In the long history of idiotic and confused responses to my (all-too) frequent arguments detailing the way manufactured and carefully-crafted narrative is disseminated, popularized, and then used to prove the very premise it sets out to authenticate, this extended assemblage of curiously cobbled-together twaddle by one “InkDog” just might set the record for sophomoric incoherence.
After all, faux-intellectual engagement is one thing; but when you find yourself declaring that your opponent is unfamiliar with how irony works, or when you find yourself arguing with John Zogby—not, as you believe yourself to be, with me—about the importance of how poll questions are framed in determining the outcome of the polling (and doing so by drawing strange, strained analogies to colored eggs and marshmallow bunnies [note: the “law breaking” is not the operative variable in the point I was making in comparing the polls; Presidential power divorced from a specifically named actor is; and the granting of that power shifted dramatically when a generic President was replaced with Bush])—well, it’s time to shut down the computer and go have yourself an ice cold Yoohoo, and maybe catch up on some cartoons.
Similarly, when you find yourself questioning your opponent’s understanding of how postmodern linguistic strategies work toward establishing and reinforcing the contingent nature of “truth,” it helps to have some idea what the fuck it is you’re talking about. Simply dismissing me as “pedantic,” for instance, does not undermine my points; I apologize if my interest in this area puts you off, really I do. But it is what it is, and if you don’t wish to deal with the points I’m making, kindly resist the impulse to criticize the post.²
Which brings me to the rather astounding recent pronouncements made by Eschaton’s Duncan Black, who—in one of his increasingly frequent efforts to paint me an “idiot”—engages in the kind of mind-boggling obfuscation and backpeddling one hasn’t seen since the days of Katie Couric scrambling to explain to her NBC morning coffee clatch how having one’s Presidential knob polished in the Oval Office by a portly intern isn’t really sex per se (a revelation that freed up millions of teens to guzzle the cock without fear of being grounded by their liberal parents), nor is it even “sexual harassment,” strictly speaking—though admittedly, one could, were s/he part of the VAST RIGHTWING CONSPIRACY, point to such “technicalities” as the disparity in power relations as grounds for some absurd case for abuse. BECAUSE OF THE HYPOC—oh, well, you get the point.
Anyway, here’s Duncan, explaining why I—and the legion of pro-war conservative chickenhawks who comprise the current dubiously elected administration—are idiots for not listening to him and the military and foreign policy experts on the progressive left:
Bush and his defenders have defined leaving Iraq as losing. Period. It’s one reason crazy people like me think that may having some sort of arbitrary timetable or rough events-triggered withdrawal is a good idea – because there will never be some magical day when the Iraq security situation suddenly improves.
[My emphasis]
Follow that? It was Duncan/Atrios and his minions who, we’re now learning, were all along demanding—DEMANDING!—an events-based draw down of US troops! Unfortunately for the prospects of global freedom and righteousness, however, bloodthirsty neocons like yours truly (and the greedy evil Bushies from whom I’ve been taking my marching orders) wouldn’t hear of such a common sense-based approach! Instead, what we wanted, according to Duncan, was to stay in Iraq in perpetuity, afraid that any draw down of troops would be seen as a defeat. Period! And boy, were we ever wrong!
What is so astounding about this revisionist narrative (and Atrios is not alone in pushing such a mindboggling bit of flip-flopping; see, for instance, this sublimely ironic puddle of self-satisfied piffle from one of the contributors at The Left Coaster), is how brazenly it attempts to airbrush out all relevant context in order to make its points (such as they are).
In the case of Atrios, we are suddenly asked to believe that he has been on Bush’s side all along!—that the difference in strategy between Atrios and the Smirking Chimp’s Army of Electoral Idiocy is merely one of semantics, with Atrios wanting “some sort of arbitrary timetable or rough events-triggered withdrawal,” while the slackjawed rank and file Bushbots—with their jingoistic bluster and their canned beer—practically forced the administration to stay in Iraq forever, presumably just to spite anti-war liberals and to assert their global manifest destiny of hyperpower imperialism.
Leave aside for the moment that an “arbitrary timetable†based around events—insofar as it can be said to be “arbitrary”— is not really a “timetable†at all, because a “timetableâ€Â, by its very nature, is tied to a particular “timeâ€Â, while events-based draw downs are fluid, and happen when the events happen, regardless of some pre-conceived timetable). Because that’s just nitpicking. What matters is, Duncan had the right idea.
And to Atrios, it is simply unthinkable that what we wingnuts have been arguing all along is that it would be a military and foreign policy mistake to leave Iraq before the job is done (and before those goals established by the DoD and the new Iraqi government are met)—something that Jack Murtha and Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean were not exactly vocally pushing for. And it is unthinkable precisely because that’s been the progressive plan, too!—or so we’re now being told. And because we know for a fact that progressives and Bushbots disagree—well, there you go. QED.
Won’t be long now before Atrios Photoshops himself into a flight suit and places himself in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner, I’ll wager.
Meanwhile, here’s eriposte at The Left Coaster taking issue with my post on self-fulfilling narratives and the postmodern turn—specifically, it’s recent made-for-media performative in the statements of al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri (a performance that Left Coaster’s Steve Soto claimed he “had to admit it was fun to see”):
When Jack Murtha called for a troop withdrawal, who said that a withdrawal is the same as conceding defeat to the enemy and the terrorists? It was Bush and his patsies.
