I just posted a more long-winded thing on TPM cafe. Not appropriate here, but if you ask what will work best for Bush in domestic politics, that's what he'll do. He won't be thinking about military realities and he won't be thinking about long term consequences.
Re #6 -- Drum, TNR, and various others, sometimes even including Sausagely himself, will also sometimes speak of major policy questions in primarily electoral terms.
Sometimes you have to do that, and on some secondary and pork-barrel type issues (gun control, artichoke supports) doing so is necessary and relatively painless. But not only is it wrong to decide major issues that way, it looks bad. Whenever Democrats try to talk tough on military questions, they just look weaker and more opportunistic.
One reason why Democratic options are so constricted is that generic public opinion, especially as heard on free media, is center-right or far right. There's been a well-funded 30-year Republican strategy of recruiting opinion-makers and placing their people in influential positions in the media, and it's worked.
I keep wondering what the Israelis will do. Are they going to work in tandem with the administration, on the American election timetable, or take matters into their own hands?
What's with the hating on Kevin? His post seems totally reasonable to me. Rather than being giddy that the Abramoff scandal is going to get rid of a bunch of Republicans, we need to be ready for another national security crisis. Given how ineffectual the Democrats have been in coming up with compelling alternatives to Republican fear-mongering, a heads-up seems like just the thing.
As for setting the terms of the debate, well, whoever is President can do that, and Ahmadinejad is helping him out a whole lot.
So the democrats will cave, and then all us liberals will start going back to having sex with each other, only this time, we'll really move to canada first.
What national security crisis? Is anyone suggesting that Iran has the capacity to strike the US? NO. Just like Iraq, this Iran thing would have nothing to do with national security, sanely understood (i.e., the physical safety of the US mainland).
Israel already has nukes, and on the issue of national suicide, I'm going to assume Ahmadinejad is a rational actor until I get really strong evidence otherwise. The US just needs to back the fuck off.
The core problem is the underlying assumption that "crowd-pleasing" == "some variation on the Republican policy." How about just saying "no"? Look where nuance and seriousness got us last time.
My worry is that Bush really will do something. He's more than stupid enough to order an airstrike. At that point the Iranians might just decide they're never going to get a better chance to stick it to us and they'll do something like send 100,000 troops into Iraq. This could could get bloody real fast.
This should be a link to Emerson's comment. The thread isn't bad, although, as usual, completely impossible to follow. If you want a massive link-dump on this issue, go to the top post on my name's url.
Kotsko: Do you really think "The US just needs to back the fuck off" will constitute a "crowd-pleasing answer" reply? It's always nice to think that if Democrats just stood tall and proud and spoke the truth that this would turn out to be a brilliant political strategy, but it seems rather unlikely in that particular instance.
What about, "Try not to be such p**sies." (New word, please.) It's not like we didn't ask Americans to bear the risk of total fucking annihilation for 50 years. And all we got was no nuclear war and peaceful triumph over our enemy.
Maybe we can promise to kick Greneda's ass, again.
Hating on Kevin: in the post I linked in 4, it looks kind of like he's saying that we're going to get the choice between leaky and ineffective sanctions and air strikes -- and when you put it that way, air strikes sound appealing. And KD says we have to think seriously about the issue.
Which would be fine, except that KD and others spent so much time thinking seriously about Iraq that they supported the war up till, oh, about a month or two beforehand -- by which time it was too late; when some actual serious thought along the lines of "There's no fucking casus belli, Iraq isn't an immediate threat, and everything the Bush Administration has said gives the impression that they'll be totally unserious about the war" would have led one to oppose the war sooner. (We've been over this pretty much ad nauseum, so if you don't believe with what I just said, pls take it as part of an explanation of why I don't trust KD on this issue.)
In other words, KD has let himself be played before. And I'm pretty sure that any war against Iran would be an absolute and total fucking disaster -- we'd be better off losing outright than winding up with an Iraq-style insurgency. So I'm a bit twitchy about KD saying that we now have to be very serious about the choice between blowing shit up and leaky and ineffective sanctions. If he's going to start a conversation about why blowing shit up won't work and why we need to present some realistic alternatives, that would be great.
Saiselgy may have the right approach in saying that we need to emphasize how badly Bush has screwed up. His comment 21 sounds sort of like speaking of major policy questions in political terms (and I think it is very bad politics for the Dems to seem to be testing the wind on this; our problem is that we don't seem to stand for anything), but we do have to be able to say something about the policy. And maybe an OK one would be "Look, Bush fucked up badly, he'd really like a war now to fix his screwups, but you shouldn't let him have one unless you luuuve how the last one's turned out."
But I'm no political strategist. The only thing I'm sure of: War on Iran almost certainly a horrible idea. Don't get caught in a Beinart-Packer situation in which the only people who are to be taken seriously are the ones who are willing to seriously entertain war even though it's a horrible idea (and even after it's been proven to be a total failure).
I don't read the linked post that way. Kevin's not limiting us to the choices he thinks Bush will present--there's his "hypothetical c"--but saying that we have to take the issue seriously because it will probably define the upcoming elections. Again, it sounds like a caution against complacency to me: don't think you'll get to crow about Abramoff when, in fact, trying to do so will get you painted as soft on national security, again.
And I'm pretty sure that any war against Iran would be an absolute and total fucking disaster
I think that's exactly right. Anyone with fantasies about bombing Iran should stop and think about just how badly it could go for us.
Iran has mandatory military service at 18, and well over 10 million able bodied males aged 18-49. They could pretty easily field hundreds of thousands of infantry, every one of them having already had formal training. In addition, our military is bogged down in cities in Iraq, where our air superiority is of little to no use. This situation has real potential to turn into a total bloodbath.
I don't think the US electorate is ina very jingoist mood right now. Or pro-republican. If they stay united and handle the matter with some skill, it should be a winning issue for the dems. If.
Is any one else weirded out when a major foreign policy issue gets framed primarily in terms of political stage-craft? Maybe it's just taken as read here that the proper response to an Iranian nuclear program is indifference. For me, howevever, the question of what if anything, can be done to limit Iranian nuclear ambitions holds more interest than the qusetion of who win short term political gain in the spin-cycle about Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Also, with respect to Drum, what did he write that is so terrible? He's just trying, it seems, to encourage the Democratic party to develop an Iran policy. That's a good idea. Not too many people define US security interests as the safety of the US mainland. Maybe that's the official Dem view, but if so, probably good to state it. If one doesn't want to state it, either beacuse it's wrong, or because the stupid, stupid electorate won't listen to the truth, then one needs to articulate and promote another positive position. Like Weiner says, it's important to stand for something. Hey, it's great that Atrios wants to predict the roll-out of the "confront-Iran" propaganda initiative in loving detail, but that's kind of a secondary feature, no? The New Deal had a propaganda initiative too.
Damn right I'm weirded out, baa. It's very frightening to have Karl Rove be the second most powerful person in the world.
And of course, since you're a Republican, the fact that this is probably a political ploy doesn't bother you a bit. Because if the trick works, your side will win! If Bush is able to fool 51% of the people all of the time, you'll be happy.
One of the reasons that many ended up not supporting the Iraq war was that they decided that Bush and his team were too dishonest, devious, incompetent, and misinformed ever to do anything right. Those reasons still hold.
Something not mentioned by Drum and not mentioned so far here is the reason why the Bush point of view is going to have more "traction" than ours, and why public opinion might swing his way.
The media will cave first. Anti-war spokesmen will not be on TV. And eventually a lot of people are going to end up thinking "Well, everyone else seems to think that the threat is serious this time". And Bush and his people will not hold anything back in their attempts to terrify the American people and smear war opponents. (The swiftboating of Murtha is already happening.)
The upsetting thing isn;t that people are saying that Bush is willing to start a war for domestic policy reasons. The upsetting thing is that it's true.
the question of what if anything, can be done to limit Iranian nuclear ambitions
What do you think can be done, baa? Osirak-style air strikes don't really appear to be an option here, given that the Iranian nuclear program is reported to be widely distributed in hardened sites across a country nearly 4x the size of Iraq. Plus, our intelligence on Iran is bound to be worse than it was with Iraq, so even knowing where to bomb might be problematic.
the proper response to an Iranian nuclear program is indifference
I doubt that anybody's indifferent, but speaking solely for myself, if Iran decides it's going to become a nuclear state, then Iran is going to become a nuclear state and there's f*ck-all we can do about it, short of drafting all our fighting age men and invading. The West's task is to figure out to deal with an nuclear Iranian state, not entertain fantasies of how we're going to prevent it. When Israel developed nuclear weapons, neighboring states going nuclear became a matter of when, not if, just like Pakistan following India.
I've been expecting something like this ever since Bush's luck started turning. An international or domestic security crisis is the only card Bush has left.
The scheduling of the crisis is what's suspect. Iranian nukes would be a bad thing, and something should be done if possile, but why is the issue coming up now? About a month ago I asked whether there were designated trigger districts used to decide whether the Iran issue is raised for the 2006 election or the 2008 election. Congessional polls have been looking bad for awhile, especially because the Republicans have been shown to be vote-selling, grafting slime, so the calendar has been moved up.
It's a version of Pascal's wager. The odds of Bush being right might be very small, but the threat that he claims (an Iranian nuclear attack) is very large. So if you multiply it out, aren't we better off believing him?
The answer, of course, is no. Anyone who thinks that the answer is yes is a born sucker, but there are lots of them in the electorate, and there are lots of plants with war agendas both in the media and in the Democratic Party.
Alas, I do NOT know how to present this issue to the American people. Bush's whole success and all his skill are in domestic politics, and he's formidable there.
Fool me twice, shame on me. I expect the American people to do another Charlie Brown, though.
