At the New York Times, Brian Stelter reports on on the Incredible Shrinking Coverage of the US mission in Iraq:
According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.†Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News†has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News†and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.†(The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)
CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.
In “The Big Picture(s),†I noted that the establishment media began radically scaling back the resources and time devoted to Iraq as early as 2003, locking in a Vietnam-esque narrative and missing many of the turning points along the way to the current state of progress. Even at the end of 2007, there was still a disturbing level of “hotel” journalism, so it is not much of a surprise that the trend has continued. As Bob Owens notes, the scant coverage from Iraq also allows the broadcast networks to avoid owning up to the fact that their preferred narrative is no longer operative.
Missing from the NYT story is a common excuse trotted out for this year’s precipitous fall in Iraq coverage — that it is being drowned out by coverage of the presidential election. The omission is notable because the Democratic contest featured two candidates whose big difference was over initial support for the invasion of Iraq. Thus, downplaying progress in Iraq by omission could be said to have benefitted Barack Obama at the expense of Hillary Clinton, which would be consistent with the pro-Obama trend of media coverage documented (among other places) here, here and here.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
Mostly not enough of our soldiers are getting killed. It’s just no fun anymore.
Someone needs to notify the Dems POTUS nominee, the last I heard from him and the Goracle was that Iraq was an “engineered distraction from the real terrorist threats.”
If you succeed at something stupid is it still something stupid? YES.
If you succeed at something stupid is it still something stupid? YES.
You seem to be the “stupidity” expert. That’s probably why you answered your own question.
“#Comment by happyfeet on 6/23 @ 11:59 am #
Mostly not enough of our soldiers are getting killed. It’s just no fun anymore.”
Let’s just keep it that way. My son, Matt the Marine, is scheduled to deploy there some time towards the end of the year.
“#Comment by ProggHero on 6/23 @ 12:04 pm #
If you succeed at something stupid is it still something stupid? YES.”
You should know.
SNAP!
“…to avoid owning up to the fact that their preferred narrative is no longer operative. …”
or having to face the potential case that it never was operative and was instead an intentional fabrication.
Unsurprising to see this. Events no longer mesh with the narrative, thus even the same level of coverage would point that up much too uncomfortably.
It’s very simple, it’s like economics. The reporters report most on what they want – degradation, death, filth, destruction… and when they don’t get it, i.e. there’s good news, they change the subject.
Oh. I was being ironic, you know that, right? Me I am very, very pro not killed soldiers. But teh NPR loves them bunches.
If they do not report it, it did not happen.
Hmm… We were completely wrong about the war being lost.
OK progressives! Let’s pick up these goalposts and set them down over here where it says:
“If you succeed at something stupid is it still something stupid? YES.”
There. That’s better. And don’t you DARE question our patriotism!
For real teh NPR just this morning was reveling in the dead soldiers, which are a lot their favorite ones.
Nobody but nobody milks a dead soldier for all he’s worth like NPR I don’t think. Cindy Sheehan? Amateur.
Oh, is that the new Narrative™ now, proggie? What happened to “Blood for Oil” and “Halliburton” and “Cowboy Diplomacy” and “We can’t win a Civil War” and “We’ve lost?” What, none of those work anymore? So we have to go with “Just because you succeed, it’s still stupid!” Great, call Harry Reid and have him incorporate that into his weekly bleatings.
Do you ever take a minute to look in the mirror and have a moment of insight along the lines of “My gosh, I’m an unserious person who really just doesn’t love my country much, at all.” Do you honestly believe that success, a democratically elected secular government in a muslim country, pro-west, right smack dab in the Middle East is stupid? How about al qaeda blowing off mountains of men and material in both Afghanistan and Iraq and achieving less than nothing, other than their almost complete humiliation in front of the muslim world? How about not a single successfull attack on American soil in the last six years and the increasing buffoonery of the attempts elsewhere in previous years? Yup, incredibly stupid. After all, to give any credit to McChimpy BushHitlerfuckwad and his cohort, O’StalinCheneyasshatovitz would be beyond the pale. So now it all has to be stupid: success, Failure and everything in between.
Do you ever have to stop and remind yourself to breathe because of the hypocracy? Don’t!
Well those Tillmans do kind of give NPR a run for their money, but it’s a friendly competition.
