by Charles
My latest entry at Redstate is here. I didn’t put it on ObWi because there’s quite a bit of overlap with my previous post, but there’s enough new material that I thought it worth linking to over there.
"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
From the linked article:
“I would add that determination is not a plan, either. We know Bush is determined.”
And thus ends the argument over the No End but Victory case that all we need to prevail is will.
Yow:
Pretty much every word of Erick’s story leaves me speechless.
The Party is free to vote on the Comrade-Secretary’s performance!
via TBogg:
Oh, no. These assholes don’t get to unshackle themselves from Bush and his failed policies, to include any wars he’s already started and any he plans on starting, and retreat back into “We’re Reagan Conservatives!” until they apologize publicly for voting for the son of a bitch twice, and do some significant community service, and then sign papers saying they will never, ever again speak in a room with more than three people who are not of their own immediate family.
Ideally I want to see their asses painting up a bunch of schools in Iraq, and I want these bastards to pay for the paint themselves.
Jesus, the mess these people have made of the planet, and we’re supposed to trust that there’s some reason for optimism and accept that it’s all the media’s fault, that the liberals caused all this and they were just sitting there watching in passive voice? Screw them. Screw them all.
The whole system is so broken I don’t think we’ll ever fix it, and they’re already making plans to announce that Bush just didn’t kill enough people because he was too compassionate and too scared of the liberal media.
Screw them. Tie Bush around their necks, tie Iraq around their necks, like a fucking millstone, and let’s watch the whole conservative, paleo or neo, sink deep into the ocean trenches. You failed, boys. Failed badly.
And one of the consequences of failing this badly is that you have to shut up and let actual adults take charge and clean this shit up. I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you’re ready to live with it. Sit down, and don’t raise your hand again until you have something useful to say.
-D. Sidhe
It’s not Monty Python, but:
judson: I haven’t been policing this much recently, since I don’t like being a policeperson in general, but: one rule of the site is no profanity. This is not just because we’re squeamish wimps; it’s because some people read this at work, where filters are an issue; and also because we find it helps keep the place civil.
Likewise, no incivility. Calling people assholes fails on both counts.
What Charles thinks passes as something resembling fact or fact-based opinion:
Our substandard performance in Iraq is the sole reason for Bush’s low approval ratings, and it has hobbled his ability to push forward other parts of his agenda.
Comport that with the Social Security failure which predated the drop in the polls, and the ongoing failures on budgets, corruption, Katrina, well, just about anything the Republicans try to do. The whole agenda has been a failure.
A better information war. This lesson should have been reinforced in the wake of the Israel-Hezbollah War, where Israel was mostly unscathed militarily but took an embarrassing drubbing in the media.
Unfortunately, the one thing the Republicans do well is the information war. The problems are substantive. Better propaganda is not going to help.
And why did Israel take an embarrassing drubbing in the media — a bad publicity director and an unfair media? Maybe its because they failed to achieve through military action their stated military aims, which is most books is a “defeat.” Not the end of Israel kind of defeat, but a setback no matter how you cut it. Not something that a better media campaign can soothe.
____
Finally, conservatives who now finally call for more troops, after arguing strongly throughout 2004 that no more were needed, have no credibility. And how many more? And were do they come from? And does it make sense to now try to stuff a civil war back in the bottle? Even those Republicans calling for more troops are not calling for enough to do the much harder job created by past failures (if anything effective can be done with more troops – a big if).
I am sure in the same breadth with which Charles utters this “plan,” he will fault Democrats for not having a “plan.”
This reminds me of the words of a local talk show host who was in-country not so long ago, who said that “hope is not a plan”.
Was that back in ’03? I heard that phrase a lot back then.
No matter, we’re on to Iran!
Judson is OTM.
Pretty much every word of Erick’s story leaves me speechless.
Rumsfeld for President ? wow. those guys are really loyal to Bush Brand Republicanism.
Oh, my. Well, democracy is messy. I’m looking forward to the day it gets all over those guys.
Over at the former HoCB, a thread is now open.
D. Sidhe: “Oh, no. These assholes don’t get to unshackle themselves from Bush and his failed policies, to include any wars he’s already started and any he plans on starting, and retreat back into “We’re Reagan Conservatives!” until they apologize publicly for voting for the son of a bitch twice, and do some significant community service, and then sign papers saying they will never, ever again speak in a room with more than three people who are not of their own immediate family.”
I can understand the sentiment, but how do you propose actually making them do that? By law? Should the republic be suspended and the Bill of Rights not reinstated until the right-thinking get their proper revenge?
Maybe it’s partly self-serving because, while I was never a Bush voter, I was on the wrong side of this particular issue for a while. But when people start making their lists of all the things we should do to punish Republican voters once we get back in office, it strikes me as really not helping them change their minds or their votes. Most people don’t vote on the basis of who will punish them adequately for their past political transgressions.
I’m not interested in punishing Bush voters in the sense of go to jail or be fined or lose voting rights. I am interested in seeing them get the blame for the President, party, and policies that they supported.
I am even more interested in seeing them understand the connection between their actions and those actions’ consequences. For instance, it will be interesting to see which conservatives apply any lessons from Iraq to the case of Iran.
“I would add that determination is not a plan, either. We know Bush is determined.”
Do we really? He is determined not to “back down”, but he doesn’t do a lot of things you might expect from “determined”. Like push for authorization to expand the number of people in the armed forces. (Which, I’ll repeat, he should have done immediately after we started in Afghanistan even if he wasn’t planning on going into Iraq).
which conservatives apply any lessons from Iraq to the case of Iran
The lesson is clear — send more troops this time.
So, let’s see. If we needed 300,000 troops to do a decent job in Iraq, and Iran has a population that is just under 3 times as large, that would suggest about 850,000 troops for Iran.
Nice. Should take care of any remaining unemployment problems.
But of course, I imagine those disaffected Irani youth will shower our troops with roses. All the American soldiers who will be able to get out of the service early because conquering Iran is so easy will be able to open florist shops when they come home.
The lesson is clear
It is, but you’ve missed it kenB: the lesson is that this time you take out the true evildoers standing in the shadows ruining an otherwise perfect plan. Then we can be greeted like the liberators we really are.
Seb: I think, as I said in my ‘failures of will’ post, that he honestly does not get the fact that caring about something involves more than really really wishing it would happen; that it involves, say, hard work and careful thought about how to accomplish it. He is “determined”, in the sense that he won’t back down, but he doesn’t do any of the things you might expect to follow from that, because he doesn’t see that they’re necessary.
And why should he? Nothing in his life has ever suggested the need to try hard and think clearly. (I mean this quite seriously. It was what first really spooked me about Bush, back in 1999: the thought: oh God, one of those rich kids who honestly have never gotten the idea that it’s just not OK to coast by on names and connections. For context, I am speaking as someone who knows people like that, not indulging an anti-rich kids prejudice. George Bush and I are from different parts of the same class, so I recognized him.)
“George Bush and I are from different parts of the same class”
Which of you had to clean the blackboard?
I am interested in seeing them get the blame for the President, party, and policies that they supported.
No problem. I accept the blame. And if I had a do-over, I wouldn’t change a thing, except push for more troops in the post invasion phase. If we had secured the border with Iran and ruthlessly put down any and all insurgents we would be (mostly) out of there by now.
Hindsight is a great thing no?
I’ll take the blame for supporting freeing millions of people and attempting to plant the seeds of democracy in the ME. The bottom line is that we can transform it, or we can destroy it, but the old status quo can no longer be tolerated. Therefore in my mind, those who oppose our attempts to transform the region doom it to the alternative.
I’ll take the blame, but you won’t find me apologizing or regretting my support. The alternative could be a lot lot worse. It still may be before all is said and done.
Not disagreeing with hilzoy’s analysis, but there’s the additional issue of Bush’s and his supporters’ tendency to mistake ideology for reality. There is a deep seated opposition to just looking at the facts and figuring out what to do a la those practical Swedes. Social Security was attacked, not in an attempt to address a real problem, but for ideological reasons. All the disrespect for science comes from people who are much more comfortable believing and applying their beliefs than learning and creating. The refusal to deal with the health care crisis (except to use it to serve the interests of lobbyists) is another example. All the determination in the world won’t help if a person or group is so blinded by their preconceptions that they can’t learn or plan. Bush and the Republican party leadership in general are too ideological to be competent.
Hindsight is a great thing no?
nobody needed any hindsight to know that Bush wasn’t up for doing what was required. you only needed to look at how he left the job unfinished in Afghanistan to know how he was going to handle Iraq.
i don’t hate at all saying “I told you so”.
Steve, I challenge your right to designate yourself to be the changer or destroyer of the Middle East. For Chirst’s sake, get a prespective. We lost three thousand. That doe not make it right for us to decide that the people of the Middle East either have to do things our way ro die. How many people are you willing to kill because you have decided the status quo can’t be tolerated and that even chaos and war is your preferred outcome, from the safety, of course, of your home? Talk about American Exceptionalism! What a classic example of how an ideology, can be lead to absolute folly.
Not everybody’s willing to give up on blaming our lack of will:
Think about it. Currently, the U.S. has an arsenal of 18 Ohio class submarines. Just one submarine is loaded with 24 Trident nuclear missiles. Each Trident missile has eight nuclear warheads capable of being independently targeted. That means the U.S. alone has the capacity to wipe out Iran, Syria or any other state that supports terrorist groups or engages in terrorism — without risking the life of a single soldier.
Terrorist supporters know we have this capacity, but because of worldwide public opinion, which often appears to be on their side, coupled with our weak will, we’ll never use it.
yeah… think about it
and don’t forget to check out the comments on that ClownHall article. there’s no shortage of Will over there !
there must be a god watching over us and guiding us day to day – because humans really are too stupid to survive.
Dantheman: it was always me.
lily: I think that the lack of concern for reality is, in Bush’s case, enabled by his never having had to concern himself with it. It just never got in his way. Funny thing, that.
“It still may be before all is said and done.”
Those opposed to nuclear annihilation are appeasers and guilty of handwringing
Greenwald should use shorter titles. The “nuke-em-all” talk is accelerating ominously. I have taken this very seriously for like decades, ever since listening to table talk in the early (Cuba) and late (losing Vietnam). The way I figure, in this country a)nukular disarmament is quite unlikely; b) a smaller military and the limiting of military options will lead to frustration for the hawkish and the greater fetishization of nukes;so c) I want the 50s army back. With forced bases around the world and much adventurism and tens of thousands of casualties.
Because I listen to OCSteve. Because I listen and believe the alternative will be billions dead. I really believe I will see America use nukes in the next few years. It is worth a ton, almost any price, to prevent that.
People wonder why I hate. But people also I think don’t take OCSteve and his allies seriously. They don’t wanna believe it. Maybe I am a bad person for believing.
Hey Bob! I saw this bit in comments at Sadly No and thought of you:
DAS said,
August 22, 2006 at 17:13
Actually, it took a lot more personal courage to go to canada than it did to go to vietnam. I know many guys who will say they wish they would have had the courage to stay out of the war. Hell, it was easy to shut up and do what you were told… – mikey
Actually, the key issue in Vietnam was class — and Vietnam was what allowed the GOP to wage a divide and conquer strategy and win the class war for the rich.
Poor and working class stiffs generally had no choice but to fight in ‘Nam. They didn’t have the resources to make it to Canada, get student deferments, or what not (that is why Bill Clinton should get a total pass on his Vietnam war activities — for someone of his socio-economic class to have pulled off what he pulled off required extreme smarts and chutzpah … and why what he did in ‘Nam is so different than GW “Skipping out even on TANG” Bush). The middle class had a choice: they could risk Vietnam or risk protesting it. Of course, the middle/professional classes take great risk in avoiding the war, but they still had a choice, whereas the poor/working classes did not. It was resentment of the working classes of the large scale professional class sitting out of the war and protesting it that the GOP was able to use with such skill to sour those working classes on the liberalism both they and the professional classes had previously espoused — and this resentment is why so many who would benefit even from social liberal policies tend to view us “effete, latte sipping liberals” with suspicion: because our class allowed us to protest a war we didn’t believe in.
Of course the irony, as people note, is that those who so resent the upper-middle classes for their ability to sit out ‘Nam end up voting for rich folk who didn’t even have to take risks and protest to sit out ‘Nam.
But at the heart of the “effete, latte sipping liberal” meme lies a class divide and jeolousy over what the upper-middle class was able to do w.r.t. ‘Nam while the grunts got shipped off to die — a divide exploited ever since by the GOP and their lackies in the media who start shouting “don’t play at a class war” whenever class, the real third rail of American politics, is even brought up.
cleek – I thought only the WOPR got to play Global Thermonuclear War, guess Mr. Williams wants to play too.
“The bottom is that we can transform it, or we can destroy it, but the old status quo can no longer be tolerated. Therefore, in my mind, those who oppose our attempts to transform the region doom it to the alternative.”
It’s odd what does, and does not, get through the filters at work.
O.K., since transforming the region (let’s nuke Newark, New Jersey, too, since it seems so recalcitrant to democracy) seems to make things worse by the day, I need an estimate of what it’s going to take to destroy it.
I want explicit numbers of nuclear bombs used (that will be the only way to kill the insurgents), ballpark figures on the portion of the 1.3 billion of the Muslims in the world who will need to be butchered and incinerated, and a good round number of the number of U.S. troops who will be lost going to house-to-house if the nukes don’t do the job. Also, a price tag would be nice.
Will a draft be required? And will my 16-year-old go the way of all flesh before his time? I need to know up front, cause I’d rather be the one to kill him then let the terminally glib on either side get hold of him.
Also, I require the names, addresses, and mother’s maiden names of all who got us into this mess, namely, placing the Shi-ite majority in power in Iraq, who then
could make common cause with the Shi-ite regime in Iran.
That was so real-politik of the smart guys. I feel so warm inside now that Saddam is no longer around to be a thorn in the side of the Iranians.
If World War III is what folks want, I think it’s only fair that EVERYBODY in the world gets a taste. I want a neo-conservative Slim Pickens strapped to every bomb and I want to hear the yippy-kyos all the way down.
cleek –
Jiminy H. Cheesegraters. Those commenters on the Williams “essay” were just . . . whew. First strike nuclear glassing of Iran and Saudi Arabia – those guys are just ALL FOR IT:
No reservations except doubt that Bush has the balls. Plus invocation of Lincoln in the service of a call for the hanging of Sulzburger and Keller.
Wow. Wha-how.
“without risking the life of a single soldier.”
So we are going to nuke the entire countries? Are we then going to go to war with Russia and China simultaneously in order to get ahold of a sufficiently large nonradioactive oil supply? The grandeur of the plan impresses me.
Public Acceptance of Evolution, by Country courtesy of ComingAnarch. For those who think these issues, or any issues, can be dealt with via rational discussion. America isn’t Latvia or Portugal. We are an extreme outlier.
…
Frank, I am not sure what you meant above. If you don’t know me, I was blue collar in the Midwest in 1970 and was up to my elbows in Vietnam draftee vets. Didn’t know any officers, knew 1 or 2 non-coms, knew dozens of grunts. As far as their resentments or political attitudes, we all barely achieved consciousness until 1975. I was gone by 1980, so it is very possible that my drinking buddies of the 70s, as they settled down became Reagan voters.
I am aware of the objections. It is complicated. I do believe the Republican (and some Dem/s) ideal military (smaller, lighter,faster) has the main purpose of creating a climate of terror without ever changing anything. Like Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, etc.
All this talk about invading Iran, but no one’s actually answered this for me:
What are we going to invade with? The 135,000 troops that are currently busy in Iraq? The 50k or so in Afghanistan? The 350,000 or so that are either just back from Iraq or Afghanistan, or about to rotate in?
