By on Thursday December 8, 2005 04:40 PM
- ... when churchyards yawn, and Hell itself breathes forth
- Contagion to the world.
Yep, the Republican implosion has brought the democratic-party Undead clambering out of their graves. A particularly ripe and fragrant specimen is Dick Holbrooke, baulked of the top job at Foggy Bottom when his noble steed Kerry died under him. Behold, he sniffs the air. A terrible excitement animates his decaying sinews. Hollowly, tonelessly, mechanically, he speaks:
"I'm not prepared to lay out a detailed policy or strategy... It's not something you can expect in a situation that is moving this fast and has the level of detail you're looking for.... I don't believe in an arbitrary drawdown, whether it's Vietnam or Bosnia or Iraq.... A departure must be based on realities on the ground.... Iraq is a country enmeshed in civil war, with no purely military strategy available.... Sunni insurgents cannot win but U.S. troops also cannot win, cannot eliminate multiple insurgencies.... Rather than a prescription I prefer to talk about goals.... we need to reach a point where U.S. troops are not participants in this civil war but where we're still able to protect U.S. interests like oil, regional stability, counterterrorism and Israel."As with all the War Democrats, there is much slapstick in these attempts to bridge an ever-widening gap. One foot in the dinghy, one on the dock, and the dinghy starts to drift away. The panicked expression, the windmilling arms, the inevitable splash.
And it's very gratifying to reflect that mealy-mouthed temporizing like this is quite likely to deprive the Democrats of a recrudescence in '06 that they have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to deserve.
