Horses

National Review Online is your Back-To-School Headquarters for hysterical and stupid commentary on the Connecticut primary. Their in-house talk radio cretin, Mark Levin, comments that "Lamont follows in the great tradition of his uncle, Corliss Lamont, who was a courageous pacifist during the rise of the Nazis, just as Little Neddy has been heroic in his adamant appeasement of the Islamo-Nazis." Um, whatever.

His colleague, Cliff May flogs, a Neocon dead horse that should instead be given a dignified burial.

The war we are fighting -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere -- is nasty and bloody and we are not doing very well. But this is the face of war in the 21st century. We either learn to win such battles or we get used to getting whipped; maybe we even start to like getting whipped. Think of John Murtha almost bragging about the retreats he has favored in the past, from Beirut in 1983 and Somalia in 1993 -- as though those retreats did not pave the way to 9/11/01. (emphasis added)

The lesson that neocons take from Beirut and Mogadishu is that our retreats from those occupations showed us to be a weak horse to bin Laden. And so they did. Their solution is to continue such missions no matter how unrelated to the national interest they might be.

An equally, and perhaps even more valid lesson, is to not get involved in such situations in the first place. Beirut and Somalia were unrelated to our national intersest, while Iraq was contrary to the national interest from the start. Perhaps we should stay home next time and look like a horse that can mind our own business.