Thank Goodness This Halfwit is Retiring in November

OK, that's it, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has officially left the reservation, and I am thanking my creator that this otherwise very book-smart man is going back to practicing medicine again soon...I just hope for his patients' sake he is more competent at performing surgery than leading a political party. I also hope he has no delusions of adequacy in running for President, because he is so wooden as a public speaker, he's the Republican version of the Gore-bot (Al Gore). If this is the best leadership we have to offer, then our country ought to be embarrassed. There hasn't been a consistently tough and good leader since Ronald Reagan, and I don't see any on the horizon.

On the one hand, kudos are in order for two outstanding Supreme Court justices, a border fence (assuming no amnesty follows right behind it), gun manufacturer liability, seemingly pretty good tribunal legislation, and tax cuts on Frist's watch...but on the other, where do I begin? Here's a stab at it, spinelessness of the first order when it comes to getting judges confirmed, passage of the prescription drug boondoggle, doing little to nothing on immigration issues, and perhaps most importantly, failure to understand the nature of the enemy we face.

This last issue trumps all others, by a wide margin, and if you as a politician don't get that, then you should be retired by the people and go back to whatever you did before coming to D.C. Sen. Frist actually said we should bring the Taliban into the Afghan government...what a massive, crippling demonstration of idiocy. That same junk worked out real well in Iraq with al-Sadr, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and with the Palestinian terror masters now having a "democracy", didn't it?!

Convincing tribal leaders to accept and work with a democratically elected government is one thing, but let's face it, Osama bin Laden pegged the average Muslim very well when he said they "follow the strong horse". So long as the Taliban and the drug lords continue to remain in power (elected or otherwise), no one is going to meaningfully follow the Karzai government. Senator Frist is dead wrong here talking about bringing these people into the fold...he should be talking about sending another couple of divisions of troops in there to exterminate the rest of these terrorists. Rusty at My Pet Jawa takes a cluebat to the soon-to-be retired Senator's wooden head much better than I, read the whole thing. (All Emphasis below is mine, and some R-rated language appears below) --Ed.)

"The only difference between a moderate Islamist and a radical one is that moderates are convinced that they need to participate in the democratic process to come to power. Once in power, though, they make no bones about using their new found legitimacy by democratically enacting sharia law.

You know, cause it's so much better having a democratically elected government cut your f***ing head off for blaspheming Mohammed than one that eschews elections as harim. (harim- incompatible with Islam. --Ed.) ...

The only thing that kept me supporting the Republicans, and still does, is that if Bush and Rumsfeld don't know how to fight a war at least they are willing to fight. The only sure way to lose a war is not to fight it when attacked. So, supporting the Republicans was a longshot gamble, but supporting the Democrats was a sure bet to lose. ...

The argument that supporting dicatatorships has not helped reduce terrorism in the world seems like it has some merit to it, so the thought of democratizing the world as a strategy for self-defense seemed plausible. But it becomes increasingly apparent that Muslims cannot be trusted with democracy outside of a framework in which secularism is imposed through force (such as in Turkey where the military is always standing by in the wings to crush democracy if Islamists ever get too uppity). ...

If democracy in the Middle East is a grand experiment, then the null hypothesis has been disproven. No, the majority of Muslim nations are not yet ready for democracy. Give them another hundred years and we'll run this experiment again. ...

I had been willing to let the neocons do their experimenting of bringing a Muslim nation into the fold of civilization. All the while in the back of my head--and many times in writing--asking what the hell we were doing not giving the secular Kurds a state? These guys are not just allies with mutual interests, but friends who shed blood and would willingly give us places for forward bases. Or why were we not giving Fallujah the Carthage treatment? You know, carpet bombing followed by salting the earth. Or why were we letting freedom of speech enter into a war zone?

And even if this grand experiment in remaking the Muslim world in our image had a modicum of a chance to succeed, then you have to start from the beginning. The beginning is to beat them. Badly. So badly, in fact, that they know they have no chance of ever winning. ...

It was only after millions of civilian casualties and the total wasting of all centers of production that the Germans and the Japanese could be rebuilt in our image. To quote Gladiator, 'A people should know when they are conquered.' Only after this can we even begin to think of changing their ways.

I have always been skeptical of the notion that we can 'win the hearts and minds of moderates'. What we need to do is win the fear of realists. People like Musharraf who understands that if he does not play ball, we destroy him. And if Musharraf is a dictator, better a dictator on our side than a democratically elected nutjob--like in Iran--ready to start WWIII. Okay, enough said. I'm pissed. You should be too. The State Department-ing of the world has not only begun, it has succeeded. God help us all. ...

I also believe in the Truman doctrine that total victory means total victory. Our main goal in bombing Japan was not in making Japan our ally, rather, it was to make it incapable of ever doing us harm again. Truman:

"We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war."