Simon Jenkins on the ancient and ferocious Taliban nation:
The American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, flies to Britain this week to meet a crisis entirely of London and Washington’s creation. They have no strategy for the continuing occupation of Afghanistan. They are hanging on for dear life and praying for something to turn up. Britain is repeating the experience of Gordon in Khartoum, of the Dardanelles, Singapore and Crete, of politicians who no longer read history expecting others to die for their dreams of glory.
Every independent report on the Nato-led operation in Afghanistan cries the same message: watch out, disaster beckons. Last week America’s Afghanistan Study Group, led by generals and diplomats of impeccable credentials, reported on “a weakening international resolve and a growing lack of confidenceâ€Â. An Atlantic Council report was more curt: “Make no mistake, Nato is not winning in Afghanistan.†The country was in imminent danger of becoming a failed state.
A clearly exasperated Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, has broken ranks with the official optimism and committed an extra 3,000 marines to the field, while sending an “unusually stern†note to Germany demanding that its 3,200 troops meet enemy fire. Germany, like France, has rejected that plea. Yet it is urgent since the Canadians have threatened to withdraw from the south if not relieved. An equally desperate Britain is proposing to send half-trained territorials to the front, after its commanders ignored every warning that the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth.
“Run away! Run away!”
Maybe its just me, but I’m not sure he really wants to win.
:P
“Toughest Fighters on Earth”?
Where do they pull this shit from?
Wonderful! A pathetically weak, spineless and self-contented Western Europe shows America, itself losing its will to resist, the road to ridicule, irrelevance and defeat. Mark Steyn is right, western civilization must have a death wish.
President Hillary! might hang in there a bit, President Barry has no interest in those kind of brown people.
From his most fervant hopes, Techie.
Shorter Simon Jenkins: “I pray to the God that I do not believe in that you awful yanks with your cheeseburgers and cowboy boots will receive the slaughtering that you deserve.”
…right before they were wiped out by judicious application of limp-wristed, namby-pamby American military hardware.
In a related development, John Kerry’s sister was mugged in New York. I got 20 large there were no republicans in that transaction.
Victoria Nuland knew what the report was going to say. She says it’s the cold war with armies and we should put up with all the NGO USAID(CIA) spies that just want more cash.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/31/AR2008013102545.html
I thought Afghanistan was the fight everyone was behind? Why aren’t our supposed allies bothering to help us?
“I thought Afghanistan was the fight everyone was behind? Why aren’t our supposed allies bothering to help us?”
Nice post, Collins. Do you think this is moonbattery which requires no
refutation?
The failure of focus in Assghanistan is another feature and benefit of
the Iraq debacle, handled so competently by your chosen Prez and his accomodating enablers (eg Condi) It’s almost like the
trickle down foolishness on the supply-side happy horseshit trail.
What a legacy this Presidunce hands off to those of us who have to clean up after him. Feel free to defend him down to the last minute.
We’re losing because we have a royal dickhead for President. He gave no bid contracts for contractors to win the war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And now our relatively low paid front line troops are going in there to bail out the contractors. Hey, who are those contractors? Fat Cat Republicans safely ensconced in Texas, Carolina or Virginia while subbing out their work to guys only collecting a paycheck..some corrupt mujahideen or Phillipino shanghaied by a Kuwaiti company getting a fat check from DOD. This is what you get with Republicans contracting out the war to mercenaries.
What a legacy this Presidunce hands off to those of us who have to clean up after him.
Translation: “I’m going to continue screeching about Bush even after he leaves office, because that’s the only thing that gives my life meaning.”
Darleen and all. The major contradiction inherint in the conservative arguments about war are thus: support of militarism is totally in contrast with a proBusiness ethic. The military if run right is a non profit socialized machine..with support and good pay and unflinching anticorruption measures….remember Henry the 5th having warrior stealing or being scavengers of the dead in France being put to death. A well run military has one for all, all for one socialized attitude. But if you couple that with low taxes and profiteering….you lose the arguement and the war.
If Bush was serious about winning he’d raise taxes to win it. Put resources into the fight to win. Instead he stretched the military thin, denied them benefits, extended their times of service, and then to top it off gives a lot of money to ineffective politically connected contractors that regularly snub and piss off the ordinary soldier (ala dynacorps, blackwater and a thousand other Republican contractors).