Got that? The gist of eriposte’s amazingly facile argument is this: when “Bush and his patsies” began pointing out that should the increasing drumbeat for immediate troop withdrawal (or “redeployment as soon as is practicable,” which is merely the same sentiment dressed in plausible deniability) from Murtha, likeminded Dems, and their media proxies actually to be followed, our enemies would most certainly interpret this action as a sign of retreat and defeat. Instead, noted the Bushies and military commanders, troop draw downs should happen on our terms, without any set time table, and should happen only when events on the ground suggested the time was right—each of which would be tied to the completing of some goal, or to some other measure of success that the DoD and the Iraqi interim government had decided upon.
The Democrats, however, were not satisfied with that answer, and continued to push for dates, times, and numbers—a strategy the administration and the military continued to insist would embolden our enemies and allow them to plan spectacles based around those dates and (publically known) events.
Of course, the desire for dates and times on the part of Congressional Democrats was never about anything more than trying to get out in front of troop withdraws they knew were in the offing since at least July, following a successful election. That is, they needed a strategy to take some measure of credit for what might be perceived as a major successs in Iraq, and they lit upon one the idea that presenting themselves as tough-minded critics of the administration —realists whose pointed criticisms would “fix” problems on the ground and hasten the return of troops—was the best way to claim a measure of credit.
Still, some Democrats like Murtha and Pelosi and Dean either didn’t get the message—or else they triangulated for the sake of the party’s overall postition; they continued to call for immediate withdraw, they continued to suggest the war was unwinnable, and their pronouncements were dutifully driven by the press, forcing the Bushies to yet again rebuff the preposed strategy as one that would embolden our enemies.
All of which leads up to the post-election present and the long-predicted troop draw downs. Only now, instead of being able to say with confidence that we are drawing down troops as the result of what has been a remarkable success for a burgeoning democracy, at least in terms of democratic participation, we are met with pronouncements from Zawahiri that directly parrot the “message” of troop withdraws the administration predicted our enemies would assert once they could reasonably argue that the draw downs are the result of pressure from Dems like Murtha, Dean, Pelosi, Kennedy, Reid, et al, who claim Iraq is a quagmire that the US can’t win, and that our best bet is to cut our losses and save face.
The irony of all this being that eriposte and Steve Soto now have the temerity to turn around and claim that it was the Bushies who pushed this “withdraw equals defeat” meme—when in fact withdrawal under the kinds of conditions many congressional Dems were calling for would in fact have been defeat. That the Bushies were forced to mention this in order to disabuse certain supporters of the Democratic plan about the wisdom of their shortsighted strategy is now being used as proof that it was the Bushies who made the argument. That is, “Bush and his patsies” are now responsible for this meme—they own it—simply because they were forced to respond to it in a way that explained its faults and labeled its strategic defeatism.
All of which shows a remarkable gift for bracketing out inconvenient history. Because the fact is, we were inundated for several months with excuses to pull out—and though, from a tactical and strategic perspective, these foreign policy suggestions were absolutely and criminally insane and could only lead to defeat, they were nevertheless offerred day after day as a legitimate position, one we were told we needed, as a country, to “have a debate” over.
Now, however, we’re being told by progressive revisionists that the real reason Murtha, et al, wanted us out of Iraq is that our were seen soldiers as targets (not terribly suprisingl in war, I’d venture)—and that the Iraqis need to learn to stand on their own two feet and fight their own battles.
Whereas, we are simultaneously reminded by these same liberal Democrats that we pulled out of Afghanistan too soon, forcing the fledgling Afghan democracy to stand on it own to feet when what we should have done is stayed and finished the job.
But let’s not get too hung up on consistency.
What is happening now is that Zawahiri is trying to paint troop draw downs as a defeat—and the reason that argument has any force (even with an ironic wink)—is precisely because congressional Dems, our own press, and international opponents of the Iraq effort have provided him with cover for doing so. And they gave him that opportunity when they decided to politicize already planned draw downs in order to suggest that such draw downs were required as a way to save face and cut our losses.
The idea that it was the Bushies’ response to Democratic insistance that we pull out—which Bush et al correctly pointed out would be seen as a sign of weakness and defeat—is the genesis¹ of how al-Qaeda’s number two is framing draw downs, is risible.
And further—it proves the point of my original post, which is that people like eriposte and Steve Soto and Atrios are capable of constructing their own carefully crafted and cherry-picked narrative of events, and then actually convince themselves of the veracity of those manufactured “truths” in order to cite them as evidence of the arguments they were constructed to bolster in the first place.
It’s almost a sickness, honestly.
(see also, Junkyard Blog)
****
****
update: eriposte offers a feeble response that amounts to this: “Sure, the Dem’s plan to cut and run would have been a sign of weakness—and would have been seen by our enemy as tantamount to surrender. But it was the REPUBLICANS who pointed it out in those terms, and so it is THEY who are responsible for Zawahiri parroting the point—not, as Goldstein would dishonestly have you believe, the responsibility of those Congressional Democrats and their media enables who actually tried to implement the retreat / surrender strategy, and who demanded the Republicans explain why such a plan was both dangerous and unworkable.”
Seriously. That’s the argument. Well—that, and I use too many scare quotes for his tastes.
