From The Observer:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline President of Iran, launched an angry tirade against the West yesterday, accusing it of a ‘dark ages’ mentality and threatening retaliation unless it recognised his country’s nuclear ambitions.
In a blistering assault, Ahmadinejad repeated the Islamic regime’s position that it would press ahead with a nuclear programme despite threats by the European Union and United States to refer Iran to the UN Security Council, where it could face possible sanctions. He added that Iran was a ‘civilised nation’ that did not need such weapons. Iran insists its nuclear programme is a wholly peaceful attempt to generate electricity.
Addressing a rare press conference in Tehran, he appeared to issue thinly veiled threats against Western countries, implying that they could face serious consequences unless they backed down. ‘You need us more than we need you. All of you today need the Iranian nation,’ Ahmadinejad said. ‘Why are you putting on airs? You don’t have that might.’
Cold Fusion ready yet? Because if not, screw the goddamned caribou and let’s see what we can pull out of ANWAR. Secondly, let’s get some natural gas refineries built, send Ted Rall prospecting for that Caspian pipeline, do our own recon off the gulf and California coasts, and work on that Pat Robertson plan to rid the world of Hugo Chavez so that we might “borrow” his oil as a stop gap until we can teach Iran the kind of lesson that this mad theocratic fanatic is demanding we teach him about the dangers of playing Kim Jong Il in a volatile region where China can’t act as a safety net.
Of course, we may go precisely the opposite direction, unfortunately—fearing a dramatic spike in oil prices, France is already relenting on sanctions (as is Germany), and sadly, Condi Rice is making similar conciliatory overtures to tone down the confrontational rhetoric (though this could be part of gambit to keep Tehran guessing, as the lefty agitprop organ Think Progress inadvertantly notes while taking a predictable shot at the competing, bloodthirsty rhetoric Cheney)—but the truth is, the world doesn’t “need the Iranian nation,” as Ahmadinejad seems to think (for instance, I’m perfectly happy with knock-off Persian rugs from Pakistan, and I stuff my own grapeleaves, thank you very much), so much as it needs a rationale actor in the middle east who will not spend generations trying to acquire the means to commit religiously sanctioned genocide.
What role the US can play is preventing a nuclear Holocaust is dubious. But the chances are increasingly clear that we’ll soon have an answer to that part of the story. And for it’s part, Irsrael appears to be putting on its game face.
See also, “Why Iran Won’t Back Down,” Time; and “Ahmadinejad to Meet with Assad This Weekend” (via Link Mecca
Not too long ago cheney wanted the sanctions eased. But that may have been just because he could make money from that sort of a policy.
What do you want Actus?
Has anyone else noticed lately that it is only UK papers that are putting out these articles? Where is the coverage in the US press? Wait, don’t tell me; I think I know.
Why bother having a serious discussion on what to do about the most serious nuclear crisis we’ve faced in over 40 years when you can simply intimate that at one point in time—during a period where foreign policy realism was the order of the day, and while Iran and Iran were engaged in a “stable” stasis, the world was at the “end of history,” and the easing of sanctions would have (were it not done by a greedy warmongering bloodthirsty Rethug vampire like Cheney) been seen as a “carrot” of diplomacy and rapprochment—Hawkish greedy neocon Vicious Dick, who has nobody’s interests but his own in mind, must have some ulterior motive that has nothing to do with what’s in the best interest of the nation?
After all, these are all intellectual debating exercises, with historical “gotchas” the order of the day.
Thanks for elevating the discussion, Actus! Good one! Stick it to the Rethugs —
BECAUSE (say it with me now, fellas) OF THE HYPOCRISY!
You fucking bore me, man. Seriously.
Actus, I have a serious question for you.
Of the two, who would you NOT want to be locked in a room with for 10 minutes and why; George Bush or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?
Cardinals Nation  Zarqawi, of course. But what would you call THAT NSA video? Brokeback Camel?
Only idiots believed that. I doubt also that any PNAC’ers did.
And stable stasis? The growing and dynamic Iran? the contained and faltering Iraq? Weird.
He was making the argument that our oil related sanctions were losing money for our companies and making money for the euro ones. At the time he was , you know, involved with one of these money losers.
Though I did hear elsewhere that these domestic companies had euro subsidiaries that took care of the money making with the enemy.
Actus, why do you come here? Seriously. I cannot see what you could possibly get out of it. Are you “Educating the Rethugs?”
