{"id":19,"date":"2006-03-24T16:09:09","date_gmt":"2006-03-24T20:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=19"},"modified":"2006-03-24T16:09:09","modified_gmt":"2006-03-24T20:09:09","slug":"the-onion-and-the-neocon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=19","title":{"rendered":"The Onion and the neocon"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK — here are two quotes. One is from<\/a> the Onion<\/em> this week, and the other<\/a> is from Charles Krauthammer’s column in today’s Washington Post.<\/em> The hard thing is to decide which is which. Vote in the comments, please.<\/p>\n\n

People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side — the Sunni insurgency — [has been] fighting it.
\nNow, all of a sudden everyone is shocked to find Iraqis going after Iraqis. But is it not our entire counterinsurgency strategy to get Iraqis who believe in the new Iraq to fight Iraqis who want to restore Baathism or impose Taliban-like rule? Does not everyone who wishes us well support the strategy of standing up the Iraqis so we can stand down? And does that not mean getting the Iraqis to fight the civil war themselves?
\nHence the gradual transfer of war-making responsibility. Hence the decline of American casualties. Hence the rise of Iraqi casualties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

vs<\/p>\n\n

Over the last month, the Iraqis have been fighting like you wouldn’t believe … New Iraqis are joining the war every day—so many, in fact, that we don’t know where they all came from. It’s almost as if they came out of nowhere.
\nCritics of this war who said we couldn’t inspire the Iraqi people to stand up and fight for themselves have been proven wrong. There was the stubborn perception that after greeting us as liberators, the Iraqis had no fight in them, and couldn’t effectively defend their interests. Without our presence on their soil, I doubt most Iraqis would ever have lifted a finger or picked up a gun at all. Now, there’s almost no stopping them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Thanks to Ros Taylor for spotting them both in the Wrap’s weekly roundup.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK — here are two quotes. One is from the Onion this week, and the other is from Charles Krauthammer’s column in today’s Washington Post. The hard thing is to decide which is which. Vote in the comments, please. People … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}