We gather together

In the wee hours we awoke to find Tiny (above inspecting the Thanksgiving Lite table yesterday morning) and Baby still fast a asleep. Normally they would have been up and at our eyes, ears, nose and throat with their jaws, claws and crazy-hour dashes across our reclining self in the countdown to breakfast at 4:45 a.m. sharp. Tired but happy hosts of yesterday's gala blogfeast like ourselves, however, they overslept.

Plus ça change . . . Nothing changes but the date. Herewith a timely repost:

November 19, 2006. We awoke early morning to find the totally awesome General John Abizaid, head of CENTCOM, addressing an audience of the best and brightest in a C-Span rerun of a Friday forum at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he encouraged his audience to "Think of [the War on Terror] as a chance to confront fascism in 1920, if we had only had the guts to do it." What a treat under any circumstances, but especially when the alternative was all-OJ-book-and-"TomKat"-wedding-all-the-time on the increasingly unwatchable 24/7 cables. The General is a user-friendly Rumsfeld/Cheney, a brilliant, articulate, congenial spokesman for what used to be called The Bush Doctrine and its key "strategery" that dare not speak its name, "stay the course." Abizaid prefaced his remarks with a humorous reference to his appearance before the Senate Committee on Armed Services a few days before, saying he had worn his medals then but was now wearing fatigues, as his formal attire had been bloodied.

Ken, Sol, MB -- who told Tuck she wants to move into our atmospheric Victorian-hunting-lodge-esque living room at once -- Jean and Tuck help themselves to the delights of the groaning board at our elegant Thanksgiving Lite gathering of local bloggers yesterday. It had the festive feeling of our long-ago Christmas parties of friends from the Art Institute, but this time, it was a meeting not of people who happened to work at the same place but of minds, a disparate group who happen to share an understanding of how the world works.

Searching cyberspace for a video of the Kennedy School event to review at our leisure, we came upon our blogfriend Laura Lee Donoho's insightfully titled "Senator Despair vs. General Abizaid," a reference to the moment of truth that we happened to have seen for ourselves last week, when Senator Hillary! in full sourpuss mode had the nerve to chide the gallant and soft-spoken General Abizaid for undue optimism, saying in that you'll-never-amount-to-anything voice that is her signature, "Hope is not a strategy." [Her words have been widely misquoted and are now being presented in news "reports," reflecting the General's response, as "Hope is not a method."] Madame Clinton's question was widely referenced in the media, while Abizaid's reply -- a keeper that belongs in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, not to mention the hearts and minds of his countrymen -- was widely ignored, as it was on Gwen Ifill's PBS show, where her self-satisfied, smirking circle of like-minded Hillary watchers chortled with delight at the General's bitchslapping. His reply resonates:

Despair is not a method. When I come to Washington, I feel despair. When I’m in Iraq with my commanders, when I talk to my soldiers and Iraqi leadership, they are not despairing.

Sol and Tuck and Ken and Teresa and our new blogfriend Jill of Business of Life -- who brought a homemade pecan-and-cranberry pie fresh from her oven -- come back for seconds.

Laura Lee's soldier son had this to say about it all:

I saw McCain and Clinton both beat up on General Abizaid. They are BOTH worthless. Abizaid basically said, hey this is what we are doing given the constraints you put us under, sure we could use more troops but we can’t send more given the military’s force structure (ie we don’t need more troops in Iraq, we need a bigger military period, I guess McCain thinks the Pentagon can arbitrarily make the military bigger whenever there is a need). I just saw Lou Dobbs ranting, Well what is West Point producing nowadays, Generals like Abizaid look like politicians. Another idiot who needs to pull his head out of his ass and figure out what he’s talking about.

Needless to say, Lou Dobbs is not in danger of figuring out what he himself is talking about any time soon.

Don't take my picture! Guests relax in the studio while SpongeBob (upper right) looks on.

Two other contenders for Bartlett's citation this week:

1. President Bush's Iraq/Vietnam analogy ["Peace with honor" need not apply]:

We’ll succeed, unless we quit.

