Congrats, BRD! You’ve graduated to war porn! Sad how, in a piece where you nod more to an Andrew Sullivan than, say, a Bill Quick, you are labeled with such a broad, blood-soaked brush by someone either intent on misunderstanding your or incapable of understanding you.
Let me say that having written about this kind of thing myself here on several occasions, I’ve enjoyed the debate happening in the comments to your post.
I’ll give my short response first: I understand BRD’s concerns, but I think they are misplaced. I have never really bought this notion that responding forcefully—even in a way that might sicken us, in retrospect (as it did, say, Oppenheimer)—will turn us into what we are fighting, or will (to borrow one of Andy Sullivan’s favorite maudlin laments) destroy our nation’s soul. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Instead, whatever that response will be will appeal to the pragmatism that is just as much a part of the American character as is its idealism. And so there is absolutely no reason that such a response cannot be reconciled with the “soul” (Sullivan) or “idea” (BRD) of this country, so long as we recognize that part of the American idea includes the imperative toward self-preservation as a precondition for all else.
Such an imperative is made politically manifest, in fact, in the Bush Doctrine. And though people can decry it now, it has set a precedent for us that can be used by whatever future leaders we elect, of whatever political stripe.
Perhaps I’m taking a postmodernist view here, but a culture simply is all the things it does. It is malleable. Once you cease doing something, it ceases to be part of your culture. Once you begin doing something new, it becomes part of your culture.
Structurally, though, there are limits to this—forced constraints—and this brings us to the heart of your argument. For the USA to cease to be in the way you describe, we’d have to permanently alter our Constitution, which acts as the deliminating boundary for cultural expansion. And I don’t think that will happen—because as it is written, we have in place all the necessary means to protect the “idea” that it is you fear for.
And so it will simply play as part of our evolving culture to take in, internalize, and sublimate whatever guilt we feel in retrospect for the kinds of responses you imagine would arise from a worse case scenario attack. Still, I don’t think any of that would fundamentally change the country, unless we allow the country, by way of scrapping the Bill of Rights, to be fundamentally changed.
And I’m convinced we would not allow that to happen.
As I’ve argued before, should we start seeing bombs going off in schools or in malls or in movie theaters (think The Siege, for those of you who’ve seen it—only extract the Hollywood idealism of Denzel Washington), the immediacy of such attacks will, with few exceptions, again galvanize the country. And, with few exceptions again, the country will not only accept—they will in fact DEMAND—draconian measures be taken to stop such attacks. This is not a braying for blood. This is a foregrounding of the pragmatic part of our national character. Idealism is well good and laudable provided their is something left to be idealistic about—and the idea of America has always recognized this.
We only hear carping about the, eg., NSA surveillance program and the PATRIOT Act these days because many Americans are still letting cultural idealism, as they see it, determine their world view—often in a way that is dangerously overdetermined. And the danger comes precisely because the terrorists know that they will be far more tactically and strategically successful keeping us in high moral dudgeon than in engaging us directly with any kind of sustained domestic attacks. At least for the time being. They are, that is, allowing us to weaken from within, and it works to a point, and will continue to work so long as it happens slowly, through legislation, court rulings, and cultural inculcation that creates a society so afraid of offending—so afraid of action against anything other than it’s own guilt—that it will sit on its hands and hope things blow over. At THAT point—at the point we are reluctant to respond, and not at the point where we respond with unprecedented force—will we have changed the “idea” of the USA, or lost our nation’s “soul.”
The biggest mistake al Qaeda could make right now is to force the issue—to hit us hard before we are entirely soft. To many Americans, the terrorist threat is now so remote that they’ve returned to their comfort zone of criticizing our government, playing brave dissenter, engaging in partisan politics, dusting off their Howard Zinn, etc.
But this is only because they have, for the time being, bracketed the pragmatic side of the American character—or, for the more cynical, they are deploying their pragmatic impulse in the service of crass and trivial political considerations, rather than applying it to a longer-term view, and extending it to the country as a whole as it exists beyond partisan politics.
Should we be visited with the kind of devastating attacks BRD envisions, though, I think this country is strong enough as a whole to allow that pragmatism to take over. We will do what needs to be done to bury our dead, punish the perpetrators, and make it known that any such future attacks will be met with the kind of severe response that will likely result from having watched our citizens die in staggering numbers.
Pragmatism, however, demands (to put it bluntly) that we allow for witnesses, if only so they can testify to our capability for lethality—and our ability to foreground the pragmatism that ensures our survival.
I have argued before—and been excoriated for saying such—that “smart” munitions, severely constrained ROEs, and artificially granting ourselves to some mythical moral highground, are not always the best response to violent attacks. They may, perhaps, be the more “moral” response in the short term, from some perspective; but in the long term, the most moral actions, whether they are born of pragmatism or idealism or some combination of both, are the ones that preserve lives—first here, then elsewhere.
And I think it entirely moral to pose the questions—even though for having done so I’ve been accused of wanting to carpet bomb orphanages and slaughter all the world’s brown puppies, etc.
When we talk about a battle for the nation’s soul, then, what we are really fighting over is the recipe for combining idealism with pragmatism so that we achieve the proper balance.
Foreign policy realism, for instance, was essentially pragmatic, but—once we recognized that it was not the best way forward after the Cold War—it became far more pragmatic to give greater weight to idealism in terms of how we develop foreign policy. The spread of Democracy is an idealistic goal. But it is also pragmatic: the current foreign policy leadership believes that the spread of freedom will, in the long run, make the world safer.
But this change hasn’t changed our nation’s “soul” or in any way eroded the idea of the USA—the handwringing of people like Sullivan or Greenwald(s) notwithstanding. And that is precisely because the idea of the USA allows for such latitude, and in fact, it encourages it.
Of course, this has been a rather lengthy and rambling free-associative response, so feel free to point out my errors—which I’m certain are legion. Anyway, I offer this as a counterpoint to BRD’s provocative post, with the hopes that we can continue the conversation.
It need not destroy the nation’s soul. It need only corrupt the souls of enough people that they might make the difference in preventing America from fighting back against the next enemy.
That’s what I’m worried about. Every time members of our own society work against our national self-defense, the effect is to embolden our enemies and encourage them to harsher and more ill-advised attacks. And every time the nation responds as it must, the opponents of national self-defense mischaracterize the action to further indict our moral standing as a nation.
