On the Daily Show the other night, Jon Stewart showed the latest Newsweek issue, which in all 3 versions outside the US had the cover story “Losing Afghanistan”. In the US, it had an article about some photographer…who is lesbian, but they even backed away from saying that. Disgusting.

Also, if and when the Democrats do say anything, the media pretty much ignores them, and they get a tiny little splash in the pond that no one notices. The chimperor opens up his mouth and they all jump all over themselves to shovel another truckload of bullshit all over the American people.

Thanks for the kind words.

In military terms you can go either way. You can concentrate against the enemy’s strength, or you can maneuver to penetrate at a weak point and either split or roll up the other guy’s line. If you’re going strength-against-strength you need an advantage in numbers or some other telling advantage. A relatively weaker force is probably (not always) better off massing against the enemy’s weak point.

I guess I’d argue that an incumbent is almost always the stronger force so you need to find a way to hit him where he ain’t.

Only problem with going right for the dems is it might cost them their base. Also credibility is important; John Kerry blasted Bush for not having had enough troops but he still didn’t carry the day. If the Democrats were united and credible on this issue it would certainly help them out.

Funny thing though is that from what I’ve heard, Karl’s strategy is always to go for the opponent’s strength. But I guess you too are going for the opponent’s strength — namely Bush’s national security cred — but attacking its weak point. If the Dems could take out that credibility, the Repubs are done for.

I am blaming the president and his people. I’m asking why the Dems are too dense to manage to do the same with any effectiveness.

It’s two years til the next presidential election. You really think Dems can just stand around carping without offering suggestions or at least cogent criticisms til then?

I think that’s a very smart historical point to make. That summarizes it perfectly: we need a JFK who can credibly get to the right on this and other security issues.

They put a hundred chips on the table, we kill all 100, they kill 3 of ours (or 3 NATO soldiers.) Rinse and repeat. So we do that for what, ten years? Fine. But how does that game get Al Qaeda out of the tribal lands? How does that game accomplish our strategic objective, which, let us remember, was to deny Al Qaeda a home base.

We didn’t set out to prove we could maintain bases in Afghanistan, the idea was to take out the Taliban and deny Al Qaeda a safe haven.