Ironically, such a conspicuously literal reading of my post, which aims to forgive and protect from criticism those directly responsible for framing troop withdrawals in precisely the way Zarqawi is now heralding them—as a sign of victory for al Qaeda—reiterates my point exactly: partisan fantasists like eriposte are willing to use the administration’s strong and clearly articulated public dismissals of the Congressional Democratic call for immediate withdrawal of troops—dismissals, mind you, whose rationale was demanded by Murtha, Pelosi, Dean, Reid, Kennedy, and the press—as “proof” that it was Republicans and the military who provided al Qaeda with the template for claiming troop withdraws meant US defeat, even though their position all along has been that troop draw downs would be events-based, and should be seen as a sign of success and a stage in the overall march to victory.
It is of course a fundamentally dishonest argument—and one that relies on the kind of semantic gotcha games progressive partisans inexplicably confuse with seriousness. Similarly, it relies for its force on the idea that any attempt to rebut an argument leaves the respondent open to charges that s/he is responsible for that argument should s/he refute it in a way that is particularly resonant.
But whatever. Read all the posts and make up your own minds.
****
¹ In his post, eriposte deploys as a classic red herring quotes from Generals Abizaid and Casey:
General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing, “the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.†General Abizaid said on the same date, “Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy.â€Â
But what has this to do with “immediate withdraw,” or the idea that we are losing the war, or that Iraq is a quagmire, etc? Here’s how General Abizaid actually answers those questions.
The bottom line is, of course the US wants to reduce our footprint in Iraq (pace Atrios’ understanding of the imperial ambitions of neocon warmongers). But what we don’t want to do is be seen as reducing our footprint in the face of domestic political pressure, which in turn might suggest that are doing so because we are losing the war, and that too many of our soldiers are dying for a lost cause. This is the Democratic narrative as pushed by Dean, Pelosi, Kennedy, et al.
² Interestingly, both InkDog and eriposte accused me of skipping over Soto’s mention of the NYT body armor story en route to my dishonest appraisal of the influence behind Zawahiri’s subtitled statement. However, in my original post, I deal with this in the very first paragraph:
Left Coaster also discusses the NYT body armor story, addressed here by Conferederate Yankee, as well as the relative dearth in new jobs created in December (an interesting spin for an unemployment rate that fell below 5%). But be that as it may.
Sometimes I wonder if these folks aren’t too busy battling bloodthirsty wingnut strawmen to actually take the time to read the posts they are criticizing in their entirety.
So basically, in some language on earth, “Atrios” means lying little twit.
I’m assuming you meant to write “liberal parents.” Fortunately your subconscious common sense blocked you: there are no liberal parents, only liberal grownups living with children…
And obviously the only thing we can do to assuage the lefties’ latest complaints is establish a long-term military presence in Iraq on the scale of our “occupation” of Western Europe…
But… but… They “Bespeak” HIGHER TRUTH!
SB: got
game
Man, Jeff, you may have single-handedly convinced Atrios to start actually blogging again–as opposed to just functioning as the main madam of the Internet’s largest lefty wh–er, chat-house.
Damn you. Damn you to hell!
Jeff,
You wrote:
“people like eriposte and Steve Soto and Atrios are capable of constructing their own carefully crafted and cherry-picked narrative of events, and then actually convince themselves of the veracity of those manufactured “truths†in order to cite them as evidence of the arguments they were constructed to bolster in the first place.”
I think you’re way too kind. These guys are merely bull shit artists, trying to score.
In olden days the bull shit loop was shorter. We could chase the buggers down in a lap or two. Jacques and his pals laid down a thicker smoke screen, and bull shit has, temporarily, gotten some traction.
Thanks for fighting the good fight with the academic and faux academic bull shitters–it’s essential. Rest assured, though, that my bubba friends understand that Atrios is a pimp, and he’d get his ass beat in any self respecting bar.
My favorite has always been when they make shit up from whole cloth.
Sometimes I feel like hitting the leftist boards and postion something like..
“..well if Al Gore had never been convicted of running a Thai Child Porn Ring, maybe he might have won that election!”
or
“When Bill Clinton invaded Turkey the first time, no one died of typhus then!”
Here’s Murtha’s plan for a safer America.
I think a buch of retards would beat my ass for calling them “Murthas”.
“buch” is moron for “bunch”. Sorry.
The next Great American Novel is in this somewhere. You should write it!
Wow! Now that was one of the most elegant (and thorough)public ripostes that I’ve read in quite some time. Very well done.
As for the lefties again moving the rhetorical goal posts, I can see why it sickens you and many others, but I’m not in the least surprised.
Bombastic assholes like Atrios, Kos, Left Coaster, etc will never admit to being wrong. They remind me of a boss I had at a former job. He insisted on the title of senior VP, yet he was the only VP in the company, you get the picture.
Anyway, whenever you made recommendations he would shoot them down. Then four to six months later, he’d pitch the exact same thing back only now, it was his idea.
Sickening, yeah, but unfortunately all too common.
As for Zawahiri’s latest blustering, I think he’s aware of just how badly it’s going for AQ in Iraq these days and that their days are numbered. The latest attacks have drawn condemnation from the Sunnis even.