Canadians aren’t leaving the south.
http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65801&Itemid=9
I am surprised Dan gave us a soapbox to stand on.
hey, I am all for winning both wars. Surprise? Don’t be, I like c.hitchens (sp?) thought Bush was in good faith trying to do probably the only good thing he did in 8 years….bring freedom and prosperity to Iraq and Afghanistan. I was wrong. He brought increased misery and instability. It’s like 9/11 didn’t happen but we’ve lost currently 3 trillion dollars as a result and so many innocent lives mostly Iraqis and a lot of Afghans and our own handfull (incomparison) for what?.. Major deficits. And a few very rich Eric Prince’s lying to Congress.
Please don’t give me that, Dave. You have no will to win. You want a loss for political purposes.
But of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps you can dredge up one of your posts from 2003 demonstrating your stand with Bush.
“The writer is U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”
a Republican political hack in other words.
I read the article….she says it’ll take 5 to 10 years more to attain our objectives…McCain’s more accurate a hundred years. Better open your wallets suckas!
I’d buy it if you’ll raise funds to win it. Put the money where the mouth is. simple as thats.
Freedom ain’t free!
Comment by datadave on 2/3 @ 11:58 am #
I want some of what he’s smoking.
Sweet jeebus on a pogo stick but dd is a stupid fuck, aint he?
A civilian component is needed to win, Dan. Help the people build their own roads, not give huge contracts to Bechtal (how’d they do on the Big Dig and then never getting the Iraqi electrical system going either?……gu). Don’t use the NRA as a quide for arms control.. gun consfication should have happened in Iraq and better policing, not military actions against civilian insurgents.
and “reach across the aisle” once in awhile. Just didn’t happen under Bush’s watch. We’ll have to wait ’til the next administration.
“Comment by datadave on 2/3 @ 11:59 am #
Freedom ain’t free!”
So, when did you have boots on the ground in Afghanistan?
What was you MOS?
“and “reach across the aisle†once in awhile. Just didn’t happen under Bush’s watch. We’ll have to wait ’til the next administration.”
Why?
The Democrats don’t even give you a reach around when they’re buggering you.
“We’re losing because we have a royal dickhead for President.”
So somehow Bush even managed to make the French and German troops afraid to fight. The man is a God I tell ya.
More brilliant insights from the Left.
How would slowing the economy and reducing tax receipts help win?
And how well do you think *THAT* would have worked? Have you ever asked an Iraqi about it? Or a serviceman who’s been in Iraq?
Good Lord, dogmadave, you’d be a pitiable figure if you weren’t such a fool.
Well, it’s nice to see that leftist detachment from reality is as strong as ever.
Apart from all his other delusions, he thinks that raising taxes always increases tax revenue. How nuanced.
Revenue was HIGHER after the Bush tax cuts, dickwad, because the marginal rates were TOO HIGH. Probably still are, but there’s no real way to know that without lowering rates again, and that’s not likely to happen again.
Maybe we can have a Dem president next, they’ll help raise rates, revenue can go down, and then DD and cleo can pretend it didn’t happen.
To be a leftist, you really have to have a misunderstanding of economics that borders on schizophrenia.
Anyone who really wants to win the war is preparing for the worst case. Anyone who is upset at those concerned about sending underprepared troops into battle isn’t primarily concerned about winning.
Sorry, David. Doesn’t wash.
Some of us have been actively supporting the troops in a variety of ways since this began, and continue so to do.
But perhaps you can give me the links at your site where you ask people to get involved with such efforts and prove me wrong.
…the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth.
According to whom? The f*cking Talibs of today couldn’t stand up to even a tiny fraction of the US military. Who is this Jenkins fool talking to? The Taliban did ABOSLUTELY NOTHING in the fight against the Soviets. They spent the entire war holed up in the refugee camps in Pakistan, waiting for the USSR to leave and the Afghans doing the fighting to beat each other up in the aftermath. A shrewd strategy Mao employed to similarly profitable effect, but not exactly “tough” or “brave”. That they have not been completely destroyed is more a testament to fickle Western politics, than to any real “toughness” on their part.
Kabul is like Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war.
If true, for the same reasons: media pundits breathlessly shilling for the enemy and spineless politicians who no longer wish to be bothered by the media and the Fifth Column activist class and wash their hands of it.
datadave – You woke up in a particularly virulent anti-american mood today, no?
“Comment by David Weisman on 2/3 @ 12:48 pm #
Anyone who really wants to win the war is preparing for the worst case. Anyone who is upset at those concerned about sending underprepared troops into battle isn’t primarily concerned about winning.”
