UPDATE. The Voice column mentions a lot of war-whoopers from early days who are again telling us again what to do in Iraq instead of requesting fresh blankets from their jailers in Den Haag. Well, today in the New York Daily News I see a let's-do-it-again column from... Fred Kagan. This AEI hack told us back in 2005 that "Iraq is Not Vietnam"; now that Iraq seems to be passing from the Quagmire stage to the Ignoble Retreat stage, Kagan is trying to reverse the judgment of history in his favor:
And so, the current impending defeat is much worse than the one we accepted so blithely in 1975. This war won't end with U.S. personnel escaping from the embassy roof (although that might happen as well). There is, in fact, no end in sight for this war now, especially if we allow Iraq to go down. A policy of retreat and abandonment remains as it has always been the fastest road to endless war.Whereas doubling down in Iraq is the scenic route to endless war. Jesus Christ. Why couldn't we have given these guys the Inglourious Basterds treatment so people would know better than to trust them again?
Team Chickenhawk is getting the band back together!
ReplyDelete~
No one could have predicted....
ReplyDeleteAt least this will make things easier for the Sunday morning show bookers - there's only so much John McCain to go around. Now they can tap the rogue's gallery of Iraq war criminals for their expertise and valuable opinions.
ReplyDelete"...Goldberg explained that he couldn't serve because "I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, [and] I have a baby daughter."
ReplyDeleteThe main problem with Jonah's use of his baby daughter as a human shield is that babies are so small, and his ass is so big...
If Jonah ever gets his time machine, perhaps he'd consider taking a trip back to August 6, 2001, Crawford, Texas
ReplyDeleteWon't this all turn out to be a distraction from the prisoner exchange? Which, in turn, was a distraction from some other fart thing.
ReplyDeleteJust like the Harlem Globetrotters routine ... 'I mean they never miss that shot twice in a row!"
ReplyDeleteI find myself wondering how anyone could listen to McCain, Totten, Hoft, or any of the other luminaries Roy highlighted. After all, THESE are the people who got us in there to begin with.
ReplyDeleteAnd then I remember that most Americans don't remember. They don't remember Doug Feith being the stupidest guy on the planet, or that Jim Hoft is the stupidest guy on the internet, or that John McCain is the stupidest senator in the senate. I remember that my fellow citizens don't remember, and I despair.
Or, like chickenhawks before him, complaining about how all those poor and minority kids took up all the draft slots for Viet Nam.
ReplyDeleteThat should be engraved on Condi's tombstone. It's a shame I probably won't outlive her, but if I do, I'll have to wheel my Little Rascal scooter there and scrawl "No one could have predicted . . ." on it with a Sharpie.
ReplyDelete"Bigger than Benghazi! Bigger than Monicagate!! Bigger... bigger than... bigger, much bigger than Syria!!! You'll thrill to rolling heads! You'll swoon to the launch of new, improved Hindrockets!! You'll cheer as Jim Hoft's glasses get steamed up!!! You'll see John McCain and Scary Sarah Palin 'lay waste' to the competition on 'Dancing With the Stars!' You'll belch, you'll fart, you'll giggle to Jonah Goldberg's imitation of a circus MC!! "
ReplyDelete"It's the all-new Iraq Vice Capades! Coming to a television set near you. On Fox, of course."
A Sharpie? Nothing less than a fireaxe will do....
ReplyDeleteHard to wield an axe from a Hover-round. Maybe I can get a hydraulically powered axe as an option.
ReplyDeleteNow in livid color!
ReplyDeleteI recommend a battery-operated Dremel tool with a tile-cutting disk. It's lightweight, easy to maneuver, and you should be able to handle it while seated on your Hover-round.
ReplyDeleteFucking Jonah Goldberg. You know, we all have fun with his ridiculous wiseass-bright-boy schtick, but he really needs to learn when to drop it. Any time he applies his "wit" to a serious life-or-death situation, his callousness goes from irritating to sociopathic.
ReplyDeleteI get his problem - as a movement con, he's used to dealing with material that's a lot more trivial. But every so often in politics, something comes up that demands comment, even if the commentator has no knowledge of or interest in the area. No one's expecting a treatise of staggering genius (or a paper of C+ quality - let's not set the bar too high). But are you shitting me? "A better option would be a time machine"? Fuck you.
No one's expecting much of you, Jonah. You get to have a job where you can't get fired and you earn a paycheck well out of proportion to your actual talent. You get to appear on the teevee and write books, with all the idle hours in between gigs to fill with YouTube videos of animals farting. Your audience really only wants you to present them with a target for their impotent rage - your expectations are about as low as they can get. Given all this, can't you exhibit just a touch of respect and self-restraint? No one's asking you to give the eulogy at the funeral, but it would be nice if you left the goddamn joy buzzer at home.