Indeedy. If you're weirded out when foreign policy is discussed in terms of political stage-craft, you shouldn't have voted for Bush, unless you like being weirded out.
Maybe it's just taken as read here that the proper response to an Iranian nuclear program is indifference. For me, howevever, the question of what if anything, can be done to limit Iranian nuclear ambitions....
No it isn't. I'm taking it as read that war with Iran is a bad idea. I think that Bush's total fucking incompetence has led us into a situation in which we may not have any acceptable ways to limit Iranian nuclear ambitions -- perhaps this was inevitable anyway, but Bush's massive indifference to nuclear proliferation, except insofar as it could be used in political stagecraft (see on the one hand Korea, North, and on the other gun, smoking, and cloud, mushroom in the form of) certainly didn't help. Perhaps in an absolutely ideal society, we wouldn't be discussing this, but the "don't go to war in Iran" policy needs a propaganda initiative too.
As for Drum, it may be that he's just saying "Democrats need to develop an Iran policy." That would be great and salutary. But Kevin has been a bit too prone to the Packer line on Iraq, the criticisms of which are best summed up here:
He sounds pretty grudging to me in acknowledging that many on the antiwar side were as serious and thoughtful as any of the hawks, AND turned out to be right.
(see also SCMT in the same thread, who from his first paragraph I suspect of being altmouse.)
Cautions against complacency are excellent; calls to develop policy are excellent; I wish I were a little more confident that Drum was starting from a baseline of "War with Iran led by Bush [that clause inserted for reasons of competence, not politics] is a very bad idea unless there are very very very very compelling reasons for it."
Perhaps I should have pointed out Kleiman as someone who's already taking the bait (he also never opposed the war on Iraq).
[I took out a couple of links in this post to avoid being spam-filtered; Ogged, don't approve the other version of the post.]
It's always nice to think that if Democrats just stood tall and proud and spoke the truth that this would turn out to be a brilliant political strategy,
Don't confuse presentation with policy. If invading Iran is a bad idea, then the Dems need to find a way to sell it while looking strong. Right now the strategy seems to be 'let's not stand up for anything because we have the 2006 midterm to think of', which doesn't seem like it's going to fly during the 2006 election.
If the only thing the Democrats can think of is to support invading Iran while mildly protesting, we're done. The Republicans are better at being convincing warhawks.
If the strategy is going to be to refuse to voice serious opposition to the war because they can't figure out how to do it without making themselves look weak, then what's the point of having a Democrat in office anyway?
One reason we should think that this case is as problematic as the Iraq case is that most of worst of the Iraq people are still in place. Woilfowitch has been transferred and Powell, a relative voice of sanity, is out. The Bush Administration's message is that they were right all along and are going to give us more of the same.
If they really think that it's serious this time, they should acknowledge their past mistakes, roll some heads, and give us reason to think that they aren't lying again and won't screw up again. But that's exactly what they're not going to do.
The Democrats' dilemma is that if they and if they oppose war they are made to look weak a different way, but if they give in to the Republicans they look weak a different way. As long as a pro-war consensus can effortlessly be engineered, the Democrats lose. Someone has to meet the issue head-on, and I don't know who that could be.
I'm starting to get the impression that no one defines "national security" as anything at all in specific -- it's just a code word for "something similar to the current Republican foreign policy."
Sausagely, I think the Democrats all need to oppose a war in Iran, unequivocally, from the beginning, and to do everything possible to prevent it from happening. Hundreds of thousands of lives are potentially at stake here.
Why couldn't they just fucking say, "Hey, isn't it weird how whenever Bush's numbers aren't looking good, he plays this national security card? Remember how he lied his way into Iraq? Notice how that's a total clusterfuck?" Why not say, "I'm not weak on national security. This has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with Bush bullshitting us, again"? I don't know if it's crowd-pleasing in the sense that crowd-pleasing means Republican-esque, but I don't think that Democrats' attempts to appear strong on national security while being nuanced and all that have really helped at all. No matter what they say, Democrats are going to be painted as peacenik Bush-hating pieces of shit -- why not actually be aggressive peacenik Bush-hating pieces of shit this time around? It's not like the guy's terribly popular at the moment.
There's no way of transmitting that kind of message to the public, Adam. The media are not honest brokers, the Republicans have a powerful machine, and the Democrats have let their communication networks decline.
On top of that, Democratic hawks are hawks first. Lieberamn and Zell Miller were never alone. Scheiber doesn't really think that the Democrats will outhawk the Republicans. He's just giving warning that if the Democrats act like doves, he'll stab them in the back.
The "hawk / dove" dichotomy makes the problem worse, because the way it plays, andone who resists going to war -- any proposed war whatsoever -- is called a granola-eating pacifist.
Bush's popularity is volatile. War trumps everything else, and that's why all this is happening.
Unless there's committed leadership from Democrats, major media people, major people from the foreign policy establishment, and elder statesmen, Bush will probably get his way. "Committed" means "willing to be smeared and willing to have your career ended". The opinion of the general public is not very important and doesn't remain firm.
This thread is extremely worrying. Drum is arguing for the conclusion that Democrats should start thinking harder about Iran, not about the electoral upshot of their failure to think hard about Iran. The appeal to electoral politics is a premise in the argument: the claim is that one immediate reason (among other less immediate reasons) to think harder about Iran is that the White House will use the issue against Dems next fall.
And it's pretty obvious, isn't it, that treating the issue as primarily the threat of the Bush administration, rather than the threat of nuclear-armed Iran, is a way of refusing to do what Drum is advising.
Thinking hard about Iran does not at all mean 'caving' to Bush, or even accepting the Republicans' list of options. Why on earth should it? Thinking hard is thinking about all options -- and, especially, thinking creatively about options that may not be obvious.
What I see here, with only one clear exception (ogged, since I guess baa doesn't count), is nothing but exactly the attitude that Drum is warning against. Cynicism, despair, and petty bickering (as if the enemy is George Packer!).
Sure, war with Iran looks like pure folly (especially as conducted by an administration with their track record), and we probably all agree that bombing short of war (assuming that's a real category) would lead to horrible consequences and probably entail all-out war anyway. But what then do you propose? If you think a nuclear-armed Iran would be acceptable, you'd better start explaining why that's so.
I'm fully aware that I'm not doing this either (yet). But Bush and Bush-supporters are responding to a real issue, however manipulatively. How not to get manipulated by them? First: don't treat the issue as one of not getting manipulated by them.
If you think a nuclear-armed Iran would be acceptable, you'd better start explaining why that's so.
Or maybe, just for a change of pace, you could explain why a nuclear-armed Iran is so much more terrifying than a nuclear-armed USSR (or China or Pakistan or India or...). I understand that simple assertion sounds more manly, but it would be really cool to see the actual argument this time. And afterwards, we can go listen to some Toby Keith.
Um, I wasn't claiming (and in fact I don't believe) that a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable. But it is obvious that a lot of people believe that it is. My point is merely that you have to argue why they're wrong.
The 'Toby Keith' reference is way over the line. I used to like this blog, but you people are not worth trying to engage.
Bush is NOTresponding to a real issue. He is picking something off the shelf to demagogue. We're not talking about electoral politics and we're not talking about Iran. We're talking about the way Bush ruins everything he touches.
Drum was suckered by Bush in 2002 and he may be suckered again. He's always believed that the Democrats have to be "tougher on defense", and that's why he got suckered the first time.
Bush has a long-term plan to remake the US and the world. Everything he does is part of this plan. Any given thing he does is chosen for political effect, and very little of it has ever been valid policy.
We're talking about Iran right now because Bush wants us to, and the reason he's raised the issue is because he can restore his sagging ratings that way. And it's generally true, and it's worked for Bush, that this kind of war-fever demagogy works.
The reason you're saying what you do isn't because you're worried about Iran. It's because you're aware that Bush's ploy will be powerful in domestic politics, and you think that "thinking seriously about Iran" upon demand will help the Democrats. That's what people tried with the Iraq war.
The political road is uphill, but as long as people are taking Bush's words at face value, we lose. We need to break his hold on the hive mind, and we can't do that by "thinking seriously about Iran" right when he gives us the cue.
"You people"? Go screw yourself. Can you find the door unaided?
"Thinking seriously about Iran" doesn't mean anything and won't change anything. What the Democrats need to do is figure out a way to approach the general public. If empty slogans work, fine. If meaningful policies work, even better. But the problem is not Iran, it's public opinion. (And remember -- the TNR people calling for "serious discussion of Iran" are dies-in-the-wool hawks and nothing but hawkishness will shut them up. They're not looking for any new ideas. They plan to sabotage the democrats if they don't get their way).
No one here is a Democratic strategist. The strategists don't listen to us, either. We're just talking about the world we live in.
I don't expect an effective Democratic response one way or another, except that the DLC / TNR hawks will be effective in crippling the party.
Um, I wasn't claiming (and in fact I don't believe) that a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable.
Fine. I agree that a nuclear-armed Iran is to be avoided if possible, but is not unacceptable. Why can't we just say that, and ask the other side to show their work?
The 'Toby Keith' reference is way over the line.
Retracted. Though it's hard for me to imagine a lighter jab.
Maybe after invading Iran, we can sweep into Pakistan and India to remove their unacceptable nuclear arsenals as well. Or maybe we could plow through Syria on our way to disarming Israel! And after we disarm North Korea, we would have a decent staging ground for taking out China and Russia's nukes.
Let's just go all the way -- now that's some serious shit!
Look, there are a few inconvenient facts: the President gets to set the agenda, the press seems willing to go along again on Iran, and Ahmadinejad is giving the Bushies a gift a week. So what everyone needs to do is 1) decide how big a problem Iran is, and what needs to be done about it and 2) how to communicate that to the public.
