Frequent commenter timmyb (née “neoconsstink”), a persistent “progressive” voice (and so I imagine, a recent convert to the foreign policy realism of Nixon and Kissinger and James Baker and GHW Bush), takes issue with my implied critique of that particular foreign policy posture—a posture, I should point out, that has prevented me, in years past, from supporting Republicans (Reagan, a former Democrat and an idealist being one exception; the other being Steve Forbes on the single issue of the flat tax). Squawks timmyb:
Back to Jeff’s snerring [sic] at realism…I assume the next time you go down to the State House, you will try to talk any number of people into sending the Colorado National Guard to Uzbekistan, Chechnya, the Sudan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, China, Burma, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo….
There’s a lot on the plate of the world’s police chief, bravely stomping out injustice all over the world, so you need to skip those trips to the market and get recruiting.
Otherwise, perhaps you can, just maybe possibly, agree that you can’t solve everyone’s problems. When you make that leap, I will help away from Kissenger’s Realism and toward a principled realism. Who knows, it may help you make it through the day.
As a side note, you can still abuse the feel good folks on the left who disdain everything American.
My reply to timmyb was rather fraught, as they say, but in my defense, I’m really not happy with my hair today, and that puts me in a pissy mood.
Tone aside, though, I think the underlying points stand up well:
Gee, Timmy. What an original paradox! Why, here it is, a half-decade on after the Iraq operation began, and I haven’t yet even once come across that!
I confess, it stumps me! I mean, how can we possibly presume to liberate one country if we aren’t going to simultaneouslyâ€â€through force of armsâ€â€liberate them all? While curing AIDS in Africa!
Seriously. I’m dumbfounded. Caught in a logical dilemma from which there is no escape!
…Oh, wait, how about this: we argue that the nexus of our interests in fighting global terrorism combined with a resolution for regime change already on the books (passed during the Clinton years) against a dictator who was hostile to international resolutions and who was a prime candidate to supply terrorists with weapons and moneyâ€â€all in the wake of a couple of giant towers crumbling to the ground in NYC and an Anthrax scareâ€â€made the gamble worth it, given that the status quo was not holding (remember all the children dying because of our sanctions? Remember the Duelfer Report saying Iraq was poised, under a lifting of sanctions, to renew its weapons program?), and that, in addition to keeping al Qaeda occupied in fighting democracy in the heart of the Arab world, any success could provide both the template and the impetus for a sea change in the greater middle east.
Admittedly I haven’t given it much thoughtâ€â€your brilliant rhetorical sally has left me wheelingâ€â€but for now, go ahead and chew that over.
I don’t know what it is with these “progressives” who insist on making the same tired arguments again and again, each time acting as if they’d sprung fully-formed from the head of Zeus, divine, impregnable in their logic, and dazzling in the glow of cranial afterbirth.
I suspect it’s ego. But then, I can’t say I’ve ruled out simple stupidity and a stunningly incurious nature quite yet, either.
Because, Jeff, it isn’t isn’t about debate, but about stiffling debate. By throwing out innane one-liners or hackneyed talking points over and over again, trolls like “Timmuh” and “alphie” keep us rehashing the same arguments over and over again, thereby inhibiting substansive discussion. This isn’t done consciously – there’s no conspiracy among leftoid trolls to keep the discussion on righty blogs going around in circles – but the effect is a desirable one (give the troll lots of attention while preventing the righties from engaging in a substansive debate that might result in new and challenging ideas) and the effort required is minimal, so it’s not surprising that a lot of leftie trolls converge to this strategy.
In timmy’s case have you considered a giddy euphoria from the unfamiliar emotions of Indianpolis winning a major sports championship? Perhaps accompanied by bad bean dip and too much Montrachet?
Nah! I’d stick with with a robotic obsession with the anti war talking points. Brrzzzzzzzt!
I have difficulty getting past the concept that since we can’t do everything at once we shouldn’t so anything. An argument that is simply stunning in its use of logic and reason.
next he’ll be asking why we stick to our ideas when (fill in the blank, be it a politician or poll result) don’t agree with us. because being popular is important and obviously a sign of, um, correctness.
Tom Ault:
Being fair to timmyb at least he makes an effort to make an argument, unlike monke … errrrr … alphie who snipes the same sound bites in slightly different form. Timmy’s problem is, at some point, the shear stubborness of teh neocons in not acknowledging their abject failure causes him to melt down in various ways and to various degrees.
It’s kind of fun to to watch in a 7 car pileup leaking toxic chemical truck kind of way…
Mikey; the “Why don’t you invade Saudi Arabia/financing terrorists” rant is a timmy specialty along with truffles and a pithy little white wine sauce.
