Wisc. Paper: Neocons Want Petraeus for President? Huh?

August 3rd, 2007 9:51 AM

It's no wonder that sensible people just shake their heads and wonder what's wrong with the extremists of the far left when they come up with such off the wall nonsense and then try to pass it off as real political analysis. It just makes people who have even the slightest clue about what is really going on in the world double over with laughter. Such is the case with today's comedic attempt at political forecasting by nut in residence Ed Garvey of the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times.

Columnist Garvey, in true nutroots fashion, thinks he has hit on the perfect Neocon conspiracy. The Neocons don't want any of the current candidates for president. No, sir, they are trying to angle for General Petraeus to take up their Neocon banner!

I know that you're scratching your head wondering how in Heaven's name he came up with this one. I did too.

After dismissing the current crop of Republican candidates, McCain, Romney, Rudy and Thompson, Garvey imagines he spies the Neocons real move: Petareus is the man.

I think the money boys and the neocons have a candidate, and it isn't Fred Thompson, Rudy, John McCain or Ron Paul. In their view, it is time for a president in uniform. It is time for the modern-day Douglas MacArthur. When MacArthur clashed with President Truman over war policy in 1951, with the general wanting to run the risk of engaging China, President Truman did what he had to do. He asserted that under our Constitution, men in suits controlled men in uniforms. He fired the war hero, and the conservatives of that day wanted MacArthur to run for president in 1952. Cooler heads prevailed, and MacArthur faded away.

First of all, Garvey presents the facts of the Constitution as if Truman made them up out of whole cloth just to beat a possible rival candidate as he prepared for reelection. Garvey misses the fact that Truman didn't just "assert" anything about civilian control of military policy. It is a F-A-C-T that civilian government controls the military under the American system. It's a little something called the Constitution of the United States that ordains this arrangement. Not a scrambling president from the 1950s.

Maybe Garvey is more woeful proof of the lack of quality of our educational system?

Next Garvey launches into a litany of warped, untrue and oft times disproven, leftist tropes about this war under the rubric of what he feels is the "danger" we face.

Here is how I see the danger. The Congress will do nothing to punish the administration for lying us into war, taping our phones, humiliating us by use of secret prisons and torture and on and on. There won't be an impeachment or censure because the leaders don't have time both to argue over bridges and highways and to deal with those who have stolen our democracy. The Democrats won't cut the funding for this outrageous occupation, and voters will blame the Democrats for the mess. Millions won't vote, and, with a couple of billion to spend, the neocons will help establish another third party effort, and they win!

Chicken Little strikes again.

And what "danger" does Petraeus present to the country? As far as Garvey is concerned, the report Patraeus will give next month is the danger.

Can this be stopped? Only if people raise the roof over the Petraeus report and demand an end to this suicidal episode. Only if Democrats in Congress take the lead, discard the Petraeus report, and end the funding of the occupation.

Yes, you understand correctly. Not only is Garvey basing his far fetched claims on a report that is over a month in the future, one he knows absolutely noting about what it might contain, but he sees moves by people who have made none... based on a report that no one has seen.

Now, it isn't so amazing that a member of the nutroots is roaming freely about the countryside like this. What is amazing is that the MSM would give such a person a platform with which he could give evidence of his psychosis while at the same time imposing it upon the rest of us.

I haven't seen such an off base, wild eyed, silly excuse for political analysis since Rosie O'Donnell went off into the cold, dark night. I mean, in his off time, this Garvey guy probably stands on the street corners in Madison wearing a sandwich board and shouting unintelligibles through a megaphone while Mothers steer their children to the safety of the other side of the street and as other upstanding citizens walk by trying to avoid making eye contact.

But his rants were good enough for the Capital Times to irresponsibly print.