TMQ sucks

Note: this is a politically-oriented post.

In the past the magic of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column has been that
Gregg Easterbrook didn't stick to just football. Especially since a lot of his football
shtick has gotten tired and repetitive, the non-football material has proven an
interesting and fun change-of-pace.

But not this year, now that Easterbrook has seen fit to inject some kind of smartass
liberal commentary into the column every week. Maybe I've been tone-deaf, but I
hadn't noted any politically partisan material within the column before. TMQ mostly
left politics out of the column or played it like a libertarian when he included any.
This week, we have him calling Iraq the worst foreign-policy mistake in US history,
and wisecracking in haiku that Matt Millen makes Dick Cheney look competent.

Gee, call me a neophyte, but it takes about 20 seconds of research to see that Vietnam
cost the US nearly 20 TIMES as many lives as Iraq has. A foreign policy mistake that
manages not only that, but to deeply divide a nation for generations domestically, is
EASILY a bigger mistake, and makes me wonder if Easterbrook was visiting another
dimension, or drinking blueberry almond martinis, during the years 1965-1975 or something.
If you feel like getting all political, TMQ, spare me the misinformed liberal myopia that equates
Iraq and Vietnam. That is nowhere near the level of intellectual honesty I have come to
expect from your column.

The US also entered the Spanish-American War at the behest of newspaper publishers -
there's great decision-making! Kennedy's Bay of Pigs fiasco took planet Earth to the
brink of total nuclear war; that was a good risk! How about the Clinton administration
ignoring genocide in Rwanda? How many innocent civilians perished there? A MILLION!
Not a good decision in hindsight! How 'bout Korea? How 'bout the Battle of New Orleans
being fought after the British surrendered? How about the entire Carter administration?
How about Truman letting Stalin run roughshod over Eastern Europe following WWII? The US
got kind of scooped there, didn't it? Wasn't it a bigger mistake that intelligence that would
have led to bin Laden's capture prior to 2001 wasn't followed, as opposed to that which
has happened in the aftermath?

And calling Dick Cheney "incompetent" in anything other than pheasant hunting is little
more than an impetuous liberal diatribe. He is certainly fit to do the job and is never described
as less than the most powerful VP in US history, never described as other than one of the most
politically adept VP's, and if you believe a VP's role is to advance the President's policies,
he has done that beyond question. That Cheney has been a singularly effective Vice President
is not even for those diametrically opposed to administration policies to argue against. I didn't,
and don't, like much of anything about Al Gore's politics, but have never called him an
incompetent Vice President. He was quite successful in the role itself; granted, determining a
Vice-President's success, though we can all agree Agnew was probably a failure, is about as
precise as projecting regular-season results from NFL preseason games.

Hey, I got it back to football! TMQ, I'd request for you to do so as well. The Web already has
millions of places to find strident liberal commentary; Tuesday Morning Quarterback has no call
to serve that market.

End rant.