When you live your life according to philosophies that can fit on a bumper sticker, stuff like timmyb’s post seems like in-depth reasoned analysis by comparison.
VISUALISE WHIRLED PEAS!!
alpo and timmah could do us all a big favor, if they would just stick to world of warcraft, and leave the real world to the adults.
Speaking of which, have any of you seen the Chompsky inspired Schoolhous Rock video? *
This almost perfectly describes NPR, which, at any given moment, is likely to have a reporter in New Orleans helpfully inform you that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq as a segue into a report about a shock poll that reveals that Bush’s poll numbers are low.
“Dazzling in the glow of cranial afterbirth”???
It’s an Athena thang, shank. You wouldn’t understand.
in addition to keeping al Qaeda occupied in fighting democracy in the heart of the Arab world
Some people think we’ve provided al Qeada and their ilk with a training ground and recruiting cause in Iraq that has allowed them to grow from tiny finge movements to ones capable of toppling governments.
Smarter people would think that those people are ill informed and ignorant, alphie. But none of them have the solution to Middle East Peace like the Balloon Fence Missile Shieldâ„¢.
Do tell!
Anyone else feeling hungry?
I agree, we can’t solve all the worlds’ problems. Only the ones that we have the will, resources, time, and power to. Because that’s a limited amount, the first place we should start is “places that most directly impact our interests as a nation.”
That means no Darfur, no Tibet, no pet leftist causes – and even if it included those we know you on the left would do a Kerry and suddenly be against what you were once for.
If by ‘training ground’ and ‘recruiting cause’ you mean a place to get arrested and killed after some waterboarding.
But I agree, they certainly did topple Spain’s Aznar government.
Are you saying that the best way to fight them is to capitulate to their desires so they don’t get very cross at us?
Stop fighting the terrorists! It makes them cross and there is no telling what they might do!
Alphie—how many of the jihadis al’Qaeda has trained in Iraq have made it out alive? Arguably, they’ve improved their “doctrine”—such as it is—but so have our forces.
It’s interesting that this argument is made by the same people who counsel retreat in Iraq.
Hmm. Needs some work. Try this:
Some people think we’ve provided the US Military with a training ground and recruiting cause in Iraq that has allowed them to learn how to adapt to terrorist threats worldwide and possibly help a struggling new government to avoid getting toppled by opportunistic forces.
Hmmmm.
@ Jeff.
My theory is that they aren’t all that scholarly.
So a new pustule crops up every now and then when that … individual “discovers” the same silly nonsense the previous one did, and of course he just has to share it with everybody else.
Which is why the same damn thing keeps coming up again and again and again. An endless rhetorical mobius strip. A sisyphean nightmare of elemental Progressive tendencies. A constant accretion and regurgitation of issues we’ve already covered two hundred thousand times before, but suddenly all new to the latest progressive putz and so it must be all new for everyone else.
The terrible part isn’t feeling like you’re trying to drive knowledge into a brick wall. It’s the feeling that you’ve done this same damn thing hundreds of times before, and it’ll never end.
The Groundhog Day of political blogging, but without the cute chicks.
alphie; did you hear about Bin Laden’s brother-in-law, the money guy?
He became the latest to be sent to the 72 virgins and endless milk and honey. Check into Task Force 145 and try to realise that training, recruitment and tactics go both ways.
Our guys will always be better, smarter and tougher than there’s.
Was this tiny fringe thing before or after the brought down the WTC?
No wonder so many people are eager to claim it as either an inside job or a Jewish conspiracy. They are simply trying to keep us from identifying al Qaeda and, in so doing, legitimizing them.
How very noble!
Oh well. Cat’s out of the bag now, though. So I suppose they can continue to recruit and “grow,” and we’ll continue to prune their new branches, and in the process pull out some old roots.
Pretty soon they’ll be an army of scallions.
Jeff, I think that alphie should stick to missile shield engineering.
FOR TEH PEACE IN OUR TIME!
Ah, yes. The “if we can’t save all of the starving babies, we shouldn’t try to save any starving babies” argument.
Jeff, given the truth of what you say, that people like that continue tirelessly to use arguments that have already been countered a million times, I must say I admire your ability to carry on countering them.
Me, I gave up blogging largely because I felt like I was trying to hold back a tsunami with one sandbag and a shovel.
I’ve been focusing my efforts on coming up with something better than the individual blog to counter these idiotic arguments, but in the meanwhile, I’m glad that people like you are out there manning the wall.
