Via James Wolcott, this prewar letter to the president from boy neocon John Podhoretz:
- There’s a luscious double trap in starting the war as soon as possible, Mr. President. Your enemies are delirious with excitement about the corporate-greed scandals and the effect they might have on your popularity and the GOP’s standing in November.
If you get troops on the ground quickly, they will go berserk. Incautious Democrats and liberal pundits will shriek that you’ve gone to war solely to protect yourself from the corporate-greed scandal. They will forget the lesson they so quickly learned after Sept. 11, which is that at a time of war the American people want their political leaders to stand together.
Your enemies will hurl ugly accusations at you, Mr. President. And at least one of them will be true – the accusation that you began the war when you did for political reasons.
But that won’t matter. It won’t matter to the American people, and it won’t matter as far as history is concerned. History will record that you and the U.S. military brought an end to a barbaric regime on its way to threatening the world.
Luscious: to a glutton all experiences are gustatory, I suppose. Though “experience” might be the wrong word to describe savoring mass death and destruction on Fox News from the comfort of one’s recliner.