life is cheap

... and after the bankrupt ruin of the invasion of iraq, so are neocons.

fred kagan, brainchild of george bush's "surge strategy" escalation gamble, on iraqi indifference:

... the interesting thing is that when we were fighting those battles and doing that damage, on the whole the iraqis were not bitching about collateral damage. you had nothing like the degree of upset about how many civilians were being injured and how much damage was being done to the infrastructure in iraq at a much higher level of destruction than you have in afghanistan at a much lower level of destruction. i think there's a cultural reason for that: afghans don't fight in their cities. iraqis do. for good or ill, iraqis expect to fight in their cities. that's where the insurgents dug in, saddam hussein planned to dig in to the cities or lure us into an urban fight. it's sort of understood that the battlefield is going to be there, that doesn't mean that they don't complain about it, that doesn't mean that it's not a problem, but it does mean that when the insurgents dig in and we root them out, the iraqis don't on the whole say "darn it, you shouldn't have blown up all of our houses." they sort of accept that. afghans do not.

shorter kagan:

the oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the westerner. life is cheap in the orient. — general william westmoreland, “hearts and minds” (1974)

... which is why we shouldn’t feel bad about killin’ lots 'n' lots of ‘em, amirite, freddy boy?

like writing on toilet paper

it sounds like bush is getting tired of all the carping know-it-alls-without-a-plan:

president bush on saturday challenged lawmakers skeptical of his new iraq plan to propose their own strategy for stopping the violence in baghdad. "to oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," bush said. — "bush: war skeptics 'proposing nothing'"

but if bush is genuinely interested in seeing other plans, he need only check his inbox.

it's where he'll find, among others, the murtha plan, the kerry-feingold plan, the biden plan, the edwards plan, the levin-reed plan, and not to mention the baker-hamilton plan, otherwise known as the iraq study group plan, which bush already sounds familiar with, since he was recently overheard describing it as "a flaming turd".

and then there are the seemingly daily growing roster of freely-dispensed blogger plans like the johnson plan. it's plainly apparent to none but the willfully blind and deaf that at this late date there are no lack of thoughtful alternatives.

unfortunately (and i do say this with the utmost respect to all those who have been applying the necessary brain-power and wisdom that's been heretofore lacking in this debate) all these plans represent nothing more than idle academic masturbation. they're all quite pointless. and that's why you'll find no trademarked and patented "aarrgghh plan" on this site.

because unless the first step in your grand strategy reads:

my grand strategy for iraq by carping know-it-all 1) remove george bush and dick cheney from office.

... then your plan is nothing but toilet paper.

because unless you're willing to let events continue to spiral for at least another two years, george bush will give your precious plan all the due consideration he gave to the over-anticipated iraq study group report — that is, as steve gilliard remarked, he'll "wipe his ass" with it.

which leaves us with only one plan — the only one that matters — the kagan plan, more fondly known as "the surge".

and what makes this one plan oh-so irresistible to the commander-in-chief?

frederick kagan, 36, is the author of choosing victory, a blueprint for the surge adopted by president george w bush. just as everybody had begun writing off the influence of the neocons at the white house, genial, chubby-faced frederick gave the muscular intellectuals a lease of life. it was at camp david last june that kagan, a military historian and fellow of the american enterprise institute, outlined his plans for pouring more troops into iraq to bush and his war cabinet. donald rumsfeld, the then defence secretary, was unimpressed, but kagan's views got another hearing when bush was searching for ways to ditch the seemingly defeatist recommendations of james baker's iraq study group. "wow, you mean we can still win this war?" a grateful bush reportedly said. — "... bush's final baghdad gamble"