IMHO, we need a more systematic way to identify, label, and deal with arguments en masse. I fear this is leading me to conclude that until the “Semantic Web” becomes a reality, we’ll just have to keep tackling these fools one post at a time.
I want to develop a system where you can enter arguments using ONLY sound logic, with various forms for the accepted sound argument types, etc. etc. It’s going to take years.
Fight on, my man.
Gray,
As I’ve noted before, they absolutely love it when we kill them. It’s like tossing Popeye a can of spinach.
BJ: I know that, but based on the same reasoning we should be invading Iran and Syria, who have also been hostile, rhetorically and actively, for at least twenty-five years.
Yet timmy wouldn’t want us to do that. Funny, that.
You must remember that when dealing with leftists, you are generally dealing with people dominated by their emotions – and for these people, their positions on issues are rationalizations for those emotions.
Their main, underlying emotion is a hatred for reason and everything that reason makes possible. Reason makes possible certain tangible things like success, achievement and wealth—as well as intangible, abstract things like morality, judgment and certainty about one’s convictions.
(Why do they hate reason? Well, the answer to that is beyond the scope of a single post. Suffice it to say that they abandoned the development of their own ability to reason many years ago in favor of conformity to the group or their professor’s opinions, generally to win the approval of others. But since reason is our only means of dealing with reality, they become, indeed they make themselves into, helpless little conformists unable to think for themselves and unable to deal with reality. Since they know, intuitively, that they brought this condition upon themselves, it produces intense feelings of self-hatred, which, by the psychological phenomena of projection, is expressed as hatred for the use of reason or any manifestation of reason in others.)
How does rationalization fit in? A rationalization is an idea or principle that, superficially at least, seems to justify one’s emotions. Rationalizations serve to create a veneer of respectability for their emotions, whose actual source and meaning – their own betrayal of their own minds and integrity – they must evade at all costs.
For instance, consider the standard Marxist claim that wealth is a function solely of labor, and that concentrations of wealth in the hands of anyone other than the workers represents exploitation and theft. This claim, despite the fact that it is false, seems to justify the leftist’s hatred of those who are wealthy and successful. It permits him to vent his feelings of hatred by means of a semi-plausible-sounding argument.
It does not matter to the leftist that you can refute Marx in 2 minutes. He is not in the discussion to persuade you or to find the truth. He is there simply to express his ugly emotion of hatred for those who have achieved wealth; he is driven to emote, as an end in itself. Marx’s rantings on the subject simply helps him hide from himself the fact that what he really hates is that the wealthy did NOT sacrifice their minds and their ability to reason – as he did –and instead used them to get rich.
This is why the leftists are indifferent to reason and are willing to offer up the same nonsensical arguments no matter how many times you refute them: their goal is not to persuade you or to find the truth about any issue. Their goal is to express their hatred under cover of the rationalizations that they, like good little, mindless puppets, have been taught to recite.
There are many variations of this game with some rationalizations being more subtle than others, but they all serve the same function. Their purpose is to help the leftist hide the fact that the real source of his hatred for success, achievement, wealth, morality, judgment and certainty is the self-loathing that comes from knowing that he willingly – and for the cheapest of motives: the approval of others – abandoned the faculty that makes these things possible: reason.
mikey:
timmy thinks that we should be negotiating with the country that funds and provides both material and personnel support to terrorist organizations around the world, has nuclear ambitions, whose leader, when he’s not calling in western nations to convert pines for the Islamic apocalypse, hidden iman style and ends their legislative sessions with chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
We, of course, are the stupid ones.
I think you’re missing the point, Ash.
Iraq has turned into such a fiasco, it will probably be another 20-30 years before America tries anything like it again.
The U.S. military will have to follow the post-Vietnam rehabilitation program of crushing tiny nations like Haiti, Panama, Grenada, etc., followed by a well-run slam dunk like the Gulf War.
The sooner we get started on the path to recovery the better. Pulling out of Iraq now could knock years off the Pentagon’s time at the Betty Ford clinic.
Let me get all this straight: We shouldn’t liberate any authoritarian countries unless we can liberate all authoritarian countries without angering the local despot, his crony’s or third party actors who may enter the battlefield as a result of religious/ideological reasoning.
The reasoning of the left: We are just against war for various pychological/pathological reasons but please deal with the various buffoonish arguments we make as an excuse for our opposition in a serious manner.
Alphie, does your own flatulence deafen you?
Yeah, he supports the bullying murderous, rapist war criminal troops….
If the 1st Gulf War was so fucking great, how come we never fucking left?
I was on the DMZ in Korea at the time. I made the prediction: “We’ll be back….”