Do you really think that US troops are “underprepared”?
Go here:
http://usmc.mil/22ndmeu/Image%20Galleries/IG_Main.html
and see how “underprepared” our poor, ignorant, uneducated troops are.
God DAMN it, Semanticleo and datadave, I want you to say straight out that Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban was SO FUCKING MUCH BETTER than it is now. Come on, say it. Say that imprisoning women inside, allowing women no education, pulling out women’s fingernails if they were caught wearing nail polish, whipping women with electical cables if their shoes made a sound was SO MUCH BETTER than circumstances are now. Overturning walls on homosexuals, stoning women to death–you know how that works, right?–you bury the woman up to her chest, and then throw stones at her until she dies, all that was SO MUCH BETTER than now. You two morons, you come right out and say that.
Oh, the 22nd MEU?
6 month deployment, 14 countries, combat missions flown over Iraq and Afghanistan, a months training in Kuwait, a humanitarian mission off Bangladeshm, and didn’t lose one man or woman to accident or enemy action.
“Underprepared”, indeed.
Anyone who really wants to win the war is preparing for the worst case.
…
?
Anyone who is upset at those concerned about sending underprepared troops into battle isn’t primarily concerned about winning.
ET: (unhingedly) Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me in any words you wish!
HR: (Gary Cooperdly) But I don’t think of you at all.
Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, …[sent] an “unusually stern†note to Germany demanding that its 3,200 troops meet enemy fire. Germany, like France, has rejected that plea.
Feckless allies are a different story, however.
. “You two morons, you come right out and say that.”
Congrats to you for having the temerity to assume I opposed the invasion of Afghanistan. Imagine what that country would look like if we actually
fulfilled our commitment.
All roads lead to Iraq…………………
what is it with people named dave? one claims to be data driven while arguing with the hallucinations in its head. The other dave claims to be a weisman, while it is obvious being wise would never be used to describe it. Raise taxes! we are losing everywhere? socialize everything? collective misery! fuckers.
cleo – allegedly being for something and then actively cheering against it does not constitute support. that pre-traumatic stress disorder appears to be acting up again.
miss cleo is a chicken hawk on afghanistan
N. O’Brain,
Our troops are the most underprepared fighters on Earth, except for all of the other fighters they might ever come up against. After all, NO MAGIC WANDS!!!
You can’t go into battle without magic!
Major John, RTO, BRD – What say you? Are you under-prepared, under-trained, and under-equipped? Or, are they arguing against some mythical ideal where there can never be enough?
“Our troops are the most underprepared fighters on Earth, except for all of the other fighters they might ever come up against. After all, NO MAGIC WANDS!!!
You can’t go into battle without magic!”
We beat the British, twice, we beat the Mexicans, had a Civil War that killed 600,000 of our own, beat the native Americans, beat the Spanish, beat the Germans, beat the Germans again, while at the same time beating the Japanese, beat the north Koreans and the Chinese, beat the North Vietnamese army and destroyed their puppet NLA/VietCong, faced down the Soviet Empire long enough for it’s internal contridictions to destroy itself, and the Iraqis, twice.
There’s some kind of magic at work here.
Judging from the above comments of Semanticleo and some others, I’m convinced Don Rumsfeld was right:
“You go to war with the moonbats you have.”
I still want to know how someone can have the word “semantic” in it’s name if said someone has no understanding of English.
JD, RTO is out, um, preparing today. then again, he was carping about the ancient rifles they had to shoot with yesterday last night.
so far as Afghanistan is concerned. I thought you guys were for having a coalition, but now that it’s coming to light that those allies don’t perform quite as well as U.S. forces you’re going to throw them under the bus? We’ve got more U.S. troops in Afghanistan now than when we started because of it. Most of those allied forces weren’t “distracted by” Iraq, so what’s their excuse?
To have set one of the world’s most ancient and ferocious people on the warpath against both Kabul and Islamabad takes some doing.
No it doesn’t.
But western diplomacy has done it. Now must begin the agonising process of escaping that appalling mistake.
Are you saying we should take more of a “Cut-Out-Their-Living-Guts And-Use-Them-To-Grease-The-Treads-Of-Our-Tanks” approach, Simon?
Oh, and Simon, how could you neglect to put the frosting on your mother-beautiful, seven-layer-cake of an op-ed?
Godspeed the Sons and Daughters of Liberty.
How haven’t we? Specifics, please.