To me it looks more like a rat in some kind of experiment. Is there some kind of mechanism attached to your brain that gives you a shock to the pleasure center every time you play “gotcha” with historical actions taken (completely out of current and historical context) by evil Rethugs? If so, may I suggest you take the food pellets instead for a while?
Context: experiments with animals have shown that, given the choice between hitting a bar that dispenses a food pellet, and one that stimulates the pleasure center, they will die of starvation as they lean on the bar that gives them pleasure.
I would love to spend 10 minutes locked in a room with Dubya, a pardon for what happens, and some Scotch. Well would be fine, so long as it was on the rocks.
So actus finally admits to being on the other side. Don’t you dare accuse him of being unpatriotic, though.
I just want to have a rough old college time drink with our president. If that’s unpatriotic, hang me now!
Jesus. More typical Actus-type obfuscation.
Enough people wanted to believe in the “end of history,” and foreign policy realism relied on the very kind of “stability” all the liberals are now longing for in the good old days of middle east internecine battles, which would eventually fade away thanks to the inexorable spread of freedom and liberal democracy (though Fukuyama, if I remember correctly, noted that the ME would be a problem, but was in essence simple a minor blip that would be quickly handled).
Trying to attribute these beliefs to me, and then pretend befuddlement that I could believe such, is typical of your mode of disingenuous argumentation, and why I rarely bother even reading your responses.
I’ll make it clear to you: your argument was akin to “Clinton did it too”—which is the favorite derisive lefty rejoinded to conservatives who dare to point out historical analogues (as if this meta-awareness of the use of the analogue somehow negates its truth).
The foreign policy realism of the time dictated, to the thinking of some (who were acting in good philosophical faith, I believe) that trying to engage and embrace might work better than simply maintaing the status quo—though the Cheney position still worked within realism (giving more weight to economic incentivism that tried to show the benefits of global capitalism as a way to undercut tribalism, combative nationalism, and a potentially troubling return to the strange marriage of Muslim expansionism and nativism than some other incarnations, which preached strictly ideological appeals).
In short, you seem to show up simply to play contrarian and gotcha—not to engage in these important (in my mind) debates about how to proceed now. I hate when Sean Hannity brings up Clinton’s transgressions at every opportunity to justify some charge against Rethugs; and I similarly dismiss your hamfisted, disingenuous, and frankly quite useless attempts to pull the same shit from the Colmes side of the table.
If you don’t wish to engage in the discussion, don’t. But don’t waste my fucking time forcing me to defend the previous foreign policy beliefs of someone who was thinking through circumstances from a different context.
Seriously Actus, what do you want to happen with Iran? So far all you will say is that you hate Bush/Cheney which isn’t much of a policy statement. I’m beginning to think you’re another hollow BDS sufferer.
Let me rephrase then.
We should start by ignoring the people who were wrong in the past. The people who were so pie-in-the-sky as to think we were at the ‘end of history.’ We should also start by ignoring the people who thought iran and iraq were in some sort of ‘stasis.’ Specially if they called all this ideology covering the facts as “realism.”
We could also stop removing contained enemies of our uncontained enemies. We could also stop installing governments to be allied to our enemies. But I think its a bit too late for this.
And we could also stop listening to people who thought the cheney position had anything to do with showing the Iranians capitalism. They had plenty of trading partners to learn that from. It had to do with making money.
How do I rescue the bush policy in Iran It seems like we’ve taught the world that to avoid the US you need to have nukes. I’m not going to place much stock in a policy that assumes that we’ll keep the whole world from getting them. Proliferation can be slowed, but it can’t be stopped. There are too many ways in which it proceeds in order to say that there is one way to stop it. It really needs to be considered and applied with leeway by a competent executive.
But countries that we don’t like with nuclear weapons are going to come along eventually. We’ve dealt with them in the past and we can deal with them in the future. Among other things it takes keeping our cool. Blog on wingnuttia, blog on, the cool heads of our rulers depend on letting off steam on the internet.
Actus, you know who backed the US in the Revolutionary War? It was the Hussars. Yep, it was the Germans.
We all know what that means….
We should have backed the Nazis in WWII. Just to be consistent, after all, like a fucking Puritan.
Actus,
You realize that you have slumped off into PIATOR land with this last don’t you. Basically you’re saying that Iran with nuclear weapons is no big deal, except for the fact you hope to be able to blame it on the Bush administration. I’m sorry, but not only is that suicidal it’s morally bankrupt. Like Piator you are no longer worth talking with…other to be lampooned. I had hoped for more from you…my mistake.
So, to summarize: ignore anyone who has ever changed strategy as conditions on the ground warranted it (unless you’re GWB, in which case you are expected to make those changes).
