December 10, 2005 by s.z.

Free Midge Decter

In an effort to show us what we're missing by not signing up for the digital version of National Review, NRO tantalizes with a portion of Midge Decter's latest work.  But hey, four paragraphs is way more Midge than we wanted anyway, so their plan backfires.

But here are some portions of our free sample of Midge -- see what you think..

Enlist ThemThe president should do more to involve Americans in the war.

If Midge is going to claim that John Podhoretz should be serving in Iraq, well, more power to her.

Anyone with a minimally dispassionate sense of history would have to judge that George W. Bush conducted the Iraq war brilliantly.

And with her first sentence, Midge becomes a finalist for “The Fluffy”.

Yet he has been dogged from almost the very first moment by restless disaffection. Self-styled experts, many of them retired military men, complained of the plan of battle, of the shortage of troops, of the speed of the march on Baghdad, of the failure of supply —

Damned military experts, always thinking they know more about war than our war hero President!

and an all-too-eager press was on hand to echo them. The chorus of the disaffected grew ever louder after the fighting stopped: There was unchecked looting, there was no electricity, he ought to dismantle the Iraqi army, he ought not to have dismantled the Iraqi army, many of our allies were becoming disenchanted, our soldiers were out of control and torturing prisoners, and on and on.

Buncha whiners!  You just shut up about the looting, the lack of electricity, the torture, etc., because the war was conducted brilliantly, damn you!

Each day brought its own quota of complaints. Finally lady luck began to smile upon the prophets of doom, for in the wake of Saddam Hussein, there came a second war. This was the war of disguised combatants and murderous roadside bombs, a war of terror seemingly without end.

Yeah, the prophets of doom just got lucky with that second war, because no reasonable person could have seen it coming.

And so at last: an indisputable, authentic quagmire.

In our next two trial paragraphs, Midge accuses elitist anti-war demonstrators, Cindy Sheehan, "pro-Soviet, pro-Castro, pro-Che radicals of yesteryear," and the Democrats for being the real problem, because they refuse to recognize just how brilliantly George Bush's war has been going. 

She reminds us that politicians used to have a saying: “Politics stops at the water’s edge.”  But a couple of dozen wars eroded that spirit of collegiality in the face of wartime incompetence. 

And after that came Vietnam. . .

And while that's the end of our free sample of Midge, here's what we think the rest of the piece deals with:

• The dirty, morally-superior, folk-singing, elitist hippies who protested the Vietnam War, but who are allowed to live in this country anyway
• Today's pampered liberal college students who think they're too good to serve in the military
• The liberal media which refuses to tell us just how brilliant George Bush and his war are
• Homosexuals, who spread vile diseases through their icky sexual practices, but who are allowed to live in this country anyway
• The Clenis.

We believe that Midge concludes by calling for a return of the draft, and demands that all of the above people be forced to fight in Iraq. 

And then she sputters something about how in her day (the Civil War era), nobody was gay, nobody had sex, nobody was a hippie, and everybody said that the war was going great, even after General Lee was forced to surrender. 

And then the attendant gives her medication, and she takes her afternoon nap.

1:03:23 AM