There’s no “Army” left. We don’t have a few divisions lying around, kicking their heels. They’re all rather busy right now.
Are we going to air strike our way to victory? I mean, what’s the actual plan here. It’s one thing to run around screaming “IRAN! IRAN!” but invade with what?
Bob, I’m not sure what you think can actually be done about this.
Bob I’m not claiming credit for the thought in my earlier post I just saw it on SN and thought it was interesting. I figured since Vietnam was formative for you that you might have an interesting take on it thats all.
Cleek- I love your poem:
apologies embarass;
hairshirts, how they itch!
flagellation stings him;
penance? for Catholics;
confession’s for the guilty;
pardon’s not his to give;
‘mea culpa’ hints at weakness;
punishment? no, none for him
“No reservations except doubt that Bush has the balls.”
You know I didn’t grow up scared of the Soviets. What was scarier, the commonists, or the guys who thought the minimum wage and EC Comics were almost as bad as the commonists.
The dreaded “Islamofascists” can kill thousands, tens of thousands. The guy in the White House who believes Riverbend and a billion others “hate us for our freedom” has his finger on the Red button.
I have known where the greatest threat to peace, freedom, security, human rights, life & limb resides. Unfortunately, like Eloi, the left has lost its taste for violence, so some kind of appeasement is all I have left.
The best handling of Walter Williams I ever saw was on the old “Wall Street Week” with Lou Rukeyser.
Rukeyser, a bonafide conservative, asked his panel of experts what they would do with interest rate policy (at that time) if they were Fed Reserve Chairman. Williams said “Lou, my first act as Fed Reserve Chairman would be to abolish the Federal Reserve” (We’ll leave aside whether he could overstep Congress in that way, I thought to myself, while parenthetically thinking, too, how can conservatives possibly believe affirmative action is the source of all our troubles).
Lou instantly looked down at his notes, shuffled them, swivelled his chair slightly and then looked up at the next guest and asked “What about you ..?”
Williams has a favorite ice cream, I’m sure. And I’m sure he believes all other flavors should be abolished, or nuked, or something.
As for the commentariat on the thread, they would break in the second week of Marine training. Just cleaning up the urine and feces would pretty much bankrupt the government.
OT: more enlightened analysis from Redstate.
Did Moe Lane REALLY used to be ‘moderate’? And why is (supposedly moderate, frequently AWOL from ObWi) von trying to smear Webb as anti-papist?
My head hurts…
Talk about denial… azizhp’s response to the Samir Sumaida’ie story that Charles linked to:
Dream on. This does not look like the best possible effort.
mattbastard,
that thread is very interesting but this comment was either amazingly oblivious or so sharp that one doesn’t notice it until they see the blood.
Steve, I challenge your right to designate yourself to be the changer or destroyer of the Middle East.
Challenge my perspective, my beliefs. In short, give me an alternative. The UN? A corrupt, feckless, powerless joke, as most recently demonstrated by this recent crisis. Should we depend on the EU? Right. Russia? Should we depend on the sanity and/or concern for civilization of the Mullahs? The Saudis? If you grant me my premise – then convince me that change is somehow worse than genocide…
Because I listen to OCSteve. Because I listen and believe the alternative will be billions dead. I really believe I will see America use nukes in the next few years. It is worth a ton, almost any price, to prevent that.
Thank you. That is my point which I rarely seem to get across. I know what we as a country, as “civilized” people are capable of. Right now 90% of the country does not see this conflict as a fight for survival. Forget nukes – we killed many more hundreds of thousands in WWII with simple incendiary bombs than we did with nukes. If and when a 10 times 9/11 event happens we will get there. I have no doubt we will survive – I just hate to think of what we will do when we get fully riled up.
people also I think don’t take OCSteve and his allies seriously.
They should. I’m not sure I have any allies – just me and mine. All I can say is study history. If you don’t think we can and WILL wipe out a large portion of the earths’ population if pushed to it – think again. You apparently think that is what I want – some kind of bloodlust… Wrong. I am for transforming the region – killing the cancer, even at the cost of American blood, rather than the quick and simple solution. If I truly thought as you imply, I would never have been in support of the whole Iraq war – I knew it would cost thousands of American lives. We have many nukes getting past their shelf age – I could easily have said “use them or lose them” back on 9/12. I did not. I supported shaking up the ME.
O.K., since transforming the region (let’s nuke Newark, New Jersey, too, since it seems so recalcitrant to democracy) seems to make things worse by the day, I need an estimate of what it’s going to take to destroy it.
A couple of keystrokes, dual key turns, and 30 minutes. Surely you know that.
If World War III is what folks want, I think it’s only fair that EVERYBODY in the world gets a taste. I want a neo-conservative Slim Pickens strapped to every bomb and I want to hear the yippy-kyos all the way down
I prefer Bruce Willis – but I won’t rile Hilzoy with the profanity.
Unfortunately, like Eloi, the left has lost its taste for violence, so some kind of appeasement is all I have left.
Speechless.
“Did Moe Lane REALLY used to be ‘moderate’?”
For those with memory, the devolution of Moe Lane has done wonders for my confidence in my instincts and intuition.
…
“Bob, I’m not sure what you think can actually be done about this.”
Charley, I wrote and deleted three answers. It’s a tough country. I am kinda Leninist. Wait for the catastrophe, and be prepared to get all radical when it comes. I think the necessary and sufficient catastrophe may be a while off, but I see that the radicalization proceeds apace. I am pleased with Lieberman;may he win an inexplicable landslide, change caucuses, and provide the marginal vote for Justice Rogers-Brown as Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and HRC say “we thought Joe was our friend.” This would please me much more than Lamont winning. We are too far gone for that to be helpful.
Erick, at Redstate, my sole reason for favoring a Draft.
He trembled before Rush, like Monica second-guessing the toppings she ordered on Bill’s first pizza.
Erick claims “no Party-line” at Redstate.
Well, even Lenin’s shellacked corpse needed the occasional renovation.
I think the SDS has some punks like him, early on in the mid-Sixties. Before they went on the run.
Just because I couldn’t resist after OCSteve’s invoking of 9/11 times 10.
Team America: World Police
LJ: the mind boggles (adding to my headache;)).
Bob – reflexive hawkishness from the right (including those who claim to be less-than-rabid in their conservatism) is (obviously) not surprising, just…disturbing, I suppose. That said, I’m starting to prefer right-leaning folks like OCSteve who don’t attempt to disguise their bloodlust in fuzzy rhetorical camouflage.
‘Civility’ means they say ‘sorry’ before sticking the shiv in your back.
If and when a 10 times 9/11 event happens we will get there.
I think it will only happen if we remain complicit in allowing this administration to rachet up the rhetoric. The broken up British plot, which was apparently well under control and even if it had blown up ten airliners in midair, would not have been as catastrophic as 9-11, was generated by decentralized groups with no contact or control. An ounce of prevention is equal to a pound of cure, and I’m thinking that we have to eliminate the fear mongers from the body politic in such a way as to discourage fear mongering, which kind of goes to the heart of the discussion between Matt and lily round about 4:30. I’m beginning to think that there has to be a middle ground where they might be ridiculed and cast out, so that they end up like Pete Rose or Ben Johnson. To do that, I think we need the help of some people like OCSteve to hold their tongue, at least for a moment, while we are running people out of town on a rail. I wish I had Thullen’s sense of humor to make this sound a bit more palatable, but there it is.
Andrew: it pains me that the posting rules preclude me from posting the lyrics to ‘Freedom Isn’t Free’.
🙁
That said, I’m starting to prefer right-leaning folks like OCSteve who don’t attempt to disguise their bloodlust in fuzzy rhetorical camouflage.
OK – I admit it is a waste of bandwidth to try to explain my position on a lefty blog. If you can’t see that I clearly tried to explain why I support change over genocide (bloodlust) then I admit I can not express myself well in this medium.
To do that, I think we need the help of some people like OCSteve to hold their tongue, at least for a moment, while we are running people out of town on a rail
Curiosity peaked – can you expound on that?
matt,
I feel your pain. I’m occasionally tempted to reel off with Kim Jong Il’s favorite question myself.
Pretty much what I expected, getting little love today, but I didn’t expect two rebuttal posts at Redstate.
It’s hell when you don’t march to the beat of anyone’s drummer, Charles. You get it from all sides. I suppose that’s a factor in what draws people to party politics.
Give an alternative to killing jillions of people so you can feel like something has been done to change the Middle East?
What exactly was so bad about the Middle East that we would be justified or obliged to cause chaos there, supposedly to benefit the Middle Easterners who manage to stay alive through our intervention? There are lousy governments all over Africa but no drum beat to go to war with thhem. The North Koreans are both crazy and seeking nukes, but no rightwing yammerring about WW3 with them. What has the Middle East got that makes it OK in some people’s minds to set off a chain reaction of violence toward an unknown result with no justificatioon other than an impatience with the status quo? Why are Middle Easterners so expendable?
The neocons were only interested in terrorists for the excuse they offered, The neocon goal was simply power, make the US the One Superpower.. That isn’t a goal any decent human would support.
For most Americans the war in Iraq was a response to 911. Supposed to be a fight against terrorism. That’s a dumbed-down understanding of an even dumber policy: the idea that military intervention in Iraq would set off a series of other upheavals resulting eventually in the spread of pro-American governments which would magically end support for terrorists. Sort of a Great Game played by academics and politicians who didn’t know anything about the Middle East and were too in love with themselves and their lovely ideology to think of the thousand ways things could go wrong. It is just plain immoral to play with hhuman life that way.
The alternative? Well we could have responded to terrorism with the practicality of people who live in the real world. We could have taken domestic security seriously, focused on international intelligence gathering, worked to control the flow of illegal nuclear materials, and concentrtaed on finishing the job in Afganistan. We could committed ourselves to the l honest broker role between Palestine and Isreal. None of this would have provided instant gratification or quick sure results or vicarious thrills for the armchair warrior. However, there wouldn’t be eitherr the current levels of support for terrorism, hatred for us and Isreal, increase in Iraniann influence, return of the Taliban to parts of Afganistan…etc
The only positive result of our invasion of Iraq is that they have a paper democracy. It is an open question whether or not they can get stability without destroying their democracy. Those millions of “freed” people now live in fear of fundamentalists and their crazy rules, death squads and random violence. I suppose yu share Bush’s frustration with their ingratitude. All of the other results (other than the paper democreacy) of this war have been bad and the idea that creating chaos in order to shake things up on the assumption that a positive chain reaction will be set off is totally dillusional now.
So blame yourself.
Just because I couldn’t resist after OCSteve’s invoking of 9/11 times 10.
Andrew:
I have not seen it, I know they could revoke my VRWC card for admitting that, but I haven’t.
On a serious note – I know that as a military officer you have studied history. In my experience, officers tend to go well beyond what history is required of them, and study it quite a lot.
Assuming I am not wrong, can you give me your response to my comments? Do you believe that we as a country are capable of much worse than has occurred to date, and that shaking things up in the ME is much preferable to what we could have, and still may have to do? In short – do you think I am totally off base? For obvious reasons I respect your opinion. {salute}
Pretty much what I expected, getting little love today, but I didn’t expect two rebuttal posts at Redstate.
You’re just not Red enough for them Charles.
OCSteve: a kinder, gentler form of ‘cancer extraction’ (“hey, I think Americans should die, too!”) doesn’t make the consequences any less devestating. That said, I withdraw the portion of my comment that was directed towards you. I misread what you had written (that’ll learn me to post on the fly at work;-)).
Andrew: this thread is in dire need of a montage…
OCSteve,
Clearly our history demonstrates that we are capable of quite amazing feats of mass destruction. From the campaigns against the Indians to the bombing campaigns over Germany, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, we’ve shown an impressive ability to kill people when we’re trying to get our way. Of course, we seem to have mellowed significantly over the past few decades (which isn’t to say we’re not willing to kill, only that the limits are much lower than in the past; even the worst estimates of deaths in Iraq pale next to the deaths we inflicted to win WW2).
As to your second question, I was of the belief that disrupting the status quo in the Middle East was preferable to letting it continue to fester. I have come to regret that belief, as I’m unconvinced what we will leave behind will be noticeably better than what was there before. That doesn’t mean I think you’re totally off base, but I do think that the unintended consequences of our actions in the Middle East are more significant than we anticipated (and we still don’t know what else may come of it). While I remain concerned over what will come of future terrorist attacks, I am unconvinced that our current course of action will assist us in preventing them.
Charles: did you expect Erick to endorse Rumsfeld for Prez?
Because, in all honesty, that really threw me for a loop.
Spoken like a man who knows the true value of talk, OCSteve.
Yeah, that’s how it is when your girlfriend’s watching isn’t it? “Hold me back, fellas! Grr… Hold me back or I’ll beat the pants off those dirty Islamofascists! Snarrrl… Hold me back I say, or I’m afraid I might do something terrible! Hisss…”
Jeez, between OCSteve and bob mcm I suddenly feel like listening to The Final Cut. Not a great album by Pink Floyd standards (better by the Roger Waters solo standards that ought to apply I guess), but boy howdy that guy can write some heartbreaking songs. After that maybe I’ll cheer myself up by watching Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead.
Re Webb, I suspect that his “new friends” on the net are well aware that he’s pretty much Southern paleo and a Reaganaut. And that Lamont’s not exactly progressive either. Hank Johnson OTOH — I think he’s gonna catch a lot of people by surprise (assuming he wins).
BTW it turns out Webb’s article would be an okay argument against co-ed warfighting if it were edited down to about 1000 words, and there’s a pretty funny moment when he observes that the military is, in a sense, a “socialist meritocracy.” Yes, he really says that (I guess he couldn’t quite bring himself to say Communist meritocracy, even though that would technically have been more accurate).
matt,
Good point. Even Rocky had a montage. (And, for the record, I give huge points to David Weigel, guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan, for this post title.)
I’m not Andrew, but I can point out that we already “shook things up” in the ME – and the results are appalling.
Now, it’s quite possible that you (along with the gang at RS) believe that turning more ME countries into abbatoirs, a la Iraq, is a good thing. Maybe you believe that reducing the ME – and any other Islamic state, from Pakistan to Indonesia – to enormous Killing Fields will somehow “keep America safe.”
If you believe that, then there’s nothing I can say to you, because we have no values in common.
I’m not Andrew
Ah, but without IP tracking, can we be sure of that?
sock here–
just dropped by to say: I’m not Andrew either!
Andrew: I nearly did a Danny Kaye on my keyboard when I read that. (Weigel’s been doing a bang-up job at the Daily Dish this week – and I’m not just saying that because he cleverly incorporated a reference to one of my all-time fav movies;-)).
Hi OCSteve,
I took what you were saying as we have to pull up before going over the edge and didn’t assume you were advocating 2 key turns to successful democracy. As such, I hope that you would agree that this administration and its enablers have, in lieu of dealing with the problem, have made it worse, whether by stupidity or design. So what needs to happen (imho needless to say) that these folks be treated as being the same toxicity as Nixon’s inner circle was after Watergate. Maybe they can be rehabilitated in 20 years, but for the moment, they need to be shut off from public opinion and kept away from sharp objects. In order to do that, some more thoughtful folks are just going to have to bite their tongue and not bellyache about ‘liberal bias’ in the media and such. The only court that matters at the moment is the court of public opinion and I realize that is more like a kangaroo court, but it seems like the only thing that is left.
I believe that because the military class and the civilian class in the US is so separated, we have reached this juncture. It seems to be that Israel tried their own version of fear mongering, and now, the reservists are up in arms about trying to do something for the sake of public opinion rather than for actual results, but that starts much earlier and is much stronger because of the extent that there is less of a gap between those who serve and those who are protected. When I get back this pm, I’ll try to flesh that out a bit more, but thanks for hanging around on this.