In this case, even more than with Iraq, you'd like to think that "are you fucking kidding me?" is the proper and sufficient response. But with the President saying "grave threat" and Ahmadinejad saying "get rid of Israel," you're never going to get a debate that starts with the presumption that we should do nothing.
Ted H pretty much nails it -- even if he does break out the Ross Perot "you people" (just kidding Ted...). Like it or not, Iran going nuclear is not an issue Bush invented. Likewise, Saddam Hussein was not an issue Bush invented. Denying the existence of a problem just enables your opposition to define the terms of the debate.
That's what happened to the GOP on health care, and that experience should serve as a cautionary tale. No one trusts the GOP on health care; the issue is a big plus for democrats across the board. Is this because everyone has thought deeply about the problems of 3rd party payment and risk pooling, and concludes that market failure is inevitable? I suspect not, and that democrats dominate on this issue because they, unlike republicans, seem legitimately to care about the health care system. Democrats raised the issue to the national level, and would have been thinking about it quote independent of the momentary needs of political perception. Republicans, by contrast, had to be dragged into the debate, and would drop the topic instantly if they could. It may be the case that Republicans truly believe the way to improve health care is deregulation + benign neglect, but by offering that solution reactively, it certainly does appear that improving US health care is not a big priortity for them. So too, I would argue, there is the impression today that constraining hostile regimes is not a big priority for the democrats. I would also argue that both these impressions are accurate: to a first order approximation the GOP elite doesn't care about health care, and the Dem elite doesn't care about Iran, or North Korea, or China. These are not issues that they like to think about, perhaps because in both cases the uniterested party considers benign neglect the obviously correct solution. Moral of the story, perhaps: think how tough it is for libertarians, who want to advance the benign neglect program broadly.
On the substance, as it happens, I really don't know what good options exist w.r.t. Iran. I would go for aggressive multi-lateral economic sanctions, I suppose [[And please do fall over youselves to note that it is All Bush's Fault that such a approach seems unlikely to succeed.]] Why Drum is the villain here I simply don't understand. He's just offering good political advice to his own party.
First of all, your #2 is the whole problem. It's probably impossible. Recently one of the talk shows had four Republicans on to talk about Alito and the discussion of Iran will presumably be similiar. The anti-war position was almost not heard at all before the Iraq war. What Democrats appear will be pro-war Democrats. Even of the whole Democratic party had the same prowar position, though, they would gain nothing from that.
Second, I'm sure that the Democrats have a position on Iran, and I presume it's as good as Bush's. It doesn't make any difference. Bush does control the agenda, and he's agile enough to make sure that he makes the Democrats look bad no matter what they do. He's not going to let this be bipartisan, because hurting the Democrats is one of the main goals of abything he does.
As I've been saying, the public opinion problem and the political prooblem are what we're talking about. Unless he's stopped, Bush will do whatever he's going to do. Pro and anti are our options, and I think that mistrust of Bush is an adequate reason to be anti. But I doubt we can sell that.
Bush paid no cost for his Iraq failure, and whatever he does in Iraq should be assumed to be continuous with that.
I apologize for the 'you people.' SCMT's comment made me extremely angry, but I should have directly the anger only at him and dispensed it with more grace.
Drum is a villain because of his track record, not only because of what he just said.
There are two reasons why the Democrats can't offer a superior alternative to Bush's. One is that no one really speaks for the party, and the party is not united. So there will certainly be a Democrat to demonize, if only Ward Churchill.
The second reason is that, as Yglesias, baa, and others jave noted, there really aren't many good options. The reason we're being asked to be serious is not because there might be a good policy out there no one's thought of yet. It's because we need to convince the viters that we have a serious alternative.
Criteria for a successful serious alternative? 1. Sound tough. 2. Promise success. 3. Make Bush's plan look bad. 4. Suitable for a sound bite.
there's no honest way to do that. IF TNR and Drum are saying that we have to come up with a cheap, flashy, vivid fake plan to catch the voters' attention, they're right. But that's not what they're saying.
But with the President saying "grave threat" and Ahmadinejad saying "get rid of Israel," you're never going to get a debate that starts with the presumption that we should do nothing.
But this is the assumption that is making many of us so angry. The Republicans say, "We must do something about Iran." Why can't we say, "Why?" Or, "Why does it have to be something dramatic? Why can't we contain the problem until Iran goes democratic? (Which it will obviously do, now that we've established the City on the Hill that is Iraq.)" Why must we concede that they've formulated the problem properly? Especially when they haven't shown their work.
Baa, as our thoughtful conservative, offers a good example. He says, "Not too many people define US security interests as the safety of the US mainland." Fine. But that's not a definition of our security interests. Once he defines our interests, we can decide whether we need to (per Kristol) invade. Or we can decide that, on the whole, we prefer fewer rather than more nuclear powers, and suggest that others in the neighborhood are likely to feel the same. Welcome to multilateralism. But first we should go through the effort of defining the problem. And, as they currently control all branches of the federal government, it's incumbent on Republicans to do so first. It's incumbent on Democrats to make clear that Republican responsibility.
Baa and I agree on the present prescription: economic sanctions. China and Russia, who've been deemed the great obstacles to resolution of this issue, have the best reasons not to want Iran to go nuclear. (See, e.g., Chechnya and Afghanistan.) Call their bluff. Bribe them. Whatever.
That Bettis fumble was ... unexpected. Quite a game. And again, from my Patriot-o-centric perspective, it just makes the loss last night harder to take.
Just to keep Emerson happy: Go Panthers! (WTF? I just turned on the game. Two minutes in, and they're already up 7, and have the ball? This truly is a world gone mad.)
You win that one, ogged. And by the by, has any coach in the "team apparel era" ever looked better on the sidelines than Lovie Smith. He's rocking the leather coat.
87: The sentence, "This not only gave Islamic societies a youthful energy that contrasted markedly with the slothful senescence of Europe," makes me think that he's channeling Philip Johnson, if you can channel the living.
For whatever it's worth, Ahmedinejad says he is not interested in the bomb.
A nation which has culture, logic and civilization does not need nuclear weapons. The countries which seek nuclear weapons are those which want to solve all problems by the use of force. Our nation does not need such weapons.
I read an article in The Independent today that tried to paint Ahmadinejad as believing in some kind of Islamic end-times thing:
More worrying for some is that Ahmadinejad is closely identified with the cult of the "hidden imam", the 12th and last of the line of imams revered by Shia Muslims. In a clear parallel with Jewish and Christian visions of Armageddon, Shias believe the imam zaman will return at a time of great turmoil to defeat the forces of evil; recently the president urged Iranians to work hard for this moment. As one commentator pointed out, this was like Tony Blair telling Britons to prepare for the Second Coming.
The most extreme zealots, a group called the Hojjatieh, say total chaos should be created to hasten the coming of the Mahdi, and there have been claims that Ahmadinejad, if not a member, sympathises with them. This explains his reckless attitude, say his critics. If the final triumph of Islam can be brought closer by provoking a nuclear war with Israel or America, why hold back?
Is there any truth to this or just some reporter being hysterical? End-times-ers on both sides of this conflict (I'm counting Bush's far-right Christian allies) would be disturbing.
About Ahmadinejad: it doesn't matter. The mullahs are not suicidal, they've been engaged in pragmatic, if repressive, pragmatism for the past twenty years. Ahmadinejad has the same position that was described over and over as toothless when Khatami held it. He's not dragging that country into war, and if it comes down to battling it out in the streets, the vast majority of people oppose him.
The line that tells you that Ferguson is bloodthirsty and dishonest is the crap about all the young men in Iran being "ready to fight." They're not even willing to take to the streets for a revolution: they're explicit about this: "we've seen enough bloodshed" some of them told me--there's no way at all that they're willing to fight for some crazy religious dude. Ferguson just wants war; simple as that--that article is one of the more sickening things I've read in a while. Ok, back to the game.
There are two reasons why the Democrats can't offer a superior alternative to Bush's. One is that no one really speaks for the party, and the party is not united. So there will certainly be a Democrat to demonize, if only Ward Churchill.
JE was making a crucial point here. People speak carelessly about 'the Republicans' and 'the Democrats', as if each party were a corporate entity with one spokesperson reporting an official position. It ain't like that.
I suspect it's one of those group identification phenomena, where those within the group can be nuanced and decide who is really a member (e.g. Catholics aren't really Christians) - but everyone else is one big undifferentiated lumpen, and whatever Ward Churchill says must be archetypical of the beliefs of all Democrats. If only we(?!) could make Pat Robertson the poster boy for all Republicans.
"Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration's original principle of pre-emption."
And the reader is bound to ask whether or not the value and significance of historical understanding is vindicated by such forays into an unknown and as-yet unknowable future.
I have to admit, as I get older, I have a harder time watching football and enjoying the big hits: I end up thinking, "oh, that must really hurt," or just worrying about their careers. Maybe because now they're almost all younger than I am.
Totally agree with you on the big hits. Do you recall Merill Hoge's essay in SI about ten years back? He wrote that at one game post-game breakfast, he forked up some scrambled eggs, and was blowing on them to cool them off. He was blowing, and blowing, and then realized that he didn't have eggs on his fork, but a section of an orange.
With luck, one of the team planes will crash not too long before the superbowl, sucking up all the media oxygen and thus precluding the invasion of Iraq.
Preferably it will be the Denver plane. Two goats and nine 16-year-old girls will be on that plane.
Carolina is looking tough. So is Pittsburgh, but it's tough to imagine a team that banged-up winning again, let alone winning two more. But, there's no way I'm agreeing with Timbot. Carolina over Pittsburgh.
