And a Pony!

Ponies for everyone! Belle Waring has still written the Best Weblog Post Ever:

John & Belle Have A Blog: If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride -- A Pony! : [W]ishes are totally free. It's like when you can't decide whether to daydream about being a famous Hollywood star or having amazing magical powers. Why not -- be a famous Hollywood star with amazing magical powers! Along these lines, John has developed an infallible way to improve any public policy wishes. You just wish for the thing, plus, wish that everyone would have their own pony! So... not only wish that Bush would say a lot of good things about democracy-building and fighting terrorism in a speech written for him by a smart person... also wish that Bush should actually mean the things he says and enact policies which reflect this, and he should wish that everyone gets a pony. See?

I am reminded of this by Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings:

Time to Get Serious!: Yglesias quotes Harry Reid pontificating on the matter of Iraq:

The time has come for the Bush Administration to stop driving blind and make sure its plans coincide with real-life in Iraq's neighborhood. We need a regional strategy that induces Iraq's neighbors to act responsibly; accepts other countries' offers to train Iraqis; seals the border with Syria; and shifts spending to smaller, Iraqi-run projects that have a chance at success.

1. To coin a phrase, And a pony! (Belle, you hereby owe every libertarian on Earth an apology.)
2. You call that a strategy!? I can beat that! I hereby call for the appointment of an Iraq War Czar.

There! I am now the most officially serious strategist EVAR.

And, of course, by Duncan Black, the Incomparable Atrios:

Comments

[sasha]

Well, not to mention, of course, The Poor Man Institute for Freedom, Democracy, and a Pony (http://www.thepoorman.net/2005/08/23/institutionalized/). (Home of the kitten standard)(!)

[ogmb]

Huh?

[derek]

1. Henley misunderstands, or seems to misunderstand, Harry Reid's purpose. There is no Iraq strategy: you're fucked. Reid is therefore completely at liberty to embarrass the administration by proposing "serious alternatives" that wouldn't actually work. It's the appropriate judo response to the administration's attempt to make the Democrats squirm on the horns of a dilemma between supporting Bush's Folly and seeming anti-war, or at least seeming without an alternative. So Reid spouts a bullshit alternative and dares the Bush people to scream the truth: IT WON'T WORK! NOTHING IS GOING TO WORK!

2. I'm surprised Henley has the nerve to use the "and a pony!" snark, given that libertarians are the world's worst perpetrators of and-a-pony thinking. It's a basic feature of anarchistic philosophy, if I can dignify childish wishing for the moon with the word philosophy.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/opinion/07fri2.html?ex=1286337600&en=7e90abd949cd3e2e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

October 7, 2005

President Bush's Major Speech: Sounding Old Themes on Iraq

We've lost track of the number of times President Bush has told Americans to ignore their own eyes and ears and pretend everything is going just fine in Iraq. Yesterday, when Mr. Bush added a ringing endorsement of his own policy to his speech on terrorism, it was that same old formula: the wrong questions, the wrong answers and no new direction.

Mr. Bush suggested that people who doubt that nation-building is going well are just confusing healthy disagreement with dangerous division. "We've heard it suggested that Iraq's democracy must be on shaky ground because Iraqis are arguing with one another," he scoffed. What he failed to acknowledge was that the Iraqi power groups seem prepared to go through the motions of democracy only as long as their side wins.

Just this week, the United Nations narrowly averted disaster when it convinced Shiite and Kurdish officials to drop a plan to fix the upcoming constitutional referendum to eliminate Sunni voters' capacity to vote down the constitution. But their promises to follow the rules seem likely to hold up only as long as the game goes as they want.

Americans want to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq, and Mr. Bush offered quite a bit. "Area by area, city by city, we're conducting offensive operations to clear out enemy forces and leaving behind Iraqi units to prevent the enemy from returning," he said. Best of all, there were "more than 80 Iraqi Army battalions fighting the insurgency alongside our forces." Unfortunately, the real questions are how many of the cleared-out towns actually stay clear once American troops have gone, and how many Iraqi units are capable of fighting on their own, without American soldiers at their side. In both cases, the answers are far more dismal than Mr. Bush suggested....

[Karlsfini]

"And, of course, by Duncan Black, the Incomparable Atrios"

Huh? I thought his real name was Open Thread.

[Bruce Webb]

"seals the border with Syria"

This would be so easy. Because everyone knows that with American know-how we have sealed our own border in a way that Mexican workers, Columbian cocaine and British Columbia marijauna are totally stymied from entry.

Talk about blind-spots. People have been smuggling goods across borders in the Mid East since Abraham left Ur. The notion that Syria could simply deploy a couple of battalions of Border Patrol and stop unauthorized border crossings is absurd nonsense. If we can't do it why should we assume that they can magically do it? And then blame them for not?

[Lewis Carroll]

I don't know if derek's putative rationale for the suggested strategy is correct, but I read similar suggestions here:

http://securingamerica.com/node/253

[almostinfamous]

mark, swing and a miss.

i have to say holden of first draft(first-draft.com) and The Editors(mentioned above) have been banging the pony drum for much longer. and yet here i am, still no pony

[dilbert dogbert]

karlsfini,
Thanks for the laugh.
Bruce Webb thanks for the snark.
To assume that the head of Syria controls anything is like assuming that bush really controls anything. I could see Syrian troops pointing out the way to Iraq and saying "sickem" to whoever and whatever wants to go in that direction. A little transfer of money and or dope and the deal is done.

[Padraig]

But for truly revealing non-sequiturs, I recommend "Mr. Show's" religious formulation:

"Stop abortion! Because Life is precious! And God! And ... the Bible!"

[Don]

Lovely pic of the horses