Falling Flat

Mark Steyn:

“The Grand Old Duke of York

He had ten thousand men

He marched them up to the top of the hill

And he marched them down again.”

The Grand Young Duke of Hope has 30,000 men. He’ll march them up the Khyber Pass but he’ll march them down again in July 2011. If you’re some village headman who’s been making nice to the Americans, the Taliban have a whole new pitch for you: In a year and a half, the Yanks are going. But we’ll still be here.

“Our goal in war,” wrote Basil Liddell Hart, the great strategist of armored warfare, “can only be attained by the subjugation of the opposing will.” In other words, the object of war is not to destroy the enemy’s tanks but the enemy’s will. That goes treble if, like the Taliban and al-Qaida, he hasn’t got any tanks in the first place. So what do you think Obama’s speech did for the enemy’s will? He basically told ‘em: We can only stick another 19 months, so all you gotta do is hang in there for 20. And in an astonishingly vulgar line even by the standards of this White House’s crass speechwriters, he justified his announcement of an exit date by saying it was “because the nation that I’m most interested in building is our own.”

Please read the whole thing. The message, sent in clear and received 5X5 by the thugs of the world is that they have nothing whatsoever to fear from the Wizard of O.

He’s not interested, you see.

That’s why I am worried – very worried – about the troops and this country. There was no indication of resolve or fortitude in Obama’s speech. There was only political pandering and a myopic self regard.

There was a two dimensional cardboard cutout of an American president at the podium. A Flatbarry. Wafer thin and easy to fold.

Others noticed as well.