Who’s he calling a ‘loser’?

July 28, 2007

I don’t think Giuliani has thought this one through.

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani called Democrats “the party of losers” for demanding a scheduled pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq.

“Democrats have already declared we’ve lost,” the former New York mayor said during a campaign stop in Texas. “It’s really strange. The Democrats want to give our enemies a timetable. Never in history of war has a retreating army been asked to give a timetable.

“I’m for victory,” Giuliani said. Democrats, he added, are “living in a world where they refuse to admit the existence of Islamic terrorism.”

First, Giuliani’s tangential relationship with the truth is going to cause him some political headaches one of these days. Dems don’t doubt the “existence of Islamic terrorism,” they think Bush’s approach to combating terrorism is reckless and ineffective.

Second, “losers”? Giuliani thinks Americans who disapprove of the war and want to get the troops out of Iraq are “losers”?

I haven’t worked on a campaign in a few years, but the last time I checked, insulting two-thirds of the electorate is generally a poor political strategy.

July 28, 2007 at 2:10 pm

And everybody knows Rudy Giuliani is a student of the history of war. However, if he were such a student, he might have noticed the impossibility of reconciling his typically empty and pompous, “I’m for victory” with his characterization of U.S. forces as “a retreating army”. Retreating, Rudy – you eggheaded military-history bookworm, you – is what you do when you are losing.

Why doesn’t anybody ever call these guys on things like this? Why doesn’t some reporter say, “Gee, Ex-Mayor Giuliani, there hasn’t been much coverage of your background in military history. Could you tell us a little about it?” Rudy would start to sweat like a hooker during Fleet Week. This guy wants to be Commander In Chief of United States Forces, and he continues to pretend he’s some sort of throbbing-cerebral tactician. And the press continues to let him get away with it, as if embarrassing a Republican candidate on the campaign trail was like farting in church.

Throbbing-cerebral tactician is brilliant Mark 🙂 Too bad he’s too chicken to face the actual public, those 75% who think the war is lost, or you could ask that youTube question 🙂

And the crowds just cheered and cheered. Republicans=victory, winners, Democrats=losers. Guiliani=coward, wouldn’t fight. Won’t say it to a Democrats face either because it’s nonsense and he’d be put down for the lynch mob voice he is.

It’s a rally. No one to call him on it so he says whatever will get him applause. Only a third of the country is applauding Guili.

but the last time I checked, insulting two-thirds of the electorate is generally a poor political strategy.

One hundred per cent of a third of the electorate, if you”

*suppress enough turnout, by everything from caging votes to creating a climate of everyone-does-it, what’s-the-use-ism,
*scare the bejesus out of a minority of independents,
*exploit considering the anti-majoritarian bias built into the Electoral College,

keep an election within stealing distance.

Career criminals very rarely change their M.O. and I don’t expect the GOP to, either.

oops –‘considering’ should be stricken from the above — an artifact from an earlier draft.

This is the 50% +1 formula that they used in Congress moved out to the big stage. You get 100% of the power by winning 50% +1 of the vote. The rest of any majority is unnecessary, especially if it requires compromising revolutionary principles to get it.

Most of the country have moved beyond thinking about “winning” and “losing” in Iraq.

It’s a shameful mess, based and continued on lies, and fewer and fewer believe there is any kind of “winning” in that situation. Even if we got our way in Iraq magically tomorrow, it wouldn’t vanquish the terrorists, mostly just get us back to where we were before we invaded, only half-a-trillion poorer and with a broken military. Some “win”.

Never in history of war has a retreating army been asked to give a timetable. — Rudolph, the… (never mind; not fit for a family website)

No, because if the army is retreating already, it’s doing it with all the possible speed (vide Napoleon in Russia, Hitler in several places), where completion is impossible to predict. We still have the opportunity to withdraw in an organised way, instead of in a bloody chaos. Hence, we can afford timetables.

““I’m for victory,” Giuliani said.”

Jeez, who the fuck isn’t for victory? Everyone from Able to Cornwallis to Hitler to Westmoreland was for victory. The problem is that victory is as complicated as war is, but that would distract from your simple solutions to complex problems meme.

As above commenters point out, Roodee’s grasp of military history is shit. Libra’s point about actually having the luxury of setting their own timetable is bang on.

Would you rather have something like this Roodee?

The US 8th Army (with elements of UN members) and X Corps retreated with their tails between their legs in the harsh winter of 1950 down 3/4 of the Korean Peninsula after attacked by almost 400,000 Communist Chinese. This occurred after MacArthur and his intelligence boys refused to believe that the Chinese would attack and in the numbers they did. It was the most ignominious retreat in US military history (that’s including the debacle of the Battle of Bulge six years early where Omar Bradly refused to believe the Germans would do the same thing.)

Aahhh, biggerbox; but if the U.S. government got its way in Iraq tomorrow, and the insurgency died down and the al-Maliki government was able to make some headway, and get the oil law passed…..well, doubtless it WOULD be better for everybody, because less Iraqis would get killed every day, and the U.S. Army could come home – or most of it – and Iraqis might even have a little bit more money in their pockets. The price of gas around the world might drop a bit, although not likely ever back to the price it was before the invasion.

However, over at Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco, things would be very good indeed. The profits would be well worth the half-a-trillion spent to get control of Iraq’s oilfields, the profits would be worth wrecking the Army – which could be rebuilt in a few years – the profits would be out of this world.

Not to mention the capability to tell Saudi Arabia to piss up a rope, as well as the rest of OPEC, and gaining a huge strategic advantage over the world’s biggest developing economies, India and China. If the U.S. were overlord of a passive and productive Iraq, it could do what it pleased in the Middle East, and likely in the world.

Georgie B. keeps hoping that some miracle will make that happen.

Here’s a question for Rudy at the next Repub debate: Please tell us what criteria must be met for us to be able to declare victory in Iraq?

I’ve never heard one of these Chickenhawks define what they meant by “victory.” Bush did say that it would not involve a signing on a battleship. (@ VJ Day). And we know the sign on the carrier didn’t work out as planned.

Oh, sorry, never mind. I forgot–Rudy is afraid to appear at the YouTube debate.

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