Why do you hate the military, alphie? There’s no more hiding it–why do you hate us? Did a soldier suck the jelly out of your jelly donut?
Shorter Goldstein: “In other words, the Left’s never really thought about why they oppose liberating brown people, having once screamed, almost to a man and woman, for it.
“Not only that, the Left’s never really thought about how it’s conflicted itself for that half decade, pursuant the above.
“But what really gets me is that they don’t think anybody notices.”
Or like that. Close?
Two words for you, alphie: Prescience or hindsight. Pick one. Meanwhile thank your god there hasn’t been anything worse, fruitcake.
Some people think we’ve provided al Qeada and their ilk with a training ground and recruiting cause in Iraq that has allowed them to grow from tiny finge movements to ones capable of toppling governments.
Alphie is behind on his talking points. Latest word on the Leftie street is that they are not capable of toppling governments. Nope. Not at all. They’re all hat and no cattle.
This is the thing:
Bin Ladin and his mujahedeen believe that they defeated the internally rotting Soviet Union. They believe that the US is similarly rotted and ripe for a fall. He has been trying to draw us into a fight for years so that he and his holy warriors could defeat us by making us shrink back in ignominity when our nose was bloodied. Had we not responded to 9/11, he would have kept trying, each time escalating the violence, until we did respond.
What keeps the recruits coming is the promise of success against the infidel. You’re not supposed to wage military jihad unless you think you have a reasonable chance of succeeding. If we had them a victory in Iraq, his armies will only increase, because it will be a sign that Allah is softening up the infidels for conquest.
Granted, the prospect of killing infidels is enough for some, but if you can kill them and usher in the glorious Caliphate? That’s what brings ‘em in.
They keep saying “embolden” the enemy, but they don’t finish the thought and say that that boldness is a prime recruiting tool.
alphie: I think you’re missing the point, Ash.
This could qualify for the irony hall of fame.
@Michael Smith:
I am old enough to remember when the word ‘conformist’ was a weapon in the hands of leftists. If it was your intention to evoke this memory, well done. In any case, the irony is delicious.
“If we hand them a victory in Iraq,”
sheesh…
Debt, pollution, war fatigue, etc.
Can’t ignore the future forever, guys, because it has a nasty habit of showing up.
Like it ot not, Iraq is this generation’s one grand military adventure.
The longer we stay, the longer it will be before you can try another one.
Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.
This is contemporary liberalism. The absolutist kind. The kind that cannot accept anything imperfect that is not of its making (in which case, deaths of millions – a.k.a. the U.S.S.R, Communist China, Cuber – is simply overlooked). It is the adolescent kind, spewed by high school liberal arts teachers to naive yute who then, in an effort to appear to be compassionate and wise beyond their years, repeat it incessantly, especially to adults whom they can annoy.
I rather like that. Glow suggests something radioactive rather than divine. Jeff’s confection is tastefully damning, piquant in its dry understatement, with an ironically complex amusement for a finish. Well done.
alphie:
I suspect you never got past my first sentence or two, or you would probably have noted that the subject of my post was the endless repetition of unsound arguments, not any specific point about this or that U.S. policy.
If you had, you would have been less likely to attempt to counter with yet another unsound argument.
<blockquote>Like it ot not, Iraq is this generation’s one grand military adventure. <blockquote>
Specifically which generation, alphie?
Then why not just off yourself in one final orgiastic statement to the man, alpo?
Jeff, your response would make for a realist argument, if only it was based on reality. Somehow I don’t think you’ve captured idealism there.
try
timmyb writes:
But, as any PoliSci 101 person knows, there is no such thing as “principled realism.” The whole point of realism has always been to get away from any sort of idealism, and to focus on doing “what needs to be done” in defense of the national interest.
Support the genocidal maniac Stalin in a war against the greater genocidal maniac Hitler? Consummate realism. Support Mobotu against Lumumba? Typical realism.
The intricate gavotte undertaken by the US and the USSR with the governments of Somalia and Ethiopia is another classic examples of realism. So is toppling a Mossadeq (socialist in a time of the Cold War) or an Allende (communist in a time of the Cold War). Elections be d*mned—what matters is whose side you’re on.
Realism is the embodiment of the observation, “England has neither permanent friends, nor permanent enemies, but only permanent interests.”
Somehow, I don’t think timmyb’s quite mature enough to handle the reality of realism.
I’m sorry are you claiming there is actually a point to your comment Alphie? If so please clarify, I’m afraid I had taken it for a feckless, flailing attempt at intelligent discourse by a shut-in college freshman who needed to take a break from studying for his remedial english quiz and didn’t want to leave his dorm room and risk getting wedgied by the Rugby players down the hall because he didn’t want to have to call home and have his mom send him another new 3 pack of Fruit of the Looms.
