[media id=7689] Global-relations and military-tactics expert Glenn Beck and his equally qualified guest, famous-for-being-famous Canadian Mark Steyn,
March 27, 2009

Global-relations and military-tactics expert Glenn Beck and his equally qualified guest, famous-for-being-famous Canadian Mark Steyn, held forth yesterday on how America can solve the military situation in Afghanistan and the Middle East generally:

Beck: Here's the thing, Mark, I really think that if we're gonna fight a war -- and that's why I say, 'Kill them faster than they can kill you' -- if we're going to fight a war, why aren't we giving our military absolutely everything they need, go into Afghanistan, and just kick their butt. And then come home. So that way, everybody in the rest of the world goes, 'Oh jeez, I don't want to screw with them, because they're really serious.'

Real-world answer: Maybe because "just kicking their butt" in a tactical-landscape nightmare like Afghanistan is easier said than accomplished, unless you're talking about just dropping a nuke on them -- which of course has global complications all its own. Otherwise, just going into Afghanistan and "kicking butt" and then leaving won't solve the problem, because Al Qaeda is based as much these days in Pakistan as it is in Afghanistan.

But as usual, Glenn Beck likes to keep things simple. Real simple.

And so does Steyn, who seems to have gathered his talking points at Richard Nixon's knee:

Steyn: Because they know, and our enemies know, that when the United States goes into battle, it fights with one hand tied behind its back. So in your ass-kicking terms, we're not using the full force of the foot. We're using the little toe.

And our enemies realize that. They see the way we go into paroxysms of guilt over Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and all the rest.

Beck: Well, I mean, Abu Ghraib was ... I mean, dontcha think?

Steyn: Yeah, it was a guy -- what, whatever it was, the banana and the Victoria's Secret panties. Big deal! That's nothing compared to what goes on in the --

Beck: Wait a minute, wait a minute. I'll never get that Victoria's Secret panties thing out of my head now.

Yeah, it was just a freakin' holiday there, Mark.

Then again, this is the same cretin who penned this similar line:

The merest glimpse of a U.S. servicewoman leading an Abu Ghraib inmate around with girlie knickers on his head was enough to prompt calls for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, and for Ted Kennedy to charge that Saddam’s torture chambers were now open “under new management.”

Oh, and here's something else for Steyn and Beck -- who were arguing that Obama was going soft on terrorists -- to chew on: The 2006 National Intelligence Estimate:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

... Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat.

Maybe Canadian right-wingers don't worry about what that all means. After all, hey, it's not their problem, is it?

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