And your position, finally, is this: pre-emptive idealism, rather than the “stability” provided by trying to manage and install leaders perceived to be helpful to the interests of the US, is the way to go.
In other words, the Bush doctrine—or what Cheney is now saying, if we can pretend for the moment he’d never had another position.
You last paragraph—about wignuttia blogging on while people like you—so cool, so calm, so dispassionate, so collected as to not even have to CONSIDER ALOUD the alternatives—THAT’s the way to go.
How content you must be!—you who, among lesser men and women—are practically godlike in your farseeing pronouncements and counsel.
How world-wearily wise it is to throw up your hands and note that proliferation is ultimately unworkable—and so why bother? It’s like you live in a Le Carre novel. I imagine you with a cigarette, shouldering your secret burden of the heaviness of how the world really works.
You are Clooney in Syriana!
Yawn.
Give in to it, man. YOu are a Bushie who wants Dems to be Bushies, because you so hate Bushies, and yet you agree with their idealism.
Jeff writes:
Cold Fusion ready yet? Because if not, screw the goddamned caribou and let’s see what we can pull out of ANWAR. Secondly, let’s get some natural gas refineries built, send Ted Rall prospecting for that Caspian pipeline, do our own recon off the gulf and California coasts, and work on that Pat Robertson plan to rid the world of Hugo Chavez so that we might “borrow†his oil as a stop gap until we can teach Iran the kind of lesson that this mad theocratic fanatic is demanding we teach him about the dangers of playing Kim Jong Il in a volatile region where China can’t act as a safety net.
Jeff earlier wrote:
Who knows? But Chinese cars suck, man (in fact, they’re called fucking bicycles, last I checked), and while I’m a big fan of the Russian vodka, standing in line for toilet paper ain’t quite the same as playing Halo II on a 60†HDTV in my quiet little non-radioctive mountain town…*
‘cos, you know, it’s always easier to kill brown people than to cut back on any of the luxuries…
Actus,
See, now that PIATOR is here it’s hard to tell the two of you apart.
Yeah, that’s it, PIATOR—pretend not to note the irony and play the JEFF HATES BROWN PEOPLE card.
You’re a fucking joke, PIATOR. And anybody who calls me racist is not welcome here.
So long, and thanks for all the bitch.
PIATOR is banned. I can stomach criticism, and I’m very willing to debate. But anybody who simply asserts my racism is gone.
My commitment to racial equality—as opposed to cosmetic, feel-good, racial micro-management that relies on the structural racism it pretends to combat—is not a matter for question, in my mind.
And I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let some faux intellextualist leftist cumbubble try to sully my character simply because her own positions are so morally dubious and conveniently fluid (for the sole purpose of scoring debating points and asserting a pragmatically ethical superiority that exists nowhere but in her own fevered, combative, logically incoherent and ideological inconsistent mind).
So there you have it.
If PIATOR reappears here, it will be because sne wrote me with an apology—and a convincing one, at that. Otherwise, she can go back to the echo chamber of Oliver Willis’ site, or go join Amanda Marcotte or some of the other bright light of the left in setting up strawmen, torching them, then going home alone and pleasuring themselves to the augmented memories of their own imaginary rhetorical triumphs.
Life is too short to have to defend myself against a charge I find so morally repugnant that I would glady come to blow over it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if being banned was her ultimate goal. Now she can crow about how she got banned for “spreading reality” or something like that at the websites of the usual suspects.
Hay, Hamilcar Barca she wasn’t, y’know?
How telling that you’re a fan of the neoKKKon MURDER SIMULATOR known as Halo 2–most notable for its use by keyboard kkkomandos to train future recruits for wars that are as illegal and intractable as its’ quagmire of a unilateral single-player campaign–the ending of which was highly disappointing, MUCH LIKE THE RESULTS OF A CERTAIN WAR FOR OIL, PAUL BREMER!
The Covenant love their children too!
Actually, if we want to talk racism, have we considered that an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel would mean the extinction of the Palestinian race? How well do you think the PA is set up to handle fallout casualties?
And the crowd goes wild!
Oh no. Changing your mind is good. Having a bad record is bad.
I have no idea where you get this from.
Me? no. Its our rulers that keep their cool while we flip out.
And one day, the US won’t be here either. Sorry, we’re not eternal either.
And we’ll be lots less eternal if we act without a clue like some would have us do.
Isn’t that right, Actus?