O’StalinCheneyasshatovitz
Point of order: TroggLoser would never say that. He admires Stalin.
SBP: Don’t get me started, I’m in a mood.
Log Cabin is right. That idiot statement is the result of an intergalactic movement of the goal posts.
Not a movement of goal post at all. As soon as it was discovered there were no WMD, the mission had no point and was based on a lie. It is pretty simple really.
Phew! For a minute, I thought we would get through this without the bad intell = lie talking point.
WMD was not the only justification given, so perhaps talking about lies is something you should avoid. Even assuming it was, once the invasion happened it is from that point that consideration of the next step must start.
Without the WMD justification even after 911 this illegal invasion would not have been possible. I think we can all agree on that. 4000 dead for nothing what a waste. I hear they are now testing drugs on the people dumb enough to sign up during bush’s crappy presidency. We would all have been better off if those 4000 died trying to cure cancer than just trying to secure Oil for Big Business friends of our own royal family.
I don’t impute the media with the self-serving agenda that you all do. I just don’t take all the reports, good or bad, as gospel.
I did hear something interesting yesterday on NPR, though. Jordan and several other ME countries are planning to return some of the priceless relics looted from Iraq right under the Americans’ noses. One spokesperson said that they felt that the Iraqis had enough control that it was safe to send the relics back. To me, that is a tangible and significant benchmark, unlike the “fewer Americans blown up!! things are great!” pronouncements I usually get from the right.
Oh, yea, Proggie, because once we had discovered that the WMD, in bulk, couldn’t be found (and nice touch with the “lie” despite the fact that almost all western intelligence services including our own thought they were there) then by your calculation we should have just upped and left, leaving the country in total chaos.
Hey, it’s only brown people, right?
You need to look up “stupid” in the dictionary because I don’t think it means what you think it does. Also, while you’re at it, look up “honor,” “prudence,” “strategy” and “cowardice.” Don’t ask John Murtha or Sean Penn to help you.
BJ when are you enlisting to go over and fight this honorable war? While your there say hi to the bush twins I am sure they are rushing to join up too. Their paperwork is just going slow.
The invasion wasn’t illegal either by the standards of US law or international law (as represented by the UN). Not really doing very well at the whole opinion based on fact thing progghero. You also studiously ignore the fact that we did invade, and no one owns a time machine.
Cynn they are just grasping for any excuse to say “hey look we won it was all worth it bush didn’t lie to us” when that will never happen. There will never be a moment in history that this will be looked on as anything other than a mistake. To complain about the media coverage is also laughable. They eagerly wanted to go to war too, remember all the embedded coverage? Now that it was discovered bush lied they understandably are wary of anything the lying pentagon says. They are all bush cronies.
Hey, they don’t call him “ProggressiveHero” for nothing! In the span of just a few minutes we’ve seen the goalposts pushed around, the Big Lie, and the Chickenhawk.
I think we can safely say his work is done here.
“#Comment by ProggressiveHero on 6/23 @ 12:52 pm #
Not a movement of goal post at all. As soon as it was discovered there were no WMD, the mission had no point and was based on a lie. It is pretty simple really.”
You’re even more unintelligent than I had surmised.
Mission Accomplished. ;-)
Cynn, are you really making an argument that progress in Iraq should be measured by returning relics? Rather than in territories secured by Iraqi troops and al qaeda running away faster?
Great. Googly. Moogly. You and proggie should take a vacation together.
Ohg, and proggie, does success on a “stupid” enterprise also make it a waste? Which Narrative™ will you use?
Face it, progggie. The Hubble Telescope can’t see your goalposts.
Oh, and don’t forget how many children we could have educated or how much starvation world wide we could have alleviated with all of the money we spent. That’s always good for TEH OUTRAGE!!111eleventy111!!! Nice touch with the oil for Bushhitler’s crony’s line but you forget ….. !!!!!11111HALLIBURTON1111!!!!
“Comment by ProggressiveHero on 6/23 @ 1:03 pm #
BJ when are you enlisting to go over and fight this honorable war? ”
And what’s your MOS?
N. O’Brain not unintelligent enough to want to join the military right now and go over to the slaughterhouse with all those nice little Repub christian soldiers. Seems your intelligent enough not to do that either congrats.
Some people have to be too slow to outrun the bear, so in reality folks like ProggHero provide a service by allowing the rest of us to get away.
