From progressive lefty site the Booman Tribune:
Forgive me for this but Alan Dershowitz’s children should be hit by a 5000 lb. bomb made by an American military-industrial corporation, sold to Israel, and misfired into his home. Then he can talk to me. I will offer my sincere condolences. Then we will get drunk and talk about relative culpability. I’m sorry Alan. You’re scum. Among the people in history that would gladly bitch-slap you are Jesus, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Nelson Mendala, Bishop Tutu, Pope John Paul II, and me. We’d all like to smack you for being a prick.
Wow!—a hard leftist wishing harm to a political opponent’s children? Where have I heard that before?
A note to the progressive left: for behavior such as this to be labeled “non-representative” of the larger movement, it helps if, you know, it doesn’t happen every other fucking day.
Honestly. I don’t know if it’s just the mask slipping, or if—in your zeal to take back power at all costs—you’ve opened up the flap to your tent a bit too close to the gates of (Marxian) Hell.
Speaking of which, this would be a bit of a laugher—if, that is, it didn’t reveal some deep-seated and dangerous willingness to go all Freemason when a simple slice of Occam would suffice. From LGF, “Air America Founder Sheldon Drobny: Karl Rove is Behind the Left’s Antisemitism”:
I came to the conclusion that the hostile comments about Israel on these liberal blogs are not coming from true liberals. Most of the anti-Semitism comes from racism and most of the racism I have experienced has come from the far right, not the left.
So my conclusion is that the bloggers who violently hate Israel and see it in black and white terms are not really liberals. They may even be anti-Semites, but they are not representative of the liberal community that was so active in achieving racial and ethnic equality. It is a contradiction for a true liberal to be an anti-Semite.
Furthermore, I would not put it past the right wing to flood the liberal blogs with hateful criticisms of Israel to advance a perception that liberals are anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. And I see Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over this.
Hmm. Perhaps somebody needs to get the Booman Tribune added to that new supertopsupersecret Townhouse list. To, you know—alert him to the fact that the all the bald anti-semitism bubbling up from the left is really just a nefarious a Rovian plot. Because when a long-established lefty site breaks message—as Booman has—it makes it much more difficult to constrain one’s “experiences” with racism to the “far right”, not to mention far more difficult for progressives to control the narrative through a gambit of coordinated, “unified messaging.”
And controlling the narrative—first by bending it to fit your will, then by repeating it until it becomes provisional “truth”—is at the heart of a progressive “activism” that, let’s face it, has failed to win people over using an unrigged marketplace of ideas.
Beyond that, the care Mr Drobny takes with his rhetoric is also quite telling. Because while it is certainly true that “hostile comments about Israel on these liberal blogs are not coming from true liberals,” it doesn’t follow that the hostile comments must therefore be coming from the hard right.
What Drobny is pretending is that most of the commenters who have taken up the mantle of progressivism are, in fact, “true liberals”—something which has never been the case, as I’ve been at pains to point out many times on this site. Progressivism’s collectivist impulse and group identity politics is at odds with the individualism at the heart of classical liberalism—and in fact, progressivism’s very ideas about epistemology naturally propel it into a social dynamic that favors identity politics (which it views as a pragmatic force for social change).
And so is it really surprising that some “progressives”—who have learned to traffic in victim politics, class warfare, and soft socialism—would find themselves questioning Israel’s very right to exist, or find themselves perversely aligned with Hizbullah?
Not to me it’s not—though I admit to being surprised at how open some of them have been about it.
But that’s where Mr Drobny’s Rovian conspiracy theory comes in, I suppose: it attempts to tether neocons to the far right paleocons who, over the last few years, have become increasingly aligned with “progressives” when it comes to foreign policy positions (compare the foreign policy stands of Pat Buchanan and David Duke, for instance, to that of Bill Kristol or Charles Krauthammer). Drobny wants us to think of all of these “rightwingers” as a monolithic group—a rhetorical position that is both objectively absurd and intentionally obfuscatory. That is, in its attempts to deflect attention away from progressive rhetorical excesses, it dishonestly and reductively deploys the label “right” to bracket out the possibility of progressive culpability.
Ace has more.
(thanks to Allah for the Booman link; and boy, am I ever glad he’s back)
Which is what the Soviet Union propaganda machine always tried to do.
