Those damn Danes

There's goes the ballgame.

Denmark is pulling out of that garden isle of purple-fingered majesty, Iraq. It's had enough, or at least its prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has, announcing Wednesday "that his country will withdraw its 460-member contingent from southern Iraq by August and transfer security responsibilities to Iraqi forces."

"Will ... transfer security responsibilities." I like that. It almost sounds as if some sort of security is in place, that a transfer of it will occur, and that the recipients of said security transfer have been deemed responsible, which no doubt they are, as long as southern Sunnis remain sufficiently terrified. Still, "transfer security responsibilities" is a niftily impressive-sounding phrase, no matter how you slice it.

Nevertheless, the stark downside remains: Denmark is bailing out.

We had a real shot at winning the Iraq war/civil war/internecine war/uprising/insurgency/general bloodbath -- nay, we had it won, by God -- till Denmark lost it for us. Well, it and liberal bloggers. And Keith Olbermann.

That, anyway, is the blame-game line I am recommending forthwith to the White House and Republican National Committee for their most traditional of all right-wing amusements: finger-pointing on chewed carpets when all things American go a bit ... sour.

You will recall, for instance, that decades ago the Chinese communists did not defeat Chiang Kai-shek's forces. The communists did not win anything at all. No, they lost China -- "they" being Trumanite pinkos in the State Department, United States Army and other well-known bastions of raw pinkoism.

Then "they" lost Korea -- they being the same Trumanite pinkos, who, it is true, were too busy fielding idiotic McCarthyite questions about their loyalty to pay much attention to the business of foreign policy. But such is the price of freedom we -- they -- pay.

And Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong did not victoriously reunify that country by kicking French and American butts into the Tonkin Gulf. No, "they" lost it, too -- the flower children, the liberal media en masse and Walter Cronkite, personally. Oh, and medal-tossing John Kerry and artillery-straddling Jane Fonda, who, according to my talk radio sources, were also "directly responsible for the deaths of 3 million Southeast Asians," right after Walter lost Vietnam.

"We" don't lose wars, you see -- we being the real Americans. Other people -- "they"; the those-on-the-left they -- lose wars for us. And of course occasionally those infernal, weak-kneed foreigners contribute to snatching victory from the we-us.

The Brits never cared enough about their own bloody empire, let alone ours, so they're skedaddling from our garden sandbox; and Lithuania, too, is throwing in the Iraqi towel, which is just like a bunch of lily-livered Lithuanians, don't you know.

But I blame the Danes, damn their Scandinavian hides.

Comments

[Lee Purcell]

Your skewer is especially sharp today, P. M. Excellent post!

[Vic Anderson]

As a left of median, Scandinavian flower child, it's good to be "losing", AGAIN!

[Jay Randal]

I am half-Danish, but I finally believe they have wised up and they notice that Iraq is a lost cause. Eventually it will be American troops all alone in Iraq and the oil will not be worth their deaths.

[A. Leslie Palmer]

In England political reality has taken hold . At last. Tony Blair,unlike our pretender to the Presidency, will not leave a "mess of Potamia to his successor! There will be an increase in troops to Afghanistan - the scene of many Anglo-Afghan disasters in the 19thCent!