I was thinking about a country completely different from the US that was pursuing a reckless and destructive campaign led by people who had no concern for either public or elite opinion -- and I was wondering, in that country that is completely NOT the US, at what point targetted assassinations become a valid political option for people of good will.
I think that, in that country that is NOT the US, it's about the same time that the people who have no concern for ether public or elite opinion start actually gearing up for a second completely unjustified, batshit crazy insane war on a country that it thinks is out to get it.
The Washington Times may be consulting the wrong oddsmakers. This is 5-1 against by March 07 by either US or Israel. But please, continue discussing treason.
This is all completely hypothetical. I'm actually a total pacifist. I was a member of a Catholic pacifist group up until last month or so, when I couldn't afford to pay dues.
I'm pretty sure that pacifist groups are considered "terrorist organizations" by this Administration, Kotsko. In arguing arguing against war, you are really arguing for dead American babies. You really are a member of the Party of Death.
It's an interesting question. I kid around about hitting the point where I'm crawling through the sewers with grenades in my teeth: there's some point at which a government becomes evil enough that violent resistance is appropriate but how do you recognize that point? (Not suggesting that we, here, in the US, are anywhere near that point, Mister FBI man.)
Under any reasonable definition of "treason," Bush and his close advisors should be in jail right now, rather than allowing them continued control of the US military.
I disagree with 13 (I assume you mean treason to the constitution or some such, and don't think such a concept is tenable), said something like 12 ages ago and stand by it, and don't see what's wrong with reading 2 as saying, "When is treason moral?" The answer isn't "Never."
Well, 13 isn't true under the legal definition of 'treason'; OTOH I think under the legal definition of 'treason' even targeted assassinations (redundant, BTW) don't count as treason. Under reasonable definitions of 'war crimes' they should certainly be in jail. And Bush and his advisors have certainly done more to hurt U.S. interests, out of malign recklessness, than those crazy Catholic pacifists.
(pwned by 16, but really: What is 'treason' under the constitution? Is assassinating government officials sufficient? I would have thought not. Not that that isn't rightly illegal for other reasons, Mr. FBI man.)
I actually regard US power as currently unstoppable, at least in terms of causing pure destruction. As long as the country continues to be run by sociopathic criminals, there is no end in sight -- even if "we" don't invade Iran, we're going to continue torturing and murdering the people of Iraq for no apparent reason, as well as mild-mannered Afghan goatherds, etc. I also believe that it would be physically impossible to assassinate the president or any other high-ranking official in the executive branch.
The only hope would be a procedural thing to remove them from power, but the Democrats are such useless pieces of shit that they would never do so, even if they regained a supermajority in both houses of congress. So we just kind of have to wait this one out and assume that they will, in fact, step down peacefully after the current term is up -- and hope that whatever Republican gets elected in 2008 doesn't appoint any of these maniacs to his cabinet.
So in general, I'm thinking of just checking out and joining one of Mary Daly's Wiccan covens, except she wouldn't let me in due to my gender.
I think the point about the "point" as in LB's point is that you can never recognise it in advance; that it's always obvious in retrospect; and that the moment is always too short.
Wherefore we read of resistence and revolution, but never of pre-emptive popular uprisings.
I assume you mean treason to the constitution or some such
Oh, I could be talked into laying out an argument that Bush and Co. have knowingly, for domestic political advantage, pursued a foreign policy that was in the best interest of Al Qaeda and terrorists aligned with them. Aiding the enemy for personal advantage? Treason isn't a crazy way to characterize that.
I think the point about the "point" as in LB's point is that you can never recognise it in advance; that it's always obvious in retrospect; and that the moment is always too short.
In fact a point that I considered making: if at any time you feel justified in taking to the sewers with bombs in your teeth, you will almost inevitably have wished to have done so a long time earlier.
if at any time you feel justified in taking to the sewers with bombs in your teeth, you will almost inevitably have wished to have done so a long time earlier.
I don't know if that's true. Recent history seems to have shown that there's a certain utility to having "other priorities" during times of a conflict you support.
Syria's trying to get away with hiding the forbidden letters at the end of its name, and scrambling their order, but that sort of tricksiness only makes Cheney madder.
Armed resistance is a personal decision of free men, it generally means the social contract has broken down. Do not expect mass support. I do not necessarily approve of the Minutemen (18th C), or John Brown, or Emma Goldman's boyfriend, or union violence, or Sirhan Sirhan. or the Weathermen, or Tim McVeigh...but they is what it will almost always look like.
They is...yeccch. War is ugly. Civil war or insurrection is the ugliest. The people vs Bush would not be a face-off on the Texas fields near Fort Hood, 1 million Dems with pitchforks taking on the Armored Division. The tank ran over the guy in Tianeman Square, or could have. This ain't the French resistance, although the reprisals make make that resistance unpretty.
It would be Baghdad. Terrorism, death squads, assassinations.
In fact a point that I considered making: if at any time you feel justified in taking to the sewers with bombs in your teeth, you will almost inevitably have wished to have done so a long time earlier.
That's why you've gotta buy some guns right now, just in case.
And who is really capable of that? Well, since approximately one black voting organizer was killed in Mississippi every month for years in the early sixties, I would strongly presume that Trent Lott and Haley Barbour remember it well, and know some killers personally, if not having them on their staff.
I don't think the left is as well-prepared as the dittoheads.
And can you really hold more than one grenades in your teeth? Isn't it typically a knife one holds in one's teeth? This is going to be the worst insurrection ever.
One holds the grenade pin in one's teeth, after pulling out said pin with said teeth. One could, over the course of an evening, collect several grenade pins in one's teeth in like fashion.
Teh Liberal Blogosphere Is Teh Fightingest!1!11!11!111!!!1
In seriousness, Bob is right. This is part of the reason why our democratic institutions are so important, because there is no alternative to them.
And that's part of what makes it so scandalous that Bush is claiming monarchic power, with one advance accountability moment every four years (if you count the 2000 election). He should not be able to unilaterally start a war without Congress's consent, nor should he be able to lock people up permanently without meaningful trials. Yet that is where we are.
Worse leaders than Bush have done worse things to their nations' interests without suffering from serious armed uprisings. Just thought I'd toss that one out there.
A military insurrection isn't going to work against the greatest military force in the history of the world. Something akin to the early Christians' strategy of martyrdom is the only way -- learning to recognize the moments when the spectacle of an obviously just person dying can erode the consent of the governed.
Things like completely checking out of normal life are always helpful, too -- look at the hatred toward the hippies. The desert fathers did that, and it was a big fucking deal when the Empire had to fight an uphill battle against the appalling death rates of the ancient world.
A strategy of refusal, combined with a willingness to die under certain circumstances if it will help with recruitment -- i.e., increasing the drain on the Empire -- is the only way to go. Surely the Christians could've taken down the Empire entirely if they hadn't fallen for the trick of being made the official religion.
And as Felix notes, knives are way more punk rock than grenades.
Hey Weiner, I've been meaning to ask, what's your take on the current state of play on the Plame leak? Do you buy the inadvertent Armitage screwup scenario?
learning to recognize the moments when the spectacle of an obviously just person dying can erode the consent of the governed.
You'd probably have a lot harder time convincing the consenting governed that you were an obviously just person, if you're dead and the government doesn't like you. These early Christians benefitted hugely from the fact that propaganda and mass media had not yet been invented.
And General J.C. Christian's inner Frenchman, but I'm thinking someone actually in today's chain of command somewhere.
When you've got generals turning down promotions to retire, you've really scewed up. And there's pretty disturbing numbers on the officer class in general fleeing the military. If remarks by retired generals and the conversations I've had with friends back from Iraq are any indicator, a hell of a lot of the military is seriously pissed.
I'm curious, in countries in which there were successful revolutions, like Iran and Romania, for example, what portion of the population supported the regime to the end. Something like 35% here still does. That's a big chunk.
I don't know if I have ever communicated how scared I am, but I am not so far from believing that the people who committed, or condoned, or financed the Birmingham Church bombings are now in charge of the gov't. Or people who would have if they were of that generation. Events like Katrina do not reassure. IOW, we on the left may not have a choice but to play Moqtada Sadr to Bushco's Sunni minority.
And if you look at America, and the rabid right and the docile left, you may understand why the Baathist/Sunni minority were able to rule Iraq for generations. It is about "the willing" as the Duke said. Moqtada is no nice guy, but I think he understands his enemy, and his Shia compatriots.
I don't know how far the Ancien Regime of New Dixie is willing to go. I honestly don't. I don't know how much support they would have, but I suspect enough. I am pretty sure if Bush suspends the 2008 elections and shoots protesters, most of us will simply go to work the next morning. I worry that Bushco understands that.
I don't really blame the Iraqis for Saddam, or the Germand for Hitler. Violence is tough.
and baa and Idealist may be nice guys, but like Germans waking up the moring after the Reichstag fire of Night of the Long Knives, I doubt they are willing to eat a bullet to rectify their mistake in judgement.
I am pretty sure if Bush suspends the 2008 elections and shoots protesters, most of us will simply go to work the next morning.
What I'm afraid of in my paranoid fantasies isn't a suspension of the 2008 election -- it's a blatantly stolen one. I do think we need to spend the next two years figuring out what the hell to do if we wake up on the morning after Election Day and the official results bear no resemblance to reality.
And come to think of it, I don't know why I'm putting the paranoia off two years. Although with Congressional races, it's hard to figure out what would be 'blatant' rather than merely surprising.
63: The 2004 election was stolen. The 2000 election was stolen. What did we do then? What is the burden of proof for "blatant," compared to what we've already experienced?
I don't for a moment believe that the Republicans could blatantly steal an election. I do think that no one would do anything in the face of real disruptions of standard understandings of America as long as most of us still had a nice standard of living. The Civil Rights Movement always strikes me as something of a miracle.
61: Propaganda is better now, and coersive force is more powerful as well. I don't know that the strategy of martyrdom could work in our situation, as an empirical matter. But it's a difference of degree, rather than kind.
What I'm wondering is, what if people just all decided to default on their debt all at once? What if everyone stopped paying the mortgage and absolutely refused to leave? What if everyone decided, fuck it, I'm not going to put in 70-hour weeks anymore? What if every Walmart employee started systematically shoplifting?
66: I see a significant parallel. I've been studying this and pondering it for years. Your flat denial of a significant parallel is unconvincing to me.
I don't find a 'blatantly' stolen election too likely, either. To be considered 'blatant' there'd have to be a broad consensus about the facts, and this would never happen. Any uncertainties would be nursed and amplified until a suitable level of confusion was achieved, and thus the status quo maintained.
There's a case to be made for 2000, but I don't know of any compelling evidence that the 2004 election was stolen.
There's no compelling evidence, except the uniform discrepancy between the exit polls and the final results...but since various people who had the capability to steal it also had the motive to steal it, I assume they did.
Bush suspends the 2008 elections and shoots protesters,
But there's the rub. Surely you don't mean Bush will personally shoot the protestors. So he can only do as you envision if the armed forces are willing to obey him unconditionally even as he is ordering them to turn on peaceful protestors. Some might go along, but I think many (too many) would think "wait, what the hell, who does this guy think he is? He wasn't even elected!" SO they basically don't listen to him. In worst case this degenerates into civil war (with a split in the armed forces' loyalty), but I can't really imagine that in present circumstances. In other words I think Bush's planned dictatorship is destined to fail. It's really hard to pull off in a country with as well-developed a democratic tradition as ours.
I'd think a non-uniform discrepancy would be more indicative of a stolen election; a uniform discrepancy looks to me more like a flaw in the poll. I don't rule out that the election was stolen, but the evidence I've seen isn't knockdown.