Thanks PH!
BJ when are you enlisting to go over and fight this honorable war? While your there say hi to the bush twins I am sure they are rushing to join up too. Their paperwork is just going slow.
So will you be supporting McCain, then? His son is over there, you know.
“#Comment by ProggressiveHero on 6/23 @ 1:09 pm #
N. O’Brain not unintelligent enough to want to join the military right now and go over to the slaughterhouse with all those nice little Repub christian soldiers. Seems your intelligent enough not to do that either congrats.”
See comment #5.
Then go fuck yourself with a nail studded baseball bat, cocksucker.
Nostradamus? Is that you?
You guys know that ProggHero, realizing he has lost the argument has decided it’s time to move on to just pissing off his political adversaries. You should consider these lashing out comments as a series of concession speeches by a sore loser.
ProggyHero is the reason I let the people with the Anti-War buttons stuck to their canvas backpacks have all the room they need on the train and sidewalks. Who can tell what little instance will set them off?
I don’t want to be responsible for them getting hurt.
Frog Hero has managed to trot out the standard moonbat memes du jour – Racist!, Bush lied, warforoil, and chickenhawk.
Oopsy, proggie. Nice job trying to lay the chickenhawk label on the guy who has both served in the military and has a son in the Marines headed to Iraq.
You stay classy now, ya hear? After all, Progressives lobe the troops or so I’ve been told.
BTW: If you hang around in all of your transcendent classiness you’ll have a chance to hear from several commentators who have served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, including a couple serving there right now. See we tend to get our news from those battlefields directly from boots on the ground, not from DU or Kos or Huffpo.
But, hey, proggie, I’m sure your activist work to save the endangered patchouli has its moments of satisfaction.
BJ when are you enlisting to go over and fight this honorable war?
As for me, Little ProggHero, I’m focusing on neutralizing chicken dhimmis such as yourself first, as demanded by successful Wars and authorized by the Constitution.
Also remember, my son, Chickenhawks eat Chicken Dhimmis….ummmmmmmm…a ProggHero sandwich…yummy.
BJ — I was not making an argument of any kind. Of course increased autonomy and unity in Iraq is important. But just sorting through a laundry list of a few isolated events doesn’t give me a clear sense of the situation. However, the assessment of neighboring nations who have a stake in Iraq’s outcome tells me quite a bit.
OHMIGOD, the dreaded CHICKENHAWK MEME.
Let us cringe at the inescapable logic of it, that if one has not experienced what it is, one cannot state an opinion of it.
Friends should not let the brainless intertube.
PH, we all know that you’ve never had a cohesive thought, so please stop slobbering what you’ve mistaken for one? OK?
Well I don’t know, Geezer! It’s not as if McCain McSame McBush has a son serving in Iraq …
[…]
Wait a minute…
Cynn; Sorry I jumped on you. You were actually making a positive statement and I was blinded by the functional idiocy of proggie’s “success is stupid” blather.
My bad!
* WMD justification – Only for the Left is this the one and only reason. Saddam just didn’t exist in their world. Maybe we shouldn’t have listened to Hillery, Rockefeller, Kerry, Edwards, Kennedy, and all the rest of the Democratic leaders that said he was an “imminent threat and had to be toppled”. – Lie #1
* this illegal invasion – Congress voted to give the war powers to Bush. Thats how it works under the Constitution. Your side probably threw Hillery under the bus because she followed the Constitution, not because she obeyed the law. – Lie #2
* 4000 dead for nothing – That might have been a good argument if your side could have managed a “manufactured by propaganda” surrender and loss in Iraq in the same way you did in VietNam. As things stand – Lie #3
* Oil for Big Business – Directly because of our efforts on behalf of the Iraqui people, their oil production is up to a level of ~2 million barrels a day, of Which we have neither bought or “taken” a single drop. – Lie #4
– Reviewing this “Big Lie” track record, and understanding you’re painted into a small, very uncomfortable corner of partisan mendaciousness, your talking points are as out of date and wrong headed as your ideology.
– I would say we’re not the ones grasping here PH.
But BBH: Nostard… I mean proggie has future history on his side!
Brave ProggHero ran away?
“N. O’Brain not unintelligent enough to want to join the military right now…”
– Oh, is that your problem. Ok, give me your email addy and I’ll send you a copy of the lifetime deferment application. I might as well, I’ve beem passing them out for years at so-called “anti-war” rallies. Funny how the whole group just disappears after I hand them out.