He hasn't commented, so it's fair to say that he probably did.
In other news, I should really drag my ass to finally see Brokeback Mountain tonight, but I'm so enjoying sitting in my chair, with two burgers (that's right, burgers, bitches) in my belly, and Matrix:Reloaded on the TV and "Assassin at the Gate" promising me knowledge. How does anyone ever leave the house?
If you're all happy and contented and enjoying a post-football glow, I would say stay home. Brokeback will only bring you down. It will still be there tomorrow.
That's the spirit. Of course, that's also the spirit that's kept me from seeing it yet. While I was in NY, I picked up something that said "Carpe Mañana!"
Watching the Matrix: Reloaded with other people was one of the more squirmily embarassing three hours of my life.
And ogged, hamburgers? Someone recently linked to a thread where your careful rationing of avocados led into an all-out flame war, and you're eating hamburgers now?
In re food, I am happy to report that the "Hope & Tim's" soup that I just ate, which was called, I think, "summer fresh tomato basil," that I purchased from the store, because I am lazy, was excellent.
I was eating at this restaurant, Real Food Daily, in Santa Monica, which serves excellent vegan food, and the woman at the table next to us was grilling the server about whether each item had any onion and/or garlic in it (both of which she was violently opposed to). Seriously, what kind of existence is that?
I don't think she was allergic, because she finally ended up getting the veggie burger, which was made with onions in the burger itself (but none on top) after the server and I convinced her that the burger didn't have a particularly oniony taste. She just didn't like the taste.
241: What is the Big Fucking Deal with In n' Out? It seems to be a cult among Californians, and was super hyped up. I finally tried one, and wasn't particularly impressed.
I didn't even think their fries were good - another source of hype.
It could have been that the one time I had In n' Out was in less than ideal circumstances - at some rest stop in the middle of nowhere, with two guys I didn't know (Craigslist rideshare; that was interesting).
My father hates onions so much that he'll sometimes refuse to eat a dish with cooked celery in it, just to be safe. Since every time he left for business or hockey, my mother immediately made a huge vat of onion soup, I associate the smell of cooking onions with gleefully-getting-away-with-something. I use them in everything I possible can, now.
The thing I find most fascinating about In and Out is that they are supposedly owned by a bunch of Mormons and their expansion is limited by how quickly they breed. Could be an urban legend but I'm sticking with it.
I've only had their burgers twice and they were yummy. Steak and Shake is the best you can get outside of the land o' In-and-Out, followed by Sonic.
I suspect that they will engineer a more plausible crisis this time than last time. They can learn from their mistakes.
The pressure will be intense, and half the Democrats will cave in immediately.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 12:33 PM
The only place I disagree with Atrios is that nothing will happen to Iran. I'd love to be wrong here, mind you.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 1:08 PM
His protestations in that piece you linked to notwithstanding, I don't trust Kevin not to fold in some important way.
Digby had another take.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 1:48 PM
Now, bg, why wouldn't you trust him?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 2:00 PM
Exactly, Weiner.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 2:10 PM
I just posted a more long-winded thing on TPM cafe. Not appropriate here, but if you ask what will work best for Bush in domestic politics, that's what he'll do. He won't be thinking about military realities and he won't be thinking about long term consequences.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 2:24 PM
Kevin is the first name that came to mind on the question of caving? ("Caving" may not be the right word.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 2:41 PM
Re #6 -- Drum, TNR, and various others, sometimes even including Sausagely himself, will also sometimes speak of major policy questions in primarily electoral terms.
Sometimes you have to do that, and on some secondary and pork-barrel type issues (gun control, artichoke supports) doing so is necessary and relatively painless. But not only is it wrong to decide major issues that way, it looks bad. Whenever Democrats try to talk tough on military questions, they just look weaker and more opportunistic.
One reason why Democratic options are so constricted is that generic public opinion, especially as heard on free media, is center-right or far right. There's been a well-funded 30-year Republican strategy of recruiting opinion-makers and placing their people in influential positions in the media, and it's worked.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 3:06 PM
Shorter Kevin Drum:
"The Republicans are going to do all they can to control the terms of the debate, and we should totally let them."
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 6:03 PM
I keep wondering what the Israelis will do. Are they going to work in tandem with the administration, on the American election timetable, or take matters into their own hands?
Posted by ming | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 6:07 PM
I don't think Kevin wants to concede the terms of debate to the repugs. He's trying to stir up the Democrats to come up with some counter terms.
This is depressing. When is the conversation going to turn to sex like Unfogged threads usually do?
Posted by lily | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 6:11 PM
The sex wouldn't be the same without the bursts of seriousness.
Posted by ming | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 6:22 PM
What's with the hating on Kevin? His post seems totally reasonable to me. Rather than being giddy that the Abramoff scandal is going to get rid of a bunch of Republicans, we need to be ready for another national security crisis. Given how ineffectual the Democrats have been in coming up with compelling alternatives to Republican fear-mongering, a heads-up seems like just the thing.
As for setting the terms of the debate, well, whoever is President can do that, and Ahmadinejad is helping him out a whole lot.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 6:32 PM
I...shudder...agree with ogged. Also, the conversation usually turns into sex?! How have I not noticed this? I feel so left out.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 6:50 PM
So the democrats will cave, and then all us liberals will start going back to having sex with each other, only this time, we'll really move to canada first.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 6:53 PM
What national security crisis? Is anyone suggesting that Iran has the capacity to strike the US? NO. Just like Iraq, this Iran thing would have nothing to do with national security, sanely understood (i.e., the physical safety of the US mainland).
Israel already has nukes, and on the issue of national suicide, I'm going to assume Ahmadinejad is a rational actor until I get really strong evidence otherwise. The US just needs to back the fuck off.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 8:15 PM
The core problem is the underlying assumption that "crowd-pleasing" == "some variation on the Republican policy." How about just saying "no"? Look where nuance and seriousness got us last time.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 8:36 PM
My worry is that Bush really will do something. He's more than stupid enough to order an airstrike. At that point the Iranians might just decide they're never going to get a better chance to stick it to us and they'll do something like send 100,000 troops into Iraq. This could could get bloody real fast.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 8:51 PM
Emerson, I'd like to read your café piece but I am inept at navigating over there. Link please.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 9:24 PM
This should be a link to Emerson's comment. The thread isn't bad, although, as usual, completely impossible to follow. If you want a massive link-dump on this issue, go to the top post on my name's url.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 9:58 PM
Kotsko: Do you really think "The US just needs to back the fuck off" will constitute a "crowd-pleasing answer" reply? It's always nice to think that if Democrats just stood tall and proud and spoke the truth that this would turn out to be a brilliant political strategy, but it seems rather unlikely in that particular instance.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 10:23 PM
What about, "Try not to be such p**sies." (New word, please.) It's not like we didn't ask Americans to bear the risk of total fucking annihilation for 50 years. And all we got was no nuclear war and peaceful triumph over our enemy.
Maybe we can promise to kick Greneda's ass, again.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 10:36 PM
Grenada? Are you being satirical?
Are there subjects that have never been discussed on Unfogged?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-14-06 10:58 PM
Hating on Kevin: in the post I linked in 4, it looks kind of like he's saying that we're going to get the choice between leaky and ineffective sanctions and air strikes -- and when you put it that way, air strikes sound appealing. And KD says we have to think seriously about the issue.
Which would be fine, except that KD and others spent so much time thinking seriously about Iraq that they supported the war up till, oh, about a month or two beforehand -- by which time it was too late; when some actual serious thought along the lines of "There's no fucking casus belli, Iraq isn't an immediate threat, and everything the Bush Administration has said gives the impression that they'll be totally unserious about the war" would have led one to oppose the war sooner. (We've been over this pretty much ad nauseum, so if you don't believe with what I just said, pls take it as part of an explanation of why I don't trust KD on this issue.)
In other words, KD has let himself be played before. And I'm pretty sure that any war against Iran would be an absolute and total fucking disaster -- we'd be better off losing outright than winding up with an Iraq-style insurgency. So I'm a bit twitchy about KD saying that we now have to be very serious about the choice between blowing shit up and leaky and ineffective sanctions. If he's going to start a conversation about why blowing shit up won't work and why we need to present some realistic alternatives, that would be great.
Saiselgy may have the right approach in saying that we need to emphasize how badly Bush has screwed up. His comment 21 sounds sort of like speaking of major policy questions in political terms (and I think it is very bad politics for the Dems to seem to be testing the wind on this; our problem is that we don't seem to stand for anything), but we do have to be able to say something about the policy. And maybe an OK one would be "Look, Bush fucked up badly, he'd really like a war now to fix his screwups, but you shouldn't let him have one unless you luuuve how the last one's turned out."
But I'm no political strategist. The only thing I'm sure of: War on Iran almost certainly a horrible idea. Don't get caught in a Beinart-Packer situation in which the only people who are to be taken seriously are the ones who are willing to seriously entertain war even though it's a horrible idea (and even after it's been proven to be a total failure).
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:15 AM
I don't read the linked post that way. Kevin's not limiting us to the choices he thinks Bush will present--there's his "hypothetical c"--but saying that we have to take the issue seriously because it will probably define the upcoming elections. Again, it sounds like a caution against complacency to me: don't think you'll get to crow about Abramoff when, in fact, trying to do so will get you painted as soft on national security, again.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:45 AM
And I'm pretty sure that any war against Iran would be an absolute and total fucking disaster
I think that's exactly right. Anyone with fantasies about bombing Iran should stop and think about just how badly it could go for us.
