Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Are we the British?

Darth Cheney was nice enough to contrast the current situation in Iraq with the American Revolution. Rudepundit covers this, and I don't want to let the point get away.

But beyond lessons in childhood safety, Cheney offered a truly bizarre take on the U.S. forces in Iraq. See, despite being the "best-trained, best-equipped" military in the world, the Americans in Iraq are really just the same scruffy lot that fought the American Revolution. Farted Cheney, "The victories in 1776 were few, and the condition of the Army was dreadful. By Christmastime our men were cold, hungry, and exhausted, and many of them didn't even have boots to wear. The volunteers were near the end of their rope, and thousands of enlistments were set to expire on New Year's Day. These men were bound and determined to leave, so the Continental Army was about to evaporate."


But...

Ahh, see the little problem here is that, back in the day, the British army was the best-equipped, best-trained military in the Western world. And, you know, the American revolutionaries? Shit, let's just let the Army tell the story: "A force of farmers and townsmen, fresh from their fields and shops, with hardly a semblance of orthodox military organization, had met and fought on equal terms with a professional British Army. On the British this astonishing feat had a sobering effect, for it taught them that American resistance was not to be easily overcome."


And the Rude One brings it home:

And if we're gonna go with this "holy shit, we're the Redcoats in Iraq" scenario, let's go whole hog. Here's how the Revolutionary War was viewed, at least partly, in England: To fight the war, "Britain had first to raise the necessary forces, then transport and sustain them over 3000 miles of ocean, and finally use them effectively to regain control of a vast and sparsely populated territory. Recruiting men for an eighteenth century army was most difficult. The British Government had no power to compel service except in the militia in defense of the homeland, and service in the British Army overseas was immensely unpopular." How did the British make up for the lack of recruits? By outsourcing to the Hessians. Mercenaries, they were called then. Today, they're "security companies" or "Halliburton."


So, according to Cheney, we are the bad guys who should be kicked out. Ahhh, cognitive dissonance, thy name is GOP...