I’ll leave you with one final question alphie. Are you going to be a douchebag like this all your life or is this just something you’re dabbling in?
Careful – That’s a trick question, alphie.
Certainly, in the case of Allende, it was a case of Constitution be damned. That guy stepped far outside of whatever mandate he had. The people of Chile could not wait until whenever Allende ‘declares’ (one reason why I hate the parlimentary system) an election. He was doing far too much damage to Chile. Hence the coup.
To be fair, Jeff, I don’t think alphie was born neoconsstink. We can argue about the relative contributions, but I’m certain nurture had something to do with it.
The truth hurts sometimes, Big E.
The “Surge to Failure” underway now in Iraq has the support of 9-12% of Americans, depending on which poll you look at.
No American politician is going to suggest we engage in any nation-building military adventures for decades to come now, because everyone has seen that once it gets going, it’s impossible to stop no matter how badly it turns out.
Even if American military intervention is a very good idea.
Kinda sad.
We’ve got two penalties on the comment: 15 yards for unnecessarily stupid commentary and 15 yards for trying to be cool by using “street lingo”.
What causes people like you to worship polls? Are you so feckless and cowardly that you cannot express an opinion unless you think you are in the majority? What amount of support makes an effort “worthwhile”?
I know Alphie, have you tried using Shout to get those skid marks out of your underwear after the rugby players get done with you or are they ripping the whole waistband? Cause that’s not cool….wait I know how you can get back at them for not realizing how great you are! Just throw up kneejerk opposition to anything you think they might approve of like…oh, I don’t know, the Iraq War maybe?
Hey, wait a minute…..
mishu:
Val Dorta did an excellent piece on the background to the coup against Allende, recapitulating precisely your points.
But for the realists (and neorealists), that doesn’t matter. The point is, Allende was someone who needed to go, and the method, whys, and wherefores of his toppling matter less than the fact that he was toppled, and replaced with someone more in line with our immediate interests. The fact that the Chileans did it, b/c Allende was economically incompetent and intent upon assuming absolute power, is beside the point. From an American realist perspective, what matters is that Allende was toppled.
BTW, are you actually a mishu? Or a student of mishu?
Neville, making one of his patented messes, ejaculates
Of course, the idea that one might intervene for reasons of some sort, be they idealistic or founded on realism, is entirely beyond his ken. In Neville-world, those who want to intervene simply do so out of bloodlust/warmongering/’cuz it’s there.
Turing phrase: earth22—denoting the number of standard deviations that alphie’s alternate universe is from the rest of us.
Alphie,
As far as I can tell from over here, warfare is still a political exercise. When one starts citing polling data as a predictor for the future effectiveness of offensive operations, one is, ultimately ceding control of the outcome of operations to information warfare. In the context of information warfare, it is a form of asymmetric warfare at which our enemies excel, and you and your cohorts aid and abet.
I don’t really think that you and your ideological cohort have really considered is what the downstream consequence of giving primacy of (what amounts to) advertising over the ability to use a nation’s force of arms to pursue policy objectives.
While it may have some sort of neat-o underdog, ‘what if they gave a war and nobody came’ warm and fuzzy feeling, it ultimately has the effect of giving a cynic with an AK-47 an ability to trump each and every international agreement, duly elected government, and any other manifestation of the rule of law. The only long-term outcome from this kind of evolution (assuming that the trend continues unchanged) is going to be a Hobbsean ‘War of All Against All’ – which has all the wondrous trappings of Clauswitzian ‘Absolute Warfare’ without any of the benefits of interest aggregation.
And as spooky as that may sound right now, consider what the consequence will be should technology continue to create vast new generations of enabling technology – the same kind of technological advances that have improved weapons systems lethality by approximately an order of magnitude every decade since the end of the Second World War.
Rather than being the neat, concise analysis you seem to suggest, rather you have missed the point, and in continuing to hold that banner aloft, are setting the stage for bloodshed and chaos enabled with the raw destructive power of the Cold War and informed by the sensibilities of the Thirty Years War.
I don’t suggest anything as simpleminded as saying that you are actively encouraging the defeat of the US (although you are), but rather your behavior is strongly reminiscent of an autoimmune response to the last thirty millennia of civilization and progress. Frankly, it is the response of you and yours that scares me more than our opponents who, while they would like to see us dead or under heel, at least have the good grace to acknowledge that they really do seek the annihilation of their enemies. Your ilk haven’t even demonstrated that fundamental level of self-reflection and fidelity to your own goals.