Remember, “Pravda” means “Truth.”
HA! I found it!
-Robert A. Heinlein
You know, in my RSS reader your quotes get turned into “ and ”, making the titles hard to read.
Hence, when I saw “The Lord Will Smith”, I had to admit my interest was piqued.
That should have read “ and ”
I’ve never left a comment at DU or DailyKos.
One, I’m not sure what kind of disgusting foreign diesese my computer might contract, and two, I’ve seen how long a commenter’s posting rights are respected if they aren’t willing to stay on script.
A Rovian plot, eh?
And these people want political power? Feh.
TW=”less”. DKos/Du/DNC = less than useless.
I guess our generation needs to learn about the affinity between the Marxists and all the groups that derive their status and identity from victimization.
They are aligned, not necessarily in terms of secretive, smoky, backroom conspiracies (you know, something like Townhouse, for example), as the Birchers often claimed. But rather, they are aligned in terms of natural ideological affinity. They have decided to be anti-individualistic, and therefore depend upon political and economic collectivization in order to achieve their goals.
That’s why we see so many weird alliances on the Left—Int’l A.N.S.W.E.R., labor socialists and the other economics-oriented commies end up being aligned with, say, gays and blacks, who have no inherent Lefty inclinations, but frequently align themselves with the Marxists.
Jeff,
Your take on the ills of “progressivism” is spot on and substantial.
I wonder if noted center/libertarian-oriented Glenn Greenwald, Svengali to a U.S. Senator and other of a widely-praised NYT bestseller on executive authority, will note this in volume 2.
No, I don’t wonder.
Cordially…
Dialectical materialism requires a religious fervor willing to kill others mercilessly.
Lenin did it; Stalin did it; Mao did it; Pol Pot did it; Castro has done it. Killed humans by the tens of millions.
You simply have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. And since their omelet is the one revealed by the dialectic to be the best, anything, any means, is permissible. It is, after all, revealed truth.
having Mr. Dershowitz’s young children killed by a 5000lb. bomb will certainly teach him for suggesting that…it’s more tragic for young children to be killed by a 5000lb. bomb than an adult who knowingly and willingly aids terrorist organizations who lob much smaller missiles into town squares to kill young children?
But they don’t support terrorists- don’t you dare suggest that.
tw cent- as in if I had one every time we couldn’t question their patriotism.
Phinn, your point is why I don’t believe there is an intentional, liberal bias in the news (as much as the right would have you believe at least). The news sells sensationalism and the easiest sells are those stories which are emotional rather than logical. Leftyism (not liberalism!) is based on the same concept – an emotional appeal rather than logical. So the two run parallel and are often mistaken for one another.
It’s more complex than a paragraph can indicate in any detail, but that’s the gist.
oh wait- Booman says it should be “misfired” into his home.
I wonder where Booman would like the bomb actually targeted to? Assumably it’d be a location near the Dershowitz’s home.
God, these guys sound like they’re been imported from the old Soviet Union. Everything is a conspiracy. Their analysis is more like a hallucination or a state of insanity.
The fact that they end up chasing their own tails is less entertaining than deeply discouraging. What on earth are they using for a brain? Moreover, where did they learn to believe such illusions? Put together such addled arguments? American universities have a lot to answer for.
The author of the piece makes it clear in the first two words of his piece that he expects you to forgive him.
.
Meanwhile, Nobel Laureate Betty Williams would “love to kill George Bush.â€Â
Even the finest parodist could keep up with these people.
geezer: Yeah, you’re right. Their thought is distinguished chiefly by its overwhelming hate.
Heh, check out this comment
These people sound like tons ‘o fun…
Well someone has to fight the war on christmas, and it aint gonna be chickenhawk me. thats for sure.
Poor baby, did somebody challenge his worldview? Tsk, tsk.
(That’s “Tough Shit, Kid”)
WE ARE ALL CASUALTIES OF THE BUSHCO EEEEEEEVIL WAR AGIN’ THE A-RABS!
Morons. With degrees, yet. Piled higher and deeper.
It’s just amazing what you can learn from these people. I just learned from the Washington Post that this conflict started because of an Israeli act of war. Even I thought it’d be a bit early for the revisionism to begin.