Put an air tank on a trailer and get cracking with the air chisel.
ReplyDeletetell me more about this "wmds." it sounds as though i may have to support repealing obamacare in order to do something about "wmds."
ReplyDeleteThere were people who listened to Jim Hoft?
ReplyDeleteThey're sure tappin' away. Doug Feith, fer God's sweet sake! I'm amazed that clown has the gall to show his face in public.
ReplyDeleteI comfort myself with the hope, based on some evidence, that the country will ignore these vampires....
"No one's expecting much of you, Jonah."
ReplyDeleteAnd even then, he's not meeting expectations by just... that... much.
Hard to believe, I know...but there apparently are people dumber than Jim Hoft.
ReplyDeleteIt stands for Whiny Mendacious Dipshits, and, yes, they are a genuine threat to the nation.
ReplyDeleteO'ReillyVision!
ReplyDeleteThankfully, the rest of the military is made up entirely of 23-year-old independently wealthy singles.
ReplyDeleteCondi's five years older than me, so maybe I'll still be ambulatory. That way, I can do the major work with the fire axe, and finish up the fine detailing with the Dremel. (Thankfully, I already have the Dremel!)
ReplyDeleteYou'll laugh! You'll cry! Well...mostly you'll laugh.
ReplyDeleteIf the WMDs don't do it, then Saddam's balsa drones of death (maximum operating range of 500 feet) should seal the deal.
ReplyDeleteMore like Freddy Kreuger is still alive for the sequel, because they didn't kill him dead enough when they had the chance.
ReplyDeleteDoug Feith? Paul Wolfowitz? WTF? Was Richard Perle busy getting his intravenous formaldehyde infusion? Is Elliot Abrams still on the list for a morality implant? Is the Kagan family still doing that all-nude reality show?
ReplyDeleteIt's bad enough these scoundrels go unpunished, but inviting them on TV and not limiting questions to those containing the word "clusterfuck" is shameless.
It's a source of unending fascination for me how the right flips on its puppy-dog-eyes act like a light switch when the topic switches from American unfortunates to foreign unfortunates. Not that I don't get the obvious explanations (Oil! and shifty contracting deals for the higher-ups, vicarious war-boners for the rank and file) just that, even for right-wingers, the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance is impressive. Do the right word-swaps in those screeds ("Republicans" for "Democrats", "the uninsured/unemployed" with "Iraqis") and they read like passionate defenses of social democracy. Do none of them realize this? How do they so completely shut it out? And for the few that aren't being completely cynical about the whole enterprise, what's the internal moral compass that allows their heart to bleed for people halfway around the world but not next door.
ReplyDeleteMy own position is that the question of whether it's hypothetically morally justifiable for America to intervene in these situations (I go back and forth on that), as long as the military-industrial-political machine is a corrupt abomination that fucks up everything it touches, I can't support any war being waged that would make it more powerful and richer. So yeah, that pretty much means I'm against all wars of choice.
If Maliki doesn't look too concerned...
ReplyDeleteActually, they both look stoned...
OT but not OT--we just got finished watching three episodes of The Americans, back to back. Its been a great show so far and many of the episodes are just incredibly gripping and horrifying for politically aware people--especially the scenes of Reagan on TV. But as the credits role who should get a story line credit on the episodes about nicaragua and the contras but Oliver North. I googled to make sure and lo and behold, it is the charmingly roguish old grandfatherly grifter and scam artist himself, who so endeared himself to the producers and writers with his "insight" into the Contras that they gave him a writer's credit.
ReplyDelete"Arab governments complain when we intervene and they complain when we
ReplyDeletedon't intervene," he wrote. "Basically, they complain no matter what. So
asking what they want is pointless. It takes a while to notice this
trend over time, but there it is."
The very finest grade of Wingnut Frontier Gibberish. There should be a Gabby Johnson Award for shit like this.
Oh, indeed. It ought to be mandatory on all networks that every Iraq war retread invited on receives this question first: "Since you fucked so badly the first time around, what do you think, so we can do the opposite?"
ReplyDeleteThat shithead is still seen as a hero by people with deliberate blinders on.
ReplyDeleteWingnuts complain when we intervene and they complain when we
ReplyDeletedon't intervene," he wrote. "Basically, they complain no matter what. So
asking what they want is pointless. It takes a while to notice this
trend over time, but there it is."
Undead Ari Fleischer, July 9, 2003: "I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile the Shi'a squads have organized themselves and have pushed backed the over-extended ISIS/ISIL. Which was entirely predictable. Even Paton got himself way over extended during WWII. Yes, ISIS took over sympathetic Sunni areas but the Kurds will not back them and if the Iranians intervene + plus Shi'a militias then ISIS is finished. That said the Iraqi Army is utterly useless. And al-Maliki's government has been useless and corrupt for the last 7 years. The neo-cons understand nothing of this. Worst of all is Sen. Grumpy McWalnuts who was happy to have us stationed in Iraq for 100 years.
