Don't Panic

(fm the BC thread "At the Summit")

Morton Doodslag,
Yes incrementalism, as opposed to saying “Oh My God we must kill one billion people by yesterday or the world will end.” Are you suicidal? Seriously I have no desire to cause pain but the despair is over the top. Islam has waxed and waned for 1400 years. The confluence of post WW-1 trauma and petro-dollars for the Ummah is a recent and passing problem. We ace real dangers and hard choices but panic is not the answer. On the last thread, on my bberry I only get one window and commenting is a pain, DWB is screaming that the Patriot Act gives Obama super secret unlimited powers to suspend elections. This is not only untrue but it makes us all look bad. Be of good cheer, we have a lot of work to do. People side with happy warriors.

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Morton Doodslog,
(who would target the "epicenter of their ideology" to reduce casualties)
Very glad to see we agree on what is important. If you look back I did try not to make my criticism to personal and my concern, about people reinforcing each others fears not just as to the intentions of the administration but about our prospects for avoiding failure and defeat, was not entirely unreasonable. Someplace in the archives are my own concerns about the constitutions we sponsored in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as speculations regarding the governance of the oil fields. Just yesterday I wrote in excruciating length about the possibility that the lines between combatants and civilians and sovereign states and dominant subsystems have become so blurred that threatened nations and communities may disburse and preposition WMD for retaliatory purposes. Yesterday Iran essentially announced their intention to do so.

Present company excepted, we have had trolls attempt to seed the blog with either defeatist or inflammatory content. Some time ago at one at least one of the regulars at LGF was deliberately submitting calls for violence or hate speech into PJM blogs. We know that there will be efforts to disrupt tomorrows tea parties. No one should be offended if someone offers a hand and says, "Steady on, it may not be that bad."

A defense of "incrementalism" is not a defense of current policy. It is an acceptance of the intent behind the original, highly assertive in most people's opinions, Bush-Cheney Doctrine. The concept of really changing their culture, using all the tools we have as we did with Japan and Germany, is a positive pro-American policy that over time may transform the Middle East. The actual specifics were subject to dispute. If we believe in our culture we have to believe that what it does for peasants who come to America it can also do to peasants in Mesopotamia. When conservatives reject that policy they do not get Patrick Buchanan's policies as an alternative, thank God. The same as when they stayed home rather than vote for John McCain did not get them a more conservative choice. If we do not want Obama we need to support the best we can get. Bush-Cheney had a good plan worthy of support. It was certainly to good to be conflated with the current program of retreat and surrender."