Bury Me Broken

Bargaining with the Terrorists

Blaghdad at DailyKos asks what happened to we don't bargain with terrorists in light of Sunday British newspaper article, U.S. military negotiating with Iraqi insurgents.

Oh no. We have it all wrong. He isn't bargaining with terrorists per se; they are negotiating with insurgents.

See, if they were talking to those "foreign fighters" coming in from across the Syrian border and causing this entire brouhaha that has kept the Iraqis from throwing flowers at our feet, then that would be bargaining with terrorists. Instead, they are talking to inserrrrgents (said with a sarcastic exaggeration) and that is much different; that is keeping in line with policy.
Wait a minute. Wasn't it the administration that was calling Iraqis engaged in bombing in Iraq 'terrorists' while everyone else referred to them as 'insurgents'? Well so much for that terrorist/insurgent argument.

The biggest problem with absolutists like Rove, Rumsfeld and the president is that they have no concept of contingency. This is what happens to the rest of America, say an Army reservist whose wife's mother is keeping the toddlers while she works two jobs and maxes out the credit cards to keep the house while his tour is forcefully extended. When you have powerful friends of your father to sink money into your failing business ventures, you have no real sense of a contingency plan, what to do when your present efforts fail.

The game in this administration is to make the president appear to be the most resolute man on the planet, even more ideological than Reagan and the bloodthirsty, brainwashed core constituency will buy even more 'W' stickers while children go to bed hungry and there ain't no jobs in Ohio.

The problem with making the president appear resolute/ absolute/ unwavering is that absolutism doesn't work. It clashes with infinity.

posted by niteskolar @ 9:32 AM