Chuck and duck

Charles Krauthammer, not to be out-blustered my Michael “Goddamit! Kill someone” Kelly, comes in late, but no less rabid, on President in Exile Al Gore’s speech:

A pudding with no theme but much poison. Such was the foreign policy speech Al Gore delivered in San Francisco on Monday. It was a disgrace — a series of cheap shots strung together without logic or coherence. Most of all, it was brazen. It was delivered as if there had been no Clinton-Gore administration, no 1990s.

and

Gore should be careful about leveling charges about presidents getting combat-happy to distract attention from other problems. Yet what is most remarkable about Gore’s speech is that for all its poison, it is profoundly unserious. Take Gore’s repeated characterization of the Bush policy on postwar Afghanistan as “this doctrine of wash your hands and walk away.”

then he finishes with this

One can argue either way, but the burden of proof is on those urging the more onerous and risky MacArthur regency. If Gore were a serious man he would make the case. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even try to. He is too thin. And too cynical.

The New York Times reports that Gore wrote the speech “after consulting a fairly far-flung group of advisers that included Rob Reiner.” Current U.S. foreign policy is the combined product of Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and the president. Meanwhile, the pretender is huddling with Meathead.

Had it not been for a few little old ladies baffled by the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach, Fla., American foreign policy today would be made by Gore-Reiner instead of the Bush brain trust. Who says God doesn’t smile upon the United States of America?

I’ll pass on the way too easy characterization of Rummy, Condoleeza “liberating the Germans from Hitler” Rice, Dick Cheneyburton, Colin Powell, Paul “Chickenhawk” Wolfowitz, and President Cartman as a Bush brain trust, and instead move on to a point that Krauthammer makes…and then runs away from like Bush from a drug test. To wit:

Considering the glass house he inhabits, Gore’s attack on Bush is remarkably ad hominem. He implies, first, that the president is going after Iraq to distract attention from not finding Osama bin Laden. And second, that Bush is doing this for electoral purposes.

Well…what about those implications? His answer:

Clinton’s dick, Clinton wagging the dog, Clinton checking polls, Monica, Monica, Monica…

Is Bush wagging the dog?

Clinton’s dick, impeachment, Monica, Monica, Monica…

Have we found Osama?

Well, Gore specifically says we need to finish the job in Afghanistan, and Krauthammer agrees with him:

Walk away? Our current policy is to secure Kabul, retrain the army, protect the new president and establish a small central government that can, over time, expand its political and geographic reach. This is a serious commitment. Our soldiers trying to fulfill it are being shot at regularly. Tell them they’re walking away.

There is a serious question about how deeply involved in Afghanistan we ought to be. Are we more likely to bring stability by continuing Afghanistan’s long history of decentralization and allowing warlords to act in their traditional areas of influence, or by sending an imperial army to go around imposing order in places where outsiders — the British and the Soviets most notably — have not had much luck imposing their own order?

Notice he avoids bin Laden, completely. (bin who?) But then he says:

One can argue either way, but the burden of proof is on those urging the more onerous and risky MacArthur regency. If Gore were a serious man he would make the case. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even try to. He is too thin. And too cynical.

I think what is cynical is agreeing with someone…and then disagreeing with them in the next breath because it hinders your point of view, and then hoping no one notices. Like most of the critics of the Gore speech (the Humes, Kellys, Sullivans…you know , the second tier pundits) he chooses to select a few fragments of the speech and egregiously misinterpret them. Then again, maybe he’s just obtuse. Who knows? But like Kelly’s foam-flecked commentary on the same subject, it betrays a man obsessed with transfering his hatred from Clinton to Gore in a most bilious manner.

Either way, you got to love this line (again):

Meanwhile, the pretender is huddling with Meathead.

Insert your own Bush/mirror joke here…