America the Teenager

David V

If America is suffering from low morale I should think Britain's dropped off the scale some time ago.

ndm

Does anyone take the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages seriously? They insult the readership. Peggy Noonan is particularly bad since her articles are always permeated with mushy tripe. But then who can forget her blooper when she criticized Sarah Palin off-camera having just gushed about her on-camera.

ndm

Oops - and this wasn't even in the Journal?? What excuse did the Telegraph have?

ndm

AS if to prove my point Peggy Noonan wastes her Wall Street Journal column today suggesting Obama needs adult supervision. She ends with:

-- Back to the political scene. Who might benefit from a real, if not consciously felt, longing for the old, tried and true? Not a Facebook jockey twittering from deepest cyberspace. A frank, unshowy Sen. Tom Coburn? Gov. Haley Barbour, an old-style, gray-haired, shrewd-eyed southerner? Maybe Mitch Daniels, who is, as they say, an old person's idea of a young man. He has the style of a lovely normal boring person. Boring: that looks so good right now. Old, that looks so fresh, so new.

Ground Control to Peggy Noonan your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong. Peggy, the Democrats won the last election - and the guys you shill for lost.

Conservative Cabbie

I really don't see what's wrong with this - we all need some confirmation from time to time (great blog by the way Alex), particularly when we are in a rut. And America is in one hell of a rut right now. And it has been British PM's in the past who offered that:Blair, Thatcher and Churchill. There aren't many other world leaders prepared to speak well of (and to) America, so why not Cameron?

And fwiw, she's right about how left and Obama can't tell the difference between nationalism and patriotism.

Conservative Cabbie

ndm

"Peggy, the Democrats won the last election - and the guys you shill for lost."

Judging by the continued state of the economy, the polls and Robert Gibbs (he he), this is increasingly likely to be a very temporary state of affairs.

*cough*Palin 46, Obama 46*cough* (according to PPP)

ndm

Conservaitve Cabbie paraphrasing the Noonan writes:

-- And fwiw, she's right about how left and Obama can't tell the difference between nationalism and patriotism.

Yawn. The Republican Party has made hay for years with its total inability to distinguish patriotism from nationalism. Oh look at such and such - he isn't wearing a US flag lapel button, or he doesn't want American troops fighting yet another losing war. In asserting this Peggy Noonan is just confirming that her article is little more than verbal diarrhea.

Conservative Cabbie

ndm

I'm no fan of Peggy Noonan, but there's a clear difference between talking down America as Obama and his cohorts have done (by cohorts I mean wife and pastor), sometimes on an international stage, and in criticising a person for not wearing a badge. She may, in your opinion, be spouting verbal diarrhoea but at least she's smart enough to spot that difference. Yawning right back at ya' (hey! This Palin-speak is kinda liberating :-) )

Snowman

agree with the sentiment of the piece, Alex. Where’s all the padding then, cannot spot it. Cameron, once described by the one who walks on water as ‘lightweight’, should indeed find words of love for the great unwashed of America whilst there. The special relationship ain’t cooked up high up, it lives or dies at the ground level, the camaraderie of the troops in Afghanistan is a good example of it, the boy should say so.

ndm @ 10.07:

well, the one who walks on water certainly is fighting a losing war in Afghanistan. Not only can he not lose what with the troops being watched over by the human right lawyers. The country decades away from any cohesiveness at the national level. The aims of the coalition outlined by Obama cannot be described as dreamlike even in a dream. There’s only way the whole venture can end up. Having been bribed the Taleban will join in the governance of the country, Obama will declare a victory, the MSM will move camp to another hole, the Afghan people will carry on as before, in conditions far worse than before.

The new brilliant idea of Petraeus reported in the media is to set up tribal militia. Madness. Afghanistan ain’t Iraq. Arming the tribes there would only enhance the country’s segmentation into deeper tribalism. One cannot but fear for the Afghan unwashed.

ndm

@Snowman -

-- well, the one who walks on water certainly is fighting a losing war in Afghanistan. Not only can he not lose what with the troops being watched over by the human right lawyers.

If Obama is fighting a losing war in Afghanistan after 18 months in office it is only because the preceding Republican Administration failed to win the war in seven years of (barely) trying. Human-rights lawyers are irrelevant to the situation in Afghanistan. The primary problem is that Bush/Rumsfeld tried to run a war on the cheap and found they lost the war. In 2001 the US people were willing to spend the resources necessary to engage seriously in a war in Afghanistant - but that moment is long past and the US people are no longer willing to do so. That is not the fault of Obama.

-- The new brilliant idea of Petraeus reported in the media is to set up tribal militia. Madness. Afghanistan ain’t Iraq. Arming the tribes there would only enhance the country’s segmentation into deeper tribalism. One cannot but fear for the Afghan unwashed.

I am always amazed at the wisdom of the armchair General who understands nothing but knows the solution to everything.

Beefeater

An excerpt from Cameron's speech:

Hey, America. Let me say, with sincere affection, you are one great Big Society. We in Great Britain know what it means to be a Big Society, how easy it is to be misunderstood. How people back off from what they see as different. A Big Society is exceptional and we know how lonely that can be. We are sensitive to how difficult it sometimes is for a Big Society to show its kinder, gentler feelings. But we know they are there, America. I'm here to tell you that its OK for Big Societies to cry. And to offer you a shoulder to cry on, and to fight side by side with you. Together we can bring about meaningful global change. With our two Big hearts we can solve the problems that beset the world and restore fiscal trust and sustainable climate change. America, together we can hug the hoodie nations of the world and leave the planet a better place for our children and grand children..."

For the traditional gift-giving, Cameron gave President Obama a bust of Churchill and a set of DVDs of Obama's campaign speeches dubbed into Gaelic.

Fergus Pickering

I don't give tuppence for the Afghans, washed or unwashed. I don't care if they have democratic government or dictatorship or government by clans and gangs (which seems their preferred model). I don't think their piece of ground is worth a single British life. Or ever was.