Banana Fana Fo Fana? No, Something New.

There are two ways to be a pundit. The more popular one is simply to belabor the obvious, perhaps in the hope of creating the illusion that it is fresh or, more likely, through sheer repetition challenging the growing notion that it is fallacious by saying it again and again without alteration as if no objection merited changing one's initial argument by even an iota.

Or you can say something fresh. But on the Internet fresh doesn't last very long. The window is less than an hour, probably 50 minutes at most, and during that brief time it would seem that after something happens, if there are no new developments, everything that can be said is said. There are just too many people saying too much, and some know what they are talking about.

That's why most pundits are repeaters. That's why I despair of being a pundit. I'm not brazen enough and not nearly clever enough when it comes to repackaging.

So you can't imagine how proud I am that my friend Brother Bob Wieder has flashed some second class punditry. (I mean, of course, some punditry of the first rank but of the second of the two types I have described above.)

He writes that Bush can't leave Iraq until Saddam is dead. The point of the whole enterprise -- the only point that hasn't crumbled into dust -- is that heck yes we *did* overthrow Saddam. But as Brother Wieder points out, if we leave with Saddam still alive, of course there's a chance a deal will be cut -- perhaps the Baathists placated? perhaps the country divided? -- and Saddam will come out of this with his head still on his shoulders, hey maybe even some kind of top dog?

As I explicate Brother Wieder, preventing that is the bottom line for Bush. That is the one thing that really is unacceptable.

There would be then absolutely no aspect of Bush's Iraq war which was not a total failure. He would go, in history, from failed president to laughingstock. As long as Saddam lives on, so does our large-scale military presence.



I had never thought of it in quite that way. Kudos to Brother Wieder.

P.S. Oh yeah. If Saddam is still alive and in custody come the last day of the Bush presidency, well, think Richard III.