Re: PIATOR’s banning
Who cares? I’ve seen multiple trolls try that tactic, being a complete asshole and trying to intimidate the blog host with claims of free speech. Sorry, free speech doesn’t protect the right of a drunken asshat to piss all over someone’s living room, even if the asshat insists it’s a valid form of expression.
That’s why its important to keep these clueless end-of-history schmucks out!
Y’know, it’s peculiar.
The folks declaring the “end of history” were the ones who thought they were all set. Got the tenure, got the house; now they could contentedly watch the slow but inevitable slide into True Socialism, with themselves (inevitably) in the position of Respected Advisor to the Masses. When the Revolution came it wouldn’t be historical, exactly, just the inevitable result of Progress, so much so that the Capitalists would go to the wall voluntarily, out of the feeling that it was just their time to go (and, it must be admitted, more than a trace of ennui). Got it over with one morning, back to the routine.
It’s one of the main reasons they’re so appalled and upset about it. They had plans, and those plans did not include excitement, or reaction from uppity Masses who didn’t feel much like Massing.
Ain’t gonna happen, at least not by default. You want the Revolution, work for it.
Regards,
Ric
Aw, well now I’m depressed. I was hoping to try out Kierkegaard’s idea that, if confined to even the most trivial original text, a sufficiently determined (and bored) exegete can eventually read the meaning of life out of it.
Anyone got a 10-15 line perl script? A sock puppet? Actus?
That reference was pointed *directly* at you, Einstein. I wish I could say I was surprised even in the slightest that it sailed past you…
Well since I am sure that you have no problem with the USA invaliding whatever country they like and murdering whatever leader they like .. can we safely assume that you wouldn’t have any problem with the notion that the rest of the world can invade / attack the USA by whatever means possible (including nuclear weapons) in order to kill Bush and effect regime change in the USA? .. it certainly sounds like a plan to me.
There is nothing in that suggestion that you don’t seem to be suggesting is OK for America to do .. especially now that Bush has taken to threatening countries like Norway.
Actus, in true liberal style you didn’t answer the question, although the answer you gave was certainly enlightening to your perception of reality (you know damn well you’re not old enough to drink Scotch or any other kind of alcohol).
I asked you to answer in the negative, not the affirmative, and provide explanation.
So, put down your MoveOn.org Howard Dean bobble-head and try again.
Of the two, who would you NOT want to be locked in a room with for 10 minutes and why; George Bush or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?
How interesting that you show up here, Mark, in the aftermath of Phoenician’s banning.
Mark wrote:
Might want to use preview before setting up a strawman, and think: “Does this word make my smug remarks look educated or just damned foolish? Sure the spellchecker likes it, but does it make sense?!”
RS: Unfortunately, while I have encountered trolls who use different arguments and insist they’re a different person despite the fact that they write just like the previous troll, there are also other trolls who just have similar viewpoints and behaviors.
Dear Patrick Chester,
You can always spot the moronic troll (like you), who is incapable of independent thought, when he resorts to ignoring the statement and concentrates instead on a simple spelling oversight .. and dismissing others as “trollsâ€Â, simply because they happen to have a different point of view that he is unable to counter rationally with words.
Still, it isn’t really my concern, since it is you that ends up looking smug and just plain foolish .. because you have never in your life made a typo, have you?
Mark,
You have just revealed one of the primary tenets of the troll religion. Patrick Chester can only criticize your typo if he has never misspelled a word.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
What do you call it, The Church of Troll? Are you the Archtroll Mark? When the Apocatroll comes will you be reborn into Trolleavan?
tw: letter, as in Mark has revealed the letter and the spirit of the Trolluth.
Okay, I’m confused (sarcasm). Let me get this straight. Let’s go back to the beginning.
So does this mean we ignore, forever, the people who argued that sanctions would work to contain Saddam? Those members of the democratic party who were for regime change in Iraq before they were against it? Or just ignore those evil neo-cons?
Sure, realpolitik sucks. Making deals with lesser evils to thwart the plans of greater evils has led to some very nasty things being tolerated. But we can’t run a pure and virtuous foreign policy and still win over those who don’t, and now when we try to make our policies better, assholes like PiaToR whine that we’re not perfect.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with people arguing that the US could do better and pointing out when we’ve been wrong. But when I see much of the left arguing that the US is not just imperfect but evil and ignoring just about everyone else that’s worse, especially sanctimonious morons like Mark, I want to ignore them. And they whine more, so I ignore them more. And one of these days there will actually have a point with their whining, and I’ll ignore them, and we’ll both be a lot worse for it.