Yep. And here are more of Karl Rove’s fingerprints!
I said elsewhere…not sure if I am most impressed with Rove’s ability to organize these rallies all over the place OR to get participants to accost on-lookers, attempt to break their camera’ and say things like:
to Jews.
In other words, how dare we question their Semitism!!!11!
From the article:
Help me out here: Is there still an embargo on medicine to Iraq, or is this BDS and talking points?
David Adesnik said something this weekend that bears on this discussion. He noted that top liberal bloggers “…are hesitant to discuss the [current Middle East]crisis at all….Why? Because of the viciousness it provokes within the liberal camp.
The ‘venom… is just, from my personal experience, just a whole order of magnitude greater than with garden variety political topics,’ [Josh] Marshall told the Forward. His Web site, Marshall said, typically receives 100,000 visitors a day, and as many as 300 to 500 emails from readers.
“In the past week, most of the vitriolic responses have come from critics of Israel.
“I ‘touched off the fireworks’ in saying that ‘Israel has a right to respond strongly when they have a border incursion over the Lebanese border,’ Marshall said.”
Josh Marshall—the Joe Lieberman of the blogosphere? Heh.
“Overwhelming hate?” ALL liberals? ALL progressives? The same venomous epithet could be leveled at some of the more sputtering hardrightwingers. Does anybody ever stop and think anymore before smearing an entire group of people based on their more outrageous members? Guess not.
Speaking of which, this would be a bit of a laugherâ€â€if, that is, it didn’t reveal some deep-seated and dangerous willingness to go all Freemason when a simple slice of Occam would suffice.
Stop that, lest I bitch-slap you. I’m a Freemason.
And in fact, the same epithets were levelled against the right, which is the basis for this post.
Here’s a hint, cynn: click on the orange words in Jeff’s post.
Beyond parody.
Matt:
Interesting you should mention that. I’m constantly amazed to see how oblivious of the facts some people are considering that the facts have been recorded only weeks or days ago and out there for all to see.
Increasingly, an event–say, the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier–is noted in hundreds of news stories both printed and electronic; yet, days later, everyone is suddenly overcome with amnesia. The original news stories and documentary photos are as clear as day; they haven’t changed. But their origianl value as a fact has changed.
I can understand interpreting what one reads incorrectly if one is relying on memory or receiving an opinion from a secondary work, but to lose grasp of a recorded fact so immediately alarms me.
cynn:
An apt reply:
It really can’t be said much better than that.
I think that the Left is like a bunch of spelunkering Batmen, firing grappling-hooks on the lowest stalgtites in the cavern. Their hooks whip up and down and up and down and up and down, wrapping tighter and tighter until the very core of who they are is wrapped so tight about the cognitive dissonance of “supporting human rights” by supporting terrorists, everywhere that terrorists exist to support.
We can only hope they jump after it. Weeeeeeee, down down down, into insanity.
Cynn: By no means do I believe that all those who identify themselves as Progressive or ‘liberal’ are motivated by hate. As a matter of fact, I have quite a few such friends. Most of them are idealists who have the same goals for humanity that I do but would proceed about it differently. That is the jist of the difference between your average Democrat and Republican voter. Most of the differences–with a couple of key exceptions–are differences of means, not ends.
The wackos who form the subject of Jeff’s post are just that–wackos who’ve been indoctrinated in Marxist propaganda, Orwellian groupthink and a historically debunked class warfare. It would be refreshing to see idealistic liberals endistance themselves from these hateful wackos, but, ordinarily, they do not.
Which is the subject of the post.
I’ve never forgiven Drobny for lying to us about Iraq’s WMD programs. But be sure to keep reading as Drobny clues us in about the pact between the Nazis and the Zionists.
It’s mind boggling to contemplate the level of bloated self-congratulation it would take to write this sentence.
OT:
ahem, did you just use the (non)word “endistance” intentionally? I like it.
Endistance is a real word, just one not much in use any more.
“obfuscatory” – Mmm, clarifying.
All lined up like in Airplane!. Hey, there’s John Wesley Hardin, the Dahli Lama and Jenjhis Khan too!
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
My sincerest contrafibbularities on its usage…
Amen to that, Jeff!