OTOH, wasn't 71 true of the 2000 election?
(baa: I don't know what Armitage was thinking, but there isn't any doubt that after the initial leak Rove made sure that Plame's name was publicized, is there? And that Bush pledged to fire anyone involved in the leak, and went back on his pledge? Since Plame worked on Iranian WMD I'd think that this would be a bigger deal than the technical legality of their conduct, but apparently that's not what serious people think.)
To be considered 'blatant' there'd have to be a broad consensus about the facts, and this would never happen. Any uncertainties would be nursed and amplified until a suitable level of confusion was achieved, and thus the status quo maintained.
I think you could get to 'blatant' if in the days going up to the election, the Democrat had a substantial lead -- I'm talking consistently outside the polls' margin of error -- that disappeared in a suspicious fashion, with a fair amount of evidence of chicanery.
76: you're going to have to link to a lot more than that to demonstrate that the exit polls didn't mean much. There's a fair amount of back-and-forth on this.
What was different about the 2000 election was that it took too long to figure it out -- by the time we understood what was happening, it had happened. A precisely similar thing couldn't happen again, I don't think.
My goodness I posted way late. Yes, a stolen election is more of a concern than bloodshed in the streets. Although if anything becomes obvious I think it falls apart all the same. And I really do think it would be pretty hard to hide.
(Although with these fancy new voting machines with no paper trails, all bets are off. There really may be no greater short-term threat to our democracy.)
82: What? In 2000 we saw what happened as it happened. Before the Supreme Court decision came down there was the ridiculous stay decision, in which Scalia declared that it could harm Bush irrevocably to count the votes. If they rig the machines we won't get nearly this much advance warning.
Also in my gut I think this is a touch overwrought; that we won't see a blatant stolen election in 2008. I don't exactly think the GOP is this corrupt, though I'm not sure why I don't. I worry more about the damage to democracy that they've done in between elections, which is considerable.
I think you could get to 'blatant' if in the days going up to the election, the Democrat had a substantial lead -- I'm talking consistently outside the polls' margin of error -- that disappeared in a suspicious fashion, with a fair amount of evidence of chicanery.
You could, although I doubt you would. Experts who had some plausible-sounding explanation for the result would be on the cable channels all day, for one thing; the encouragement would be for people to see that it was such a confusing thing that happened, it's reasonable for people to disagree but there's just no way to be certain etc etc. Thus, anyone who says it's blatant cannot be trusted, because they are all partisans who have an interest in lying to you.
But Bush wouldn't order the military to turn on peaceful protesters. The election would be "temporarily" postponed due to hightened terrorist threat and protesters deemed a threat to national security. I can think of many, many soldiers who would go along.
I think you're underestimating the weirdness of Bush v. Gore. Sure, the stay decision telegraphed what they were going to do, but that was only, what, four days before? Before that point, it looked as if the full recount was going to happen.
Also in my gut I think this is a touch overwrought; that we won't see a blatant stolen election in 2008. I don't exactly think the GOP is this corrupt, though I'm not sure why I don't.
This is almost certainly right -- I did say it was a paranoid fantasy. But it's the one that worries me.
I can think of many, many soldiers who would go along.
Despite the implications of my post, it's not soldiers you worry about, it's generals. And I really don't see too many buying into this. When such things succeed it's because the military leadership genuinely believes they they're doing is for the nation's good (even if that is often a stilted, incorrect assessment). I don't at all get that vibe between our military leaders and Bush.
70: Adam, I'm curious as to the degree of parallel you see. I'm on shaky ground for me, but as I understand it Rome, at it's peak, was without peer politically, militarily, agriculturally, architecturally, and in engineering, medicine, etc. at least within the world with any significant interaction with Rome.
I suppose you could argue that US military superiority is approaching the same order today, but I don't know enough about that to know if it would fly. It certainly doesn't hold in most fields, at all.
I can't even imagine that complete US collapse would have the same sort of economic impact that the collapse of Rome did, could it? It certainly wouldn't set back knowledge like Romes collapse did. It took something like 1000 years to build a comparable city to Rome in europe, didn't it?
Experts who had some plausible-sounding explanation for the result would be on the cable channels all day, for one thing; the encouragement would be for people to see that it was such a confusing thing that happened, it's reasonable for people to disagree but there's just no way to be certain etc etc.
Part of what I think we should be doing, to prevent my paranoid dreams from coming true, is putting in a lot of effort before the election publicizing and discussing what would be an impossibly suspicious result. Semi-scholarly articles on polling procedures, talking heads talking about the kinds of discrepancies that do and don't show up -- nothing inaccurate, just priming the discourse on what's known about this sort of thing.
And a hell of a lot of serious effort on better, larger sample, more accurate exit polls.
You would have to set Rome back a few hundred years from the era we usually consider for the analogy to work. If the U.S. is any kind of Rome, it is the Rome from just after the Punic Wars. The Senate is still, sort of, in control.
And I think, at most points during Rome's dominance, you could make an argument that Greece and similar conquered areas were culturally and intellectually superior to the territory within the boot. That is, someone who knows more about this than me could make that argument. Sure, Greece was under Roman military control. But then, what's with this NATO thing?
I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone that this is a FOX anchor quoting from Arnaud de Borchgrave, the individual presumably behind the Washington Times's editorial process that "gay marriage" only ever be referred to as "gay 'marriage,'" a policy for which all of his employees should be referred to as "'journalists.'" Even de Borchgrave the credibility he doesn't deserve, he's talking about "odds makers." Like, users at Sportsbets.com or whatever? The same who bet that we'd have marched through to Syria by now and so forth?
It's not that the Bush administration isn't deeply unsettling. Rather, taking this story—that one apparatchik told another—remotely serious and flipping right the eff out is, in fact, doing your part to ensure that liberals look deeply unserious about foreign policy. Comments like this are deeply out of whack with the subject at hand, which involves two jerk-offs daydreaming aloud about war with Iran.
I think you're underestimating the weirdness of Bush v. Gore.
Or not remembering that at the time, we didn't know how bad Bush Jr. would be. Sure, I was bummed that we would have another conservative president, but Bush Sr. wasn't a crazyman. He was just a president whose policies I didn't like. Since I am all enviro all the time, I would have loved a Gore presidency, but I wasn't gonna take to the streets over a run-of-the-mill Republican presidency. I thought Bush Jr. would be bad, but I didn't know it would be this bad (and he wouldn't have had so much free rein if it weren't for Sept. 11, which we also weren't expecting.).
Rather, taking this story—that one apparatchik told another—remotely serious and flipping right the eff out is, in fact, doing your part to ensure that liberals look deeply unserious about foreign policy.
I don't think this is true. A serious attitude toward foreign policy has to acknowledge that the current administration is liable to do absolutely any damn-fool thing that enters their heads.
A serious attitude toward the right-wing press has to acknowledge that they will say absolutely any damn-fool thing that enters their heads. What else could they possibly hope for than to have Democrats ask "Whither revolution?" just two months before we're scheduled to sweep Congress? (Using elections, even.)
"2004 was stolen" is crap. Fuck the Electoral College and Ohio. If you take the popular vote by a 7 figure margin, you've won. I haven't seen any evidence that they stole a couple million votes. Kerry and the Democrats campaigned like pansies, and we lost. Either we come to terms with that, or we keep on losing.
"If you take the popular vote by a 7 figure margin, you've won."
This is like saying, if you've won, you've won. The issue is whether the 7 point margin reflects the votes as actually cast. There's not a knock-down case here, but neither is the issue frivolous. I have a different meaning of "pansy" than you on this one.
A serious attitude toward the right-wing press has to acknowledge that they will say absolutely any damn-fool thing that enters their heads.
At the Corner, the big story today is about why granting a limited visa to "mass murdering terrorist" ex-Iranian President Khatamei sends the wrong signal to the Iranian Masses Longing To Be Free.
Can we please agree, as a country, not to take seriously anything said by anyone who insists on "homicide bomb" or "Islamo-fascism"? Which is to say, the Corner and TNR.
92: I appear to have alienated a sympathetic swing voter in Ohio. I apologize. I'm glad we have the Democratic thought police to keep us all on message.
I vote a straight Democratic ticket every time, solely because they are (a) not Republicans and (b) capable of winning. I actually hold the Democrats -- meaning the people who actually have power in the party, not the people who are blackmailed into voting for them -- in contempt. (I can't think of an exception off-hand.)
The Party Machine is much more interested in continuing to win elections than in enshrining Bush, and he, personally, does not wield the power and influence necessary to usurp utter command away from his handlers and coddlers and advisors and rivals. Hasn't there already been noise that Republican members of Congress in less-than-rock-solid districts/states are trying to distance themselves a bit? Isn't that, ultimately, what the Dubai Ports World thing was about for many of them? By 2008 he's going to be someone they just want to keep the lid on long enough to transition power to someone less entirely retarded, try to solidify Bush as someone or another's New Reagan, and forget his ass faster than that of a two-dollar rentboy.
There are other Republicans who would like to be President one day. There is no grand conspiracy to erect a Dark Throne constructed from the femurs of dead children. They will pay lip service to whatever quote-unquote issues are used to enshrine Bush in memory, yes, the same way they still pay lip service to Reagan's Official History of being for small government, blahdy-blah, while at the same time enlarging government at breakneck pace. Yes, they will say very nice things about him, as one generally must do of a member of one's party after they've been President twice. They will say these things with all the enthusiasm necessary to muffle the sound of them bouncing their own legs under the table, impatient for their chance at the big chair, each desperate for Bush to clear the stage so s/he can establish emself as the real Republican in the room and the rest of the competition as disastrously incompetent.
If Bush were to delay the election in 2008 due to a terrorist threat, I would start asking Rah which of the other English-speaking nations of the world appeal to him, because my Spanish is awful and he took Latin in high school and our asses would be going away ASAP. But I really don't see that happening. I really don't. Even if the Republican (or Democratic, for that matter) Party were so unified that they could seriously pose a threat of pulling off such a grand conspiracy, there would be easier ways to do it. However, they aren't, and his popularity is not so high that anyone outside of specifically blood-drenched-red districts really wants to buddy up to him, and so I just cannot bring myself to conceive of these things. Would I put it past Bush to start a war with Iran to distract us from Iraq? Not at all, not for a second. I sort of expect he will, in fact. Would I believe he has entertained fantasies of something happening to give him a "third" term by extending his second? Sure, maybe so, we all have our moments of megalomania and I'd buy he's living in one such moment. But I don't think The Party Machine would commit to that. Dirty tricks? Doubtless, and on both sides. But in 2008, the Republicans can employ those tricks on behalf of someone who isn't damaged goods. There is no margin in undoing the very mechanisms of government they wish to control.
I don't really expect us to win in 2008, but with a President ineligible to continue and a VP who has repeatedly said he's not running for the job, the Republican field is going to be crowded with everyone from more-or-less-sane-but-ambitious McCain to Rick "Santorum" Santorum. Nothing is uglier than a really ugly purge-from-the-right Republican primary, and 2008 is going to be, as they say, a doozy.
Again, this is all in the paranoid fears realm. Given the political realities you and 'Smasher have pointed out, I don't actually believe this sort of thing is likely to happen.
I think it is close enough to the realm of possibility that kicking up the hugest possible fuss about voting machines with paper trails, reliable exit polls and the like, can't do any harm and might possibly do some good.
The issue is whether the 7 point margin reflects the votes as actually cast. There's not a knock-down case here, but neither is the issue frivolous.
Maybe that non frivolous case is out there, but I haven't seen it. And I'm not talking Ohio here. I mean a decent case that a nationwide campaign of fraud swung the election results by a couple million votes.