BRD
Gad, I hate to pile on, but – alphie, when you say, “Like it ot not, Iraq is this generation’s one grand military adventure,” it becomes stunningly clear that you don’t understand what war is for. You appear to have bought into “Blood for oil,” “Young men dying for old men’s profits,” the whole thing about how Iraq is just Cowboy W’s way of poking his dad in the eye, or possibly of proving his manhood since, after all, he ran away like a little girl during Vietnam, right?
Useless as it is to point it out to you, this is not a game. The stakes are not “Can we claim victory before the American public gets too tired of the little magnetic flag thingies on their cars?” but “Can the Middle East be reformed as more peaceful, more stable, and more liberal?” Because that is in our national interest. If it weren’t, we’d be irresponsible to pursue it.
If isolationism were a viable option, it’d be a better choice than appeasement or tacit support of brutality and illiberalism in the name of multiculturalism/anti-Westernism, which appear to be the only arrows in the leftist quiver – but isolationism is a thing of the past and will never be a viable option again. We will engage, by choice or by default, because radical Islam has an agenda whether we want to admit it or not. That agenda includes – no, centers on – the destruction of Western liberalism, and it’s not The Impossible Dream because there’s a whole lot of money under that sand, a whole lot of fertility in the Fertile Crescent and its environs, a whole lot of upside for devotees if it’s successful, and a whole lot of help, willing and unwitting, coming from the vaunted World Community. Again in the name of multiculturalism/anti-Westernism.
So this administration engaged, at a time of our choosing (its choosing if you want to split hairs), rather than waiting until we were on the defensive. Do you not get that there’s no way to disengage?
By the by, since the Senate cannot pass its disapproval of the Iraq surge, but looks most likely to approve forswearance of cutting off funds for the Iraq war forever, isn’t the only poll that matters the one that the demoralize-the-troops Democrats can’t seem to pass in the Senate?
Seems like support for the GWOT is beter than supposed by defeatist Democrats?
Why do you folks continue to try to play Alphie’s games of sophistry?
I can’t be the only one, so here it is…
The term mishu, which literally means “secretary†in Chinese, refers to a range of people who differ significantly from each other in terms of the functions they fulfill, the leadership bodies they serve, and the responsibilities given to them. Important distinctions should be made between organizational (jiguan) and personal (geren) mishu, between chiefs of staff or secretaries-general (mishuzhang) and office
directors (bangongchu zhuren), and between aides with high official status (zhuli) and clerks who usually do nothing but type and answer phones (banshi yuan).
During the first few decades of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), mishu were often called clerks (ganshi).
OHNOES:
B/c we’re bored, and b/c Jeff inexplicably allows him to defecate in his armadillo’s holding pen?
Don’t mind alphie, guys–he’s just pissed off about yesterday’s homophobic snickers ad…
The gay lions rocked.
Wrong. As usual. And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of bad poll numbers for alphie to quote. But he still couldn’t get it right.
You would think fellow trolls would perform some sort of intervention, if only to prevent their side from looking like a bunch of drooling morons.
Or maybe they’re no better.
Just a little bit of news, Iran has cured AIDS.
<a href=”http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250281,00.html” target=”_blank”>
Yeah the gay lines were cool. I liked the face-slapping bud commercial best though. Guess that must be because I have been coarsened by GHWBs phony war on terror, right NYT?
Lines=lions. Of course, there were several “gay lines” crossed as well!
Apologies to all, I didn’t intend to (as I may have done) run Alphie off. He just happened to step into the line of something I had been thinking about over the weekend.
BRD:
It would take more than reasoned argument from you to run alphie off. F-16s with LANTIRN pods and GBU-12s have failed at that mission.
If you had succeeded, however, I think the level of discourse would have risen.
In either case, no apology is expected (at least by me—our host Jeff or the armadillo might differ, however).
I liked the GM robot ad, m’self.
BRD, you may not have chased him off, he may still be reading your post. Probably looking up “Clauswitzian”.
Assuming, of course, that he has broken with tradition and actually read someone else’s post.
Oh come on, you know you enjoyed it. Just like when you were a kid and you would run headlong into the yard, scattering the starlings by screaming, “Hello, Clarice!”
[…]
Why is everyone looking at me like that?
I guess it’s true that addicts have to hit bottom before they seek help.
Isolationism is a natural response to unpopular wars.
And Iraq is a very unpopular war.
Alphie,
Let me try (at least the first step) again, in much shorter, simpler words.
