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logomachy--1. A dispute
about words. 2. A dispute carried on in words only; a battle of words.
logomachon--1. One who argues about words.
2. A word warrior.
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2004-09-20
Campaign blather
"Bush's go-it-alone approach has cost billions of dollars that could have been spent on jobs, schools, and health care"--Kerry campaign.
Wait a minute. Does this mean Kerry wants to increase transfer payments and the Federal take-over of the economy even more than Bush, to the tune of $200 billion? What about the deficit? How does spending money on "jobs, schools, and health care" run up the deficit any less than buying war materiel? And whenever did government spending create jobs?
What the hell does "no plan to win the peace" mean?
To start with, what does "win the peace" mean? This is a new military/sociological category. Maybe it is one of the higher modalities Kerry so likes. Are the Dems saying that the WAR is won? Does it mean that they are going to stop sneering and kvetching about "Mission Accomplished"? Doesn't setting up interim governments at all levels, opening schools, training security forces, creating an environment in which the phenomena of freedom appear--from Internet cafes to political parties--and fighting Baathist remnants, Iranian-backed insurgents, and mujihadin wet-backs count as a plan? (Remember, the Pentagon had a win the peace plan, but the diplomats and CIA junked it, because it wasn't nuanced enough.)
As though getting France and Germany involved is a good plan! As though it were ever going to happen. Half of Germany--well, you've heard of lace-curtain Irish--they're Iron-Curtain Germans and still viscerally infected with the anti-Americanism they learned as children.
France not only instinctively takes the attitude C'est un travail sale. Laisser les américains sales le font. ["Eet ezz a dairty chob. Let zee dairty Americains do it."], France is already more involved in our Iraq policy than any country other than Britain--selling weapons to Saddam, supporting his development programs, taking Oil-for-Food bribes, planting phony documents, strong-arming small countries against joining the U.S., and vetoing U.S. efforts to get the UNSC to enforce its own demands on Saddam. They are really going to jump at Kerry's appeal: "We don't want Americans to die in Iraq; we want you to die there, the way our allies in Vietnam did, the ones I said were worthless. . . not to mention the 30 allies we have in Iraq, who I say don't exist."
Heck. If Kerry can say that the allies that are there aren't there, why don't we just say that France and Germany--Hurrah! Voila Belgium!--are there?
Now, is everyone happy?
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