And by pansy I meant "wouldn't hit back." I think Kerry and Democrats in general in 2004 were way too timid. They were busy lacing up a pair of boxing gloves for a streetfight, and lost.
I read the beginning of this thread while listening to the slippery rhetorical stylings of the insufferable Michael Ledeen on Fresh Air, and I'd still have the taste of vomit in my mouth if I hadn't opted for an early glass of wine to wash it back down. He did make one good point: the issue isn't Iran's nuclear program, as he sees it, the issue is that Iran has been attacking us for 27 years. At first I was puzzled, but then it struck me that as recently as yesterday an Iranian operative was attempting to incite conflict between American men and women over the Internets. Clearly, heightened vigilance is essential.
Actually, the only reason I'm commenting is that I've wanted to meet you all in person, and I've also wanted someone to take me to Cuba; this thread seems like my best shot at killing two birds with one stone.
110: OK, point taken. But I'm keeping my image of the throne made of femurs. I like it.
And I wholly endorse kicking up a huge fuss about paperless voting machines. I think they do present a genuine risk to the whole network of trust that is necessary for democracy.
Would I put it past Bush to start a war with Iran to distract us from Iraq? Not at all, not for a second. I sort of expect he will, in fact.
This is something worth being concerned about. We're talking lots of gratuitously dead people. And 'Smasher, the right-wing press will say anything, but stories about the Administration's war-lust against Iran aren't restricted to the right-wing press. Seymour Hersh has had something to say about it.
more-or-less-sane-but-ambitious McCain
Where are you getting more or less sane? First, anyone who's still in the Republican Party is already off the more-or-less sane scale; they abetted Bush's lunatic policies full-time until his approval ratings stayed below 40 for six months or so. Second, McCain just fucking loves war and Falwell. He has a nice reputation because he knows how to flatter the press, but he. Is. Not. Our. Friend.
106: The realities of the 2000 and 2004 elections notwithstanding—and acknowledging full well that one was a real travesty of the Democratic process—you go to the polls with the Americans you have, not the Americans you want. Given that the post was not about whether the Administration has tortured prisoners, committed war crimes, or stolen elections, but rather whether the Administration, on the good authority of odds-makers cited by two unreliable sources who are pleading for war with Iran, in fact plans to begin a war against Iran—it's not worth the rhetoric wasted here.
120: You will grant that there are certain factors beyond LB's quotation in and of itself that lend the idea of a pending war with Iran at least plausible. It's not like this is the first we've heard of the idea.
118: When he gave the non-answer answer of "MYOB" in 2000, when asked whether he would allow his teen daughter to have an abortion, I took it as a sign of hope that he might not be totally insane. What can I say? I'm an optimist. But I don't really think he's sane. Anyone who hugs a guy whose campaign used a push poll to smear one's own daughter has abdicated what I consider sanity in order to climb the ladder. Either way, I ain't exactly volunteering for his campaign, thanks.
The throne of femurs would be all femurs, all the time, except for the ends of the arms, which would be made of fanged jaws, pointing down (obviously) to avoid injury, and the middle of the back, which would be a jawless skull. Duh. And whenever anyone sat down in it, it would briefly play a recording of a voice that sang, "The thighbone's connected to the... thighbone," in a loop.
I'm with the traitor Kotsko. It seems only prudent to believe that the saber-rattling is serious; I'd be overjoyed to learn that my concern is wholly misplaced.
I love reading the comments here. But I think the point should be made that Iran has been at war with us since they took over the embassy in 1979.
Further, much of the violence in Iraq is being financed by Iran. I believe what we are seeing in Iraq now is a power play between Saudi sponored terror and Iranian sponsored terror as to who will control not only the oil of the Middle East, but Islam itself. A new chapter of an old war. The oil revenues have given both sides the resources to have global reach, which is how the US got involved. But I have always felt that Iraq was only phase 2 of a three or four phase war.
Was 129 supposed to be some sort of justification for an attack on Iran? Because while I more or less agree with what you said, I don't think that gets you from point A to point B.
But I think the point should be made that Iran has been at war with us since they took over the embassy in 1979.
Goes back a bit farther than that. This country seems to love depicting the storming of the embassy as solely the product of the delusions of those crazy Iranians. But the belief that the Americans were agents involved in a plot to overthrow the Iranian govt. wasn't really a crazy idea considering the Americans had done exactly that in 1953 with Operation Ajax.
I believe keeping embassy workers as prisoners is an act of war. Supporting the deposed leader is an act of charity. I can't speak for Mossadegh's bona fides, but at the time being a socialist in a country that bordered the USSR was a pretty good indication that the US was not your friend. I think that Palahvi's failure in his attempt to be the Iranian Attaturk set up the backlash that we are still dealing with.
Was 129 supposed to be some sort of justification for an attack on Iran? Because while I more or less agree with what you said, I don't think that gets you from point A to point B.
Well, it probably goes even further back than the 50s. It sounds like Iran didn't enjoy its WWII experience as key transit-point in lendlease, and before that, the Qajars were having a grand time selling off bits of the country to the British. In the grand scheme of things, all of us are just iterations of the Mongols.
I can't speak for Mossadegh's bona fides, but at the time being a socialist in a country that bordered the USSR was a pretty good indication that the US was not your friend.
138: And what about your summary makes you think that there is anything irrational about their present (apparent) conception of us as interfering power with little concern for their welfare? Or why not just say, "Might makes right," and be done with it?
Um, yeah. Are you suggesting that attacking Iran wouldn't be an important change in the current situation because 'we're already at war with them'? And if so, would you care to share your crack with the whole class?
Seriously, what part of 'being a socialist in a country that bordered the USSR' constitutes a declaration of war? I mean in the real world, rather than bizarro-world.
141- the 1953 CIA sponsored coup against the duly elected Mossadegh was because he was a g-d commie. So we put in the Shah as part of our containment strategy. Which the Soviets didn't like, so they supported Iranian dissident groups, one of whose leaders was Khomeni.
Leech, can you be more explicit? Do you honestly believe that the overthrow of Mossadegh was justified? Do you believe that it was a lesser offense than the taking of the American hostages? Do you believe that the latter would have happened without the former?
148: Oh, it's a sketchy sort of thing to be. And once your government is identified by the US as sketchy, you don't expect us not to overthrow your leaders, do you? That would be unAmerican.
That was the worry at the time, though it's hardly as if there's conclusive evidence that that was true. He wanted to nationalize the oil industry, but there was no reason that Iran needed to be aligned with the Soviets, rather than the British and Americans, if the latter two hadn't tried to fuck Iran over.
And I'm also not clear on what conclusion you think should be reached on the basis of this.
ogged, have you read that Sandra Mackey book The Iranians? At the end of her section on Gengis Khan (towers of skulls! the sack of the great Persian civilization!), she tells a story about an Iranian gardener she met who, when she complimented him on the rich redness of his roses, said something like "It is the red of all the Iranian blood that has been spilled here," and she was all, "You mean the post-revolution purges," and he was all, "No, by those barbaric Mongols."
It kind of reminded me of how my Irish friend claims that everybody competed to make up the best stories to fuck with the folklorists, but I guess all that post-Mongol existentialist poetry could really mark a culture.
No. Except once. I'd been watching the Wire constantly, and she could overhear, and I have a habit of saying "Fuck!" perhaps more than I ought, so she was feeling beseiged by all the foul language. The ex was here, and I was saying, jokingly and loudly, that I was PISSED OFF, and my mom came into the room and said, "Fuck! Who's fucking pissed off?"
146- If you think we would get favorable terms, a peace treaty would not be out of order.
147- It would definately be a change, but one that favors our way of war over theirs. Which in a way, responds to 143- might does make right, or rather, the winners write the history books.
might does make right, or rather, the winners write the history books.
Suddenly, my eyes are opened.
I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL.
Perhaps instead of invading Iran we could just annihilate them with a nuclear barrage? Seems much cleaner, plus it would really teach them a lesson for taking those damn hostages (a lesson they have clearly not yet learned).
OK, I can't be clever. I do not think that the coup in 1953 was justified, but the powers that be at the time sure thought so. I think sometimes we forget just how scared we were of the USSR. Many of the "crimes" of the US foreign policy were reactions to Soviet actions. In the 50's and 60's the cold war could have gone either way. The Cuban missle crisis was a reaction to our having missles in Turkey, and to a degree the coup in Iran. My personal opinion is that Americans and through them their government, want to be able to buy oil at the world price, and sell Coca Cola and MS Word for what we can get for it. Any interference with those transactions will get the attention of the 7th Fleet.
169: I'm OK with hard-edged realist. Hell, I prefer them to most others. The hard-edged realists didn't want us to invade Iraq. The problem is stupid hard-edged realists.
By the way, if we're currently "at war" with Iran because they took hostages in 1979 (and our negotiation of their release did not delineate an end to the "war", for some reason), I'm starting to think there must be a whole lot of countries with whom we're still at war. At we at war with Japan over Pearl Harbor? Are we at war with Cuba over the bay of pigs? At we at war with Vietnam over the Tet Offensive? Are we at war with South Carolina over their unlawful efforts to secede from the Union?
After you posted that grim little "slippery with human fat" detail, ogged, I went back to the Mackey book and then looked Khan up in Wikipedia. His Wikipedia article stresses the administrative functions of Khan's empire, not so much with the skulls and human fat. Oh, and there was a bit about how the Khwarezmian shah totally dissed Khan's ambassador and so brought the invasion on himself.
(My Iranian honey takes after his mom's Azeri family.)
I'd just like to note that normally, y'know, I'm all about the pastries but in this case I'll pass on the crack waffles. They'd probably taste terrible no matter how much syrup you pour on 'em.
170: Umm, yeah. Mostly the folks running around trying to display their mental toughness about other people bleeding are not, in fact, legitimate realists. I thought we were clear on that.
169- sorry to bother you DaveL with my tired schtick. I guess it's better to stay in the warm comfort of like minded folks. PS, I've bled plenty. as one of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children.
Also, this: My personal opinion is that Americans and through them their government, want to be able to buy oil at the world price, and sell Coca Cola and MS Word for what we can get for it.
Dude, we're the ones pushing for trade sanctions against Iran.
I don't think I ever said it going to war into a hot war with Iran was a great idea, only that it is going to happen. Under the current leadership of both countries, I see it as inevitable. And I think that the US will prevail, but with a lot more casualties than we are used to seeing. But once the war is over and we have prevailed, we will be looking at a post war situation more similar to 1945 than now.
going to war in any "hot" way with Iran would likely result in a gigantic clusterfuck?
Leech, I suspect that there are many things we agree on, but I have to say that 183 seems right to me. But it is not clear to me (although I only skimmed the thread) that you actually were advocating a ground war in Iran. Were you?
But once the war is over and we have prevailed, we will be looking at a post war situation more similar to 1945 than now.
You know, in the real world, 1945 onwards was worse than now. I don't doubt that if there is a way to fuck things up more, this Administration will find it. But I don't know why you seem so gleeful about it. Are you shorting the US market?
191- there are scenarios for a depression when the housing bubble bursts, like now. And I am not gleeful about that situation, but sanguine. I don't blame Bush for the current state of affairs, but pity him that it came on his watch. I truthfully don't think that Gore would have done better. I am afraid that the baby boomer's perpetual adolesence has caused all sides to refight Vietnam, when we are fighting at the gates of Vienna. We are looking for a Lepanto, which may not come.
188: Considering that the topic of the thread is whether it's a good idea, perhaps you can understand our confusion at what point you're trying to make?
Except that, if I'm understanding the reference properly, we are not at any risk from Iran or all of the Muslim powers combined. You people need to get comfortable with our strength.