Iran has mandatory military service at 18, and well over 10 million able bodied males aged 18-49. They could pretty easily field hundreds of thousands of infantry, every one of them having already had formal training. In addition, our military is bogged down in cities in Iraq, where our air superiority is of little to no use. This situation has real potential to turn into a total bloodbath.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:55 AM
I don't think the US electorate is ina very jingoist mood right now. Or pro-republican. If they stay united and handle the matter with some skill, it should be a winning issue for the dems. If.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 1:24 AM
Will republicans in swing seat rally behind the president?
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 1:30 AM
War with Iran is a whole ot crazier than war with Iraq and the natinal mood is different.
I'm not saying Atrios scenario is completelyy unlikely, but I think you're much too pessimistic.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 1:33 AM
Is any one else weirded out when a major foreign policy issue gets framed primarily in terms of political stage-craft? Maybe it's just taken as read here that the proper response to an Iranian nuclear program is indifference. For me, howevever, the question of what if anything, can be done to limit Iranian nuclear ambitions holds more interest than the qusetion of who win short term political gain in the spin-cycle about Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Also, with respect to Drum, what did he write that is so terrible? He's just trying, it seems, to encourage the Democratic party to develop an Iran policy. That's a good idea. Not too many people define US security interests as the safety of the US mainland. Maybe that's the official Dem view, but if so, probably good to state it. If one doesn't want to state it, either beacuse it's wrong, or because the stupid, stupid electorate won't listen to the truth, then one needs to articulate and promote another positive position. Like Weiner says, it's important to stand for something. Hey, it's great that Atrios wants to predict the roll-out of the "confront-Iran" propaganda initiative in loving detail, but that's kind of a secondary feature, no? The New Deal had a propaganda initiative too.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 2:25 AM
Damn right I'm weirded out, baa. It's very frightening to have Karl Rove be the second most powerful person in the world.
And of course, since you're a Republican, the fact that this is probably a political ploy doesn't bother you a bit. Because if the trick works, your side will win! If Bush is able to fool 51% of the people all of the time, you'll be happy.
One of the reasons that many ended up not supporting the Iraq war was that they decided that Bush and his team were too dishonest, devious, incompetent, and misinformed ever to do anything right. Those reasons still hold.
Something not mentioned by Drum and not mentioned so far here is the reason why the Bush point of view is going to have more "traction" than ours, and why public opinion might swing his way.
The media will cave first. Anti-war spokesmen will not be on TV. And eventually a lot of people are going to end up thinking "Well, everyone else seems to think that the threat is serious this time". And Bush and his people will not hold anything back in their attempts to terrify the American people and smear war opponents. (The swiftboating of Murtha is already happening.)
The upsetting thing isn;t that people are saying that Bush is willing to start a war for domestic policy reasons. The upsetting thing is that it's true.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:42 AM
the question of what if anything, can be done to limit Iranian nuclear ambitions
What do you think can be done, baa? Osirak-style air strikes don't really appear to be an option here, given that the Iranian nuclear program is reported to be widely distributed in hardened sites across a country nearly 4x the size of Iraq. Plus, our intelligence on Iran is bound to be worse than it was with Iraq, so even knowing where to bomb might be problematic.
the proper response to an Iranian nuclear program is indifference
I doubt that anybody's indifferent, but speaking solely for myself, if Iran decides it's going to become a nuclear state, then Iran is going to become a nuclear state and there's f*ck-all we can do about it, short of drafting all our fighting age men and invading. The West's task is to figure out to deal with an nuclear Iranian state, not entertain fantasies of how we're going to prevent it. When Israel developed nuclear weapons, neighboring states going nuclear became a matter of when, not if, just like Pakistan following India.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:59 AM
I've been expecting something like this ever since Bush's luck started turning. An international or domestic security crisis is the only card Bush has left.
The scheduling of the crisis is what's suspect. Iranian nukes would be a bad thing, and something should be done if possile, but why is the issue coming up now? About a month ago I asked whether there were designated trigger districts used to decide whether the Iran issue is raised for the 2006 election or the 2008 election. Congessional polls have been looking bad for awhile, especially because the Republicans have been shown to be vote-selling, grafting slime, so the calendar has been moved up.
It's a version of Pascal's wager. The odds of Bush being right might be very small, but the threat that he claims (an Iranian nuclear attack) is very large. So if you multiply it out, aren't we better off believing him?
The answer, of course, is no. Anyone who thinks that the answer is yes is a born sucker, but there are lots of them in the electorate, and there are lots of plants with war agendas both in the media and in the Democratic Party.
Alas, I do NOT know how to present this issue to the American people. Bush's whole success and all his skill are in domestic politics, and he's formidable there.
Fool me twice, shame on me. I expect the American people to do another Charlie Brown, though.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:07 AM
Indeedy. If you're weirded out when foreign policy is discussed in terms of political stage-craft, you shouldn't have voted for Bush, unless you like being weirded out.
Maybe it's just taken as read here that the proper response to an Iranian nuclear program is indifference. For me, howevever, the question of what if anything, can be done to limit Iranian nuclear ambitions....
No it isn't. I'm taking it as read that war with Iran is a bad idea. I think that Bush's total fucking incompetence has led us into a situation in which we may not have any acceptable ways to limit Iranian nuclear ambitions -- perhaps this was inevitable anyway, but Bush's massive indifference to nuclear proliferation, except insofar as it could be used in political stagecraft (see on the one hand Korea, North, and on the other gun, smoking, and cloud, mushroom in the form of) certainly didn't help. Perhaps in an absolutely ideal society, we wouldn't be discussing this, but the "don't go to war in Iran" policy needs a propaganda initiative too.
As for Drum, it may be that he's just saying "Democrats need to develop an Iran policy." That would be great and salutary. But Kevin has been a bit too prone to the Packer line on Iraq, the criticisms of which are best summed up here:
(see also SCMT in the same thread, who from his first paragraph I suspect of being altmouse.)
Cautions against complacency are excellent; calls to develop policy are excellent; I wish I were a little more confident that Drum was starting from a baseline of "War with Iran led by Bush [that clause inserted for reasons of competence, not politics] is a very bad idea unless there are very very very very compelling reasons for it."
Perhaps I should have pointed out Kleiman as someone who's already taking the bait (he also never opposed the war on Iraq).
[I took out a couple of links in this post to avoid being spam-filtered; Ogged, don't approve the other version of the post.]
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:12 AM
It's always nice to think that if Democrats just stood tall and proud and spoke the truth that this would turn out to be a brilliant political strategy,
Don't confuse presentation with policy. If invading Iran is a bad idea, then the Dems need to find a way to sell it while looking strong. Right now the strategy seems to be 'let's not stand up for anything because we have the 2006 midterm to think of', which doesn't seem like it's going to fly during the 2006 election.
If the only thing the Democrats can think of is to support invading Iran while mildly protesting, we're done. The Republicans are better at being convincing warhawks.
If the strategy is going to be to refuse to voice serious opposition to the war because they can't figure out how to do it without making themselves look weak, then what's the point of having a Democrat in office anyway?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:19 AM
One reason we should think that this case is as problematic as the Iraq case is that most of worst of the Iraq people are still in place. Woilfowitch has been transferred and Powell, a relative voice of sanity, is out. The Bush Administration's message is that they were right all along and are going to give us more of the same.
If they really think that it's serious this time, they should acknowledge their past mistakes, roll some heads, and give us reason to think that they aren't lying again and won't screw up again. But that's exactly what they're not going to do.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:22 AM
The Democrats' dilemma is that if they and if they oppose war they are made to look weak a different way, but if they give in to the Republicans they look weak a different way. As long as a pro-war consensus can effortlessly be engineered, the Democrats lose. Someone has to meet the issue head-on, and I don't know who that could be.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:26 AM
I'm starting to get the impression that no one defines "national security" as anything at all in specific -- it's just a code word for "something similar to the current Republican foreign policy."
Sausagely, I think the Democrats all need to oppose a war in Iran, unequivocally, from the beginning, and to do everything possible to prevent it from happening. Hundreds of thousands of lives are potentially at stake here.
Why couldn't they just fucking say, "Hey, isn't it weird how whenever Bush's numbers aren't looking good, he plays this national security card? Remember how he lied his way into Iraq? Notice how that's a total clusterfuck?" Why not say, "I'm not weak on national security. This has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with Bush bullshitting us, again"? I don't know if it's crowd-pleasing in the sense that crowd-pleasing means Republican-esque, but I don't think that Democrats' attempts to appear strong on national security while being nuanced and all that have really helped at all. No matter what they say, Democrats are going to be painted as peacenik Bush-hating pieces of shit -- why not actually be aggressive peacenik Bush-hating pieces of shit this time around? It's not like the guy's terribly popular at the moment.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:59 AM
There's no way of transmitting that kind of message to the public, Adam. The media are not honest brokers, the Republicans have a powerful machine, and the Democrats have let their communication networks decline.
On top of that, Democratic hawks are hawks first. Lieberamn and Zell Miller were never alone. Scheiber doesn't really think that the Democrats will outhawk the Republicans. He's just giving warning that if the Democrats act like doves, he'll stab them in the back.
The "hawk / dove" dichotomy makes the problem worse, because the way it plays, andone who resists going to war -- any proposed war whatsoever -- is called a granola-eating pacifist.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:18 AM
Bush's popularity is volatile. War trumps everything else, and that's why all this is happening.
Unless there's committed leadership from Democrats, major media people, major people from the foreign policy establishment, and elder statesmen, Bush will probably get his way. "Committed" means "willing to be smeared and willing to have your career ended". The opinion of the general public is not very important and doesn't remain firm.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:44 AM
I don't really think Bush will do anything either.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:51 AM
This thread is extremely worrying. Drum is arguing for the conclusion that Democrats should start thinking harder about Iran, not about the electoral upshot of their failure to think hard about Iran. The appeal to electoral politics is a premise in the argument: the claim is that one immediate reason (among other less immediate reasons) to think harder about Iran is that the White House will use the issue against Dems next fall.
