Thoughts on the interregnum

[pecunium]

I keep seeing this meme,

"He won. Get over it.

It bothers me, and last week, seeing a listserve flaming match full of it, it began (in the shower, where, as has been said before, I tend to mull matters of weighty thought) to dawn on me why.

It's bullshit. I mean we all know it's bullshit. It's a rhetorical way of someone saying, "shut up," without resorting to that much open aggression.

It's discountive. As if the mere fact of my guy losing invalidates what I have to say on the issues.

Which is bullshit. We have elections, not annointings. Being declared the winner doesn't give said winner a free ride (and most certainly it doesn't when the margin of the victory was so small as it was in the most recent presidential election). If I had doubts and reservations about a candidate before the election, they don't magically fade away when the tally gets totted up.

What really irks me is I know the people doing this, and they are not being honest, because they were shrill, to the point of incoherence; with non-sensical ramblings (I still hear about the "murders" the Clintons managed to commit/have committed), when they were on the losing side.

But now... heck, their guy won and we need to, get over it.

Bullshit. If he can be "the kind of guy who stands up for what he knows is right, even when the rest of the world disagrees," so can I. More to the point, I will.

If I have to be a preacher in the wilderness, so be it. If it means I get treated to scorn and ridicule (beyond my portion) so be it. If it means some people stop reading me, then regrettably; because I hope to persuade those outside the choir, so be it.

I am not going to trim my sails to public opinion. I shan't bow my head to men, nor bend my knee. I do not have a king; my natural superior, I have a president, who is, at best, primus inter pares and I am one of that parity.

If those who take issue with what I have to say don't like it, well I have three words for them.

"Get over it"

Comments

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

It was a bad decision to vote Bush before the election and it remains a bad decision after the election. A bad decision that people made doesn't make it moot. It's still a bad decision.

If Bush reveals that the war wasn't based on intentional fabrications, brings peace to Iraq, rebalances the budget, and revalues the dollar, THEN I will get over it.

[antiquated-tory.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I'd settle for a reasonable outcome on Iraq; i.e. one that doesn't leave them looking like Lebanon in the 1970s and us like complete assholes.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

This is funny to me. This seems a sort of, "We have to stick it out, because we can't afford to fail," which was the Republican policy for staying in Viet-nam.

Right now, with 14 bases in Iraq being planned, discussion of PCS tours (a la Korea) and suchlike, we aren't planning to get out.

We are planning, so it seems, a permanent force there. I can see a number of reasons for this, and I like none of them.

More to the point, the only good chances I can see for an avoidance of Lebanon, is more on the order of Iran. Even that seems less than stable. We made a mess, and unlike a spilled puzzle, I think this is dropped eggs.

TK

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

Terry, I've been mulling the different possible scenarios in my mind, and you can sum all of them up thusly: we're screwed. With the same people who dropped the eggs still in charge... how could it be anything but?

[antiquated-tory.livejournal.com]

Well, I think you're probably right. On the other hand, if we pulled out right now it would definitely be a 100% catastrophic outcome, as opposed to only almost 100%. But I really don't want to echo Republican policy on Vietnam. In short, I don't know what the Hell to do.
This of course doesn't matter--I'm only a slob in Prague. It's that apparently the Administration also does not know what the Hell to do and furthermore never did. Even the most ardent supporters of the invasion I know are gobsmacked by this. (not to mention people like myself who said 'Naw, they can't really be that stupid, they'd never risk this much if they didn't know what they were doing...')
I somehow don't think we're going to end up with all these permanent bases throughout Iraq, though. My current bet is an American protected Kurdistan (and won't our allies the Turks love that?) with a serious permanent base and God knows what else in the rest of the country, besides some Great Game action between us and Iran in the South, which we will doubtlessly screw up and lose. Unless Lancelot Link goes completely mad and invades Iran, of course, but I'd rather not think about that. Not before breakfast.

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

Whoa, I musta missed your comment back in Dec.! How'd that happen? 'Naw, they can't really be that stupid, they'd never risk this much if they didn't know what they were doing... Yup, that was me too! I finally came around to the realization that yes, they ARE completely clueless.

Unless Lancelot Link goes completely mad and invades Iran, of course.. Well, you wrote this on Dec. 11 and today Condi was making cluck-clucking noises over Iran's nuclear capability. And Seymour Hersh says we already have operatives in Iran. Just like the Project for the New American Century asses wanted.

[antiquated-tory.livejournal.com]

Well, I still think an invasion of Iran is very unlikely, as those aren't the kinds of noises Condi is making. I think a nuclear Iran is pretty much unavoidable at this point. The reformists in Iran are for the most part staunch nationalists and favor getting the Bomb even more than the Council of Guardians do. Also, Tehran is rather more clever than Baghdad and has dispersed its development centers, with many of them in cities, making even limited military strikes a doubtful option. What Hersh says makes sense, since sabotage is probably the only remaining military option. And there pretty much are no diplomatic options, since the Iranians have decided no combination of carrots and sticks would be more advantageous to them than having the Bomb. And under current circumstances, they're probably right.