198- after Iran gets the nukes, the balance of power shifts, doesn't it? I don't think you can say we are not at any risk.
197- it may not be a good idea but it may be necessary.
Leech, the Bush administration has never had anything resembling an Iran policy---other than closing their eyes and hoping that the students overthrow the regime like Michael Ledeen promised, that is. Kenneth Pollack is a dirty word in most liberal households, but his book on Iran is basically about what an US policy on Iran should look like, and it involves a negotiated settlement, not war. His book came out maybe two years ago, and I don't see anything like his proposed policy coming out of this administration.
I don't know what Gore would have done--maybe not diss the Iranian offer of talks in 2003? maybe expand on Gore's work in counter-proliferation? maybe not gratuitously insult a famously nationalistic country with a very fragile opposition movement?--but I'm willing to bet that he wouldn't have kicked the can down the road to an impasse the way that Bush has.
Would you very much mind taking your grand historical analogies somewhere else? We're talking about killing actual human people here, not some four-war Quadrifecta on a fucking Risk board.
200: 198- after Iran gets the nukes, the balance of power shifts, doesn't it? I don't think you can say we are not at any risk.
Not unless they get several thousand. Heck, they'll never get a big enough arsenal to take on Israel, let alone us (or Russia, or China, or India, or (arguably) Pakistan). At most, they'll have slightly more freedom to engage in covert-ish actions. (We already have effectively total freedom, I assume we use it for better or worse.) So what? So did the Sovs., and they had a much bigger military, with a much bigger and better arsenal. We're still in a better state of affairs than at any time during the Cold War.
Bush has two more years. I'd like to think there's a limit to how hard he can fuck us, and how many of our future years he can commit us to spending on unwinding his mess. We'll see.
195- I think that the Chinese are going to have a bigger problem with the coming US recession than we are.
201- You're right about Bush's Iran policy and Pollack. I am no fan of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq or not negotiating with Iran. I think his "Axis of Evil" statement, while true, was impolitic. Or having made the statement, then do something about it. The half measures taken in Iraq are unfathomable. Why did he ignore the State Dept. plan? I am afraid that domestic political fighting has seeped into all areas of government and it has crippled our ability to act. Should Democtatic supporters in State and CIA sabotage the foreign policy of the elected, or because they "know better" should policy wishes be adjusted? Whig and Tories.
204- OK Matt,. I know that we're talking about real people. I know some of them who are there now. I have served with them. But we also need to remember that "they" are trying to kill us, too. And we need to take that just as seriously.
. Should Democtatic supporters in State and CIA sabotage the foreign policy of the elected, or because they "know better" should policy wishes be adjusted?
Let's be leave aside democratic rule issues for the moment and admit this: we do know better. You see grudging admissions of something like this from (IIRC) Ross Douthat occassionally. We just have the machinery in place to handle the modern world, particularly with its multiculti facets, and y'all don't. I honestly wonder sometimes if we need some sort of affirmative action program for conservatives, or to just dump money into southern universities with the explicit program of developing a conservative intellectual edifice.
But we also need to remember that "they" are trying to kill us, too. And we need to take that just as seriously.
Possibly our willingness to continue to support far and away the most powerful armed forces in the history of the world ought to count as seriousness of a sort? By and large that sort of thing seems to have done pretty well at keeping other folks from trying to conquer and rule the U.S.
210- 40years of Democratic control of Congress will do that. An actual affirmative action policy of hiring "conservatives" in junior positions at State and CIA would be a great idea. Call my alma mater, Claremont McKenna.
Al Qaeda is trying to kill me. I favor taking the fight to them. Iran isn't trying to kill me; it may be sponsoring some of the people fighting in Iraq, but that's a war on their border that we started and there's no evidence that they plan to take it to our shores.
The innocent people in Iran who you're saying it may be necessary to blow up certainly aren't trying to kill me.
And to follow on SCMTim's 210, I would assert that this administration effectively does not have and has never had a foreign policy as regards Iran. Inasfar as we have an Iran policy, it's a cockeyed hope for "regime change," which has effectively subtracted from our real-world options. If Democratic-leaning CIA Iran hands are still trying to influence policy, that would be a good sign; in their place, I would contemplate suicide.
213: Right, because State and CIA are located in the legislative branch, so the number of those years in which the Republicans controlled the executive is completely irrelevant. And 12 years of GOP control of one or both houses of Congress is far to short a time for so benighted a bunch to pull its collective head out of its ass.
And for that matter, why bother? Poppy Bush was a lot of things, but demented about the Middle East wasn't one of them.
214- Al Queda and Iran are two seperate issues to be sure. They have a mutual interest in seeing our power and influence diminished. Can we get get the Persians and Arabs, who have fought for centuries over the Middle East, and which includes a religious component to the split to mutually coesist whithout one dominating the other? Maybe, but not in my lifetime.
Thank you all for taking the time to respond to my less than orthodox opinions. Let me leave with this. If this is the existential threat to our very existence that we have been led to believe, then why hasn't the Republican Congress authorized the expansion of the active duty military? We have stop loss and IRR call ups because we need 2 more divisions. It won't take a draft, but a serious approach to fighting this war. War bonds, higher taxes etc. If not, then what the heck are we doing? We have the means , but not the collective will. And if that means that the people vote these guys out because the people don't want to fight this war, then that is what should happen.
OK, I'll bite: I think that's actually what he means, as well. Either these crack waffles are delicious or what he's saying is that he doesn't think war is a good idea but it appears inevitable so it might as well be fought balls-out (and, tangentially, that it's not a huge threat because the same Republicans pounding the war drums are the ones who aren't significantly enlarging our military).
On the other hand, like I said, crack waffles. I could totally be wrong.
"the Iranians and the North Koreans aren't working together on missle development or nuclear proliferation."
See, that's a statement with content, and it can be evaluated for its truth, relevance, etc. I don't think the Iranians and North Koreans are out, generally, to proliferate nuclear weapons. But they may share information. So if President Bush were to say, "Hey, the Iranians and North Koreans may be sharing information," that is a statement that could, potentially, be true.
But "Axis of Evil" is like "Nobody Gets Me Lucky Charms." It says nothing. Some speechwriter, appended "Axis Powers" to "Evil Empire" to try to trade on both connotations, to try to make a nasty sounding monster. This is irrefutable: the words don't mean anything.
I disagree that, even with a draft and as much money as you like, we have the means to pacify Iraq, Iran, and a country to be named later (Saudi Arabia or Syria?) I think that's what you're calling for. But even if we could succeed in occupying those countries, we just couldn't defeat the resulting insurgencies.
And even if we could, it wouldn't be worth it. Starting a war requires a serious reason, which has not been on offer.
I disagree that, even with a draft and as much money as you like, we have the means to pacify Iraq, Iran, and a country to be named later (Saudi Arabia or Syria?) I think that's what you're calling for.
I bet we could. But it would take a long time, we'd be monsters by the end of it, and we'd be worse off, besides.
we are fighting at the gates of Vienna. We are looking for a Lepanto, which may not come.
With all due respect, TLL, that is just a steaming pile of crap. Idealist shares your delusions of an imminent reestablished caliphate, but at least he realizes the clusterfuckicity of attacking Iran.
230.---Ok, so start educating yourself on the other options available. Because the all-out US vs. Islam clusterfuck war is hardly inevitable, or at least it shouldn't be.
And don't let me catch you talking about the 12th Imam after all this superpower-enabled fatalism.
I think we all need to step back for a minute and realize that we have no power. Not me, not Armsmasher, not Jackmormon, not LizardBreath, and -- thank God! -- not Tassled Loafered Leech. None of what we say has any effect on anything -- not even giving yet another small morsel to the Republican slanderers, who would normally hit up Daily Kos or (in days gone by) Democratic Underground, rather than Unfogged. I will never be quoted, and neither will any of us, at least not about this. We are not among the media elite. We are in a little corner somewhere.
Well, at least TLL help explains my general pessimism and paranois. It obviously isn't just Bush, Cheney , Rumsfeld, and the Neocons. It is not just a bunch of dittohead bullies who will back down at a loud "boo". It is one third of the country with an irradicable worldview and a lifetime committment. War or no war, it will still be war.
Some weird moral calculation leads to wish the war was at home. The Iraqis and Iranians don't deserve this. Somehow I think we do.
No TLL the world would not be better off, like 1945. The fucking goddamn 50-75 million dead were not fucking better off for WWII. We would be the aggressors, the bad guys and we would utterly damned, as damned as the Germans. Damned.
I am suddenly reminded of the chapter in Doktor Faustus where Leverkuhn is composing his masterpiece while the child Echo is screaming, dying of migraine in the next room. Leverkuhn incorporates the screams into the finale.
I went kinda nuts over at Crooked Timber, but God I love the guys like Mann so much. Mann was a liberal exile form Nazi Germany, but the book he wrote was a cry of the damned. Leverkuhn was Mann himself, was Germany, was also modernism and the Enlightenment and the demonic sacrifice of the heart to Reason, the return of the repressed Drunken Master
America too thought it had buried its devils, its curse, its ancient sins and guilt. The end of racism. But the frat-boy shook off the borrowed skin and unfolded his great bat wings and took flight.
You know, rather than killing off a shitload of them, a smaller shitload of us, and assorted bystanders, let's bring back the idea of settling things by combat between champions. Their president and our president, mano a mano. Dress them up in clown suits, give them each a chainsaw, and let them have at each other. May the best brushcutter win.
Damn, fucked up and left off the best stuff:
Like you, the Krell forgot
one deadly danger...their own subconscious hate
and lust for destruction.
The beast.
The mindless primitive. Even the Krell must have
evolved from that beginning.
And so those mindless beasts
of the subconscious...had access to a machine
that could never be shut down.
The secret devil of every soul on the planet...
all set free at once
to loot and maim...and take revenge and kill!
My poor Krell!
After a million years
of shining sanity...they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.
227: Though I disagree that war is inevitable, I agree that they present no real threat or the hawks would be trying to expand the military. I'm not sure I buy the balls-out-or-nothing approach. While it's obvious that in order to pacify Iraq we needed more troops than we used, I also think there were strategies available that wouldn't have required as great a degree of pacification. Though I may well be wrong, it is my impression that had we not so aggressively de-Baathified the civilian bureaucracy and dismantled the army, instead merely decapitating Saddam's power structure and then giving those in the government who already knew the levers of control a chance to use them to better ends, we wouldn't be in this situation.
I mean, I understand the lure of expected, hoped-for finality in a Total War scenario. I don't think it's accurate, however. If there were a way to just kill everyone else and have it make everything better, I'm pretty sure someone would have hit on the right methodology over the course of human history. As it stands, I can't actually think of a single war that eradicated every vestige of the problem it sought to solve, no conflict whose core was not somehow passed down to another generation.
I'm not sure I buy the balls-out-or-nothing approach. While it's obvious that in order to pacify Iraq we needed more troops than we used, I also think there were strategies available that wouldn't have required as great a degree of pacification.
Perhaps, but there's not much precedent to suggest that's the case. Pacification just always seems to involve killing a shitload of people. And insurgencies, if anything, are easier to sustain these days, especially in urbanized areas. The urban areas largely negate our air advantage, and the global proliferation of light arms means they have access to rifles every bit as good as ours. (perhaps better, ccnsidering the environment)
they present no real threat or the hawks would be trying to expand the military
Sadly, I don't think this follows. The hawks have demonstrated that the actions they're willing to take bear no relation to any real problems that we actually do face. You could reason "If North Korean nuclear proliferation were a real problem the Bush Administration would have had a policy toward them besides sitting around with its thumb up its ass for five years," but you'd be wrong. They really do think that they can do what they want without willing the means, and that anyone who points out problems with their approach must be a Democratic supporter sabotaging the policies of the elected -- just because they know better!
