MB Reader Chris H. writes:
Howard Fineman was quick to sow the seeds of the “Gosh, if only all those troops weren’t in Iraq everything would’ve been fine…” myth that I’m sure we’ll hear A LOT more of in the weeks and months to come. He says, ” National Guard officials insist that they have enough men and women on hand to do the job, but common sense tells you that they could use the others stationed abroad.” I guess Fineman’s common sense knows more about the availablity and deployment etc. than the National Guard itself. Common sense would say a lot of things about this disaster, but that has no bearing whatsoever on what is actually possible or necessary on the ground. That is just such a weak statement.
“Common sense” is often a drastic oversimplification. Pandering to people’s “common sense” is just exploiting their ignorance to take a cheap shot. Chuck Schumer likes to be the hero by demanding that we tap the strategic petroleum reserve. After all common sense tells us that this will make prices go down, right? Thanks Chuck! But what do we do if the problem had more to do with refining capacity than with crude supplies? And what do we do if Iran or Saudi or Venuzuela one day decide to cut our supply altogether? Please journalists and politicians, we can handle the details — its ok, we’re pretty stupid but not that stupid.
UPDATE: RedState continues to debunk the “insufficient National Guard” myth.