I find the “critique” that the “Neocons” running the Administration’s Iraq war plans have long wanted nothing but a large-footprint, extended occupation of the country a little hard to swallow, given a reality which shows we have done nothing but pursue the exact opposite strategy, perhaps to our disservice (at least IMO, and in the opinions of many Iraq war critics–including Powell and McCain, as well as nearly every credible Democrat, for that matter). Can the drawdown of forces be seen as anything but an attempt to mirror (or get back to) a strategy similar to what worked for us in Afghanistan? A strategy we likely thought we would be implementing in the first place, in order to clean-up the odd terror cell and Saddamist dead-ender? The fact that few people in the Administration seriously felt we would not encounter WMD stockpiles of some sort, and that in the minds of many, therefore, the invasion would be vindicated–despite throwing our hands up in frustration at the fruitless inspections and stalled/intransigent UN negotiations–and our casual, “hands-off†post-invasion approach (it’s their country now, and democracy can be messy), which slowly ground to a halt and reversed-course as much as possible, but too late to prevent a sense of heavy occupation, seem to belie this point.
Wasn’t it Nixon who had a Patsie? Bush has a Laura.
TW “door” like the one which being noticed left open led ultimately to Nixon’s resignation.
APF, with all due respect, just what the fuck are you trying to say?
That I like hyphens, commas, and em dashes?
I can dig it.
Seriously though, we didn’t plan for a “never get out” heavy invasion, and no one is pimping for the same–at least not the Bush Administration, as far as *I* can tell. We’ve always wanted a small footprint, and have always wanted to draw down troops as fast as possible. We just thought we’d have better cover to create a stable Iraqi government, wouldn’t have to deal with an infrastructure as fractured as what we found, etc.
Okay, I’m definitely with you there. If you look at the various criticisms, you can pretty much find them all: we had too few troops or too many, we planned to stay too long or didn’t plan for how long it would take, we had the elections too late, or too soon, or too soon, or too fast, or too many, or we imposed our idea of democracy on them but didn’t impose the right terms on the constitution they wrote.
And in the mean time, we seem to meet the goals and deadlines and strategic positions we announce.
US OUT OF GERMANY AND JAPAN!!!!
NO BLOOD FOR SCHNITZEL AND SUSHI!!!
….oh, um. You were talking about Iraq then, weren’t you…How terribly embarrasing.
Never mind, carry on.
Compare and contrast:
“His meanderings on the premise that speculations in common discourse people express in language their best knowledge ( in the subject or event I assume ) and that liberals take the stand that their’s is some universal absolute truth yet at the same time saying that liberals are inherently suspicious of everything.” (Inkdog)
“Well, I don’t really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It’s like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how – what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what’s stopping it, and what’s behind what’s stopping it? So, what’s the end, you know, is my question to you. “ (David St. Hubbins)
Jesus Christ Goldstein, don’t you have a day job?
I wrote it after dinner before bathing Satch and reading him his bed time story.
Oh. And before the second Klonopin. Otherwise I probably would have just skipped the fascist obstrutionism of punctuation.
I thought his first name was “Jess.”
You’re a naughty one, Saucey Jack.
You’re a haughty one, Saucey Jack.
good times.
Man, I gotta meet your GP. It’s all I can do to get a little benzodiazepene out of mine.
I thought I’d typed “Jeff” too.
Maybe I don’t need the Klonopin after all.
I think Inkdog’s theory is in danger of being trod upon by a dwarf.
“… hand me the pliers.”
With the greatest respect to the august blog host, I should like to offer the observation that a span tag was left unclosed in the footnotes of this otherwise brilliant post. Which, while it might seem pedantic to point out, is having the unfortunate effect of rendering the content of the previous posts on this page in the same small face.
Wow. This
[…] that liberals take the stand that their’s is some universal absolute truth yet at the same time saying that liberals are inherently suspicious of everything.
is…really dumbâ€â€even ignoring the randomly drooled apostrophe.
I’m a stone fucking idiot who works in sweatpants with a beer on my desk and Napalm Death blasting in my face, and I’ve had no trouble getting Jeff’s gist. I’m even more subclause-mad than he is, but I’ll give it a whirl here:
The atmosphere of universal suspicion/linguistic non-signification is (or at least has become, in the “wrong hands”) a power-play; the right to interpretation is being denied the laity and deferred to institutional authority (or whoever wields “power” qua wealth/tenure/lawyers/violence/press pass/pussy/exasperating illiteracy/endless capacity for thoughtless repetitionâ€â€whatever), in all matters re: truth (or big-t “Truth,” or narrative/intent/harassmentâ€â€whatever).
The danger is that we become immobilized by a horrible combination of priestly class-infallibilities and the oppressive idiocy of their propagandized mobs. Susceptibility to this is deep in all our heads now; it’s even embodied in (some American and all European) law. What was epistemologically radical (and true) in Nietzsche, Husserl, et al, has fallen into a universal common sense that’s vulgar (especially in the academy) and wrong (in politics) and debilitating (in everyday life).
If you believe that this wasn’t always so (which is where Jeff and I would disagree), the current philosophical situation seems uniquely shitty (whereas I’d say it’s just uniquely self-aware), and someone needs to nail a manifesto to someone’s door or something.
Which…whatever. I say beer.
Oh, I like slashes too.
But not slashes as in, “Harry Potter/Ron Weasley/Sepiroth” fan-fiction. ‘Cause that’s gross.
