Colin Powell fires back at Cheney & Limbaugh

[CapelDodger]

When you see someone going at what you perceive as an unsafe speed down the highway, you don't hope he crashes, you don't hope he dies, you hope he gets pulled over or stops speeding.

I hope they die soon without taking anyone with them.

Hoping for failure is still stupid. Hoping that policies change is not. Believing the will fail is not.

Hoping the policies won't even be tried smacks of defensiveness ...

If you want to frame it as Rush saying he hope the President fails to implement his policies, that's an entirely different subject. But as hgc said, we should really give a two ***** about what Rush thinks or hopes.

... which is what brings Limbaugh's claim to have a pair into question.

Ideally Obama would implement his policies so that they would fail in practice, something believers such as Limbaugh have faith in. Let the electorate learn their lesson for abandoning Real America - give Obama the rope and he'll hang himself.

 

[SezMe]

Some dare call it Hubris .

The problem is, if you distance yourself from the Hubrists within the Republican Party, who do you move closer to? Wall Street?

Hubrists and WallStreetists are not mutually exclusive sets. In fact, the overlap is genuinly scary.

 

[hgc]

It was right after the Kuwait War not to get too far into Iraq directly, but it was wrong politically to leave Saddam in place. As Pershing said in 1918 "If we don't finish them [Krauts] now we'll have to come back and finish them later." And so it proved.

Not to get to far afield... I seems to me that Pershing got his wish vis-à-vis Germany after WWI. Totally decapitated and stomped underfoot.

 

[Geezer]

And of course it wasn't the military's job to determine that. They did what they were asked to do and then awaited further orders. That's when the whole thing started to unwind, because at the political level there were no plans for the day after. The military were left to cover their own asses on an ad-hoc basis while the White House connected glee-club played out turf (and money) wars.

The invasion itself was a professional job of the first order, from top to bottom.

Yes, and when they asked about phase IV they were told don't worry we will have it ready for you in time, which they didn't so they left Garner, the military and the Iraqi civilians hanging in the breeze.

 

[Geezer]

Not to get to far afield... I seems to me that Pershing got his wish vis-à-vis Germany after WWI. Totally decapitated and stomped underfoot.

Which of course is counted as one of the main reasons why NSDAP could gain so much ground during the 20's and early 30's.

 

[CapelDodger]

Not to get to far afield... I seems to me that Pershing got his wish vis-à-vis Germany after WWI. Totally decapitated and stomped underfoot.

It's important to distinguish between wish and prediction. Pershing's wish was to finish it there and then. The German Army was in retreat (and in parts mutinous) but not defeated, not crushed beyond argument. It was still fighting hard and Allied casualties were horrific - worse than during trench-warfare because the soldiers going forward were so exposed.
A fighting retreat with machine-guns and light artillery, falling back on supply-lines, can be murderous. Pursuit of a broken army is very different, but the German Army was not broken in 1918. If it had been the French would have chased it all the way to Berlin and done there what the Germans had done in Paris.

That's why the Allies made a negotiated peace, and why the "stabbed in the back by politicians" theme took root in Germany. Pershing predicted that - not in detail, but in principle. And he was absolutely right.

In the concluding round it was "unconditional surrender". That lesson had been learnt. Again .

 

[CapelDodger]

Yes, and when they asked about phase IV they were told don't worry we will have it ready for you in time, which they didn't so they left Garner, the military and the Iraqi civilians hanging in the breeze.

It wasn't so much "it'll be ready in time" as "we've got that covered, don't worry your simple military heads about it, you'll all be home by Xmas". The military (and the State Department) were profoundly dubious, but what could they do? Launch a coup? That's un-American in principle, but when the obvious leader is a black guy it could only result in civil war.

Of course the White House clique didn't have it covered at all. They hadn't even decided on their preferred puppet. Unlike Pershing (and almost all successful military men) they had no historical awareness at all. They "created reality when they acted". Yeah, right, that's been heard before ...

There's a good reason why "hubris" is a classical term .

 

[CapelDodger]

Hubrists and WallStreetists are not mutually exclusive sets. In fact, the overlap is genuinly scary.

Hubris does get in everywhere.

By "Hubrist", of course, I meant the Cheney-Rove clique that thought (after 2004) that they had created a "party" of everlasting power. A party that was simply a means of gelding any meaningful democracy to perpetuate rule by oligarchy.

To those people the GOP was only ever a vehicle. Ideals never entered into it (unless limitless greed for wealth and power per se is a Republican ideal, which is not my understanding of Republicanism).

Nor is it my understanding that traditional Republican ideals are to be found in Scripture. That would leave bankers and money-changers outside the pale, and traditionally they've been the backbone of Republicanism. Damn' Yankees .

Republican ideals are up for grabs at the moment. I expect the Cheney/Limbaugh/Scripture coalition to win out, and it's the only competition they have any prospect of winning for a good while.

 

[CapelDodger]

Which of course is counted as one of the main reasons why NSDAP could gain so much ground during the 20's and early 30's.

If Germany had actually been crushed by the democracies, democracy would probably have taken hold in Germany and the NSADP would never have counted for anything. As it was, returning soldiers who felt undefeated formed the basis of the Freikorps which in turn projected the Nazis into power. Politicians over-rode the Kaiser and the hold-out military to bring about a humiliating peace by negotiation, which undermined the legitimacy of German democracy in its infancy.

It's been very different in Germany (and in Japan, incidentally; no first mistake there) since the second go-around. That time the democracies really rubbed their noses in it. Heck, they even let the Slavs join in. It doesn't get more unkind than that .

 

[Dorian Gray]

If the president's policies are not good for the country, you _should_ want the president to fail.

The amount of cognitive dissonance required to keep this silly meme alive is getting "WMD GOT MOVED TO SYRIA" bad.

You're either with us or against us, Corplinx. Wait, who's president again?

We've just been through 8 years of "attacking the president is unpatriotic." When people said they wanted Bush to fail, they were 'traitors.' And now, may I present to you the Republican event we've all been waiting for: The Flip-Flop.

 

[Dorian Gray]

The problem is that you are arguing two different definitions of the word "fail".

For example, I've heard many refer to Bill and Hillary's efforts at health care reform a "failure", since it died. Failure in this sense means that they failed to get the changes that they wanted, and lost some political capital for it. It does not mean that they made the country fail or somesuch.

Rush has made it clear on the radio that this is what he means.

No, the problem is that he's saying this now, YET when Democrats said the exact same thing about the war in Iraq, Rush lined up to call them unpatriotic. Can't have it both ways!

And after doing a little search on Corplinx, I've noticed that when he doesn't agree with a statement, he paints it as a silly meme repeated by uninformed people. Good luck having an intelligent unbiased conversation with that. ETA: Add 'talking points' to the list: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=4740506#post4740506