I find myself wondering exactly how much “racism” this Drobny character has actually experienced, and how much of THAT was really, truly racism and not just something he read about in the New York Times or some other similarly disreputable place.
Hmmm.
So Drobny thinks conservatives, Republicans and “neo-cons” spend their free time emulating whack-nut progressives on blogs like DailyKos?
Consider the vast mass of anti-Israel and anti-semetic crazy-ass nonsense on those blogs. If this were the case then the vast majority of their readership are those from the Right.
Mr. Drobny, ostrich.
Mr. D’s got the mad logic skillz yo! He’s like a flasher showing us his dirty dissonance and projections.
When even Ghandi is wants to take a swing at you, that’s a sign that what a real rat bastard you are. Pretty much that just says it.
TW: Don’t you DARE question my pacifism.
That seems like a long way to go just to speak with a moron. Not only that, but it’s wasteful–Hamas can kill an entire family with just a few kilos of C-4.
Hint to Booman: Jesus wasn’t known for bitch-slapping people. (And Zoroaster? Socrates? Please explain what part of what we know about them would motivate this alleged bitch-slap?
RawStory quotes Dershowitz as saying: “There is a vast difference  both moral and legal  between a 2-year-old who is killed by an enemy rocket and a 30-year-old civilian who has allowed his house to be used to store Katyusha rockets,” argues Dershowitz. “Both are technically civilians, but the former is far more innocent than the latter. There is also a difference between a civilian who merely favors or even votes for a terrorist group and one who provides financial or other material support for terrorism,” he continues.
What part of this would anger Socrates? Did Socrates even write about the morality of actions in warfare*? And the difference between an infant killed by a rocket aimed at an entire city, and a adult whose home is a military target seems pretty obvious. At least to those of us who don’t think we can speak for Jesus.
* I ask this as a Bachelor of Philosophy. I’ve done my homework and read the Dialogues; please tell me where the hell Socrates enters into this puerile non-argument. Because “these [mostly] dead people would totally want to bitch slap that bad man” is not an argument.
People like Booman might wish to consider the difference, if they want to do more than perpetuate the failure of the “Progressive” cause. Considering the cause, though, I suppose I’m not upset that they’re failing and doing little more than pouting and namecalling.
What part of this would anger Socrates? Did Socrates even write about the morality of actions in warfare*?
Sigvald – I think you’ll find his writings on this collected along with the equally-little-known “Oh No You Di’nt/Now It’s On, Girlfriend” passage from Lao Tzu.
Great read – it’s also got “‘What Did the Five Fingers Say to the Face? Slap,’ Sprach Zarathustra.” In the Jowett translation, of course.
The “No True Scotsman” logical fallacy seems to have been replaced with the “No True Progressive” logical fallacy. But then again, if it isn’t Scottish, it’s crap.
Additional fun fact about Socrates:
Once, he killed his sensei in a duel.
And he never said why.
As I was reading I just could NOT get this from my mind:
Brian: ‘Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t NEED to follow ME, you don’t NEED to follow ANYBODY! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re ALL individuals!’
The Crowd (speaking in unison): ‘Yes! We’re all individuals!’
Brian: ‘You’re all different!’
The Crowd (in unison): ‘Yes, we ARE all different!’
Man in crowd: ‘I’m not…’
The Crowd: ‘Shhh!’
I am sure that all Mr. Dershowitz was asking for was a ‘terrorist-o-meter’ to check an individual’s culpability for his own death… someone is *definitely* off their meds.
— Stuff Socrates Said, vol. 2
Cynn: Also, I’d suggest reading this article on the Israel and the Progressive response. It’s illuminating.
I was gonna copy/paste some particularly biting excerpt from that particularly biting post, Jeff, but then I realized that bandwidth costs. I’d have to copy the entire thing.
Damn fine stuff.
The combo of blind, stinking rage and moral nihilism today’s Left exhibits hasn’t been seen since the halcyon days of post 9/11, when said hive of fucking lunacy, it seems, chose between either that or actually being bitch slapped themselves into a temporary alignment with the reality the rest of the universe appears to run on.
The reality-based progressives were bit. I bet it hurt. Naturally, they didn’t learn a damn thing. So fuck them. The pathological, beet-red excuses for humans they are.
I think Sheldon Drobny may be on to something when it come to Karl Rove.