“His meanderings on the premise that speculations in common discourse people express in language their best knowledge ( in the subject or event I assume ) and that liberals take the stand that their’s is some universal absolute truth yet at the same time saying that liberals are inherently suspicious of everything.â€Â
I presume this sentence made more sense before it was translated via Babel Fish into Mandarin Chinese and then into English from the original Twi?
Jeff, Jeff, I love you like a brother, and you’re absolutely right.
But —
Is it remotely possible for you to express yourself with a Gunning index of less than twenty? I mean, I don’t consider myself stupid, exactly, but having to go back over sentences two or three times to figure out what you said is making my head hurt and attacking my self-esteem
Please, please, go back and re-do that using the same talent for elision, tension, and above all brevity that you engage for your wonderfully evocative humor posts. Otherwise you’ll be absolutely right, but only twenty people will ever figure it out, and three of those will be resentful at the work involved.
Please?
Regards,
Ric
tw: five. A fog index of five is probably too low to hope for, but you should be able to manage seven or so.
I give up.
– Is it just me or does it seem that the “message” resonating through the star chamber halls of the mumbling minions of Atrios/Kos has become a frenzied cry of …”Say whatever the fuck you want to say… don’t worry about context/sense/irony/confusion/hypocracy/plegerism… We are right because we HAVE to be right, we are the elites, and everything else is unimportant”…
– There have been times in history when that sort of logic got you in a world of hurt. Someone on the left ought to take a deep breath, and REALLY think for a minute. The whole gaggling campaign is very transparant, something like the Kings new clothes…
– Summing up, I guess its tough when your elegant wisdom, and plum perfect political stratedgy ends up leaving you looking like a bunch of whimpy, defeatist, asshole cowards, scrambling wackily to force yourself back to a position of varacity and prominence no matter what you have to do or say…..
– With the grumbling airing of the “Nancy” problem, they’re so confused and dissmayed that so many of their “get Bush” projects have left them bleeding, they’re starting to eat their own. I agree Jeff that the major trauma driving this sort of mental masterbation is that Iraq may stabilize and actually move forward. That leaves them with two black eyes. and wrong on every position they’ve espoused since 9/11. But worse of all, they’ve spent the time in the Bush derangement bowl instead of building a reconizable party plan for the future. If the Bush bowl fails, (Someone should sneak over to the DNC and paint in 20 foot red letters on a sign over the front door – “He’s not running again”), they’re in deep shit and they know it.
TW: The left is really shingled out 100 feet over the cloud bank, and looking for that magic lexiconal elixar to save their sorry asses….
Murtha said he didn’t want a slow withdrawal “that looks like victory”, but rather preferred a rapid, almost immediate, retreat instead. Now, what would his preference look like?
Defeat.
And, Jeff, we have to realize that the shifting claims of the BDS crowd are nothing new. Look at the history of the Democrat behavior during the Cold War—famously described by Clinton as something everyone agreed about—or after 9/11. They’ve conveniently forgotten that many of their staunchest supporters and mouthpieces opposed going into Afghanistan, the incessant declarations of imminent doom in the land that crushed the British and the Russians, the dreaded Afghan winter, etc. They’ve let their predictions of tens of thousands of American casualties caused by Saddam’s gas and plague weapons slip into the memory hole, along with every statement by the Clinton administration in re Iraq.
And, hell, I remember a liberal comentator (Liasson?) rather indignantly wandering just when the Bush administration was going to start doing something about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein—in December 2001.
These are people who grew up being taught that “consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds”, without ever learning the whole quote. They’ve taken as their intellectual inspiration people who were able to swallow the constantly changing party line from Moscow without batting an eye. Hell, how many of them would express their admiration for Chomsky, the veritable poster child for shifting morality and intellectual dishonesty?
TW: I’d have thought we’d all recognize the pattern by now.
It’s no secret to anyone who has read my blog that I don’t like the current administration. That’s not to say I don’t like conservatives; I have stated before that we should be one team, maybe with differing views on how to “win,” but working toward the same goal—a healthy, safe nation upholding our shared principles.
The problem is, I don’t believe BushCo is conservative. I don’t believe they adhere to any principles or ethics at all. Why? I could write several posts on that topic, but I have children to raise and a household to run. I will write specifically about Iraq, however.
My personal pet peeves are lying and misinformation. By nature, I am an inquisitive person; I have to “know.” So it pisses me off to no end when I hear two mistruths coming from BushCo’s spin machine regarding Iraq:
1. The “conflict” in Iraq wasn’t about confiscating their weapons of mass destruction so Saddam couldn’t use them against us. It was about regime change, to bring freedom and stability to the Middle East.
2. Hey, we were all fooled. Democrats had access to the same intelligence, and drew the same conclusions. They all voted for it!
Lie Number 1: Let me tell you something. In March of 2003, I was in my ninth month of pregnancy. I experienced false labor twice and hours of real labor once. While I was lying in a hospital bed with monitors strapped to my gigantic baby-filled abdomen, I had nothing to do but stare at a television monitor for hours and hours. It was always tuned to a news station, or sometimes even Fox News.