An individual can only stand up to so much of that kind of abuse. And America is, more than any other, a nation of individuals.
And, of course, also to discourage ourselves from taking forthright action. The harder we have to fight amongst ourselves to make anything happen, the more still it encourages the enemy.
Actually well put Jeff. The only thing to add is that we have done this once before in WW2. Mostly in the Pacific Theater, but there was plenty done in Europe. Alot of people don’t grasp the barbarity of the fighting in WW2. While many individual’s were scarred badly, the Nation was fine. Stronger, even. We’ve simply let our guard down again and will require a much bigger hit to get the message.
If I don’t respond much today, it’s because my wife just got back from a business trip so we have a lot of errands to run.
I’ll check back in later, though.
This is a very uncomfortable topic. What I embrace about it is that I think it’s a valuable exercise to imagine and explore the dark terrain of potential cataclysm and its aftermath. We have people for this, and they’ve been dropping the ball. It’s time, I think, for the much-hyped, leftist-informed, appallingly bad ABC miniseries that explores The Day After a scenario like the one BRD uses as a starting point. The TV Event that will be preceded by morning-show discussions of how the material may not be appropriate for children and followed by a panel discussion featuring Brzezinski, Zbigniew and Albright, Madeleine. Reveling in an exploration of vengeance and nihilism is not particularly healthy, and can definitely be a pornography of a sort, but avoidance and denial is even less productive. I think what hangs over the evolution of this discussion is the likelihood that it will require the production of a particularly appalling/compelling splatch of “war porn” to gain a bit of popcultural traction before Hollywood will find a sufficient impetus to commission a “serious” and “authoritative” counter-narrative.
Jesus. I was just looking at the site JG linked, and the site it h/t’d. Apparently, if you talk about something bad happening, and attempt to prepare for it, it means that you want it to happen.
Also the couple thousand people who march on DC periodically are going to provide the restraint in the event of a catastrophic WMD attack. These people have no clue.
I think they do have a clue, B Moe. But it bespeaks their cravenness.
These people would fully expect and hope for drastic responses should, say, independent bookstores or little Indian restaurants see a rash of terrorist bombings. But in the meantime, they’d come out against them—knowing full well that they are inevitable, and that adults would take care of things so that they could go on behaving like spoiled children rebelling against mommy and daddy’s bourgeois patriotism.
Gotta disagree, Jeff. There’s no need to change the Constitution when it can simply be ignored. Look at McCain-Feingold—about as unConstitutional as a law can be, yet Congress passed it, the president signed it, and the Supremes let it stand.
Similarly, look at what passes for “open discourse” in universities—only one side is acceptable, and that side is allowed unlimited discourse while the other side is severely restricted. It’s OK to wish for “a million Mogadishus” or proclaim that “every Zionist deserves a bullet in the head”, but beyond the pale to show a film about the hate propaganda that’s common place in the Muslim world, or to stomp on the flags of terrorist groups.
The people who built that environment believe they’re intellectually honest and utterly consistent, despite blatantly ignoring the clear meaning of those words.
I tend to agree with your thinking about pragmatism guiding the national reaction mostly because it’s consistant with human nature. What I think still concerns many people in the US today is that the country has settled to a level of misunderstanding or disregard because al queda isn’t as easily identifiable or simple to define on a war footing as Imperial Japan or the Nazis.
To some degree, I think this grates at the American psyche in that we have no collective desire to really go after al queda’s neighbors or enablers, as we just want to eliminate them. I think that is somewhat governed by the typical American feeling about the individual.
While, I see the problem as beng defined in that you must root out both the active, recruiting, sympathizing and enabling elements of al queda, I think many people do not. The want to punish the “red handed” criminal and leave the sympathizer alone because they equate that with a non-operational function. To some degree that is because the root of al queda is hidden in islamofacism and the moral equivelence of our culture makes broaching the judgement of religion taboo. The military understands that logistics is a function and, in time, America may as well.
In the meantime, those who would want life to “be fair” and to “just get along” will continue to chafe at all efforts to assign guilt past the terrorist combatant level because they are not effected personally.
RC —
The fact that you don’t M-F as constitutional—ditto Kelo, it seems to me—is enough to show that these decisions will likely be remedied in a way that fits the national consciousness, either legislatively or through subsequent court rulings.
And I think that the continued one-sidedness of the discourse in academia (of which I’ve been as staunch a critic as any) will only lead the market to create new types of schools. The online university is still in its infancy, but one can imagine that such will eventually pressure the status quo. For the same reason, it seems to me, the Teacher’s Union fights so hard against charter schools and vouchers. But the tension is still there, and so I don’t think all is lost.
I expect a pendulum swing on many of these issues, just so long as people are willing to keep fighting them or illuminating their faults.
Might be when that occurs, a new civil war breaks out. Just a little short one, I’d bet. And nothing I’d want to happen, of course, only that it probably would.
We’ll see. Both cases mean politicians and judges would have to give back some of the power they’ve taken for themselves. I have a hard time believing that will happen.
Maybe. Credentialism will make that hard to do, particularly with the entrenched interests and guild nature of many professions. With so much government money flowing directly to the existing educational system, instead of following the students, it’ll be hard to build a realistic and accepted competitor.
The rest of the world will gasp in horror at the terrorist attack, and shed its tears, and then give us the nod to retaliate. And we will. Again. And again. And again. And the rest of the world will start to look on in amazement and slowly, slowly turn away in abject shock and profound horror. We will make Curtis Lemay’s application of airpower against civilian targets look like Wesley Clark coordinating with NATO allies in the Kosovo Air War.
Good.
Wish we were doing it already.
Because you don’t have to kill every Muslim on Earth to get them to stop attacking us. But you DO have to TERRIFY every Muslim on Earth, or some of them will never stop.
So let’s get it done.
The Internet will allow an immediate and global distribution of a much-hyped ABC miniseries in a way that was never possible during the Cold War. They will know terror.
Star Trek once had an episode wherein the good guys (Kirk, a simulated Abe Lincoln, a Chinese future hero and some other guy) and the bad (a Klingon, some historical mass murderers, etc.) were forced to fight each other, to allow an all powerful entity to decide if treating with either group was worthwhile. In the course of things, both sides fight hard and somewhat dirty, leaving the entity unimpressed. In the end, it leaves. This story has always struck me as stupid.