And if you say there should have been more troops, explain what they’d be doing, how they’d be supplied, and how you would manage the perception of it as an occupying force.
Next, explain why our “allies”, bound by treaty to come to our defense when we are attacked, have been so niggardly in fulfilling their obligations vis a vis Afghanistan.
Remember their sneers at the “coalition of the willing”?
You can’t go into battle without magic!
Or Galoshes !!
The United States and Afghanistan are launching five new initiatives “that will help the Afghan people achieve the peace, stability and prosperity they deserve,” Bush said.
First, he said, the United States will launch an ambitious training program for newly elected Afghan politicians and help newly elected assembly members better serve those who elected them.
Second, Afghanistan and America will print millions of new textbooks and will build modern schools in every Afghan province. “Girls as well as boys are going to school, and they are studying under a new curriculum that promotes religious and ethnic tolerance,” Bush said. Women under the Taliban rule were repressed and forbidden from receiving an education.
A part of this initiative is a new $4 million women’s teacher training institute in Kabul. “Graduates of this innovative program will return to their provinces and rural districts to train other teachers in the crusade against illiteracy,” Bush said.
Another initiative will promote cultural exchange programs to help foster understanding and respect and to accelerate progress. More than 250 qualified Afghans will participate in Humphrey, Fulbright, Cochran and other U.S.- government-sponsored exchange programs, the president said.
A fourth initiative is the intent of the United States and Afghanistan to pursue a bilateral trade and investment framework agreement. “Years of war and tyranny have eroded Afghanistan’s economy and infrastructure, yet a revival is under way,” Bush said. “Afghans are busy starting their own businesses. Some 15,000 licenses have already been issued for foreign businesses and investors to explore economic opportunities in Afghanistan.”
The United States and Japan have worked together on other basic infrastructure improvements. “We have rebuilt the Kandahar-Kabul highway, a vital commercial and transportation link between Afghanistan’s two largest cities,” Bush said. “A bilateral trade agreement will add new fuel to the economic revival.”
Fifth, the United States pledges “to continue our efforts to create opportunities for women,” Bush said. The United States will dedicate $5 million to fund training programs and grants for small businesses. “The additional funding we announce today will provide Afghan women with small-business grants and training in business-management skills,” the president said.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=26264
Rob;
Your turn. Please address each benchmark with links.
Cost of Afghanistan $8 Billion annually.
Cost of Iraq; $8 Billion Per month.
Go ahead. Tell me about the return on each investment. Tell me about
the real war, and the focus of our Leadership.
can you not read defenseLink past 2004, semanticleo? cause I’m pretty sure there’s lot of article that cover those points. you could even find helpful links to site like this one by people that are currently operating there if you want to get even more specific. but I’m not going to eat up Jeff’s bandwidth to provide link after link for your lazy ass.
maggie – you know that chicken little’s like cleo quit reading once they find a link that fits with teh narrative. It is a disingenuous lying fucking hack.
Please address each benchmark with links.
The real-deals, or those pre-cooked ones.
The sixth and final initiative is the linchpin of our stategy.
In order to give our first five a fair chance at success, we will cut out our enemies’ living guts and use them to grease the treads of our ta… six!
There are six new initiatives…
Strategy, even.
PREVIEW HELD HOSTAGE DAY 627 !!!
Strategery, actually.
DAMN YOU BLOG MANAGER GOLDBERG !!!
JD, NO not unAmerican especially today. I could see us winning by winning hearts and minds and spending lots of money there. But it’s a long ways away, our resources are limited, and we didn’t ask for this war. Now, I knew the moment on the morning of Sept 11, ’01, I heard that the twin towers were falling it was the Taliban. I was pretty much right. I’d been watching them fuckers destroy Buddhist shrines, sending women back into the Dark Ages, making the world cheaper Heroin and all the while Bush was giving them several Billion in aid to fight the war on Drugs. Ha! And I knew Bush et al would reduce human rights world wide as a result, have a royal tissy fit so he could ram through his big tax cuts, give contractors no bid contracts and all the while insinuate that Liberals were somehow at fault after his State Dept. lowered visa requirements for Saudi students coming into America. Does that make sense. We should have raised taxes paid for ‘more boots on the ground’, worked with other countries to humanize the Afghan situation……
We couldn’t even build a road across the country. We beat the Taliban and won the war in a few weeks….but seem to lose the peace by letting corruption grow and don’t seem to know how to help the people get away from their medieval world views and we lack information by trusting the Pakistanis and other unreliables to inform us.