ReplyDelete"Barack Obama's less-than-benign neglect of the ancient state in Iraq"
ReplyDeleteYeah, that "Ancient State of Iraq". That would be the one with all the ruins (some of 'em a bit more ruined now that before) and museums full of whatever antiquities the British and Americans didn't cart off, right? In the weeks following the invasion, I was gritting my teeth and shouting at the monitor with every report of looting, smashing, and burning, seemingly unimpeded by U.S. forces. Like we had better things to do than see to it that rioters and looters didn't destroy whatever remnants of the cradle of fucking civilization they couldn't fit into their pickups. And yes, they certainly did. Like safeguarding 380 tons of extremely high explosives (HMX, or something like that. More splodey than TNT or C4) (say, that shit would make some dandy homemade bombs to set of by the side of the road, wouldn't it? Nah, they'd never think of that). Oh, and they must have been busy securing the airfields, and cargo planes, and all those pallets of cash. And painting schools! Oh, wait, that came later. Well, they were gearing up for it, and that takes time...
Jesus wept...
ReplyDeleteLook, R2P, humanitarian intervention, just war, they're all excuses to blow shit up, except perhaps in the rare instance that it's reasonable to fight back when someone's trying to take your home away from you or kill your family.
ReplyDeleteAll wars are manufactured--and, not coincidentally--most of them are manufactured by us. If we really did have a responsibility to protect, we'd be dronifying every Saudi and Qatari and Emirates prince funding terrorist groups (and, make no mistake, we know who every last one of them are), seizing their assets and making life generally unbearable for everyone in the region who's stirring the shit, funding Wahhabi wackos and selling arms--including the Israelis.
We don't do any of that for all the reasons you list and because someone made promises that we wouldn't do anything actually harmful to the people in the shadows who are fucking with world peace. That alone is enough to make us ineligible to offer aid to anyone, because we simply do not tell the truth--to our own people or the world--and we are not honest about our motives.
We propagandize everybody, especially our own people, just for the sake of money and political advantage. We're the Joe Isuzus of the world.
It would be mordantly funny were the Russian agents to obtain the info on North's numbered Swiss bank account.
ReplyDeleteGall is plentiful; shame is in short supply.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the cartoons...
ReplyDeleteThe guy who wrote that "Air Support" thing must have been looking for an excuse to put Obama in Dukakis' tank helmet for ages, and figured his chance had come at last.
I have a new theory, which is mine, that you can devine the validity of any ideology, past or present, by whether or not its political cartoonery actually makes any sense. I submit that Left-leaning 'toons are not only funnier--well, duh--but they usually have a point that is easily accessible even to Righties, even as they cry "that's not funny!", as they inevitably do. Rightist "humor", though, mainly leaves me scratching my head, wondering WTF the artist is even getting at. Newsflash, dudes, it's supposed to be obvious, not tax the brain like an IQ test, or one of those awful logic problems.
Yeah, that one sounded like Reagan on one of his fuzzier days. More worrisome was that none of the press bothered to ask him the (well, I thought) ridiculously simple follow-up, "do you have the faintest idea how stupid that remark makes you sound?"
ReplyDeleteHey, just imagine Act I if Sarah Palin had been in the original cast!
ReplyDeleteStatement #1: We basically had Iraq pacified when Bush left.
ReplyDeleteStatement #2: Obviously Iraq was going to descend into confusion and genocide as soon as we left.
Pay attention, children, because today we're going to learn the meaning of the phrase "mutually exclusive."
I'm betting she would have been the clown car.
ReplyDeleteComments regarding that fuckstick Ari Fleischer are required, a la JennofArk in the previous thread, to begin with "That fuckstick Ari Fleischer." Get it right.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't forget the proper script. Something vaguely Ralph Steadman-ish.
ReplyDeleteJudy Miller has resumed commentating on Iraq. I-- I-- y'know-- I--
ReplyDeleteAh, well, this is akin to the old saw about logic being wasted on the insane. You simply can't argue with crazy people on the basis of fact, because, well, they're crazy and what they see as fact is fantasy for the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteSo, no, we don't say, this is taxing the brain like an IQ test. We say, properly, this is nutso. This is flakier and more dangerous than old lead paint.
Then there was the Jonah Goldberg approach, distinguished by Jonah Goldberg.
ReplyDeleteAnd how often do you get a chance to put "Jonah Goldberg" and "distinguished" in the same sentence?
Sometimes public stoning can be justified.
ReplyDeleteAnd a Gabby Hayes Grin award for the fans.
ReplyDeleteThis may be a good time for Arab leaders and opinion makers to ask themselves what they can do to win over the hearts and minds of Americans.
ReplyDeleteYes, the GOP's ingenious outreach specialists can show them how.