While the degree to which the Left is undermining the Constitution can be debated, I believe it’s indisputable that the moral navel-gazing and ‘handwringing of people like Sullivan or Greenwald’ is possible only because there has been no follow-up attack on US soil.
Their so-called moral dilemmas are all a luxury: a self-deception liberal-Left weaklings can indulge in because we are, indeed, the strongest democracy on earth. The smarter Dems realize this; they’re power-hungry–not stupid. When push comes to shove, no Democratic voter will stand still for the idea of voluntary self-annihilation so beloved of the Left. Not one of them really feels they deserve to be slaughtered, regardless of what they say on TV or write in the New York Times. Their intellectual and political positions are fashionable pretenses and everyone knows it.
If the terrorists hit us again domestically, the villagers will go berserk. And Dem leaders will trample each other into a bloody pulp to be the first to appear more butch, more pro-American and more pro-defense than the GOP. Bring back the draft! Shut down the borders! Break out the nuclear weapons!
Leading the charge will be craven morlocks like Pelosi, Murtha and Reid. Spitting red dust from the gutters will be the dewy-eyed morons: Kos and Hamsher, Arianna and Olberbatt, Greenwald and Sullivan.
Once in a while, I like to let the useful, self-loathing, idiots on the far Left know that they are being diddled by the Democratic leadership. You are, fuckheads. You’re being diddled.
The sun is out, and I’m feeling great today.
Read the response by Cernig to the BRD column. I really would love to know how to define a proportional response to a direct attack on the major buildings in the major cities of the country. I had problems with this concept in the Israeli/Hamas conflict last summer and I still don’t understand how you restrict yourself to proportional response when you are attacked. That makes absolutely no sense to me at all. If someone preaches for over 20 years that they want to either kill you or convert you and then that someone attacks you killing thousands of people, just how proportional should you be. Total idiocy! But then when you look at who got elected to Congress last fall, I guess some people believe it. It is just that I can’t understand how you define that and how you manage to hit back and then pull your punches at the appropriate point. Sounds to me like a good recipe for a very long and ultimately far more costly conflict in terms of lives lost and freedom lost and possibly a whole civilization lost. That apparently does not seem to mean much to the LLL dems, though.
Americans prize liberty but pragmatically value reasonable restraints. American life plays out this struggle. Human nature is rapacious and violent. America has somehow managed to harness this energy and moderate the inherent destructiveness–but not eliminate it. There will always be a dark side to American life–freedom demands it.
American wars have been notoriously violent. We’re innovative, and very good at killing, but we value the American dream–what ever that means for each individual. American soldiers are the best in the world, but most would prefer to be home. Our citizen soldiers in WWII brought unspeakable hell on the enemy–so that they could go home.
I don’t think the essential formula has changed. God help our enemies if you truly rouse us. The gloves will come off quickly. Sullivan and Greenwald may dream that Hiroshima and waterboarding are inconsistent with the American soul, but they are wrong. They are a direct result of our freedom and our willingness to protect it.
Old Dad – I exactly concur. This post modern idea of “proportionate” response”, is both fractious nonsense, and nihilistic primming delusion.
– America has shown time and time again, we will respond if goaded or attacked, to the dismay and destruction of every antangonist that has come down the pike, regardless of its structure, city-state or ortherwise.
– Usama thinks his idea’s of a “distributed, undefined enemy” innoculizes him and his from Amerca’s wrath. He’s having to go back and recalculate. The thing I would guess that has his robes in a knot: The greatest mistake our enemies make in their campaigns against us, besides thinking we will not defend ourselves until its too late, is under estamating our doggedness and resolve.
– He will be hunted down eventially, and he knows that now. Even the Leftist distractions here at home will not stop that process. His brilliant idea of a protracted, diffused approach is not going to work any better than the Nazi’s direct frontal assault did. Too late Commrade.
And yet the Far left is smugly convinced they are the ones doing the diddling. Endless entertainment.
The U.S. military is the wrong tool to combat terrorism.
We have no other tool.
So, we have two bad choices.
How to change that?
>>>> stretch <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> yawn <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>>>> blink <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
fivemoreminutes alfie mkay?
Yes we do… we have you!
TW: plane96 <— and there’s 96 more of ‘em, looks like
Very close. Substitute appropriate for reasonable and you have the Jacksonian mindset in a nutshell.
Where clowns like Cernig and company fall down is mistaking proportional for appropriate.
Jacksonian mindset doesn’t believe that appropriate equals proportional equals just holding your own in a pushing match. Nor does that mindset believe that an appropriate response is just smacking the bully upside the head until he says he’s sorry. It’s knocking him flat and continuing to knock him flat until he is utterly convinced that the last thing he wants to do is get up again.
You don’t lose your national soul doing that, but you might transform his.
– alphie – Fanaticism and drugging does not win wars. Pragmatic resolve and will wins wars.
BRD must have grown up in a different country than I did. I’ve never seen us react strongly to anything!
If we attempted to, the Filthy Internationalist Left would squeal our plans to our foes to prevent it.
We can only react as strongly as our Leftist Fifth Column will allow…
So, yes, I’ve often thought we would lose the GWOT, but more out of PC censorship of non-Islamic ideas to avoid hurting the Ummah’s feelings while they kill the shit out of us.
ok alphie – if we can’t use violence constructively, and there’s definitely some truth to the idea that the military is only part of the mix, there’s still no reason to take *ideas* of violence off the table, ideas that “can testify to our capability for lethality.” I bet there’s lots of things you don’t do every single day for fear of the consequences, no?
I think that it was you that left, before the show ended.
The episode was “The Savage Curtain”. The Excalabians pitted Kirk, Spock, Surak (the father of Vulcan philosophy) and Abraham Lincoln against Khaless (the unifier of the Klingon Empire), Col. Green (a treacherous future warrior known for violating truce), Zora (who experimented on primitive tribes on her home planet) and Ghengis Kahn (who is reminiscent), in order to determine whether good or evil is stronger.
The Excalabians decided that evil retreats from good when confronted, that evil is motivated by a desire for power and good by a desire to know new things.