We also have a zero casualty goal for our forces that entails massive force to bear on “insurgents” and civilians to avoid our own ‘regrettable’ losses thus forcing our over geared, overprotected military to stay within ‘green zones’ and thus leaving the terrain to the insurgents. Accidental collateral deaths as a result incense the population, increase insurgent activity and thus a cycle begins. The “Surge” was a method to compensate for our earlier timidity and requires personal to get out of safe zones and confront the population and perhaps win it over by being more selective but also entails greater casulties and risks in the short term.
Again, I don’t think the right is no more able to accept that Freedom isn’t Free than the left. One says ‘boots’ and the other sees taxes’. Taxes are needed for the boots, No?
and 9/11 is past. America’s tired of hearing of it. It didn’t crush us and wasn’t even close to crushing us…just a lucky one time loophole soon closed for the terrorists to get in a big media blast. And the 10 Mountain Division (upstate NY) can take anything Afghans could throw at them….and I hear that the Mountains of Afghanistan could be awesome for back country skiing and boarding….if we can get the land mines cleared. But since we failed to build roads or seemed to not even care about the Afghan’s economy or lack of it (no jobs but growing and smuggling poppies and opium). And that politically connected American and Arab contractors get the bulk of the money and squirrel it away in their Swiss bank accounts…. and those soldiers are just going back and forth with no relief….endless loss of money and deficit spending leading to 70s style Stagflation.
Dan, back to shorten rant, argument, whatever. I meant to say: increased military activity requires more taxation. Conservatives who support the troops but are unwilling to increase the taxes that fund the troops are indulging in illogical thinking. War costs money, freedom isn’t free. If you think war and freedom are the same. But there lies another contradiction, war by its very nature requires a reduction of freedom if only for the command structure. That is why a freedom-loving people avoid war unless they are attacked and that is why I support the Afghan liberation by our troops. However the war for Iraq was a case of personal vendetta by Bush and a few neoCons for perhaps to keep us in the Middle East indefinitely, but no one thought the Iraqis had anything to do with 9/11.
I think the war for Iraq was nice on our part. And smart too. You don’t seem very able to take the long view, but if you were I think you’d feel better about things.
Dear datadave,
“However the war for Iraq was a case of personal vendetta by Bush and a few neoCons for perhaps to keep us in the Middle East indefinitely, but no one thought the Iraqis had anything to do with 9/11.”
Oh, the little code-word “neoCons” [sic] pops up again. You mean the Joooooooooooos, don’t you? Yeah, if we just got rid of all those pesky, hook-nosed, money-grubbing Jews, and their “shitty little country” (as a sophisticated French diplomat so eloquently put it a few years ago), everything would be just swell. Puh-leeeeeze.
“Personal vendetta?” Hmmm, if Bush’s enforcement of nearly two dozen U.N. resolutions (which the U.N., by the way, couldn’t or wouldn’t enforce itself) is a “personal vendetta” then, buddy, we need a whole lot “vendettas,” I don’t know if you have kids, but, if you do, they must have the run of the house since, according to your logic, any attempt on your part to impose some rules and responsibility would be viewed by them as a “personal vendetta.” Capisce, paisan?
I therefore cordially invite you to go back and look at what you just wrote in an objective manner. As you read your post, pretend you’re actually a thoughtful, intelligent person and, I guarantee, you’ll think a blithering idiot cobbled it together.
However the war for Iraq was a case of personal vendetta by Bush and a few neoCons
What other scenarios did you consider before you reached your conclusion?
to keep us in the Middle East indefinitely
Even a broken clock…
no one thought the Iraqis had anything to do with 9/11
Nuance, ddave, nuance.
Nuance, ddave, nuance
One more question, ddave.
Teh Left has been harping that Teh Right can’t see the various shades of grey between black and white since longer than I care to remember. Forever, even.
Can’t you folks see any said shades between 9/11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom?
wait, I’m confused, I thought a whole bunch of people did and that was a problem. without data yet again.
eh, maggie.. that’s the power of propaganda… I meant no one who knows anything about Iraq, knew they weren’t involved in 9/11. Dick Cheney’s lies worked for awhile. That was 2003, this is now. Half Time! Tom Petty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mX9-2xuyP8
qP, I think the soldiers in Iraq are basically on a noble quest and have poor civilian leadership. But despite what the BushHead said about “increasing tax revenues” we’ve lost 3 Trillion in debts during the Bush 2 Administration. So his idea that lowering taxes increases liquidity isn’t proven…increased taxes maybe but with faster increasing expenses due to the wars and those greedy contractors like the Kuwaiti one that is getting 1 to 2 Billion for building Iraq’s Embassy with slave labor from the Phillipines. And not getting it done on time. And we can talk about the warm and fuzzy feelings that Iraqis have for Blackwater Guards driving over their babies on Iraqi streets.