Of course anyone who thinks that we do face an existential threat from the Middle East is a moron. Nuclear terrorism (which is a problem, would've been nice if we'd elected the guy who demonstrated some awareness of this issue) could lead to an unrecognizable fascist state in America, but that's because the hawks are eager to implement unlimited power for themselves. The existential threat is from within, not from without.
Given the increased effectiveness of insurgency, you'd think we might consider just cutting our losses and letting other countries run their own affairs, rather than invading, massacring, and torturing them -- because damn, invading, massacring, and torturing them is expensive and kills American troops! I mean, shit!
I haven't caught up on the comments since yesterday yet, but I think this is worth posting. Media Matters caught Hannity saying this on his radio show yesterday:
HANNITY: This is the moment to say that there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the speaker.
There have been successful counter-insurgency campaigns in the past. It's just very hard to do.
I think it's getting harder. With past insurgencies you often had one side of the fight much better armed. With the widespread production of Kalashnikov style rifles, that's just not the case anymore. Modern food production and the subsequent urbanization isn't helping either. We can't cut them off from supplies, we have a hard time finding them, and they are well armed. I'm not quite ready to say it's impossible to put down insurgency, but looking at Chechnya and Iraq, I wonder if it's impossible without the cooperation of the resident population. And in Iraq we just don't have it.
244, & others: Well said, and points taken. Mainly I was trying to meet TLL halfway, but it's a line of reasoning to which I, myself, can be quite susceptible. A little reality-orienteering is always welcome.
If Hannity wants somebody to die so that Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the Speaker, the obvious way is to hire a suicide bomber, which he may already have done. I recommend throwing Hannity in jail for public terrorist threats against a potential member of the presidential line of succession.
After A good nights's sleep I am not nearly as pessimistic as yesterday. A hot war with Iran may not be inevitable. After all, we were able to fight a cold war with the much more powerful Soviets, who were causing trouble across the globe as oppossed to the Iranians, who really are only playing in their backyard. But I agree with Matt in post 244, should nuclear terrorism reach our shores the reaction by either a Republican or Democratic President will not be pretty. The challenge to our liberty is internal.
It is a Washington Times article, so you have to at least hope that "odds-makers" s/b "wishful thinkers."
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:41 PM
I was thinking about a country completely different from the US that was pursuing a reckless and destructive campaign led by people who had no concern for either public or elite opinion -- and I was wondering, in that country that is completely NOT the US, at what point targetted assassinations become a valid political option for people of good will.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:42 PM
I promise to faithfully blog your trial, Adam.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:45 PM
That's "K-O-T-S-K-O," Mr. G-man.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:46 PM
I wouldn't be getting on a subway, bus, airplane, train or other form of public transit the day after a US strike on Iran if I were you.
What's wrong with these people?
Not enough love from mommy?
Posted by Ugh | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:46 PM
I think that, in that country that is NOT the US, it's about the same time that the people who have no concern for ether public or elite opinion start actually gearing up for a second completely unjustified, batshit crazy insane war on a country that it thinks is out to get it.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:47 PM
The Washington Times may be consulting the wrong oddsmakers. This is 5-1 against by March 07 by either US or Israel. But please, continue discussing treason.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:48 PM
Adam, can you recommend me a book on targeted assassination by Mary Daly?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:48 PM
This is all completely hypothetical. I'm actually a total pacifist. I was a member of a Catholic pacifist group up until last month or so, when I couldn't afford to pay dues.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:49 PM
Guess we all know the scoop on those Catholic pacifists.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:51 PM
I'm pretty sure that pacifist groups are considered "terrorist organizations" by this Administration, Kotsko. In arguing arguing against war, you are really arguing for dead American babies. You really are a member of the Party of Death.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:53 PM
It's an interesting question. I kid around about hitting the point where I'm crawling through the sewers with grenades in my teeth: there's some point at which a government becomes evil enough that violent resistance is appropriate but how do you recognize that point? (Not suggesting that we, here, in the US, are anywhere near that point, Mister FBI man.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:54 PM
Under any reasonable definition of "treason," Bush and his close advisors should be in jail right now, rather than allowing them continued control of the US military.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:55 PM
But please, continue discussing treason.
"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:56 PM
What are the chances that "Kotsko" becomes the official nom-de-guerre for all the new liberation theologists?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:57 PM
I disagree with 13 (I assume you mean treason to the constitution or some such, and don't think such a concept is tenable), said something like 12 ages ago and stand by it, and don't see what's wrong with reading 2 as saying, "When is treason moral?" The answer isn't "Never."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:57 PM
but how do you recognize that point?
And just as importantly, at what point do you buy a "I love my country, but I fear my government" bumper sticker?
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 12:59 PM
Well, 13 isn't true under the legal definition of 'treason'; OTOH I think under the legal definition of 'treason' even targeted assassinations (redundant, BTW) don't count as treason. Under reasonable definitions of 'war crimes' they should certainly be in jail. And Bush and his advisors have certainly done more to hurt U.S. interests, out of malign recklessness, than those crazy Catholic pacifists.
(pwned by 16, but really: What is 'treason' under the constitution? Is assassinating government officials sufficient? I would have thought not. Not that that isn't rightly illegal for other reasons, Mr. FBI man.)
Posted by Ttam R. | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:00 PM
I actually regard US power as currently unstoppable, at least in terms of causing pure destruction. As long as the country continues to be run by sociopathic criminals, there is no end in sight -- even if "we" don't invade Iran, we're going to continue torturing and murdering the people of Iraq for no apparent reason, as well as mild-mannered Afghan goatherds, etc. I also believe that it would be physically impossible to assassinate the president or any other high-ranking official in the executive branch.
The only hope would be a procedural thing to remove them from power, but the Democrats are such useless pieces of shit that they would never do so, even if they regained a supermajority in both houses of congress. So we just kind of have to wait this one out and assume that they will, in fact, step down peacefully after the current term is up -- and hope that whatever Republican gets elected in 2008 doesn't appoint any of these maniacs to his cabinet.
So in general, I'm thinking of just checking out and joining one of Mary Daly's Wiccan covens, except she wouldn't let me in due to my gender.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:01 PM
I think the point about the "point" as in LB's point is that you can never recognise it in advance; that it's always obvious in retrospect; and that the moment is always too short.
Wherefore we read of resistence and revolution, but never of pre-emptive popular uprisings.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:01 PM
I assume you mean treason to the constitution or some such
Oh, I could be talked into laying out an argument that Bush and Co. have knowingly, for domestic political advantage, pursued a foreign policy that was in the best interest of Al Qaeda and terrorists aligned with them. Aiding the enemy for personal advantage? Treason isn't a crazy way to characterize that.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:01 PM
18, I don't want to just say under the legal def. More, under a definition reasonably expected to be useful to discusssion.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:02 PM
(I think we all agree that in the case of a coup, the FBI should be put in charge, Mr. G.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:02 PM
People in Irab must be really worried these days.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:03 PM
I think the point about the "point" as in LB's point is that you can never recognise it in advance; that it's always obvious in retrospect; and that the moment is always too short.
In fact a point that I considered making: if at any time you feel justified in taking to the sewers with bombs in your teeth, you will almost inevitably have wished to have done so a long time earlier.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:04 PM
I first started to wonder when the sewers would become necessary around about Oct 2001.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:06 PM
People in Irab must be really worried these days.
And the Irish are probably shifting nervously in their seats, hoping that our standards of what constitutes a given vowel don't loosen.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:06 PM
if at any time you feel justified in taking to the sewers with bombs in your teeth, you will almost inevitably have wished to have done so a long time earlier.
I don't know if that's true. Recent history seems to have shown that there's a certain utility to having "other priorities" during times of a conflict you support.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:08 PM
Syria's trying to get away with hiding the forbidden letters at the end of its name, and scrambling their order, but that sort of tricksiness only makes Cheney madder.
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:10 PM
I think that people "support" the Iraq War in precisely the same way that Rumsfeld "takes responsibility" for, well, basically anything.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:10 PM
You are all under arrest. Report to the nearest re-education camp immediately.
Posted by Mr. FBI Man | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:13 PM
Oh shit. Will we be replaced by cardboard cut-outs so our families won't know we're gone?
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:15 PM
Your families have already been re-located to the camp. Resistence is futile.
Posted by Mr. FBI Man | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:18 PM
As is proper spelling.
Posted by Mr. FBI Man | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:19 PM
Impersonating a government agent is itself a crime, Mr. Ogged.
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:22 PM
Impersonating a government agent is itself a crime, Mr. Ogged.
'Twas me, and who says I'm not a government agent?
Posted by Ugh | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:27 PM
Armed resistance is a personal decision of free men, it generally means the social contract has broken down. Do not expect mass support. I do not necessarily approve of the Minutemen (18th C), or John Brown, or Emma Goldman's boyfriend, or union violence, or Sirhan Sirhan. or the Weathermen, or Tim McVeigh...but they is what it will almost always look like.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:33 PM
They is...yeccch. War is ugly. Civil war or insurrection is the ugliest. The people vs Bush would not be a face-off on the Texas fields near Fort Hood, 1 million Dems with pitchforks taking on the Armored Division. The tank ran over the guy in Tianeman Square, or could have. This ain't the French resistance, although the reprisals make make that resistance unpretty.
It would be Baghdad. Terrorism, death squads, assassinations.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:39 PM
In fact a point that I considered making: if at any time you feel justified in taking to the sewers with bombs in your teeth, you will almost inevitably have wished to have done so a long time earlier.
That's why you've gotta buy some guns right now, just in case.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:44 PM
And who is really capable of that? Well, since approximately one black voting organizer was killed in Mississippi every month for years in the early sixties, I would strongly presume that Trent Lott and Haley Barbour remember it well, and know some killers personally, if not having them on their staff.
I don't think the left is as well-prepared as the dittoheads.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:48 PM
And can you really hold more than one grenades in your teeth? Isn't it typically a knife one holds in one's teeth? This is going to be the worst insurrection ever.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:55 PM
I'd plan to do some research first.
("Note to self: Grenades -- dental carrying capacity? Perhaps Molotov cocktail pref.")
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:57 PM
One holds the grenade pin in one's teeth, after pulling out said pin with said teeth. One could, over the course of an evening, collect several grenade pins in one's teeth in like fashion.
Teh Liberal Blogosphere Is Teh Fightingest!1!11!11!111!!!1
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 1:59 PM
That's why you've gotta buy some guns right now, just in case.
I wish I didn't think this was true.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:00 PM
In seriousness, Bob is right. This is part of the reason why our democratic institutions are so important, because there is no alternative to them.
And that's part of what makes it so scandalous that Bush is claiming monarchic power, with one advance accountability moment every four years (if you count the 2000 election). He should not be able to unilaterally start a war without Congress's consent, nor should he be able to lock people up permanently without meaningful trials. Yet that is where we are.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:01 PM
Knives worked pretty well in V for Vendetta. I'd stick to knives.
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:01 PM
Worse leaders than Bush have done worse things to their nations' interests without suffering from serious armed uprisings. Just thought I'd toss that one out there.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:02 PM
A military insurrection isn't going to work against the greatest military force in the history of the world. Something akin to the early Christians' strategy of martyrdom is the only way -- learning to recognize the moments when the spectacle of an obviously just person dying can erode the consent of the governed.
Things like completely checking out of normal life are always helpful, too -- look at the hatred toward the hippies. The desert fathers did that, and it was a big fucking deal when the Empire had to fight an uphill battle against the appalling death rates of the ancient world.