We're Americans; we specialize in bullshit.
ReplyDeleteEven the most hypothetical just war imaginable would be hellish, for soldiers and civilians on both sides, because that's what war is. Arguably war is only justifiable when not going to war would make things even worse.
ReplyDeleteWWII is endlessly romanticized as the Just War, but I think there's some truth there, and that people who were strict interventionists at the time were on the wrong side of history.* In that situation, I'm willing to put aside my isolationist tendencies. Since then? Eh, kinda slim pickings. The problem isn't so much with the philosophical idea of helping people in need** as with the fact that you can no longer separate the noble ideals from the graft, corruption, imperialism, shock doctrine capitalism, and anti-left-wing hysteria***, to the point where even the most nobly intended intervention likely will make things worse, especially long term. And most importantly, when you have to work with people who just love war for the blood and money it engenders, you can't ever trust them to stick to the objective of helping people at all, let alone with as little damage as possible. That's why I think it's a cheap dodge when conservatives put on the puppy-dog eyes and go "Don't you care about helping people?" It's because of you assholes that I can't even make that my first priority.
*-(which is not to say their views were indefensible: from an American
perspective I'm sure it just looked like the latest sequel in the
Europeans Killing Each Other franchise. And of course some people were
rooting for Hitler.)
**-(Ostensibly I think that being a nation-state requires a minimum ability to keep your shit together and that it's hard to justify other countries being required to help you, but those things are obviously easy to think from my cushy first-world chair: whenever I start thinking like a libertarian, I stop and wonder what I'm missing.)
***-(i.e. Hugo Chavez is somehow an existential threat to America but Alvaro Uribe is just a sweet lil' boy scout.)
I suspect that the neocons understand very well. To them, governments are supposed to be useless and corrupt.
ReplyDeleteIf you miss this you'd better be dead, or in jail.
ReplyDeleteMaybe if we, consistently, referred to her as the "Jayson Blair of national security reporting," she'd go away.
ReplyDeleteNah. Won't work. No shame.
The real horror of her reappearance is that Laurie Mylroie cannot be far behind....
There are limits to nostalgia, or at least I hope there are.
ReplyDeleteFuck, Reagan taught me that.
ReplyDeleteLike I said--horror movie. The sentiment isn't just "fuck these assholes" or "Ah Christ, this shit again?" but genuine shock. How can so many people who fucked up so badly and, by any objective measure, should be ashamed to show their faces in public, start it up again like nothing happened? Are they zombies? Terminators? Body-snatchers? Are we like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day? Is this some kind of Twilight Zone episode about the dangers of political apathy? How can such wrongness be allowed to flourish? So many questions, so few answers.
ReplyDeleteI believe it's the "ancient state" that the British Empire created by tossing darts at a world map back in the 40's. I'm not an expert on Islam, but it seems to me that if you've got two sects that absolutely loathe each other, and history has blessed you with the opportunity to do a Marvel-style continuity reboot of national borders, it would be prudent to keep a bit of distance between them. But no.
ReplyDelete"The Ancient State of Iraq" as nailed together by the British Empire in the 1920s, anyway. Fuck, I grew up in a house that's older than the country of Iraq.
ReplyDelete"After working with Jonah Goldberg for a few months, I quickly distinguished between vegetable farts and meat farts."
ReplyDelete"Vice Capades"? Collect your Internet, sir. Well done.
ReplyDeleteI didn't catch Mitt on the TV this morning, but if I were a tweeter, I'd roll out the hashtag #sendMitt'ssons.
ReplyDeleteI'd prefer that they don't ignore them! It's torch and pitchfork time!
ReplyDeleteAs well, only a right-winger would think--after the United States destroyed their country twice--that the most important thing Iraqis could possibly do at the moment is figure out the best way to kiss the asses of a bunch of flaming eejits
ReplyDeleteI'm convinced that this is all a trial balloon. If the dipshitterati find that the American public has such a short memory that we've all forgotten the largest set of events of the last fifteen years, then they may try to convince people that the Confederacy won the Civil War, or that the Constitution provides for corporate ownership of all branches of government.
ReplyDeleteNo way to know without trying...
You sound as though you're speaking from experience. I'd love to see the edited epitaph.
ReplyDelete"Sometimes, Eartha, the bunnies bite back."
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, the DeLay Defense. I'm surprised he didn't try that one in the money-laundering trial--all the minority Congressman got all the good bribes first.
ReplyDeleteI'm sitting in one.
ReplyDeleteFuck me to tears, I do not want to see the standardized test on that one. I'd think I was living inside a Louisiana Christian charter school locker.
ReplyDeletenot that the vast majority of your point isn't correct, but the quote is ancient state IN Iraq, not ancient state OF Iraq. So, while much is not thought through, the author did remember that Iraq isn't an ancient state
ReplyDeleteI have nothing to say about any of the rat bastards under discussion that, ironically, wouldn't get me arrested & prosecuted for making terroristic threats.
ReplyDeleteSo much for free speech. What's happened to this country?
Grrrrrrrr......
ReplyDeleteFleisch: "I'm rubber, you're glue."
ReplyDeleteI have to believe that much of the destruction was a feature, not a bug- both the Islamic and Christian fundamentalists would be pleased at the destruction of any evidence that might undermine their dogma.
ReplyDeleteWhat really bugs me about this is the line, "So asking what they want is pointless." In other words, we don't give a shit what the people in those countries want for themselves in their own places; only what "we" want counts. I literally can't imagine a more blatant example of imperial arrogance.
ReplyDeleteThe irony of almost all forms of American crazy ( fundy, libertarian, sell me stuff I don't want, gun nuttery, waging war to secure foreigners' property) is that the afflicted always are at pains to assure you that they are on the side of logic; they have a superstious and simple faith that logic will settle all arguments. This logic has the same purpose and expectation of every huckster's pitch: not agreement but capitulation to its irresistible force. If you resist it is you that isn't logical. and a person who doesn't mind being suspected of being crazy must actually be crazy, unlike the actual crazy person who has put so much effort into not seeming crazy.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of like their relationship to racism. They know it's bad to be thought of as racist, but don't know how to not be racist. They know that 'logic' is a thing smart people use to win arguments, so they try it themselves, but they don't actually know what it is or how to deploy it.
ReplyDeleteAnd the particularly libertarian obsession with 'logic' is an ongoing fascination of mine. My own beliefs would probably sound a little woo-ish to some people here, but in part it's an active measure against turning into the sort of person who sees life as a math problem and people as numbers.
I still think Mylroie is actually Wolfowitz in drag.
ReplyDeleteSomebody said "Doug Feith" three times.
ReplyDeleteIn the No Win Zone!
ReplyDeleteDoes he welcome an opportunity to make a fresh start in a more suitable line of work?
ReplyDeleteI hear Frito-Lay is looking for product testers.
my family couldn't afford the lost income
ReplyDelete"We love the troops... but we have to pay them less than an indolent incurious ratfucker-affirmative-action keyboard jockey ... because MARKET FORCES."
Is the Kagan family still doing that all-nude reality show?
ReplyDeleteThe Aristocrats!
This is flakier and more dangerous than old lead paint.
ReplyDeletePica -- not just small print!
Unlike the Romans, who had no problems using unmitigated brutality to pacify their conquered foes, our own home-grown imperialists feel like they have to conceal their bloodlust in a fog of "bringing peace, stability"--so far so good--"and democracy"--oopsie!--to the countries we decide to fuck with. Beyond the fact that our news media can't be bothered to figure out who really did what to whom in Iraq, and why, they also can't be bothered to understand that democracy and imperialism don't mix. The Romans were good empire builders because they weren't in it to "free" anybody; they wanted client states and weren't subtle about how to subjugate them--sorry, Jesus!
ReplyDeleteAmerica wants to have it both ways: boss of the world but with a smiley face. No wonder we get mad when people, like Iraqis, tell us to just go the fuck home. I mean, hey, sorry about the total destruction and the ongoing chaos, but can't you at least show a little gratitude once in a while?
Irony isn't just dead, it's been beaten to a bloody pulp and tossed into the wood chipper.
ReplyDeleteNo one's asking you to give the eulogy at the funeral, but it would be nice if you left the goddamn joy buzzer at home.
ReplyDeleteYou do realize you're asking for Goldberg to shut up and think, right? You'd have better luck asking a mosquito to play Brahms.
Gives new meaning to the term "flying sit-spin."
ReplyDeleteThat statement encapsulates the wisdom of the invasion as well as any.
ReplyDelete"Rated 'Are you serious?' R. Now playing in select green rooms."
ReplyDeleteNorth has been on the TV in just the last few days to prattle on about all manner of current events--including the Bergdahl swap. Ol' Ollie was critical of it because we swapped prisoners. Instead of, I guess, making sure the mullahs got some fancy missiles like they did when Ollie was running the shop.
ReplyDeleteIraq's got insurgents, so it's time for a re-Surgence! If we don't the bald eagles will sob!
ReplyDeleteLet's respect the troops, round up those poor dupes and send them back there to finish the job!
Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to watch repeats, or something like that. I always thought the tape loop would be longer than this, though.
ReplyDeleteAnd not just a small rock-dwelling mammal.
ReplyDelete. . .can't you at least show a little gratitude once in a while?
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, the Iraqis' lack of gratitude really stuck in the craws of lots of the PNAC people. Imagine those Iraqis not being grateful after we basically wiped out their economy, killed their families, friends and relatives, and set the stage for perpetual civil war!
[recycled from the previous thread. Just my way of helping save the environment]:
ReplyDeleteSure, there were all sorts of people "on the Left" (not to mention billions more worldwide) who knew what was going to happen the instant the secular Baathists were toppled. But all of those people were right for the wrong reasons. So whatever they had to say then didn't count, and whatever they have to say now is even less worth listening to.
On the other hand, everyone who was wrong was wrong for the right reasons. That fact that they have continued to be wrong makes them even more worth listening to now than ever before. If their wrongness can result in the outbreak of jihad-fueled war that engulfs the entire Middle East, resulting in millions more needless deaths and a worldwide depression fueled by energy shortages, that makes it imperative that we listen only to them.
A Twinkie?
ReplyDeleteOh sorry, I lost track of who was replying to whom.
As Tehanu notes, you just need the right Translator:
ReplyDelete"Those ragheads are too stupid and excitable to know what they want. It is up to the White Man to reshoulder his Burden and decide what is best for them.
[Three picoseconds of thought]
What's best for them is for our armed forces to tear the country down around their ears, paint a school house and declare victory. If they complain, send in a Surge and shoot anyone who isn't waving an American flag."
I bet that's about
ReplyDelete1) North being *way* more easily accessible than anyone else
2) Producers thinking he has more "sekrit inside info" than academics or other knowledgable people
3) Showbiz people not giving a shit / being young.
We got rid of Saddam, fercrissakes. What more do they want?
ReplyDeleteAnd their infrastructure!
ReplyDeleteYou can bet if (and I realize this a huge if) he is ever called to task by the people who write the checks, he'll promptly blame his interns. "I didn't write any of that! I was watching TV the whole time!"
ReplyDeleteDo it obliquely: "Are there no tumbrels?"
ReplyDeleteRight now? They probably wouldn't mind Saddam back.
ReplyDeleteIf it makes oil companies and defense contractors rich, and immanentizes the eschaton, where's the down side?
ReplyDeleteDemocracy bringing!
ReplyDeleteOr at least decriminalized.
ReplyDeleteAs Anne Romney so patiently explained, Mitt's sons have already put in their hitch serving their country in the most important way: Working on their dad's presidential campaign. No winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor has served with greater distinction nor sacrificed more--according to Anne.
ReplyDelete--and now we have to trick Feith into saying his name backwards. Good luck with *that.*
ReplyDelete"think that Mitt Romney would have anything useful to say on ANY subject."
ReplyDeleteAlthough someone on Twitter wrote, "I would so watch a dating show hosted by Mitt Romney. I would watch it so hard."
Yeah, Perle. "What a piece of work is man." http://www.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/02/23/what_gene_kranz_could_teach_richard_perle_integrity
ReplyDelete"A better option would be a time machine, because then we could have then taken all the mouthbreathing glib chickenhawks and...." The piece ends as Jonah is pulled into the space time continuum into an alternate universe where he's the groundskeeper for William F. Buckley's mausoleum.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the matter with you people? Do you want to die? Lindsay Graham says Iraq could be another 9-11 in the making"!! And the New York Times says we need a war to spur economic growth! You think I'm kidding? Get with the program, folks.
ReplyDeleteIt's been almost ten years since Iraq. In those ten years boys and girls who were ten yrs old when we invade Iraq or fought the glorious Desert Storm have reached their majority, admiring and modeling themselves after the brave hero-warriors of our military. When do they get their chance to serve their country? Must they be denied?
Eagles, feh. Can't stand 'em. Did me out of my spot as National Animal.
ReplyDeleteIt's not exactly a war-crimes tribunal, but at least Ari Fleischer continues to be a ridiculous screw-up.
ReplyDeleteOh don't worry! The NYT has an article recommending a war to spur economic growth. No, I am not kidding, see TPM.
ReplyDeleteHow do you ask a soldier to be the last one to die for a Cheney?
ReplyDeleteThe only way I can fathom their moral pirouettes is that everything outside themselves is just a prop in their personal psychodramas.
ReplyDelete"They know it's bad to be thought of as racist, but don't know how to not be racist."
ReplyDeleteHey take away their bigotry and misconceptions, and they got nothin'. You can't do that to people. You messing with their identity.
The logic you refer to strikes me as being same kind of "logic" mentioned below, wherein Fuckstick Fleischer (go, Jenn!) challenged people who questioned the existence of Saddam's WMDs to tell us where they really are. That's not logic, it's nonsense. IANASP (I am not a social psychologist), but what I suspect people are capitulating to is the irresistible force of this nonsense-that-looks-like-facts, which a lot of people cannot actually see as nonsense and so they decide that, since they don't understand it, it must be beyond their ability to comprehend. And Americans being Americans:
ReplyDelete"Trust us, we're experts!"
Thank God Israel never complains. We have one plucky ally in the ME!
ReplyDeleteWatch it fella. I won't have you saying that our American boys and womens what serve their country as heroes are stupid enough to fight in the wrong war, or a bad war!
ReplyDeleteAnd what about the "economic growth" what war engenders in copious amounts according to no less an authority than the New York Fucking Times?
You've been Freedomized™!
ReplyDeleteGreat band, though.
ReplyDeleteThat's because moose bites are so nasty.
ReplyDeleteHe can ride Rafalca for a glorious cavalry charge.
ReplyDeleteWell, I for one would rather hear complaints about our not intervening. It's much cheaper.
ReplyDeleteMug shot
ReplyDeleteThat's right, I forget the last one paid for itself.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think I understand what Fleischer was trying (and failing) to say. There was a political cartoon going around just before the invasion. Imagine a guy holding up a slip of paper, saying, "Look, we KNOW he's got them. He bought them from US! We've still got the receipt!"
ReplyDeleteIf not in active duty, at least as part of Mormon Missions to Mosul.
ReplyDeleteI tried & failed to cut and paste North's mug shot there.
ReplyDeleteFor my opinion of the Eagles, see The Dude.
ReplyDeletesee also British Malaya, Belgian Congo
ReplyDeleteAnd so, the current impending defeat is much worse than the one we accepted so blithely in 1975.
ReplyDeleteRemind me again which party had control of the White House for the 7 years leading up to that?
Also, too: Viet Nam after the U.S. withdrawal did not go through anything nearly as violent and bloody as Iraq is going through now, and will continue to endure for the foreseeable future. Viet Nam settled down fairly quickly, and it today one of our trading partners. So I fail to see how America's retreat from and abandonment of Viet Nam in any way parallels or presages what Kagan predicts for Iraq.
But, then, Kagan is one of those lucky enough to be paid to be wrong about everything.
Look, if you were going to have a story line about hit men, you'd get Whitey Bulger. If you were going to have a story line about crack mechandising, you'd gt Freeway Ricky Ross. When you want to know about crime, hire a criminal.
ReplyDeleteMaybe M. Krebs is another type of sweet filling?
ReplyDeleteHasn't Rafalca suffered enough? He'd probably strap the poor horse onto the roof of the station wagon and drive to Tikrit.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if American soldiers having "died in vain" had anything to do with his view of the 1975 defeat.
ReplyDeleteDo you actually believe Jonah eats vegetables?
ReplyDelete...
Doubtful. For people like this, American GIs are merely decorations or toys to be played with--Army Man IRL.
ReplyDeleteThe rightwing revisionism of Viet Nam should be pointed out every time it comes up. This whole "we woulda won if not for the damn hippies!" thing is complete bullshit. We dropped more bombs on the place than we did in all of WWII, and deployed more than half a million men there over the course of the war. That's more than enough bang-bang and boom-boom to make any warmonger's limp wanger stiff--but all that and double would never have been enough to convince the Vietnamese to leave their country divided with one half under the control of the kleptocrats and the U.S.
That's a big Twinkie.
ReplyDeleteKetchup counts.
ReplyDeleteonly what "we" want counts. I literally can't imagine a more blatant example of imperial arrogance.
ReplyDeleteI'd be okay with it if Bush had invaded with a fucking plan for what he wanted.
If the dipshitterati find that the American public has such a short
ReplyDeletememory that we've all forgotten the largest set of events of the last
fifteen years,
... they might convince them to vote the political party most responsible for the disaster back into control of the House of Representatives?
Thing is, sometimes their logic is fine. It's their premises that are completely wrong. Example: if a fetus is fully human with a soul, and if its mother exists mainly for the purpose of it's creation, then it logically follows that the fetus needs to be protected at the mother's expense. The problem is that everything between "if" and "then" in that sentence is garbage so the conclusion after "then" is also garbage. But the logic itself is sound. Like "if Saddam has WMD and is plotting an imminent attack and was involved in 9/11, then we should totally invade." Or "if the gold standard is the only true stable currency then we should get back on it right away." Or "if opposing everything the President does, even when it's something we want like killing bin Laden or bombing Libya or telling kids to stay in school, as if it were the worst sort of Islamocommunazi tyranny, then everybody will totally love us and vote our guy into the White House."
ReplyDeleteThe logic's not wrong, but the premises are insane.
Indeed. The troll I mentioned had no idea what logic was and wasn't making an argument at all, but you're right - there are plenty of nutz out there whose arguments are, strictly speaking, valid (in that their conclusion does follow from the premises and the application of logical rules) - just founded on premises that have nothing to do with reality.
ReplyDeleteVietnam recovered from the war without making any rich Americans richer. This was a tragic failure on their part.
ReplyDeleteHow about Funyons?