The temperture hit 100 here four days last week and I pretty sure Rove had something to do with it but what I can’t figure out is how Rove is getting the local rabbit population to eat up all my tomatoes.
If you want people to not tar you with the same brush you have to be outspoken and condemn the “more outrageous members”. Until you do that and maybe push them well out into the fringes of the groups you freely associate yourself with don’t be surprised when you are lumped into the same group. You might notice that a bunch of conservatives have publicaly distanced themselves from the likes of Buchannan and Duke. Same as the message about Islam is different than the one the terrrorists are passing around you better stand up and say so and condemn barbarism along with the rest of us.
“Find?” Really? It seems to me that the less reasoned, or reachable-by-reason, a belief is, the nearer it is to foundational.
I can’t see it. I even hear them say these things themselves, sometimes, but the conclusions, the politics, the force, areâ€â€coughâ€â€always alreadyâ€â€spitâ€â€there, and the epistemological necessity is grafted on post facto, like an insanity defense.
Epistemologies are rationalizationsâ€â€or, at best, explanations. They don’t do anything. No one is chased by metaphysics into a real-world corner where he’s forced to hate Jews or call for the death of his enemies’ children. He was already there, waiting for an excuse.
Progressivism (and its racist friends) is either an ephiphenomenal offspring of such “unrepresentative,” “perverse” emotional axioms as its frequent pleas for collective punishment and its irrepressible antisemitism (etc.) (I’d say), or it’s perfectly incoherent (which is possible, I guess)â€â€because you really can’t get there from here if you start from the metaphysic(s) progressive politics has co-opted (all of which are equallyâ€â€more, I’d sayâ€â€open to anti-leftist (though not conservative) conclusions and uses).
Blah, blah, etc.
Oddly, Socrates was at the siege of Potidae, the first battle of the Peloponnesian War. You know, where Athens ripped down the walls of the city and sold folks into slavery and all.
And Plato wrote the Laches–if I remember correctly–based on what he remembered of Socrates’ teachings on courage, specifically battlefield courage. Which kind of works, seeing as how he was a decorated soldier.
And a soldier that had to bury his spear through the orbit of his enemies’ eyes, not pull a trigger.
I have no freaking clue why idiot would include him in his magnificient circle-jerk of pacifism; Socrates was not one of the pack.
And that’s The Lowdown from Mr. Scaggs.
As for the Boo Man, I must have missed the gospel where Jesus said, “blessed are the bitch slappers.”
Well, someone has to say it:
Socrates never wrote anything. Plato wrote dialogs that contained a character named Socrates, but that character was probably more Plato than Socrates.
However, it’s likely that both Socrates and Plato (and Aristotle, Plotinus, and Epictetus) would be more likely to bitch-slap Booman.
Upon reflection, I think I agree with a poster above – I think I would have rather read a post about “The Lord Will Smith”.
But that could just be me.
But Boz, the dialectical materialist assertions of thinking meat require of its adherents conclusions that are unavoidable. The revelations of the dialectic are scientific, for pete’s sake! Therefore, the epistomology of Marx, for example, is no rationalization, it is a dictation, an irreversible order derivied from the contradictions and “conversation” of the dialectic that exists in virtuality as a result of social conflict and physical influences. The dialectic, even if repulsive, is not an explanation or excuse, but a requirement, an unavoidable precept of the unconscious universe. Those who know it, who understand it, may lead, may even profit from it, but it is the mold, the force, the irresistible, mindless destiny of humanity, and it absorbs ultimately all.
Or, at least that’s what they used to tell us in the commune.
The rell question (and I can’t believe it has to be me to be the one to say) is would of Jesus, ect, cockslap Desheowirtz.
Socraties is going to have to stand on barstool to slap anyone, cockwise or bitchwise or whathaveyou. Dude was short. Serously. He was like 3’ 20”, soaking wet.
Vegas odds that anyone on the left can even string together any sort of historical context to back up their swamp fever delusions? 35:1 and trending upward, like the early arc of a Katyusha rocket. Which, though deadly, is apparently more asthetically pleasing to the moonbats than a JDAM.
Odds on the first, “Rove is Pulling the Strings on Nasrallah” post appearing in the next 24 hours: 1:1.