A strategy of refusal, combined with a willingness to die under certain circumstances if it will help with recruitment -- i.e., increasing the drain on the Empire -- is the only way to go. Surely the Christians could've taken down the Empire entirely if they hadn't fallen for the trick of being made the official religion.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:02 PM
Yeah, I buy #43. For *holding* weapons, however, initial research suggests that knife between the in teeth is preferred.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:04 PM
And as Felix notes, knives are way more punk rock than grenades.
Hey Weiner, I've been meaning to ask, what's your take on the current state of play on the Plame leak? Do you buy the inadvertent Armitage screwup scenario?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:06 PM
learning to recognize the moments when the spectacle of an obviously just person dying can erode the consent of the governed.
You'd probably have a lot harder time convincing the consenting governed that you were an obviously just person, if you're dead and the government doesn't like you. These early Christians benefitted hugely from the fact that propaganda and mass media had not yet been invented.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:09 PM
We'd have to have the military (or at least some part of it) on our side before any insurrection could be successful.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:09 PM
We've got Lt. Col. John Petzen, Ret.!
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:10 PM
51: You are completely wrong about propaganda not having been invented.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:11 PM
And General J.C. Christian's inner Frenchman, but I'm thinking someone actually in today's chain of command somewhere.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:14 PM
Kotsko, if (when) the Roman Empire was taken down, what came after was not notably more civilised or gentle.
Posted by Andrew Brown | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:21 PM
And General J.C. Christian's inner Frenchman, but I'm thinking someone actually in today's chain of command somewhere.
When you've got generals turning down promotions to retire, you've really scewed up. And there's pretty disturbing numbers on the officer class in general fleeing the military. If remarks by retired generals and the conversations I've had with friends back from Iraq are any indicator, a hell of a lot of the military is seriously pissed.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:23 PM
All we need is for them not to fire on us as we, uh, storm the seats of power or whatever.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:25 PM
I'm curious, in countries in which there were successful revolutions, like Iran and Romania, for example, what portion of the population supported the regime to the end. Something like 35% here still does. That's a big chunk.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:27 PM
I don't know if I have ever communicated how scared I am, but I am not so far from believing that the people who committed, or condoned, or financed the Birmingham Church bombings are now in charge of the gov't. Or people who would have if they were of that generation. Events like Katrina do not reassure. IOW, we on the left may not have a choice but to play Moqtada Sadr to Bushco's Sunni minority.
And if you look at America, and the rabid right and the docile left, you may understand why the Baathist/Sunni minority were able to rule Iraq for generations. It is about "the willing" as the Duke said. Moqtada is no nice guy, but I think he understands his enemy, and his Shia compatriots.
I don't know how far the Ancien Regime of New Dixie is willing to go. I honestly don't. I don't know how much support they would have, but I suspect enough. I am pretty sure if Bush suspends the 2008 elections and shoots protesters, most of us will simply go to work the next morning. I worry that Bushco understands that.
I don't really blame the Iraqis for Saddam, or the Germand for Hitler. Violence is tough.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:28 PM
Fine, not propaganda, but the psychological and sociological discoveries that have made propaganda truly effective. Better?
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:28 PM
and baa and Idealist may be nice guys, but like Germans waking up the moring after the Reichstag fire of Night of the Long Knives, I doubt they are willing to eat a bullet to rectify their mistake in judgement.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:34 PM
I am pretty sure if Bush suspends the 2008 elections and shoots protesters, most of us will simply go to work the next morning.
What I'm afraid of in my paranoid fantasies isn't a suspension of the 2008 election -- it's a blatantly stolen one. I do think we need to spend the next two years figuring out what the hell to do if we wake up on the morning after Election Day and the official results bear no resemblance to reality.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:34 PM
And come to think of it, I don't know why I'm putting the paranoia off two years. Although with Congressional races, it's hard to figure out what would be 'blatant' rather than merely surprising.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:36 PM
56: Some petty mobster from out in the sticks could never match the systematic brutality of Rome at its peak.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:38 PM
56: true but how is this relevent? There is no significant parallel between the Roman Empire in its context and the current USA in its context....
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:40 PM
63: The 2004 election was stolen. The 2000 election was stolen. What did we do then? What is the burden of proof for "blatant," compared to what we've already experienced?
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:40 PM
Yglesias's domestic policy book, which will become the manifesto for an underground insurrectionary movement, will be called The Axis of Ça Ira.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:42 PM
I don't for a moment believe that the Republicans could blatantly steal an election. I do think that no one would do anything in the face of real disruptions of standard understandings of America as long as most of us still had a nice standard of living. The Civil Rights Movement always strikes me as something of a miracle.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:42 PM
61: Propaganda is better now, and coersive force is more powerful as well. I don't know that the strategy of martyrdom could work in our situation, as an empirical matter. But it's a difference of degree, rather than kind.
What I'm wondering is, what if people just all decided to default on their debt all at once? What if everyone stopped paying the mortgage and absolutely refused to leave? What if everyone decided, fuck it, I'm not going to put in 70-hour weeks anymore? What if every Walmart employee started systematically shoplifting?
66: I see a significant parallel. I've been studying this and pondering it for years. Your flat denial of a significant parallel is unconvincing to me.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:43 PM
What is the burden of proof for "blatant," compared to what we've already experienced?
When the majority of people believe it was stolen. Or even the majority of people who voted for the "loser" firmly believe it was stolen.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:44 PM
I don't find a 'blatantly' stolen election too likely, either. To be considered 'blatant' there'd have to be a broad consensus about the facts, and this would never happen. Any uncertainties would be nursed and amplified until a suitable level of confusion was achieved, and thus the status quo maintained.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:47 PM
The 2004 election was stolen. The 2000 election was stolen.
There's a case to be made for 2000, but I don't know of any compelling evidence that the 2004 election was stolen.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:47 PM
72 is me, you can probably tell by the bad prose.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:49 PM
There's a case to be made for 2000, but I don't know of any compelling evidence that the 2004 election was stolen.
There's no compelling evidence, except the uniform discrepancy between the exit polls and the final results...but since various people who had the capability to steal it also had the motive to steal it, I assume they did.
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:50 PM
The exit poll discrepancy might not mean much.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:54 PM
Bush suspends the 2008 elections and shoots protesters,
But there's the rub. Surely you don't mean Bush will personally shoot the protestors. So he can only do as you envision if the armed forces are willing to obey him unconditionally even as he is ordering them to turn on peaceful protestors. Some might go along, but I think many (too many) would think "wait, what the hell, who does this guy think he is? He wasn't even elected!" SO they basically don't listen to him. In worst case this degenerates into civil war (with a split in the armed forces' loyalty), but I can't really imagine that in present circumstances. In other words I think Bush's planned dictatorship is destined to fail. It's really hard to pull off in a country with as well-developed a democratic tradition as ours.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:55 PM
I'd think a non-uniform discrepancy would be more indicative of a stolen election; a uniform discrepancy looks to me more like a flaw in the poll. I don't rule out that the election was stolen, but the evidence I've seen isn't knockdown.
OTOH, wasn't 71 true of the 2000 election?
(baa: I don't know what Armitage was thinking, but there isn't any doubt that after the initial leak Rove made sure that Plame's name was publicized, is there? And that Bush pledged to fire anyone involved in the leak, and went back on his pledge? Since Plame worked on Iranian WMD I'd think that this would be a bigger deal than the technical legality of their conduct, but apparently that's not what serious people think.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:56 PM
To be considered 'blatant' there'd have to be a broad consensus about the facts, and this would never happen. Any uncertainties would be nursed and amplified until a suitable level of confusion was achieved, and thus the status quo maintained.
I think you could get to 'blatant' if in the days going up to the election, the Democrat had a substantial lead -- I'm talking consistently outside the polls' margin of error -- that disappeared in a suspicious fashion, with a fair amount of evidence of chicanery.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:58 PM
76: you're going to have to link to a lot more than that to demonstrate that the exit polls didn't mean much. There's a fair amount of back-and-forth on this.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:58 PM
I exaggerate: 32 percent said Bush won in 2000 on a technicality, while 18 percent acknowledged that it was stolen.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 2:59 PM
OTOH, wasn't 71 true of the 2000 election?
What was different about the 2000 election was that it took too long to figure it out -- by the time we understood what was happening, it had happened. A precisely similar thing couldn't happen again, I don't think.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:00 PM
My goodness I posted way late. Yes, a stolen election is more of a concern than bloodshed in the streets. Although if anything becomes obvious I think it falls apart all the same. And I really do think it would be pretty hard to hide.
(Although with these fancy new voting machines with no paper trails, all bets are off. There really may be no greater short-term threat to our democracy.)
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:00 PM
82: What? In 2000 we saw what happened as it happened. Before the Supreme Court decision came down there was the ridiculous stay decision, in which Scalia declared that it could harm Bush irrevocably to count the votes. If they rig the machines we won't get nearly this much advance warning.
Also in my gut I think this is a touch overwrought; that we won't see a blatant stolen election in 2008. I don't exactly think the GOP is this corrupt, though I'm not sure why I don't. I worry more about the damage to democracy that they've done in between elections, which is considerable.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:05 PM
I think you could get to 'blatant' if in the days going up to the election, the Democrat had a substantial lead -- I'm talking consistently outside the polls' margin of error -- that disappeared in a suspicious fashion, with a fair amount of evidence of chicanery.
You could, although I doubt you would. Experts who had some plausible-sounding explanation for the result would be on the cable channels all day, for one thing; the encouragement would be for people to see that it was such a confusing thing that happened, it's reasonable for people to disagree but there's just no way to be certain etc etc. Thus, anyone who says it's blatant cannot be trusted, because they are all partisans who have an interest in lying to you.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:05 PM
77-
But Bush wouldn't order the military to turn on peaceful protesters. The election would be "temporarily" postponed due to hightened terrorist threat and protesters deemed a threat to national security. I can think of many, many soldiers who would go along.
Posted by sam k | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:07 PM
I think you're underestimating the weirdness of Bush v. Gore. Sure, the stay decision telegraphed what they were going to do, but that was only, what, four days before? Before that point, it looked as if the full recount was going to happen.
Also in my gut I think this is a touch overwrought; that we won't see a blatant stolen election in 2008. I don't exactly think the GOP is this corrupt, though I'm not sure why I don't.
This is almost certainly right -- I did say it was a paranoid fantasy. But it's the one that worries me.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:09 PM
I can think of many, many soldiers who would go along.
Despite the implications of my post, it's not soldiers you worry about, it's generals. And I really don't see too many buying into this. When such things succeed it's because the military leadership genuinely believes they they're doing is for the nation's good (even if that is often a stilted, incorrect assessment). I don't at all get that vibe between our military leaders and Bush.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:12 PM
70: Adam, I'm curious as to the degree of parallel you see. I'm on shaky ground for me, but as I understand it Rome, at it's peak, was without peer politically, militarily, agriculturally, architecturally, and in engineering, medicine, etc. at least within the world with any significant interaction with Rome.
I suppose you could argue that US military superiority is approaching the same order today, but I don't know enough about that to know if it would fly. It certainly doesn't hold in most fields, at all.
I can't even imagine that complete US collapse would have the same sort of economic impact that the collapse of Rome did, could it? It certainly wouldn't set back knowledge like Romes collapse did. It took something like 1000 years to build a comparable city to Rome in europe, didn't it?
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:20 PM
Experts who had some plausible-sounding explanation for the result would be on the cable channels all day, for one thing; the encouragement would be for people to see that it was such a confusing thing that happened, it's reasonable for people to disagree but there's just no way to be certain etc etc.