You have it mixed up. The US Military is not a tool. It is a guild of craftsmen who use many tools in their roles of warriors or soldiers or peacekeepers or builders or guardians… They are very good at using warfare as a tool when the situation calls for it, but they certainly aren’t limited to it.
However, it is true that the main and most effective tool in the fight against terrorism is the bullet. It is also true that it’s use as an effective tool against terrorism is not limited to the military.
Well, in the contest between appropriate, we’ve never really addressed what appropriate means in the context of those who would destroy your civilization and its peoples. Even the Nazis and Soviets didn’t want to destroy Western civilization. Possess it? Conquer it? Sure. But not to eradicate it.
And – silly notions of proportionality aside – what will be the Jacksonian response to that kind of threat?
You couldn’t hope, aspire or plan to be more wrong, Alphred.
The U.S. military is *a* right tool for combating terrorism.
We have lots of other tools.
We are using them to great effect.
Fortunately, those who actually act in this regard aren’t saddled with your myopia. It’s never been believed, suggested, articulated, suspected, hinted at or alluded to that the military alone could solve anything.
But without the military to force open “space” for other efforts to proceed, nothing positive could happen.
Best way to address the implications in your comment is that the Jacksonian mindset is not vindicative. It is relentless in realizing the scope of it’s original collective intention when it is aroused, but stops there. The Jacksonian response would be to nullify the ability to carry out that threat, but not to the extent of eradication in return.
The Jacksonian mindset is not just pragmatic, it also operates under some very definite moral imperatives.
Apparently, the only response we have is ‘addressing the root causes of terrorism’ by:
banning cartoons of Mohammed,
building Islamic prayer rooms in airports,
taking pork off the menu,
teaching high school kids about the glories of Islam,
making movies venerating the Jihad,
using public funds to build loudspeakers for the muezzin
and cutting defense spending.
I read your other posting about losing the GWOT, and I was dumbfounded to read your idea that we would respond all out-of-proportion.
I’ve never seen us respond to much of anything in my lifetime.
We wouldn’t be in this pickle if we had ever responded all crazy-like. Our enemies can count on us to roll over and play dead until we actually are dead….
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes,
You’re paralyzed…
The bad guys don’t need the $600 billion a year U.S. military on their side to operate, RTO.
How come?
coupons, alphie, coupons
???
I’ll consider offering an answer if you’ll demonstrate relevance of the question.
Jeff,
And thus, you must blog, Grasshopper.
The bad guys don’t need the $600 billion a year U.S. military on their side to operate, RTO.
How come?
– They have us to pay for their side of it.
McGehee,
Those souls are already corrupted and will always remain so, but without the strength of their convictions necessary to join the other side. But remember the aftermath of 9/11, when we could have overrun the entire Muslim world with nary a peep, and the ask yourself what happened in the interim.
The sentence that sums it up best, I think, is this: The Marines are at war, America is at the mall.
Threaten or attack the mall, and we’ve got a whole ‘nother ballgame.
I think the pro-war crowd is actually fighting the ghost of Ronald Reagan.
How can Americans tell the GWOT apart from the liberal social programs that St. Ronnie battled?
Don’t ask us about the cost.
Don’t ask us whether its working or not.
Just shut up and give us more money (and lots of it).
If only the Gipper hadn’t taught America how to recognize and combat such things.
Or was it the Ghostbusters?
Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities. We didn’t have to produce anything. You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it is like out there. I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results!
– Dr. Raymond Stantz,
Because there are idiots like you who treat their murder of a bus full of children as a military victory. Who will respond to their temper tantrums with appeasement. Who will believe every lie published—and make up a few of their own—if it makes civilization look bad.
You’re the one who claimed US forces call air support down on random buildings whenever they take fire. That’s what the terrorists call a “force multiplier”.
Well said Jeff, well said.
We rustled a little after 9/11, but if another attack came we would respond in kind and accordingly. Pakistan would cease to exist if it ever allowed al Qaeda to attack us with nuclear weapons. Same with Iran. Same with NoKo.
You mean like that guy in Salt Lake City a few weeks ago? Or the college kid with all the Pakistani roommates who auto-detonated outside a football game? Or the guy who drove through San Francisco(?), running people over? Or the guy in Columbus who wanted to bomb shopping malls? Or the odd mass cell phone purchases by Muslims? Or the various scams and illegal operations run by Muslims in the US to fund jihad? Or the jihad training seminars and camps held all over the US? Or the way anti-Semitic, anti-American, anti-West, Islamic-supremacist literature seems to pop up in Muslim book stores and mosques all over the world?
It’s hard for the people to wake up when the alarm calls are drowned out by critical issues like who screwed Anna Nicole Smith.
Saudi oil revenues? Iranian? Terrorism being by definition a low intensity conflict choice? (bargain basement cheap logistically) Training being essentially limited to knowing how to buckle on a belt and pull the lanyard in a marketplace? (they sure as hell don’t perform too well in combat scenarios)
Need a hint where you’re going with this. Because the assumption that matching force structures are required in the standalone question is sublimely stupid.
Ah. You’re suggesting that we should simply start a much cheaper terror campaign on our own to match theirs rather than finance a traditional military. Bet it’d take no more than snuffing a few hundred mullahs worldwide. Intriguing idea. Cost effective. They’d be some collateral damage of course, but that’s the nature of a terror campaign and you don’t get an omelet without breaking some eggs.
alf…. for pure bang for the buck, a suicide bomber trumps all.
We could go that route cheaply… cynically using orphans, mentally and developmentally challenged young people packing plastic expolsives wrapped in bits of metal to blow up mosques, marketplaces, buses, trains, subways and anywhere else people “we don’t like” gather.
We could poison gas every marketplace in Waziristan with a crop dusting bi plane, but trying to play by the rules costs $$$.
Avoiding casualties is expensive $$$ wise. Are you saying the lives of our soldiers and of innocents are not worth a few bucks?
I can poison my next door neighbor for less than a bullet costs… does that somehow make the police department in my town inferior morally and intellectually because they have a budget in the millions of $$$?
Alf…. name the right tool then…. come on. The democrats don’t have one besides leave Iraq.
Even the media is starting to laugh…
Yeah, Steve,
But there has to be a happy medium somewhere.
Take today’s war/money story:
MONTEVIDEO (Reuters) – President George W. Bush has approved adding 4,400 more U.S. troops to a force buildup already ordered to try to bring security to Iraq, the White House said on Saturday.
