I wrote an article in NRO three and a half years ago, at a low moment in Obama’s first term, when his ratings tanked and his party had just lost Edward Kennedy’s senate seat to a Republican, that suggested that Obama could “salvage his tottering administration” by taking “dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.” He could do well and do good, I offered, by taking out the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.
Well, as the world knows, he did not follow my advice.And he was convincingly reelected.
But the time has come to crank it out again at a moment when Obama seems close to imploding...I assume the real purpose of his post is to tell the world, "I still exist and my answer to everything is still 'Kill Arabs.'"
UPDATE. Commenters tell me the punchline should be "Kill Muslims." Quite right, will remember that for the second show.
Iranians aren't Arabs. Pipes believes in principled, race-blind killing of Muslims.
ReplyDeleteAnd had Obama done that the right would have given him as much credit for it as they did the killing of Bin Laden.
ReplyDeleteGiven this background, I propose that (updating my 2010 article) a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless fifth year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene.
ReplyDelete'Cause nothing distracts the rubes from their numerous real-world problems like a good old-fashioned war, eh, Pipes?
I note that Mr. Pipes is leading the charge only in a metaphorical sense.
ReplyDeleteFuckin' weenie. I thought real men wanna go to Tehran, not talk about getting the Prez to send other people there.
Y'know, I think Washington would cease to exist if we bundled up all the chickenhawks there and dumped them in Somalia.
Since I'm sure it will be a shorter list, what has Mr. Pipes gotten right about foreign policy?
ReplyDelete"Cranking it out since 1949."
ReplyDelete- Daniel Pipes, G.W. Bush recess appointment to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace
~
I'm sure the fallout when the administration inevitably botched an impossible attack on a sovereign nation's most jealously protected asset would do wonders for his reputation.
ReplyDeleteProtip Daniel: Iranian forces are green and made of plastic like the ones you gamed this out with.
at a low moment in Obama’s first term, when his ratings tanked and his party had just lost Edward Kennedy’s senate seat to a Republican
ReplyDeleteSo, he's writing this not only after the Dems got that seat back, but kept another Massachusetts Senate seat out of the GOP's hands, just a few days ago? Nice timing, Pipesy.
1.) Correctly identified that Iran is a foreign country.
ReplyDelete2.)...
Ol' "Meth" Pipes is still smokin' shit, I see.
ReplyDeleteIranians aren't Arabs.
ReplyDeleteGood point, but do you have any evidence that Pipes knows that? A great many of his fellow travelers certainly don't.
It would sideline immigration reform, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, make netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon.
ReplyDeleteArmageddon--The Ultimate In Pissing Off Liberals
Obama could “salvage his tottering administration” by taking “dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.
ReplyDeleteOf only Obama had done something like, say, finally get Osama bin Laden killed by a bunch of Navy SEALS.
"Commenters tell me the punchline should be 'Kill Muslims.'"
ReplyDeleteOkay, now I get it.
Bullshit. Iranians are Arabs.
ReplyDelete3.) Profit!
ReplyDeleteHe could do well and do good, I offered, by taking out the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.
ReplyDeleteThe Stucknet virus did a pretty good job of that, actually.
Well, as the world knows, he did not follow my advice.
Yes, accomplishing the same ends in a smarter, less expensive, less dangerous to our service men & women, and less kablooey! way just doesn't get Pipes the boner the way a shock-n-awe mission using the latest in expensive military hardware would, ergo, FAIL.
A short, victorious war.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the fallout when the administration inevitably botched an impossible attack on a sovereign nation's most jealously protected asset would do wonders for his reputation.
ReplyDeleteNow now, I'm sure the Republicans would have refrained from using any of that to attack the president, since he would have been putting one of their own policies into effect. You know, just like how they let him pass Obamacare without a bunch of drama because it was originally a Republican idea.
Only about 2%. Iranians are mostly Persians.
ReplyDeleteEvery time an NRO writer works a reference to Ted Kennedy into a column, K-Lo buys them a Hershey bar, which they then eat alone and with great ceremony, pretending just for a little while to be a normal person.
ReplyDeletethe public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue
ReplyDeleteProtip: "public" means more than just you.
Damn. Hey Obama, if you kill somebody your ratings will go up. Jesus Fucking Christ!!
ReplyDeleteAnd wouldn't it be ironic if the missiles that Reagan gave them still worked and were used against us?
I dunno if it's bad advice. As a State Dept. official under Reagan and an appointee to the U.S. Institute of Peace under GWB, Pipes well understands that stupid, pointless acts of war are no barrier at the ballot box. He speaks whereof he knows, which isn't very much.
ReplyDeleteTut tut, every good american patriot (read conservative which is the same thing) knows that Romney was responsible for the killing of bin Laden.
ReplyDeleteI knew young Daniel's father at Harvard. The man is a monster and a moral degenerate; it appears that the apple did not fall far from the tree in this case.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that image, I needed a good laugh.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't occur to me when I wrote this, but the metaphor of NRO as a whorehouse is kind of perfect.