I have three pictures that illustrate for me what is wrong with the anti-war left. One is the celebrated picture of Cheney and Saddam during the 80s. This is used to illustrate that Cheney is evil because when Iran was the greater threat to American interests, we didn’t treat Hussein as evil as well. And now, somehow, when Cheney attempts to overthrow evil Hussein, that’s evil too. We should have listened to nice President Chirac and let the sanctions work. Of course, picture number two is Hussein getting a guided tour of a French nuclear power plant, by Chirac. And the French sold Iraq a nuclear reactor and more weapons than you can shake a stick at. Well, says the left, we could have listened to American democrats. And picture three? That’s Secretary Albright clinking glasses with ronery Kim Jong Il. There is no one we need to prop up the North Koreans against. No realpolitik at all in negotiating with them.
Sorry for the rant… actus and Mark pushed a few buttons.
TW: future. Lets hope we have one.
You mean like Fukuyama at PNAC? What are you talking about? Why would the people that expected true socialism be declaring end of history when the soviet union was defeated?
Rumsfeld. Not cheney.
Actus,
Thanks. You’re right. My bad. Too tired this morning to find the pictures…
I still think the point stands either way.
I would like to take a moment at this time to implore everyone to give to the logic-impaired.
I have a feeling that actus and mark are in their fifties, having flashbacks of the brown acid.
So much the worse.
There is nothing in that suggestion that you don’t seem to be suggesting is OK for America to do .. especially now that Bush has taken to threatening countries like Norway.
God, who would want Norway, of all places?
What is it with this fascination that people have to so charachterize, to fill in the blanks, and try to assign to me a character or a role? What does it get you? Some ordering to the complicated world that is my comments? at the expense of being so off from reality?
Actus,
Don’t over think. I’m sure they all just enjoy making sport of you. I know I always do.
Its just such an odd sport, to play guesses with such little information, at the expense of almost doubling my age. It just reinforces their appearance ignorance, their ability to leap from scant evidence to high conclusions. At least to me, that knows how wrong their statements on such matters that they clearly do not know are.
BECAUSE OF THE NUANCE!
Zero danger of that.
tw: school. Heh…
FOR THE HERRING!!!!!
Muhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, oh actus just stop.
A “complicated world” full of nonsequiturs, ad hominems, and gotchas!, yeah, you’re about as complicated, predicative, as the weather, but as deep as a puddle.
Um, for the beautiful, intricate fjord work?
I’m getting too old for this shit.
“At least to me, that knows how wrong their statements on such matters that they clearly do not know are.”
Huh? Seriously.
aHA!
So actus is schlepping over here. No wonder I haven’t seen him pop into my comments at Jawa lately.
No offense, Jeff, but you’re welcome to keep him. He doesn’t eat much, but he does poo on the carpet now and again.
Actus,
I think everyone is fully aware that you are a young, up-and-coming civil liberties atty, (who has yet to pass the bar, and tell his parents he’s gay, in that order) and that you once cohabitated with some ladies in college and no disaster came of it.
I think all also have the 4-1-1 on your preference for bubble baths over showers, chick-flicks and long walks with someone who wants to know who’s in here (points to heart).
Oh and you disagree with everything. Everyone knows that too.
Its really fascinating. Maybe I should say ‘fabulous.’
Indeed. “Fabulous” would be tongue in cheek reply.
Good on ya Actus.
There might be someone in there. (points to heart)
You ever seen Norwegian babes? Yowsah!
TW: herself. Damn, but this machine is starting to scare me…….
So, we’ve basically established that actus loves to change the subject and play trivial gotcha games rather than address the issue, but not nearly so badly as PIATOR, who is No Longer With Us Unless Under Another Nick And Possibly IP Address Because Jeff Is Sick Of The Slimy Personal Attacks.
And Mark is incapable of distinguishing the moral differences between actors or positions in the real world and attributes that characteristic to “having a different point of view.”
A characteristic, interestingly enough, shared by actus and the former PIATOR to lesser or grater extents.
I especially liked the part where actus denied association with the “end of history” dudes, implying that you can’t attribute the ideas of a member to the group, then attributes Cheney’s past ideas to Jeff. Implied, but precious nonetheless.
I just hope this whole “Iran Game” we’re all playing from our armchairs ends with a whimper so the left can spend the rest of history pretending there was never any real threat and it was all just “wingnut racist paranoia.”
What the Hell kind kind of game is it, when if you win, you lose, and you lose, you lose? Only way to NOT lose is to drag out the game.
What association can I have with PNAC and fukuyama? Or Cheney and Jeff?