And it's pretty obvious, isn't it, that treating the issue as primarily the threat of the Bush administration, rather than the threat of nuclear-armed Iran, is a way of refusing to do what Drum is advising.
Thinking hard about Iran does not at all mean 'caving' to Bush, or even accepting the Republicans' list of options. Why on earth should it? Thinking hard is thinking about all options -- and, especially, thinking creatively about options that may not be obvious.
What I see here, with only one clear exception (ogged, since I guess baa doesn't count), is nothing but exactly the attitude that Drum is warning against. Cynicism, despair, and petty bickering (as if the enemy is George Packer!).
Sure, war with Iran looks like pure folly (especially as conducted by an administration with their track record), and we probably all agree that bombing short of war (assuming that's a real category) would lead to horrible consequences and probably entail all-out war anyway. But what then do you propose? If you think a nuclear-armed Iran would be acceptable, you'd better start explaining why that's so.
I'm fully aware that I'm not doing this either (yet). But Bush and Bush-supporters are responding to a real issue, however manipulatively. How not to get manipulated by them? First: don't treat the issue as one of not getting manipulated by them.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 10:24 AM
If you think a nuclear-armed Iran would be acceptable, you'd better start explaining why that's so.
Or maybe, just for a change of pace, you could explain why a nuclear-armed Iran is so much more terrifying than a nuclear-armed USSR (or China or Pakistan or India or...). I understand that simple assertion sounds more manly, but it would be really cool to see the actual argument this time. And afterwards, we can go listen to some Toby Keith.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 10:32 AM
Um, I wasn't claiming (and in fact I don't believe) that a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable. But it is obvious that a lot of people believe that it is. My point is merely that you have to argue why they're wrong.
The 'Toby Keith' reference is way over the line. I used to like this blog, but you people are not worth trying to engage.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 10:42 AM
Bush is NOTresponding to a real issue. He is picking something off the shelf to demagogue. We're not talking about electoral politics and we're not talking about Iran. We're talking about the way Bush ruins everything he touches.
Drum was suckered by Bush in 2002 and he may be suckered again. He's always believed that the Democrats have to be "tougher on defense", and that's why he got suckered the first time.
Bush has a long-term plan to remake the US and the world. Everything he does is part of this plan. Any given thing he does is chosen for political effect, and very little of it has ever been valid policy.
We're talking about Iran right now because Bush wants us to, and the reason he's raised the issue is because he can restore his sagging ratings that way. And it's generally true, and it's worked for Bush, that this kind of war-fever demagogy works.
The reason you're saying what you do isn't because you're worried about Iran. It's because you're aware that Bush's ploy will be powerful in domestic politics, and you think that "thinking seriously about Iran" upon demand will help the Democrats. That's what people tried with the Iraq war.
The political road is uphill, but as long as people are taking Bush's words at face value, we lose. We need to break his hold on the hive mind, and we can't do that by "thinking seriously about Iran" right when he gives us the cue.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 10:55 AM
"You people"? Go screw yourself. Can you find the door unaided?
"Thinking seriously about Iran" doesn't mean anything and won't change anything. What the Democrats need to do is figure out a way to approach the general public. If empty slogans work, fine. If meaningful policies work, even better. But the problem is not Iran, it's public opinion. (And remember -- the TNR people calling for "serious discussion of Iran" are dies-in-the-wool hawks and nothing but hawkishness will shut them up. They're not looking for any new ideas. They plan to sabotage the democrats if they don't get their way).
No one here is a Democratic strategist. The strategists don't listen to us, either. We're just talking about the world we live in.
I don't expect an effective Democratic response one way or another, except that the DLC / TNR hawks will be effective in crippling the party.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 11:04 AM
Um, I wasn't claiming (and in fact I don't believe) that a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable.
Fine. I agree that a nuclear-armed Iran is to be avoided if possible, but is not unacceptable. Why can't we just say that, and ask the other side to show their work?
The 'Toby Keith' reference is way over the line.
Retracted. Though it's hard for me to imagine a lighter jab.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 11:09 AM
Maybe after invading Iran, we can sweep into Pakistan and India to remove their unacceptable nuclear arsenals as well. Or maybe we could plow through Syria on our way to disarming Israel! And after we disarm North Korea, we would have a decent staging ground for taking out China and Russia's nukes.
Let's just go all the way -- now that's some serious shit!
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 11:19 AM
Though it's hard for me to imagine a lighter jab.
Garth Brooks?
Posted by Mike | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 11:51 AM
Look, there are a few inconvenient facts: the President gets to set the agenda, the press seems willing to go along again on Iran, and Ahmadinejad is giving the Bushies a gift a week. So what everyone needs to do is 1) decide how big a problem Iran is, and what needs to be done about it and 2) how to communicate that to the public.
In this case, even more than with Iraq, you'd like to think that "are you fucking kidding me?" is the proper and sufficient response. But with the President saying "grave threat" and Ahmadinejad saying "get rid of Israel," you're never going to get a debate that starts with the presumption that we should do nothing.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:05 PM
Ted H pretty much nails it -- even if he does break out the Ross Perot "you people" (just kidding Ted...). Like it or not, Iran going nuclear is not an issue Bush invented. Likewise, Saddam Hussein was not an issue Bush invented. Denying the existence of a problem just enables your opposition to define the terms of the debate.
That's what happened to the GOP on health care, and that experience should serve as a cautionary tale. No one trusts the GOP on health care; the issue is a big plus for democrats across the board. Is this because everyone has thought deeply about the problems of 3rd party payment and risk pooling, and concludes that market failure is inevitable? I suspect not, and that democrats dominate on this issue because they, unlike republicans, seem legitimately to care about the health care system. Democrats raised the issue to the national level, and would have been thinking about it quote independent of the momentary needs of political perception. Republicans, by contrast, had to be dragged into the debate, and would drop the topic instantly if they could. It may be the case that Republicans truly believe the way to improve health care is deregulation + benign neglect, but by offering that solution reactively, it certainly does appear that improving US health care is not a big priortity for them. So too, I would argue, there is the impression today that constraining hostile regimes is not a big priority for the democrats. I would also argue that both these impressions are accurate: to a first order approximation the GOP elite doesn't care about health care, and the Dem elite doesn't care about Iran, or North Korea, or China. These are not issues that they like to think about, perhaps because in both cases the uniterested party considers benign neglect the obviously correct solution. Moral of the story, perhaps: think how tough it is for libertarians, who want to advance the benign neglect program broadly.
On the substance, as it happens, I really don't know what good options exist w.r.t. Iran. I would go for aggressive multi-lateral economic sanctions, I suppose [[And please do fall over youselves to note that it is All Bush's Fault that such a approach seems unlikely to succeed.]] Why Drum is the villain here I simply don't understand. He's just offering good political advice to his own party.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:20 PM
First of all, your #2 is the whole problem. It's probably impossible. Recently one of the talk shows had four Republicans on to talk about Alito and the discussion of Iran will presumably be similiar. The anti-war position was almost not heard at all before the Iraq war. What Democrats appear will be pro-war Democrats. Even of the whole Democratic party had the same prowar position, though, they would gain nothing from that.
Second, I'm sure that the Democrats have a position on Iran, and I presume it's as good as Bush's. It doesn't make any difference. Bush does control the agenda, and he's agile enough to make sure that he makes the Democrats look bad no matter what they do. He's not going to let this be bipartisan, because hurting the Democrats is one of the main goals of abything he does.
As I've been saying, the public opinion problem and the political prooblem are what we're talking about. Unless he's stopped, Bush will do whatever he's going to do. Pro and anti are our options, and I think that mistrust of Bush is an adequate reason to be anti. But I doubt we can sell that.
Bush paid no cost for his Iraq failure, and whatever he does in Iraq should be assumed to be continuous with that.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:31 PM
I apologize for the 'you people.' SCMT's comment made me extremely angry, but I should have directly the anger only at him and dispensed it with more grace.
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:32 PM
directly=directed in #53
Posted by Ted H. | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:38 PM
Drum is a villain because of his track record, not only because of what he just said.
There are two reasons why the Democrats can't offer a superior alternative to Bush's. One is that no one really speaks for the party, and the party is not united. So there will certainly be a Democrat to demonize, if only Ward Churchill.
The second reason is that, as Yglesias, baa, and others jave noted, there really aren't many good options. The reason we're being asked to be serious is not because there might be a good policy out there no one's thought of yet. It's because we need to convince the viters that we have a serious alternative.
Criteria for a successful serious alternative? 1. Sound tough. 2. Promise success. 3. Make Bush's plan look bad. 4. Suitable for a sound bite.
there's no honest way to do that. IF TNR and Drum are saying that we have to come up with a cheap, flashy, vivid fake plan to catch the voters' attention, they're right. But that's not what they're saying.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:39 PM
But with the President saying "grave threat" and Ahmadinejad saying "get rid of Israel," you're never going to get a debate that starts with the presumption that we should do nothing.
But this is the assumption that is making many of us so angry. The Republicans say, "We must do something about Iran." Why can't we say, "Why?" Or, "Why does it have to be something dramatic? Why can't we contain the problem until Iran goes democratic? (Which it will obviously do, now that we've established the City on the Hill that is Iraq.)" Why must we concede that they've formulated the problem properly? Especially when they haven't shown their work.
