Stop Me Before I Vote Again

My eagle eye is skim shooting the Huff bloggery massif and notices R J Eskow, "writer, business person, and musician." Seems he's applied his multipart talents to the "Iraq: what next?" quandary, and here's his view: the whole damn mess needs not "bipartisanship" but... "non-partisanship"! Neutral rethinkers! "If the Iraq Study Group is going to be dominated by the "bipartisanship" of so-called "centrists," it will be too paralyzed by political posturing to lead us out of the quagmire" "political posturing"? That's our national welfare's present danger number one? Not the beastly Occ and its "police war" itself, oh no -- just the featured pols fluttering around with it for petty party and personal gain.

Piffle! The fix is even worse: "experts", yes experts, deadeye stone geniuses ready to craft a solution. But here's his twist: to qualify as an expert on Iraq, you have to have been right on the topple's consequences from before day one, and therefore, against the invasion and occ all along.

But that's a problem, since as he sez, "people who were actually right about the Iraq War -- before it happened" ain't "presentable", because the imperial stooge press has spent "the last three years tarring anyone who made the right call about this war as 'left-leaning' and therefore not 'centrist'". And God knows if this is to be an all-party plan it needs to be "centrist". So if we need a centrist-lookin' team we're stuck with pro-invasion retreads, wizards manque, political hack-spurts, venal roller clods who've proven their chief skill is calling a knot hole an ass hole if that's what the guys who sign the checks want it called. Thus, RJ warns us we're in for a "bipartisan" train ride to "nowhere".

w What else can we expect out of these tinkering time servers? No matter how clever or plain-thinking they may be, they're servants of the interests, like Baker and Hamilton -- moral smudge jobs.

Nope this means impasse, drift, more blood, boots and bombs -- and why, RJ asks? Because we can't call in the "experts", and "when it comes to war and national security" there's "no substitute" for "the willingness to let experts look at a problem without ideological blinders." Cue the brass section florish and... post over... the end... finis.

Now are you saying what I said -- "That's it? All we get is this pompous portico?"

Hey, RJ, what about these experts? Name names, you bugger! Names and audition tape suggestions they've made!

I guess just conjuring the blessed spectre of these "neutral" experts, these ghost riders, is a comfort and a spur all at once to the soul of this windy dope.

Even if the guy hasn't a foggy fart of a notion of what is to be done, how's he sure somebody without ideology or special interests, with courage and brains and integrity, someone steeped in regional scholarship and with Solomon's knack for fine judgements, could devise a miraculous chestnuts out of the fire solution here, one agreeable to all parties and one that would do our nation proud. He can't know that short of blind faith, and if he don't really believe it, if he's just blowin' feel good smoke and figures there is no such fantasy plan, no matter who in hell works it up, even George Marshall himself, then he oughta blast these proceedings and any future proceedings for what they are, will be and must be -- a big fat goosey stall job.