I can tell you, unequivocably, BushCo’s stated reason for invading Iraq WAS SO to protect us from those nasty weapons of mass destruction. We couldn’t wait for Hans to finish his inspection! The peril was imminent! Saddam was going to construct and launch nuclear weapons any second! Time was of the essence! We had evidence he ordered a red telephone and a big red “launch” button! It’s true! This one Italian guy saw it!
Anyone who states otherwise is lying. Lying. Lying. How short of a memory do these people think we have?
Lie Number 2: Congress and everyone else received a REPORT from BushCo. They didn’t see the original evidence. They TRUSTED BushCo’s report. Yes, they let us down by not looking deeper. But the con job originated with BushCo, Congress just bought it. That’s the equivalent of saying, “It’s YOUR fault for trusting us!” Well, yes. It is. But that doesn’t excuse BushCo for their more egregious behavior.
Conservatives have always called for personal responsibility. I find it the utmost hypocrisy to not call for it now. Our loyalties are supposed to lie with America and its stated ideals and laws, not a brand-name political party. To stubbornly stick with a particular man or regime just because he wears your team’s jersey puts our entire country in jeopardy. And that, folks, is treasonous and unpatriotic.
Thank you MILF for Peace. Wow, an honest conservative?
Can one call oneself a MILF? Because the “I” stands for “I”. So what are you really saying?
1) Yep, I will admit that it WAS mostly about the weapons before the invasion, at least in the media. There were other points in the actual bill passed by Congress, but the news media (including FOX) was all hyped up on WMD. Read the bill and tell me where the lie was.
2) Name one respectable source that, pre-invasion, said that Iraq was “WMD free”. Just one.
Milf for Peace,
1. Love the name.
2. On your first point, with you all uterus-gravid and all, is it possible that the “news” you were watching (including Fox) was just a teensy-weensy bit slanted and/or simplistic? Haven’t we largely discredited the MSM?
3. Your point #2. I remember reading somewhere that the raw data in the PDBs was “more alarming” than the summary form given to the Congress.
And a third note. Isn’t the word lie a bit strong? You must ascribe nefarious motive to infer the intent to deceive. I just don’t think that’s the case, but we are entitled to our mutual opinions.
Patrick
TW: married, as in off the MILF-market
Sorry to deflate your case, MILF–but here goes:
Every intelligence agency on this planet from the CIA to MI5 to Mossad to the MSS to whatever passes for it in Cameroon, believed Iraq to be in possession of WMD. In any event, the burden of proof was on Saddam NOT on the U.S. or Cameroon.
And, if you can come up with a single CIA analyst who claims they were pressured to cook the books, I’ll march with you. And if that truly were the single motivation, you seem to argue that the President and the administration were pure in their motives in believing the danger from Iraq.
Otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time explaining the entire war unless you jump into “Halliburton!!!” screeching. And we all know where that leads…
Psyberian, go shit in your hat.
No, Jeff, don’t give up. But you do need to remember that you’re in a position where you have to serve two audiences.
Every field that’s even moderately complex sprouts jargon like an untended lawn sprouts weeds. Some of it’s neologism, but much will be words whose specific meaning within the field is both narrower than common usage has it and slightly skewed from what might be thought the modal value. When one addresses fellow professionals in the field, the jargon adds both clarity and brevity to the discussion because the mutually-agreed meanings of the jargon words represent the culmination of debates which are either long-settled or basic parts of one’s arguments.
But when someone outside that field encounters the discussion, it will very likely be totally opaque because the outsider has, by definition, not participated in the previous debate. The newbie will fail to understand the neologisms at all, and is very likely to come away with a completely wrong impression of what the debate is about, because the non-mainstream technical-sense usages don’t quite match the way the larger society uses the words.
All of which you know; Hell, it’s a sizeable part of what you’re explaining/complaining about. I’m just reminding you that, while it’s vastly important that other members of the professorate be addressed in their comfortable jargon lest they abandon or ignore the argument as coming from ignorance, the rest of your audience needs something a bit pithier. The things you’re saying are important. Can you say them so that Aunt Maude can access the explanation? She isn’t stupid, but she seldom hears “semiotics” and related terms at Monday bridge.
Regards,
Ric
MILF, honey, saying it three times doesn’t make it true.
I don’t care what Rev. Dodgson said.
Short enough that you don’t remember how to look up the resolution or the Iraq liberation Act.
MILF reveals “her” nature by using the pejorative “BushCo”. Someone who was interested in good-faith argument would not.
Channeling Murtha again?
MILF,
1. I think you’re reading too many lefty blogs and not enough pre-war Bush speeches. Democratizing the Mideast was a Bush staple all through 2002—and he was often ridiculed for it.
2. BushCo? LOL OK, but I’m not sure why you think the entire CIA was a vast conspiracy of Bushbots. The reality is, Bush relied on the same intel that everyone else did.
I think “Murtha” has now become synonymous with beating a frightened retreat. As in “Oh shit, the cops are here! We gotta Murtha!”
I can’t believe Duncan was quoting a former Carter Administration official on what we should do about the Middle East. That’s like asking a Kennedy to be the Designated Driver.