Charles: did you expect Erick to endorse Rumsfeld for Prez?
Nope, but I know that the RS directors wrote an editorial a few months ago supporting Rumsfeld, which makes it the official RS position.
Andrew:
Thanks for that frank response. I can understand it – even if I don’t totally agree with all of it. Specifically I disagree with lumping Germany and Japan into: “we’ve shown an impressive ability to kill people when we’re trying to get our way”. Korea and Vietnam – arguable, but not those other two.
“While I remain concerned over what will come of future terrorist attacks, I am unconvinced that our current course of action will assist us in preventing them.”
Can you say what would have? What would have worked better? After all, there has not been a significant attack on US soil in almost 5 years. How can you disprove a negative?
Spoken like a man who knows the true value of talk, OCSteve.
Don’t try the chickenhawk bit with me – I have walked the walk, and I will again if the country ever needs a 44 yr. old overweight, nearsighted soldier. I tried to re-up on 9/13/01 and they said “don’t call us”. I will take that POS M16 into the desert (which I hate with all my being) any day this country wants me to. You game?
Steve, I do understand yopur passion and belief that changing the ME would be for the best. And perhaps it would be.
I do have two problems with what you are saying. The first is that your are presenting a false choice. Transform or genocide. I don’t see it that way. We could have left it (and by this I basically mean Iraq) alone. We could have finished the job in Afghanistan, which we didn’t do, leaving it to probably become a failed state again.
The second problem is that you apparently believe the only way to affect the transformation is through military means. even if competently done, I doubt if it owuld have made any difference. As my son said when he came back from Iraq is that no matter when we leave, no matter what state Iraq is in when we do, civil war will erupt.
However, it appears part of your wish is coming through. The ME is being tranformed. Iran is more of a power broker than before, Israel is somewhat diminished, Lebanon’s fragile democracy may be a shambles, and Iraq may well end up as neither a democracy or even a single unified country.
Spekaing of Iran, the moderates there and elsewhere in the ME have also been transformed, many of them into radicals.
I think the biggest problem many of those who advocated our massive response in Iraq have is that they really believe that terrorists can actually really threaten or destroy this country.
If we allow them to, perhaps, but this administration is doing their work for them. I think lily laid it all out above. Gosh even George Will has come around to saying that using military means is not the way to defeat terrorism.
“After all, there has not been a significant attack on US soil in almost 5 years. How can you disprove a negative?”
Unfortunately, this is one of the lamest statements I hear. The assumption is that if we hadn’t done what we did, there would have been one.
Since so much was accomplished by the first one, why have another. Terrorists like to scare people. Bush has been doing that ever since 9/11. They don’t need to.
I’m not Andrew either, but I think the best alternative I’ve heard here was Lily’s:
“The alternative? Well we could have responded to terrorism with the practicality of people who live in the real world. We could have taken domestic security seriously, focused on international intelligence gathering, worked to control the flow of illegal nuclear materials, and concentrtaed on finishing the job in Afganistan. We could committed ourselves to the l honest broker role between Palestine and Isreal. None of this would have provided instant gratification or quick sure results or vicarious thrills for the armchair warrior. However, there wouldn’t be eitherr the current levels of support for terrorism, hatred for us and Isreal, increase in Iraniann influence, return of the Taliban to parts of Afganistan…etc”
In other words, act like grown-ups instead of frightened kids. Sounds like an excellent alternative to spreading a fall-out cloud around the world that would solve absolutely zero problems.
Actually, the only part of Lily’s post I disagreed with was this:
“…make the US the One Superpower.. That isn’t a goal any decent human would support.”
I personally was and am all in favor of making the US the one superpower. The US has its flaws–the last six years have shown that it is too easy for its government to be taken over by a criminal coup, for instance, and for its Constitution to be abandoned by a terrified populace.
But when the US is functioning, and when its Constitution is being followed and respected, then there is no other country in the world that more thoroughly deserves a place of political and military pre-eminence.
If the US should continue in the paths of illegality and unrighteousness, god forbid, then I don’t think having a military rival will make it any saner. And if, as I hope, it returns to its senses, then a military rival will not help the world, either.
And I want to go back to running surpluses, as we did under Clinton, so that we don’t finance China’s run at being an economic superpower.
No, I’m happy to see the US be the one superpower again. I just want to make sure that it is the real US, the US of Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln, and FDR, instead of the hijacked and perverted criminal regime we have had for the last six years.
Charles: that’s truly disturbing. I fully agree that Rumsfeld needs to go ASAP. Can’t say I’m surprised the sentiment isn’t shared by the RS elite, though.
I misread what you had written (that’ll learn me to post on the fly at work;-))
I hear you there matt, I often respond to a post in a hurry and then have no time for days to follow up and see if I should respond to someone. Feels like a driveby – but we can’t all spend our days here 🙂 That said – thanks for the clarification.
turning more ME countries into abbatoirs
CITY GENT #1: Uh, did you say ‘knives’?
MR. WIGGIN: Uh, rotating knives. Yes.
CITY GENT #2: Are you, uh, proposing to slaughter our tenants?
MR. WIGGIN: Does that not fit in with your plans?
CITY GENT #1: No, it does not. Uh, we– we wanted a… simple… block of flats.
MR. WIGGIN: Ahh, I see. I hadn’t, uh, correctly divined your attitude towards your tenants.
john miller:
John Mueller, in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs:
OCSteve: Civility may be in its final throes in this increasingly partisan atmosphere, but inaccuracy is never acceptable.
😉
Steve, I do understand yopur passion and belief that changing the ME would be for the best. And perhaps it would be.
I do have two problems with what you are saying. The first is that your are presenting a false choice. Transform or genocide. I don’t see it that way.
Thanks for the civil response. I get that less and less these days and most times I don’t know why I bother (on left of center blogs) but I don’t like the echo chamber either. I like popping in here because it is mostly a good group – even if I disagree with 95% of them 🙂 Hilzoy is a joy, and Gary can wear me plum out. The addition of Andrew is a big plus because he is an authority figure to me (don’t let that go to your head dude! – yes, after many years since EOS, I still give automatic respect to an officer – but like the butterbar, you have to earn it and so far you have.)
I understand about “false choice”. But I do see it that way. I have tried for years to reconcile the madness there with western civilization – and I can not. It really has come down to a “us or them” scenario for me. Not the masses – but the leaders, the influential imams, etc. So in my mind taking out the leaders, putting in new leaders (friendly to us or only partially so) is a step in the right direction – and much preferable to what I see as the potential outcome here.
I am not a bloodthirsty warmonger. I am just apprehensive about the current state of affairs – and I do not get all my info from BushCo or Karl. I truly think that the day may come when we will be forced to do something truly horrific – so I prefer anything to that. Regime change is nothing to what I see coming.
Re Erick the Innocent and Rumsfeld: I notice Erick makes an exception because Rumsfeld is too old.
It’s always something with these people.
Although, the habit of asking oneself rhetorical questions and answering them, as Rumsfeld does as others watch, does seem a little, I don’t know, advanced.
Also, OCSteve, thanks for your service to the country. I’m sure you’re not itching to nuke, but maybe there is a middle-ground long slog of wrenching terrorism ahead of us for 50 years and maybe the region transforms slowly and not very well, but good enough to avoid the big one.
Read some Graham Greene, if you haven’t already, regarding good intentions. It could be that good intentions and genocidal intentions end up in the same place.
I like Democracy, too. Others don’t, yet.
So what else is new? They might vote to kill us, if they got the chance.
I demand a recount, in Ohio and Tehran.
As to proving a negative, Oliver North stated on Fox News soon after the 9/11 attack that Al Qaeda had blown its wad. That was it.
When he proves it, get back to me.
OCSTEVE: “I am just apprehensive about the current state of affairs.”
You speak for everyone here, I expect. That you are apprehensive is a good thing. It’s those who think they might like whatever is going to happen who are the ones who won’t be fit to live with the rest of us when all is said and done.
Steve, civil is what I am all about. At least you are able to present a cogent argument explaining why you feel the way you do. Our real disagreement lies in the assumptions and premises we work with, which obviously lead to different conclusions.
Like the other John, I also wish to thank you for your service. My son is one of those officers so please also at least consider his opinion. When he left for his tour in Iraq, he thought it was a good thing.
No longer. He does not think his fellow soldiers died in vain, because he feels they died to protect each other. But he does feel that we will have done no good over there.
You speak for everyone here, I expect. That you are apprehensive is a good thing. It’s those who think they might like whatever is going to happen who are the ones who won’t be fit to live with the rest of us when all is said and done.
My fear exactly. Thank you for enunciating it so well. “Bad Moon Rising” CCR? That is what I feel like, and even the better outcomes may be awful. Interesting times be damned.
Incidentally, Charles, since everyone pretyy much ignored you on this thread, and we can’t have that …….
………… how come all of a sudden your dissatisfaction is so important and mine has been ignored since November of 2000?
I (we) are the Dissatifieds. Find another name. The “Pissed Offs” is taken, too.
My son is one of those officers so please also at least consider his opinion. When he left for his tour in Iraq, he thought it was a good thing.
Absolutely! Your son and his comrades are obviously the best source of what is really going on there. I give what any of them have to say 1000 times more weight than the front page of the NYT.
Those front line reports were all optimism for a couple of years. Depressingly less so the last year. I will not argue with the grunts on the ground – and no one should. So I readily admit that things are not all good. I am not going to cheerlead BushCo – I just don’t see a viable alternate solution.
Tell your son from me, thank you for his service {salute}.
Cleek- I love your poem
Frank- thanks. yet i defer to Ms. Parker – of course.
OCSteve: Regime change is nothing to what I see coming.
it is certainly interesting how utterly terrified the right is these days. besides those who are eager for Rapture, in the past week or so, the right has collectively decided that it’s Now or Never, Us or Them, Kill Or Be Killed, War Of The Worlds, yadayadayada. if this is what a handful of pissed-off radicals can do to half our country, i cannot fathom what the height of the Cold War was like.
all of the terrorists in the world couldn’t bring down the USA, let alone all of Western Civ. Russia could have incinerated it all in mere seconds. now that’s an existential treat – Islamic terrorism directed at the west ? that’s orders of magnitudes less of a threat. by comparison, it’s a nusiance. it’s certainly nothing to get all “First strike” about.
frankly, it looks like there’s a part of the conservative psyche that simply craves an external threat, and will seize whatever’s handy in order to fill that need. it’s sad, because these are the same people who also tell us they’re the Real Men in charge of protecting us all. well, i don’t want yuor protection.
it is certainly interesting how utterly terrified the right is these days. besides those who are eager for Rapture, in the past week or so, the right has collectively decided that it’s Now or Never, Us or Them, Kill Or Be Killed, War Of The Worlds, yadayadayada. if this is what a handful of pissed-off radicals can do to half our country
It is certainly interesting how utterly un-terrified the left is these days. Do you take this seriously at all? I don’t cower in my bunker at night. I realize that I am more likely to die commuting to work or being hit by lightning than via a terrorist attack. But we can’t do anything about weather or much about traffic fatalities can we? Should we not do anything? Iranian nukes don’t bother you at all? Rapture huh? I am not the least bit religious and I dare say that that the fringe religious zealots bother me more than you – just as I would hope that the fringe on your side bothers you.
i cannot fathom what the height of the Cold War was like
I think you may be very correct there.
it’s a nuisance
Tell that to the families of 9/11, Khobar Towers, the Cole, Beirut Marines, African Embassy staff…
“Us or them”? Yes, I do think it will come to that, and not too far in the future. Am I terrified or are you sticking your head in the sand. Time, unfortunately, will tell.
well, i don’t want yuor protection.
Well, you get it anyway. Fortunately for you, your protectors do no not discriminate on the grounds of race, religion, or political beliefs. Even after this exchange – you would get it anyway. You think any soldier would ask your political party before rescuing you from a situation you most likely got yourself into? Hardly. Firefighters or police officers out there want to speak up? Does politics come into play?
You get it anyway. Question – if you found me dying on the road with a big placard stating my political beliefs, would you help me? I think that with a lot of the left today, the answer would be no.
It is certainly interesting how utterly un-terrified the left is these days. Do you take this seriously at all?
Speaking for me, why should I be terrified of Islamic terrorism? I’ve lived in its shadow for nigh on 20 years — grew up in Asia, got regular letters from the State Department reminding us not to go certain places lest we be kidnapped and/or killed for the crime of being an American — and I’m not gonna let it get me down. The f***ers deserve to be put away, of course, but as cleek noted they’re not even remotely an existential threat; they’re a bunch of vicious, murdering thugs, more on par with the Mafia than the Cold War Soviet Union. The one exception, of course is…
Iranian nukes don’t bother you at all?
They bother me substantially less than unsecured Russian nukes or Pakistani nuclear technology being sold on the black market, fwiw, both of which threats Bush has done next to nothing about. How about you?
Tell that to the families of 9/11, Khobar Towers, the Cole, Beirut Marines, African Embassy staff…
Let’s be brutally utilitarian here: count the dead. Compare them to the major war of your choice. How many orders of magnitude disparity is there?
As I said, they’re vicious, murdering thugs; so what? They need to be stopped, of course, but invoking a nuclear firestorm as a countermeasure (or response) is just plain unhinged.
[I’m not saying you advocate that, incidentally, just that it’s flat out ludicrous to compare the two.]
Well, you get it anyway. Fortunately for you, your protectors do no not discriminate on the grounds of race, religion, or political beliefs. Even after this exchange – you would get it anyway.
FWIW, I don’t think cleek was talking about the soldiers, but the bedwetters on the right who would wreck our foreign policy and what moral high ground we might have left by unhinged acts of aggression, rather than — as lily said upthread — “respond[ing] to terrorism with the practicality of people who live in the real world”.
[Nice turn of phrase there, btw.]
Question – if you found me dying on the road with a big placard stating my political beliefs, would you help me? I think that with a lot of the left today, the answer would be no.
I’ll take that action any day of the week; remember, the (mainstream) left aren’t the ones talking about the other side being traitors, pro-terrorist or what have you.
I’m sure that the average German was sincerely scared of the toxic cancer of communism and the Jew, and that the Germanic people were going to be the first and last line of defense.
All fascist societies in Europe and Latin America believe genocide and authoritarianism are necessary to combat the collapse of Western society …by any means necessary Praise God! And generations after always express surprise at their forefather’s radical paranoia.
Actually the “chickenhawk bit” hadn’t even occurred to me; I don’t doubt that you’re defending your home and family every bit as ferociously as your Muslim counterparts are defending theirs. Even more ferociously, since you have the Big Red Button and all they have are AKs and RPGS and hijacked airplanes.
No, I was just contemplating what it must have cost you, at work, and at home, and in terms of wrestling your demons, to take personal responsibility for the invasion of Iraq. Plus all those years when you were trying to reconcile the madness there with western civilization… Wow. How many of those years did you spend further east than Rhode Island?
Your moral superiority to “a lot of the left” has been noted for the record. That’s good, cause I hear St. Peter grades on a curve.
if you found me dying on the road with a big placard stating my political beliefs, would you help me? I think that with a lot of the left today, the answer would be no.
Well, there’s plenty of heated rhetoric on both wings, but I think it’s probably a mistake to take their extreme statements very seriously. I dare say most of them, when encountering an actual suffering human being rather than a mental caricature, wouldn’t do any less for the ideological opponent than for a neutral party. But maybe I’m just a starry-eyed optimist.
OCSteve: Question – if you found me dying on the road with a big placard stating my political beliefs, would you help me? I think that with a lot of the left today, the answer would be no.
