Stupidity, thy Name is Glazov

Clark Stooksbury has alerted me to the presence of another of Jamie Glazov's famous "symposiums" on Front Page Magazine.

As usual, Jamie Glazov is a moron, and manages to use double-talk to advance illogic.

A few examples:

The basic setup of the symposium is an analysis of the US war effort in Iraq.

First off, Jamie Glazov (aka FP, as he represents all of Front Page Magazine) and Karl Zinsmeister give the war effort an A because we were able to overthrow Saddam and to set up some sort of government. Considering how weak Saddam was, this is the equivalent of giving a kid on a test an A because he spelt his name right.

Steve Vincent, who would come to die before the symposium was concluded, gives the US a B-, and says that in terms of securing Iraq from the insurgents, we get an F.

Glazov's response? You can't blame the US for what the insurgents are doing. "Blame the terrorists, not America."

This is stupidity. The issue, as Mr. Stooksbury pointed out, is not blame. The issue is that in order to grade the war effort, you need to grade how well we accomplished our goals. One of our goals was to secure Iraq from terrorist attacks. If the terrorists are still able to make enough attacks so that people cannot go out of their hotels, then that is a failure on our part, and should be considered in assessing the war effort.

Cliff May, after saying that "the Bremer regency was seriously flawed" (i.e., we should have put Chalabi in charge), points out that we didn't plan for a guerilla war, and that we underestimated the strength of the insurgency.

Glazov's response? "But isn’t it a bit unfair to judge the U.S. for failing to see the future? These criticisms are easy to make in hindsight, no?"

No, it is not unfair to criticize the US for failing to see the future. That is what a war plan is about, trying to predict the future, and to prepare for it. If you predict the future accurately, you get good grades, poorly, you get poor grades. Moreover, it is not as if people didn't predict a guerilla war; just look at the first few issues of The American Conservative, just look at the concerns of GEneral Shinseki that we needed more troops in order to stabilize the country. Moreover, I remember a report by James Fallows that Rumsfeld refused to consider the possibility of an insurgency when people mentioned it. As for criticisms being easy to make in hindsight, yes, they are, that is why hindsight is the standard we hold our decisions up to. Getting an "A" should not be an easy task.

He also consistently insists that anyone who opposes the US with weapons is a terrorist, and that there is no "insurgency," and that we cannot use the term "occupation," but must use the term "liberation." He also tries to imply, until it becomes untenable, that the foreign fighters are the bulk of the insurgency (which allows him turn it around whenever discussing who is the invader and occupier).

Finally, (although this isn't about Glazov) there is a little bit by Cliff May, where he suggests that grading the war effort is rather useless; how, he asks, would we grade the war effort in WWII in the early years when Japan and Germany were advancing.

My answer? Well, wars do not fight themselves. You constantly grade yourself to see how you can improve. After the first year or two of he Civil War, when the Union seemed to be losing, Lincoln did not turn things around just by "staying the course." He re-assessed his strategy and altered it in order to win. He would have done it again if he had kept losing.

In any case, the problem with Glazov is that he can't do anything but parrot propaganda that everything is always fine. He has no critical thinking skills whatsoever, or else he chooses not to use them.

That is all.