Part of what I think we should be doing, to prevent my paranoid dreams from coming true, is putting in a lot of effort before the election publicizing and discussing what would be an impossibly suspicious result. Semi-scholarly articles on polling procedures, talking heads talking about the kinds of discrepancies that do and don't show up -- nothing inaccurate, just priming the discourse on what's known about this sort of thing.
And a hell of a lot of serious effort on better, larger sample, more accurate exit polls.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:20 PM
You would have to set Rome back a few hundred years from the era we usually consider for the analogy to work. If the U.S. is any kind of Rome, it is the Rome from just after the Punic Wars. The Senate is still, sort of, in control.
And I think, at most points during Rome's dominance, you could make an argument that Greece and similar conquered areas were culturally and intellectually superior to the territory within the boot. That is, someone who knows more about this than me could make that argument. Sure, Greece was under Roman military control. But then, what's with this NATO thing?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:28 PM
I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone that this is a FOX anchor quoting from Arnaud de Borchgrave, the individual presumably behind the Washington Times's editorial process that "gay marriage" only ever be referred to as "gay 'marriage,'" a policy for which all of his employees should be referred to as "'journalists.'" Even de Borchgrave the credibility he doesn't deserve, he's talking about "odds makers." Like, users at Sportsbets.com or whatever? The same who bet that we'd have marched through to Syria by now and so forth?
It's not that the Bush administration isn't deeply unsettling. Rather, taking this story—that one apparatchik told another—remotely serious and flipping right the eff out is, in fact, doing your part to ensure that liberals look deeply unserious about foreign policy. Comments like this are deeply out of whack with the subject at hand, which involves two jerk-offs daydreaming aloud about war with Iran.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:41 PM
I think you're underestimating the weirdness of Bush v. Gore.
Or not remembering that at the time, we didn't know how bad Bush Jr. would be. Sure, I was bummed that we would have another conservative president, but Bush Sr. wasn't a crazyman. He was just a president whose policies I didn't like. Since I am all enviro all the time, I would have loved a Gore presidency, but I wasn't gonna take to the streets over a run-of-the-mill Republican presidency. I thought Bush Jr. would be bad, but I didn't know it would be this bad (and he wouldn't have had so much free rein if it weren't for Sept. 11, which we also weren't expecting.).
Posted by Megan | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:44 PM
Rather, taking this story—that one apparatchik told another—remotely serious and flipping right the eff out is, in fact, doing your part to ensure that liberals look deeply unserious about foreign policy.
I don't think this is true. A serious attitude toward foreign policy has to acknowledge that the current administration is liable to do absolutely any damn-fool thing that enters their heads.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:48 PM
A serious attitude toward the right-wing press has to acknowledge that they will say absolutely any damn-fool thing that enters their heads. What else could they possibly hope for than to have Democrats ask "Whither revolution?" just two months before we're scheduled to sweep Congress? (Using elections, even.)
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:52 PM
"2004 was stolen" is crap. Fuck the Electoral College and Ohio. If you take the popular vote by a 7 figure margin, you've won. I haven't seen any evidence that they stole a couple million votes. Kerry and the Democrats campaigned like pansies, and we lost. Either we come to terms with that, or we keep on losing.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:52 PM
"If you take the popular vote by a 7 figure margin, you've won."
This is like saying, if you've won, you've won. The issue is whether the 7 point margin reflects the votes as actually cast. There's not a knock-down case here, but neither is the issue frivolous. I have a different meaning of "pansy" than you on this one.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:55 PM
Is Kotsko speaking as a Democrat, here? Coulda fooled me.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:56 PM
A serious attitude toward the right-wing press has to acknowledge that they will say absolutely any damn-fool thing that enters their heads.
At the Corner, the big story today is about why granting a limited visa to "mass murdering terrorist" ex-Iranian President Khatamei sends the wrong signal to the Iranian Masses Longing To Be Free.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:56 PM
Can we please agree, as a country, not to take seriously anything said by anyone who insists on "homicide bomb" or "Islamo-fascism"? Which is to say, the Corner and TNR.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 3:59 PM
Can we please agree, as a country, not to take seriously anything said by anyone who insists on "homicide bomb" or "Islamo-fascism"?
You mean like the current occupant of the white house?
Posted by Ugh | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:00 PM
and the president. No, it seems, we can't.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:01 PM
And our president...
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:01 PM
I'd like not to take our President seriously, SCMTim.
Posted by Pwned | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:02 PM
how does my pwned! taste?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:03 PM
92: I appear to have alienated a sympathetic swing voter in Ohio. I apologize. I'm glad we have the Democratic thought police to keep us all on message.
I vote a straight Democratic ticket every time, solely because they are (a) not Republicans and (b) capable of winning. I actually hold the Democrats -- meaning the people who actually have power in the party, not the people who are blackmailed into voting for them -- in contempt. (I can't think of an exception off-hand.)
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:03 PM
What is this, Left Behind fanfic?
The Party Machine is much more interested in continuing to win elections than in enshrining Bush, and he, personally, does not wield the power and influence necessary to usurp utter command away from his handlers and coddlers and advisors and rivals. Hasn't there already been noise that Republican members of Congress in less-than-rock-solid districts/states are trying to distance themselves a bit? Isn't that, ultimately, what the Dubai Ports World thing was about for many of them? By 2008 he's going to be someone they just want to keep the lid on long enough to transition power to someone less entirely retarded, try to solidify Bush as someone or another's New Reagan, and forget his ass faster than that of a two-dollar rentboy.
There are other Republicans who would like to be President one day. There is no grand conspiracy to erect a Dark Throne constructed from the femurs of dead children. They will pay lip service to whatever quote-unquote issues are used to enshrine Bush in memory, yes, the same way they still pay lip service to Reagan's Official History of being for small government, blahdy-blah, while at the same time enlarging government at breakneck pace. Yes, they will say very nice things about him, as one generally must do of a member of one's party after they've been President twice. They will say these things with all the enthusiasm necessary to muffle the sound of them bouncing their own legs under the table, impatient for their chance at the big chair, each desperate for Bush to clear the stage so s/he can establish emself as the real Republican in the room and the rest of the competition as disastrously incompetent.
If Bush were to delay the election in 2008 due to a terrorist threat, I would start asking Rah which of the other English-speaking nations of the world appeal to him, because my Spanish is awful and he took Latin in high school and our asses would be going away ASAP. But I really don't see that happening. I really don't. Even if the Republican (or Democratic, for that matter) Party were so unified that they could seriously pose a threat of pulling off such a grand conspiracy, there would be easier ways to do it. However, they aren't, and his popularity is not so high that anyone outside of specifically blood-drenched-red districts really wants to buddy up to him, and so I just cannot bring myself to conceive of these things. Would I put it past Bush to start a war with Iran to distract us from Iraq? Not at all, not for a second. I sort of expect he will, in fact. Would I believe he has entertained fantasies of something happening to give him a "third" term by extending his second? Sure, maybe so, we all have our moments of megalomania and I'd buy he's living in one such moment. But I don't think The Party Machine would commit to that. Dirty tricks? Doubtless, and on both sides. But in 2008, the Republicans can employ those tricks on behalf of someone who isn't damaged goods. There is no margin in undoing the very mechanisms of government they wish to control.
I don't really expect us to win in 2008, but with a President ineligible to continue and a VP who has repeatedly said he's not running for the job, the Republican field is going to be crowded with everyone from more-or-less-sane-but-ambitious McCain to Rick "Santorum" Santorum. Nothing is uglier than a really ugly purge-from-the-right Republican primary, and 2008 is going to be, as they say, a doozy.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:04 PM
how does my pwned! taste?
Tangy.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:06 PM
I regret posting that.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:06 PM
Again, this is all in the paranoid fears realm. Given the political realities you and 'Smasher have pointed out, I don't actually believe this sort of thing is likely to happen.
I think it is close enough to the realm of possibility that kicking up the hugest possible fuss about voting machines with paper trails, reliable exit polls and the like, can't do any harm and might possibly do some good.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:08 PM
The issue is whether the 7 point margin reflects the votes as actually cast. There's not a knock-down case here, but neither is the issue frivolous.
Maybe that non frivolous case is out there, but I haven't seen it. And I'm not talking Ohio here. I mean a decent case that a nationwide campaign of fraud swung the election results by a couple million votes.
And by pansy I meant "wouldn't hit back." I think Kerry and Democrats in general in 2004 were way too timid. They were busy lacing up a pair of boxing gloves for a streetfight, and lost.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:08 PM
I read the beginning of this thread while listening to the slippery rhetorical stylings of the insufferable Michael Ledeen on Fresh Air, and I'd still have the taste of vomit in my mouth if I hadn't opted for an early glass of wine to wash it back down. He did make one good point: the issue isn't Iran's nuclear program, as he sees it, the issue is that Iran has been attacking us for 27 years. At first I was puzzled, but then it struck me that as recently as yesterday an Iranian operative was attempting to incite conflict between American men and women over the Internets. Clearly, heightened vigilance is essential.
Actually, the only reason I'm commenting is that I've wanted to meet you all in person, and I've also wanted someone to take me to Cuba; this thread seems like my best shot at killing two birds with one stone.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:12 PM
110: OK, point taken. But I'm keeping my image of the throne made of femurs. I like it.
And I wholly endorse kicking up a huge fuss about paperless voting machines. I think they do present a genuine risk to the whole network of trust that is necessary for democracy.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:13 PM
But I'm keeping my image of the throne made of femurs. I like it.
As you should -- it's a fine one.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:15 PM
Because a throne of Lemurs wouldn't sit still?
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:20 PM
115: They like to move it, move it.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:21 PM
A question about the throne of femurs... will the legs be made of femurs, too? Because that would be pretty amusing.
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:28 PM
Would I put it past Bush to start a war with Iran to distract us from Iraq? Not at all, not for a second. I sort of expect he will, in fact.
This is something worth being concerned about. We're talking lots of gratuitously dead people. And 'Smasher, the right-wing press will say anything, but stories about the Administration's war-lust against Iran aren't restricted to the right-wing press. Seymour Hersh has had something to say about it.
more-or-less-sane-but-ambitious McCain
Where are you getting more or less sane? First, anyone who's still in the Republican Party is already off the more-or-less sane scale; they abetted Bush's lunatic policies full-time until his approval ratings stayed below 40 for six months or so. Second, McCain just fucking loves war and Falwell. He has a nice reputation because he knows how to flatter the press, but he. Is. Not. Our. Friend.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:35 PM
The reporter asks if the throne will be made of the femurs of lemurs; the press secretary demurs.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:35 PM
106: The realities of the 2000 and 2004 elections notwithstanding—and acknowledging full well that one was a real travesty of the Democratic process—you go to the polls with the Americans you have, not the Americans you want. Given that the post was not about whether the Administration has tortured prisoners, committed war crimes, or stolen elections, but rather whether the Administration, on the good authority of odds-makers cited by two unreliable sources who are pleading for war with Iran, in fact plans to begin a war against Iran—it's not worth the rhetoric wasted here.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:39 PM
Moses supposes the femurs are lemurs'
But Moses supposes erroneously.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:42 PM
On Armitage, s.z. (who knows something) has good points. #2 is especially worth noting.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 4:50 PM
Upon the throne, the preznit sat down.
And quoth the lemur, 'Fuck you, clown.'
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:05 PM
112.---I'm listening to it now. Attack, Terri, attack!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:08 PM
120: You will grant that there are certain factors beyond LB's quotation in and of itself that lend the idea of a pending war with Iran at least plausible. It's not like this is the first we've heard of the idea.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:24 PM
118: When he gave the non-answer answer of "MYOB" in 2000, when asked whether he would allow his teen daughter to have an abortion, I took it as a sign of hope that he might not be totally insane. What can I say? I'm an optimist. But I don't really think he's sane. Anyone who hugs a guy whose campaign used a push poll to smear one's own daughter has abdicated what I consider sanity in order to climb the ladder. Either way, I ain't exactly volunteering for his campaign, thanks.