God, that’s bitter. Does your big placard say Get a Brain, Morans? Or Liberals are godless and Hillary’s husband is a rapist? What are you envisaging your placard saying that’s so hostile, so horrible, that you’re certain “a lot of the left today” would walk right past it – the way an ideologically-pure right-winger would walk past you if your sign said anything like this?
the answer would be no
As noted, this calumny is the daydream (and excuse) of fascist wannabes everywhere.
What I don’t get about The Dissatisfieds is how they don’t get what a huge mistake it has been for the President to pursue such a divisive politics at the same time as calling for war. I’m not sure it would have made any difference, but it sure seems to me to underline how little determination the Administration really has.
I was calling for massive ME Transformation 4 years ago, famously “50 million men in the ME for five years and 5 million for fifty years” sio I do not lack sympathy for Steve’s position. Unfortunately I had to face the fact that adequate resources will not be competently allocated…at least not without a 9/11 or larger domestic event. If I still sometimes bring it up, it is because I am certain another 9/11 event will likely happen within the next generation, and I would prefer that transformation remain an alternative to isolationist withdrawal or nuclear holocaust.
I do not at all feel culturally or ideologically threatened by Islam. There is zero chance woman will be forced to wear burquas in Dallas. The military threat of suitcase nukesor whatever is serious, but that is not even an existential threat.
The existential threat comes from the overreaction. As charley asked, I do not know how to rid America of exceptionalism and xenophobia and paranoia.
Aww, I have no answers, and this just goes beyond depressing.
It takes a very, very special kind of person to spend five years calling his political opponents traitorous terrorist appeasers, then turn around and in a single breath accuse them of a lack of both compassion and gratitude. And by “special,” I mean the kind of special that rides a short bus to school.
Since ol’ Steve has been willing to take on the burden of Iraq, once this whole thing plays out, can we try him for war crimes? I think it might teach him a very valuable lesson on a number of fronts.
Also, a ban, please, on euphemisms such as “shaking things up in the Middle East.” Have the balls to call it what is is: Killing people.
Tell that to the families of 9/11, Khobar Towers, the Cole, Beirut Marines, African Embassy staff
i italicized a couple of words there for a reason, ya know. but if you want to misrepresent what i wrote, i guess i can’t stop you.
Question – if you found me dying on the road with a big placard stating my political beliefs, would you help me? I think that with a lot of the left today, the answer would be no.
if that’s really what you think, then i suggest you step away from all political discussion for a while. partisan bickering has poisoned your thinking.
if you found me dying on the road with a big placard stating my political beliefs, would you help me? I think that with a lot of the left today, the answer would be no.
I should take some responsibility, as it is possible for my call to ‘make these people as toxic as possible’ may have been interpreted as not wanting to help OCSteve in the middle of the Santa Monica Freeway. Honestly, I believe I would render aid and assistance to any right winger in distress, but I might hesitate to pound on Dick Cheney’s chest lest the Secret Service think I was attacking him and blow me away.
But when I say make people toxic I mean accept that some people need to be made an example of. Looking at the screenplay of A Few Good Men after Andrew posted about it, this line of Jessup’s struck me
I hate casualties, Matthew. There are casualties even in victory. A marine smothers a grenade and saves his platoon, that marine’s a hero. The foundation of the unit, the fabric of this base, the spirit of the Corps, they are things worth fighting for.Dawson and Downey, they don’t know it, but they’re smothering a grenade.
I feel like using some folks to smother the grenade and give notice that any other grenades will be smothered in a similar manner.
The Redstate comment thread linked to above has Von and Moe arguing about James Webb’s paleo-conservative tendencies, suggesting that he’s got the same thoughts as George Allen, he’s just finessed them better and as a result, the left embraces him, which presumably makes the left the side of hypocrisy. You know what? If James Webb is smart enough to play ball with us and deplane from the Hindenberg before it explodes and George Allen Jr. is not, too bad for ole George. Drag Macaca George around RFK by his heels. Speculate about issues with his father (who apparently had an excellent relationship with the black players he coached) and wonder why a boy raised in LA has such issues with non-white folks. If he’s going to try to stay with the Republican ship of state, he’s going down, and I’m not going to save him while he’s gripping the ship’s wheel, especially when there are others who are swimming like hell to avoid getting pulled down.
I’ve said several times that I am sympathetic to Bob’s analysis and feelings towards the whole mess we are in, though I have expressed doubts. But it is becoming more and more clear, with manipulated terror alerts, accusations of treason, and a refusal to work to solve problems, that this administration has to, to borrow a leninist image, get dumped in the ashcan of history and sooner, not later.
The harsher words above by others, I don’t share, not because I don’t think that conservatives are wrong, wrong, wrong about almost all of this Middle East mess, but that if anyone is going to bother to discuss things (and by discuss, I mean real discussion, laying out premises and ideas), I’m going to assume that there at least exists the possibility of changing their minds. But this administration and its enablers are not discussing anything, so I’m not going to waste any time worrying whether they are being treated unfairly for this statement, or getting misquoted out of context for kerfluffle #1239384. I’ll try and be as accurate as I can, but that’s the limit of it. If that gets interpreted that I’m not going to help you out of burning wreck, too bad, and if you ask if I will, I’ll just tell you to wait and see what happens when you get in that situation, as I’m not going to bother to reassure you that I will do something when the time comes.
I think Anarch had the right response to OCSteve’s question. The left’s rhetoric gives no reason to believe they would not help a dying person due to his beliefs. On the other hand, the Ann Coulters and Michael Savages of the world continue to use rhetoric which not merely would suggest that not only would they not assist a dying liberal, but believe it is their affirmative duty to kill liberals, dying or not.
partisan bickering has poisoned your thinking
With respect, cleek: pot, kettle.
I’m not exactly squeaky-clean on this front, either. It’s best to just cut it out, though. The nonstop snark certainly doesn’t help.
So, suggestion: before you accuse others of having an overly sharp tongue, it’s best to take the edge off your own.
steve, serious question here:
you write:
“It really has come down to a “us or them” scenario for me. Not the masses – but the leaders, the influential imams, etc. So in my mind taking out the leaders, putting in new leaders (friendly to us or only partially so) is a step in the right direction – and much preferable to what I see as the potential outcome here.”
I don’t have that much to quibble with there–I hates me some imams, too, as well as some non-imams like Ahmadinejad.
But how does your concession that it is the leaders, not the masses, go along with the desire to see a lot of nuclear devices unleashed on the ME at large?
I mean–do you know of some new Imam Bomb class of thermonuclear weapons that will kill only imams, not the masses?
Maybe you were thinking you’d try selective assassination first, before radioing the Ohio Class Subs. (We tried that with Saddam. Turns out it’s really hard to kill one guy from far away).
But once you have granted that “the masses” really are not the ones doing the ‘us or them’ thing to us, how can you contemplate killing several hundred million of them, even as a fall-back to selective assassination?
That just looks weird.
It doesn’t really look like a serious attempt to solve the problem, even in the terms in which you have defined it. It just looks like a frustrated, desperate desire to smash the chessboard cause you can’t think of any good moves.
But that’s after you have conceded that smashing the chessboard would kill several hundred million people who are not the problem.
before you accuse others of having an overly sharp tongue, it’s best to take the edge off your own.
with all due respect… huh ?
there’s sharp and bickering, and then there’s accusing tens of millions of being comfortable letting a person die in the middle of the road because of his beliefs.
seems to me there’s a notable difference between the two. accuse me of wanting to raise taxes to crushing levels; or accuse me of wanting to weaken the armed forces; or accuse me of wanting to give hand-outs to undeserving lazy people; accuse me of being unable to recognize ‘evil’; those are all wrong, but they’re wrong only because they’re silly caricatures of actual positions i, and many other liberals, share. but accuse me of being willing to let someone die because of their political beliefs ? that’s far beyond simple partisan bickering; that’s deranged.
Slarti: suggestion: before you accuse others of having an overly sharp tongue, it’s best to take the edge off your own.
Tell that to OCSteve, who just accused virtually everyone to the left of him politically of being the kind of person who walk past him if he were lying injured on the sidewalk. Or did you miss that comment, even though Cleek actually quoted it?
“If you found me dying on the road with a big placard stating my political beliefs, would you help me? I think that with a lot of the Left today, the answer would be no.”
Do you carry medical insurance? May I see your insurance card? Would the placard ask that I means-test you first, before offering help? That could take some time. What if you’re placard got mixed up with Cindy Sheehan’s placard? Should we sort out the confusion first? Do you in any way look Middle Eastern, and why do you keep fiddling with that cellphone? Would you care to hear my views on gun control while we await the ambulance? Stop complaining about activist judges, you’re just making the bleeding worse. Listen, I’ll carry you, but the next time you suggest that the Road to Baghdad (which, if I’m not mistaken, is this one you seem to be dying on) will be nothing more than a Hope and Crosby romp, we will have words. Now let’s get out of here, cause here come 12 million pissed off Shi-ites. No, we can’t bring the stinking placard! Geez, (to no one in particular) how come these conservative guys are always so damned heavy?
“you’re placard”
You don’t mind if a guy with irrepressible apostrophes gives you a blood transfusion, do you?
matt,
It took me a few moments to realize what he was referencing, but I do love that scene (and, really, the whole movie). I’d be more thrilled with Weigel if he didn’t subscribe to the whole ‘blame don’t ask on soldiers’ trope.
OCSteve,
I’m not sure why you wouldn’t include Germany and Japan in that count; I’m reasonably confident we killed more Germans and Japanese than Koreans and Vietnamese, although I certainly could be wrong.
As for the fact there have been no attacks over the past five years, that is a valid data point, but it hardly proves anything. It took eight years between the first and second attacks on the WTC, so a five year hiatus doesn’t necessarily mean our efforts have borne fruit. I suspect that our biggest success has been the initial invasion of Afghanistan and the ongoing efforts to track down and kill AQ higher-ups, as that has forced AQ to worry about survival and taken away some of their ability to plan major events (although the recent plot against the British flights demonstrates they’re not done by any means). Ultimately, you don’t win a war if you’re only playing defense, but you don’t win if you’re not striking at the enemy’s center of gravity, either. Iraq is not the center of gravity in this fight, and therefore our efforts there have drawn resources away from more profitable efforts.
As an aside, I think we could have done a lot more with the initial success in Iraq than we did. Had we gone in with a plan for maintaining order and had we taken advantage of the Iranian offer for talks then, we’d be far better off than we are now. (Even assuming Iraq slipped into civil war under that scenario, if the Bush administration had seized the opportunity to take Iranian nukes off the table that’s still better than our current dilemma.)
What would I do now? That’s probably a post in itself, but off the top of my head:
-support the Cedar Revolution: get money into the hands of contractors who can rebuild Lebanon quickly, make sure the Lebanese government gets the credit for that money, and open talks with Syria and Iran to discuss cutting off support for Hezbollah (we might well fail, of course, but I suspect we have some chits we could offer)
-start real talks with Iran, putting an offer of security assurances on the table. Iran thinks (not without reason) that the U.S. may invade, and that is helping drive the train to create a Persian nuke; give them some guarantees and we might slow that drive down.
-spin up two more Army divisions and bump troop strength in Iraq to improve security with the caveat we will begin drawing down in 2007; set a tentative schedule for withdrawal and push hard to get the Iraqi Army up to speed
Again, that’s just off the top of my head. But I think those (particularly the first two) would be big steps in the right direction.
Hey, OC Steve, I live in Southern California.
I work, break-bread and get stoned with a lot of right-wing assholes.
ESPECIALLY from the OC (Santa Ana, Anaheim and Cyprus to be exact!)
I’d pass YOU a joint, if I thought it would mellow you out.
One thing they all share, though….they are some paranoid tweakers. (With or without help!)
Fantastic – weekend pot party at ObWing! *passes around Alice B. Toklas brownies*
(although the recent plot against the British flights demonstrates they’re not done by any means)
I’m not up to speed on this (largely because I think it is a load of old cobblers), but if there were actual contacts with AQ, then the admin did (and is still doing?) a monstrous thing in forcing the Brits’ hand in this investigation. It’s my belief that this group was completely unconnected to AQ except in their minds (and more importantly, the quite possibly tortured mind of Rashid Rauf) and they never touched base with them. If the people arrested were actually planning on taking action, I take this as evidence of the complete and utter failure of this administration’s policies, in that it encourages those with no connection to AQ to take on their goals. And if they were not, where does that leave us?
In referring to the enemy’s center of gravity, is one to believe that a group of disaffected young Britons of Muslim descent is anything like the center of gravity? They were planning to blow up airliners, not fly them into nuclear reactors, and if each one of them successfully (and suicidally) blew up one airliner each (after carefully performing chemical reactions in the toilet, a place where I have never been able to completely get the toothbrush on my toothpaste and then locating the precise location on the plane to take it down, despite the fact that airliners have landed with ) it would be a tragedy, but it would not be the end of our way of life. To think that this plot, even if it equalled everything that it is claimed to mean, suggests that ‘not being done’ is a distinctly unterrifying thing.
lj,
My point is merely that we cannot assume that AQ is incapable of attempting to strike at us. It was not to suggest that we should all hold each other close and wait for the end. Had this plot been successful, (and I am uncertain of its chances, as you note), the death toll would have been comparable to 9/11. Bad, but hardly fatal (except possibly for an airline or two).
Cleek, I think that there are a lot of people who talk as if they probably wouldn’t piss on someone like OCSteve if he were on fire. It’s a fact. It’s perhaps not a fact that they’d actually choose not to help a wounded or dying person because of that person’s politics, but there’s no shortage of people who speak as if they wish suffering on Republicans.
It’s kind of a counterpoint to accusations of treason. I try to tone this kind of talk down wherever I find it by pointing out the penalty for treason. Usually I get spluttering and at least some walkdown.
Accusations of treason, if you Google around a bit, can be found applied to certain members of SCOTUS in the context of Bush v. Gore, and not by conservatives. So it’s not as if the right has the market on such things completely cornered.
I think it’s important to mean what you say. Me, I have problems with saying what I mean, and have not exactly been a saint in the area of invective in my previous life, so take this for what it’s worth to you. If it’s worth nothing, disregard. Either way, that’s all I have to say about it.
It’s perhaps not a fact that they’d actually choose not to help a wounded or dying person because of
On second thought, perhaps should be likely.
Andrew, as I understand it, some of the men supposedly in on the plot didn’t even have passports yet, and no airline tickets had been bought. Without such hard evidence, it seems unlikely that a British court will accept that they all had genuine intent to carry through the plan.
Some of them might have. But if any of them did, to prove it in a court of law at minimum it would be necessary to wait till they’d bought the airline tickets… but that might not have happened at an electorally convenient moment for the Bush administration. Or at all.
Even if they could have blown up the planes, though – the details of the plot sound more like something dreamed up by a torture victim prepared to say anything than any practical plan of action.
To argue that because someone being hung upside down in Pakistan came up with a terror plot that sounded plausible to his interrogators, this means AQ “isn’t done”… I’d say look at plots that have some real world evidence they were likely to take place. Such as the anthrax attacks in September/October 2001: five people died, but it seems to have been completely forgotten, even though there’s actual real evidence that someone was plotting something, as opposed to the suspicious-looking pile of speculation and accusation with regard to the 10th August arrests.
there’s no shortage of people who speak as if they wish suffering on Republicans
…and no shortage of people wishing suffering on Democrats, liberals, Muslims, the French, southerners, Yankees, Yankee fans, other drivers, neighbors, spouses and coworkers. it’s easy to say ill-considered and intemperate things. but i think most people recognize that it’s pretty rare that the ill-wisher really means it.
OCS’s comment makes me think he believes people mean it when they say ill-considered things about their political rivals. that’s sad.
in any case, that topic is feeling a little beat. maybe it’s best to let it fade away.
I try to tone this kind of talk down wherever I find it by pointing out the penalty for treason.
i try to direct them to a more appropriate place to make that accusation. in other words: i don’t believe they’re really serious, either.