ReplyDeleteFTW. You may pick up your Internet after 5 PM (PDT).
ReplyDeleteBlerg, obviously this is me, and I forgot deleting comments doesn't work. Roy can you strike this one? I fear it may stray into SPOILERS territory.
ReplyDelete"prompt Republicans to work with Democrats"
ReplyDeleteBold! Visionary! Aisle-crossing!
Or is this just good-citizenship boilerplate, something to show he's a nice boy, like when Eddie Haskell compliments Mrs. Cleaver on her dress?
Sadly, it's the Democrats working with Republicans that we have to worry about. Over and over again.
ReplyDelete~
"I wrote an article in NRO..."
ReplyDeleteStop. No good.
Bomb, bomb, bomb,
ReplyDeleteBomb, bomb, Iran!
Second verse same as the first.
See below. A majority of republicans can't admit this. It's the same sort of reality denial (or maybe in this case Daniel, get it, get it?) which states that Obama is a Kenyan muslim, that government has expanded prodigiously during the recession, that the stimulus has failed, tax cuts pay for themself, Bush kept us safe, Obama is responsible for the deficit, debt and the sequester, that human life begins at conception, healthcare reform is tyrannical, unconstitutional and job-killing and so on. I could go on for thousands of words. The point of this rambling post is that being a modern movement conservative is to be at war with reality and truth itself.
ReplyDeleteShorter me: Just read conservapedia.
On the other hand the population will greet american troops as liberators, with flowers and candy.
ReplyDeletePipes quotes some idiot in a British rag:
ReplyDelete...this summer Barack Obama has no fewer than four separate scandals pending, which are collectively referred to as “Obamagate”...
NO NO NO. Each galaxy-collapsing scandal gets its OWN "gate" suffix.
So let me introduce you to SuckMyAssGate.
I'm sure the fallout when the administration inevitably botched an impossible attack on a sovereign nation
ReplyDeleteYou just say "I am quitting the Democrat [!] Party and joining the Republican Party" and it's a free pass.
Implicit in Pipes' self-congratulatory prose is that his advice is worth anything at all. Hasn't he figured out yet that he's a stumblefuck, a bonehead, that he's dangerously stupid?
ReplyDeleteWhich is why only other venal, stupid people take his advice.
The image of Pipes "cranking it out" while envisioning the death of thousands of Iranians is curling my toenails.
ReplyDeleteOf course, he knows that the Kenyan Usurper won't have to face the ballot box again, so this is merely bloodlust.
ReplyDeleteI've only seen a few interviews of the elder Pipes, but, have read a lot on him--particularly regarding his "Team B" obsessions--and under that very thin veneer of Harvard professor and big thinker lies a thick slab of crackpot and lunatic. There are very few people in academia with his degree of resistance, nay, hostility, to fact. (An attribute, I might add, which made it inevitable that he would become an adviser to Reagan.)
ReplyDeleteThe DoJ is going after General Cartwright for leaking information about this
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question: No, he hasn't Dunning-Krueger effect.
ReplyDeleteIn this allegory, Mrs. Cleaver is Tom Friedman, yes?
ReplyDeleteDoctor Phibes is still rollin'? *sigh*
ReplyDeleteWhich is what any war is ever billed as.
ReplyDeleteWell, as the world knows, he did not follow my advice.
ReplyDeleteSure, the whole world was fascinated by what an idiotic blogger had to say "to" the President.
All the Iranian refugees I've met here in Denmark, call themselves Persians.
ReplyDeleteRemember Grenada!
ReplyDeletePlease do.
ReplyDeleteI get not being able to a carry a country... But a tune?
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was hard in the original... uh... English.
ReplyDeleteWe need a longer list.
ReplyDeleteWell, I've you've been crankin' it THAT long, you do need a recess
ReplyDeletehey, most of his friends think that too
ReplyDelete1a) fix your shoes
ReplyDelete1b) repair your underwear
The natives are restless tonight, sirCooped up on estates with no hope in sight
ReplyDeleteThey need some kind of distraction
We can give them that
'Cause they'd die if they only had something to die for
They'd kill if they only had something to kill for
They'd cheer if they only had something to cheer for
We can give them that
So it's off to war we go
Bring out all the flags
Fight the good fight
Of him being wrong, I meant.
ReplyDeleteSet the missile to home in on Farsi.
ReplyDeleteI think this kind of captures the heart of this advice, which really boils down to "Obama should alienate his allies in an attempt to appease an opposition whole explicitly-stated agenda is maximal opposition to anything he does."
ReplyDeleteGood point, but do you have any evidence that Pipes knows that? Depends on if any words to that effect are inscribed on his colon.
ReplyDelete[JONAH GOLDBERG'S OFFICE IS CONSUMED BY A FIREBALL]
ReplyDeleteYou idiots, I said Farsi.
You're wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicities_in_Iran
ReplyDelete