Housekeeping & Exit Strategery

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was reviewing his site server statistics and seeing what had happened to his dearly beloved blog in the weeks of limited posting. He discovered that while his traffic has fallen off since the high point in June we still get between 65 and 120 unique visits a day. Not too bad really.

Also, while checking the referral log, you Maximum Leader discovered that 10 unique visits to Nakedvillainy.com came from Neil Barker's Seoul. Neil has sent traffic here, has wisely chosen to blogroll this site and writes some good stuff. Thus he has been added to the Legion of Villainy.

In reviewing search terms that brought people to this site, your Maximum Leader has learned that he is still the number two match for the name "Summer Saunders" on Google. It is all because of this post. The joys of misspelling a name will be revisited upon you for ages. But hey, it is worth about 25 hits a month...

Ah, Summer... She would probably still make the list of the most desireable women in the universe ever. What is she up to know your Maximum Leader muses? A quick search of her name (spelled correctly) shows that she is still the co-host of NBA Inside Stuff. That bit of knowledge is almost enough to get your Maximum Leader to watch, although he hates the NBA and basketball in general. Here is a chat transcript with Summer from the WNBA site. Interesting, she'd want Ashley Judd or Diane Lane to portray her in a movie. Grrr baby... Summer also still hosts "Figure it Out" on Nick. Your Maximum Leader should get the Villainettes to watch it one day...

One last housekeeping matter. Some lucky soul found Nakedvillainy by searching for the following words: "wanted ayrshire heifer in washington state." Humm... On Google that puts us on the second page of matches, and Yahoo also puts us on the second page of matches. Well Mr. "Looking for an ayrshire heifer in Washington state," if you are still visiting shoot an e-mail to the Minister of Agrigculture (link on left) and he will extoll the virtues of ayrshires to you. And perhaps encourage you to join his ayrshire breed fan club...

Enough of this...

Some of you minions may be wondering when your Maximum Leader is going to get to the "Exit Stratergery" part of the post. Well here it is.

While vacationing, Villainette #1 (the Princess) made a little friend. Your Maximum Leader and the little friend's parents engaged in a little chit-chat of our own while watching over our progeny. Little friend's father (LFF) noticed your Maximum Leader was reading the most recent issue of National Review. He then started to ask some political questions of your Maximum Leader. Who gladly opined in the areas in which LFF was interested. Then LFF asked your Maximum Leader if Bush was wrong to go into Iraq without a clear exit strategy. Your Maximum Leader said no, it is almost impossible to plan a clear exit strategy when you have no idea how the war will turn out. Your Maximum Leader then asked LFF if having an exit strategery (so to speak) is a critical component of supporting going to war in the first place. LFF said yes it was. Your Maximum Leader then asked LFF when did President Clinton unveil his exit strategy for Bosnia? Or Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon for Vietnam? Or Presidents Truman and Eisenhower for Korea? Or FDR for WW2?

None of them really did was the point.

Exit strategies are tricky things. If you make them up ahead of time they must be flexible enough to adapt to a changing situation on the ground. Your Maximum Leader seriously doubted that Truman or Eisenhower thought that fifty years after the truce was signed in Korea that US troops would still be on the peninsula. It is hard to imagine FDR telling Churchill that he would be happy to send US troops to Europe "... But only if we have a sort of plan for bringing the boys home quickly after victory is won. The American people will not stand for a long-term occupation."

So the question before us is what about Iraq now? Did the current administration have a plan for getting us out of Iraq once we got in? Your Maximum Leader believes the consensus opinion would be that they had some loose ideas about what would go on, but not a really firm plan. Administration officials said that our troops would be in Iraq for a few years. That seems like a reasonable assessment. Our actions are being determined, in part, to the very fluid situation in which our troops and their officers find themselves.

Our goal should continue to be propping up the Interim Government and doing all in our power to stabilize the country and turn over full authority to a new Iraqi government. One that is democratically determined and popularly supported. Of course, your Maximum Leader's preference is that the government be a regular "western-style" democracy. (With certain basic freedoms, rule of law, and toleration.) But that might be something of a stretch.

Our goal, in a roundabout way, brings us to the problems in Najaf. It seems as though the forces of the interim government are going to storm the Ali Mosque. This is, in your Maximum Leader's opinion a generally good thing. The Interim Government needs to surpress insurrections. If that means storming a mosque that has been made into a makeshift fortress... So be it. The militants inside were given fair warning to put down their arms. They were offered amnesty. Now the Interim government must show it has some balls.

Carry on.