Before the fiasco in Iraq, the theme I heard on the Left/anti-war side was “This war will strengthen our enemies and make things worse, not better.”
The hippies/liberal defeatist knew what was really going on and the right-wing freedom liberators seemed to be smoking something hippies would never touch. (I think it’s called warmongering, very popular among right-wing nationalists).
Anyway, the point is…”conservatives” are going to have get honest about not knowing what the hell they are doing or thinking. To be this wrong about things of such value is just suicidally careless, at best and willfully evil at worse.
Bin Laden knows how to deal with folks like him, and he found a soul mate in Bush.
Killing Iraqis, in masse, for Bin Laden’s actions is no different than Bin Ladden killing thousands of American’s for the Bushs’ dealings.
Slarti: I think that there are a lot of people who talk as if they probably wouldn’t piss on someone like OCSteve if he were on fire. It’s a fact. It’s perhaps not a fact that they’d actually choose not to help a wounded or dying person because of that person’s politics, but there’s no shortage of people who speak as if they wish suffering on Republicans.
The only person in this thread (I just went back and re-read every comment before OCSteve made his) who sounded as if he wished suffering on Republicans was Judson, and Judson got told off for profanity and incivility by Hilzoy and hasn’t come back.
OCSteve’s comment was hostile, bitter, nasty, and out of the blue accusation in an otherwise civilised discussion. Not that I’m trying to pretend I’ve never done that… I’m not: guilty, guilty, guilty, your honor, etc. But you seem to be trying to say it didn’t matter because someone on the left may have been mean to OCSteve somewhere else sometime so OCSteve was justified in saying that people who were trying to engage him on a civilised and intellectual level would walk past him while he was lying injured in the road. If I’d come up with that excuse for any one of the times I’ve been uncivil here (“Hey! It’s okay for me to be rude to Charles Bird because someone on Family Scholars Blog just made it clear for the nth time that they see me as subhuman scum!”) would you have accepted that as a valid excuse? It’s happened often enough on other blogs than this that right-wingers have made clear to me that they wish I would die or get raped: do you think that justifies me being rude to right-wingers here, who have never expressed any such wish?
John Thullen’s response to OCSteve was the best, but then, we have high expectations of John. 😉
Jes,
I noted that I’m uncertain of how likely the British plot was to succeed, and it may well have been a whole lot of nothing, although I’d hope that the British authorities had some real reason for making the arrests. In any case, please substitute ‘suggests’ for ‘demonstrates’ in the paragraph at issue. I don’t think it is an overly controversial position to suggest that there are still people out there who would launch terrorist attacks against the U.S. if they could.
lj,
I missed the note about the center of gravity. I do not believe that any one group of terrorists (or near-terrorists, or terrorist wanna-bes) constitutes the center of gravity of our enemy. Taking them out is akin to defeating a particular attack in battle; it is a success, but it will not lead to victory.
Andrew: In any case, please substitute ‘suggests’ for ‘demonstrates’ in the paragraph at issue. I don’t think it is an overly controversial position to suggest that there are still people out there who would launch terrorist attacks against the U.S. if they could.
Fair enough.
and it may well have been a whole lot of nothing, although I’d hope that the British authorities had some real reason for making the arrests
Well, me too. But I don’t believe that the relevant British authorities are sufficiently stubborn to stand up to the US: stubbornness to US pressure has come at court level, where judges have resisted the idea that they’re supposed to turn over “terrorist suspects” to American custody when the US cannot provide any evidence that the person accused is guilty of anything.
But looking at what the people being charged are being charged with, and given that (it appears) the majority are to be released without charge, it does look like – if they were a real terrorist group – the arrests were premature, to say the least. (If they were not a real terrorist group, the arrests were both outrageous and outrageously stupid.)
And it has been confirmed with reasonable surety that the timing of the arrests was purely to benefit “the US” – which does look like a straightforward electoral/political piece of timing, nothing more.
There are eight people who have actually been charged with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism: we’ll see when their cases come to court what evidence there is, I suppose. If they were planning to blow up planes in an act of terrorism, I wish to hell that the US had let the British authorities wait till they’d bought the plane tickets: that way we’d stand a chance of seeing them convicted.
Note that a third rebuttal piece has appeared on the front page of Redstate (or as I prefer to call it, Bizarro World), is it the new HOCB?
If so, one without the flair and panache of the original, I think.
Yeah, that’s how it is when your girlfriend’s watching isn’t it? “Hold me back, fellas! Grr… Hold me back or I’ll beat the pants off those dirty Islamofascists! Snarrrl… Hold me back I say, or I’m afraid I might do something terrible! Hisss…”
Jeez, between OCSteve and bob mcm I suddenly feel like listening to The Final Cut. Not a great album by Pink Floyd
Posted by: radish | August 24, 2006 at 08:51 PM
Now that was classic.
However, what is scary, is when this same guy’s friend places a gun into his hand and starts egging him on.
“You gonna let him make you look like a wimp?! You better show him whose boss!”
Little boys with weapons and small egos are a noxious brew. This has been our foreign policy under Bush.
Jes,
I don’t think that OCSteve was out of the blue. I don’t believe that, given the ferocity of the debate and the anger that I myself feel at times can angry words about these sorts of things ever be ‘out of the blue’.
My own feeling (which will probably come off like smugness) is that OCSteve realized that things are going very poorly, which is the first 1st step on our 12 step program. Relieving one of a sense of fear and foreboding is probably step 5 or so and to help that along, here’s my take.
A while ago, the US conducted wargames against an opponent using an asymmetrical approach. The general for the B side kicked butt and took names. He used iirc, swarms of small suicide boats to attack tankers in the Hormuz straits, used motorcycle messengers to avoid superior US signals intelligence. Took horrible losses, but because the A side was unable to resort to mass killings to defeat the side, they were on their way to winning when the refs called the game (I can’t remember if they ordered the B side to stop using certain tactics or if they just called the game a draw and left it at that) This has often been invoked for the fact that a determined opponent using asymmetrical warfare has a huge advantage over us. But to me, what it points out is that the only way we are going to get into such an asymmetrical situation is if we do something as stupid as invade Iran. I believe that the military minds that are involved with this understand this, which is why Hersh is talking about how the military has only offered up a nuclear option on Iran, though Hersh’s point is that the administration may be stupid enough to take it.
The fact is that this kind of asymmetrical warfare is only going to raise its head if we threaten some country, be it Iran or North Korea, with the kind of stark choices it is claimed that they are offering us, because it requires a whole lot of people with training and committment to take steps. It is not going to come out from a latter day SLA movement making bombs with a fun with chemistry outfit. As you noted, though the death toll (if all 11 had gone on to suicidal glory, though Jes now notes that there are 8 on the serious charges, so the number keeps getting smaller and smaller) might approach 9/11, the only larger things that would have died would be a few airlines and perhaps the tourist industry. Perhaps this is enough to tip us into a global recession, but if it is, then it isn’t the superior planning of the bargain basement jihadist, it is the fragility of the current state of global economics. And I’m far more frightened of that (or of a bird flu like pandemic) than of AQ or Hizbollah. The only centers of gravity in this ‘war’ are the leader figureheads and if you can kill/capture them, or make them less appealing, you’ve taken on that center of gravity. That this administration has not done either tells us a lot. (Peter Bergen, talking about Bin Ladin, noted that at the battle of Tora Bora, there were probably more journalists than US soldiers) It is not overly controversial to suggest that there are still people who want to launch a terrorist attack on the US. But so what? Googling for some info on plane crashes (I was trying to find some info about jetliners that suffered incredible damage, but were able to land safely, like the Hawaiian Air which had its roof peel back), I learned that the first act of blowing up an airliner happened in…1933. My point is that if you look at the British terrorist ‘plot’ (and I’m not absolutely sure that evidence wasn’t planted, unless they were absolute idiots, I mean, what group makes their bombs and then starts thinking about passports?), it should induce no more fear than people who are stupid drivers. To put this very sharply, to use it as a reason to undermine our basic civil liberties either means that you haven’t thought this thru, or you weren’t that attached to those civil liberties to begin with. With someone who might think that people who are accused of a crime are, a la Ed Meese, more likely than not guilty of it, the discussion has to go on some basic principles, but when it is someone who argues from libertarian starting points, I think it is a different matter.
(this may be a bit too harsh, if it comes across that way, apologies and insert random Thullenisms to bring it to an appropriately lower temp)
“A while ago, the US conducted wargames against an opponent using an asymmetrical approach. The general for the B side kicked butt and took names.”
This story is told in Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”. The general was Paul van Riper.
wow–a reference to the SLA. Man, that’s making me think you might be as old as *I* am.
LJ: I don’t think that OCSteve was out of the blue. I don’t believe that, given the ferocity of the debate and the anger that I myself feel at times can angry words about these sorts of things ever be ‘out of the blue’.
You may be smug, but you’re probably right, which is always an adequate excuse for smugness. 😉
if all 11 had gone on to suicidal glory, though Jes now notes that there are 8 on the serious charges, so the number keeps getting smaller and smaller
Well: at the moment, I make the figures: 5 released without charge. 3 held on less serious charges. 8 charged with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism. And that seems to leave 7 people still being held without charge under the “28 day rule”, who will have to be either charged or released by 7th September. I get the impression that the main reason the other 7 haven’t been charged or released is that there’s nothing to charge them with but they look “suspicious” enough that the authorities don’t want to release them. Which happened before with people who looked suspiciously Irish, and has happened since with people who look suspiciously Arab. But I don’t know.
and I’m not absolutely sure that evidence wasn’t planted, unless they were absolute idiots, I mean, what group makes their bombs and then starts thinking about passports?
Exactly. I pointed this out to one person who said “Maybe they were planning on getting forged passports?” but given that every one of them would have been entitled to get a genuine passport, and that this would have been relatively fast and much cheaper than a forged one, I can’t see why – if they were seriously planning anything any time in the next two months – they hadn’t got passports already.
So does DWI have a different connotation in Britain–Driving While Irish? 😉
Thanks kb, I could not pull out enough of a referent to remember where I had read it. Here’s a news article from the Army Times about what I was talking about and here is the Guardian, and here is Joe Galloway’s column which touches on the topic of the post.
Gladwell’s argument, I believe, was that Riper was less encumbered with information so he therefore won is a bit misleading. Riper won because for the purposes of the game, he possessed a highly trained military force that was able to carry out asymmetrical warfare. Yet the only way that we are going to get attacked by a highly trained military force is if we find such a force and pick a fight with it.
About the SLA, I was early teens when it happened, but I found out a lot more about it when I read One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race by Scott L. Malcomson as he uses Oakland and the story of the SLA as material to discuss the problems of race in America. Enjoyable book.
Boy, RedState is really something. Skimming over the comments thread there, I see:
One guy who thinks we should fight the GWOT for as long as it takes, like the Cold War, which took 50 years — and the context is clearly about the hot wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m glad he’ll be paying the $20 trillion tab.
One goofball who wants to fulminate against Clinton One Moore Tiime
Speaking of Moore, there’s the guy who calls the Sunni terrorists “Michael Moore’s Minutemen.” Because obviously, Michael Moore is all about fundamentalist Islam and blowing up small children.
Several people who think the war is going just right, and the only problem is the librul media and the failure of our Noble President to put together a really top-notch PR campaign for the war.
Oh, and the one liberal who posted (though I’ll admit he was rude and called someone “chickenhawk”) was immediately banned from the site. So the rest of them don’t have to suffer from the cognitive dissonance of an opposing viewpoint.
I thought about posting this there, but it turns out I’m “not authorized to post comments,” apparently there’s a membership requirement, and I don’t have the copingness right now.
Man, every time I think liberal blogs are over the top, all I have to do is wander by one of the “fair and balanced” sites and I am immediately reminded of how bad it can get.
Charles, why DO you hang out with these people?
“Michael Moore’s Minutemen.” Because obviously, Michael Moore is all about fundamentalist Islam and blowing up small children.
IIRC, Moore did say something like “the Iraqi insurgents are like our Minutemen. they’re just fighting to gain control of their own country”. while he has somewhat of a point (they are trying to get control of their country), it was a pretty sketchy thing to say.
Sorry all…I mostly peruse wilder, no hold barred sites.
Ah. Thanks, cleek, I missed that gaffe.
But now that I look up the date & context of that quote, it was two years ago, and the problem then was direct insurgency against American troops, NOT the terrorist-tactics civil war happening now. Different mission, and quite possibly different people doing it. It is not clear that the same people now blowing up their fellow Iraqis were holed up in Fallujah then trying to kill American occupiers. There must be some overlap, but I don’t really know how much, and neither does that dude at Red State.
Here’s a rogue elephant.
Sorry Charles, because I really do believe you are sincere.
But there’s is no way Americans are going to give you and yours a mulligan on Iraq. And why should they? Put yourself in their place, would you?
After nearly four years of tragic ineptitude in Iraq most Americans have reached several conclusions.
1. It’s a mess.
2. There is no reason to believe that those who made the mess have the ability to clean it up now.
3. The partisans who spent the last four years cheering about making the mess and insiduously derriding anyone who dared to point out the mess need to close their mouths and quietly step aside.
Need more troops in Iraq? Duh! It’s not like lots of people didn’t try to warn you. But requiring more troops would have effectively ruled out going to war in the first place because they simply don’t exist. Not now or then.
And since ensuring that we did go to war, regardless, was the number one priority of this administration and it’s supporters it’s obvious that they were either woefully incompetent, or that they felt going to war was more important than actually winning the war.
You’ve had your time, and the results have been judged as horrific.
Have a little self respect, and quietly proceed to the exits of public discourse on this issue.
OCSteve: “Question – if you found me dying on the road with a big placard stating my political beliefs, would you help me? I think that with a lot of the left today, the answer would be no.”
I don’t agree. Any specific names of people you think wouldn’t help you? Me? Josh Marshall? Kevin Drum? Matt Yglesias? I’ll concede Deb Frisch in advance, but I don’t think “most of the left” is like her.
“It is certainly interesting how utterly un-terrified the left is these days. Do you take this seriously at all?”
Yes. Moreover, I think most of us on the left do. Speaking just for myself, though, it’s one of the reasons I’m against Bush: I think that a lot of what he has tried to do about it has been completely counterproductive, and even the good things (Afghanistan) were left half-finished. It’s precisely because I really do take this seriously that having an idiot in office right now terrifies me.
(Just being my usual joyous self, ha ha ha)
hilzoy: I’ll concede Deb Frisch in advance, but I don’t think “most of the left” is like her.
Heh. I still remember the shock I felt when I realized that Deb Frisch, lunatic extraordinaire, used to be Deb Frisch, demented Crooked Timber (and CalPundit, iirc) commenter #473. It was sort of like waking up from a slightly wacky dream to find it was a wretched form of reality.
Andrew: -spin up two more Army divisions and bump troop strength in Iraq to improve security with the caveat we will begin drawing down in 2007; set a tentative schedule for withdrawal and push hard to get the Iraqi Army up to speed.
If you don’t mind me asking: how?
What’s the primary goal of terrorism again???
It would appear that, if not for the left Osama would have already won.
Terrorism is a threat. A threat that has to be managed. Terrorism is not a threat to US sovereignty. Yet many on the right manage to delude themselves into believing it is.
liberal japonicus,
You are one of the smoothest talker/comenters on the net.
To be clear: I do not believe that terrorism is a threat to US sovereignty. I do not think the terrorists can come close to bringing this country down. At the moment, only we can do that.
I do think they are very much worth fighting for a number of reasons. But we have to fight them intelligently, which we have really not been doing. And we also have to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons, and here Bush’s record, on loose nukes in Russia, North Korea, etc., is just appalling. I mean, it’s Manchurian candidate bad.