Bush formally requested about $3.2 billion to pay for the additional deployment, even as he and Democratic lawmakers battle over his Iraq strategy.
$3.2 billion to deploy 4,400 troops.
That come to $727,000 per troops deployed!
Talk about welfare queens.
JPT, to alphie:
alphie’s helping remove all doubt that he’s just another ghoulish idiot praying for defeat.
And where have you been living?
Congress knows how much it costs as does everyone who pays attention.
You may choose not to believe that it’s working or not to know it, but again, those paying attention know the answer to this one too.
War’s also a head scratcher in the “results” department. “Winning” is persuading the other guy to give up. “Loosing” is being persuaded to give up. The guy who stops fighting first is the loser.
But what were the “results” that could be pointed to after Kasserine Pass? Bull Run? Brooklyn Heights? LZ X-Ray? Even after a series of successes might not someone have been persuaded to quit after Arnhem? the Bulge? Antietam? Trenton?
The war doesn’t go to the guy who wins the most battles, kills the most enemy, spends the most money, produces the best or most expensive stuff or has the most manpower. Battles tend to go to the guy who gits thar fustest with the mostest, but ultimate victory isn’t measured in battlefield success, casualty counts or targets eliminated. It’s about will, the desire to continue. Ability factors in, but even then it’s not determinative.
Is there any chance that you understand any of this, Alphred?
Alphie,
I suspect that you are not an idiot, but for the life of me, I wonder why you persist in acting like one.
First, your WAPO source has no detail. What kind of troops, when, how long, etc.
Second, consider what it costs to train equip and transport a soldier half way around the world, pay and insure her, etc.
Third, consider what it costs to resupply him. Ponder the logistics. It will boggle your little mind.
And no one is talking about welfare queens on this thread but you. FYI–said queens never come home in a box in service of their country.
It’s, I guess, your fate to be both stupid and offensive. You have that talent, though.
We were attacked on 9/11 by a radical subset of Wahhabi Sunni Islam. Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 had by all accounts trained approximately 20,000 to 40,000 jihadis, primarlily for duty fighting Indians in Kashmir for the benefit of their benefactors the Pakistani ISI. They attacked us with 19 men bearing boxcutters.
Since December 2001 the administration you support has done little to nothing to destroy the threat of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Hardly anything to rebuild and strengthen Afghanistan so it doesn’t once again fall prey to warlordism and narco economics, the splintered condition that left it susceptible to Taliban takeover in the first place. The Chicago Tribune reported earlier this week the newly appointed general director of the General Independent Administration for Anti-Corruption in Afghanistan who is charged with rooting out the endemic graft that is fueled in part by the country’s position as the world’s largest producer of opium poppies was busted for selling herion in Las Vegas back in 1987.
The Bush Administration and it’s Republican toadies in congress wouldn’t even mandate chemical plant security for fear of irritating their shortsighted campaign contributors.
There’s dozens of instances where they’ve refused to take measures that would actually prevent an attack against us or destroy those who attacked us from Pittsburgh to Tora Bora.
Saudi princes still finance radical madrassas all over the Islamic world. Our Army is bogged down in Iraq bleeding itself of men and material at a pace that can’t be sustained.
And you clowns worry about whether or not we’ll have the guts to murder 1.1 billion people someday? How about we get rid of the clowns who won’t fight the war we ought to be fighting? Who won’t even care for our returning wounded.
That little Vietnamese girl in the photo who had her clothes burned off by napalm now lives in Ontario. She’s still not happy about being bombed.
Maybe just to be safe you should go up there and beat her to death with a baseball bat you sick fucks.
– markg8 – you should have quit with the polar bear screwup….at least as phoney as it is, its not a bullshit argument as bad as VietNam. You know nothing concerning that conflict, even less than you understand about the WOT.
– You should be ok when you’ve actually hatched.
RTO Trainer:
Except, you know, depriving them of an entire nation state as an unfettered haven, chasing them into the hinterlands, and killing them in numbers whenever they come out. Doing hardly anything to rebuild? There’s a Civil Affairs major who posts here sometimes. I’d like to see him point out in detail how foolish that statement is.
And not because you’ve offended me by criticizing the beloved (that’s a joke, son) Bush administration, but because you seem to give no credit to what our military has accomplished. Because they haven’t solved all problems there, they’ve apparently done nothing worthwhile.
Talk about missing the point. Most of us seem to be worried that it will come to that, and hoping to God it never does.
You think we approve of what happened to that little girl? Idiot. You come in here, attribute to us views that we don’t hold, then get angry at us for it.
[Sorry, all, for the screwed-up tags.]
BBh still waiting for your link to the polar bears breeding like flies story. So far I only have your word which for obvious reasons isn’t good enough.
As usual you have nothing to counter what I say, you simply call bullshit without any facts.
Really, mark, I have to know. Did Ted Rall draw you and animate you through some deal with the devil?
Careful, gentlemen. Any minute now and Mark’s gonna trot out his basso profundo voice from the thread below…
markg8,
Apparently junior high composition is not what it once was. The “you” you reference is not modified, nor are the “sick fucks.”
A better construction might be something like, “Marky mark, you are an illiterate asshole.”
As to the substance of your post, it’s odd that your favorite Sunni nut jobs have been so preoccupied that they’ve not managed an encore in America.
It’s Bush’s fault.
Here you go, ‘tard.
Markg8, does such blatant misrepresentation of the last 5 1/2 years make you feel good? I can just hear you scream “Take that, Bush lovers!” as you pushed the submit button. But the fact that your silly screed bears no relation to actual events doesn’t bother you? The corruption of BDS.
Look, Old Dad,
For the money we’re spending to send a soldier to Baghdad for a year, we could send him to Maui for a year instead, put him up in a $1000 a night suite, rent him a Ferrari to drive, feed him gourmet meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, book him a daily round of golf on the finest courses in the world, and still have enough left over for plenty of resort shopping.
And RTO says that the $600 billion a year U.S. military is only part of the solution.
Somewhere, Tip O’Neil is watching this fiasco and smiling.
Well, well.
In my absence, I missed a seminal event here at PW: the vitural morphing of a troll, markg8, into a caricature of troll who evidently has some deep seated inferiority issues. To wit: his assurances of his masculinity. Basso profundo? That’s gold, man.