MILF For Peace: You talk about OUR short memories? Reality did not begin on 9/12/2001, contrary to what you appear to think. That Bush report to Congress you condemn was nothing more than a rehash of intelligence that had been around for years; most of it in fact came from the Clinton Era. BTW, I don’t recall ANYONE (Credible) saying that Saddam didn’t have WMDs before we invaded. The only disagreement I remember was what we should do about them. So please, tell us; since Bush’s reports were based on existing intelligence, if all the intelligence backed up the conclusion that Iraq had WMDs, and everyone AGREED that Iraq had WMDs, then how the hell did Bush lie? Honestly, go google the debate, see what people were saying at the time. Being wrong about something doesn’t make you a liar. I mean hell, look at Jimmy Carter; the man was wrong about everything when he was president, but no one is calling him a liar. Idiot, sure. Liar, not so much.
I would encourage you to not use the TV as your sole news source; it’s biased, it cherry picks for sound-bites, and hell, half the time the cameraman is more intelligent than the commentary. Take Powell’s presentation to the UN concerning WMDs, for example. That was only one of the points given to the UN. I think there were 12 or something like that. Point is, it was the most interesting, so the MSM concentrated on it. MSM pretty much ignored all the other reasons, because they weren’t as easy to package and sell.
Myself, I think WMD was a good reason to go in. 400,000 Iraqis killed by their own government was a good one too.
Saddam’s support for terrorists in general was a good one, too. Harboring one of the 1993 WTC bombers, for example. And Abu Nidal.
And as we all know, you’re only allowed ONE reason to go to war. Just one. No multiple goals. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
TW:research
As in, I think milf-ie didn’t do hers.
Anyone who states otherwise is lying. Lying. Lying. How short of a memory do these people think we have?
1,182 days?
2,628 days?
You tell me…
During the runup to the Iraq war, conventional (media) wisdom was that while Tony Blair’s case for war hinged on the possibility of a direct and [possibly] iminent WMD attack, Bush’s case for war was broader and focused on regime change; this is why post-invasion, as it became clear that evidence of WMD stockpiles was not to be found, Blair was considered to be on far more shaky ground with his electorate than Bush. It should also be noted that, pre-invasion, one of the biggest criticisms against the Bush administration was that there were too many reasons offered for going in; that the *real* reason was a Neoconservative strategy to reshape the middle-east; that the WMD argument was only a means to get through the UN process, in order to gain more allies for the invasion. It’s more than a little disingenuous to say, after almost a year of harping that we can’t invade “just because Saddam is a bad guy,” that, “you can’t install democracy down the barrel of a gun,” etc, not to mention looking at the Iraq war resolution, looking at the Bush’s pre-war speeches talking about the necessity of regime change and democratic reform in Iraq, etc.
MILF,
I don’t care about history, and the constant chatter over “why we went into Iraq”. It doesn’t matter now. We’re there. Now what? Do we finish the job? Do we withdraw as Pelosi, Murtha, and Dean demand?
There are three objectives in the GWOT:
1—Economic = cut off terrorist funding
2—Military = eliminate terrorist safe havens
3—Political = establish liberal democratic governments to eliminate terrorist ideals
Iraq is one campaign in the GWOT—withdrawing without achieving these three objectives means defeat.
Another point—if BushCo hadn’t invaded, then an invasion would have been a Dem campaign item in 2004. Just like ClintonCo said the US military should have gone Baghdad in 1992. These type of statements are what this post is discussing. It’s a Liberal Twilight Zone—anything KosCo say today is fact, and anything he said yesterday is . . . nothing, he never said that. Just like the ClintonCo statement—never mind he understood each side of the argument. If he was President in 1991, the US would have “finished the job” and gone to Baghdad. Riiiiight!
In the Liberal Twilight Zone, KosCo are always right. Like Monday morning quarterbacks. They are never in front of the issue—they snipe from the sidelines, then play catchup by revising the events to fit their agenda.
Jeff—solid post, many thanks.
Oops, chopped-off the last bit: it’s disingenuous to have folks saying that at the time, but now trying to spin it as, “it was only about WMDs” and not this whole big calculation.
ooo, Jeffie’s mad!!!
That has got to be the most gratuitous injection of the Lewinsky scandal into a debate I’ve ever seen. It’s the semantic equivalent of watching a legal drama when the hottie DA decides to take a shower during her final summation.
Shorter Goldstein: Clinton got a blowjob. HOW DARE HE? HOW DARE HE?
There’s something missing from this passage. Why isn’t there an emoticon for “stamping my foot like a three-year-old denied a plate of cookies just before dinner”?
Vinnie, I don’t think that’s wine you’re drinking.
Actually, I could give a shit about Clinton’s hummer. Were I in the White House, I’d be banging Hooters chicks 5 at a time, then having some hot aide in a Catholic School girl uniform over for a bit of the old ass sex.
The, er, insertion, of the BJ here was simply because I found the thought of Katie Couric trying to explain away an actual substantive transgression to her morning coffee sippers both funny AND a comedic example of some rather unconvincing backpeddling.
I could have mentioned Gloria Steinham, too.
But for some reason, Katie Couric trying to dance around the idea of slick willy’s moistened, lipstick-ringed execu-dong struck me as a bit more giggle worthy.
And sometimes I write them just for me.
Has there been any conflict that the left has supported since 1945? Or are they all just shaggy, smelly hippy types?
Totally OT: I wonder if a request by a manager for sexual favors from a subordinate, even if willingly accepted, would constitute sexual harassment under EEOC guidelines, through federal case law, or be argued as such by feminist theoreticians regardless of the law?
Just asking.