But there’s is no way Americans are going to give you and yours a mulligan on Iraq.
Please tell me where I asked for one, davebo. I don’t share your pessimism about Iraq, or that it’s all one big fat unsolvable mess, hence my being a Dissatisfied.
Have a little self respect, and quietly proceed to the exits of public discourse on this issue.
Since this is a site whose mission is to encourage dialogue and exchanges of views, I refuse your recommendation that I shut up and go away, but it’s mighty dictatorial of you to request.
Terrorism is not a threat to US sovereignty. Yet many on the right manage to delude themselves into believing it is.
and at the same time, many of those same people insist that they are the only ones qualified to protect us against the threat. quite a nice little racket they’ve got there.
Anarch,
Would you believe that the details are in my super-secret post-election folder, that will only be opened if I’m elected President in 2008? No? OK, just checking.
Spinning up two new divisions would require:
– Congressional approval to increase the size of the active force
– Increased incentives to get the necessary bodies
– Roughly 12-24 months of training
– Money
Getting the Iraqi Army up to speed is already in the works, but we could aid the process by spending the money to get them the right equipment.
Would this work? I don’t know, because ultimately I can’t be sure if training the Iraqi Army is helping Iraqi security, or just putting more trained killers into the civil war. But it’s the best way I can think of offhand to start the process of getting us out.
Anarch: I suspect those two divisions will come from the Magical Military Manpower tree.
Seriously, we obviously don’t have two divisions or they’d be deployed. I suppose we could, if we were absolutely totally serious about being out by 2007, screw the troop rotation and send EVERYONE there for the next year, but we’d have no choice but to withdraw after that — since there’d be no troops to relieve the ones stationed overseass.
It’d probably also finish breaking the Army.
People — and I’m surprised to see Andrew being one of them — really aren’t grasping the nature of “We’re out of troops”. The Marines didn’t just active 2500 IRR for giggles, and the Army hasn’t been enlisting scores of kids it would have turned it’s nose up at a year ago for fun.
The supposed Iran invasion as a perfect example — invade with WHO? Unless we’re moving all the troops out of Iraq into Iran via invasion, there’s no body but the Air Force available.
Ah! Andrew explained. So, we could get two divisions in two years, if we had the recruits.
But the Army can’t meet it’s slashed recruiting quotas now, and they’ve gotten VERY generous about their offers and reduced their standards significantly. So exactly what “incentives” do you have in mind to convince two divisions worth of people to enlist in the middle of a way the bulk of Americans are now against?
Because unless it’s a “Serve for four years and we waive the rest of your prison sentence” sort of incentive, you’re just indulging in a different sort of pipe dream than the “Will to Victory” types.
How can it possibly be dictatorial for someone to ask someone else to do anything?
Well in your post at Red State of course. Unless of course you’ve been arguing for 3 plus years now to replace Rumsfeld, increase the size of the US military, etc.
If indeed you have been suggesting this since 2003 I apologize. In such a case you would be consistant with this post.
Otherwise, it’s just “shake up the middle east Ver. 2.0”.
I am disappointed by conservatives here and everywhere. This recantation shouldn’t just be a recantation of the tactics of the reconstruction. That, after all, isn’t a recantation of belligerence. What I would like to see (in addition to an apology) is a recantation of the strategy — we simply have no idea how to invade nations and democratize them. Nobody does. More troops would help. More troops would help with law and order. But the idea that it would help solve the political problems of Iraq is just the same old bullying thinking.
OCSteve:
I’ll take the blame for supporting freeing millions of people and attempting to plant the seeds of democracy in the ME.
Your problem is continuing to think that this goal can only be accomplished by even larger wars of aggression — the only recipe is war, but just make sure you add enough troops to get it to cook right. That’s a pretty poor lesson to take from this mess.
____________
Hilzoy:
I am even more interested in seeing them understand the connection between their actions and those actions’ consequences. For instance, it will be interesting to see which conservatives apply any lessons from Iraq to the case of Iran.
If the recently released House report on the Iran threat is any clue, they have given up on secretly manipulating intelligence to justify war. They are now just doing it out in the open without bothering with the intelligence agencies.
Nothing like learning your lessons on how to most effectively peddle baloney.
OCSteve: how could the alternative be worse?
That is not a strong enough point, you realize. You need to argue that it would be worse, not just that it could.
liberal japonicus,
You are one of the smoothest talker/comenters on the net.
Yeah…kinda makes you want to keep an eye on your wallet 😉
One thing that the people who’ve found themselves drastically wrong on what would happen should do is ask themselves what it is in them that was there to be exploited by (it turns out) con men and hucksters. I’ve been doing this myself in recent years, and learned a few useful things along the way. And while it’s painful to realize, if I keep looking to people who promise me what I want, and it keeps going badly, maybe I need to accept that I can’t get what I want. We should hold our wishes on shorter leashes than we may wish – and particularly so when it’s other people’s lives at stake. We should, for starters, no more gamble with others’ lives for the sake of grand programs than we are willing…not just to gamble with our own, but to be used as pawsn in others’ plans. That’s the acid test: how much are you willing to die or watch your loved ones die for the sake of a stranger’s vision of renewal in your own home? That’s about how much death you’re entitled to inflict on others for the sake of your vision.
That’s two points rolled together. Insert a paragraph break where it’s suitable.
Yeah…kinda makes you want to keep an eye on your wallet 😉
With great smooth talking comes great responsibility.
With great smooth talking comes great responsibility.
But smoothly.
Andrew: pretty much what Morat20 said in his second post, i.e. where exactly are these people going to come from? I have some answers myself but since they’re all pretty much equivalent to the draft — which I note you pretty clearly excluding, and I don’t blame you — I’m curious as to where this manpower’s going to emerge from.
How can it possibly be dictatorial for someone to ask someone else to do anything?
It’s a trait that I’ve seen at both ends of the spectrum, davebo. Instead of engaging, you seek to shut ’em down.
As for mulligans, are you sure you know what the term means? I’m not asking for a do-over, as if the initial stroke didn’t even exist.
As for mulligans, are you sure you know what the term means?
I thought it meant precisely a do-over, that you get 1 mulligan on the first hole, and if you really screw up your tee shot, you get to do it again without penalty. Checking wikipedia, it notes it means “any minor blunder which is allowed to pass unnoticed or without consequence.” I think it is the ‘without consequence’ that gets people perturbed.
Or perhaps it is the notion that this was a ‘minor blunder’.
Charles, you really honestly don’t seem to get that the problem isn’t Rumsfeld. George W. Bush is the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The Secretary of Defense serves at his pleasure, and executes his policy. It doesn’t matter who’s behind the desk at Defense. As long as he (or she) is executing Bush’s policy, you’re going to get precisely the same result. No more, no less. What makes you imagine it could possibly be any different?
I really think there is such a split within conservativism that conservatives should declare upfront which kind they are. I think that there is such a divide between the old pessimistic conservatives, who wanted to build political institutions that were as resistant as possible to abuse and corruption, and these new Candide conservatives, who believe the free-market and open elections are the natural state of man, to which we would all return by some law of nature, if the shackles of bad government were broken. These conservatives are as much utopians as the Marxists they despise.
I love “Candide conservatives”.
Though Candide kept getting abused in a variety of ways, and never really wised up. While this may be applicable (and watching Chas get beat up at Redstate, with people demanding that the ‘Dissatisfieds’ itemize their list of complaints and defend each and every one of them) somehow, I don’t think that these conservatives have really experienced a level of abuse that Candide did.
I like “Candide conservative” a lot.
I like “Candide conservative” a lot.
OMFG, Candide conservatives. That is brilliant beyond belief, and I’m pleased to be present at the birth of a new meme.
I do think they are very much worth fighting for a number of reasons. But we have to fight them intelligently, which we have really not been doing. And we also have to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons, and here Bush’s record, on loose nukes in Russia, North Korea, etc., is just appalling. I mean, it’s Manchurian candidate bad.
But liberals are lobbying against these efforts:
– Electronic intelligence
– Human intelligence
– Cooperation of international financial institutions
– Diplomacy
– Efforts to present the US side positively in the media
– Efforts to debunk anti-American propoganda
– Military options
Honestly, hilzoy, do you think that universities are teaching students to be ambassadors for America or are they teaching that Howard Zinn take on history? Are Middle Eastern studies departments producing problem solvers for our country or are they teaching that the US is imperialistic and evil? Are universities against ROTC so much that a students considering a military career will be marginalized? I think that universities and colleges clearly discriminate against patriotic teachers and students, so of course the fight will be waged less intelligently.
A lot of targets there, DaveC, so I’ll just take a shot at one
Are Middle Eastern studies departments producing problem solvers for our country or are they teaching that the US is imperialistic and evil?
What makes you think that this administration has ever turned to ME departments for problem solvers? Case in point
one U.S. Army colonel, a veteran of Middle East work, fluent in Arabic, was interviewed by Feith for a possible job. During the session, Feith looked down at his résumé, “I see you speak Arabic,” Feith said. When the colonel nodded, Feith snapped, “too bad” and dismissed him. To make matters worse, the Feithians appointed their unskilled friends and relatives—Michael Fleischer (brother of Ari) and Simone Ledeen (daughter of Michael)—to prominent positions in the Coalition Provisional Authority. After a few months of sightseeing and war profiteering, such folks have mostly come home—not Effective.
But liberals are lobbying against these efforts
That is such a sweeping statement that it doesn’t really deserve an answer at all. To say that “liberals” are lobbying against anything, as if “liberals” were a unified political group like the Republican Party is against ObWing posting rules, and you know this perfectly well, DaveC.
It would be possible to take each item that you claim “liberals” are “lobbying against”, and debunk it, as lj debunked your claim about Middle Eastern studies departments, but not worth it (and would create a pile-on): you’re making the same kind of error as OCSteve did when he claimed that people from “the left” would walk past him if he were lying injured on the street clutching a large placard that outlined his political beliefs.
What other societies claim that the universities and academia are enemies of the state/right-wing leadership?
Not a good sign, DaveC.
SomeOtherDude: ESPECIALLY from the OC (Santa Ana, Anaheim and Cyprus to be exact!)
As a one-time (actually two or three time) resident of Orange County – which no one ever called “the OC” back in the day – I was flummoxed by this.
Then it dawned on me. Cyprus = Cypress.
(Yes, I realize this is pretty much OT, but I don’t think my comments on what I think of the main theme of this thread would spread much peace, joy, or enlightenment today.)
“Candide conservatives.” Should that just be shortened to neocancon.
DaveC, glad you’re back. Is the yard mowed?
Anyway, it has appeared to me that the list that you ar mentioning is exactly what the Democrats have been calling for, as well as increased port security, border security, etc. They just are asking that they be done in a Constitutional and legal manner.
Just about everything on yourlist were specified by Kerry during his campaign as things he would promote. And yes, that included military options. The difference is that he proposed that they be used in a way that would actually produce results and be effective, something this administration has no awareness of.
hi daveC–
you know, I realize that you like to stake out the rightward corner of the debate here, but I don’t usually think of you getting your facts just dead wrong.
you write:
“But liberals are lobbying against these efforts:
– Electronic intelligence…”
That’s just so far from an accurate depiction of the facts, that I wonder where you even misheard it. No I don’t; it’s what Fox News is peddling.
But I had thought that anyone as astute as you have generally been, no matter what their political orientation, was aware that “liberals” are lobbying against *the violation of federal laws* in the conduct of electronic intelligence, when the same intelligence could be collected equally effectively, equally expeditiously, in accordance with federal laws.
By all means, we should be doing SigInt– that’s what the NSA is for. I’m not opposed to that in the slightest. And we should also be tapping phones, and tracing calls, and all that stuff. Sure; I’m cool with all that stuff.
Are “liberals” lobbying against eavesdropping on terrorists? Maybe a few outlier leftists; no liberals you’ll meet on this board.
Are “liberals” insisting that this eavesdropping be conducted in accordance with federal law?
Yeah. That’s like, the whole point of the fuss over FISA. The Government already has all the powers it need for effective electronic surveillance–the laws are in place to make it easy, even to grant retroactive warrants so there is no worry about immediate action.
The Bush regime has systematically violated those laws. There is no legitimate rationale based on a concern about terrorism that can justify those violations. The only reason to violate those laws is to avoid accountability (and possibly to pursue a monarchist ideology of executive ascendancy).
That’s the whole issue, and I just find it hard to believe that you have been so badly misled on the substance of it that you think “liberals” are lobbying against electronic intelligence.
Not lobbying against the collection of intel. Lobbying against doing it contrary to law.
Anyhow, good to see you around again.
Hey, Dave, welcome back! How’s the lawn?
Maybe pushing the mower around has tired you out a bit, but your laundry-list of “efforts liberals have been lobbying against” in your 1:42 comment is just so plain wrong on so many levels it would require a proper Fisking; but I’ll just take on a couple of egregious bad examples:
– Cooperation of international financial institutions
Any cites for this assertion? IIRC, “Follow the money” is usually covered in the first class in Investigation 101: in fact, shutdowns of terrorist-financing banking networks over the past few yearshave been one of the main early successes in the “War on Terror”, and their disruption has, from all reports, severely crimped the ability of groups like Al-Qaeda to fundraise and finance their evil. That terrorists often use non-monitored or non-traditional means of money transfer is a problem, of course, but to claim that “liberals” have been “lobbying against” international efforts at cooperation is pretty off-the wall.
– Diplomacy
If you mean by this that liberals, in general, have been “lobbying against the Bush Adminstration’s arrogant, ham-fisted, self-righteous, blinkered and simplistic views towards foreign policy and their PR-obsessed attempts to foist these attitudes on the rest of the world” – well, why didn’t you just say so? Most of the “liberal” opinion on current FA that I have read is prone to castigate the direction and execution of US foreign policy – and the Adminstration for not relying on it enough; most assuredly NOT the idea of “diplomacy” itself.
Also: please be reminded, criticism of misuses or abuses in government programs is not always a blast at the programs themselves: still less, as you seem to claim, at the ideas behind them. And critiques of the present Maladminstration’s policy have not come entirely from the straw “liberals” as you say.
I’ll repeat, in short form, what I said on TIO: Rumsfeld’s not the problem, Cheney is.
Charles, you really honestly don’t seem to get that the problem isn’t Rumsfeld. George W. Bush is the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
Phil, Bush has 2½ years left on his contract and there’s nothing that can be done to change that. The Defense Secretary position can change right now. BTW, I thought for sure you would write something like, “Gee, and all this while I thought the Dissatisfieds were those folks who haven’t had enough good sex.”
But liberals are lobbying against these efforts:
– Human intelligence
Considering the Bush Administration’s destruction of Brewster Jennings–a company which it would seem would be VERY useful to have around now, considering the thrust towards confrontation with Iran and public admissions that our intelligence on Iran is terrible– for petty revenge, the discharge of Arabic speakers owing to their sexual orientation, when we have a desperate shortage of skilled translators of that language, not to mention other things, your comment looks more like projection than a valid criticism.
BTW, I thought for sure you would write something like, “Gee, and all this while I thought the Dissatisfieds were those folks who haven’t had enough good sex.”
Given that there are so few Dissatisfieds over at Redstate, I don’t see how this can be the case. ;^)
The good thing about having DaveC post is that it tickles all these memories. To give some links to JakeB’s points, you have Brewster Jennings, or gay Arabic linguists. The case of Sibel Edmonds or James Yee or Ahmed al Halabi. It’s a trip down memory lane.
Then it dawned on me. Cyprus = Cypress.
(Yes, I realize this is pretty much OT, but I don’t think my comments on what I think of the main theme of this thread would spread much peace, joy, or enlightenment today.)
Posted by: dr ngo |
Noted.