JPS the gist of both Jeff’s and BRD’s posts is that 4 or 5 nuclear explosions will likely destroy major American cities. Their concern is whether or not we will bring ourselves to commit genocide on all of Islam when it does. Jeff thinks we will have the “pragmatism” to commit genocide. BRD thinks we won’t because we’ll be disgusted with ourselves if we do.
I’m pointing out that the majority of the American people are sick of the political party that leave us vulnerable to such an attack and might even contemplate such a response.
She doesn’t seem to share your hatred.
Do you have anything positive to suggest, mark? Because it doesn’t really help much to just blindly rage about all that is wrong with the world. Pretty much any simpleton can do that.
Wanna quote that, Charlie Brown?
markg8 proclaimeth:
No.
Damned straight I’m sick of the Democrats.
So vote Hamas! For The Childrenâ„¢!
Look, Alphie, you completely missed the point.
We need combat troops in Maui why?
Here’s a little google project for you. What does an MRE cost?
A Lotto ticket and a 40 in your hood?
Fuckin’ A. And it represents such a small slice of our annual spending, too. The scale of our economy astounds.
According to the Murtha plan, we’ll need them there to reinforce Okinawa.
– Thanks Robert. Would have had to search the link out. As we are prone to do according to the moonbat mindset, we made it all up of course. Except we didn’t do an AlGore like markg8’s side would.
FOR TEH BEARS!
– Incidently, if they prosper too much from the increase in fossil fuel consumption, they’ll over-eat their natural food sources, and become an endangered species. So by that kogic we need Al to switch to a bicycle.
Maybe we should pay our soldiers $300,000 for a year’s service in Baghdad and let them buy their own bullets, MREs and toilet paper?
Think of the savings.
And let the terrorists kill alphie and all the other dumbasses? I’m in!
Really, alphie is right, his kind and his worldview is the majority right now. I don’t give a shit anymore and I’m sick of being in the army defending the small-minded jealous shits like him. Let them die.
The people who are serious about defeating the jihadists are a minority of the small group who will even admit there is a jihad against us.
We’re not losing the War on Terror, we’ve lost it.
All that is to be decided now is the tribute the Muslims will demand of us.
Alphred just doesn’t understand war financing. (Well, he doesn’t understand war, so go figure.)
He’s thinking of this thing all wrong. As if we had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Abdel’s house…right next to Omar’s. And in the Rahaman house, and Mrs. Badr’s house, and a hundred others. Why, we’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?…Now wait…now listen…now listen to me. I beg of you not to do this thing. If Pelosi gets hold of this funding bill there’ll never be another decent house built in Baghdad. She’s already got charge of the bank. She’s got the committee chairs. She’s got the finance committee. And now she’s after us. Why? Well, it’s very simple. Because we’re cutting in on her authority, that’s why. And because she wants to keep Iraqis living in slums and living in violence. Jamail, you lived in one of her slums, didn’t you? Well, have you forgotten? Have you forgotten what she charged you for that broken-down shack? Here, Mohammad. You know, you remember last year when things weren’t going so well, and the Medhi Army was coming after you. You didn’t get killed, did you? Do you think Pelosi would have protected you? Can’t you understand what’s happening here? Don’t you see what’s happening? Pelosi isn’t selling. Pelosi’s buying! And why? Because we’re panicky and she’s not. That’s why. She’s picking up some bargains. Now, we can get through this thing all right. We’ve got to stick together, though. We’ve got to have faith in each other.
(Apologies to Frank Capra.)
– alphie. Doust mine eyes decieve me?. A lefty questioning the infallibility of our government to handle and disburse revenue, and in fact, nuture every neccessity of our existance. Somethings foiled up here. What happened to the FED as the penultimate nanny, or does that only apply to pet social programs awaiting Dem enactment?
There are more Americans now who believe George Bush and The Joooos blew up the WTC and Pentagon than there are Americans who support the War on Terror.
How the hell can we continue to fight with that kind of internal Fifth Column?
I profoundly disagree with BRD, though I usually respect his opinions, that we will somehow overreact if attacked again.
If attacked again, an even larger portion of the population will blame it on the US Government and a Jewish conspiracy and the Filthy Left will use it as an excuse to get even with ‘capitalism’.
Cite?
Be careful, Mark, because it’s a trap. Your first instinct will be to point at the 2006 midterm elections and crow ‘See, see’. There are several reasons that doesn’t fly.
1 – Based on the reaction and support for the House and Senate majority Democrat’s various initiatives to control the narrative concerning the Iraqi campaign in the WoT, the midterm election seems not to have been the rousing rejection of the currently charted course of the war. It appears to be little more than the historical ‘out with the old and in with the new’ midterm election. The forces that turned over the House and Senate appear more likelier by the day/week to have been a rejection of old boy politics by the republicans rather than any positive reaction to the efforts of the current crew of American surrender monkeys.
2 – Democrats do not constitute a majority in this country. Nor do republicans. In absolute numbers, independents outnumber each party individually though not collectively (or do they also outnumber registers democrats and republicans collectively also? not sure, make note, search that.) Anyway, you get the point. I hope.
3 – Local elections (and US House and Senate and gubernatorial elections are indeed local) don’t express the will of the majority in their districts. The outcomes indicates only the will of the people who voted. Since people of more moderate or conservative habits are far less likely to get fired up enough to vote by screeds from the fringes of either of the two main parties in local elections, the results are even a little more suspect when assigning majority status to the opinions of the winners.
4 – The best indicator of people’s faith in the direction the country is going at a national level is and always has been the presidential reelection campaign results. Choosing which guy is best in the House or Senate at bringing in the highway money is not the same thing. The choice of the chief executive for second term is the best indicator we have of the the national opinion on whether they approve of the job done the previous 4 years. That was Clinton in 1996 and for good and sufficient reason considering the times we lived in then. It was Bush in 2004 for good and sufficient reasons considering the times we live in now.
5 – The national and local media make no bones about the fact that they supported the democrats and are more than willing to brag about delivering 10-15% of the vote through manipulation of the news. (google this yourself. results are quite startling). Not a forceful supporting argument for any true majority opinion when 10-15% of the voters are manipulated by the 4th estate.
