You don't get to use that word. That's OUR word.

via Lawyers, Guns and Money I see that the National Review has decided that we can in fact criticize the troops, after all:

Some generals may have said that [the US can't win in Iraq by force alone], but it’s wrong. It’s what is said by generals who love to train and parade and buy expensive weapons systems and then retire to cushy jobs at Lockheed.... If we have a military that can’t fight and win a war such as this, then we have a military that is close to useless, because this is what war is going to look like in the 21st century.

But what caught my eye was that Cliff May ended his little rant with a quote from George Orwell. I imagine it's one that the war-tards like:

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."

- George Orwell, 1/01/1946

There's nothing more despicable than right-wingers quoting George Orwell to justify their disgusting little misadventure. Of course, May already seems to have gotten something wrong, as the Orwell quote is actually from the summer of 1946 (in the May issue of Orwell's magazine Polemic), not January 1 1946. Maybe May thought it didn't matter. I suppose it doesn't, but it does indicate exactly how seriously May takes Orwell's writings.

I would not, under other circumstances, have thought Orwell would have become so popular among the right wing. He was, after all, a lifelong socialist. He was also born with enough sense to part ways with the other Internationals after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. That is to say, George Orwell actually showed his opposition to the Nazis before war made it necessary, and several years before whatever passed for American punditocracy got of its ass.

The quote May has selected is kind of interesting for what it says about the right-wing psychology. The essay that quote is pulled from is titled "Second Thoughts on James Burnham", and in it Orwell looks at the writings of one James Burnham (duh) who made a number of wild predictions about how the Nazis would win the war, how a form of global fascism was inevitable, and capitalism, socialism, and democracy were all doomed. Burnham believed that the Nazis would inevitably win against both the UK and Russia.

Orwell, noting that basically every one of Burnham's predictions was wrong, tries to explain why Burnham - and Orwell alleges many intellectuals in England - got the war wrong. That is, why did they wish to see Britain lose?

...there was admiration — though only in a very few cases conscious admiration — for the power, energy, and cruelty of the Nazi régime. It would be a useful though tedious labour to go through the left-wing press and enumerate all the hostile references to Nazism during the years 1935-45. One would find, I have little doubt, that they reached their high-water mark in 1937-8 and 1944-5, and dropped off noticeably in the years 1939-42 — that is, during the period when Germany seemed to be winning.

So May is comparing US generals, and all anti-war folk, to those people who sided with the Nazis during the war. Classy. But here's the thing - Orwell is using actual evidence and history to destroy Burnham, dryly noting:

Burnham's earlier prophecy, of a Germany victory in the war and the integration of Europe round the German nucleus, was falsified, not only in its main outlines, but in some important details.

Meanwhile, if Orwell were here today, do we think his reading of history would be kind to the pro-war folk? Would he look at their long string of failed predictions, the lies, the wide-eyed optimism about the future of American power in the Middle East, and be kind? And if you were pro-Iraq war and still think Orwell would be on your side, I challenge you to find one example in his career when that incredible man ever sided with mendacity over honesty, fear over hope, or greed over the common good.

And eventually, when you give up and realize you've picked the wrong side, would you at least try reading 1984 and not imagining it's all about liberals?