What does “popular” have to do with “war”?
alphie/Neville:
Your utter lack of historical knowledge is frankly embarrassing. Reading your lines is like watching a homeless man piss himself.
Civil War, popular or unpopular? America pursued an isolationist foreign policy ‘til the turn of the century.
Spanish-American war, popular or unpopular? America pursued a robust foreign policy in the Pacific and Central/South America.
Korea, popular or unpopular? Was America isolationist in the 1950s and 1960s?
In your own comment, you noted that the US fought multiple wars after Vietnam. Is that what an isolationist nation does?
That word “isolationist,” I don’t think it means what you think it means.
But then, you were claiming that North Korea’s nukes were b/c of the US opening of Japan (was that during a period of isolationism? Perhaps after the unpopular war with Mexico?), so again, for your own sake, learn some history before blathering.
TW:anyone87, as in Is there anyone among the 87 who are willing to do an intervention with poor alphie/Neville?
alphie as seen by his mom
Why is it important that it be “popular”?
Considering it was “popular” when it began, why are people being giving the opportunity to change their “votes”?
When has a war been waged primarily at the pleasure of the population?
What is the definition of “leadership”?
How many lives in Vietnam, Lao, Cambodia, etc., would have been saved if the US had not listened to the public’s views on the “popularity” of the war and prosecuted it to its fullest intent?
You’re what, twelve? Fifteen at the most?
There will be no rewriting of history here–especially the positions of some of your heroes at the time, alphie.
Everyone raise your hands who remember any of the following:
1. The vote in the Senate for Desert Storm was 52-48–pretty much on party lines.
2. Endless carping over how F-15s, Tomahawks, Apaches and M-1s were “too complex” for actual combat. Oh–and American carriers being vulnerable to small, missile-launching ships (Good ole Gary Hart).
3. 50,000 U.S. casulaties in the first month of a ground war (that one courtesy of retired Adm. Eugene Carroll of the ever-popular Center for Defense Information. AFTER the war, the same person who then said, “See? The military was so good; it’s obviously too big.”)
4. Vietnam…blah…blah…blah.
Timmah and his indeological brethren are less concerned with consequences than BDS. Hence the willing ness to just leave and whatever follows…well, it just can’t be worse.
Oh yes, it can.
You know, it is probably worth revisiting this again.
And why is that? It’s because of the constant stream of lies, backstabbing, and outright worship of our enemy’s propaganda that your ilk have indulged in. As the threat was made, over and over—“it’ll be another Vietnam”—and the people making that threat made it come true.
Fer crissake, you talk about the jihadis as if they’re military geniuses. Why? Because you believe the crap they pump out to the press that’s intended to make you think they are. You bought into their propaganda like a fish eying a juicy worm, too stupid to notice the nasty barbed hook.
It is the goal of the jihadis to break our will. By advocating our abandonment of Iraq, you’re assisting them.
Does anybody know how that pipeline we’re building in Afghanistan (the reason people like timmy gave for us invading) is going?
yeah!
Guys, I know you think that this whole anti-war thing is new to me, but I can assure you that I had in the late 1770’s, family in Boston and New York that not only questioned the Genghis Khan-like actions of George Washington, but demanded that that costly, unjust and illegal war be brought to an end after 3-4 years as well. I mean after 4 years of lies, and all of the misled American dead (mostly uneducated poor and stupid people), lack of victories and constant British invasions, most “real†patriots polled in favor of the British. But no, those that actually insisted upon their fascist version of freedom from foreign rule couldn’t wait and kept fighting for another 3 years at staggering costs. It wasn’t until the Treaty of Paris was signed in Sept. 1783, a full 7 years after the overrated and dissent squashing Declaration of Independence, that this disgusting and economically unsound, so-called “revolution†was finished. It took another 6 years before a Constitution was ratified. We should learn from our own past and not ignore the polls, because nothing good has ever come from it, just ask that decorated, “real†American hero, General Benedict Arnold. All wars should be long enough for a few commercial breaks, should never involve American dead (ever)and should be rightly devised, started and lost by Democrats only, just like Vietnam and Korea. Now those were wars one could oppose in public and feel great about.
I remember all of them. I also remember the anti-war nuts declaring that OIF would end with tens of thousands of GIs dead from Saddam’s war gases.
One of the most vibrant memories I have of the anti-war movement during the Gulf War was sitting in on a meeting of the “Progressive Student Alliance”. They had—apparently out of white guilt—elected a foreign student to be their president. He gave a speech about tyrants like Saddam only understanding force, that no amount of sanctions or negotiating would get him out of Kuwait. He asked the PSA to *please* consider that.