Robert Crawford from your article:
So the question is, then, is Pelosi’s Field going to be a sub-division or a cemetary?
That was beautiful, RTO.
Cemetery. Definitely.
Fighting harder, better, faster, saves lives over the long term. She and her party fellows don’t get that.
The people you’re talking about are not the people I’m talking about. I’m talking about the people who just get beaten down into submission by the people you’re talking about.
And I’m just not seeing our side making as much positive effect as it needs to make. We’re missing something and I have no clue what it is. And until somebody figures it out and is able to set an example for the rest of us, we’re going to keep losing ground.
And I’m not talking about politically. This isn’t something that’s only been going on since I’ve been alive. The momentum has been uneven, but inexorable, for generations.
“To say that bear populations are growing in one area now is irrelevant.”
….Whereas obviously, to note that the population is declining in another area is irrefutable proof that every word said by the environfacists is absolute, and perfect data in all regards. If thats not enough for you just ask that pre-emmenent climatologist, Al Gore.
– The fecklessness simply astounds.
I don’t believe that shit anymore. I know its what the polls say, but the polls are products of the same people that are still defending Joe Wilson. I work in the real world, and damn few people I know or work with feel like the supposed majority of these polls.
Just wanted to add that we can give one soldier a ferrari, but we also need to give another one a multi-million dollar tank and another a helo and another a tens-of-million dollar aircraft and still another a fifty-plus million dollar jet fighter and then still another a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier. Average it out and we have your 750K Ritz-Carlton warriors here actually living hand-to-mouth.
Then for the nightly fireworks displays. We have to replace equipement (desert wears things out). Tow missiles cost more than a Ferrari; JDAMs more than a Hummer; positioning a battle group off a coastline for a month costs more than your average California subdivision.
Bullets, beans, and band aids, plus bad guys, but I know that alphie of the Walter Reed hystericals would not begrudge the soldier’s their medical care.
“There are more Americans now who believe George Bush and The Joooos blew up the WTC and Pentagon than there are Americans who support the War on Terror.”
– This statement is not only rank irresponsible propaganda, its total bullshit. The people that would actually voice such an absurd contention in public are also the same people that believe that the NASA moon landings took place on a Hollywood set. It’s the same 5% of the small cadre of hard-Left conspiracy nutjobs who use rigged polls as their one and only means of supporting this unhinged garbage.
It is impossible to have a conversation with lefties like Mark. For instance, nowhere do I mention genocide—and yet, that’s the “summary” of my position.
Carpet bombing orphanages and wiping out all the brown puppies on earth.
Go away, Mark. Adults are trying to have a fucking conversation.
What will happen if America is bombed again?
Outrage. Sub-optimal action. Navel gazing. Bomb. Repeat.
As Israel demonstrated with Lebanon, I’m just not sure that Western democracies have the stomach to go all the way to finish a war with an enemy willing to use their own as canon fodder. The notion of such over-whelming force (however that manifests, and no, it doesn’t have to be nuclear)frightens everyone. Meanwhile, the enemy is not plagued by any such self-doubt. A mark of insanity, that.
America will suffer increased internal turmoil over how to protect itself. The Left will become more convinced that Bush, “neocons” or whomever is at fault. They will cite the attack as proof–see we tried using force and didn’t work. (That it worked for however many years will not be evidence enough.) We need to try it OUR way. The sophisticated, European way. Aka, appeasement.
Israel’s constituents are mostly survivors of attempted genocide and they weary in the face of existential threats. America has never faced such problems. Their attention span is shorter. How will they summon the fortitude necessary to do the dirty work of excising malignant evil?
I don’t see a state sponsor getting blasted, either. Too many innocents will die, in the soft democratic view. It will be paralysis. Moral and actual paralysis.
I hope I’m wrong. It is heartening to read such optimistic opinions.
Not sure why you think I’m a “lefty” BBH.
I’m not sure why you big spenders think you’re “righies” either.
Big budget social programs with no progress and no end in sight always look the same to me.
And the excuses always sound the same.
Brown puppies???
Orphans, joos, micks, ayrabs, Fijans, the French – I’m on board…
but jesus Jeff, brown puppies??
Guys, give it up – alphie was an honor graduate of the 90A course, he’s Career Field Logistician, baby! He can lecture you on logistics, budgets and the like all day. He can tell you exactly where every dollar goes. BECAUSE OF TEH SIMPLE DIVISION!
As was noted above – I guess I am that CA Major – heh. What RTO was trying to hammer into a‘s thick skull was that USAID, NGOs, IOs and the like can’t go in and do much when Afghanistan was like it was in 1998-2001. When you start building the Ring Road, Tarin Khowt highway, schools in Charikar, bridges in the Salang and such….a few soldiers might have actually made that possible. That’s what is meant by “clearing space.” And not just in the physical construction sense either – the Wolesi Jirga wasn’t elected because the HIG suddenly decided they like representative government…
But a thinks we were spending the budget on Crystal to sip out of the clevage of a $1,000 a night escort or sumthin’… General Order #1 aside.
I am assuming that was a mistake, but ain’t serendipity a bitch, sometimes?
Ah I see, it’s not genocide if there’s a few survivors left to stumble out of the wasteland to describe the devastation.
This sounds like a gotterdammerung fever dream from those who can’t admit to themselves they’re backing a bunch of lying fuck ups.
You ignore the fact that Bush’s great Wilsonian dream of democratizing the middle east is funded by a laughable few million in the State Dept. and
isn’t pointed at Saudi Arabia or Egypt where it might do us and their citizens some good. When Arabs do vote they put Hamas in Palestine and Iranian backed theocrats in Iraq in power, some of whom are still on our terrorist watch lists. Geez, who knew Arabs would vote for Arabs who hate us?
So instead admitting to yourselves that Bush and Cheney aren’t getting the job done (even by your standards) you lament the rise of Democrats, prophesize a disastrous attack on the US (even though Dems are doing such things as passing port security legislation and attempting to shift the fighting where it belongs, against Al Qaeda) and
fantasize about blowing up the Arab middle east.
Actually, no, it isn’t.
And of course, I’m not talking about an entire race or ethnicity or culture being wiped out systematically, either. So it’s not genocide in the more traditional respect.
Personally, I don’t care what it sounds like to you. It is certainly useful to think these kinds of things through beforehand—and it is less than useful to have you pretending that to do so is somehow a hate crime.