2. US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton re the UN's toxic disingenuousness:

In a larger sense, the United Nations must confront a more significant question, that of its relevance and utility in confronting the challenges of the 21st century. We believe that the United Nations is ill served when its members seek to transform the organization into a forum that is little more than a self-serving and a polemical attack against Israel or the United States . . . The problem of anti-Israel bias is not unique to the Human Rights Council. It is endemic to the culture of the United Nations. It is a decades-old, systematic problem that transcends the whole panoply of the UN organizations and agencies.

Hope may not be a strategy -- or a method -- but national leaders like General Abizaid, President Bush and Ambassador Bolton do give us reason to not yet despair.

Update: Maggie's blesses us with a Thanksgiving Day link.

Comments

[goomp]

People of courage and determination with an understanding of what history has taught us, namely that dictatorial leaders be they fascist, communist, or religious cannot be appeased, are what is needed to save western civilization. It is later than we think. We need to hear and listen to the Abizaids of the West. Thanks to you and your bloggers many are hearing the truth.

[miss kelly]

Excellent post, Sissy, glad you captured the Hillary/Abizaid "encounter." Regrets that we didn't know General Abizaid was in town!

We had a wonderful time last night at your sumptuous feast!! Many thanks!
http://misskelly.typepad.com/miss_kelly_/2006/11/sissys_sumptuou.html

[Laura Lee Donoho]

Wonderful photos Sissy! Thank you for the mention and link. My husband considers General Abizaid one of the finest generals to come out of West Point in a long time. Also watch for Gen. Marty Dempsey, a classmate and good friend of my husband's at West Point.

Our son is gaining more insight into Iraq with every passing day. One thing he mentioned to me in his latest email is the following...

"You know how people get so mad about Halliburton and how they are "cheating" the government out of money and all that BS?

Well, now that I'm here that really annoys me. A lot of the things they do make it a lot more comfortable and better for soldiers to live here, plus safer. All that concrete they put up is a good thing, haven't seen any real need for so much yet but it's just a nice security blanket sort of to see it all around.

Plus, our latrines are like normal latrines (almost)like back home and we can get our pick of whatever food we want. All that stuff doesn't just magically float in.

There are a lot of civilian employees that go out and ride the roads in trucks that don't have the equipment the military has.

Sure, they are escorted and well protected by the military but I certainly think they should be paid well for what they do and I don't see how someone back there in the US could think, "well they are getting paid WAY too much because the price of this or the price of that is so much cheaper back in the US. Hah, big difference especially for those people."

[LanceThruster]

A brief counterpoint to the claim of devastation to protect American lives -

from here: http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2006/10/qotw_everylife.html

and here: http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/06/of-fundamental-moral-principles-and.html

"Each of us is unique; not one of us can be replaced. Each of us has a family, loved ones, friends and a life that is a web of caring, interdependence, and joy. When even one of us is killed or horribly injured for no justifiable reason, the damage affects countless people in addition to the primary victim. Sometimes, the survivors are irreparably damaged as well. Even the survivors' wounds can last a lifetime.

This is of the greatest significance. There is nothing more important or meaningful in the world. No moral principle legitimizes our invasion and occupation of Iraq, just as it will not justify an attack on Iran. Therefore, when the first person was killed in Iraq as the result of our actions, the immorality was complete. The crime had been committed, and no amends could ever suffice or would even be possible. That many additional tens or hundreds of thousands of people have subsequently been killed or injured does not add to the original immorality with regard to first principles. It increases its scope, which is an additional and terrible horror -- but the principle is not altered in the smallest degree".

-- Arthur Silber; Of Fundamental Moral Principles, and the Value of a Single Human Life.

Photo: A man weeps as he holds the body of his son, wrapped in a blanket, at a hospital in Baquba October 6, 2006. The boy was killed in crossfire during a gun battle between insurgents and soldiers, witnesses in the area said. (AFP/Ali Yussef)

[Mark Tork]

Excellent commentary Sis. With the aniversary of Tet '68 approaching I found President (that sounds good doesn't it) Bush's quote quite poignant."We'll succeed, unless we quit."
This Vietnam veteran thanks you and your friends on Thanksgiving.