Sorry, got busy and couldn’t get back until now. Thank you for the (mostly) pleasant replies (ahem: you are more than an interjection). I just don’t know how to process all this dance-your-mess-around in the Middle East. I come from a family of Goldwater Republicans, and dad always told me what to think, but not believe.
Important distinction; might be lost on some. I watched the Apollo moon landing by auctioning off my stay-up TV rights and breakfast cereal priveleges to my older brothers. I guess I got stuck in that mode of America is the best. Then I saw the horror of Vietnam, and maybe I internalized “strategic withdrawal” as a valid strategy. God knows I used it in my personal life. Same results, fewer helicopters!
Anyway, your job as sentient folks is to prove ne wrong—not with invective or spittle, but convince me that there is an actual plan for control of this region. It’s not about the vote anymore; it’s about the rhetorical control. Thanks again.
And do you feel comfortable sending your children (or yourself) to fight a “war” like this?
“If you want people to not tar you with the same brush you have to be outspoken and condemn the “more outrageous membersâ€Â. Until you do that and maybe push them well out into the fringes of the groups you freely associate yourself with don’t be surprised when you are lumped into the same group”
Oh really, really, now? I guess because you’ve conveniently jettisoned Buchanan (and Buckley—skip Duke; he’s a moron) that we should abruptly change course like a school of minnows? I can think for myself, thanks, and I can recognize a campaign of useful ambiguity when I see one.
I’d feel better about Cynn’s complaint if the malignant left wasn’t driving the debate for the Democratic Party and ‘moderate’ progressives.
Does anyone seriously think Karl Rove is taking the advice of, say, Frank J or Ace of Spades? Is Cheney getting his policy tips from Pajamas Media? Do we see Jeff Goldstein being drafted chairman of the RNC?
But I look at the Democrats, and I see Pelosi and Reid parroting posts from Daily Kos. I see Kos Bialystok dangling a few ‘netroots’ dollars and Democrats rushing to abandon a lifelong liberal like Joe Lieberman. I hear Democrats and progressives ranting about a Republican culture of corruption while one Democrat after another is being convicted or forced to step down from their post on the federal, state and city level. I see ‘peace-loving progressives’ determined to ‘speak truth to power’ but excusing or ignoring the threats and lies of a Jason Leopold, a Larry Johnson, a Deb Frisch, a “Booman Tribue” or Kossacks and DU posters too numerous to mention.
I’ve been a registered Democrat since I cast my first vote for Jimmy Carter, and I can no longer bring myself to think these people and beliefs are not the core and the future course of the Democratic Party. And I have to oppose them.
Yippies become yuppies, Far Left acts like old far right.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Why does Kos et al sound like Aryan Nations?
I guess it dosen’t matter.
That’s not the point, oh reducuctionist one. But I hold my lighter aloft.
Oh, ‘scuse me! I have to take the entire leftblogosphere out for a walk! Lots of plastic bags involved! Gotta curb ‘em! It’s my turn this week! It sucks and it stinks, but it’s my sworn duty as a lefty! Hell, I don’t even know what they stand for, and I still have to scoop the poop!
NO. After so freaking long, you can GOOGLE and check Jeff’s archives. WE simply do not care if you cannot read or listen to speeches or do your own research. And–I assure you–you won’t listen anyways, so shove off; you’ll give us boilerplate about no WMDs (found ‘em), war for oil (heh), aggression (not Saddam’s, of course, shooting at our containment of him), and on.
So take the entire douchesphere and FUCK OFF. We owe you jackshit.
Cynn,
Here’s my take and in all seriousness, if you can’t engage in some critical historical thinking then you’d better just drop the subject.
You ask for plans and I’ll give you two. First, Jimmah and his twerps cut the Shah loose and look how that turned out.
Second, Bubba got in bed with Arafat and look how that turned out.
Now you demand that the current administration have a plan for “control.” Loosely, it goes like this–to ensure a better future for ourselves and the people of the region (and yes, this includes oil interests, but not the venal variety as some would hold)–the status quo has got to go. Saddam, Hezbollah, Hamas…the whole stinking mess.
Otherwise, the Israelis will never be secure; the Palestinian probelm will continue to fester, and; thug infrastructures like Hezbollah will usurp the authority of nation-states.
