Daddy's Not Happy

Oh dear. Fred Daddy Thompson isn't happy. How do you piss off Daddy and the Daddy-Complex Party? Easy. Say something bad about the military or the people who lead it. That's exactly what Harry Reid did on a conference call recently, and you know Daddy has to say *something*.

Well, you've heard by now that Senate leader Harry Reid insulted one of this country's brightest military minds, Marine Corps General Peter Pace -- calling him "incompetent." Let me take a few moments to put this in context.

Oh yeah. This is going to get good. Daddy won't let you figure this out alone. No, no. If you're going to lead the Daddy Party then you have to be willing to explain how things work...

First, Harry Reid voted for the war, like a majority of our legislators. America decided as a nation to free Iraq and the region from Saddam Hussein's tyranny. I have friends, both Democrat and Republican, who questioned the decision at the time, but the Republic made a commitment based on constitutional and democratic procedures. So they are now a hundred percent committed to moving forward in a way that’s best for our country. None of them, by the way, believe surrendering to the forces of terror in Iraq is what's best for our country.

But Daddy? I thought we decided as a nation to go after Saddam's nuclear and biological WMD stocks. Isn't that what Colin Powell went to the UN for? Oh wait... our current Daddy changed the reason after the WMD was not found. But let's explore the concept of what's best for our country. Is it best for us to attempt to force a society into an unfamiliar mold? Or is it best for us to bring the troops home from their successful mission and allow them to rest and recuperate while we rebuild our military infrastructure. (Oh, and by the way, "surrendering to the forces of terror" is sooo September 12. People aren't buying it anymore.)

Harry Reid, though, has taken a different route. He made his statement about General Pace on a conference call with fringe elements of the blogosphere who think we're the bad guys. This is a place where even those who think the 9/11 attacks were an inside job find a home.

Oh SNAP! "Fringe elements of the blogosphere?" Now, I'm not Daddy but I'd like to put this into a little context. Harry Reid's had a conference call with a group of progressive bloggers with a larger audience base than conservative bloggers. And you want to talk about fringe? Daddy has a podcast of this hit-piece on his blog. You can't even count that audience as fringe; that's a discarded left nipple tassle in Cher's closet. I will give him an E for Effort for the de rigeur 9/11 reference.

How could anyone possibly believe, as Reid charges, that our commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, is out of touch with what's going on. Surely someone in Reid's position would know that Petraeus is briefed daily on all aspects of Iraq -- from civil to military. Surely he has to know that Petraeus is a true warrior scholar who literally wrote the Army's book on counterinsurgency warfare.

Savage Symbolic Soliloquy Batman! Petraeus is a modern day Lao Tzu! He literally wrote the book that Bush would have read if he cared about military strategy. And Petraeus is so in touch that he decided that we could implement his strategy without enough troops to sustain it. Kinda makes you wonder what Daddy's Iraq strategy will be. Force another 150,000 troops into Iraq for at least a decade until we "clear, hold, and rebuild"? That's going to be a tough sell no matter how deep and rich your accent is.

But Reid's comments are not meant for logical analysis. He proclaimed the war lost some time ago, and the surge as a failure even before the additional troops were on the ground. The problem is that every one of Reid's comments I've noted here has also been reported gleefully by Al Jazeera and other anti-American media. Whether he means to or not, he’s encouraging our enemies to believe that they are winning the critical war of will.

Damn. Daddy brings home the bacon and throws it into the baked bean casserole. How could Reid possibly know that the war was lost some time ago? It's not possible because nobody in the administration has clearly defined the goals of this war! How can Reid say we've lost the war against evildoers that hate us for our freedoms?!? (And don't even try engaging that logic in combat, it'll whip your ass everytime.) And how could Reid say that the surge is a failure before it began? It's like he read the manual on counterinsurgency warfare and realized that we weren't actually implementing it....

Daddy makes a good point about the gleeful Al Jazeera reporting. If anything can be defined as gleeful, it would be that. (However, Al Jazeera would likely be even more gleeful for a discount on Law & Order syndicated episodes starring Daddy!)

I can see why the Daddy Party is so excited about candidate Fred Thompson. He has EVERYTHING. You can't read his diatribes without imagining that you're sitting in his lap, lightheaded by the combination of Aqua Velva and cigar smoke, enveloped by that husky Southern Accent that is the very definition of gravitas. Could I say these things to Daddy when he's on his sixth glass of scotch and second Cuban cigar of the evening? Of course not.

But he does have it all. The accent. The empty rhetoric. The 35-year old trophy wife. The five grandchildren. A role in the 1980's S&L bank scandal. A role in The Hunt For Red October. He helped a company avoid paying asbestos settlements. And he was on Law and Order and one of its spin-off series. This is so beyond Reagan that it's not even funny. This isn't your Daddy's Daddy. This is Daddy 2.0. Stronger. Handsomer. More Actor. More Senator. More. More. More.

If I had a Daddy Complex, I would probably vote for him...