I blame the bread.
lj–
Thanks. (Although my mother would smack me upside the head if she saw someone indulge my laziness like this.)
john miller: Maybe ‘neocan’?
Or more appropriately, based upon the past few years, “neocan’t”.
Phil, Bush has 2½ years left on his contract and there’s nothing that can be done to change that.
Well, um, yes there is. I’ll give you a hint: It starts with an “i,” and we usually dole them out to punish people for oral sex.
The Defense Secretary position can change right now.
But why would it? What makes you think that Bush is getting something other than what he wants from the current SecDef? What makes you believe that the policies being pursued at DoD are something other than the policies desired by Bush?
As I’ve said previously, the White House has been anything but shy about dumping people who don’t do what the President wants. That they have not dumped this SecDef indicates to me that he’s, well, doing what they want.
BTW, I thought for sure you would write something like, “Gee, and all this while I thought the Dissatisfieds were those folks who haven’t had enough good sex.”
1) That isn’t even close to a joke I would make. (To the extent it even qualifies as a joke, which . . . not so much. Jokes tend to be funny.)
2) You aren’t very good at mindreading. No wonder it’s a sore spot for you.
Shorter me re: getting the SecDef fired: It doesn’t matter how dissatisfied you are; if you oppose Bush’s conduct of the war, he isn’t interested in listening to you.
So in my mind taking out the leaders, putting in new leaders (friendly to us or only partially so) is a step in the right direction – and much preferable to what I see as the potential outcome here.
OCSteve,
They are leaders for a reason. In what way do you think you can dictate to Muslims who their leaders are going to be. Hell, that’s how we got into this situation in the first place.
Also: please be reminded, criticism of misuses or abuses in government programs is not always a blast at the programs themselves: still less, as you seem to claim, at the ideas behind them. And critiques of the present Maladminstration’s policy have not come entirely from the straw “liberals” as you say.
True, and whoever runs the next administration and the next after that, and so on, is going to have to make decisions that not everybody will like. I certainly do not want to give up on the long term project of freer and more open societies in the Middle East. It is a hard project, but I don’t see any other strategy is more likely to address the “root causes” of terrorism. Why I addressed hilzoy, was that I know that she generally wants the same end result that I do. Now, criticism is certainly not unwarranted and can be instructive. But I think that the US has to press on fighting for freedom, naive and utopian as that may be.
But I think that the US has to press on fighting for freedom, naive and utopian as that may be.
Define “fighting”.
DaveC: I certainly do not want to give up on the long term project of freer and more open societies in the Middle East.
That’s nice, but the US has never been into freer and more open societies in the Middle East: consistently, both Republican and Democratic administrations have supported dictators over democracy, not merely in the Middle East, but anywhere a dictator would support US policy while a democracy would support its own interests. So, if that’s genuinely what you want, Dave, you are an unAmerican commie liberal pinko fighting evil American imperialism… join the club! You get a button and a t-shirt and a secret decoder ring. 😉
Further, you don’t appear to support a freer and more open society in the US, even, given your list of things that “liberals” are against but that presumably you support: including, I note, warrantless surveillance of anyone the government feels like eavesdropping on, which is really not the mark of a “freer and more open society”.
Define “fighting”.
I listed some of the “fighting” tactics:
– Electronic intelligence
– Human intelligence
– Dry up terrorist finances
– Diplomacy
within the UN of course, but of course also we have to be the “strong horse” and get cooperation in not-so-public ways. Sometimes diplomacy means making threats, and unfortunately then we have to make good on those threats. I probably think of diplomacy differently than most people at ObWi.
– Present the US side positively in the media
– Debunk anti-American propoganda
– Military options
Generally speaking, Punish our enemies and reward our friends.
Hmm, Jes reminded me that the liberals in Britain sent their troops to Iraq, not that I’d make her Secretary of Defense or anything like that.
but the US has never been into freer and more open societies in the Middle East: consistently, both Republican and Democratic administrations have supported dictators over democracy,
until the advent of the Candide conservatives, and excepting Eastern Europe, Korea(s), Taiwan, Cuba, etc.
Wow, taking Candide conservatives as a label of praise rather than of derision. That’s some serious reframing.
DaveC: Jes reminded me that the liberals in Britain sent their troops to Iraq, not that I’d make her Secretary of Defense or anything like that.
Actually, no. This is what “liberals in Britain” did. The British troops sent to Iraq were sent despite one of the largest backbench rebellions on record and possibly the largest ever mass protest in the UK: had the Opposition party been in any way effective or able to take advantage of this pro-US policy, Labour would unquestionably have lost the next election. (The Conservatives had a problem, though, being more pro-US than Labour: it very nearly happened that Blair only won the House of Commons vote on the Iraq war with the Conservative vote, so many MPs of his own party voted against him.)
Mind you, the most right-wing party to hold power in the UK are the Conservatives, who are roughly on the same place on the political spectrum as the Democratic party: no party as right-wing as the Republicans holds any significant power in the UK. So, given your definition of “liberal” as “anyone to the leftward of Bush”, you may have a point. 😉
I don’t think that insisting that our government obey its own laws constitutes interference with the use of electronic intelligence. Bush is out of line when he innsists that hhe has the kinnd of powers one associattes with dictatorships.
I think perhaps Ol’ Lyin’ Dave should read today’s Greenwald.
“Generally speaking, Punish our enemies and reward our friends.”
Yes, but what happened to Candide amongst the Bulgars? And, please tell us a how a magnificent auto-da-fe was staged to prevent further earthquakes, and how Candide was flogged. I await the adventures of two travelers with two girls and two monkeys, and what happened to them amongst the savage Oreillons.
I must retreat to my garden where I will plant the rotting, syphilitic nose of Pangloss and await the blooming of a thousand pustules of freedom …. among my friends, whom I may need to kill later if the infection doesn’t take root.
Speaking of syphilis, wasn’t Camus’ “The Myth of Syphilis” (sic) on someone’s reading list this summer. Or was it Sartre’s “No Exit”?
until the advent of the Candide conservatives
*giggle*
…who support dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan: who actively oppose democracy in Iran, Lebanon, and the Occupied Territories.
No, Dave. If you’re for democracy in the Middle East (or anywhere else) you are necessarily opposed to the Bush administration’s habit of supporting unelected dictators when they support US policy and opposing democratic government when the people in question elected a government opposed to US policy.
If you’re for a freer and more open society as a matter of principle, you are opposed to the Bush administration’s current actions in the US.
If, on the other hand, you just want to support the Bush administration and believe that the US should rule the world, then don’t spout hogwash about being in favor of “free and open societies” and “democracy”, when patently, you’re not.
Everyone should really click Phil’s link….
Even though Phil’s description of Dave is a little harsh. The description of how they got the confession (in the second link) really sucks.
Sorry, that’s the second link in Greenwald’s post. If you have a greenwald allergy, here are the raw links
here and here Note also that the second article’s title is ambiguous, but ‘might have saved’ means ‘could have but didn’t’ rather than ‘might have been the person who’.
Bob: I was calling for massive ME Transformation 4 years ago, famously “50 million men in the ME for five years and 5 million for fifty years”…The existential threat comes from the overreaction.
Hmmmmm…..
“…50 million men in the ME for 5 years …”
I predict a saltpetre shortage.
Well, it is hard to explain my foreign policy in ways that would differentiate it from say, Michael Ledeen’s or Peter Beinart’s. However, to be completely insulting and offensive, it is partly based on the Nell’s and Ezras and hilzoys and Thullens being completely irrelevant, as they were before the current war began. Better people than me perhaps, but like Quakers or Ghandi asking that people just get along, not a factor. And I do easily say that, for instance, “honor killings” ain’t my problem, not do I think women’s conferences in Tokyo will rapidly, like in generations, lessen the practice.
So the choice is not war or no war, but only what kind of war. And I realized that the kind of war Bush and the Republicans were gonna give us would kill many thousands of Middle Easterners pointlessly and move us right quickly along toward an oligarchic dictatorship in the US. I have not been refuted. A mass mobilization, will on the other hand, give everyone a piece of the pie, a stake in the enterprise, and a voice in the outcome. Like WWII, Imperialism liberalizes. Hegemony is the tool of reaction.
I say “will” because it ain’t over yet. It has only begun. Like the cold war, which as it moved from a societal democratic endeavor to the province of “professionals” moved America massively to the Right, the “GWOT” is useful, as long as most Americans see themselves as victims and powerless observers, to move America more toward the banana republic the Right has always dreamed about. With Janisarries and Praetorians enforcing the Emperor’s will.
America is not frigging Sweden. America is Rome. Deal.
I’ll have you know that I’m much more militantly irrelevant than Nell, Ezra, or Hilzoy.
Ya know, History and other channels had a “Rome Week” last week. Got to see Caesar build a 29 ft wide 1200 foot long bridge across the Rhine in ten days. How could Caesr do that? Because his soldiers weren’t Seals…they were carpenters and engineers. Also watched the Dacian campaigns, which showed the garrison spent 75 per cent of its time in non-military work. The soldiers built the aqueducts and baths and bridges.
Not US soldiers. Our guys blow stuff and kill people, and nothing but. We even outsource our KP, to keep our soldiers pure. Those Romans weren’t any good, anyhoo.
1)Let Gaul rule itself. Keep 5 legions in Italy and keep the roads up. If Gaul doesn’t pay its taxes, send a legion, kill 50,000 Celts, come on home. Hegemony. Rumsfeld.
2) Park a legion in Gaul, along with 20-30 legions around the empire. Keep them busy building baths and aqueducts, have em marry local girls and build local farms, send merchants and clerks and gladiator trainers and actors and lots of Romans to Gaul until Gaul becomes Rome, or merely wears togas while remaining Celtic. Lots of jobs, lots of language skills, lots of cultural exchange, lots of good stuff. Imperialism. The 50s.
The anti-war left serves their enemies, directly and completely.
Thullen, think what you will. Peace is not an option. We should have learned something from the 20th century.
Your kid will likely have to fight. Do you want him to fight with 50 other guys at his back or 5000? To be honest, in a way, it is up to you.
Just to get one in before Farber:
Gandhi
I have been derided, dismissed and mocked. I must rant.
Today’s Housing Bubble Post …Seeing the Forest. All the economic blogs are talking about housing when they aren’t talking about income inequality.
“And finally add in the federal government’s massive borrowing that is pushing up interest rates AND rising inflation rising which also puts pressure on interest rates. This has all the makings of something much worse than a recession.”
See, I think we have been played liked a drum since 1985. This is a plan, to crash the economy in 2007. Trillion dollar deficits in a recession. What do y’all think will happen? Won’t be a massive tax increase. Kiss your entitlements goodbye.
Now bury the last resistance with an attack on Iran, maybe the use of nukes, the loss of a division in Iraq. The world will call America scum, and Hillary and Schumer will not join the chorus. They won’t like it, but the survival of the nation will be attached to Bush’s star, and we will all go along for the ride. If I am German, and lived thru the aftermath of WWI, and the people elected Hitler, and Hitler invades Poland, if I am not already out of the country mourning, I probably say “Heil Hitler” and hope I and my country somehow survives.
Or maybe I just kill myself.
But if it was gonna be stopped, it should have been in Florida in 2000, when we saw these guys recognized no rules and played for keeps. People in love with the idea of “irrevocable” must be eliminated.
But there is no peace. There is never any peace.
Don’t you know Bob? Even After Armageddon there will be war.
I’m beginning to discern a bit of daylight between Bob and me, unless he’s been reading too much Cella.
I’m not sure there’s anyone else who can make me feel like such a starry eyed optimist by comparison.
“But if it was gonna be stopped, it should have been in Florida in 2000….”
I noticed Katherine Harris told someone or other recently that “God chooses our rulers.” This, more than anything else, convinces me that Florida was rigged in 2000. She just admitted it.
“I’ve been derided, dismissed, and mocked.”
Not here, much. Every time I read one of your rants, Bob, I join Jackmormon, LJ, and many others here in needing a good lie down to get over the palpable dread I feel about the future.
Cella’s prolixity merely makes me want to cough up a hairball.
“To be honest, in a way, it is up to you.”
I’ll let that stand. I’m gonna go look at the kid.
However, I will say that I rarely do things halfway. It’s either all or nothing. If it’s going to be up to me (the relevant me), give me six or so nukes to use as I see fit, and then the police power to arrest the top 10,000 most influential Republicans in the country. And, probably a Democrat here or there, if I can find a relevant one.
I’ll make a hell of a mess.
My life is one constant pleasant surprise, from the moment I awake in the morning. Many heart attacks occur in early morning nightmares, you know. I am never ever disappointed. Every human act of kindness and charity is an inexplicable miracle, a defiance of nature. I expect the worst, and the world is more pleasing than I can ever hope.
Religion may only be a metaphor, but metaphors are all to me. “There is no good but comes from the Father.” said the Man. We don’t create or contain the Good, but only can become transparent and let it pass thru. I don’t ever want anyone to see good in me.
Yeah but it’s not a complaint that you hear tonight,
It’s not the laughter of someone who claims to have seen the light
No it’s a cold and it’s a very lonely Hallelujah.
Like a secret hairshirt crawling with lice, the pessimism is a mortification in pursuit of ecstasy. The world goes round in utter indifference to what I think of it, and that pleases me to overflowing.
The anti-war left serves their enemies, directly and completely.
I thought we were irrelevant. Which is it, Bob?
There is no contradiction.
Seems like an apropos time to open up a thread at Taking it Outside, and so, visit to see my take on ‘The MacManus thesis’
Anyone see this highlighted by Greenwald yesterday. U.S. citizens barred from entering the country unless they talk to the FBI.
“The Roman Legion metaphor is also a bit interesting, because Roman Legions were in large part local recruits who became Roman citizens when discharged.” …lj at link
OK.
The foreign policy questions are pretty complicated and slightly off topic. I said above that I do not believe that the terrorists or jihadists at this time or in the near future pose any kind of existential or even critical threat to the US. And I spoke of overreaction. It is, well like, I do not necessarily blame Hizbollah for the recent destruction of Lebanon. But nevertheless Lebanon was destroyed. My thesis in part is that we are not dealing with rational actors here, in the US and Israel. Telling the US after 9/11:”No sweat, we can handle it” although realistic will make you irrelevant.
If someone wants to discuss the problems of the Middle East:the plutocratic dictatorships, the declining economies, the growing attraction of extreme ideologies as hopeless young men get ever more frustrated, and especially, What happens as the oil runs out., I will listen and play.
But my basic thesis is that, as our various activities during the cold war had little to do with a real Soviet threat, so our, and our allies, activities in the ME have very little to do with the ME. They are driven by domestic authoritarianism and paranoia, and trying to use the facts about Islam and Arabia as a refutation will work as well as trying to tell the Germans in 1938 that they are not threatened by Jews. You will not be heard.
The reasons America is what it is, doing what it does, are the subjects of entire books. Orcinus and Firedoglake are discussing authoritarianism these weeks. A recent book by a Tapped contributor revisits American Exceptionalism.
But when I say we are Rome, I mean it. I see the peace crowd like I would see someone going to Hadrian (Trajan) in 100 AD and saying:”Let’s pull out of Gaul and Egypt and disband the legions.” We have been a brutal self-denying empire for so long the conversation is impossible. Even long after the economic benefits of Empire disappear (like the economic benefits of slavery and Jim Crow…how about that) the psychological thrill of exceptionalism and Empire will remain. Until it kills us.
So the only moral question is:”What structure of Empire will be most beneficial and least harmful to ourselves and our subjects?” Refusing to deal with that reality will put the worst of America in charge of the Legions.
And this is where I differ with so many I respect, like Newberry and Klein and the rest. They say that trying to stay on imported oil and trying to maintain the inefficient Empire is stupid and crazy and self-destructive.
