Mr. Moran's whole comment was excellent. The Bush League are all about dishing it out, utterly unable to take it...

I remember that these Bushies, almost to a man (or woman), did not serve in combat. I remember that they are classic bullies

That said, I think Mr. Blumenthal's straining a little in his column. It's uncharacteristic of him; I actually doublechecked to see if he was the author of it, almost in disbelief. The aesthetic impairment of the Bush League is surely symptomatic of their moral impairment, but I don't know what kind of lessons can be drawn from that, exactly.

Killer kitsch? Sadistic sentimentality? Friendly fascism? Interesting notions, but better explored in fiction or in satire, I think, than in an otherwise straightforward essay.

Congress is going to have to take the gloves off, for real, because this Presidency clearly doesn't see itself as being a co-equal branch of anybody. Too bad the Supremes tainted themselves in 2000; I certainly don't consider them neutral arbiters in any dispute where executive power is concerned. The 2008 elections can't come soon enough.

with huge regional implications as well.

That's the key phrase, there. They will do whatever it takes to keep Iran from assuming the regional prominence it has historically enjoyed, which likely means that even if an Iraqi police state is created to our liking, we'll probably still have a permanent garrison there, just to keep Iran "contained." Barring a serious change of foreign and domestic policy, I can't see us leaving the region at all.

It's an odd situation, really -- a battle of competing strengths. Clinton's got institutional leverage and name recognition, but I feel she's really lacking as a campaigner. Obama's got charisma to burn and comparatively youthful vision, but will the whole lack of experience line bog him down? Edwards seems to be running hard on policy because that's the only way he can distinguish himself from the other two (He's more charismatic than Clinton, but less than Obama. I'm not an Edwards fan; though he's run from it, the DLC stain is still on him in my eyes -- it feels like he's being opportunistic in his single-payer talk). Maybe Edwards is shooting for the VP slot on either of the other tickets, although he'll give no bounce from the South, for sure.

They need to be more, they need to be bolder. Maybe they figure they can't lose in 2008 against the GOP, and so they don't want to risk themselves unnecessarily. But bold is good. Vision is good. The GOP will fight as dirtily as they can against any of the candidates, so I think a strongly-presented vision is vital, which is why Clinton's kind of stilted, arm's length campaigning isn't going to cut it this time around.

In the age of PR spin and damage control, who the hell knows what's behind this latest thing with Baldwin? Maybe he wanted to get out of his NBC obligation and staged a meltdown (the timing of the upcoming book is interesting in relation to the whole media flap); maybe he just blew a gasket and hadn't expected this to happen. Anything's possible. Ms. Zacharek's column is to the point -- "here we are now, entertain us!" Baldwin's a good actor, but it sounds like he (and the Baldwin Clan in general) wrestle with a lot of stuff. A good actor certainly isn't always a good person. Ah, well. Even if he actually is retiring, at least he still did this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY

But the war in Iraq is not being lost because the soldiers don't speak Arabic. The lesson from Iraq is that we should never have invaded the country on trumped-up false pretenses.

Heh. Better to have invaded on subtler, true pretenses, then? Best not to have invaded at all, yes?

I doubt being able to say "Take off all your clothes, you're about to be tortured" in Arabic would've smoothed any wrinkles in the occupation plans.

Being multilingual would be a good thing in general, might encourage Americans to realize there's a world beyond our shores, might encourage a more internationalist view. But most Americans can barely speak English (how many illiterate these days?) so I think it's probably asking more than we're willing to give.

This Language Corps notion seems to fit the American addiction to The Quick and Easy (phrased as our love of technological solutions). Really, we just want things done for us, and done quickly, and done easily -- we don't want to have to actually have to change ourselves in the process. Until we learn that lesson, more Iraqs are in store for us, no matter what language we're speaking.

Think of how surprised and outraged Americans still are that the Vietnamese had the nerve to fight back when we invaded! That war's shadow is still upon us, led to our Iraq nightmare.

How do you say "Sorry we invaded you; we were wrong to do so" in Arabic? I doubt the Language Corps would bother with that one.