All of the above is hard statecraft. It takes courage, treasure, and occasionally, blood. Your side thinks that fear, retreat, and more fear is the answer. That is when the thugs win.
You know, Cynn? I think you just made the point that everyone else has been trying so hard to make. “Scoop the poop”. Exactly what you are doing.
There is no excuse that these people have become the mouth of the Democratic party. I don’t know if you have ever actually read DailyKos, but if you have, and you accept these people as sane, I think you are pretty much on the wrong track if true freedom is what you desire.
The USSR has already tried “Kosdom”, and we all know how that worked out…
The problem is that its impossible to decide on a set of facts these days. Facts are malleable to fit an ideological agenda, and without facts no one is going to be convinced.
Is there a plan? Yes. Is it a good plan? Probably not. But given the volatility of the region, no ‘good’ plan will last for more than a few days because the strategic picture changes too fast. No one feels comfortable sending their children or watching their friends go off to war, but you do so because the alternative is worse.
You fight the war you’ve got. You either have to fight the war, in all theaters of conflict, or you let the other side win, and in this war, the more important theaters of conflict are media and public opinion. Have the progressives taken a hard look at what’s really going to happen if we lose this war?
I’ve never even come close to pissing off Verc, and I’m still scared.
Thank God he’s on our side.
geezer
Civilis, Mark Twain said, get your facts straight and then distort them the way you want.
BUT there still remain facts out there and this false equivalence between all people everywhere, that we ALL twist facts to the same degree in the same ways to fit our cherished beliefs is not a smart move on your part. Mostly because it is completely wrong.
THere is propaganda out there. There are legitimate news services. There good actors. There are bad actors.
We know from experience who the good actors are–the Israelis–as we know from experience who the bad actors are–Hezb’allah which fires rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas and hugs civilians, all to increase the number of civilian deaths. If you want to extend it to Iraq, the US is hands down the better side than the trogoldyte Baathists or reactionary jihadists or Shia thugs.
THose are simple facts which are not malleable. Cynn’s side by and large reverses them (Abu Ghraib = BushHitler; insurgency = minutemen, la resistance!), so fuck him. They are wrong and do not warrant the time and reason to right their obvious lies.
And screw this plan stuff. What about execution in the real world? We’ve got a bunch of sedentary pussies criticizing the US as it performs an ultramarathon in the desert. Yeah, we stumble. Yeah, its hard. Yeah, we get bruises BUT we will close the distance. We always do.
Weigh execution against planning; planning is easy. John Kerry has so many plans he has none at all. These critics such as cynn, if you lofted a perfect plan on loan from God himself down to the party platform, would not have the stones to keep it.
They want to bug out, Civilis. You don’t ask the folks that are leaving the party (or were never invited to begin with) what games you want to play. Simply wag the middle finger; everything else is a waste of time.
Well; since I sent my child already, I can give an unequivocal “yes”.
Can you in good conscience oppose the mission of liberating 25,000,000 Iraqis; or the long term goal of a stable and safe Middle East?
cynn: I think one’s political position these days hinges on two ideas: 1) whether or not you feel Bush stole the 2000 election and 2) whether or not you believe the United States is at war with radical Islam. All else devolves from that.
I voted for Gore but was okay with Bush. It seemed inevitable that some day an election was going to be so close that it would have to be called. It was and I was prepared to live with the results. Some on the left have been holding their breaths ever since and screaming like children. Life has gone on. I have faith in our form of government. If you don’t like someone, there’s always next time.
On 9/11 half the country decided that it was a random act that could be shrugged off and forgotten. The other half decided they saw a pattern in the violence, that it had been directed toward us for the last 20 years, that it was getting nearer, and that it was becoming much more deadly. We awoke to the fact that someone had declared war on us without our really noticing it, and we decided we had to take action to stop it.
I didn’t care for the idea of war in Iraq, but once the decision was made, I supported it. I still do. Where does one start fighting something as amorphous as terrorism? Maybe one is forced to grab a corner–any corner–and start. I can’t second-guess the president because I have no idea what I would do in the same position.
In any event, I am convince Islamism is a genuine threat to the world and I remain optimistic that the west has the power to defeat Islamism. The only alternatives offered by the left are nihilism and defeatism, both of which I absolutely refuse to accept.
verc: cynn is not a troll. she posts here often and is more often than not pleasant. you can tell a troll to fuck off, but you should really be more civil to someone who merely happens to disagree with you.