And I say:”Well, Yeah. And your point?”
Shorter bob: It’s too late to debate whether or not we are going to be an empire, the debate needs to be how we will act as an empire.
I think that is what he is trying to say.
When the Soviet Union collapsed and were no longer seen as a threat or subject of
our fear and/or hatred (they are so closely connected) I told everyone that would listen to me (both of them) that there would probably be an increase in hate crimes in the US.
A basic part of the human psychology is that to feel better about ourselves we need to diminish others. This is particularly true as a nation as well. Conservatives have known this and played on it for years.
When that need to diminish is focused, those that do the focusing tend to collect power in that society.
The rest of us need to try to make sure that power is not misued.
Telling the US after 9/11:”No sweat, we can handle it” although realistic will make you irrelevant.
You bet. I did say that after September 11, and it did marginalize me. Yet a lot of relevant people are making that point now (as the fear that led to overreaction fear wears off). Maybe you’d say it’s too late to make any difference.
I can deal with being thought irrelevant; most people in this country without enormous wealth or power are unless highly organized in large numbers. But being told that I’m actively helping the worst of America stay in control of the Legions pisses me off exactly the way it does to be told that opposing the occupation of Iraq or supporting Ned Lamont’s candidacy makes me an enabler of Al Qaeda.
We have been a brutal self-denying empire for so long the conversation is impossible. Even long after the economic benefits of Empire disappear … the psychological thrill of exceptionalism and Empire will remain. Until it kills us.
The conversation has been made possible by the overreach of the current regime, which has made the reality of empire a permissible subject in mainstream discussion (as it was not during the Viet Nam war).
The conversation may have come too late. Our days as an effective empire are drawing to a close, and the final decades of thrashing about that will kill us and many others aren’t pleasant to contemplate. Who’s in charge of the Legions may only affect the timing and length of the process.
the only moral choice
This is the logic of collaborators; resistance is just ruled right out.
Thanks for replying, Bob, and I hope no offense was taken.
There’s a quote from the 50’s, but I’m not remembering who said it, that goes something like ‘looking around the world, we see that there is a wide gap between our standard of living and that of the rest of the world. The challenge is to maintain this without creating resentment.’ The fact is that we failed in that challenge. Not only have we created resentment, but we have created a situation, with outsourcing and globalization, that if countries are unable to close the gap of standards, there is going to be resentment and we cannot redirect it. Ironically, it is not the living standards so much as the questions of social justice, and if we continue to channel our exceptionalism into trying to maintain a domestic hold on power rather than channel our exceptionalism into making it possible for other people and countries in the world to have the benefits of stability and some sort of social justice (though I’m not suggesting that the US is perfect in this sense)
As for telling Americans that they are not threatened by Muslims, it is certainly swimming against the current, but I can’t see myself saying ‘well maybe you are right that Muslims are a threat, so let’s try to come up with the most efficient way to handle that’, cause it is not going to do anything but kick the problem down the road a bit. Accepting that we had any reason at all for going into Iraq, after the revelations we have seen, is a large enough lie so as to make any invocation of some end justifying that lie untenable. Which accounts for the reaction that Charles gets when he inches ever more closer to the position that this was a FUBAR effort with no redeeming features. Perhaps it is just pride, but almost everyone seems to have weigh in here with a “sorry, that is just not good enough”. One could look at it as the minority just not being smart enough to realize that they should cash their chips in, but I tend to view it as having a hand that becomes more and more unassailable as the cards are turned over, so I’m willing to let them up the ante. Perhaps they aren’t bluffing when they make arguments that Tehran should be made into a glass parking lot, but it seems we have let them get away with bluffing too many times, and it is time to call them on it. Making one gesture towards giving them any credence in this is one gesture too many. Which is why I am sympathetic to the domestic version of the McManus thesis, but not the international one.
I realize that I haven’t addressed the oil question, but if the oil does run out, it won’t simply be a matter of the US trying to make sure they get enough, like a drunk trying to keep all the other drunks away from his bottle of Maddog 20/20, it will be something that effects all countries. Trying to maintain our perks in that kind of world (as Japan and China compete to sign contracts with Iran, every increase in oil puts more money in Putin’s pockets, and other countries and the EU mulling a unified energy policy) is, it seems to me, more like refusing to deal with reality than suggesting that an anti-war effort is like someone telling Hadrian to pull out of Gaul. At any rate, Hadrian spent half his reign outside of Rome, generally negotiating to avoid military conflicts, and not having to deal with open borders, outsourcing, and international companies. Thus, it’s not Hadrian we are telling this stuff to, it is whoever is going to be around at the middle/end of this century.
You bet. I did say that after September 11, and it did marginalize me.
Likewise.
I went looking but couldn’t find the post. Gilliard got to me a while ago, he had an article about a soldier who had lost his legs intended as a message to Billmon:”Despair is a luxury this guy can’t afford.”
…
Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. Disregarding the money spent in Iraq, which is mostly in supplementals, we still have a $500 billion annual defense budget in a world without threats.
I think Lamont is gonna break your heart, like Obama is disappointing. HRC is backing Lamont now, she is recognizing reality and moving Lamont into the club. We pull out of Iraq, wait five years, go into Venezuela. Or back to Somalia. Or maybe the Sudan. Or God help us, Iran.
I once thought Vietnam had changed things, that there was a lesson learned. I was wrong.
If despair is a luxury, so is false hope.
And I didn’t attribute this:”Telling the US after 9/11:”No sweat, we can handle it” although realistic will make you irrelevant.”
to anyone in particular, and y’all shouldn’t take such offense at it. I don’t quite understand why, given the venal incompetents in the WH, so many are willing to say they could handle the war in Afghanistan but not the war in Iraq. They obviously couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t. In fact, it is the war in Afghanistan that gave us torture chambers and random detentions and genocidal semi-trailers and the loss of soft power and world respect.
So if you are looking for sanity points for supporting Afghanistan but not Iraq, I don’t have any to spare. All I got is big and small crazy stars.
Bob, who are you addressing with this?
I think Lamont is gonna break your heart, like Obama is disappointing. HRC is backing Lamont now, she is recognizing reality and moving Lamont into the club.
Because if it’s me, I appreciate the concern, but I’ve been withholding my heart for some time. Until the system of legalized bribery that is our campaign financing is seriously changed, corporate tool-ism and rightist rigidity on Israel will continue to blight our party and prevent most significant reform, much less structural change.
Lamont’s campaign is a small step, more a matter of tactical dynamics than a real shift of power or ideology. But it’s a worthwhile step nonetheless.
Bob, I think there’s a flaw in your strategy, and it’s the same flaw as in the domestic political version of triangulation. You’re saying (if I read it correctly – please correct me if I’m wrong) that we’re doomed by circumstances to empire, and that a moderately brutal and bloody empire is what it’ll take to keep the holocaust at bay. But experience leads me to think that there is no balance point with the doom-seekers. Giving them 75% of what they want will no more satisfy them than giving them 10%, or none. Giving them 100% of what they want won’t do it, in fact, because when reality fails to respond as they wish, they’ll look for scapegoats and up their demands.
Now if you want to say “Bruce, here’s what you’re missing” and lay out the precedents, I’m good for it. I’m entirely certain I’m not thinking of important considerations. But right now, from where I sit, I don’t see reason to believe that the very bloody bread and circus approach is actaully likely to work one whit better.
(It’s not like I have a strategy of my own right now. But I have a strong bias in favor of not taking steps that would be very hard to undo later.)
I misinterpreted your “we can handle it”, then, Bob. I meant by that “treating terror attacks as a criminal matter rather than a war”, which I advocated openly despite what a marginal position it was.
I knew it was politically inevitable that there would be a war or something quite like it after September 11, even if Gore had been president. You might then say that supporting some war in Afghanistan would be the only moral choice.
But I opposed it. I predicted roundups, torture, and fairly indiscriminate bombing. I also predicted the follow-on, long-planned war on Iraq. In early November, I was out vigiling with my irrelevant companions, holding a “NO WIDER WAR” sign.
Quakers and retired senior military were the first to recognize and act against the decision for an Iraq invasion, which was taken in December 2001-January 2002. The diversion of money and resources began in February. Maybe not nationally, but at least in my irrelevant little town, the two groups worked together to try to stop what we recognized as a done deal.
The small victory we had was to deny international legitimacy to the invasion, making it clear that it was a war of choice and a war of aggression. We also got some predictions onto the record, and they’ve been painfully borne out.
None of this has encouraged me to think that the right course of action would have been to line up with Democrats in Congress who supported the war, under the mistaken impression that that would be a way to have some influence on its conduct. That’s what made Colin Powell stick around, and look where it got him.
Well, I supported what I thought they were going to do in Afghanistan — something more along the lines of Panama. I still think catching the senior leadership of AQ would be a good idea. Not by occupying Islamabad, Karachi, Peshawar and other places, pulling down statues as we go, but more along the lines of how RBAS and KSM were captured.
As for the overall struggle, I don’t think AQ or its supporters are motivated by poverty or oil, and I don’t think seriously addressing either issue makes any difference to them. OK, sure, if we weren’t buying oil from people sympathetic to AQ, then AQ would have some lesser amount of money to spend, but I’m really not at all sure this is the kind of issue in 2006 that it was in 1999 (to pick a year). There are, and will continue to be people who want to blow stuff up to demonstrate the virility of their cause. Tim McVeigh wasn’t dropped off by a martian spaceship, after all.
I understand, I think, Bob’s Prophecy of Doom. What I don’t understand is what, exactly, he thinks each of us ought to actually do, in our real lives. Beyond ‘not be deluded.’ Feel free to post a list. And feel free to include advice for people not in the US (whether citizen or no) as they’d be interested as well, it’s plain to see.
“Now if you want to say “Bruce, here’s what you’re missing” and lay out the precedents, I’m good for it”
Well, of course my paradigm is the Romans, and 1955-65. The Roman soldiers who built the aqueducts, and the Peace Corps.
We have good evidence that the “lighter, faster, cheaper” Sardaukar strike force cannot hold land, cannot win hearts and minds. The argument that Yglesias and Klein take from that is that nation-building is impossible, and humanitarian wars should be really rare, and only when they are easy.
I think, I think that what Beinart is trying to say, or maybe what I am trying to say, is that Andrew’s professional army is a loser and a danger, and a citizen army, very large, with a wide variety of nation-building positions:doctors, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, diplomats and yes, soldiers to provide security, is a saner and more practical way to go. I also think it might be saleable;probably not, but worth a try. I recognize that there will be tragedies.
And believe it or not, I do think the Middle East & Africa could use some developmental help, even whether they like it or not. Saying you can’t change their institutions by force reminds of those who say FDR didn’t Keynes spend his way out of the Depression. Yes FDR did, it is just that the spending didn’t really get big enough until WWII. I will grant that my idea may be flat-out impossible.
As far as giving the Right what they want: they have what they want. They have the army they want, the war & kinda war they want, the domestic spin and consequences they want, the opportunity to complain and gripe they want. You are watching their dreams come true.
Anyway, it is raining in Dallas for the first time in like six months,which makes it a beautiful day, and I have plumbing to do. God bless.
I think, I think that what Beinart is trying to say, or maybe what I am trying to say, is that Andrew’s professional army is a loser and a danger, and a citizen army, very large, with a wide variety of nation-building positions:doctors, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, diplomats and yes, soldiers to provide security, is a saner and more practical way to go.
This sounds more like Heinlein’s concept of citizen service (a la Starship Troopers ). One is a subset of the others, so I don’t see a real difference of opinion here.
“war in Afghanistan that gave us torture chambers and random detentions and genocidal semi-trailers”
Been awhile since I read anything about the slaughter of Taliban POW’s inside those containers. I assume that’s what you’re referring to. I half-thought (assuming it was true) it might actually come out in the open here and was curious to see whether it would make a greater impact than Abu Ghraib. I’m betting no.
My own feelings about Bob’s points are similar to Nell’s–you can’t fine-tune barbarism. But I think Bob’s diagnosis is pretty close to the truth, even if the proposed cure is unlikely to work. Though I can see the point of having a draft. Maybe we’d be less likely to jump into unnecessary wars if all of us had a serious chance of being shot at (or of having a friend or relative in that position.) On the other hand, Israel has a citizen army and to me they prone to the same sort of deluded militaristic self-righteousness that afflicts us.
“they seem prone”, not “they prone”.
Bob, I’m not sure I see either of your precedents as very relevant. Would you want to narrow down the Roman one, so that we don’t edn up talking past each other with stuff dealing with entirely different centuries and all.
As for 1955-65…well, let’s see. That starts after Truman busted MacArthur, which put a spoke into the wheels of the military’s own apocalyptic faction. McCarthy was censured in 1954, and while that generation of Republican crazies was still around, the balance of power was tipped against them, and stayed tipped for a while. Er, do you mean to suggest it’s a demonstration of your recommendations, or a demonstration of what happens when they aren’t heeded, or what?
But I guess I come back to CharleyCarp’s question. Is any of what you’re saying we have to have actually likely to matter? I have this terrible feeling that there simply isn’t anything useful to be done to save the republic I’ve known, and that my job now is to keep as much as I can together for the duration of the night and collapse. I continue to act in mundane ways in the recognition that I’ve been wrong before and may be again. But in the meantime, I do take “first do no harm” as a guideline, and if the choice is between being a monster (or even just endorsing monsters) and perishing, yes, I will take perishing, ,because I don’t believe in material survival at all costs.
Thullen: good joke on “No Exit”.
Andrew’s professional army is a loser
Hey! We’re 10-1!
Hey! We’re 10-1!
How about an open thread to celebrate?
“Hey! We’re 10-1!”
Umm, no personal offense intended, Andrew, and my analysis of the professional army is certainly not your own. I recognize that mine may be a minority position supported by few experts, and that, hey, a citizen army is not a pretty sight. I remember a story about V-E day and the non-com saying:”Thank God the war is over so we can finally get back to real soldiering.”
Is a preference for a citizen army a conservative or liberal position? Good grief, stuff gets complicated.
I’m deeply unconvinced that a draft army would steer us out of any of these messes. I think that warmongers will find a way to use whatever they’ve got, and to make sure that their own kith and kin escape trouble.
“I’m deeply unconvinced that a draft army would steer us out of any of these messes.”
Heck, Bruce I have so many reasons and justifications. Avoiding stupid wars is fairly well down on the list, since stupid wars seem to be just one of the things people do.
But almost every factory worker I grew up with had spent a year overseas, mostly smoking hash and screwing German girls, and that strikes me as, on balance, a pretty useful thing. Reason 17 out of 112.
Finally, Bob, some practical advice I can get behind!
Bob,
No offense taken at all. I was poking fun at myself with the line from Stripes. I would actually prefer to see us trim back the Army once we close out Iraq; all things being equal, I’d like a pre-WWII Army again.
I respect and admire the between war military. The professionalism and scalability served our country well. And when and if the nation feels a united need to mobilize, it can mobilize, well, adjectives fail me. The world feared and respected us even in the thirties.
Hmmm. This third option, which may or may not be politically available, kinda puts liberal imperialism to question, doesn’t it?
Truman was very much a Democrat and liberal, and ole Gore Vidal didn’t wander that far from his patrician roots in condemning the national security state.
I might just have to surrender to a comprehensive small gov’t assault.
I think this is sometimes considered a paleocon position, although Pat Buchanan carries an awful lot of extraneous baggage.
But the premise might be that, at least in America, the welfare state is dependent on and inextricably tied to Imperialism. Given an opposition that tries to give me Imperialism with no welfare state, or a welfare state without Imperialism, I got arguments.
Given an option of abandoning both, I got a conscience. It is a very tough call, and that’s why politics since WWII has been a mess. Why HRC and Reagan are enigmas. Etc.