– Why didn’t you just say you’re a coward in the first place. Saves a lot of time for everyone.
He bravely ran away,
When danger reared it ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
I need to watch Holy Grail again!
Did he really need to state his cowardice? I should think his first two posts made that quite clear.
Karl, after all, the title of your post is “Vanishing…” he was just following orders.
Some friends and I were just discussing how people who are generally impotent in life use the internet to bully people around – blog comments, multi-user games, etc., etc. It’s really quite sad. I say “Go outside and make something. With your brain and hands.”
– Clint – The moonbat gaggle, in concert with the hijacked Dem party, are trying to do something with their “emotions”, forget the heads and hands part.
– They’re trying to follow in the footsteps of the great ancient Alchemists. Namely they’re trying to turn a Democratic Republic into a nannystate soft Marxist Socialism.
– In Other words they want to be the first idiots in history to turn GOLD to SHIT.
Some friends and I were just discussing how people who are generally impotent in life use the internet to bully people around – blog comments, multi-user games, etc., etc. It’s really quite sad. I say “Go outside and make something. With your brain and hands.â€Â
Did you do this discussing outside? Any upcoming motivational seminars you could suggest?
Let us cringe at the inescapable logic of it, that if one has not experienced what it is, one cannot state an opinion of it.
Imo, that’s one of the versions of the Chickenhawk Argument which is especially telling as to the utterly pre-rational Progg mindset, because it essentially means that these anti-war cultists – for the most part – then can’t speak to the issue by virtue of their very own rule – which they should follow, right?, because it is their rule, after all – while we don’t have to because, being actual Americans, it’s not our rule.
But, then again, who has ever found it useful to argue logically with infants of any age?
J. Peden: No the proggies will tell you that only those who are supportive of war (war mongers, neo-cons) are required to fight the war and prove their warrior bona fides. The anti war people are operating from a moral high ground due to their perfectly intelligent anti-war position. Beacuse of their superior moral position they may comment on the war while, at the same time hold anyone else responsible to actually fighting the war before said person is eligible to comment on said war.
Of course, if you are fighting said war, they will pat you on the head, thank you for your service, but point out that you could not possibly have the “big picture” in your MOS.
I hope I’ve cleared this up for you.
Thanks a lot, BJ.
Roboc – I hear the Admiral Theater has motivational seminars nightly, but alas the cover and drink charge is too much for me. Check ’em out, I’m sure they’ll be accommodating.
But I don’t think local laws allow them to do it outside, so you’ll have to improvise on your own there.
As it is, not am I surrounded by these Progs/Marxists (you try avoiding them at an art school, I get the extra special monkeys), I’m also subjected to another dose at the writing course I have to take… I’m actually quite thankful for all of you guys over the past few years.
I think I safely have the moral authority to not want to kill brown people in another country. Wow what a concept.
A moral authority that allows for leaving the brown people to kill each? How “selective” of you.
As it is, not am I surrounded by these Progs/Marxists (you try avoiding them at an art school, I get the extra special monkeys), I’m also subjected to another dose at the writing course I have to take… I’m actually quite thankful for all of you guys over the past few years.
Creative writing no doubt!
“I think I safely have the moral authority to not want to kill brown people in another country. Wow what a concept.”
– No, you’ll opt to stay gere safe in your elitist cacoon, and let others fight your battles for you.
– What you have is not so much a moral authority, as a yellow belly, made worse for your rapacious vilifying of the very people who protect your useless ass.
Gee your picky, Proggie – how about brown people in this country? Would ya go for that? Yellow people in other countries, maybe?
How do you feel about Astrology?
I think I safely have the moral authority to not want to kill brown people in another country.
Stuart Smalley, is that you?
Roboc – not sure exactly what you’re getting at there. If you’re equating me with ProggHero, you might want to follow the link that is my name and browse through my archives (which, admittedly, wouldn’t take long), I think you’ll find quite a different story. Unless you’re in agreement with ProggyHero, then you can forget the above.
(And it’s a nonfiction writing course wherein our first essay to read and discuss was by Freire, ashamedly it took me over half the essay to spot the Marxist…)
From Spengler in AsiaTimes today, a great aphorism from the chinese:
“Kill the chicken, and let the monkey watch,”
Heh. He got the “brown people” one in there too. He has to be putting us on.
