Thursday, March 27, 2008

An Armchair General in the Thick of It


Greenwald:

What is so deranged about the Kagans and O'Hanlons and the like is that they don't perceive themselves as "war cheerleaders" at all. They have convinced themselves that they are the real warriors, doing the actual fighting. Here's what Fred Kagan said at the AEI event:
It will be some time before the Iraqi Security Forces are able to ensure the security of the country against Al Qaeda, particularly to ensure that Al Qaeda is not able to establish safe havens anywhere in the country That will be some time. And we've got some fighting ahead of us.

"We've got some fighting ahead of us," says this brave, swaggering war hero. Then, towards the end of his presentation, with Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack waiting for their turn to shower us all with their brilliant Iraq expertise, Kagan said that he wanted to make one last point "before I turn it over to my brothers from Brookings." They're brothers in combat.

His war buddy alongside him in the trenches, Mike O'Hanlon, then proclaimed them all -- "Fred and Ken" -- to be "Lombardis of this war," after the football coach Vince Lombardi, renown for his will to win: "they stuck with it, and they persevered through difficult times," tough guy O'Hanlon bellowed. They're really as obscene and self-deluded as they are ignorant and continuously wrong.

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