Baa, as our thoughtful conservative, offers a good example. He says, "Not too many people define US security interests as the safety of the US mainland." Fine. But that's not a definition of our security interests. Once he defines our interests, we can decide whether we need to (per Kristol) invade. Or we can decide that, on the whole, we prefer fewer rather than more nuclear powers, and suggest that others in the neighborhood are likely to feel the same. Welcome to multilateralism. But first we should go through the effort of defining the problem. And, as they currently control all branches of the federal government, it's incumbent on Republicans to do so first. It's incumbent on Democrats to make clear that Republican responsibility.
Baa and I agree on the present prescription: economic sanctions. China and Russia, who've been deemed the great obstacles to resolution of this issue, have the best reasons not to want Iran to go nuclear. (See, e.g., Chechnya and Afghanistan.) Call their bluff. Bribe them. Whatever.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:47 PM
The fact that Sargent Slaughter is actually crushing the Colts (dressed in blue) is also pissing me off. WTF?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 12:57 PM
Congrats to Matt Weiner, for sure. This makes the Patriot's self-destruction last night all the more painful.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 1:14 PM
Fucking Weiner. The officials try to give it away to the Colts, and they just keep giving it back. Unbelievable.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 2:14 PM
That Bettis fumble was ... unexpected. Quite a game. And again, from my Patriot-o-centric perspective, it just makes the loss last night harder to take.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 2:34 PM
Just to keep Emerson happy: Go Panthers! (WTF? I just turned on the game. Two minutes in, and they're already up 7, and have the ball? This truly is a world gone mad.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 2:53 PM
Yes, I predict a long afternoon for Mr. Grossman.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 2:58 PM
Maybe Bush should be a football coach: "The Patriots are a threat. They have to be stopped."
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 2:58 PM
I'm changing teams, Apo. Dungy's gone, Lewis's gone. Can't be three for three. If you were a real Democrat, you'd change and root for the Bears, too.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:03 PM
Julius Peppers, baby!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:13 PM
Knee was down, dammit.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:14 PM
You win that one, ogged. And by the by, has any coach in the "team apparel era" ever looked better on the sidelines than Lovie Smith. He's rocking the leather coat.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:17 PM
The refs is in the bag!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:17 PM
Jeebus. Does Tagliabue have some sort of direct comm link to the officials in the playoffs?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:19 PM
Fuck.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:25 PM
Steve Smith, baby!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:25 PM
Huge stop. If I'm Carolina, maybe I fake the kick.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:28 PM
That was a stout goal line stand.
If you take out the two big passes, the quraterbacks combined to go 4-15 for 21 yards in the 1st quarter.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:32 PM
Yeah, baby.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:40 PM
Urlacher!!!!!
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:41 PM
Nice pass, Jake. God, he drives me nuts.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:41 PM
Now that's impressive.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:42 PM
See, Apo: Once you have a black coach, even your white guys can jump.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:43 PM
SCTM, that's all just part of the conspiracy to deny white people their due in professional sports.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:46 PM
Luckiest fumble recovery evar.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 3:48 PM
A touchdown here would be huge.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:00 PM
Yup. Big play coming up here.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:01 PM
Go for it!!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:02 PM
Smart reach, baby! It's a game!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:05 PM
Nice call Ogged!
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:05 PM
Call me Lovie.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:06 PM
So, about Iran, I think Ferguson may have come unhinged.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:08 PM
Hey, not now, eb.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:10 PM
You could always create a football thread, you know.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:11 PM
Hey, I'm watching the game too, I just didn't want to lose the link as I'm prone to do.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:11 PM
You know, Becks, I bet those 15 year old boys are watching football.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:12 PM
You could always create a football thread, you know.
And you were so shaping up to be blogging's Dream Barbie....
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:13 PM
I should send the 15 year olds my roommate's Match profile. She's been freaking the fuck out all afternoon.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:14 PM
Tillman!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:15 PM
The Bear's defense is looking pretty damn porous.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:16 PM
Which one is The Bear?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:17 PM
I'll admit my mistake after the game, Carolina boy.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:19 PM
Is the Superbowl on, or something?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:22 PM
Nah, it's halftime, you can talk to us again.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:23 PM
I thought it was some kind of oblique commentary on Iran.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:24 PM
87: The sentence, "This not only gave Islamic societies a youthful energy that contrasted markedly with the slothful senescence of Europe," makes me think that he's channeling Philip Johnson, if you can channel the living.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:27 PM
For whatever it's worth, Ahmedinejad says he is not interested in the bomb.
A nation which has culture, logic and civilization does not need nuclear weapons. The countries which seek nuclear weapons are those which want to solve all problems by the use of force. Our nation does not need such weapons.
Posted by Yuri Guri | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:33 PM
Um, Yuri, we only believe him if he says bad stuff. Good stuff is just posturing.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:35 PM
I read an article in The Independent today that tried to paint Ahmadinejad as believing in some kind of Islamic end-times thing:
Is there any truth to this or just some reporter being hysterical? End-times-ers on both sides of this conflict (I'm counting Bush's far-right Christian allies) would be disturbing.Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:36 PM
You can't stop Rex Grossman, baby!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:39 PM
The world may end very soon... but not before the Bears get this touchdown!
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:39 PM
About Ahmadinejad: it doesn't matter. The mullahs are not suicidal, they've been engaged in pragmatic, if repressive, pragmatism for the past twenty years. Ahmadinejad has the same position that was described over and over as toothless when Khatami held it. He's not dragging that country into war, and if it comes down to battling it out in the streets, the vast majority of people oppose him.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:42 PM
Sorry, didn't know halftime was over. Have fun with your football, boys.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:42 PM
Thanks for the answer, Ogged.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:45 PM
The line that tells you that Ferguson is bloodthirsty and dishonest is the crap about all the young men in Iran being "ready to fight." They're not even willing to take to the streets for a revolution: they're explicit about this: "we've seen enough bloodshed" some of them told me--there's no way at all that they're willing to fight for some crazy religious dude. Ferguson just wants war; simple as that--that article is one of the more sickening things I've read in a while. Ok, back to the game.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:48 PM
I thought Saddam was Hitler -- so is Ferguson telling me that we narrowly missed having two Hitlers in the Middle East at the same time?
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:50 PM
No, no - Ahmadinejad is Stalin. Opposed Hitler, equally bad.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:52 PM
I tell you who is ready to fight, though! The Bears defense, that's who!
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:52 PM
Too bad Rex Grossman isn't Jewish.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:53 PM
OKaaayyy....?!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:56 PM
Speaking of Hitler, did anyone hear Manning's post-game press conference? What a putz.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:56 PM
Yeah, whatever happened to classy quaterbacks? I know, I'll blame my offensive line! Next year should be a blast in Indy.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:58 PM
Consensus!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 4:58 PM
God, Smith is killing us.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:02 PM
Where's the bestiality and age-of-consent thread? Isn't this supposed to be it?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:03 PM
"I'm trying to be a good teammate here" -- the football equivalent of the lying sentence?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:03 PM
Pragmatic pragmatism, huh ogged?
Becks, why is she freaking out?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:05 PM
Are you freaking kidding me? How does that happen? (Smith, obviously)
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:05 PM
"I'm trying to be a good teammate here"
That's what made it really bad. If he'd just called them out, they might have taken it, but now they just hate him.
Damn it! Damn it!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:05 PM
Can't get much wider open than that.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:05 PM
Maybe the Bears would like to hire a safety?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:07 PM
122 - My roommate? She's a total football fan, of the screaming, stomping and throwing shit at the TV variety. She was rooting for Indiana.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:08 PM
Okay, on the one hand, that sucked. On the other hand, we did get to see Steve Smith hump that large pole. So there was an upside.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:08 PM
I missed it! I just left for thirty seconds! Fuck!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:08 PM
TiVo, Timbot, TiVo.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:09 PM
No sex during the game, Timbot.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:09 PM
You've got something in common with the Bears' corner, Tim.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:10 PM
What's the deal with Pam Oliver's hat?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:17 PM
There are two reasons why the Democrats can't offer a superior alternative to Bush's. One is that no one really speaks for the party, and the party is not united. So there will certainly be a Democrat to demonize, if only Ward Churchill.
JE was making a crucial point here. People speak carelessly about 'the Republicans' and 'the Democrats', as if each party were a corporate entity with one spokesperson reporting an official position. It ain't like that.
I suspect it's one of those group identification phenomena, where those within the group can be nuanced and decide who is really a member (e.g. Catholics aren't really Christians) - but everyone else is one big undifferentiated lumpen, and whatever Ward Churchill says must be archetypical of the beliefs of all Democrats. If only we(?!) could make Pat Robertson the poster boy for all Republicans.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:18 PM
Christ, we're going to run out of players.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:21 PM
That's got to be reviewed.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:22 PM
Are you kidding me on the TD?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:23 PM
It's being reviewed.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:24 PM
"Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration's original principle of pre-emption."
And the reader is bound to ask whether or not the value and significance of historical understanding is vindicated by such forays into an unknown and as-yet unknowable future.
Posted by IA | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:25 PM
Oh yeah! So sweet!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:27 PM
140 to the television.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:28 PM
I'm with you on that, IA. Ferguson seems to have really squandered the opportunity to something useful for history with his fame.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:29 PM
"do something"
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:30 PM
Time for the defense to step up.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:31 PM
I have to admit, as I get older, I have a harder time watching football and enjoying the big hits: I end up thinking, "oh, that must really hurt," or just worrying about their careers. Maybe because now they're almost all younger than I am.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:33 PM
He's killing us.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:34 PM
238 yards from scrimmage for Smith.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:35 PM
Nice kick.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:38 PM
Totally agree with you on the big hits. Do you recall Merill Hoge's essay in SI about ten years back? He wrote that at one game post-game breakfast, he forked up some scrambled eggs, and was blowing on them to cool them off. He was blowing, and blowing, and then realized that he didn't have eggs on his fork, but a section of an orange.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:39 PM
I didn't see that, no.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:42 PM
This next series is the ballgame.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:43 PM
They can give up one more short first down, I think, and still have a chance. But this stop would be good.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:45 PM
Woot!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:46 PM
Big stop!