No one here dreams of vaporizing the Arab middle east. This is yet another of YOUR fantasies. Oh, and incidentally, your realpolitik and chauvenism are showing.
Stupid Arabs. Simply aren’t capable of forming a democratic republic, the barbarians.
Best to just install or prop up tyrants who will keep the nabobs in check.
Congrats, Mark! You’ve fit right in with the British Empire! Maybe Henry Kissinger or James Baker will buy you a nice cold beer.
American, of course. First and foremost!
markie…markie… <sigh>
1. If you lived anywhere near a significant port in the U.S., you might have been witness to the quiet installation of serious high-tech surveillance doo-hickeys, increased Coast Guard presence, etc. Security systems somehow work best when the details aren’t publicized, and we’re okay with that, okay?
2. If you think we’re not fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, you need to pay closer attention.
3. It might surprise you to learn that Arab is an ethnicity, not a race; the people in Iraq/Iran are more likely descended from Persians, Assyrians, Hittites, and what-have-you.
I realize you may be making an attempt at political correctness by consistently referring to the enemy as Arabs, but that’s wrong. What is the uniting force motivating our enemy is Islam, even though they embrace a particularly radical branch of Islam that calls for the conversion or eradication of all infidels. Therefore, to refer to the enemy as a group, you can’t get around calling them Muslim.
TW: child51 Exactly how you have to think of markie and alpea
So in your eyes we just might be waiting around for the destruction of a bunch of major US cities, most likely gonna happen anyway and there’s nothing we can do about it now that Democrats hold congress.
In the meantime we’ll just casually discuss whether or not we can convince ourselves that nuclear annihilation of most of the middle east can be justified. You take the position that it should be viewed as a pragmatic spasm of self protection because it’s not a methodically planned, traditional march to the ovens. No rage involved or anything like that of course. We’ll just have to kill almost all of the Arabs no matter who is responsible and leave a few survivors to testify to our “lethality” to set an example. Not much a distinction if you ask me and silly premise to boot. You wouldn’t even be talking about this if the boy king hadn’t proved so incompetent or just plain unwilling to destroy Al Qaeda.
That’s a ridiculous statement and not even close to what I said.
I’m quite sure Arabs can form democratic republics. But it’s foolish to think they’re going to change their views of Israel and the US if and when they do unless we change our policies toward them despite what Chalabi whispered in Wolfowitz’s ear in the run up to war.
You believe we can still make an ally out of Iraq at the point of a gun, or by torturing them, not me.
You’re talking to yourself, mark. Scary, ain’t it?
MarkG8,
I’ve been struggling to put the core element of these questions into a frame that you or people you might consider ideological allies will address.
You’re familiar, I trust, with the doctrine of MAD and some of the thinking that informed Cold War strategy regarding nuclear warfare and the like. Those strategies are informed, at a most basic level, by questions of deterring state actors and making the response so sever as to dissuade any state actor from doing something horrific.
Absent a well-defined state opponent, those deterrence models break down. So, in other words, what do you do when your deterrence framework is no longer applicable? Rely on the better angels of those who saw heads off on videotape?
A response to a truly horrific attack is something nobody has, to my knowledge, come up with particularly well thought-out or cogent responses to.
What do you think we should do in such a case?
BRD
MarkG8,
You also might find it useful to examine the escalation latter suggested by the Three Conjectures argument. It provides the closest thing I’ve seen to a consideration of the mechanics of strategic exchange with those who would plant nuclear devices in our cities. I would be quite curious to know what you think of it.
BRD
BornRed
1. I’ve lived near ports. Cost Guard helos flying low and fast over beaches in Clearwater FL and the Jersey Shore have always struck me as more for show than catching any bad guys.
The fact remains that we inspect less than 5% of shipping containers (the most likely point of entry for a nuke) coming into this country. If they can do it in Singapore we can and should do it here. If that costs you another dime to buy that toy at Christmas so be it. Dems are going to make that happen. Republicans refused.
2. Al Qaeda in Iraq has never been estimated as more than a tiny minority of the insurgency. Most Sunnis are sick of those foreign jihadi kids who don’t discriminate among Iraqis when they kill.
Untiljust recently there was an Iraq satellite TV channel called Al-Zawraa that’s sort of an insurgent version of MTV.
They intersperse patriotic Iraqi songs with the latest videos of insugents blowing up Humvees, snipers killing GIs, a patrol of Marines going up in a fireball. That kind of thing.
From the article:
“Al-Zawraa is owned by Sunni politician Mishan al-Jibouri, an elected parliamentarian who was an enthusiastic if belligerent participant in the political process until he was charged with corruption and fled to Syria last year. The programs were uplinked on the Egypt-based Nilesat. But apparently in late February they cancelled their contract tweo daya fter teh Chi. Tirb produced this story. Starting last month, they will also be transmitted on Arabsat, a Gulf-based provider that reaches across the region and into Europe.
“To the foreign Arabs, we say `Thank you, but Iraq has enough fighters of its own and we don’t need more,’” he said. “To the Iraqis, we say `You are inside Iraq, so you know very well where to go to volunteer.’”
Never, however, has Al-Zawraa broadcast videos featuring Al Qaeda attacks, instead focusing on homegrown insurgent groups. The omission erupted last week into a highly public spat with the Al Qaeda in Iraq movement.
Making a rare appearance on his own TV station, al-Jibouri read a long statement denouncing Al Qaeda as a threat to Iraqi stability and blaming it for inciting the sectarian violence plaguing the country.
Since then, Al-Zawraa has expanded its fare to include anti-Al Qaeda propaganda. The “news” ticker, previously devoted to denunciations of the “occupiers” and the “collaborator” Iraqi government, now gives equal space to criticisms of Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda struck back, posting a long statement on its Web site accusing al-Jibouri of acting on the orders of Egyptian, Jordanian and U.S. intelligence.”
The point is Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq aren’t popular among anybody. But that’s not who we’re fighting most of the time anyway.
3. Most people in Iraq except for Kurds consider themselves Arabs. The term Arab comes in handy when discussing Jeff’s bitter middle eastern enemies unless of course you guys are also advocating wiping out Indonesia, the single largest predominantly Islamic country on the planet. I’ve already explained who attacked us on 9/11 in a post above.