“Some of the sadness and frustration following Aurora has to do with the fact…that no one thinks anyone can, or will, do anything to make our culture better. The film industry isn’t going to change, the genie is long out of the bottle.”
The Dark Night Rises, indeed.
OTOH, if American culture is toxic, something better is happening behind the scenes. Auroras are, in fact, declining. In the 2000s, murders and mass murders have dropped to their lowest levels since the 1960s.
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Posted in Obituaries, Scribbles
Tagged Aurora, Peggy Noonan, the dark night rises
When she started chewing on Sarah last fall, along with the rest of the worthless snooze media, I finally realized that Peggy Noonan wasn’t the far-seeing iconoclast I had thought. Now, as the Seablogger suggests, when she can encounter a continent-spanning technology like wi-fi on a jet flight and somehow equate it to garage-level industry, it shows she’s just another empty head with a deadline and no original (much less logical) thought.
Comments Off on Peggy Noonan is such a twit
Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles
Tagged garage industry, Peggy Noonan, wi-fi
Now Peggy Noonan is saying it–or maybe said it before but I missed it–in criticizing President Bush for ad hominem attacks against party detractors of his immigration bill. Maybe Fred’ll close them. I haven’t been a Republican voter long enough to know whether it’s true that when you lose Noonan, you’ve lost the GOP. Mysticchords’ John Salmon thinks she’s a poor analyst, but Instapundit started saying last fall she was leaving Bush behind and taking the conservatives with her.
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Posted in The War
Tagged close the borders, Fred Thompson, GOP, immigration, Peggy Noonan, President Bush
Bush’s Democrat and Republican critics have repeated the same canard now over and over again for years: Bush has no plan, no coherent strategy for Iraq. It’s all hit or miss, etc.
Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan even quotes Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel reiterating the notion and praises him for having the guts to speak out–even if a quick stroll through the Small Wars Journal could have shown her that his supposedly gutsy move was based on a false assumption.
Some of the journal’s counterinsurgeny strategists, at least, have done their homework and concluded that there not only is a plan, and a coherent strategy, in Bush’s "surge," with its focus on securing the population of Bahgdad and al-Anbar, but that it has a track record of success:
"The new strategy reflects counterinsurgency best practice as demonstrated over dozens of campaigns in the last several decades: enemy-centric approaches that focus on the enemy, assuming that killing insurgents is the key task, rarely succeed. Population-centric approaches, that center on protecting local people and gaining their support, succeed more often…in the new strategy what matters is providing security and order for the population, rather than directly targeting the enemy – though this strategy will effectively marginalize them."
It’s also significant that the Army’s guru of counterinsurgency, Gen. David Petreaus, will be the one to implement the new approach. Read it all here.
Comments Off on The plan behind the “no plan”
Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops
Tagged Bush's plan, Chuck Hagel, Iraq strategy, Peggy Noonan, Small Wars Journal
I usually find reasons to take heart from former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan’s latest column, but not today. The headline "The Two Vacuums" and the subhead "Neither Iraqis nor Democrats seem ready to do what’s required of them" seemed reasonable so I printed it out to read. Only when I read it did I realize that the headline writer, for whatever reason, was trying to avoid her main point, which is that Bush is coming unglued, hasn’t a clue what to do, and his new strategy isn’t new at all. It certainly seems new to me, with its hints of finally cleaning up Mookie and his sectarian-warring militia in Sadr City, and the insurgent/militia sanctuaries in Syria and Iran, even if that means war with those terrorist-supporting countries (see bit about carrier battle groups in the Gulf, and providing Patriot anti-missile systems to regional allies), and a clear and hold strategy for Baghdad’s most violent neighborhoods, which I don’t recall seeing before. Maybe I am the one who sees substance that isn’t there, but his detractors (the usual ones and the shocking new ones like Noonan) seem to be saying: "We can’t leave, but we can’t stay. Sorry if Iraq falls apart and the genocide begins, but we are an impatient people more interested in presidential style than substance, and we are losing what patience we had with this man and his war." As if it really was only his war, and getting rid of him would make all things better. The mind reels. Mine, anyhow.
UPDATE For all that, the stock market continues to soar. Somebody’s not pessimistic. But Donald Sensing is, deeply.
Comments Off on We can’t leave, but we can’t stay
Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops
Tagged Bush, Iraq, new startegy, Peggy Noonan, surge
That’s what onetime Texas ag commissioner Jim Hightower says are in the middle of the road. But fav columnist Peggy Noonan says the center is where the Reps and Dems need to be, especially the Dems.
"Can they go down the center, or will radicalism of various sorts erupt and gain sway? No one knows. The Democrats don’t know. The answer is going to help shape America’s future political history. And it will help shape George Bush’s. If the Democrats are radical, he will look more reasonable, not only in the eyes of the public but of history."
The Hightower wing prefers radicalism to imitating armadillos. But at the expense of elevating Bush?
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Posted in The War
Tagged Democrats, George W. Bush, Jim Hightower, Peggy Noonan, Republicans
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 