I know cynn, ahem. 90% of the other threads, I’d agree, but she jumped the shark on this particular thread. Ergo the ‘Fuck Off.’
She accused Jeff/us of something of a ad hominem attack on all the Spotless Pure Left even as we point out how magnificiently spotted the Left is.
Then she talks about her Goldwater family and yadda yadda yadda “DO YOU SUPPORT THIS WAR CHICKENHAWKS WITH YOUR OWN KIDS!!!” yadda yadda yadda.
Sorry. My best friend with a Doctorate in Political Science walks into my kitchen and pees in the sink, he gets his ass kicked.
When cynn finds a point to disagree on instead of hueing and moaning about family dinners–wherein Reichwingers accuse all left of center people of killing babies, but they are all CHICKENHAWKS!?!?! so that’s cool–we can break crumpets and sip tea.
Till then, may her ever-loving fingers guide her in her quest to unfuck off.
Oh, and ahem, exactly how many times do we need to go over the exact same thing?
YOU convince her of the ‘plans’ for the Middle East. I’M just interested in the execution. Asking that question is like getting on your knees and begging for a bionic elbow.
Therefore, I assume cynn is open-minded enough to ponder my points. Whether she changes her mind is beyond me. If one of my ideas is true, I have faith it will resonate.
Anyway, you don’t go treating someone who is civil 90% of the time like shit. Increasingly, you are acting more and more boorish. There’s really no excuse.
ahem, she pulled the chickenhawk canard. I didn’t respond to her the first time she trotted out something less-than-brilliant, BUT that’s my redline. You cross it, and I attack.
You can call that ‘boorish’, or not, I do not care. If YOU pulled out the chickenhawk meme, I will lay into you hard that your great great android grandchildren will rue the day when the Great Internet Flame Wars of 2006 created a singularity of snark from which there was no escape, and suddenly all electrons became positrons, and somebody got an eye poked out.
Cross the chickenhawk line, you might accidently get an elbow and then get accidently peed on. Thus endeth the sermon.
Are we clear?
Boorish to the end, huh?
Don’t invite me to a COCKtail party.
Deal with it.
Verc, I’m pretty much in complete agreement with what you said; I was addressing Cynn’s “Prove me wrong” comment with the argument that if you don’t accept the facts I have as being valid, then there’s no point in trying to convince you of anything. I can’t even prove the facts I have are correct as there are different “authoritative” sets of facts that each side can rely on. I know which facts I believe, but I’m not going to be able to prove anything to Cynn if her facts contradict mine and we can’t compromise on a way to dig out the truth.
TW: In Soviet Russia, Turing Word makes joke out of you!
Hello, hi there. Chickenhawk canard? Don’t believe I invoked it. And thanks again to those of you civil enough to engage me thoughtfully. Work demands my time, and I can’t make like Tinkerbell and hover endlessly. Verc, I would love to know where I started spewing the “chickenhawk” crap like some demented Rainbird. I don’t in fact think that’s an appropriate disqualifier in all cases. Sorry if I imparted some personal crap; by Allah, won’t happen again! You are escalating, dude; please dial it down.
I’ve read all the intervening responses, and you all make good sense. I’m not looking for guarantees here; nobody can predict anything. But I am not a war strategist, and I understand that those types of things are not regularly discussed in the open. However, I’m not reconciling what I’m learning about in this region. I know it’s venal (hah) and volatile; I just don’t get why it’s a given that Israel can and will eradicate piles of shit that are hidden under trees and at bus stops.
And my daughter stands to be drafted for the next Islamathon, so naturally I ask you guys for answers. Nota bene: I ask you for answers; I hold whatever administration accountable. And with that I probably killed this thread. (Note to verc: here’s a Midol; P.S. it’s not a suppository );P
O, Cynn,
Your “do you feel comfortable sending your children” remark is quintessential chickenhawkism.
Or maybe Munchausen’s Chickenhawkism by Proxy.
Sorry, you’re a drooling warmonger. I’ve got no problem fighting legitamite wars. SHUT YOU DOWM MOFO, because of the silence!!!!!