Yes, it looks like one of those random dialogue generators with tranziprog buzzwords thrown in.
ProggressiveZero,
Iam still wondering whether you are Jeff doing a parody of moonbats.
Of course, if you had ever listened to Bush BEFORE we went into Iraq, you would know that the main reason, right up there with WMDs, was to change the dynamic in the ME. THE ONLY POSSIBLE WAY TO STOP THE INSANITY OVER THERE.
But of course, you and all of your disingenuous cronies refuse to stick to facts in your arguments.
But, then again, why would fascists like you and Maxine Waters have any use for facts? The truth just muddies the issue when you are a stinking piece of lying dumpster meat.
Facts are facts, and I haven’t seen you cite one true fact since you dragged your stinking butt in here. Oh. Except for US soldier fatalities. But we all know that you do that to make people lose thier objectivity and “feel” bad.
You are one scary asshole, Mein Fuhrer.
Clint: I think Roboc was being light hearted, as in the people in your class are probably creatively writing.
I may be wrong but I don’t think he’s putting you in the proggie category.
Q: Did ProggHero go over with the group that acted as human shields against the invasion? You know, for the moral authority of it all?
– The “brown people” argument is a non-starter too, designed to slip a patina of racism over the Iraq war, because, as we all know, the race card is chief among the Lefts “big lie” menu. They are so obsessed over race, they can hardly hold a conversation without at least alluding to it.
– I’m rather dark olive skinned PH, much darker than my Arab friends, and much much darker than my Persian friends, as long as they don’t spend any time in the tanning booth.
– So does that mean I get a pass, or are we talking about some obscure group that only the SicFrogs are aware of?
– Just who are these “brown people” you speak of twat-waffle?
Kill the chicken, and let the monkey watch
If the Chinese have great aphorisms like this why do my fortune cookies always say something like, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step?”
Prolly for the same reason that they make the chinese food here so crappy americanized and keep all the good stuff for themselves back at home.
I think I safely have the moral authority to not want to kill brown people in another country.
We know you also feed the bedbugs with your very person, O Unlightened One,’But will you refrain from breathing lest you cause a cyclone?’, is the ultimate test.
BBH,
You know, the “authentic” ones.
BJT – You’re probably right, but I don’t think their creativity has much to do with their understanding of the material. I’m guessing it has more to do with their comprehension skills. So far the favorites have been the personal tales that hide the lessons behind some emotions…
Hmm… Does that sound like anyone we know of?
No, you have the preening smugness of your lascivious urge to murder brown people being taken over by your proxies, so that you may be Safely Above it All. Even the Lancet, laying every hangnail in Mesopotamia at the feet of the [horrors!] Invaders, never got up to a quarter of of the murders your beloved hero Saddam, Defender of the Iraqi People, committed with the aid of his henchmen. You are a murderer, a genocidist, a rapist, and a torturer. The fact that you are too delicate, and too pusillanimous, to actually dirty your own personal hands with the deeds you expect people to do on your behalf does not gain you any “moral authority”. In fact, you have exactly the moral authority of a person who witnesses a violent crime and prevents anyone from interfering with its commission on the ground that that constitutes “violence”.
Regards,
Ric
– Thanks Karl. I do forget that one from time to time.
– We must always remember that the one crude social talent that the Left as a group has mastered, is its predictable ability to always have yet one more vacuous argument to shore up the most recent meme that crashed and burned.
– Man oh man, if PH and his merry band of supercilious cohorts are what passes for “Elite” in America these days, academia is in ICU on life support, and the vital signs are almost flatlined.
Comment by Clint on 6/23 @ 3:16 pm #
BJT – You’re probably right, but I don’t think their creativity has much to do with their understanding of the material. I’m guessing it has more to do with their comprehension skills. So far the favorites have been the personal tales that hide the lessons behind some emotions…
Hmm… Does that sound like anyone we know of?
Well written Clint! I’m sure you’re at the head of your class.
Man oh man, if PH and his merry band of supercilious cohorts are what passes for “Elite†in America these days, academia is in ICU on life support, and the vital signs are almost flatlined.
What? You wouldn’t pay 20 grand a year so that your son or daughter could absorb the wisdom of a Professor Caric?