ReplyDeleteAnd Canada passed over the moose in favor of the beaver. Sorry for ya, bro.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the assumption that the "they" in each case are the same people in the same governments. As if there are no political divisions, no competing factions, no, you know, actually different people who disagree and want different things, like some folks in some governments want intervention while some others don't.
ReplyDeleteOr that some may have wanted intervention in 2003 but having seen how that worked out don't want one now.
It's all just one amorphous and indistinguishable "They."
Another war? Sounds like just another Big Gummint spending program to me...
ReplyDeleteRight. Just as libertarianism makes sense if you accept that selfishness is fragile and needs to be protected.
ReplyDeleteMan, that is gross.
ReplyDeletePart of the promotional push for the new Tom Cruise movie?
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling this is another domestic spending program Geraghty doesn't mean when he advocates cuts.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking India/Pakistan, too, but then my grasp of that history consists of having watched Gandhi a couple of times.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we're counting french fries, potato chips, etc. for the purposes of this exercises.
ReplyDelete"But Ari, Hans Blix has been there for six months and hasn't found anything."
ReplyDelete"Shut up," he explained.
Squirrel Cop
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/115/first-day?act=2
http://www.powerbase.info/images/thumb/7/77/Laurie_Mylroie.jpg/180px-Laurie_Mylroie.jpg
ReplyDelete+1.
ReplyDeleteHis wife sneaks them into his food. He doesn't realize it until he smells the farts, later.
ReplyDeleteThe charge of the shite brigade?
ReplyDeleteThat comment makes me miss Hunter Thompson. Now there was a man who probably knew his way around a fucking air chisel.
ReplyDeleteHis readers.
ReplyDeleteWell, apart from the brief Sino-Vietnamese war. Nothing like the constant terror bombing of Iraq, though.
ReplyDeleteAnd remember that Jonah Goldberg was hired to fill the Robert Scheer chair at the LA Times.
ReplyDeleteYup, funyuns, and when we have to cheat a bit to make the quota, cheese.
ReplyDeleteHe seems to be the sort who prefers Cheez, anyway.
ReplyDeleteI think that kicking him in the nuts repeatedly might induce him to make a sound very much like his name backwards.
ReplyDeleteFailing that, you'd at least have the satisfaction of kicking in the nuts repeatedly.
I . . . I have only this to contribute. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.bergen.html
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, I can find no peer-review papers on the subject of bovine excrement that list Oliver North as an author.
ReplyDelete"I have to pay to play Call of Duty!"
ReplyDeleteOr, more accurately in the case of BushCheney, "Trust us: We've purged all the experts!"
ReplyDeleteWheels within wheels, man.
ReplyDeleteComic Sans.
ReplyDeleteLook, it may not work. All we can do is try.
ReplyDeleteFair enough--but its horrifying to see the guy get a story credit.
ReplyDeleteA policy of retreat and abandonment remains as it has always been the fastest road to endless warI dunno. I suspect that the fastest road to endless war is to send in troops and wage endless war.
ReplyDeleteI'm curuous. Having begun with a nod to the Vietnam war -- the most conspicuous case of the Domino Theory proving to be a lie -- does Kagan bother to explain why the Domino Theory always applies? Other than the McArdle technique of stating it again in italics?
I was watching Michael Mann's Thief the other day, and found out that the guy who plays the corrupt cop was actually a former (?) professional thief himself and also a technical consultant on the film.
ReplyDeleteonce again, you have it all wrong. Iraq was all about giving our young men the chance to be heroes at Fullajah! Here let Hilary explain why being against invasions is "breaking faith with the military"
ReplyDeleteSeriously, they are thinking of running this women for President? So the Repubs can walk all over her like Bill Clinton did? I'd like a Presidentress with some spine, thank you.
Stimulus!
ReplyDeleteNo, no, you're not getting the concept! Endless war is the only way to prevent endless war.
ReplyDeleteWar is when the broken window leads to a Glory Hole!
ReplyDeleteNow the Canada thing, that hurt. Upon reflection, I am glad I did not sell my political independence.
ReplyDeleteI've read some of Bergdahl's letters home, telling of his disillusionment with the military. Must be hell to go from the 50's where most American kids grow up, to 2001.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I am not privy to, people from Scandinavian countries say it, and they put lines through the "o"s in "moose". I don't understand it.
ReplyDeleteAnd they won't tell me what their sister was doing to the moose.
As has been true through time immemorial, the quickest way to peace is to put war's most fervent advocates at the front of the charge and with the lowest rank. At the very least, reducing the most powerful to the most dispensable has a sobering effect on war hysterics.
ReplyDelete"Whereas doubling down in Iraq is the scenic route to endless war."
ReplyDeleteLine of the day, in a day of good lines.
Does the Norwegian Elk have palmate antlers, like two open hands on top of their head offering succor and friendship to all?
ReplyDeleteOr are Norwegian Elks round-horners?