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:46 PM
I have to say it: Aikman's a pretty good color guy. Buck remains irritating.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:51 PM
OK, I'll admit it. Despite my better judgement, listening to a bunch of guys talk football - kinda hot.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:51 PM
Of course that's why we do it, Becks.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:53 PM
Huge third down here.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:53 PM
game.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:54 PM
Too bad, Rex.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:54 PM
What happened to the delay of game call??
Well, that's ballgame.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:54 PM
Oh well.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:54 PM
It has to be admitted, Carolina kicked our butt; they totally deserved the game.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:56 PM
Ogged!
You pussy! It's not over. They're going to get the ball back.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:58 PM
Amazingly, it's still not over.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:59 PM
But I've already given up!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 5:59 PM
No jinx, but cross-posted.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:00 PM
And it would be a complete miracle if they managed to tie it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:00 PM
Welcome to the desert of the real, pjs.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:03 PM
They lost because Ogged didn't believe.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:04 PM
170: Well, it was definitely a Tinkerbell defense.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:08 PM
139- Ferguson is generally obsessed with counterfactuals, writing those Virtual History books.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:09 PM
Super Bowl predictions?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:28 PM
Yes. I predict there will be one.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:30 PM
I predict I will not watch it.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:32 PM
Becks is banned!
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:33 PM
Carolina over Denver.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:33 PM
With luck, one of the team planes will crash not too long before the superbowl, sucking up all the media oxygen and thus precluding the invasion of Iraq.
Preferably it will be the Denver plane. Two goats and nine 16-year-old girls will be on that plane.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:55 PM
Iran.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:56 PM
Oh man, don't joke about plane crashes.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:56 PM
Carolina is looking tough. So is Pittsburgh, but it's tough to imagine a team that banged-up winning again, let alone winning two more. But, there's no way I'm agreeing with Timbot. Carolina over Pittsburgh.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 6:58 PM
They'll be immortal, like Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:15 PM
Did Emerson just pick Iran to win the Super Bowl? Dude, you are so going to hell.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:17 PM
No, I mean an organic, all-natural plane crash. Anything to stop the Super Bowl.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:27 PM
Jesus Christ. Did Weiner shoot his colon out his backside when the Bus gave up that fumble? I nearly did, and I didn't really care who won.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:33 PM
He hasn't commented, so it's fair to say that he probably did.
In other news, I should really drag my ass to finally see Brokeback Mountain tonight, but I'm so enjoying sitting in my chair, with two burgers (that's right, burgers, bitches) in my belly, and Matrix:Reloaded on the TV and "Assassin at the Gate" promising me knowledge. How does anyone ever leave the house?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:37 PM
You're enjoying Matrix: Reloaded?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:38 PM
If you're all happy and contented and enjoying a post-football glow, I would say stay home. Brokeback will only bring you down. It will still be there tomorrow.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:40 PM
I like the flying monk outfit, and right now the Monica Bellucci scenes are on.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:40 PM
It will still be there tomorrow.
That's the spirit. Of course, that's also the spirit that's kept me from seeing it yet. While I was in NY, I picked up something that said "Carpe Mañana!"
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:42 PM
What was wrong with "Carpe cras"?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:44 PM
Nobody says "cras" when you ask them to do something.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:46 PM
Wolfson, WMYBSALP?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:46 PM
No, but you may have heard the word "procrastinate" once or twice.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:47 PM
Furthermore, no one who doesn't actually know Spanish should say "mañana" when you ask them to do something.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:48 PM
Ben, why have you become unfunny?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:49 PM
He was funny?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:51 PM
He's just grouchy that he can't look at the panties.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:52 PM
Aw, it's ok Ben, I'm sure you'll see panties again someday.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:56 PM
Having installed User Agent Switcher, I can now view panties.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:56 PM
Told ya. Anything else you'd like to know about your future?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:57 PM
I'm writing a script to enable me to see panties.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:57 PM
You know, Reloaded isn't bad; or, there are several good scenes. I'm digging the motorcycle going against traffic.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:58 PM
What about the dancing autochthons? How did you feel about them?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 7:59 PM
Is this that one? I thought that was the third one.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:02 PM
Plus, your doppelganger is in this one.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:03 PM
That's this one, and what doppelganger?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:05 PM
Cornel West.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:05 PM
I'm still waiting for 24 to come on. All these weeks without it have led me to be against torture. I need to see something that makes it ok again.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:10 PM
Ben wears 3-piece suits and french cuffs? Mr. Casual indeed.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:26 PM
I need to go on the record with this: the Architect's dialogue is the worst in the history of American film.
Posted by Jonathan | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:33 PM
Don't you think it's deliberately bad, for maximum anti-intellectuallism?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:35 PM
Watching the Matrix: Reloaded with other people was one of the more squirmily embarassing three hours of my life.
And ogged, hamburgers? Someone recently linked to a thread where your careful rationing of avocados led into an all-out flame war, and you're eating hamburgers now?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:49 PM
Given the pretentiousness on display elsewhere, no. Of course you know this, but I'm in an earnest mood.
Posted by Jonathan | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:51 PM
What do hamburgers have to do with avocados?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:55 PM
215--Fat content.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 8:58 PM
Two hamburgers, Jack, with bacon.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:01 PM
Jack cheese?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:02 PM
216 -- Also they are good in combination.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:02 PM
Jackmormon.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:03 PM
Avocado on a hamburger is rather tasty.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:03 PM
If Jeremy meant 215, I believe we are in agreement.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:05 PM
Wait, never mind me, yes, 216. Bah.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:06 PM
Damn, now I want a bacon, avocado, and jack cheese hamburger.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:06 PM
I'm not a fan of avocado, but burgers with bacon, some nice cheddar, red onions, some lettuce, maybe some caramelized onion too, yeah, I'd eat that.
Jeremy's comment makes sense with both "216" and "215" as the referent, so let's take him at his word.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:07 PM
Sorry, they're all in my tummy.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:07 PM
Did you make them on your awesome new grill pan?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:08 PM
I've seen your tummy, ogged, and I don't believe it could even hold two burgers.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:08 PM
Carmelized onions...yeah, I'd hit that.
(I had a rather unsatisfying dinner, as you might be guessing by now; I'm not hungry, but it wasn't good.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:10 PM
that's a lot of onion.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:11 PM
Actually, Becks, I got them at the awesome Wendy's drive-thru.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:11 PM
Ben, it's time for an eat-off.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:12 PM
In re food, I am happy to report that the "Hope & Tim's" soup that I just ate, which was called, I think, "summer fresh tomato basil," that I purchased from the store, because I am lazy, was excellent.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:13 PM
Wendy's? How disappointing.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:14 PM
Wendy's? How disappointing.
I had other, "better" options, but I had a Wendy's craving. They were quite perfect.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:16 PM
Agree with Becks.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:16 PM
that's a lot of onion.
A raw red onion slice and some caramelized non-red onions taste nothing alike, so it's cool.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:17 PM
Best fast food burger that I've had anywhere in the US: Western Burger (IIRC), at a Carl's Jr. Other nominations?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:20 PM
I was eating at this restaurant, Real Food Daily, in Santa Monica, which serves excellent vegan food, and the woman at the table next to us was grilling the server about whether each item had any onion and/or garlic in it (both of which she was violently opposed to). Seriously, what kind of existence is that?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:20 PM
Maybe she has a severe sulfur reaction?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:21 PM
Carl's isn't bad, but it's no In 'n Out
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:23 PM
I don't think she was allergic, because she finally ended up getting the veggie burger, which was made with onions in the burger itself (but none on top) after the server and I convinced her that the burger didn't have a particularly oniony taste. She just didn't like the taste.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:23 PM
Seriously, what kind of existence is that?
Did she look like an actress?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:24 PM
In'n'Out is what a hamburger's all about.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:24 PM
241: What is the Big Fucking Deal with In n' Out? It seems to be a cult among Californians, and was super hyped up. I finally tried one, and wasn't particularly impressed.
I didn't even think their fries were good - another source of hype.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:24 PM
Maybe you have no soul?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:25 PM
In 'n Out is awesome, escpecially if you're getting the 4x4.
There's also this little hole in the wall place next to the University of Utah called B & D that's excellent.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:27 PM
It could have been that the one time I had In n' Out was in less than ideal circumstances - at some rest stop in the middle of nowhere, with two guys I didn't know (Craigslist rideshare; that was interesting).
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:27 PM
My father hates onions so much that he'll sometimes refuse to eat a dish with cooked celery in it, just to be safe. Since every time he left for business or hockey, my mother immediately made a huge vat of onion soup, I associate the smell of cooking onions with gleefully-getting-away-with-something. I use them in everything I possible can, now.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:28 PM
Yeah, I don't really get In n' OUt either.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:28 PM
The thing I find most fascinating about In and Out is that they are supposedly owned by a bunch of Mormons and their expansion is limited by how quickly they breed. Could be an urban legend but I'm sticking with it.
I've only had their burgers twice and they were yummy. Steak and Shake is the best you can get outside of the land o' In-and-Out, followed by Sonic.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:28 PM
Craigslist rideshare? That sounds like a serial killer story waiting to happen.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-15-06 9:28 PM
Sonic. Onion Rings. Mmmm.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim |