by hilzoy
Last night, in the Austin debate, Barack Obama said this:
“I heard from a Army captain, who was the head of a rifle platoon, supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24, because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition; they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief. Now that’s a consequence of bad judgment, and you know, the question is on the critical issues that we face right now who’s going to show the judgment to lead.”
A number of bloggers on the right went ballistic. Couldn’t be true. No how. No way. Curt at Flopping Aces: “I’m gonna call shenanigans (codeword for he is lying through his teeth)”. The (cough) Astute Pundit: “Obama at Texas Debate: Liar, Dupe, Or Enemy Propagandist?” (I’ll take ‘Enemy Propagandist’ for five, Alex…)
While this was going on, Jake Tapper (yes, I know) actually spoke to the Captain in question, who confirmed the story. Later, NBC did so as well. And Phil Carter adds:
“In light of my experience in Iraq, Sen. Obama’s comments last night are eminently believable. Sen. Obama is also absolutely right to use this anecdote as a critique of the administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq. It is incontrovertible that the war in Iraq diverted scarce military resources (manpower, equipment, etc.) from Afghanistan to Iraq. The cost for that diversion was paid by America’s sons and daughters, and our Afghan brethren, who continue to fight in Afghanistan against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We owe our troops better.”
In light of this, the best response would seem to be Tom Maguire’s: “As a proud member of the Right Wing Noise Machine (or are we now the Freak Show?) I can only say “Ouch”.” Curiously, Tom hasn’t had a lot of company. Rusty Schackleford’s take is more common among the conservative blogs I’ve read:
“Tapper called the “Captain” and asked him to verify his own story.
How, exactly, is it “verifying” anything by simply asking the same source if his story is true? This isn’t the testimony of one source verifying the testimony of another source. This is two people reporting the testimony of a single source!
No one is accusing Obama of making the story up. We are accusing the “Captain” of making stuff up—or, at the very least, using selective pieces of information in order to lend credence to the bad war/good war theory. Obama then uses an untrue story to further the narrative which he hopes will get him elected.”
Curt at Flopping Aces again:
“Of course with the “Captain” remaining anonymous its hard to come right out and say the man is lying since the Pentagon doesn’t have the particulars such as the dates, units, and other important info. With him remaining in the shadows its easier for Barack and his pal Tapper to just say “believe us” because well, just because.”
To which I can only say: wow. Or, as John Cole put it:
“Now granted, Phil Carter has some military knowledge, so I would take this a grain of salt when you compare it to the vault of information these bloggers have procured over a lifetime of arranging GI Joe dolls while watching betamax copies of Uncommon Valor in the basement apartment they rent from their parents. I know it is a tough call, but I am gonna go with Obama, Tapper, and Phil Carter on this.”
But besides that, consider two things. First, the bloggers I quoted above are accusing this unnamed Captain of lying. It’s not exactly clear why they think the Captain lied, or why he would go on lying to various TV networks, but that’s what Curt, Rusty, and the gang seem to think. And why do they think this? For the most part*, they cite claims like this (from Ace): “Milbloggers say the platoon is the basic organic unit of the army, and troops are never picked out of a platoon to serve elsewhere”, or this (from one of Steve Spruiell’s correspondents): “units as small as platoons are not pulled apart like that.” That is: claims that the sorts of things the Captain described never happen.
I think that any claim of the form “X never, ever happens” are generally dubious when made about an organization as large as the US Army. They are especially dubious when made about the Army in wartime. Sometimes you can dismiss them out of hand. If, for instance, some Captain were to say that when he was in iraq, the troops under his command would turn into little bunny rabbits and scamper away into the shrubbery, skepticism would be in order. But when someone who has served in combat says something like: my platoon was stripped of some of its men, or: we were short of ammunition, that’s really not something you can just assume is a lie in the absence of any further evidence at all.
I have no particular investment in the idea that this soldier is telling the truth. I don’t see any good reason to doubt him, but some people lie, and for all I know, he might be one of them. I do, however, care a lot about the idea that we should not impugn someone’s honor absent a good reason to do so. And that’s what Rusty Shackleford, Ace, et al have done. They are willing to trash someone’s good name because what he says doesn’t fit their political narrative. And that’s despicable.
* Footnote: A Pentagon spokesman later said that he found the Captain’s story implausible, though since he didn’t know the Captain’s name or any of the details, he couldn’t say for sure. Most of the blogs posts I’ve read accusing the Captain of lying were written before this spokesman appeared; Curt’s at Flopping Aces is the exception here.
“A number of bloggers on the right went ballistic.”
Why, exactly, should anyone care?
*sigh* Afghanistan.
Sarah Chayes appeared on Bill Moyers’ Journal tonight.
If you want to know what’s going on there, just watch.
Who knows about the men being pulled from the platoon part; for the reasons cited it’s likely it wouldn’t be happening constantly, but that sure doesn’t mean it wouldn’t happen occasionally.
The soldiers using Taliban weapons is completely in line with hundreds if not thousands of years of military history, though, including in the US Army. Whenever soldiers feel undersupplied or that the weapons they’re given are bad, they scavenge. There are some issues here – if the sound of a particular weapon shooting (an AK 47) draws US fire, for instance – but as I recall from reading a lot of transcribed oral military histories, it’s not at all uncommon.
She’s accurate with her in country knowledge, but anybody there can do that; she is also pretty selective when it comes to the Taliban and all that money she had.
Canadian soldiers shooting her employee’s families. Maybe it’s best if she ran Afghanistan and everybody else left. She could skim more of that USAID money her dad got her from Harvard and PC.
Maybe the farmers should be paid for food crops like wheat or something instead of exotic soaps and dope.
“In light of this, the best response would seem to be Tom Maguire’s: ‘As a proud member of the Right Wing Noise Machine (or are we now the Freak Show?) I can only say
‘Ouch’.”
It’s cheap bottom-feeding to look at his commenters, but still.
Or:
And so on.
“It’s not exactly clear why they think the Captain lied”
Ha, I claim better understanding of the wacko mind!
It’s one word: Beauchampbeauchampbeauchamp.
These guys imprint after one experience that gives them joy. They thereafter seek replication, and to stick round objects in familiar square pegs, because it was so good last time they found a peg they think the new one looks like.
No chance that that Pentagon spokesman would be saying that in order to out the Captain and effectively destroy his career, huh? No one would politicize the military like that would they? Especially not one with such a stellar record of supporting the troops. (I threw that last one in there just in case people weren’t catching the sarcasm.)
In fairness, it needs to be mentioned that Obama got a detail slightly wrong here: “Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24, because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition; they didn’t have enough humvees.”
According to the NBC story, and Tapper, the captain clarified that the not enough ammo and humvees was during training, not when sent to Afghanistan. This is bad, but it is a slightly less bad than the way Obama stated it; it’s unfortunate to make any errors of this sort, and leave an opening for criticism.
I also wonder if the campaign fully realized the pressures this may subject the captain to, or to the campaign itself to produce the captain.
Jake Tapper is a known idiot. Whomever he talked to we have no idea what that person really said. That Jake Tapper finds ‘it’ plausible is, when you think about it, reason to suspect ‘it’.
I wish he weren’t involved. It makes the whole thing stink.
Troops in the field running short of equipment? Impossible! You go to war with the army you want, not just the army you have.
Equipment/ammo shortage in training is not that uncommon. I remember the Bundeswehr making the headlines with “Foot soldiers: shout ‘bang’, Tankers: shout ‘BOOM'”
As for lying, the first comments clearly implied a lie on Obama’s not the captain’s side.
Agreed that this is Beauchamp Redux (as far as the noisemakers are concerned, no judgement on content).
Not that long ago the right wing would have seen that story as a proof that the Dem obstructionism has led to shortages in the field.
Btw, during the Iraq invasion at least one National Guard unit had to steal* ammo from Marine supply dumps. The same unit also had partially to buy their own boots because they got a shipment that contained boots of all possible sizes in equal numbers but only one pair for each soldier. As a result a lot of them did not find anything roughly fitting.
*possibly with inofficial consent by either the depot personnel or the marines.
As someone on the inside of the big green machine. I can state a few things:
1. Soldiers do get tasked out to go to war with other units on a fairly regular basis. I have friends that this has happened to. It is a result of the unit that they are being drawn to being in worse condition then the unit they are pulled from.
2. Shortage of training dollars is a fact of life in the military. “Training as we fight” is very expensive, not because of waste or abuse but we do some pretty unique things and that makes the prices higher.
3. The sound you hear, is the sound of your military breaking.
If you look at
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/10mtn.htm
The 10th Mountain Division was in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. The units in Iraq were considered a higher priority and thus, would have been getting personnel and supplies.
The bad part of the point that Obama’s staff wrote for him is not realizing that a Captain would not serve as a platoon leader. If Senator Obama’s staff knows so little about the military, then what else are they short of knowledge and experience about?
Just looking at how things are going in Afghanistan and how the number of troops has grown its clear things are not going well there. Afghanistan has been such a quagmire for any foreign country to be involved with i still cant believe they had things wrapped up well enough to take on Iraq.
As ex-military I know that things get screwed up a lot sometimes in the best of circumstances. I suspect this Captain is telling the truth and is just mad as heck. I doubt that this a system wide common event. I do know that there is a consistent undercurrent of sentiment from those serving in Afghanistan that it is the “forgotten” war.
Steve
Didn’t any of those conservative bloggers ever watch Saving Private Ryan? Didn’t Captain Miller TAKE soldiers out of this or that platoon to go on a separate mission? Didn’t they run out of ammo and had to use whatever they could? Is it really that hard for them to comprehend that it could very well happen that in today’s time a platoon gets stripped because we have TOO FEW TROOPS? Jeez, these conservative bloggers are whacked!
I do, however, care a lot about the idea that we should not impugn someone’s honor absent a good reason to do so.
I agree, absolutely. However I’d also prefer if politicians did not exaggerate (real) problems to score political points.
40 mm automatic grenade launcher ammunition for the MK-19, and ammunition for the .50 caliber M-2 machine gun (“50 cal.”)
At Fort Drum, in training, “we didn’t have access to heavy weapons or the ammunition for the weapons, or humvees to train before we deployed.”
Training. Guess what? You end up firing .22 rounds (with a muzzle adapter) from an M16 because M16 ammo is damned expensive. You fire 100 banks for every real round you ever fire. You even play Laser Tag. (Safer but also cheaper.) You might fire a grenade launcher or a .50 cal exactly one time in training. You want soldiers to train more with real ammo you better increase the Pentagon’s budget by a fair amount.
“It was very difficult to get any parts in theater,” he says, “because parts are prioritized to the theater where they were needed most — so they were going to Iraq not Afghanistan.”
The Army supply system is notorious for being a day late and a dollar short. See for example WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc.
They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
Bull:
“The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons,” he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or “Dishka”) on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.
I was taught decades ago how to maintain and fire an AK-47. It’s just common sense. You only carry so much ammo with you. It’s not unexpected that you may run out of ammo. If you do and there are enemy weapons lying around, guess what? You pick them up and use them…
You have a valid point about RW blogs jumping the gun and freaking out. At the same time however, Obama exaggerated to score a point.
“The bad part of the point that Obama’s staff wrote for him is not realizing that a Captain would not serve as a platoon leader.”
Number one, this is wrong. Frequently a company will get split up and be sent to different locales and the Captain is with one of them.
Secondly, this is a current Captain, although he may have been a Lt at the time.
I can verify if not the details of this story the fact that many things, both men and equipment, originally meant for Afghanistan, even before the Invasion of Iraq, were pulled out of the Afghan stream and placed in the Iraq one.
They are willing to trash someone’s good name because what he says doesn’t fit their political narrative.
Well, you can’t really say they’re “trashing someone’s good name” when the guy has remained anonymous. At the same time, their batshit-crazy reaction shows why he might not want to share his name.
At the same time however, Obama exaggerated to score a point.
I think Obama’s point is fair as a response to the administration’s overly fine assertion that no troops were literally pulled from Afghanistan and sent to Iraq. The (now) captain’s story shows how, even if that’s true, the Iraq offensive came partly at the expense of the forces in Afghanistan. That matters, and people need to understand it, so it’s not just about “scoring” a point. In that context, relatively minor inaccuracies–and that’s what they are–seem trivial.
FearItself: I think Obama’s point is fair as a response to the administration’s overly fine assertion that no troops were literally pulled from Afghanistan and sent to Iraq.
I didn’t dispute troops being pulled from Afghanistan. If he had stuck to that I would agree. But his main point seemed to be this:
And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition; they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
That has a big impact as a sound bite – American troops have to capture Taliban weapons to get by due to being screwed over by the CiC… “…easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief”.
Forget about the fact that Bush does not oversee Army logistics, or how lame it is to make this point when Democrats constantly call to cut funding for the war (not that I disagree with that)…
The Captain was mainly talking about training. If you read his follow up with Tapper, a lot of it centers on pre-deployment training. Once they were in theatre he only says they had 2-3 humvees rather than 4, and they had trouble getting parts for their “MK-19s and their 50-cals” but that “Getting parts or ammunition for their standard rifles was not a problem”.
You don’t go after the Taliban to acquire AK-47’s when you have no problem getting parts or ammunition for your standard rifles. And he specifically says “The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons”.
But the big O’s sound bite was: “They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.” So I call BS.
On the training angle – that is normal. Ammo is expensive and even in peacetime you don’t get to train with the real stuff very often. With a two front war going on I imagine that gets even worse.
I can only relate an anecdote from the cold war. The main threat we were expected to face was Soviet armor pouring through the Fulda Gap. The main infantry weapon to face that threat (at the time) was the LAW (Light Armor Weapon). Those rounds were darned expensive. In training we didn’t get to fire the real thing. They had an adapter that fired a smoke rocket, essentially a fancy bottle rocket. And we only got to fire one of those. That was in no way effective training to prepare you to fire the real McCoy. In Basic you got to fire a couple hundred rounds of real M16 ammo, a few M-60 rounds, and you threw one live hand-grenade. Everything else was dummied up. That was in peacetime without a two front war that really needs to have priority on ammo.
John,
the media has reported that the anonymous Captain experienced the problems with his deployment to Afghanistan five years ago when he was an LT.
It looks like the Obama staff pulled the classic activist stunt of telling a lie by stringing together a set of truths.
Of course, if anybody of Obama’s staff had been in the military, he quote would have been written much better. However, since almost no Ivy leaguer serves in the military these days, it is no wonder that no one on Senator Obama’s staff knew what they were talking about.
Also, does the quote indicate a problem with Senator Obama’s staff understanding time frame. Five years ago the situation was different than today. However, when you staff is full of 25 y/o Ivy Leaguers, it is easy to understand their temporal problems.
Ranting bloggers, of whatever stripe, deserve no attention. Life is too short.
The level of military knowledge of Sen. Obama’s campaign staff means less than nothing. Once in office, he’ll have a new group of guys, known as the Joint Chiefs, to advise him on military stuff. Along with civilians in the various relevant places.
People who want to argue that commencing the Iraq war in 2003, without UN backing, didn’t have a serious negative impact in nearly every aspect on the then (and now) unfinished war against AQ in Afghanistan can be considered, imo, completely hopeless. The decision to start one war before the end of the other was a strategic blunder at the epic level.
shorter nutshpere: my anecdotes are law.
I couldn’t resist.
(Customized motivational poster = WIN.)
At the same time however, Obama exaggerated to score a point.
Could be, but I think more likely we have an example that demonstrates why we have the hearsay rule. Captain reports his story to Obama’s staff, Obama’s staff reports it to Obama, Obama brings up the story at the debate. There’s about eight places there where a detail can get misremembered, misreported, or misspoke.
Forget about the fact that Bush does not oversee Army logistics,
True enough. But Bush does make decisions about which wars to fight (with a cowed congress going along, of course), and I think that was Obama’s larger point – Iraq had negative consequences for Afghanistan, which can be laid at Bush’s feet.
A Pentagon spokesman later said that he found the Captain’s story implausible
I don’t believe that propaganda factory anymore.
Ugh: Iraq had negative consequences for Afghanistan, which can be laid at Bush’s feet.
True enough. And he can say that without the “Army raiding Taliban for arms” line, which just calls his whole statement into question.
Of course, it’s the lead story on
foxRNCNews.com right now.Great, now we have the Pentagon openly taking sides against the likely Democratic nominee. Like having the Bush and Clinton ruling families wasn’t banana republic-ish enough.
Of course, it’s the lead story on foxRNCNews.com right now.
I want Obama to be President for many good, substantive, even highminded reasons.
I have to admit, though, the prospect of an Obama Administration refusing to have anything to do with Faux News also makes me smile.
I bothered with this because it’s the thing that actually gets to me about some (note: some) of the blogs on the right: their willingness to impugn the honor, and in some cases really disrupt the lives, of people who just happen to get caught in their crossfire, and to do that for no good reason.
I mean, I can speculate about all kinds of things here in the privacy of my own home. I could say: gosh, I know that Andy’s MiTT was specially constituted for the occasion, and it included not just specialists but also sergeants and privates; where did they come from, exactly, if the Army never ever ever strips people from a platoon? But the thing is: that’s just me speculating. I would never call someone a liar, when that person was talking about stuff he had actually experienced, on that basis. I wouldn’t do so even if I were ex-military, but had served mostly in peacetime: it would seem obvious to me that war strains an army, and that things that were “never” done before might well be done now.
This captain will probably be outed, and if he is, his career will probably be badly damaged. Even if he isn’t, these people have been calling him a liar for no reason at all. It makes me mad.
OCSteve‘s comment at 6:58 a.m. reflects my views as well. I’ll add:
1. Even if this incident did not occur exactly as related in Obama’s speech — which seems likely (‘tho not certain) — there are myriad signs that George Bush and Donald Rumseld mismanaged their commands in Afghanistan and Iraq.
2. Obviously, I agree with Hilzoy regarding the pernicious nature of impugning someone’s honor with thin, nonexistent, or misapplied evidence.
von
Could be, but I think more likely we have an example that demonstrates why we have the hearsay rule.
Which, unfortunately, has been nearly swallowed by the exceptions.
I can think of a myriad of ways to get the Capt’s statement in. Here are two, applying the Federal Rules of Evidence: (1) it’s nonhearsay as an admission of a party-opponent (statement clearly within scope of Capt’s agency); (2) it’s not being used for the truth of the matter asserted, but for a nonhearsay purpose: to show that military officers have complaints and thus is probitive of morale independent of truth.
[/FRE blogging]
Also, too many Judges of all political stripes have a Marxist view of the rules of evidence: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This privileges folks who don’t know or want to abide by the rules, and lets a bunch of crap in that no one can cross examine (or, even, effectively examine). I’m fairly convinced that the most effective form of tort reform would be to enforce the rules as written and go back to pre-1993 Rule 11.
[OK, failure to abide by the rules of evidence really get me fired up. This is my last OT post.]
Gary Farber: According to the NBC story, and Tapper, the captain clarified that the not enough ammo and humvees was during training, not when sent to Afghanistan.
This was only the case for the ammunition, not the humvees. According to Tapper:
Emphasis mine, I should have added.
Wingnuts thhink that they own soldiers, body, mind and doul. SOldiers exist to seve tham. Soldiers are only allowed to do sy or think in a way thhat serve the wingnnuts. If the soldier deviates from the wing nut party line then the soldier is betraying them.
May be that’s why there were so many liberal Iraq vets running for office in 04 and why Obama is the second largest recipient of donations from people in the military serviices. I know I wouuldnn’t like being treated like someone’s house slave.
wonkie: with the stipulation that I’m talking only about parts of the right blogosphere, not about it as a whole, still less about conservatives as a whole:
I don’t think they think they own soldiers. I think that they do have a story in their minds about how the Left slimed soldiers during and after Vietnam, which they are determined not to let happen again. It’s a part of this story that there were some actual soldiers who were willing to help the Left vilify their comrades, for the sake of adulation or whatever. (John Kerry.)
I suspect that what happens is that whenever (what they think of as) The Left does anything they take to be the 60s all over again, and some soldier seems to be helping them, then that soldier has, according to them, revealed himself not to be a real soldier, but a dishonorable one like Kerry. So going after him or her is fair game, not going after a real soldier for political purposes.
That this makes it psychologically possible for them to hound soldiers who never asked to be part of any big controversy in the name of defending the troops is the least of its peculiarities.
I like Rusty Shackleford:
“No one is accusing Obama of making the story up.”
That’s exactly what they were doing. And if that is no longer an issue, why is this worth any time? We’re talking fairly ancient history here. It has no immediate relevance to operations in Iraq or Afganistan, there is no reason for the bloggers or the Pentagon to need to verify it. It’s pure character assasination, done to silence dissent. Ugly.
Captains complain, bloggers get stuff wrong and exaggerate, and politicians pander.
Honor in this case is reserved for those who walk the streets with an M-16; that may include the Captain.
Bring them home or put them in an isolated base to keep the Russians away from the oil. Let the Iraqis get on with their lives however they choose.
von,
Your comments on rules of evidence and abuses therein sound fascinating. Would you consider writing them up in more detail with some examples as a front page post?
As for this from OCSteve:
It sounds like the captain is answering a follow-up question, not contradicting Obama’s account. Obama made no mention of the platoon going after the Taliban for the express purpose of capturing those weapons.
Gromit : Maybe its just this wording: “capturing Taliban weapons”. I take that to mean that the point of the action was to capture weapons. Something like “using captured Taliban weapons” would not have that same meaning to me.
Note that I’m not disbelieving the Captain in any way – his statements are far too plausible unfortunately. I just think that O cranked it up a notch in the retelling.
Obama made no mention of the platoon going after the Taliban for the express purpose of capturing those weapons.
That’s not true at all, Gromit. Obama claimed “they were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.” That is exactly “going after the Taliban for the express purpose of capturing those weapons”. According to Obama, Bush didn’t equip our fighting mean properly so they had to go after the Taliban to get their weapons.
The story here is primarily that right-wing bloggers behaved badly in slandering someone who’s putting his life on the line for them, but it is also about how such bloggers were so blinded by pettiness that they missed an opportunity to ding Obama for exaggerating and playing politics with the military. (Well, most rw bloggers, that is: Redstate has a much saavier take.)
OCSteve:
“You want soldiers to train more with real ammo you better increase the Pentagon’s budget by a fair amount.”
Sorry, no can do. The economy would collapse because the napkin says so. We pledged to not raise taxes for at least 100 years, which oddly enough is exactly the amount of time President John McCain plans on being at war. Raising taxes and buying a few more bullets would cause conservatives to quit their jobs and limit their efforts in all other spheres, except dressing up like Indians and tossing weak tea into various bodies of water because their principles have been violated and they are deeply afraid that they might like being violated.
That’s why all of you guys have to share a bullet, which Andy keeps in his top desk drawer, because those suckers don’t come cheap.
Better idea. Behave as our Army captain has and make do with what’s within ready reach. Borrow the money for the bullets from the Chinese at market rates, requisition the bullets from your chosen defense contractor, stopping momentarily to purchase stock in the defense contractor, because after all if the stock doesn’t go up, what’s all the fighting about anyway, load those bullets into whatever cool weapons we can think up, place those weapons on pallets for airlift into Iraq and Afghanistan, distribute said weapons and ammo to newly trained in-country nationals, who sell the weapons to their brothers-in-law in the militias or in the caves, who then fire our precious ammo, which last we saw was in short supply at Camp Pendleton, at our guys and then in the heat of the moment drop a weapon or two and skedaddle, where finally, our bemused Captain picks up the weapon and finds out there is no ammo in the accursed thing because most of it has been shot into the poorly armored troop carrier the Captain and his exposed ass rode in on.
superdestroyer:
“However, since almost no Ivy Leaguer serves in the military these days, it is no wonder that no one on Senator Obama’s staff knew what they were talking about.”
First of all, the shitheads running the Green Zone over the past 5 years could have used an Ivy Leaguer or two to show them how to reach around and grab their butts, instead of earning young republican extra credit at their elite religious 2-year colleges.
After Commander-in-Chief George W. Pattonlyridiculous bullshit his way into the Presidency in 2000, there was video at nine of said leader and his cast of big swinging dicks, Rove, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, probably two more military experts (the Magnificent Seven) from Focus On the Family and Bob Jones University, striding like gunfighters down from the ranch and telling us that the men were now in charge.
$3.6 trillion dollars later (an estimate of the eventual cost of our wars, which included the cost to the economy in higher oil prices and continued occupation) and we now know the cost of a rolled up pair of socks stuffed down the front of a flight suit.
More video. Every time I’ve turned on FOX over the past seven years I see video of the same seven unidentified stinking bedraggled Middle Eastern enemy trainees practicing their Jungle Jim and tumbling skills.
It was just shown again last week during some patriotic business scare show, probably on Neil Cavuto, who could use a bullet.
These seven guys, who practice on the Jungle Jim every week on FOX, have kicked the butts of the big swinging community college-graduated swinging dicks previously mentioned.
Let’s say the Captain is lying and Obama is lying too. Good for them.
I say its time and hooray for some fresh lies because if we had as many bullets as we have had old lies over the past seven years, we’d be Masters of the Universe.
Here is an on the record example of a similar phenomenon, in the NYT magazine’s long article about a forgotten American outpost in the Korangal Valley of Afghanistan:
As Sgt. Erick Gallardo put it: “We don’t get supplies, assets. We scrounge for everything and live a lot more rugged. But we know the war is here. We got unfinished business.”
It’s absolutely astonishing that these right-wing blowhards really, truly care more about smearing a member of the “Democrat Party” (can someone please explain where this phrase came from, and why?!) than about the reality of “supporting the troops.” It’s sickening.
That’s not an unreasonable inference, OCSteve, but I don’t think ambiguity equals exaggeration.
Keep in mind that the nutroots are trying to wipe out a mid-level officer at a time when we are hard pressed to keep many of them in the service already.
Same reply to von. Obama isn’t responsible for your jumping to conclusions. That’s what follow-up is for, and it looks like that’s what Tapper did (in this case).
Von:
Redstate has a savvier take?
Yes, Publius99 on one of the threads said that if the story is true, he/she would shoot him/herself (after being sexed by Erick Erickson).
Savviest thing I’ve read at Redstate since johnt. came over here and did a poor impression of a funny person.
The rest of what you say is in fact savvy. Because you are savvy. Don’t ruin it by mentioning Redstate. Savvy? 😉
The number of comments to this post are astounding.
It is fair,however, to consider: was the anecdote Obama depicted unrepresentative? Was it a normal occurrence, was it symptomatic of a larger family of issues? Or was this an anomaly that would mislead? I have no idea, but it is what I would want to find out.
Same reply to von. Obama isn’t responsible for your jumping to conclusions. That’s what follow-up is for, and it looks like that’s what Tapper did (in this case).
Huh? What conclusion did I jump to? That Obama said “they were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief” and the “because” part of his statement doesn’t reflect what his source actually said?
You do understand that Obama is a politician, and not the messiah, right? You can accept that he exaggerated here and still think that he’s the best guy for the job.
Thullen, I was thinking of these stories, which rightly focus on Obama and don’t make the colossally stupid mistake (intellectual, moral, and political) of blaming the captain:
http://www.redstate.com/stories/elections/2008/obamas_platoon
http://www.redstate.com/stories/war/barack_obama_is_either_stupid_ignorant_or_an_absolutely_pathetic_liar_or_all_three
that first RS link is yet another “i talked with someone who says Obama’s story is ‘just not plausible’ ” post. and then the commenters call Obama a flat-out liar. pretty savvy stuff.
the second link doesn’t work.
von, you are jumping to the conclusion that “capturing Taliban weapons [for their own use*]” = “going after Taliban for the express purpose of capturing weapons for their own use”. Presumably these soldiers are over there to go after the Taliban, right? And doing so successfully would presumably afford them the opportunity to capture weapons to replace their own broken equipment, without that being the primary mission, yes?
* This is clearly implied and, AFAIK, universally inferred.
They are willing to trash someone’s good name because what he says doesn’t fit their political narrative. And that’s despicable.
Query: how do you trash someone’s good name when he hasn’t even given it? Some of the credibility issues arise precisely because the good captain hasn’t given his name. I understand why he would not want to give it, but I don’t see calling bs as despicable given the facts as presented.
I didn’t read everything (who could possibly endure) but the general tone of the milbloggers was “bs without verification beyond asking the same source to repeat his story”. They didn’t appear to say the Captain was lying, but that the whole story sounded fishy. In other words, someone is not telling the truth here (Obama or the Captain).
And the milbloggers were at least partially right: Tapper’s “verification” proved that Obama had a basic fact entirely wrong.
In short, I fail to see how this impugned the honor of the good captain. If anyone’s to blame, it’s Obama.
Why Obama’s campaign wouldn’t get the story straight is beyond me.
Saying “I picked up a copy of the newspaper in the grocery store, because that was easier than making a separate trip to the newsstand” is not “exactly ‘going to the grocery store for the express purpose of buying a newspaper'” (paraphrasing von at 12:41 quoting Gromit at 12:17).
It is far more likely that it means “I picked up a copy of the newspaper in the grocery store [while I was there shopping for groceries], because that was easier than making a separate trip to the newsstand.”
Excellent analogy, JanieM.
No, it isn’t. It just isn’t. You’re reading “express purpose” into it, and it isn’t there.
Read more slowly, Von. You have a record here of quite consistently misreading through haste, and you’re doing it again. This is a matter of simple English.
To say one is engaging in Act A for purpose 1 is not to say that pupose 1 is the sole or primary reason for engaging in Act A unless one specifically adds something to the sentence that adds that limitation.
My purpose in writing this comment may be to correct you, but it’s not the sole reason and may not be the primary reason; the primary reason may be to address all the lurkers.
If it makes you feel better, I do agree that the sentence can be read as implying the meaning you insist is the only one, and I think that’s poor phrasing in this context. (And I pointed out the distinction between training shortages and field shortages in the first place.)
But your insistence that your reading is the correct one is not supportable. Please reread the sentence in question and observe that the sentence doesn’t, in fact, specify an “express purpose.” There was no statement about what the mission was when the platoon used captured weapons (which is a perfectly plausible and common practice, and thus not as damning as implied).
It’s not like it’s news that at no point in the war and occupation did Bush ever ask for the money to bring troops and equipment to a verifiable standard of readiness. War supporters have always had to attack examples of inadequate preparedness, because there’s no room to say anything like “But we know this is unrepresentative, thanks to budget allocation Y and preparedness review X”. The administration has never really cared about the well-being of the individuals and units its leaders claim are defending civilization, but war supporters can’t be honest about that and still support anything at all like the war we actually got. So, projection comes into play.
It takes a peculiar mindset to insist that a mission is truly essential to the survival of our society, to refuse to fund it to even basic standards of general readiness, and to attack those who propose not risking forces whose readiness we can’t verify as unserious. But this administration has given us all lots of chances to see just how deep cognitive dissonance can go.
What Gary and JanieM said.
I would add that I try, with all politicians, whatever I think of them, to bear in mind that when they are not reading from prepared texts, one can expect some points to be less clear than they would be if someone had written them. (In my experience, Obama requires this sort of interpretive charity less than a lot of people, but less does not mean not at all.)
Thus, for instance, a lot of bloggers made a lot of the fact that (according to them) CPTs do not command platoons. (I gather this isn’t true, but that’s irrelevant to this case, as it turns out.) Before anyone did any fact-checking, I thought: well, what Obama actually said (“I heard from a Army captain, who was the head of a rifle platoon…”) could mean: I heard from someone who commanded a rifle platoon while a CPT. But it could also mean: I spoke to a CPT who had, at some point, commanded a rifle platoon.
Compare: “I spoke to the President, who was a student at X High School” — no one would take this to mean that the person who said this was under the misapprehension that someone could be President while still in high school. It would be obvious that they meant: I spoke to (the person who is now, or was at the time of the conversation) the President, and who (at some earlier time) was a student at X High School.
Had I written what Obama said, I would (I hope) have recast it to remove the ambiguity. But this is a totally comprehensible thing for him to have meant, I think.
I try to do this for everyone, whatever I think of them. I don’t see any real point to pouncing on what people say when it’s obvious that they could have meant something different, or (alternately) expecting people to speak in carefully crafted prose.
I don’t see any real point to pouncing on what people say when it’s obvious that they could have meant something different, or (alternately) expecting people to speak in carefully crafted prose.
really?
the point, clearly, is to try to make Obama seem like an unacceptable candidate.
the criticism is coming from the same people who think (or at least say) that Obama is a secret Muslim and a Manchurian-style 60’s radical who, when he can’t turn the US into a communist hell, will unleash race wars as his presidency fails; and as one last shout out to his (not-so-)secret hatred of America, he’ll turn the Democratic party into the party of black people, and black people only, forever.
you can’t really expect people who believe (or repeat) any of that crap to give Obama’s words a good-faith reading. right ? they are partisan hacks, trying to save themselves from what could be a historic electoral blow-out.
Cleek, I think you’re providing an example of unreasonably uncharitable interpretation (of Hilzoy) right there.
Gromit and Gary, respectfully, y’all miss my point (and Hilzoy half-misses it to the extent she adopts Gary’s words):
Gromit and Gary do not address the part of Obama’s statement that I am. Here is the statement again. I will again put in boldface the part of it that I’m referencing:
End blockquote
Well, von, an alternative would be to destroy captured weapons. It’s not a good idea to just leave them lying around, after all, and I believe that troops often do exactly that.
Ral, I’m asking for alternative readings of Obama‘s claim, not alternative explanations in general (‘tho yours is a fair one).
(By “exactly that” I mean destroy, not leave lying around. drat! this ambiguous language, English.)
This testimony about National Guard readiness lays out the same problem shown by the anecdote in gory detail. The testimony is by that well-known left-winger Michael Gilmore, Assistant Director for National Security in the Congressional Budget Office, in May 2007.
See in particular the section “Overstructure and Cross-leveling” and “Equipment”.
BTW, so we’re clear: I’m not saying that this statement by Obama is or is not a reason to vote for him, or that will affect my personal voting preference in any way (although I’m still leaning McCain at the moment). People exaggerate in conversation all the time, and politicians more than most. But this is an exaggeration — and a politically significant exageration given the subject matter.
I read it the same way you do von. So my reading comprehension is at least as bad as yours. But in watching the clip, I hear it the same way.
They were actually capturing [watch the hand motion] Tall-e-bon weapons because it was easier to get Tall-e-bon weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
Again, I’m sure there are shortages at the end of a 7,000 mile supply chain. And I don’t dispute what the Captain says. I just think Obama exaggerated what the Captain told him.
This is all forest for trees. It was widely publicized at the time that a significant portion of the funding for our mission in Afghanistan that was specifically legislated for that purpose was diverted into funding for the Iraq invasion without such legislative approval. That is, the executive branch breached the Constitution, by this action, something far more egregious than one isolated incident. The example is merely an apocraphal illustration of the far greater betrayal of the American people at large perpetrated by the Bush Administration and the Rumsfield Department of Defense. The grandiosity of such a betrayal is beyond the ability of our populace to wrap their minds around, but the anecdote with its human face brings the betrayal home in a way that people can make sense of and feel it.
von: when I first heard what Obama said, I assumed he meant: the soldiers were sometimes short of weapons or parts, so they scavenged from the Taliban, not: they raided the Taliban just for the weapons, or: they had to do this *all the time*, because they were *never* supplied. And I assumed that the “because” could have meant: they took Taliban weapons for use, rather than destroying them.
It wasn’t until I started reading around that I discovered that a lot of people took Obama to have meant that this whole platoon was sent into battle without *any weapons at all*, or that they had engaged the Taliban *for the sole purpose of getting weapons.* That reading hadn’t occurred to me, and it still seems pretty farfetched.
I don’t understand what all the uproar is about.
If this happened, it’s anecdotal – certainly embarassing and detrimental to the particular captain’s unit, but hardly an indictment of the entire military. If it were symptomatic of a larger problem, we would be hearing story after story like this every day.
Obama used it to illustrate a point – our military is the best in the world, but under Bush it has been so strained, stressed, and mismanaged that this anecdote – which should be impossible – actually happened. I don’t think Obama means our military is done, he’s pointing to coughing canary.
Wow, between this and the plagiarism charge we literally have the two silliest tempests in a teapot I’ve seen in a while.
This is what the Right wing is going to do during the election season. See, there are people out there who are psychologically addicted to outrage. Now Obama hasn’t given them much, so they are just going to dig deeper and deeper to get their fix.
Earlier von:
Later von:
There are 2 causal questions that have gotten entangled:
1) Why did the soldiers need/want/take weapons from the Taliban for their own use?
2) Why did they go after the Taliban?
Obama is quoted in Hilzoy’s post as saying: They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
To me, this speaks unambiguously to the first causal question: Why did the soldiers take weapons from the Taliban? “Because it was easier…etc.”
This doesn’t say anything one way or the other about what their “express purpose” was in going after the Taliban in the first place. But von, you said that it says “exactly” that.
My grocery store/newspaper analogy could also be read in more than one way; the interpretation I added in square brackets the second time around is probably the mostly likely (especially since I designed it that way), but I would agree that it might be read in other ways, especially if you took out the word “separate” from the original phrasing. (I might just live closer to the grocery store than the newsstand.)
It’s possible, I suppose, that Obama meant, “Our soldiers are pursuing the Taliban to get weapons, because that’s easier than getting them through our military channels.” But that’s not what he said, and that’s certainly not the only reading of what he said..
Also, since our soldiers are over there to (among other things) pursue the Taliban in the first place, it seems more than a little bizarre to me to assert that getting weapons would be their express purpose in pursuing them, or to assert that anyone else would be asserting that. So to speak.
Trying another approach: If Obama had said, “Our soldiers are pursuing the Taliban because they need the Taliban’s weapons” — that would speak directly to their purpose in pursuing the Taliban. That’s not what he said.
And yet another, since you (von) think the “because” is so important: the “because” in the Obama quote is explicitly about why they took the Taliban’s weapons. It doesn’t say anything one way or the other about why they pursued the Taliban in the first place.
Or rather: it’s not that it’s farfetched to think that someone could have meant that they raided the Taliban just to get weapons; what seems to me farfetched is the idea that that’s the only reasonable interpretation.
BTW Hilzoy: I’m surprised no top level post on the plagiarism thing. I mean, you might think it is silly, but a lot of people seem to have been offended by it, even among Democrats.
And it’s right up your alley in terms of things well-elucidated by Hilzoy.
(My last comment was meant to clarify my next-to-last, not any of the comments that were posted while I was writing it.)
Yet another way: If Obama had said, “Our soldiers are pursuing the Taliban to get weapons,” I think that would mean what von and OCSteve seem to think he meant in his actual quote.
Or he could have said “Our soldiers are pursuing the Taliban because they want the Taliban’s weapons.”
But he didn’t say that.
He actually said nothing about why they were pursuing the Taliban. He only said something about why they were taking the Taliban’s weapons.
Again, I’m sure there are shortages at the end of a 7,000 mile supply chain. And I don’t dispute what the Captain says. I just think Obama exaggerated what the Captain told him.
So, OCSteve, you’d agree that there’s a significant gap between interpretations: “Obama exaggerated” vs. “Enemy propagandist”?
So, OCSteve, you’d agree that there’s a significant gap between interpretations: “Obama exaggerated” vs. “Enemy propagandist”?
Well sure. All I’ve accused Obama of is exaggerating to score a political point. Given that is what politicians do, I don’t actually hold it against him in any significant way.
Ara: I got tired of Obama accusations du jour, and this one seemed to me less substantive than most. On the one hand, is it news that politicians have speechwriters? On the other, is Hillary Clinton, of all people, trying to say that she does better at writing her own stuff than Obama? (See e.g. here.)
The thing is: I am normally happy to skewer my own candidate. As it happens, I just don’t think the Obama campaign is making a lot of mistakes right now, and the ones they are making are the kind about which I generally want to say: oh, give me a break, whoever makes them. (Michelle Obama and her pride in her country, for instance: I mean, if I actually thought she had been bitterly ashamed of the US until this very moment, that would be one thing, but I think she just said something wrong, the way people do in long grueling campaigns. Same reason I haven’t gone on at great length about McCain’s ‘Bomb bomb Iran’ moment: I don’t like it, but I can absolutely see how it would happen if one had to talk to voters, donors, etc. nonstop for months.)
Anyways: so I find myself in this position in which, if I wanted to truly go to town on stuff like this, it would, as it happens, shake out in such a way that I was writing consistently for Obama or anti-Clinton, just because Clinton is screwing up a lot more these days. I know there are posts I have not written because I don’t want that to be more true than it has to. It doesn’t help that whenever I explicitly try to just find out the answer to some question, not knowing who the answer will favor, it comes out favoring Obama. (Leg. records, transgender positions…)
This link from early 2007 showing undermanned units and equipment transfer resulting from the surge.
Another link showing undermanned units in the regular army leading to call-up of the IRR, in 2004-2005.
Sorry — link non-closure.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/15/AR2007021501524_pf.html
and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111701735_pf.html
Von, you wrote:
Von writes: “Gromit and Gary do not address the part of Obama’s statement that I am.”
Yeah, I did. I addressed what you wrote.
Now you’ve written a new statement, and object that I didn’t address it.
Alternately, you are objecting to my having addressed what you actually wrote, rather than what you thought, which you now put forward.
If you simply said “I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear as to what I meant; here’s what I meant,” I could say “fine, thanks for clarifying.”
As it is, this is not a reasonable response on your part, Von. You keep doing this, too. Just as yesterday you made a bunch of objections to what Obama should be given credit for as regards the specific claim of a completely original idea, never before voiced by any other Senator, and, per Hilzoy’s criteria, being an originating sponsor, not co-sponsor of a bill passed into law; I turned that around and asked you to point out which laws McCain had gotten passed under the same criteria, and you chose to answer an entirely different question that you preferred to answer.
You can take back, modify, or offer new versions that more clearly state what you actually meant, to your heart’s content. But you don’t get to claim that’s what you wrote in the first place, and it’s not a grand idea for you to scold other people for responding to what you did write, rather than what you meant.
“In contrast, JanieM [also adopted by Hilzoy, appropriately covering her bases] does address the relevant point”
It’s the same darn point.
As I said, I do agree with you that the the overall implication of Obama’s comments, in context, about scavenging weapons, was a bit misleading, but the statement that you previously singled out nonetheless didn’t carry, in itself, the meaning you claimed it did.
The problematic aspect of Obama’s two sentences is that the second directly follows the first, which structurally strongly implies that it logically follows from the first, and is part of the same argument. That’s a problem, because it’s not supportable that way.
As a separate observation, that doesn’t logically or structurally follow the first observation, it’s reasonable and doesn’t carry the same argument any longer.
“And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition; they didn’t have enough humvees.”
The “as a consequence” has the same problem, because it’s saying that the state lack of ammunition and humvees were a consequence of the soldiers being reassigned, and that doesn’t seem to follow at all.
But absent that “as a consequence,” it’s apparently a correct statement, and otherwise unobjectionable.
Then comes: “They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.”
That’s semi-true. When you pick up an AK or other weapon on the field, whether because you’ve been in the field fighting a while, and have burned through your ammo — which doesn’t indicate any kind of supply problem in the slightest, it’s just inevitable at a certain point if you’re out and distant from resupply long enough — it’s not a matter of not not being resupplied, let alone the president having anything to do with it.
It still doesn’t in the least say anything about what their mission was when they happened to pick up enemy weapons. It just doesn’t.
But more structural problems like not having enough up-armored Humvees, because the priority was to ship them to Afghanistan, or not having enough .50 cal, or a better heavier weapons, for the same reason (if so), are appropriate and legitimate complaints.
So with your rephrasing, I’m in partial agreement with you, Von. But I seriously wish you’d ease up on having such trouble with ever just saying “huh, I wrote that in over-rushed fashion; what I meant to write was…,” rather than insisting that X is what you wrote all along, and anyone who doesn’t see it, particularly me, is a big rude doody head. It would be more pleasant to not have to go through that sort of thing over and over, or even at all.
ral:
Von:
Not to pick on ral here, a generally sensible and worthy contributor, but von is exactly right here about what he wrote, and this is a prime example of someone blatantly misreading.
I only point this out to note it as an example of the sort of careless misreading that a lot of people frequently engage in around here.
Including me, from time to time, of course; I’m human, too, and we all are vulnerable to making mistakes out of tiredness, distraction, haste, being over-emotional, having low blood sugar, being ill, being on medication, having other things in our lives distract us, or simply because now and again we all make mistakes.
That’s fine.
But a lot of misreading is just through avoidable haste and misreading (lack of charity is another huge reason, but I don’t mean to write an essay here on all the multitudinous ways communication can go bad), and I’m just pausing to encourage people to try to, sometimes, slow down a bit, reread what the other person said, and consider whether there might be another interpretation, as well as to be sure that you’ve correctly understood the precise meaning of their phrasing, if they seem to be writing with enough care that precision matters.
(That a lot of people write very clumsily, confusingly, or unclearly — including myself at times, of course — is another problem, but not easily or quickly curable, though taking a bit of time and care, and making a bit of effort to write clearly, is also something all of us usually wouldn’t be hurt by trying a touch harder.)
Sorry for the pompous lecturing; I just think that a little improvement in reading and writing carefully can save everyone a lot of wasted time and pointless emotional drayma. I know urging this sort of thing does little, but coming to everyone’s homes and offices, and whapping you with a newspaper each time you misread (and hiring someone to do this for me) isn’t in my budget.
Feel free to have a dog treat on me each time you write an elegant sentence, though. I sure do!
Given that is what politicians do
Just to expand on this, not because you want to hear this, but because I just took the dog for a walk and it occurred to me…
I’d no sooner expect a politician to give up exaggerating than I would expect my dog to quit licking herself that way after we go out.
hilzoy: I just don’t think the Obama campaign is making a lot of mistakes right now
They need to take Michelle off the campaign trail. She is (lately) a great source of material for the VRWC.
Er… ah… ahem.
Gary, see hilzoy above at 03:29 PM on this topic.
I disagree with you and von as to misreading. I believe my interpretation is a valid one, though not the only possible one. To wit,
“They need to take Michelle off the campaign trail. She is (lately) a great source of material for the VRWC.”
One stupid line. What else? Please don’t tell me you’re joining in the pile on about her thesis, which is: (1) the stupidest thing I’ve seen this campaign season, (2) in many cases, racist.
I am really utterly sick of the double standards people apply to left- & right-of center politicians. You & von still do it. I am so sick of it.
If anyone is wondering what I’m talking about re: Michelle Obama’s undergraduate thesis: see, e.g.
Hilzoy is referring to what Obama said, not what von wrote.
What von wrote: “1) what is your alternative, generous reading […] and (2) how is that alternative reading in any way supported by what the good Captain actually said?”
He didn’t ask about weapons, or Afghanistan, or something about the captain; he asked for an alternative reading.
Your response was “Well, von, an alternative would be to destroy captured weapons….”
Your response is a non-sequitur to being asked for a reading. One doesn’t perform or put forth a reading by destroying weapons. Destroying weapons doesn’t produce a new reading of what Obama said.
Cleek, I think you’re providing an example of unreasonably uncharitable interpretation (of Hilzoy) right there.
really? because i didn’t intend to criticize her, not even a little bit. she simply left a good hook on which i could hang my gripe.
i have no doubt Hilzoy (and probably every one else here) knows many of the skreeching ninnies on the right aren’t arguing about this in good faith – i just thought i’d make it explicit.
von: So: Soldiers, who need weapons, are actually going after Taliban weapons because they can’t get weapons from the DoD. How does this not “exactly” mean “‘going after the Taliban for the express purpose of capturing those weapons'” (My claim). Other than the fact that Obama uses different words?
In your addition of the words “for the express purpose of”. It’s that simple.
Now I first read the quote as you did, and I agree that Obama could have expressed himself better. But you’re wrong — simply, flat-out wrong — when you declare that this
[U.S. soldiers under the Captain’s command] were actually capturing Taliban weapons,* because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.”
denotes a causal relationship — let alone an “express purpose” — between the pursuit of the Taliban and the capturing of Taliban weapons. It’s simply not there. The capturing of the Taliban weapons could have been incidental to the mission parameters; it could have been an added goal; it could have been one of many different objectives; it could have been the express purpose of the mission. You don’t know, because Obama didn’t say.
Like I said, I got it wrong too and I would have preferred Obama had been more careful in his phrasing, but this insistence that there is only One True Interpretation of his comments is doing no-one any favors. Leave it at “his comments were potentially misleading” and move on.
Gary, my answer to (1) is my alternative reading of Obama’s causal claim, as von, I believe, requested. That is, my interpretation (noted above) of what “because” meant in context.
Now perhaps I was not as explicit in my comment as I might have been but what I wrote was not a non-sequitur.
Katherine: One stupid line. What else? Please don’t tell me you’re joining in the pile on about her thesis…
Not at all. I made fun of folks who were right here the other day.
After the “one stupid line” you mentioned:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
How do you figure that went over with the VRWC?
I am really utterly sick of the double standards people apply to left- & right-of center politicians. You & von still do it. I am so sick of it.
You’ll have to give me an example if you want me to respond as I don’t have a clue what you mean.
“You’ll have to give me an example if you want me to respond as I don’t have a clue what you mean.”
I’m not Katherine, but I’ll offer an example.
The day before yesterday you wrote wrote:
I responded:
Your response to that wasn’t along the lines of “hmm, perhaps you have a point,” but was instead:
Now I have to say that I’m actually pretty unsure what the heck your point was here. Obviously you have your own assumptions, etc. It couldn’t be otherwise. But you seemed to be presenting that as some sort of defense for being illogical, as if somehow because you have assumptions, like any human, therefore being illogical and making no sense made sense.
Since that makes no sense, it perhaps wasn’t your point. But if not, I have no idea at all what your point was. But it seems to be some sort of defense of your assumptions about McCain, if I get anything out of it at all.
But maybe it’s not the best example, since I’m so unclear what you meant.
Another example would be how you still go on and on about how you could never, under any circumstances, vote for the evil Hillary Clinton. You don’t make any attempts to claim it’s rational, because apparently it isn’t. If that’s not an example of an irrational double-standard, what is?
It’s my impression I could name a dozen leftward Democratic politicians, and ask you to write a couple of sentences of your opinion about them, and then if I asked you to justify it rationally, you’d be quite likely to respond that your response wasn’t rational.
That’s fine, but it’s not terribly compatible with then expressing puzzlement as to when you do you ever engage in an irrational double-standard about rightish and leftish politicans.
Gary: On assumptions: you accused me of having assumptions. I said, yeah, I do.
If the only appropriate response from me is “perhaps you have a point” you are going to be disappointed. 😉
But you seemed to be presenting that as some sort of defense for being illogical, as if somehow because you have assumptions, like any human, therefore being illogical and making no sense made sense.
Sorry if it was illogical to you. It made perfect sense to me. 😉 Given your definition of “spiked”, I was wrong. (Perhaps you have a point.) The overall context of my comments in that thread was media bias. I was disgusted because the “paper of record” ran this crap. McCain went to them and answered their questions. Keller apparently decided what they had was too weak and decided not to run it. There is no evidence that something new suddenly came to light – no “Ah Ha” – now we can run it. They ran crap because they were worried about someone else breaking it (still crap). And for the record I hate McCain and would not vote for him. This was just plain old shoddy journalist, hell; it was not journalism at all…
If that’s not an example of an irrational double-standard, what is?
I hate brussel sprouts. I can not for the life of me give you a rational reason why. I mean they’re good for you. Still, they gag me. Can’t swallow one. Purely irrational.
I hate McCain only slightly less than HRC. Why? Dude is a genuine gold-plated military hero. You know how I am about that! Irrational support for anything military. I should love him. POW, etc. Right up my ally. I would not vote for him if I was subjected to all the torture he experienced. Does it make it more palatable if I have irrational hatred for a Republican?
That’s fine, but it’s not terribly compatible with then expressing puzzlement as to when you do you ever engage in an irrational double-standard about rightish and leftish politicans.
I’ve been typing this for some time so I haven’t seen if Katherine responded yet – but to her, and you, I am leaning towards voting for Obama. That has been obvious for a while. In large part, that is because Katherine (and Hilzoy) told me I should give him a closer look. Equally obvious is that I have given Republicans plenty of crap. These days I am an equal opportunity crap flinger. So show me where I have a double standard. In general I dislike politicians these days. I specifically hate some of them. Totally irrationally…
Katherine:
It is peculiar, is it not, that the punkish sorts at NRO can protest the “political correctness” of Michelle Obama when she claims in an undergraduate thesis that Princeton was not academically designed for blacks, when the founder of the publication believed at one time that blacks were not academically designed for Yale (I think he wrote a book that was originally some sort of undergraduate thesis, called “God and White Men, and certainly not Clarence Thomas, at Yale”), not to mention any old public high school south of the Mason-Dixon?
What an odd beast this thing is called the Republican Party: embittered old neo-conservatives who cut their teeth on Marxist-Leninist gruel, southern white Democrats who couldn’t hack the updating of their quaint social order, California car dealership owners who view the selling of overpriced undercoating on a new Buick as the pinnacle of American exceptionalism, and judging from later developments, a group of snotty, young Indian Brahmins who enunciate their objections to anything but free-market capitalism and small to disappearing government in highly annoying mincing English, vicious, cap-toothed bleached blondes who would sooner sleep with Roger Ailes than pay their taxes, big-haired, prancing evangelists who fake their way to tax-free millions, and other freaks.
It’s like cutting open a stale fruitcake and looking at all the odd, inedible ingredients studding the inside.
von: when I first heard what Obama said, I assumed he meant: the soldiers were sometimes short of weapons or parts, so they scavenged from the Taliban
Sure, Hilzoy, he may have meant this. That’s not what the Captain told Obama’s staff, but it is a much more reasonable thing to say. But more in my response to JanieM.
There are 2 causal questions that have gotten entangled:
1) Why did the soldiers need/want/take weapons from the Taliban for their own use?
2) Why did they go after the Taliban?
In fact, these are related questions because of the underlying premise: soldiers need adequate weaponry. Obama makes the charge that our soldiers have been so mistreated by the administration that they are reduced to arming themselves by taking weapons from the enemy, Red Dawn style, because it’s “easier” (his word) to get weapons fro the Taliban than it is to get them from the DoD. Moreover, your gracious response to my question, points to the circularity of Obama’s logic:
And yet another, since you (von) think the “because” is so important: the “because” in the Obama quote is explicitly about why they took the Taliban’s weapons. It doesn’t say anything one way or the other about why they pursued the Taliban in the first place.
OK, so: (1) Soldiers need weapons; (2) soldiers aren’t getting adequate weaponry from George Bush’s DoD; (3) it’s easier for soldiers to get weapons from the Taliban (per Obama’s literal statement, which is surely an exageration); and (4) soldiers attack the Taliban, and take their weapons because they need their weapons due to points 1-3. But soldiers don’t actually attack the Taliban for their weapons. The weapons, which are critical and allegedly easier to get weapons from the Taliban than from George Bush’s DoD, are simply a side effect of attacking the Taliban and taking their weapons. In other news, eggs always come before chickens, but chickens are needed to lay eggs.
And whether you are a Chicken partisan or egg-firster, Obama’s statement isn’t supported by the Captain’s statement.
Look, this subject is played out. I happen to think it’s clear that Obama exagerated to make a point and said something silly in the process. It seems that a lot of Obama supporters are saying things like, well, I didn’t hear it that way and/or there’s no way he said something that stupid so he must not have meant it quite that way. And that’s fine — even expected.
And just when I think OCSteve is an exception to the freak rule, he goes and admits to not liking brussel sprouts.
I think Obama, in addition to mandating an end to cynicism, uninvolvement, and uninformednessnness, is going to cram brussel sprouts down all of our throats, and not a moment too soon.
OCSteve has an infinitely large line of interpretive credit from me. If he hadn’t earned it a long time before, which he did, his response to Clinton after Wisconsin alone would have secured it.
Brussel sprouts are delicious tiny cabbages. Of course my wife hates them so I never get any.
And here is a lovely non-sequitur for you all…
Six Charlies in Search of an Author
OCSteve: The right-wing shriek committee is going to find SOMETHING hugely offensive and hysteria-inducing about Obama no matter what.
And, honestly, probably about his wife no matter what.
There’s no sense trying to avoid it, nor is there any reason to let them dictate behavior.
In fact, a good politician should consider their overreaction to harmless statements fertile ground to sow a message of “This is the sort of hatred and unreasoning bile that needs to be removed from politics if America wishes to move forward in prosperity”.
I wonder if there’s a candidate with a message that might work with?
von: I’m still leaning McCain
Even after he voted to allow waterboarding and other forms of torture? For me, that would be a deal-breaker. It thoroughly shatters his claim to be against torture.
Of course, his “I did not meet with that woman” is pretty ghastly too. He’s clearly been in the pocket of lobbyists, and Paxson in particular.
So what does he offer (other than the “R” by his name) that Clinton or Obama don’t?
“Gary: On assumptions: you accused me of having assumptions.”
No, I didn’t.
“I said, yeah, I do.”
Indeed, which is besides the point, since you couldn’t have assumptions. We all have assumptions. The point is to have only assumptions that are rational and supportable.
There would have been no reason for me to have stated that you have assumptions, since it couldn’t be otherwise.
What I actually wrote, and which you didn’t read carefully, was “You’re inserting some of your own assumptions there.”
As in, you’re inserting some of your own, unsupported, errroneous assumptions.
I thought that was unnecessary to say, since why would I have been suggesting that you’re inserting some grounded, correct assumptions.
Needless to say, “yes, I have assumptions” is not a defense when someone suggests you’ve inserted incorrect and unsupported assumptions.
“Given your definition of ‘spiked’, I was wrong.”
It’s not “my” definition. It’s what the word means:
They never remotely did that to the Times story, and nobody has even suggested they did. It comes from literally taking the piece of paper with the copy, and putting it down on a spike you had sitting upright, on a frame, on your editor’s desk, with the rest of the killed stories.
The rest of what you say seems to be your imaginings, which I won’t comment on, save to say that I strongly advise against putting forward one’s fantasies as any kind of substitute for evidence. I also think it’s a terrible idea to even engage in the kind of fantasizing you do, because so far as I can see, it bears little relationship to the likely reality, and yet you seem to put a lot of faith in the unlikely likelihood that your imaginary version is
something close to reality, and it’s my obsertaion that this sort of thing frequently leads to a lot of misapprehending of the universe around one’s self.
But it’s advice you’re free to ignore as worth what you paid for, of course. 😉
“(Perhaps you have a point.)”
Better. 😉
I don’t think I have any response to the rest of what you wrote. But you do seem to have a tendency to respond with variants of “I am a normal person” whenever someone — okay, me — suggests you’re making a point that is illogical or unsupported. The fact that you’re normal, or make assumptions, or have preferences, is a given, and isn’t a defense for being wrong about is and isn’t logically supportable or correct. That you like or dislike someone makes you just like everyone else; if someone says “it doesn’t make sense for you to believe X about person A because of Y,” saying “I don’t like person A” isn’t a sequitur. And that’s the kind of one-sided bias you still tend to engage in quite a bit. It leads to you incorrect conclusions at times, I suggest, which is why I suggest you might want to reconsider that sort of logic, or non-logic. It’s one thing to have a prejudice — we all have prejudices — it’s another to simply say “and because of that I’m going to be irrational, but my answer is still defensible.” If you notice a prejudice, the thing to do is to try to figure out what’s reasonable despite your prejudice. Not to just say, “oh, I have a prejudice,” and stop dead there, never thinking about the topic again.
Not that I think you do that. You show an admirable ability to reconsider. Thus why I bother to write these long explanations to you, which I wouldn’t do for someone I don’t respect.
“Indeed, which is besides the point, since you couldn’t have assumptions.”
Should be “couldn’t not have assumptions.”
I made it through the Michelle Obama thesis. She sounds really angry, but the poll results are interesting if I read them correctly (I read it twice this time).
One finding was that when blacks went to college, their intellectual comfort level with whites dropped by two-thirds, and never recovered. Social comfort with whites dropped by 90%. Political comfort with whites dropped by half. General comfort with whites dropped by 93% after attending Princeton. What are our colleges teaching African Americans?
Her conclusions section did not touch these findings.
“So what does he offer (other than the ‘R’ by his name) that Clinton or Obama don’t?”
The R besides his name. The Democrats are too much for that class warfare that’s gotta go, you know, as well as not being serious about foreign policy and Iraq and lots more.
But, then, you’re still relatively new around here, and not that familiar with von’s POV. (Von, Sebastian, this is your cue to applaud me now for making pronouncements on what’s on your agenda, because you’re big fans of people in the opposing party doing that for the other.)
I was a fair Goon Show fan back in the early/mid-Seventies, ral, so for you:
It’s like comments, you know.
I have to say: having been maybe four years ahead of Michelle Obama at Princeton: it was, in fact, a very, very white place. I think it was someone at NRO who was asking: hey, what did Michelle Obama mean by that? I don’t know what she meant, and I’m not even sure I could articulate what I mean, but I was quite clear about it at the time. It’s at least related to whatever made people say that Princeton was country-clubby and preppy, both of which were also true.
Gary: The point is to have only assumptions that are rational and supportable.
Oh now you go too far sir! 😉
The rest of what you say seems to be your imaginings, which I won’t comment on, save to say that I strongly advise against putting forward one’s fantasies as any kind of substitute for evidence. I also think it’s a terrible idea to even engage in the kind of fantasizing you do, because so far as I can see, it bears little relationship to the likely reality, and yet you seem to put a lot of faith in the unlikely likelihood that your imaginary version is something close to reality, and it’s my obsertaion that this sort of thing frequently leads to a lot of misapprehending of the universe around one’s self.
Schizophrenia? Well maybe Obama will get me health insurance that covers that. I may as well vote for him for that reason as any other.
which I won’t comment on
Er, except you did, at length, and it amounted to “you’re nuts dude”.
But you do seem to have a tendency to respond with variants of “I am a normal person”
I’m nuts. That’s my cover.
You show an admirable ability to reconsider.
Crap. Now I’m not nuts enough?
Thus why I bother to write these long explanations to you, which I wouldn’t do for someone I don’t respect.
I do appreciate the fact that you take the time for this.
OK. I’m slamming you here Gary. I’m not mad and I’m actually chuckling as I write this. But could you read your last post one more time and put yourself in my shoes?
Now let’s compare this captain, whose complaints Obama exagerated for the sake of emphasis, to Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen, who was a figment of his imagination.
What white students actually think of them?
While I’m hesitant to over-generalize from my own experience (at a somewhat elitist school), I do recall that many white students aren’t aware of how their attitudes come off to non-white students (and how their default assumptions were irritating and even offensive to non whites). And that some of those students were rather resistant to being informed of this. (I’m afraid it is NOT PC to consider a drunk “F*** off, chinks” to be racially offensive).
For black and other non-white students to face this after believing in a color blind meritocracy, well….I’m not sure what’s the “correct” response to be…
“Er, except you did, at length, and it amounted to ‘you’re nuts dude’.”
I regret I was so unclear (and that I didn’t proofread that comment), since that’s not at all what I was trying to say.
I was trying, in short, to say that you shouldn’t confuse your hypotheses with fact. That’s all.
In no way was I trying to say that you were “nuts,” or anything like that. The worst characterization would be that it’s my impression that you’re don’t always apply the logic that you’re capable of, and I’m urging you to so apply it more rigorously.
As for Michelle Obama’s thesis, I’d like to note that 1985 was twenty-three years ago, and was less than twenty years after the assassination of MLK, and the rest of the innumerable terrible events of the Sixties and early Seventies, in which Black Panthers were being systematically gunned down in an assassination campaign by the FBI as part of COINTELPRO, the FBI was bugging MLK and sending the tapes to his wife, along with notes to King advising him that suicide was the only way out, hundreds of race riots had taken place across the U.S., not long after the sweeping violence across the South, as racist whites fought and killed dark-skinned folks, and their Jew allies, with clubs, guns, bricks, dogs, and more.
If someone can’t imagine why she might have been a tad conscious of being an African-American, and very interested in applying her intellect to, along with many other topics, questions of what that meant, then it’s possible such a person might want to educate themselves a bit more as to how and why things might look, then and now, to someone with an African-American perspective.
hilzoy: I have to say: having been maybe four years ahead of Michelle Obama at Princeton: it was, in fact, a very, very white place.
I visited there a lot (6-7 times per year, 2-3 days at a time) when my sister’s “significant other” was there in 2000-2002.
At that time I think I saw fewer Caucasians than Asians, but I swear I did not see a single black person at all.
But my memory is not great. Mostly I remember the phenomenal chapel (not religious, just a fantastic building) and this FANTASTIC ice cream place downtown.
Gary: We’re cool. As I said I chuckled. I do appreciate your feedback and that is the truth. But come on, if I get a chance to bust your stones I’m not going to jump on it? Hah!
Here it comes:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080223/D8V053E00.html
via Josh Marshall.
Get a load of the professional vomiteers the “reporter” quotes.
Whether Clinton or Obama wins this thing, it’s time to have it out at full volume– both fists full of mud–knocking over the podium and charging the audience anger with so-called patriot Republicans who somehow were born with American citizenship but manage to pay respect only to the Republican Party, which is nothing more than an alien, foreign power bent on wrecking America.
The filth quoted in the article are Traitors.
When Obama is elected, for the sake of our country, he needs to turn the entire apparatus of Homeland Security against them.
Bug em, round em up, waterboard them, and disappear them.
That will be a tad difficult to white people who are too used to thinking of “white” as the default.
Too, I think some people are not thinking things through. The attitude that blacks are, by default, there only by the grace of affirmative action was in their faces consistently, both now and in the 1970s and 80s. If they see, concretely, that they are every bit as good as these people holding those attitudes, they are, in all probability, not going to feel very close to white people.
Perhaps THAT’S what colleges are teaching African Americans, hm?
What Gary said.
But also: an anecdote from my college years, which I think I’ve told before, but what the heck. In my freshman year, Princeton seemed to assign rooms for black students in the following way: on certain hallways, every double would have one black student and one white student. I was in such a hallway. As a result, a lot of my friends, and of course my roommate, were black. When room draw for sophomore year approached, five of us (2 white, 3 black) decided to room together.
Then, maybe a week before room draw, all my black friends but one dropped all their white friends, in unison, and the three black friends with whom I was going to room decided they’d get a triple. In an odd way, it was lucky for me that they dropped all their white friends: if it had been just me, I would of course have assumed that I had done something awful, or was perhaps just generally unlikeable, but one of the dropped friends in particular was a person about whom it was just impossible to see why anyone would dislike her.
In any case, though, it was incredibly hurtful and bewildering. I was talking to my Dad about it, though, and he, being very wise, said (after some commiseration): think about it from your friends’ point of view. Princeton is very, very recently integrated, after a long history of being the white Ivy school. It is still overwhelmingly white, and has a lot of traditions and culture that are associated with its being very white. Your friends, on the other hand, are mostly from the black middle and upper class; they might well be suddenly wondering: what exactly does it mean to be black here? How can I fit in, or how can I even just exist, without being somehow coopted? They rightly don’t want to somehow disown who they are, or become sellouts, or anything, and they might very, very easily feel that they have to do something to prove that they aren’t. And that’s a very difficult situation to be in.
I thought about it, and the more I thought, the more I thought that he was probably right. At the same time that all my black friends dropped all their white friends, they also got politicized about being black, so that made sense. Moreover, the one black friend who did not drop all of us all at once — who actually seemed just baffled by the whole thing — was also the only one who was from an actual black inner city neighborhood, and suddenly I thought: it’s pretty twisted, but I can see how she would be the one who was immune to having to prove that she was authentically black or whatever.
I also looked around at Princeton, and that was when I really realized just how white it was. As I said, I don’t know that I can explain this; I only know that when my Dad said this, I did look around, and it just leapt out at me. I could easily see how if you were not sure what it meant to be black, and you didn’t want to sell it short or disown it or something, you wouldn’t want to just fit in there. It just seemed as plain as the nose on my face.
And I can also see how, if one were both black and thoughtful, one might try to make sense of this, possibly by writing a thesis about it. I don’t think it would be an easy thesis to write — as I’ve said, I can’t pin down what was so very, very white about Princeton, or why I was so clear that it would be a disorienting place for a person of color, and hopefully I’m older and wiser than I was when I was a senior. I haven’t read Michelle Obama’s thesis, but I would expect it to be full of ways of putting things she might not espouse today, just because what it sounds as though she was writing about is so very, very hard to describe with any kind of exactitude.
Bug em, round em up, waterboard them, and disappear them.
First you need to codify Patriot. Then you need to micro-serialize and register ammunition because with 280,000,000 private firearms out there, that train has left the station. Perhaps the $4000/yr crowd can process the paperwork.
This is what the ‘cut taxes on businesses that keep jobs here’ boils down to:
“In the case of any taxable year with respect to which a taxpayer is certified by the Secretary as a Patriot employer…”
-From S. 1945; a Bill Co-Sponsored by Obama
A very scary bill that seems to offer a 1% tax break to some business owners (to counterbalance the 17% tax increase that this group will bear). If the Democratic Party was legitimate, and was really out for the working families in the United States, it would cut off the flow of cheap immigrant labor and put tariffs back in place. Maybe raise the hedge fund guys’ tax rate above 15%. That’s not the game plan, I’m afraid.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.1945:
For the record, in case I run for President or am married to someone who runs for President, I wrote an undergrad paper tracing the Nietzschian influences in Henry Miller’s __Sexus__ __Nexus__ and __Plexus__.
All parties …… professor, fellow students, advisor, kept a straight face.
I think they humored me because I was, you know, an UNDERGRAD!
Please don’t hold me to it. Besides, I’ve changed my mind. I wish Nietzsche had lived long enough to spend a week in Paris with Miller on the Ovarian Trolley. He wouldn’t have been so overwrought.
Title of paper: “The Will To Screw”.
not true, but it might as well have been
Bill:
That sounds like a lot of work. I like my mayhem a little more haphazard, off the cuff, and spontaneous.
“Get a load of the professional vomiteers the ‘reporter’ quotes.”
Ah, Nedra Pickler. It’s like 2003 all over again. Good times, except for the “good” part.
Alas, that What A Pickler is defunct.
“That will be a tad difficult to white people who are too used to thinking of ‘white’ as the default.”
Although I’m hardly the best person to start compiling a reading and viewing and talking and experiencing list, I’d recommend one starter for such a person or persons be viewing all of Eyes On The Prize I & II, and reading Taylor Branch’s‘s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65, and At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, the latter not so much because of Dr. King per se, but because the books do such a good job of conveying the broad sweep of the civil rights movement, and some of what it was like to be African-American, in those years.
There are about 8000 other books one might prefer first, of course, and others will doubtless have far better educational suggestions, beyond the obvious Black Like Me experiment, which is a bit more than most people are inclined to try.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are so blind that they can look around today, and not seeing discrimination and racism in front of them, happening to themselves or their family or friends, and then conclude that there’s very little overt racism in today’s society, not realizing remotely how different their experience is from someone who actually gets to be treated differently pretty much every day of their lives, multiple times a day, simply because they’re non-white.
Engineers didn’t have to write a thesis, but we did have to take a technical writing class. I got in trouble. Donna Shalala, our Chancellor, was the subject of my final paper. C minus and no political prospects for me. Dropped my transcript average below 3.0.
It is kind of unfair to be picking through college papers from twenty years ago.
the “Democrat Party” (can someone please explain where this phrase came from, and why?!)
Wikipedia has an interesting article on the phrase. I had assumed it was a recent invention, but it was widely used as a pejorative at least as far back as the 1930s.
My daughter was in college at an elite university in the early 80’s. A friend of hers, who was black, also attended. The two races were so separate that she said they really could not even be very friendly, while at school. Still were friends at home, but tensions were such at school that both elected to just say, “Hi,” as they passed. It was sad for both.
And when people get all bent out of shape by Michelle’s remarks (my husband being one of them), my reply is a reminder that she has lived in this country as a black woman. Hers is bound to have been a totally different experience from that of her detractors.
This is one of those subjects that comes round again every eight months or so.
Although the good Wikipedia piece both links to, and briefly quotes a line or two of, Hendrik Hertzberg’s piece on the subject, I still recommend it as worth reading on top of the Wikipedia piece, to answer the question.
“It is kind of unfair to be picking through college papers from twenty years ago.”
Twenty-three years, and like a lot of things, it depends on how it’s done. There are plenty of things I wrote twenty-three years ago that I stand by, and some things I don’t. I’d certainly desire anyone to ask me if I still held to something I wrote twenty-three years ago, before going bananas on the assumption that I do.
(Note: Michelle Obama is about five years younger than me, and Barack Obama is a little under three years younger than me, so there’s even less reason for either to be assumed to be standing by something from twenty-three years ago, when she was only 21, and I was 26.)
As for Michelle Obama’s thesis, I’d like to note that 1985 was twenty-three years ago, and was less than twenty years after the assassination of MLK, and the rest of the innumerable terrible events of the Sixties and early Seventies[…]
This never ceases to amaze me, because of an accident of personal chronology. I was born in 1968 and I was becoming a teenager at the beginning of the 1980s. To me, the gap between those years was immense–it was my whole little life. The civil rights movement was distant history in books, and I never really realized the war in Vietnam was going on until it was over (which I can’t entirely explain, because I do remember hearing about the later moon landings and Watergate on TV, but the political awareness of young children is a strange thing).
The gap sure wasn’t immense to my parents, though. It was only when I got older that I truly realized that, in the memory of most people, the Vietnam War was recent during the Reagan years. September 11th, 2001 was six and a half years ago. In January 1981, the fall of Saigon was more recent than that. The JFK assassination and the Civil Rights Act were about as recent as the breakup of the USSR is today.
…and, note, Michelle Obama is only a few years older than I am–but what a few years, and what a different perspective.
I get the feeling that it’s recent for a lot of people.
Some republicans seem to have been offended by this sentence in particular:
“They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.”
I suspect that “capturing” or captured was not an exageration by Obama but rather a direct quote or a paraphrase using the same root word of what the captain told him.
Looting, or looted would have been the correct word, but it has bad connnotations in general and in the context of the military specificaly. US soldiers are supposed to be proffesionals who would never stoop to looking the corpses of the men they killed. Capturing just sounds better, even though you are just talking about ‘capturing’ weapons off the ground after a firefight.
What I think trips up many folks is that the experience of minorities in American is very much the same of non-minority Americans; they share much more in common than with, say, a Chinese farmer or an Kenyan herder. But where they do differ from mainstream Americans, the differences can be substantial, striking and profound. And the expectation that lives for all Americans are similar can be jolting when those areas of differences pop up and people stub their toes on them.
“Capturing just sounds better, even though you are just talking about ‘capturing’ weapons off the ground after a firefight.”
After you’ve killed the owners.
You seem to think that a) somehow “looting” is a more appropriate word; b) that everyone would acknowledge this, if only they were honest; c) therefore the word was being deliberately avoided; d) therefore, the implication of “looting” is an aspersion on U.S. forces, and therefore that is why some people are objecting to that sentence.
I know my opinion will mean nothing to you, but I daresay that every single one of those assumptions is incorrect. And I’m quite sure the last one is.
The people who are offended about that sentence are offended at the claim that President Bush’s Government would not supply them properly. Not that they’ve been accused of theft or low behavior.
And, yeah, after you’ve killed or driven off the enemy in battle, it’s fair to say you’ve “captured” any stuff they’ve left behind. It’s not a euphemism. It’s English.
von: OK, so: (1) Soldiers need weapons; (2) soldiers aren’t getting adequate weaponry from George Bush’s DoD; (3) it’s easier for soldiers to get weapons from the Taliban (per Obama’s literal statement, which is surely an exageration); and (4) soldiers attack the Taliban, and take their weapons because they need their weapons due to points 1-3. But soldiers don’t actually attack the Taliban for their weapons. The weapons, which are critical and allegedly easier to get weapons from the Taliban than from George Bush’s DoD, are simply a side effect of attacking the Taliban and taking their weapons. In other news, eggs always come before chickens, but chickens are needed to lay eggs.
How is this a chicken-and-egg scenario? These guys had a mission, and that mission involved capturing or killing armed Taliban soldiers. I’m sure they came across more than a few weapons in the process, what with the Taliban having been shooting at them and such. What is so difficult about the math here?
And whether you are a Chicken partisan or egg-firster, Obama’s statement isn’t supported by the Captain’s statement.
No, your assumptions aren’t supported by the Captain’s statement. And you are making the error of substituting your assumptions for Obama’s actual statement, as Gary, JanieM, and Anarch have already pointed out.
Look, this subject is played out.
Were the subject played out, your comment would have been a whole lot shorter. It perhaps would have consisted of only this one sentence.
I happen to think it’s clear that Obama exagerated to make a point and said something silly in the process. It seems that a lot of Obama supporters are saying things like, well, I didn’t hear it that way and/or there’s no way he said something that stupid so he must not have meant it quite that way. And that’s fine — even expected.
Folks are saying “I didn’t hear it that way” not so much to be charitable to Obama as to be charitable to you, von, by implying that your initial interpretation is not completely crazy, even if it is ultimately proven wrong. I hope you aren’t trying to make snarky about that charity here, or implying that it is indicative of some kind of weakness in their argument. Because if you are, then you shouldn’t be surprised if you find less such kindness directed toward you in the future.
And your interpretation was not entirely unreasonable, at least at first. You heard a sparsely-detailed anecdote, and you mentally filled in a blank or two, something we all do all the time. Obama never said one way or the other whether the platoon was conducting raids for the express purpose of arming themselves with Taliban weapons. Perhaps he omitted this detail out of haste or carelessness. Maybe he left it out because the idea that they would do so sounds ridiculous that he figured it wouldn’t survive a moment’s reflection on the part of the listener. Whatever the case, you nonetheless assumed he meant these soldiers WERE going out and jumping Taliban troops for no other reason than to get their guns. Fine, then, the question is worth following up on, which Jake Tapper did.
Then, when that blank was filled in for you by the captain himself, and the authoritative version turned out to contradict your assumption, rather than question whether you made a mistake in mentally filling in that blank, you instead concluded that Obama had actually exaggerated in a way that sounds totally f#@&ing ridiculous upon a moment’s reflection.
The simple application of Occam’s Razor would have prevented this whole argument.
“The simple application of Occam’s Razor would have prevented this whole argument.”
I don’t want to pick on Von, but we’ve engaged in this dynamic numerous times over the years now. From my POV, at least, Von misreads something, whether by Hilzoy, or Obama, or someone else, and then when several people suggest in varying degrees of emphasis that he’s misread, and working under a mistaken understanding of the passage in question, he digs in and explains why everyone else is wrong, often explaining that in fact he meant this other thing, which is exactly what he wrote in the first place, and anyone who doesn’t see this is either dim or dishonest or intentionally not seeing that which is obviously true.
From Von’s POV, of course — and I’m naturally not trying to speak for him, and he’s free and able to put it in his own words — he consistently makes an obviously correct observation, which a bunch of people inexplicably, or out of bias, or for some other invalid reason, simply don’t see, and are entirely wrongheaded, and sometimes rude, in arguing their ridiculous denial of the obvious truth.
Regardless of the Objective Truth of this dynamic, and what the Truly Fair Interpretation is — and obviously I’m no more objective than anyone else, and amn’t claiming to be — I’ll certainly observe that it’s a very familiar dynamic, now several years in the making, seen time and again between Von and Some Of Us.
Gary- I think you should avoid trying to read my mind in the future. You are amazingly bad at it.
Quit jumping on my stones. Quit it!
Quit it!
Okay, then.
No, quit it.
Ok.
But, really, is this not a serious story? Or this? What do you and Von think of the way Matt put it here?
Do you guys know my old blog pal Matt Welch? (Who literally wrote the book on McCain.)
(I think Matt W. is missing that the economy, unless it significantly improves, will also be a major part of the campaign, and that that also won’t favor McCain, to put it mildly. It’s certainly currently the #1 issue in every poll with most every category, and not the war, which I doubt will be the #1 issue, or even the #2 issue, unless Iraq melts down spectacularly dramatically, or regional war breaks out, between now and the election.)
Speaking of Afghanistan, Elizabeth Rubin reports from there, again, with a long NY Times Magazine piece as an embed with Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.
(About three and a half years ago I linked to another excellent Rubin piece, although she’s written a number of such others.)
I posted a link to this [SEE BELOW] Elizabeth Rubin piece, but it’s caught in the spam trap, due to a number of other links.
Wait until the right blogs see this by the morning:
Will this get through the spam filter? I can hardly take the suspense.
Also, first SNL in months.
————-
Okay, now I’ll make it a dead paste of the URL, since it didn’t go through with a working actual link.
——-
Okay, crap, just go to the NY Times Magazine section.
Crap, can I post at all?
Great, than I recommend going to the New York Times website and the Magazine and reading Elizabeth Rubin’s piece as an embed in Afghanistan, which Typepad has kidnapped half a dozen attempted other comments from me about.
In the Nedra Pickler article that John Thullen & TPM pointed out, I noticed this quote by Roger Stone:
“Many Americans will find the three things offensive. Barack Obama is out of the McGovern wing of the party, and he is part of the blame America first crowd.”
There are three kinds of people, those who can count and those who can’t.
And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition; they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
A few comments on this “English lesson” 🙂
1) The differences between spoken and written English can be huge. OCSteve was correct to point out the emphasis in the spoken Obama statement. The “capturing” sentence is not a separate sentence at all. It flows and in fact is a conclusion to the preceding sentence. It emphasizes the affirmative act of going and getting weapons.
2)”Capture” implies taking something by force or design. It implies going after weapons, whether as part of a mission or as a mission by itself. It denotes an affirmative act, not just collecting weapons abandoned by the Taliban. As used here, it does not denote picking up the newspaper because it is easier than going to the news stand. It implies there probably isn’t a paper at the news stand, so we had better “capture” one here.
3) That Von’s interpretation is the most reasonable, IMHO, is also shown by the fact that in Tapper’s “fact check” the Captain felt it necessary to emphasize that “[t]he purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons.” Why the clarification if Obama’s statement was not most susceptible to exactly that interpretation? I fully realize that an alternate explanation is that the Captain is simply setting the milbloggers straight. But that explanation simply avoids the common sense “hearing” of Obama’s statement. The Captain was correcting Obama.
4) Obama was dead wrong about the lack of ammunition. And the lack of ammunition comment lead directly to the “capturing” comment-it created the need. It makes the “capturing” seem much more than casual.
Final comment: national security is huge with me and with a lot of conservative voters. I am very concerned about who will be the next CIC. If Obama wants to reach across the aisle and win in the general, this sort of comment isn’t going to help. We can parse all we want. It only ignores the simple fact that Obama had it wrong (or at least not completely right).
bc: national security is huge to me too. That’s why I plan to vote for the only person who got the biggest foreign policy decision of the last decade right, not the one who wants our troops stuck in Iraq for a hundred years, while the army breaks and the treasury is bled dry and our soldiers and Iraqis die.
Hilzoy: I can appreciate that point and understand why you and others consider that a huge point in Obama’s favor. I’m more concerned about where we go from here and I’m not convinced Obama has that right. However, that is a topic for another day. My only point here was that this was no small detail to simply brush aside. Presidential candidates need to get the facts correct on the military, especially when using anecdotes to make a point.
I would think the frustrating thing for an Obama supporter would be that he had Hillary right where he wanted her. He didn’t need the anecdote. If he stated the facts as he received them from staff, I’m sure they’re feeling his wrath now.
Using a dictionary I don’t find a necessity of “capture” implying violence. For me it is the most neutral term for “getting something belonging to the enemy”. When I read the “capture Taliban weapons” remark I thought of two possibilities: 1) Collecting the weapons of fallen or fled enemies (and maybe putting them to use), 2) use the contents of discovered enemy weapon caches. What I did not think of is Battle of the Bulge strategies, relying on enemy supplies for the success of the mission (effectively making fuel dumps the primary objectives).
—
What are the bets that the captain’s name will be leaked soon and that he can kiss his career goodbye on dubious charges (while we will be treated by our right-wing patriots to more saucy details about the pink-commie 5th columnists that have infiltrated our (actually not mine) sacred armed saviours)?
I also expect that there will be demands of charging him with treason for giving military secrets to the enemy (independent of claims that the whole supply shortage story is a lie in the first place).
—
Maybe one could buy a bit more ammo for training, if some of the more exotic and/or expensive toys could be postponed or cancelled.
Maybe, but don’t be so sure which kind you are.
Or are two kinds of people, those who read carefully, and those who don’t.
The preceding paragraphs:
Stone’s quote refers to the antecedents:
1. “refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin”
2. “a photo of him not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem”
3. “Now Obama’s wife, Michelle, has drawn their ire, too, for saying recently that she’s really proud of her country for the first time in her adult life.”
HTH.
(It’s actually two kinds of people: those who don’t read carefully and make mistakes, and those who read carefully and only make fewer mistakes.)
Incidentally, I have no idea why some of my later, abbreviated, comments, have been released from the spam trap, but not the main earlier one the others were trying to supplement. Oh, well.
Maybe, but don’t be so sure which kind you are.
Or are two kinds of people, those who read carefully, and those who don’t.
The preceding paragraphs:
Stone’s quote refers to the antecedents:
1. “refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin”
2. “a photo of him not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem”
3. “Now Obama’s wife, Michelle, has drawn their ire, too, for saying recently that she’s really proud of her country for the first time in her adult life.”
HTH.
(It’s actually two kinds of people: those who don’t read carefully and make mistakes, and those who read carefully and only make fewer mistakes.)
Incidentally, I have no idea why some of my later, abbreviated, comments, have been released from the spam trap, but not the main earlier one the others were trying to supplement. Oh, well.
And why the heck is this blocked, when there are no links at all?
This is crazy. Now comments with no links of any kind are being rejected as spam?
The above comment was stuck in the spam trap for about 20 minutes. Despite, you’ll notice, having no links.
Subsequent to that, I found that there was nothing I could write, while still making sure there were no Typepad cookies surviving, and no matter what I put in the ID fields, that wouldn’t get the “this is being held as spam” response.
Will this post? It’s another test. It would be nice to not have to keep doing this each time, and to have to spend 10-20 minutes making 7 efforts to get a single comment to post.
On substance, I have to say that Obama has a little trouble coming not because of the Pledge thing, which is a calumny, but because he genuinely said that he never puts his hand over his heart during the National Anthem, because his grandfather taught him you’re supposed to just stand there.
But his grandfather taught him wrong; official flag code, as stated in the U.S. code, is, in fact, to put your hand over your heart during the Anthem (if you’re a civilian). That he, a U.S. Senator, didn’t know that, is something he’ll take hits over.) (I’m not including a link, of course, since that’s forbidden, which helps discourse ever so much.)
Now the fun of seeing if I’ve wasted more time on another comment that won’t post, or requires ten more tries, and won’t show up without e-mail correspondence.
Presidential candidates need to get the facts correct on the military, especially when using anecdotes to make a point.
no they don’t. at least, not if they’re Republican.
“We have seen a steady erosion of American power and an unsteady exercise of American influence. Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, ‘Not ready for duty, sir.'”
GWB, paragon of deceit
reaction to this blatant lie, from the oh-so-soldier-supportive 101st chairborne? beautiful silence.
I thought Mike Huckabee did a good job of living up to the claim that he has a good sense of humor.
–mysterious gf man
If so, that strikes me as once again being fetishistic about patriotism–you can’t be patriotic unless you do it exactly with this attitude and exactly with this body language and exactly with this stance. Reminds me about the debates among comic book fanboys about it’s not REALLY Batman unless he loses the yellow chest emblem or it’s not really the Blue Beetle unless it’s Ted Kord or…
“If so, that strikes me as once again being fetishistic about patriotism”
Of course. Obviously, whether you put your hand over your heart, or stand at respectful attention, so long as you have the attitude of respect, it has no affect on your judgment regarding policy, or anything else. Of course.
But fetishizing and looking for any avenue of attack is what these folks do, and in this case at least they’ll be factually correct, so we’ll hear about it; that’s all I’m saying. And there will be some voters who just hear that, and to whom it will make a difference. People often vote on trivia; it’s just the way it is.
Batman is better without the yellow target on his chest, but I can live with it; it’s the way his character is portrayed that’s crucial; his costume, not so much.
Dan Garrett is the original Blue Beetle, so certainly it doesn’t have to be Ted Kord. But if it’s Ted Kord, better that Keith Giffen write him.
I’m looking forward to the animated Justice League: New Frontier, too.
but because he genuinely said that he never puts his hand over his heart during the National Anthem, because his grandfather taught him you’re supposed to just stand there.
Bizarro World got all pissy about this several months back, pointing out the United States Code has a recommended way of paying respect to the flag during the national anthem, including putting hand on heart.* Unsurprisingly, this meant that Obama was sleeping with Kruschev, or something.
Surprisingly, several people popped up on that thread to say that they had been taught the same thing – no hand on heart for anthem. Unfazed, the wingnuts, they were.
*Their fealty to the USC was cute. If someone asked them whether Congress should be able to tell them how to address the flag, I imagine lots of them would say “hell no!”
I always thought that the “hand over heart” was for the pledge, standing respectfully was for the anthem.
You know, I knew that my lousy public speaking skills & lousy poker face, & trail of comments on this very site ruled out politics for me, to say nothing of the whole “she loves terrorists” thing. But I didn’t realize that, oh, not memorizing the flag code, and my extensive ties to the Weather Underground, sufficed (in 2006, I spoke at a thing at Northwestern with one of the Chicago professors Obama is accused of associating with.).
Maybe we can start demanding that presidential candidates release their library records to make sure they haven’t checked out any suspicious literature.
“Surprisingly, several people popped up on that thread to say that they had been taught the same thing – no hand on heart for anthem.”
It is ignorant. And does bespeak of a cultural separation. I mean, I learned to put my hand on my heart for the anthem at around age 4 or 6 or so, and that’s as a red diaper baby in Brooklyn, NY, who got sent to the Vice-Principal’s office in 3rd or 4th grade (I forget which just now) after a long argument with the teacher wherein I insisted that the Supreme Court had ruled as regards the Jehovah’s Witnesses that saying the pledge couldn’t be compulsory; my parents got called in, and I got yelled at a lot before, after a week or more, the district superintendent over-rode the principal and endlessly-feared vice-principal (Mr. Amdur) to say that I was right.
(I spent large chunks of elementary school arguing with my teachers, and explaining where they’re wrong; in 4th grade I also made a practice of hauling two large general reference books of my own, so I had proof when I raised my hand to correct the teacher, as I did more or less constantly that year, and less contantly in later years, after I realized that this was not a grand way to make friends and influence people. But I mention this knowing people will find it shockingly out of character, and impossible to believe I could have been like like that. ;-)) (I was equally a snot in earlier years, at home, correcting the grownups, who were full of misconceptions and incorrect facts, which I knew from my reading a bunch of new books every week. But I gave up telling them they were wrong pretty soon — mostly — well, less, anyway — and just kept it to myself. Er, more than before.)
But I was also a Cub Scout, Weblo, and Boy Scout, so not knowing that you put your hand on your heart for the anthem would have been inconceivable to me by age 7.
So it is damned ignorant.
But we live in vast numbers of subcultures, and lots of folks were never Scouts, and no nothing of this sort of stuff, and could care less, and that’s fine, too. People are ignorant of all sorts of things, and if it’s not important in your environment, it isn’t.
But it doesn’t help when you’re running for political office, and asking for the votes of people to whom such ignorance is upsetting and meaningful.
And it’s not entirely lunatic to look a bit of askance at such ignorance when you’re in a community where it is important. It’s a small thing, but it does have just enough real connections to larger issues to make it not completely insane to at least mention it. Symbols do matter, and for defensible reasons.
To conclude from not knowing about putting one hand’s on one heart for the National Anthem, however, that someone is seriously not patriotic, or anything like that, however, would be completely insane. Mostly it just means that Barack Obama’s grandfather got a bit of trivia wrong, and that’s all; that’s pretty damn trivial itself.
Katherine: “I always thought that the ‘hand over heart’ was for the pledge, standing respectfully was for the anthem.”
That’s wrong, of course.
What does the flag code say about scribbling on flags? Is that unpatriotic? How about trampling on one?
But I was also a Cub Scout, Weblo, and Boy Scout, so not knowing that you put your hand on your heart for the anthem would have been inconceivable to me by age 7. So it is damned ignorant.
You see, I don’t get this. Why do you put your hand on your heart for the anthem? I see your cite to the U.S.C., but all it says that those present “should” stand at attention facing the flag, not “shall” or “must” etc. Nor does it purport to impose any penalties for violations (that I can see, unconstitutional as they would be).
I mean, my father was in the army and he taught me the same thing Obama’s grandfather taught him – stand at attention for the anthem and if you’re wearing a hat, take it off. No hand on heart. Really, this was so fully ingrained in me that I used to look at people with their hand on their hearts and think they were stupid.
Maybe it’s a midwest thing.
And also note that, IIRC, the “flag code” was passed circa WWII, we seemed to along fine with our patriotism and conduct during the anthem just fine before that (not that I was around for any of that, of course).
“You see, I don’t get this. Why do you put your hand on your heart for the anthem?”
Because it’s what’s done. Why bother with the anthem at all? Why bother standing? It’s custom. It’s a symbol of being a citizen of a particular country.
It’s not mandatory, of course.
The next logical question would be “why follow or have customs?,” but I think I won’t try to answer that one.
As for symbols of patriotism, I see nothing admirable about either regarding them as ultra-important and more important than the freedoms and meanings of our Constitution, or in putting a lot of importance on making sure to disdain such symbols and sneer at them, or the people to whom they are important, perhaps because of their associations with the deaths of a sibling, a parent, a grandparent, a family tradition, or just because of how they grew up.
Symbols, and patriotism, have their place, and like all things should be used wisely and appropriately, rather than otherwise.
I don’t know how this thread got off on a tangent regarding Michelle Obama’s thesis, but my general reaction is: race relations in the 80s were pretty f’ed up. Not as f’ed up as before the 80s, but still. They are less f’ed up today, for which we should be glad. But it seems kinda crazy to assume that the 80s were just like today, only with worse hair — which is an assumption that a lot of the criticisms of Ms. O’s thesis seems to be based on.
Also, for Chrissake, she was a lot younger then. Perspectives change.
Jesus F. Christ Gary, I realize I’m wrong, but you’re being ridiculous. Membership in the boy scouts is not compulsory, reading the flag code is downright uncommon, & the informal ways that most people learn these things–public elementary school, parents, grandparents–are apparently not fully aware of protocol.
Because it’s what’s done
clearly, it’s not “what’s done” everywhere.
Well, then, you’re a flip-flopper then….
(Also…a lot of her critics seem bound and determined to be like THEY were in the 1980s–toddlers and pre-schoolers. And their tantrums haven’t improved a bit…)
I feel the same way about putting ketchup on eggs. It’s just unnatural.
BC comment this morning at 4:07 a.m. captures my concerns regarding an Obama foreign policy exactly — although I’m more concerned his “without preconditions” statements (which also tends to get parsed endlessly and generally turned into “without some preconditions but with others that I’m sure he intended but simply didn’t mention” by Obama’s more thoughtful supporters) (e.g., Hilzoy, MY, Publius).
But, as BC also notes, this is a discussion for another day.
I’m more concerned with McCain thinking that Pervez Musharraf is “legitimately elected” & responsible for saving Pakistan from being a “failed state.” Publicly wishing for Castro’s death is lousy public diplomacy for the sake of scoring politicial points domestically, too.
More of the same.
“Jesus F. Christ Gary, I realize I’m wrong, but you’re being ridiculous.”
?
How so? I wrote:
What’s ridiculous?
And why are you telling me things like “Membership in the boy scouts is not compulsory, reading the flag code is downright uncommon,” that I already stated?
cleek:
I don’t follow how this is a sequitur to the question “Why do you put your hand on your heart for the anthem?”
It seems to be a non-sequitur. What’s your answer as to why most people stand up for the national anthem when at a ball game, or put their hands on their heart, or say the pledge of allegiance, rather than “because it’s what’s done, it’s custom”?
Sometimes it feels like people are just trying to start a pointless and meaningless argument over nothing whatever.
(And sometimes it feels like people just don’t feel agreed with strongly enough, and they want to badger you into more emphatic language, as if that meant your agreement was more meaningful and comforting.)
“although I’m more concerned his ‘without preconditions’ statements”
You didn’t like what he said about it in the debate yesterday, or other times in the past month?
Can you be more specific, please? (I’m assuming you’re not talking about stuff from months ago, as if he’d never said anything on the topic ever again.)
What do you find objectionable about his current stance on that, as regards his language last night, for instance?
Sometimes it feels like people are just trying to start a pointless and meaningless argument over nothing whatever.
indeed. hence the topic this thread references.
I can’t see a single thing wrong with meeting people without preconditions. It would be different if Obama had said what Albright et al tried to pretend that he had said, namely that he planned to meet without preparations. That would be ludicrous.
I’ll just quickly note that, while I put my hand over my heart during the anthem, the crowds where I’ve done it have generally been split between those who do and those who don’t. More power to them, says I. I sure as hell don’t do it because of some code, though; I do it because it feels right to me, pure and simple. All I ask of others in the crowd is a modicum of silence and respect for the tradition, even if they don’t partake themselves.
Which reminds me, I’ve never said the Pledge of Allegiance and anyone who tries to make me can go f*ck themselves. My love for this country is no-one else’s goddamn business, and I refuse to kowtow to others’ idolatrous prostrations. Any country which requires such public demonstrations of loyalty, IMO, needs to look to true patriotism instead of reflexive jingoism.
YMMV, of course.
“Obviously, whether you put your hand over your heart, or stand at respectful attention, so long as you have the attitude of respect, it has no affect on your judgment regarding policy, or anything else.”
Eek. Effect. It has no effect.
And, of course, people are free to sit on their ass and thumb their noses, if they prefer. I wouldn’t respect that, but I wouldn’t care beyond that, either.
von: I don’t know how this thread got off on a tangent regarding Michelle Obama’s thesis, but my general reaction is: race relations in the 80s were pretty f’ed up. Not as f’ed up as before the 80s, but still.
I dunno; race relations at Princeton were probably as f’ed up in the 80s as at any point in its history. Militancy travelled slowly back in those days. And god only knows how hard it was to be a black woman at Princeton, seeing as how we weren’t fully integrated gender-wise until 1991 or thereabouts (depending on where one wants to draw the line).
[hilzoy would know this better than I; by the time I got there, the gender discrimination was a distant memory, even though some of the seniors had been present for it. Talk about swept away by the tides of history.]
I’m more concerned with McCain thinking that Pervez Musharraf is “legitimately elected” & responsible for saving Pakistan from being a “failed state.”
McCain’s carefully crafted statement, of which these two statements were part, was an excellent example of realpolitik, hedging bets, and advancing America’s interests.
Publicly wishing for Castro’s death is lousy public diplomacy for the sake of scoring politicial points domestically, too.
That’s pandering that can be done without cost: Even if he didn’t say it, that’s obviously the US view and, moreover, there are a heck of a lot of other countries that would be more than happy to see Castro die.
Now, criticism of the “Ba-ba-ba-bomb Iran” stuff is legitimate. But these two statements aren’t problematic in the least.
Yes, von, I know how fond you are of “our bastards” arguments. Suspect others will disagree & find the comments interesting.
Gary: you know what? You’re totally right. I woke up on the wrong side of bed re: lapel pin patriotism, & completely overlooked your comment about how his grandfather just made a minor protocol error. Instead of misdirecting that sort of crankiness I should outsource it to John Cole; he’s clearly better at it & .
Von, could you explain how either Musharraf was “legitimately elected,” or why it’s in our interest for someone in McCain’s position to say so?
Because I don’t have a clue as to how it is so; maybe that’s just me, of course.
I mean, just about no one in Pakistan thinks Musharraf was legitimately elected, so an American politican who does seems to be clearly supporting a largely-hated-and-despised dictator, who moreover is on the eminent verge of being thrown out of power.
So it looks to me like a wildly destructive and incredibly foolish thing to say, aligning us even further, as it does, with a hated loser. It’s just about all downside; what’s the upside?
But since your view is obviously very different, I encourage you to explain it further, if you’d be so kind as to take a few moments. If so, thanks.
“who moreover is on the eminent verge of being thrown out of power.”
Should be “imminent verge of being thrown entirely out of power.”
Anarch, I don’t have any specific knowledge re: Princeton, so my comment was general.
I can’t see a single thing wrong with meeting people without preconditions. It would be different if Obama had said what Albright et al tried to pretend that he had said, namely that he planned to meet without preparations. That would be ludicrous.
Preparations that would, presumably, include preconditions — meet with Bob, my undersecretary, first; let’s talk about an agenda; no, we will not be devoting the entire meeting to US human rights violations; etc.; etc. And, thus, my prior point:
“[Obama’s without preconditions statemant] tends to get parsed endlessly and generally turned into “without some preconditions but with others that I’m sure he intended but simply didn’t mention” by Obama’s more thoughtful supporters) (e.g., Hilzoy, MY, Publius).”
We can get into whether Obama’s version of “without preconditions” is wise or not on an appropriate thread.
Gary, are you really so unclear on this subject? Hilzoy seems to know exactly what I’m talking about — even to the point of identifying and pre-rebutting a simplistic criticism of Obama’s statement (Albright’s statement).
Yes, von, I know how fond you are of “our bastards” arguments. Suspect others will disagree & find the comments interesting.
No, not “our bastards.” We have no permanent bastards, “ours” or “theirs”; we have only bastards necessary for our interest.
After all this time, Katherine, I figured you’d know where I stand on this one.
Von, could you explain how either Musharraf was “legitimately elected,” or why it’s in our interest for someone in McCain’s position to say so?
I can answer that by example. Assume McCain said:
“I believe that Musharraf was not legitimately elected. [Or, in response to a question asking whether M. was legitimately elected: “no” or “no comment”].”
Recall, too, that McCain didn’t offer his assessment. He was asked.
“We can get into whether Obama’s version of ‘without preconditions’ is wise or not on an appropriate thread.”
What, is there a rule about not doing it here and now? But do feel free to start another thread, as you like, of course.
Meanwhile: “Gary, are you really so unclear on this subject?”
As to what you think? Yeah. Why is it you just about never actually answer any questions I ask you?
It’s a perfectly simple question: “Von, could you explain how either Musharraf was ‘legitimately elected,’ or why it’s in our interest for someone in McCain’s position to say so?”
Why not just answer it?
Secondly, Here’s a transcript of last night. Here’s what Obama said:
So, what’s your specific objection?
Sorry, I hadn’t yet seen this:
I don’t see how the second is relevant.
As to the first, let me restate: do you really think that McCain’s statement is helpful, rather than highly destructive, to our interests in Pakistan, insofar as it further convinces Pakistanis that we are indifferent to their interests, and care only about having a hated dicator doing our bidding? If so, why?
Do you disagree that Musharraf is largely despised in Pakistan? Do you dispute that he’s on the verge of being removed from power entirely? Do you dispute that the U.S. needs to do its best to find other Pakistanis to work with, and that that the U.S. government’s focus, at Bush’s direction, on Musharaff, has been very destructive in that regard, and that as a result we’re extremely late in doing much about it?
In any case, if McCain had said “it seems clear that it’s the view of the majority of Pakistan’s voters, as expressed in last week’s elections, that General Musharaff’s rewriting of the Constitution to his liking, his firing of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and most of the Supreme Court, in favor of pliable replacements, his institution of Emergency Rule, and the elections he held under them, were all illegitimate, but now we see new, and apparently fair, elections, and we applaud that and look forward to working with the new government of Pakistan,” that that would have been deeply problematic?
McCain’s carefully crafted statement, of which these two statements were part, was an excellent example of realpolitik, hedging bets, and advancing America’s interests.
I, like Gary, would be interested in an explanation of this, because I really don’t see it.
As regards Obama’s stance on meeting with enemies, how does it compare, in your opinion, Von, to Nixon’s opening talks with Mao, or Eisenhower seeking summits with Khrushchev, or even George W. Bush sending Donald Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam Hussein?
Katherine : Jesus F. Christ Gary
Hmm, I always thought it was middle initial H. At least that is how my mom screamed it at me.
On the hand over the heart thing – it is a ding with me.
Katherine – I’m still willing to respond to you if you want to tell me where I did this: “double standards people apply to left- & right-of center politicians.”
“Katherine – I’m still willing to respond to you if you want to tell me where I did this: ‘double standards people apply to left- & right-of center politicians.'”
Is it inappropriate to cite stuff from other blogs? (Or for me to cite it?)
Like where you say here that you think there is “some reality behind it” in referring to:
The double standard is that no matter how many times Democrats explain that this is nonsense, that the only possible non-cooperation due to not being immunized from breaking the law would be cooperating with breaking the law, you don’t believe the Democrats, but you do believe political appointees of the Bush Administration at least to the level of figuring there must be something to what they say, and you should split the difference somewhere in between.
The double standard would be finding evidence in the past seven years, or longer, to support dividing your credence this way.
Actually, the H is supposed to be from the IHS that you often see in churches, which is related to the Greek letters for Christ. So your mom was right. But I’m sure you knew that ;^)
Along such lines, lj, I’m pretty sure the F. stands for ‘Fish’ in this case. Although it’d be cool if it was ‘Fricative’.
fwiw, on Pakistan: M. is indeed widely despised. Delightfully, one of the reasons he is widely despised — though there are others — is that he is seen as our puppet. We have lost an enormous amount of room to maneuver in that country as a result of this administration’s embrace of a dictator, refusal to contemplate working with anyone else, and of course our failure to actually get the AQ leadership when we had the chance, which is why we have to keep pressuring Musharraf to send his army after his own people (as it is seen there.)
“Legitimately elected” is a joke, and an insult to the intelligence of Pakistanis. And it will be perceived that way. — I mean, I was there when Tom Tancredo made his idiotic remark about bombing Mecca and Medina, and I spent a truly amazing amount of time trying to convince people — ordinary people, not just the professionals I was mostly working with — that Tom Tancredo was a lunatic who had no serious chance of winning the Presidency. (His idea of building a wall between the US and Canada helped a lot in convincing people that he did not need to be taken seriously. People found that idea uproariously funny. I didn’t tell them about the wall with Mexico unless asked.)
actually, the “H” in Jesus H. Christ stands for “Howard”.
remember the Lord’s Prayer?
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Howard be thy name.
[ducks, runs]
Did anyone think there wouldn’t be a Wikipedia page?
Actually, the H is supposed to be from the IHS that you often see in churches, which is related to the Greek letters for Christ. So your mom was right. But I’m sure you knew that ;^)
Yeesh, you’d think an edumacated group like this would know the obvious: It’s Jesus Henry Christ. The Romans even put it over his cross: INRI!
Concerning hand-over-heart
I think until WW2 it was arm lifted and directed towards flag. But since that looked quite similar to the “Roman” (or German or fascist) salute, it was replaced by the gesture used now.
Btw, the person wording the pledge should be flogged for putting the flag in front of the republic (it should be, if at all: “I pledge my allegiance to the republic and the flag as its visible symbol” or something like that). I am very happy that over here we got completely rid of things like that and I would refuse to participate (standing up out of respect when the anthem is played on official occasions is imo something different)
Gary: The double standard would be finding evidence in the past seven years, or longer, to support dividing your credence this way.
What do you call the standard that assumes a man is a liar simply because he was nominated by Bush? Because Bush has in fact appointed incompetent cronies does not actually mean that anyone he appoints is an incompetent crony.
Mike McConnell has served the country for over 40 years. Did Bill Clinton have a liar as Director of the NSA? I don’t have any reason to question his integrity – if you do share it and I’ll reevaluate.
I would say that the double standard would be believing anything that Democrats “explain” while assuming that anything a Bush appointee has to say is a lie.
“What do you call the standard that assumes a man is a liar simply because he was nominated by Bush?” Realism? 🙂 couldn’t resist.
Seriously Bush appoints dishonest cronies because that is the type of person he wants beneath him. If someone honest and competent got one of these jobs it would be a mistake which indicated a lack of vetting and which would most likely cost Bush and his friends money.
Did you catch Mitch McConnell weaselling when asked if waterboarding would be torture if it were done to him?
I don’t think all Democrats are honest. You have to spend some time figuring out who you want to trust. I just find it strange that an apparently sentient conserative like yourself hasn’t noticed that this bunch of Republicans lies an incredible amount. Its like they get paid by the lie or something. Crazy. Anyway have a nice day.
OCSteve: What do you call the standard that assumes a man is a liar simply because he was nominated by Bush?
Experience.
As previously mentioned, I really do think that many of these discussions should occur on an appropriate thread that has an appropriate topic.* So here’s my final word on it, in response to Gary and Anarch. McCain’s original statement on M/Pakistan (responding to suggestion by Gov. Richardson that we cut off dealings):
More recently, McCain stated:
And:
These more recent comments have also been para-reportedly-phrased as follows (which para-reportedly-phrasing seems to be the basis for Katherine’s, Anarch’s and Gary’s complaints):
NEW YORK, Feb 20 (APP): US Senator John McCain, the Republican Party presidential hopeful, has rejected calls for the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf following Monday’s elections, saying he is a “legitimately elected” Pakistani leader.
“I think he’s a legitimately elected president, and we’ll see what the dynamic of the new parliament is,” said McCain, who is on a campaign swing across the United States for the party nomination that is nearly in his bag.
During campaign stops in the states of Wisconsin and Ohio on Tuesday, Sen. McCain was asked by reporters for his comments on the outcome of Pakistan’s election in which opposition political parties scored major gains.
“The results in Pakistan, although not unexpected, certainly are going to present a challenge for us to deal with a new government in Pakistan,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks published in The New York Times Wednesday.
“I believe that whoever runs the country, we have a common interest in defeating the Taliban and having good relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Later in Columbus, Ohio, McCain called Musharraf “a good ally”, but said he (Musharraf) had made some “mistakes,”.
He suggested the election results were largely because of the “tragedy of Benazir Bhutto,” rather than a reaction against President Musharraf, and expressed the hope the United States can work with the new government cooperatively.
“We have to understand that Afghanistan is an enormous challenge right now and we need Pakistan to help us,” he said.
The only one of those comments that is not particularly well-crafted is the bastardized version that some reporter paraphrased — and even that version isn’t really all that bad.
*Given Gary’s past policing of threats for OTness, figured that he at least would agree. But, of course, there is that charming Gary style.
I’ll be happy to transfer this over to a new thread, should you so desire, von. Last question here, and I’m only asking because my (admittedly small) research couldn’t figure this out: do you know where this
“I think he’s a legitimately elected president, and we’ll see what the dynamic of the new parliament is,”
came from? I find it hard to believe that a reporter flat-out invented that quote — which is sort of what you imply — but I haven’t been able to find an actual transcript of the speech in question.
Also, as a final aside, this:
I would remind you when we thought it was the best thing to do for the shah of Iran to leave Iran. There were some unintended consequences associated with that.
disturbs me immensely, but for reasons that should be elaborated in a different forum.
PS: How’s the vonlet doing? Happy, healthy, well-rested, etc?
Von: “*Given Gary’s past policing of threats for OTness, figured that he at least would agree.”
Say what? I’m aware of dozens of times I’ve expressed the view in comments that I’m unaware of any rules on ObWi restricting people’s topics of conversation.
I’m aware of no times that I’ve engaged in “past policing of threats for OTness.”
Perhaps I’ve forgotten what I’ve believe, which is my never having noticed any kind of “on topic” rule at ObWi, and that I’ve stated this over and over and over and over and over again here, without ever, to my notice, being contradicted by any blogowner (and since I usually say something like “unless someone can point out such a rule from a blogowner than I’ve not noticed,” I’ve solicited such a pointer countless times).
My online imprinting/”training” came on Usenet in the mid-Nineties; some newsgroups were strictly subject-oriented, and their subculture strongly emphasized staying on-topic, and chastizing people for going off-topic.
But the newsgroups I spent most of my time on had the philosophy of rec.arts.sf.fandom, where the “topic” wasn’t “sf fandom,” but “whatever sf fans want to talk about.” And thus there was no such thing as “off-topic.”
That set the pattern for my preferred style of conversation, which is natural, since it was a simple extension of identical amateur press association conversation, which is precisely the same as these exchanges, except for being done in print, and distributed more slowly, be it every few hours, or every week, or every two weeks, or every month, or quarterly.
So my view has always been prejudiced against scoldings about being “off-topic,” save, of course, for places where it’s appropriate. A place with a rule, or just a consistent culture/ethic/suggestion, discouraging or suggesting people stick to a topic is such a place, and there are many, and that’s great, and I’m all for those places enforcing those rules.
Which is why I’ve consistently expressed puzzlement here whenever anyone said someone shouldn’t go “off-topic,” because so far as I know, there is no such rule, and never has been.
And I’ve brought the subject up dozens and dozens of times. Dozens have times someone has said apologized for going “off-topic,” and I’ve expressed a variant of “so far as I know, there is no such rule around here: am I wrong?”
Which is why I know I have no habit of ever telling anyone they’re “off-topic” here. Because since 2004, I’ve voiced the opposite view over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Please cite, with links, some of these past “past policing of threats for OTness” I’ve made in your universe, Von.
Because I’m completely wtf are you talking about?
WTF? WTF?
What on earth are you talking about?
To be clear, I’d seriously like a reply, when you have a moment, von.
Because what you’ve said here about me is a big huge untrue thing (which you then went on to add “But, of course, there is that charming Gary style,” as if, somehow, because you’re telling a big fib about me, and I’m acting consistently, and not in accordance with your fib, I’m being dishonest or untoward in some way; speaking of charming styles).
I request you withdraw your false claim, and I would appreciate an apology. Thanks.
came from? I find it hard to believe that a reporter flat-out invented that quote — which is sort of what you imply — but I haven’t been able to find an actual transcript of the speech in question.
I honestly have no idea. I don’t dispute that McCain said it, but I get the sense that some context is missing. Certainly, it’s not 100% consistent with what McCain said prior or subsequently, including in the very same statement.
PS: How’s the vonlet doing? Happy, healthy, well-rested, etc?
Very well (and thanks for asking)! He just turned 2 and he’s very, very big into Thomas the Tank Engine.
Gary, when I refer to “that charming Gary style,” I’m thinking in part of posts similar to yours at 2:10 and 2:32 p.m. Which are charmingly Gary-ish. Kind of like: Fly. Sledgehammer. Repeat.
As for this particular fly: There are any number of threads in which you suggested that a particular comment belonged elsewhere. I’ll flag it for you the next time it occurs.
Von & OCSteve — just saw this thread, so I’ll chime in late at the risk of flogging an extremely dead horse. After much squinting sideways, I can understand how you got what you did or Obama’s remark. It is not the way the words struck me personally (nor, apparently, most commenters here). Apparently it is the way they struck a lot of rightwing bloggers.
This is not a grammatical dispute. Grammatically, “because” and “in consequence” do not force either interpretation. I cannot improve on JamieM’s analysis there. The paired sentences could mean “they weren’t supplied so they had to capture Taliban weapons whenever they found them,” OR “they weren’t supplied so they had to go out on raids for the primary purpose of capturing Taliban weapons.” It seems to me that the reason for hearing a grammatically simple statement in such different ways comes from underlying assumptions about reality.
To wit: right-wingers expect Obama to lie and say dumb things, left-wingers don’t. You hear what you expect to hear when there is any possible ambiguity.
There may also be another underlying factor: based on various comments upthread, many ex-military people’s experience leads them to see the need to scavenge enemy weapons as so normal that it is not worth commenting on and does not impugn Army or DoD supply decisions. If that is right, I would expect such a person to not even notice that Obama is trying to make that criticism, at least not when they first hear that sentence. That criticism is a non-point, it wouldn’t even occur to them, so their verbal processing network latches onto a different, grammatically possible interpretation. That interpretation is so natural to them that they are puzzled and annoyed when people insist it meant something else.
Us lefties have the opposite default. As Gromit said, http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/02/honor.html#comment-104094962 ,
your interpretation of Obama’s remark is that he made an absurd and stupid exaggeration. From my point of view, that is so unlikely that it was difficult for me to see how the sentence could possibly mean what you said.
The question appears to be, then: is it more likely that Obama is an idiot, or that some people view it as bad planning and worth criticism that our troops have to scavenge for weaponry? I find the answer obvious.
I also do not think it is fair to blame Obama for not taking care to construct his sentence so that it would not mislead people who assume he’s a mendacious nitwit, as most of us would fail that test of our spoken words on a regular basis.
YMMV.
“As for this particular fly: There are any number of threads in which you suggested that a particular comment belonged elsewhere.”
Von, can you ever not move goal posts, and claim rewrites of what you just wrote are what you wrote, and instead either stand by what you wrote, or withdraw it?
You did not write that I have a history of “suggest[ing] that a particular comment belonged elsewhere,” which is an entirely vague claim. Do I have a history of telling people they are “off-topic”? Do I?
You went on about the topic of McCain’s comments about Musharraf being “off-topic” in a thread about McCain, and that somehow being “off-topic” in an ObWi thread is wrong, and actually wrote of me: “Given Gary’s past policing of threats for OTness….”
(I take “threats” to be a typo for “threads”; let me know if my hypotheses is incorrect, please.)
I have no such history.
It’s not true.
You made it up.
Please withdraw the claim, and please apologize for what I shall take to be an error of extremely bad memory, and stubbornness in refusing to admit it, for some reason, the first time. Not a big deal.
Thanks kindly.
“and 2:32 p.m.”
Is this a typo, perhaps?
Gary, I can’t find it at the moment, but I think within the past 24 hours you suggested that a (somewhat spammish) comment was off topic for a particular thread and should have been posted in either another thread where it was on topic or one that was labeled as an open thread. Perhaps that was what Von was thinking of.
I’d say that that’s a very different case from simply continuing a conversation as it evolves, and I certainly don’t remember your “policing” anything like that.
For the record: it has always been my understanding that “preconditions”, as used in diplomacy, does not refer to things like “our undersecretaries have to meet before we can meet”, but to things like: “you have to give up your nuclear program before we can talk.” I understood Obama to mean that, and I think it’s the right way to go, unless you have some specific reason to think that you can use the mere willingness to hold talks to get some significant concession out of someone.
Most of the time, insisting on preconditions is just a way of delaying things.
“I’d say that that’s a very different case from simply continuing a conversation as it evolves, and I certainly don’t remember your ‘policing’ anything like that.”
Sure. I’ve certainly made plenty of comments about spam, and I’ve certainly made a number of comments over the years about someone dropping in out of the blue with something utterly off-topic, particularly if there’s a current open thread, but, as you say, that has nothing to do with ever suggesting that thread-drift was wrong or “off-topic,” and I have no history of “past policing” in that regard on this blog since it started.
I’m a fan of thread-drift, and I’ve said so innumerable times.
However, I have to apologize to Von for the above: “You went on about the topic of McCain’s comments about Musharraf being “off-topic” in a thread about McCain,”
That was a brain fart: the post starting this thread is about Obama, not McCain. My mistake; sorry.
(See, that’s not hard, is it?)
Pretending it never happened, or just letting it go unacknowledged seems to be within the rules of etiquette.
Von, can you ever not move goal posts, and claim rewrites of what you just wrote are what you wrote, and instead either stand by what you wrote, or withdraw it?
You did not write that I have a history of “suggest[ing] that a particular comment belonged elsewhere,” which is an entirely vague claim. Do I have a history of telling people they are “off-topic”? Do I?
What KCinDC said. Also, I see no goalpost moving or even nudging on my part: You have a history of saying that a particular comment belonged elsewhere because the comment, in your view, was OT for the particular thread at hand. Again, next time it comes up, I’ll flag it for you
For the record: it has always been my understanding that “preconditions”, as used in diplomacy, does not refer to things like “our undersecretaries have to meet before we can meet”, but to things like: “you have to give up your nuclear program before we can talk.” I understood Obama to mean that, and I think it’s the right way to go, unless you have some specific reason to think that you can use the mere willingness to hold talks to get some significant concession out of someone.
I understood that, Hilzoy. I think whether this is wise in every case is a worthy topic to address. (Obviously, everyone agrees that “without [certin] preconditions” is appropriate in some cases.)
Von: “What KCinDC said.”
KCinDC: “I’d say that that’s a very different case from simply continuing a conversation as it evolves, and I certainly don’t remember your ‘policing’ anything like that.”
Are you selectively agreeing, Von, or wholly agreeing?
trilobite: I also do not think it is fair to blame Obama for not taking care to construct his sentence so that it would not mislead people who assume he’s a mendacious nitwit, as most of us would fail that test of our spoken words on a regular basis.
IMHO, it doesn’t do much to advance the discussion to argue that the only way you can interpret Obama’s statements the way OCSteve and Von (and I) do is to assume Obama is an idiot (some sort of Bush Derangement Syndrome in reverse? :))
If I assumed Obama was an idiot, I would be arguing that Obama said there was a causal connection between the 15 sent to Iraq and the shortage of ammo (“because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition . . .” What? Who let Larry take all the 5.56 rounds to Iraq? ARRRRGGHH!! ) No, I went right past that and on to the next statement assuming Obama was no mendacious nitwit.
Obama then says that BECAUSE they didn’t have enough ammo, they “captured.”
I don’t see the need for the disagreement as to whether they went out for the purpose of capturing. I see the statement as saying their was a need to capture regardless of the purpose of the mission because of the need. The Captain himself has admitted they actually had enough ammo in Afghanistan, just not that much in training especially where the grenade launchers and fun stuff were concerned (and that is an ages-old issue).
Arguing that there is an ambiguity over “purpose” avoids the fact that Obama stated there was a need to go get ammo (and by simple implication weapons). There was not.
So when you say:
The paired sentences could mean “they weren’t supplied so they had to capture Taliban weapons whenever they found them,” OR “they weren’t supplied so they had to go out on raids for the primary purpose of capturing Taliban weapons.”
I respond: but they were supplied (at least with primary weapons and ammo; they were short a humvee and had a parts shortage on their 50 cal, apparently an ordinary experience in any theater)
So in short, I can still keep my conservative opinion that Obama is intelligent, charismatic, liberal and wrong on the facts (or at least exaggerating) on this one.
von: I honestly have no idea. I don’t dispute that McCain said it, but I get the sense that some context is missing. Certainly, it’s not 100% consistent with what McCain said prior or subsequently, including in the very same statement.
I’m more and more inclined to agree about the context given that I simply can’t find a transcript of the proceedings. It’s the fact that he’s not just cited, but quoted, as saying this that confuses me. I can certainly imagine a reporter paraphrasing poorly — no, really, I can! — but outright misquoting something that simple seems improbable… but then again, so does McCain contradicting himself on something that simple inside of a minute. Bizarre.
[And Thomas the Tank Engine does indeed rock!]
Are you selectively agreeing, Von, or wholly agreeing?
Wholly agreeing: my use of the word “policing” was too strong, and wasn’t necessary to my point.
[And Thomas the Tank Engine does indeed rock!]
Now that’s a statement I never thought I’d find myself (1) reading or (2) agreeing with.
Here’s the 64K question: Steve or Cousin Joe from Blue’s Clues?
And the 32K question: Is it just me, or is Bob the Builder a communist stooge? (Probably just me, but there that the Mayor-dude from sunflower valley is Lenin’s spitting image.) (Fortunately, the Very Useful Engines of Tidmouth Shed provide a more suitable example of a capitalist workforce, while Sir Toppin Hatt reminds us of the need to respect our betters.)
My tongue, of course, is planted firmly in cheek. Except for that Bob-the-Commie thing — that’s 100% true.
(Yes, I am now deliberately going OT.)
On the contrary, Bob the Builder is a union scab!
I’m real late to all of this, but I just want to note that I am among those, even older than Obama (and Gary), who never learned until this very day that it was “U.S. Code” to place the hand over the heart during the anthem! I learned instead – whether in school or whatever (not from parents, I’m sure) – to stand with my hands by my side, and so I have done all these many decades.
Which is not to say that Gary is wrong about the law – obviously he’s right – but that he might wish to modify his assumption about what “is done” by Americans, especially since others before me in this thread have made the same point. There are clearly different traditions of respect for the anthem; the fact that one is official and the other not doesn’t really alter the social actuality. (And the fact that Boy Scouts salute in a certain way is not proof, to a non-Scout, of anything except a Scout tradition, which may or may not be applicable to the rest of us.)
*********
Meanwhile, WRT the charge of Gary “policing” the threads for “OT” comments – if that whole issue has not been disposed of adequately already – my take is that Gary is very quick to point out where the primary (or at least earliest) discussion of a particular issue has taken place, and to suggest that further comments be directed there. It can be annoying, when one is told “We already mentioned that, over there,” but I think that on balance it is helpful. Even as it is when our spouse reminds us that we already decided something that we had, for the moment, forgotten . . .
I can understand why Gary objects to this being characterized as “policing” (except, presumably, in the weak/broad sense of “directing traffic, on a voluntary basis”), but I can also see how the misunderstanding arose. FWIW.
von,
Steve, but part of it may be pity over male pattern baldness and the other might be cause he seems pretty down to earth
And the 32K question: Is it just me, or is Bob the Builder a communist stooge?
My three year old watches Thomas, Cars or Bob the Builder when he comes to “work” with me at my office. In fact, he’s coming today and I promised him he could watch Bob for part of the time.
HOWEVER, be very, very careful about calling Bob a communist. You realize, don’t you, that Obama has patterned his campaign on Bob (YES WE CAN!!) 🙂
Come to think of it, maybe I should turn Obama in to HRC for plagiarism . . . . not!
Army Chief of Staff George Casey:
Damn liberal terrorsymps are everywhere.
bc, in belated reponse to your comment that I missed, February 25, 2008 at 07:23 PM:
I’m insufficiently motivated to rehearse the whole thread, but the interpretation that I addressed is not the same interpretation you are now advancing. I agree that your interpretation does not assume Obama is stupid. Your interpretation, in fact, is the same as mine: because they were short of ammo, they salvaged enemy weaponry.
Turns out, this was not true. Does that mean Obama lied or made a mistake? Well, not necessarily. It is just as likely that the captain’s original communication with Obama was wrong or confusing. People express themselves badly all the time, and the Captain may very well have meant what he said later in response to specific questions, but said exactly what Obama repeated at the debate. I can’t tell. If Obama did honestly repeat what he had been told — and considering that the difference between what now appears to be the truth and what Obama said is pretty small anyway — I think a retraction would be overkill.
“Your interpretation, in fact, is the same as mine: because they were short of ammo, they salvaged enemy weaponry.
Turns out, this was not true. I missed something. When was this demonstrated to be untrue? You’re saying it’s a proven fact that this soldier’s platoon, or no U.S. soldier, ever picked up an enemy weapon and/or ammo in the field to use? Or that at no time have U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan had a shortage of a particular type of ammo on hand? Or what?
Because I don’t recall seeing any such proof, or statement attributed to the anonymous captain. Speaking of exaggerating.
Gary, here’s what you missed. I’m quoting Tapper, linked in Hilzoy’s original post (emphasis added):
“Also in Afghanistan they had issues getting parts for their MK-19s and their 50-cals. Getting parts or ammunition for their standard rifles was not a problem.
Obama said this particular platoon was short Humvees & ammo. Assuming Tapper is accurate, the ammo shortage was only in training, not in the field. In the field they were short Humvees and weapon parts, but not ammo.
This is a quibble, not worth the time people have spent on it, certainly not worth taking the time to retract. And of course the captain’s story doesn’t show one way or another whether anybody else was shorted on ammo, and he confirmed that his men did pick up enemy weapons for use, presumably because they needed them (to flog the obvious to death, I don’t think it would be reasonable to infer that they picked them up and used them for the sheer fun of it, because soldiers generally prefer to use weapons they are trained on and have resupply for if possible).
So, as I said, a trivial inaccuracy in a basically correct recounting.