Rolling Stone Reponds to SOTU

Writing political analysis for Rolling Stone Magazine must the be the career equivalent of being a masseuse who can only find employment in seedy, back-alley, San Francisco massage parlor that serves happy-endings. Without an inherant, natural touch, you have to make it up by delivering a strong-stroke to your customers.

So, Tim Dickinson shows why he's jerking people off instead of massaging the hardbodies at the country-club:

Here's a president who has spent his political capital, and is out of ideas to boot. You can see the flipside of his predicament in Bush's bluster about foreign policy. A man who couldn't properly topple a tin-pot dictatorship is now wrapping his grand misadventure into a grandiloquent narrative about American interventionism somehow bringing the "end of tyranny in our world."

Fantasyland, indeed.

Actual analysis, or rhetorical set-up? I'm calling shannagans on Tim. He accuses the President of turning a colossal screw-up in Iraq (a grandmisadventure) into a false narrative that seeks to mislead the American people in believing that we are actually winning that war (a grandiloquent narrative about American interventionalism that wants to "end tyranny in our world").

This is a typical example of the Leftist tactic of "speaking truth to power." But what is missing is an actual plan where they lay out in some well-reasoned argument, using logic and facts, why the war is such a disaster. The Left will endlessly refer to civilian and military body counts, insurgent suicide bombings and polls showing support for the President, but what you won't see is any kind of context showing what is actually happening on the ground outside the narrative that they are trying to establish into the mind of the American people.

Free elections? They don't matter, Cindy's shirt says it all, "2,457 dead--how many more"?

Iraqi insurgents breaking apart, with some even actively fighting against al-Qaeda? Doesn't matter, Bush lied, people died.

New Constitution written by a diverse group of Iraqis and voted on by the people? "Are you trying to stiffle my dissent?"

Reading this it is clear that Tim isn't interested in understanding a very complex, dynamic and evolving history that is still being written in Iraq. I peronsally have not shied from supporting the war on this blog, while spending countless hours digging through an awful lot of hyperbole to argue that events are working towards victory in Iraq. And only a small, but significant, portion of these events are in the hands of President George Bush.

There is a significant portion of the Democratic Party that actively embraces the rhetorical rabbit punch as a strategy to removing the Republicans, and particularly George Bush, from power. It makes pragmatic thinkers, like me, want to run to the nearest Tom Delay office and make a love child with him. Ok, that would be very gay, but the point is, this strategy wins loud applause and "Amen brothers!" within their tight nit circle, but it is still only capable of gaining about 47% of the popular vote in a national election in spite of George Soros's decision to "donate" the proceeds from short-selling the stock-market crash to the opposition.

But, this is just me on a lowly blog with about five actual readers speaking truth to power.