Immediately afterward they voted to spend student activity funds on a road trip to an anti-war rally.
This was the group that plastered the campus with “No War for Salad Shooters” flyers. Never could really understand that.
He got off of his bumpersticker collection.
The same place he gets his political guidance.
Alphie, if we find that wars like the one we’re trying to wage in Iraq—wars with as few enemy casualties as possible—are so unpopular at home that they don’t work, what will we do next time someone attacks us?
If you’re right that we don’t get another nation-building expedition, what’s the alternative?
We could sit back and take it, like we did prior to Bush 43. Do you think we will? Should we?
Don’t ask alphie to think kate–his head might explode.
Iraq has turned into such a fiasco, it will probably be another 20-30 years before America tries anything like it again.
I always wonder if people who post this kind of nonsense are lying deliberately and know better or just … that… ignorant. And I wonder which is worse?
The problem is if its a lie, they are unreachably twisted by partisan zealotry. If it’s not a lie, you never know, they might listen to reason, but it’s doubtful.
Dibs on 30 in Teh Alphie IQ Pool.
try83
Nope, too high.
Y’know, like after WWI. And isolationism turned out so well then.
Isolationism is only an option to alphie and Pat Buchanan.
American exports are 1.3 trillion dollars.
American oil imports are approximately 11 million barrels a day.
We’re in NATO and bilateral defense agreeements with Japan and Sout Korea.
We’re legally obligated to pretect Taiwan.
Yes, alphie, amaze us again with your in-depth knowledge of international affairs. And ignore the upshot of your stated policy preference–if we leave Iraq now, a return becomes inevitable under uncertain circumstances.
Idealism is falling into the trap that prompted this thread—believing that we can and must fight all these battles at once.
There is a pragmatic part to my argument, sure—the timing was right to make a show of our idealism, because a number of important factors came together to give us both the international and domestic cover we needed, always keeping in mind that war is the last resort.
So no, my argument isn’t for realism. Instead, it is an example of how idealism, combined with pragmatism, is precisely the kind of foreign policy we Wilsonian idealists like to see.
Which isn’t to say we couldn’t be kicking Burmese ass come Sunday.
BRD as usual brings up the point that scares me the most.
If US ever falls, it will be through internal malfeasance, not anything that Mr. DirkaDirka will ever be capable of doing.
Every major empire in the last two thousand years fell to internal, not external enemies.
The sad thing about Timmy and Alphie and the other nitwits is that most of them don’t even realize what side the’re on, or the correlation to history. It’s cool to say “Fuck Bush” on campus, chicks dig it at the local frat bar. I used to be a stupid hippy too. I’m sure that a lot of us who post here like me grew up at some point, saw the world for what it really was and what the US really stood for.
I am truly horrifed about the next couple of years from this perspective. The level of sheer ignorance combined with the historical revisionism that passes for political debate these days is depressing. That Diane Sawyer interview with Assadwas a perfect example of the problem, and you could almost hear the DU’s lapping it up.
That and fucking Peyton won a ring. GGGGGGGGAhh.
Well, the Burmese apparently think so, happy…
That’s kind of poignant really. We should definitely hold off bombing until the new capital is done. Who’s up for Zimbabwe?
Say what you want,
The next time an American president wants to send our troops in somewhere, they’ll have to get Congress to approve it.
A Congress whose last example was Iraq.
No sale.
Not for a looooong time.
Alphie, you’re an idiot. Read a book. I’d suggest something like The Gathering Storm (my favorite for ostrich-wannabes like you), but that’s probably a bit out of your league.
You’ve engaged in enough silliness for one day to qualify for an NPR segment. Ignorant and raving is no way to go through life, son.
You forget that if Japan hadn’t been dumb enough to bomb us, America would have probably sat at WWII, wishbone.
You can hope the next bad guy is just as dumb, but we aren’t going to be fighting any more “preventative” wars.
</blockquote>You forget that if Japan hadn’t been dumb enough to bomb us, America would have probably sat at WWII, wishbone.
The next time an American president wants to send our troops in somewhere, they’ll have to get Congress to approve it.
American exports are 1.3 trillion dollars.
American oil imports are approximately 11 million barrels a day.
We’re in NATO and bilateral defense agreeements with Japan and South Korea.
We’re legally obligated to protect Taiwan.<blockquote>
Preventive warfare has nothing to do with the future course of events. The world is too complex and too unpredictable for its safety to be entrusted to military-hating ignoramuses like you. Whether you want to admit it or not–the U.S. is not the problem. We’re the cure.
Crap–I screwed up the block quotes, but it’s still understandable, I hope.