Yeah, I remember a vivid 1940s movie about the Japanese evil treatment of the Chinese. The most memorable scene was when an armored Japanese caravan was rolling down a Chinese road and the driver saw a women trying to grab her baby out of the way of the oncoming caravan. The driver just smiled knowing his commander probably would slap him if he slowed down and drove right over the mother and child. It was an effective piece of propaganda. But then Blackwater did just that in Bagdad several times. They don’t even wait to run ’em over they fire first, killing the moms, babys everything, and keep shooting when they’re running away. Blackwater’s Iraqi’s favorite people I am sure. Sarcasm.
Having you here kind of proves the point, I would think.
“When you find yourself down on the Afghanistan plains
And the women come out to cut up your remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your god like a soldier.”
Tell me again how abysmal our efforts in Afghanistan are, Dave.
link?
Leftists will believe what they want to, no matter what you say.
Cooperation is impossible, and I’m beginning to wonder if all civilization is just a series of temporary truces that last only as long as competing parties see themselves as having equivalent power.
I have zero doubt that, with mass political majorities, leftists would enact all their fantasy policies and drive our economy into the dirt, just like all their little fantasy experiment countries, and they would never admit it was their fault, just like they can’t bring themselves to look at all the mass deaths and oppression their fantasies have cause elsewhere.
DD can’t shut up about 9/11 and the war until he starts talking debt, then he forgets they ever happened. It’s damnable mental illness, I tell you.
Go compare the actual revenues, since 1970, to the tax rates. Or just continue to spread your filthy lies, your choice.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/04/cheney-myth/
http://www.counterpunch.org/kitson10232006.html
-Rudyard Kipling, The Young British Soldier
where in those links does Cheney say that Iraq had a hand in 9/11?
Maggie, read a few threads up – DD is completely lost in fictional agitprop. I mean, come on, quoting counterpunch? What’s next, Prison Planet?
You can’t reason someone out of a position reason didn’t get ’em into.
Yeah, I know, I addressed it earlier. My bad.
Sometimes when I read datadave’s…babblings, I feel like I’ve taken a couple of Valium and no longer possess coherent thought. Then I realize I’ve been trying to make sense out of the insensible.
Yes, because NATO was started by a bunch of Republican ideologues, and is in fact a front for the Trilateral Commission.
In the real world, Victoria Nuland has been a career diplomat for the last fifteen years or so, and appears to be her own person, despite her marriage to PNAC deathbot Robert Kagan. She got her undergrad from Brown, which produced such frothing rightwingers as Atrios.
Sorry, slipped and fell in dave’s drool, there. Looks like I got some on me.
I meant no one who knows anything about Iraq, knew they weren’t involved in 9/11.
But were they involved in violating the Gulf War cease-fire, defying UN security council resolutions, and generally behaving as if they were a threat to world peace?
Because that was the case made for removing Saddam. I’m sorry if you’re too stupid to remember it — maybe you were too young?
Why can these people not make up their own minds? One government follows the other and vice versa. They play gods at the expense of other people’s lives. Wage war against this, wage war against that. What good has this brought to our world? Nothing.
Except for ending the Holocaust, liberating people from oppressive regimes, and ending slavery.
Rob, don’t engage the Shielabot. It’s on a mission to comment on every thread.
I thought it was “Sheila”. Possibly I should get out more.
Oh, look. Another one.
ah, so it’s not just me…. might be okay if it didn’t seem so fluffy
datadave:
Thanks for letting me know that “9/11 is past” and that I’m “tired of hearing of it.”
In what I now see was obsessive, probably overly nationalistic thinking, I assumed that the grisly deaths of over 3,000 of my fellow Americans was still–even after all these many years!!–worth remembering.
Now I see that 9/11 needs to relegated to the historical dust heap with other things I need to stop talking about and remembering. Things like Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, the Alamo, the list just goes on and on…inconsequential moments in our history in which we were galvanized as a nation to rise above the petty, partisan differences and fight as a single unified nation. Pathetic.