This one isn’t any fun. I guess concomitant to the vanishing coverage is that the better troll people migrate to the more du jour topics. Also for real I don’t think they were ever all that into it to begin with, national security issues and all that. Also this one has a stupid name.
– Please. Don’t remind me Aldo. I’m about to do just that. Fortunately hes solidly de-programmed, having just spent 12 years navigating his way, with pops help, through the broken facilities of the Leftist infiltrated public school system.
– I truly feel for the generations yet to come that will face the desaster that is our schools. Its very bit as criminal as the worst that was going on in the Soviet. Young minds, the playground of the Marxist seditionist, all in the name of “freedom of indoctrination”. I’ve actually developed a visceral hate for the people behind this shit. In some ways I think they are more dangerous to our values and way of life than the Wahhabists.
If somebody wants to crank up coverage levels of the war in Iraq, all the AP has to do is wind up Jamil Hussein, not that that’s his real name mind you, again and stories will be flying out of there right and left. That dude was everywhere, sometimes at the same time.
I truly feel for the generations yet to come that will face the desaster that is our schools. Its very bit as criminal as the worst that was going on in the Soviet. Young minds, the playground of the Marxist seditionist, all in the name of “freedom of indoctrinationâ€Â. I’ve actually developed a visceral hate for the people behind this shit. In some ways I think they are more dangerous to our values and way of life than the Wahhabists.
One of the most influential of those people is Obama’s buddy Bill Ayers:
Perhaps PH and his/her/its merry band might take a moment and thank the military they bash for allowing them to be as much of an asshole as no one can stand.
If my side is so wrong how are we winning? Honestly are you guys capable of any self examination? If I and others of my ilk are so vile unscrupulous and evil, how are we winning every election in the last 3 years and poised to win the Presidency in a landslide?
If you disagree with me just compare the age of the average anti-war protestor and the age of everyone that shows up to “cheer” soldiers when they return home. The latter is dying off just like the ideology of the posters on this website. Like I said before deal with it.
…’cause, like, that’s — um — 25 or something in dog years!
#49
#
Comment by Karl on 6/23 @ 1:54 pm #
Brave ProggHero ran away?
Logic. It’s like a silver bullet to em.
Well, Bush was winning in 2003, so by ProggHero “logic” the invasion must have been right.
Truly amazing! Twodigit meme stuffed into a onedigit bag!
“Honestly are you guys capable of any self examination?”
So that’s what you’re calling your masturbatory fantasy of One Party, Comrade?
‘If you disagree with me just compare the age of the average anti-war protestor and the age of everyone that shows up to “cheer†soldiers when they return home.’
Don’t see that myself, protestors are usually a lot older than the ones cheering. By the way, you don’t need to put “cheer” in quotes, they really are cheering.
Let me guess. Darfur. That would have been a war ProgZero could have supported. Would have signed right up except for that gimpy wrist he got from painting protest signs with Mercedes symbols.
If I and others of my ilk are so vile unscrupulous and evil, how are we winning every election in the last 3 years
Who of your ilk has won an election lately?
ProggHweo, you don’t speak for me. Ric, you are over the top with your full-fanged denunciation of anyone who would dare question this administration. You sound like fucking Lawrence of Arabia. “We must destroy the barbarians so they might live!”
cynn, I don’t recall denouncing “anyone who would dare question this administration.” Guilty conscience talking much?
But egocentric jerkwads like “ProggHero” chap my ass in a serious way, a way that I haven’t seen you even approach. Oooooh! PH has never killed a brown person! PH always refused to endorse killing brown people, so he gains the Moral Advantage®
Except that he doesn’t. At one point, Saddam Hussein’s people threw live infants into an open ditch, then stifled their cries by slitting their parents’ throats and tossing the bodies in on top of the babies. Now, you might argue that interfering with that sort of thing isn’t sufficiently profitable to make it worth our while; I’ll wonder why you might criticize Exxon executives, but it’s a valid argument. You might argue that the principle of national sovereignty makes such shenanigans none of our business; I’ll wonder what the f* the UN is for, but it’s a valid argument. But the only way you can make the direct, absolutist argument that there was no moral reason for intervening is to endorse the goons who couldn’t be bothered to slit babies’ throats before burying them.
