Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Bastards in Suits

Over at the indispensible Kung Fu Monkey, John Rogers has a brilliant post up about our fearless clueless leaders in the War on Terror.

As usual with Rogers, it's all great stuff. But I know our readers are much too lazy to click through to the link, so here's a taste to get you motivated:
The problem is, these yahoos have managed an ugly trick. They have turned criticism of the policies of Bastards in Suits into criticism of The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. This, of course, is completely wrong, as one can easily tell the difference between the Bastards in Suits and The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. One group is in Suits, and Not Getting Shot At, while another is in Uniform, and Getting Shot At. Please, try to grasp this. Not the same.

There is a flip side. Some people confuse supporting the Bastards in Suits for supporting The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. This is, again, ridiculous. If the history of modern warfare has taught us anything, it's that the Bastards in Suits spend an awful lot of time working the kinks out of plans involving The People in Uniform dying unpleasantly. They often screw that up. When they do screw up, it is incumbent upon Bastards in Suits to suffer criticism and fix the situation, as by comparison The People in Uniform are suffering shattered skulls, missing limbs and death. Which is, on my scale, exponentially more traumatic than criticism.

Some people even seem confused on how we are criticizing the Bastards in Suits. The Bastards have a job to do. They are not doing it. Period. Tommy Franks recently trotted out the classic bit of misdirection, attacking critics of Donald Rumsfeld. "I don't care about your politics. I don't. Don Rumsfeld is an American patriot."

Yes, well, that's lovely. But we're not criticizing his patriotism. We're criticizing his job performance. One of the great mysteries of the last six years was how and when the Bush Administration turned public policy into Special Olympics. "Oh, I know Donny knocked over all the hurdles, but HE LOVES THE RACE, so you SHUT YOUR FILTHY, CYNICAL MOUTH." Jesus H. Christ.
The rest is just as damn good, so go take a look.

6 comments:

Thrillhous said...

Dang, that was a great post.

Pooh said...

Man...the Monkey is good at this blogging thing...

Noah said...

I read the entire post, and was truly moved. This was the straight-forward and cogent post I have been looking for to help explain what I truly believe about patriotism. A beautiful post, to be sure.

This is the type of stuff I wish that our Congressional delegations would read and believe. Hell yes; be hard on the Government! Hell yes; hold the Administration accountable! Instead of the insipid "right war, wrong reasons" argument, this post gets at the root. We're there, now. It's time to uphold our end of the deal, and the current Administration has fooled you, John Q. Public, into believing that thoughts, prayers and Fox News count as support.

No. It is our gestures that count as support. Not "fly the flag in front of my house" gestures, but "getting pissed at Congressman Rogers and calling him every day until I get an answer I want out of him" kind of gesture. And then it's Rogers actually taking action, or getting voted out. True, it's macro-level stuff, but it's the right stuff.

Thanks for bringing the post to our attention.

Thrillhous said...

Nicely said, Smitty. You must've had your whole wheat brew this morning.

Otto Man said...

Glad you all liked it. KFM is a great blog, and a unique one blending his day job (screenwriter) with nice political stuff.

The humor posts are brilliant. While you're over there, be sure to check out his discussion of the origins of I Love Lucy and ... aw, hell, hit the Index Fu post and just go to town.

Anonymous said...

That's a splendid rant, but there's a strong deja vu element to it.

Wasn't it, oh, about three years ago that people who had been skeptical of the need to invade Iraq in the first place started raising objections about the failure to deal with looters and maintain order, on top of the fact WMD's weren't being found?

And, in response, didn't those Bastards in Suits charge the objectors — folks they deemed whiners and Hate-America-Firsters — were against our valiant troops?