Re-elect Laura Roslin!

Brad R. from Sadly No! (the photo is from there) has a great piece up in the American Prospect Online about GOP punditry and Battlestar Galactica, which is, seriously, great. The article and the show.

Brad talks a little about Jonah Goldberg's musings on the show and the links to the war on terror, and just to give a little color to how profoundly stupid and arrogant this man is (a dangerous combination), I say we take a short look at a column he wrote recently for the LA Times titled "Iraq Was a Worthy Mistake". Goldberg replaced Robert Scheer at the LA Times (and they wonder why they are losing money....).

In the dumbed-down debate we're having, there are only two sides: Pro-war and antiwar. This is silly...

Oh yeah, that's totally silly.

...I must confess that one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the Iraq war was a mistake was my general distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side....

And that's NOT silly. Anyway, after admitting the war was a mistake (but Democrats are still losers, and we are all so unfair to Bush for thinking he is using DEMOCRACY! (tm) for his own cynical purposes):

I'm now supposed to call for withdrawing from Iraq. If it was a mistake to go in, we should get out, some argue. But this is unpersuasive. A doctor will warn that if you see a man stabbed in the chest, you shouldn't rush to pull the knife out. We are in Iraq for good reasons and for reasons that were well-intentioned but wrong. But we are there.

I do love this line of argument because it absolves one of any responsiblity for what happened, and, more importantly, for being so totally wrong about what happened, leaving that person in the unreflected upon position to STILL TELL US WHAT WE SHOULD DO! "Why should we listen to anything you say after admiting your, yourself were wrong?!" "Look, we are were we are." "Wow, good comeback, you obviously care more about the world and Iraq than I do!"

So what's Goldberg's great idea for the mess, err, FOREIGN, ILLEGAL, HORRIFIC OCCUPATION we are involved in? Wait for it:

I think we should ask the Iraqis to vote on whether U.S. troops should stay.

Polling suggests that they want us to go. But polling absent consequences is a form of protest. With accountability, minds may change and appreciation for the U.S. presence might grow.

If Iraqis voted "stay," we'd have a mandate to do what's necessary to win, and our ideals would be reaffirmed. If they voted "go," our values would also be reaffirmed, and we could leave with honor. And pretty much everyone would have to accept democracy as the only legitimate expression of national will.

Finishing the job is better than leaving a mess. And if we can finish the job, the war won't be remembered as a mistake.

Refering to a past post, "what's necessary to win" means kill every last motherfucker, so why, why, why would they vote to keep us there? And voting for us to go? Iraqi polls say (by larger margins then people here want to) we should go, some major Iraqi political figures have said publicly they want us to go, AND Bush has said he can't see ANY CIRCUMSTANCE we would leave Iraq as he is president. But Goldberg is getting paid money to present this childish idea that if they really, really mean it and showed it in a cool vote, then the US will be restored to its moral greatness to the rest of the world.

I sometimes think the Cylons' plan for New Caprica is more honest, realistic, and humane than the GOP's for Iraq. This is not a joke.

UPDATE: Tapped has another chapter in Jonah Goldberg's bizarre musings on BSG.