So ProggHero is a rapist, because Saddam and his sons and followers maintained extensive facilities for rape that didn’t even have sex as its primary purpose and PH maintains that there is no, repeat no, moral justification for stoppint them. ProggHero is a torturer, because at Abu Ghraib alone over thirty thousand people were deprived of limbs and appendages, cut with knives, burned with branding irons (among other things) and, when they died, were buried in the prison yard so their relatives had to walk over them in a culture that holds a visible shoe sole as a mortal insult, and PH declares that there is no, repeat no, moral justification for stopping that practice. He is a murderer and genocidist on the same grounds.
It’s the absolutism. The difference between something and nothing is infinite, no matter how small the “something” is. I can listen to arguments that there was insufficient moral reason. I think they’re wrong, and they make me understand why the Left is so critical of “xtianists” — all that Samiritan and brother’s-keeper stuff is such a drag when it’s time to party, you know? — but they don’t go absolutist. Of course, he is a “Progressive” Hero, right? The characteristic activity of “Progressives” for as long as the philosophy has existed has been killing off the undesirables that block the “progress”, so it makes sense for a murderer and genocidist to adopt the label. He gets no concession of moral authority from it, at least from me.
Regards,
Ric
ric: let me sleep onir and I would be honored to speak to you on this.
ric: some of my keys are sticking. I seem to be on autotype.
hcccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccOh, and the end. You are a moron to cleave to the Sadaam as Satan shit. He was bad, but really… And with that, I hop into the abyss..
I love it when Ric does that. I really do.
You are a moron to cleave to the Sadaam as Satan shit. He was bad, but really… And with that, I hop into the abyss..
Sleep well, cynn, knowing how safe you and yours are? Being thought of as a shallow, ungrateful bitch probably doesn’t create quite the unease that living under a bloodthirsty tyrant would.
If you disagree with me just compare the age of the average anti-war protestor and the age of everyone that shows up to “cheer†soldiers when they return home. The latter is dying off just like the ideology of the posters on this website. Like I said before deal with it.
Does this honestly have to be explained? Proghero has a bumpersticker mentality. You know, those saying are cute and all, but they are no substitute for actual thought.
I think I safely have the moral authority to not want to kill brown people in another country.
Margaret Sanger, in her progressive, turn-of-the-20th-century wisdom that presciently concluded that human considerations would not outweigh political expediencies, demanded the deaths of brown babies in the womb to prevent the loss of Western Civ to brown people in the United States in particular. She also cautioned in the same book that the goal of progressive eugenics must not be divulged to its targets. That might get messy, you know? And she found a couple of brown-skinned reverends to actually aid her crusade to reduce the number of brown people…sort of like Jesse Jackson and certified malicious liar Al Sharpton.
Progressivism: the enemy of non-white people for over a century.
Yes, yes you do. Seriously, cynn, at what point does evil become bad enough you’re willing to stop it? Does it have to reach “Satan” levels?
I mean, for fuck’s sake, the left is all the time telling us how heartless the US is to its poor, yet the poor in this country live better than 90% of the rest of the world. The left would be abso-fricking-lutely thrilled with another poverty program with the same price tag as the liberation of Iraq (money and lives), even though the primary beneficiaries would be middle-class whites in public-sector unions.
But God forbid we stop some tyrant from raping, torturing, and killing.
And, guys, ProggHero is a parody. Stop arguing with him.
“Comment by N. O’Brain on 6/23 @ 12:10 pm #
“#Comment by happyfeet on 6/23 @ 11:59 am #
Mostly not enough of our soldiers are getting killed. It’s just no fun anymore.â€Â
Let’s just keep it that way. My son, Matt the Marine, is scheduled to deploy there some time towards the end of the year.”
I missed this before, NO.
Please tell your son Matt that the Lost Dog thanks him, and wishes him Godspeed. The difference betwen Matt and ProggZero brings tears to my eyes.
I declined on Viet Nam, but if I wasn’t about 150 years over the recruitmant age, I would be going. What a huge difference in the two wars, and what a non-difference in the idiots that are still living in the sixties.
The new millenium is so disheartening sometimes…
#101
Unless you were a Kurd. Or a woman one of his sons coveted. Or someone he just didn’t like. They weren’t like us. So I guess you’re right. Way too overblown. Would you like to try again. If the abyss spits you out, that is.
I can’t help but think that would be more than a little bit humiliating.