Patricia? Gloria? IVV?
Hello?
Well, for one, he was married. For another, the Oval Office is the highest office in the land, not a hillbilly fuck-shack. For a third, an illicit sexual liasion compromises the office of the Presidency. For a fourth, it’s prima facie sexual harassment for a gov’t employee to have an affair with a subordinate. For a fifth, he lied about it under oath. I could go on…
I actually thought Clinton was a resaonably good President in official terms. As a person, his behavior was despicable.
Heh, whenever we hear the “IT WAS JUST ABOUT SEX!” meme regarding CLinton’s impeachment, I like to fantasize about what they’d say if Bush had an affair with just ONE 21-year-old intern, let alone the dozen women Clinton was accused of being with, not to mention the credible accusations of rape.
Forget it, TallDave. No fantasy could possibly best the real “defenses” put up by the Clintonistas during the special prosecutor investigation and impeachment. Can’t. Be. Done.
Surely you jest? All one has to do to get invited to both the nicest Western cocktail parties and the nastiest developing world killing sprees is, simply, to cross out “National Front” and replace it with “Workers’ Party” on your official letterhead.
Hold the [blankety blank blanking blank] on, you [blankety blank beep blanking blankety blankers].
Everyone just fucking stop. Did the talking asshat Left just announce that they were for an ‘events-based’ withdrawal?
DID THE TWENTY-POUND CRANIUM, HUNG-LIKE-A-LIGHTSWITCH MORONS-OF-THE-WORLD-UNITE LEFT ACTUALLY SAY THEY WANTED AN EVENTS-BASED WITHDRAWAL?
Okay, had to get that out of my system. The left, all of you, go pack friggin sand: you have lost all rights to accuse anyone of lying ever-the-f$#k again. You are inveterate morons who wouldn’t know truth if it bit you in the ass, which it appears is full on what it is doing right now.
As you are, evidently by your own admission, too stupid to tell fact from delusion, you have hearby been stripped of your right to accuse anyone of lying.
Moonbats meet cluebats.
Hey, if it’s all about O-I-L, then how in the name of Zeus’ Prince Albert is it also ALL about WMD? One or the other, ladies. Maybe you should have read Operation Iraqi Freedom [you idiots] and thought, “oh, well f#$k me, mayhaps there be something more to this…” before embarassing yourself with another “twilight-struggle” manifesto on ChimpyMcHitlerBurton.
Too many troops, not enough troops, which shouldn’t be there anyways, but they should be in Saudi Arabia, because we had Saddam contained afterall, but we really should bring them home, because after all we have WMD and so how can we point the finger at others for wanting what we have…
The thing is, my egghead but smart, well not so much, friends on yonder port side of the aisle, in order to control the narrative-battle, you actually have to have a goddamn narrative. Like my drill instructor used to say, bullets go where you aim them not where you fervorently wish them to go. So go home, put pen to paper, come back with something witty. You stay around here, you’ll get hurt.
BTW, you, MILF, might have been highly dilated on March 2003. I was in Korea making sure Uncle Insano staying in the Hermit Kingdom where he belonged. I win, your brood, evidently, loses.
North Vietnam’s invasion of South Vietnam.
The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (I think that was the country).
Palestinian attacks on Israel.
Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.
Clinton’s Balkan campaign.
Why stop there? The hard core lefties didn’t support WWII until the Mazis invaded the USSR.
– I fully expect some morning to wake to headlines blaring about “Liberals finally find shangrala – brains explode in shower of neurons”…
TW: Is that your hair, or has your neurons escaped the confines of your cranium…..
Odd, I didn’t feel alone when I was there March 2004-2005? They couldn’t all have been disguised Halliburton pipeline workers…
Can one call oneself a MILF? Because the “I†stands for “Iâ€Â. So what are you really saying?
That she’d like to fuck herself?
and more to the point, rto better not be alone there in the coming months. or maybe he finally got the scratch together to provide for his dream job of “hero”
uh, yeah, how many military people were fired/demoted for doing the same thing?
tw: case, iirc there were a couple high profile cases during his time in office.
RE. MILF, guys, I think you should quit poking the retard with a stick now, it’s starting to look cruel. For Gods sake, get a helmet on the girl, and please don’t let her reproduce anymore!
Goddamit, I checked that three times and still managed to misspell Mazi.
Well, then, she can go fuck herself.
Here’s the link to a pdf of a letter from Laurence Tribe outlining his legal arguments about the legality of NSA spying. I have my differences with Tribe (from the Left) but I would pay close attention to his arguments, many of which directly confront issues that are cornerstones of the positions taken at this website. No argument of the issue can be complete without really cogently addressing the issues he raises.
Tribe letter to John Conyers on legality of NSA snooping
This is something I am sure Jeff Goldstein should find of interest
We can all click links. If you want to throw me $50 in my tip jar to burn my bandwidth with your cutting and pasting, go for it. Otherwise, trust that we can find our way around the internet without your help.
We can all lick chics. If he wants to throw you $50 in your tip jar then at least you’ll have a tip. Which , as a jooooooo, you don’t right now….. TIPIST!
Robert,
Actually, there was a radical core of Left that opposed Clinton’s Balkan campaign for attacking a socialist paradise.
I’m not making that up, I recall some vociferous debates with a bunch of ‘em on Usenet and elsewhere.