Reading between the lines

"The Schoolgirl. A hope for education, which was banned for girls under the Taliban and crippled under the Mujahidin era (1992 - 1996)," says the Afghan Magazine caption to this enchanting image, reminiscent of that long-ago National Geo cover girl but with a sugar-and-spice gleam of optimism in the young girl's eye. You're only as good as you treat your women, as Western Civ proves over and over in both word and deed. Eat your heart out, Mullah Omar. (© Pia Torelli photo)

"When I get a pair of glasses, I shall be able to read," goes the magic thinking of illiterate Afghanis reported by Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-76 and commanding general of the the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan. We caught the Maj. Gen. live this morning on C-Span via video link speaking to reporters in the Pentagon. The disconnect of Afghanis dreaming of instantaneous literacy called to mind the magic thinking of some of our national leaders, who are frantically touting toothless resolutions against the President's "way forward" in Iraq even as they confirm the appointment of his choice of Gen. Petraeus to carry out the plan. Glenn Reynolds explains:

If Petraeus succeeds, they'll be bragging that they voted for him. If he fails, they'll note that they opposed the surge. As John F. Kennedy noted, political courage is scarcer than physical courage.

We were encouraged to hear our new Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates -- still enjoying a honeymoon with the press -- echoing General Petraeus's and VP Cheney's comments in the DODs press availability yesterday:

Q: Mr. Secretary, Senator Lieberman said the Senate resolution opposing the 21,000 increase in troops would offer some encouragement to the enemy. Would you agree with that?

SEC. GATES: Well, I think it's pretty clear that a resolution that, in effect, says that the general going out to take command of the arena shouldn't have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries.

I think it's hard to measure that with any precision, but it seems pretty straightforward that any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to those folks. And I'm sure that that's not the intent behind the resolutions, but I think it may be the effect.

Unlike our beloved shoot-from-the-hip Rummy, the admirable new man in town is more of a steel-hand-in-a-velvet-glove type. His kinder and gentler manner may be just the thing to disarm the Administration's militarily challenged critics, but the message is the same. Dr. Sanity has the diagnosis:

. . . the Democrats (e.g. like Nancy Pelosi in Baghdad proclaiming she "supports the troops") and the clueless antiwar crowd . . . seem to have a serious problem in understanding why a person's actions speak louder than their words . . .

The discrepancies that lie between actions and words are most revealing. After 30 years of doing this professionally, I am never surprised at the degree to which people are able to delude themselves . . .

That is why a disgruntled commenter on my blog (who always wears such a "happy face" no matter what she is saying) can insist that it is "nonsense" for me to observe the reckless behavior of the Democrats and the political left as they do everything possible to encourage, protect, and enable the enemies that are killing our troops; even as they proclaim -- without the slightest awareness of irony -- that they support those troops.

No, they don't want our troops to be killed, but their behavior facilitates and encourages it.

Ditto their facilitators in the media, whose frequently unhelpful chatter, "truthiness" and outright lies were best characterized by our own Donald "unknown unknowns" Rumsfeld three years back, when his crisp, take-no-prisoners prose was fashionable enough to be the subject of a Slate compilation of "The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld":

It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't --
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.
Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.

The expression "our troops" grates when it rolls off the tongues of those do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do armchair generals. CNNs in-house scold, Lou Dobbs is among the worst offenders. But for all-time tendentious, anti-American rhetoric, no one holds a candle to our own Taxachusetts junior Sen. John "Stuck-in-Iraq" Kerry, who outdid himself this day, telling an international audience of poobahs in Davos that the land of the free and the home of the brave -- under the leadership of you-know-who, natch -- had become "a sort of international pariah." No comment necessary.

Comments

[goomp]

Only one comment for Kerry, sick like so many pols and other public figures that don't have what it takes to be the noble and adored persons that they wish they were.

[Teresa]

"a serious problem in understanding why a person's actions speak louder than their words . . ."

This would be because the Dems take their cue from the very nuanced Europeans who have always been masters of saying one thing and doing another.

If this is your role model and you admire this behavior, considering it to be far more civilized than the barbaric American method of "telling it like it is", you will certainly try to emulate what you adore.

[Gayle Miller]

We're a big time international pariah, except when they want our assistance or our money. Then they love us like the best friends they ever had. Bunch of phoney idiots! And these are the cretins John Kerry and his confreres want "advising" us on how to run OUR national security operations? I think not!