Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Send in the the Secret V-Weapons


I made the mistake of watching Gwen Awful on the News Hour last night as I was lacing up my running shoes. She had on a center-right former State Department wonk and an ass-clown from the American Enterprize Institute by the name of Michael Rubin. Rubin himself was a prize exhibit -- he raised again, for the Umpteen-millionth time the question: do people embrace Rovism because they totally lack animal magnetism? Is it some sort of hypercompensation for people who feel shortchanged in the sexy department? Rubin looks like the love child of Mussolini and The Rock, and his face does something really weird when he talks; it looks animatronic somehow. Which is fitting, becuase he has totally drunk the Kool-Aid. I had to wonder, in the case of both guests actually, were they reading from a teleprompter? Were the questions and answers pre-scripted? Both guys could spew up a whole lot of highly predogested rhetoric on command, not a bit of straight talk in any of it. (Transcript here.) Rubin at one point totally lifted off from any known planet, with this:

MICHAEL RUBIN: I think you need to have a commitment from the Lebanese government that they will fill the vacuum in the south and that they will be in charge of any relief operations for humanitarian aid, and only then will Israel agree to have a cease-fire, because if it's a cease-fire that leaves Hezbollah on its borders then Aaron is exactly right.

Now, the vaunted kick-ass IDF can't really wrest the south of Lebanon from Hizbullah control, but the Lebanese, with their infrastructure in ruins, and their incentive for doing so nil, is somehow supposed to step up and make the region peaceful and insurgent-free. Sure, just as soon as they unleash their feared Unicorn Division and Dragon Wing. This is what passes for thought on the right now, kind of like the toy armies on the big map in the underground bunker that are somehow going to turn it around.

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