The throne of femurs would be all femurs, all the time, except for the ends of the arms, which would be made of fanged jaws, pointing down (obviously) to avoid injury, and the middle of the back, which would be a jawless skull. Duh. And whenever anyone sat down in it, it would briefly play a recording of a voice that sang, "The thighbone's connected to the... thighbone," in a loop.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:34 PM
For some reason, I'm picturing a pelvis as a headrest. But that may just be me.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:35 PM
I'm with the traitor Kotsko. It seems only prudent to believe that the saber-rattling is serious; I'd be overjoyed to learn that my concern is wholly misplaced.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:38 PM
I love reading the comments here. But I think the point should be made that Iran has been at war with us since they took over the embassy in 1979.
Further, much of the violence in Iraq is being financed by Iran. I believe what we are seeing in Iraq now is a power play between Saudi sponored terror and Iranian sponsored terror as to who will control not only the oil of the Middle East, but Islam itself. A new chapter of an old war. The oil revenues have given both sides the resources to have global reach, which is how the US got involved. But I have always felt that Iraq was only phase 2 of a three or four phase war.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:38 PM
Lemur-feet feet?
A lot of them, probably, to bear all the weight.
The thing would look like an unholy cross between a millilemurpede and a Flintstones vintage chair.
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:40 PM
From an Iranian point of view, I imagine that it looks very much more as though the US has been at war with Iran since 1979.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:44 PM
Was 129 supposed to be some sort of justification for an attack on Iran? Because while I more or less agree with what you said, I don't think that gets you from point A to point B.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:45 PM
From an Iranian point of view, I imagine that it looks very much more as though the US has been at war with Iran since 1979.
1953.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:46 PM
Goddammit, bad people need to be punished. Don't any of you effete libruls understand that?
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:49 PM
But Michael Ledeen said all the Iranians love us.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:49 PM
But I think the point should be made that Iran has been at war with us since they took over the embassy in 1979.
Goes back a bit farther than that. This country seems to love depicting the storming of the embassy as solely the product of the delusions of those crazy Iranians. But the belief that the Americans were agents involved in a plot to overthrow the Iranian govt. wasn't really a crazy idea considering the Americans had done exactly that in 1953 with Operation Ajax.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:50 PM
Damn, pwned by Ogged.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:51 PM
I believe keeping embassy workers as prisoners is an act of war. Supporting the deposed leader is an act of charity. I can't speak for Mossadegh's bona fides, but at the time being a socialist in a country that bordered the USSR was a pretty good indication that the US was not your friend. I think that Palahvi's failure in his attempt to be the Iranian Attaturk set up the backlash that we are still dealing with.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:54 PM
To repeat Brock's question:
Was 129 supposed to be some sort of justification for an attack on Iran? Because while I more or less agree with what you said, I don't think that gets you from point A to point B.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:56 PM
Well, it probably goes even further back than the 50s. It sounds like Iran didn't enjoy its WWII experience as key transit-point in lendlease, and before that, the Qajars were having a grand time selling off bits of the country to the British. In the grand scheme of things, all of us are just iterations of the Mongols.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:58 PM
I can't speak for Mossadegh's bona fides, but at the time being a socialist in a country that bordered the USSR was a pretty good indication that the US was not your friend.
What's that supposed to mean?
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 5:59 PM
My point was we are already at war with Iran, and have been for a long time.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:00 PM
138: And what about your summary makes you think that there is anything irrational about their present (apparent) conception of us as interfering power with little concern for their welfare? Or why not just say, "Might makes right," and be done with it?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:00 PM
So once a state of war exists, what's a few more bombs here and there?
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:01 PM
all of us are just iterations of the Mongols
When I was watching that show about Genghis Khan, my mom came in the room and saw who it was about and started cursing him out.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:02 PM
Well, it's high time to negotiate a peace treaty, then.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:02 PM
Um, yeah. Are you suggesting that attacking Iran wouldn't be an important change in the current situation because 'we're already at war with them'? And if so, would you care to share your crack with the whole class?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:02 PM
re: 142
Seriously, what part of 'being a socialist in a country that bordered the USSR' constitutes a declaration of war? I mean in the real world, rather than bizarro-world.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:04 PM
I want some!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:04 PM
141- the 1953 CIA sponsored coup against the duly elected Mossadegh was because he was a g-d commie. So we put in the Shah as part of our containment strategy. Which the Soviets didn't like, so they supported Iranian dissident groups, one of whose leaders was Khomeni.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:04 PM
Leech, can you be more explicit? Do you honestly believe that the overthrow of Mossadegh was justified? Do you believe that it was a lesser offense than the taking of the American hostages? Do you believe that the latter would have happened without the former?
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:06 PM
148: Oh, it's a sketchy sort of thing to be. And once your government is identified by the US as sketchy, you don't expect us not to overthrow your leaders, do you? That would be unAmerican.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:06 PM
145: Does your mom actually swear?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:07 PM
he was a g-d commie
That was the worry at the time, though it's hardly as if there's conclusive evidence that that was true. He wanted to nationalize the oil industry, but there was no reason that Iran needed to be aligned with the Soviets, rather than the British and Americans, if the latter two hadn't tried to fuck Iran over.
And I'm also not clear on what conclusion you think should be reached on the basis of this.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:07 PM
re: 150
" the 1953 CIA sponsored coup against the duly elected Mossadegh was because he was a g-d commie."
And which part of that statement is remotely justifiable?
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:08 PM
ogged, have you read that Sandra Mackey book The Iranians? At the end of her section on Gengis Khan (towers of skulls! the sack of the great Persian civilization!), she tells a story about an Iranian gardener she met who, when she complimented him on the rich redness of his roses, said something like "It is the red of all the Iranian blood that has been spilled here," and she was all, "You mean the post-revolution purges," and he was all, "No, by those barbaric Mongols."
It kind of reminded me of how my Irish friend claims that everybody competed to make up the best stories to fuck with the folklorists, but I guess all that post-Mongol existentialist poetry could really mark a culture.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:08 PM
145: Does your mom actually swear?
No. Except once. I'd been watching the Wire constantly, and she could overhear, and I have a habit of saying "Fuck!" perhaps more than I ought, so she was feeling beseiged by all the foul language. The ex was here, and I was saying, jokingly and loudly, that I was PISSED OFF, and my mom came into the room and said, "Fuck! Who's fucking pissed off?"
It was one of her better comedic moments.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:10 PM
146- If you think we would get favorable terms, a peace treaty would not be out of order.
147- It would definately be a change, but one that favors our way of war over theirs. Which in a way, responds to 143- might does make right, or rather, the winners write the history books.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:12 PM
ogged, have you read that Sandra Mackey book The Iranians?
I haven't, but that story is totally believable. They treat that stuff as if it happened yesterday. 800 years!
But on my dad's side, some of those folks definitely look like they have some Mongol in them, so I have mixed feelings about the invading hordes.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:13 PM
I think we really need to work hard to engage with this Tassled guy in a charitable manner.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:13 PM
After s/he brings pastry.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:14 PM
Calm the fuck down, Adam.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:14 PM
My mom once casually swore, and we discussed it and what it portended for a week.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:15 PM
might does make right, or rather, the winners write the history books.
Suddenly, my eyes are opened.
I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:16 PM
There's some Mongol in LB too, apparently.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:18 PM
Faster, LizardBreath, Kill! Kill! Kill!: Unfogged in the Post-Ogged World
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:20 PM
Perhaps instead of invading Iran we could just annihilate them with a nuclear barrage? Seems much cleaner, plus it would really teach them a lesson for taking those damn hostages (a lesson they have clearly not yet learned).
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:21 PM
OK, I can't be clever. I do not think that the coup in 1953 was justified, but the powers that be at the time sure thought so. I think sometimes we forget just how scared we were of the USSR. Many of the "crimes" of the US foreign policy were reactions to Soviet actions. In the 50's and 60's the cold war could have gone either way. The Cuban missle crisis was a reaction to our having missles in Turkey, and to a degree the coup in Iran. My personal opinion is that Americans and through them their government, want to be able to buy oil at the world price, and sell Coca Cola and MS Word for what we can get for it. Any interference with those transactions will get the attention of the 7th Fleet.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:22 PM
158: So this is just the ol' "look what a hard-edged realist I am" troll, then? That shit's been really tired for quite a while already.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:23 PM
169: I'm OK with hard-edged realist. Hell, I prefer them to most others. The hard-edged realists didn't want us to invade Iraq. The problem is stupid hard-edged realists.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:26 PM
By the way, if we're currently "at war" with Iran because they took hostages in 1979 (and our negotiation of their release did not delineate an end to the "war", for some reason), I'm starting to think there must be a whole lot of countries with whom we're still at war. At we at war with Japan over Pearl Harbor? Are we at war with Cuba over the bay of pigs? At we at war with Vietnam over the Tet Offensive? Are we at war with South Carolina over their unlawful efforts to secede from the Union?
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:26 PM
After you posted that grim little "slippery with human fat" detail, ogged, I went back to the Mackey book and then looked Khan up in Wikipedia. His Wikipedia article stresses the administrative functions of Khan's empire, not so much with the skulls and human fat. Oh, and there was a bit about how the Khwarezmian shah totally dissed Khan's ambassador and so brought the invasion on himself.
(My Iranian honey takes after his mom's Azeri family.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:27 PM
I'd just like to note that normally, y'know, I'm all about the pastries but in this case I'll pass on the crack waffles. They'd probably taste terrible no matter how much syrup you pour on 'em.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:29 PM
171- I guess you missed the signing ceremony on the deck of the USS Missouri.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:31 PM
dissed Khan's ambassador and so brought the invasion on himself
Makes perfect sense.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:33 PM
165: Either some Mongol or some second-generation folksinger.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:33 PM
Well, for "dissed," you should read "beheaded."
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:35 PM
170: Umm, yeah. Mostly the folks running around trying to display their mental toughness about other people bleeding are not, in fact, legitimate realists. I thought we were clear on that.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:37 PM
Well, for "dissed," you should read "beheaded."
Yeah, I'm just teasing; that detail was in the show too. Beheading never does anyone any good.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:38 PM
169- sorry to bother you DaveL with my tired schtick. I guess it's better to stay in the warm comfort of like minded folks. PS, I've bled plenty. as one of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:47 PM
176: Or maybe Arlo has some Mongol in him?
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:47 PM
I've heard that ol' Ghengis wore loafers fashioned out of human skin, with tassles made from the intestines of infants.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:50 PM
Leech, would you like to address the point that going to war in any "hot" way with Iran would likely result in a gigantic clusterfuck?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:51 PM
180: Yeah, dude, you're like totally shaking up our entire hivemind worldview with your incredibly insightful analysis.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:52 PM
Uncle Sam's Misguided Children
Semper fi! (from a cousin (Army))
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:53 PM
Sorry about the bleeding, Leech, but what's your point?
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:54 PM
Also, this: My personal opinion is that Americans and through them their government, want to be able to buy oil at the world price, and sell Coca Cola and MS Word for what we can get for it.
Dude, we're the ones pushing for trade sanctions against Iran.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:55 PM
I don't think I ever said it going to war into a hot war with Iran was a great idea, only that it is going to happen. Under the current leadership of both countries, I see it as inevitable. And I think that the US will prevail, but with a lot more casualties than we are used to seeing. But once the war is over and we have prevailed, we will be looking at a post war situation more similar to 1945 than now.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:57 PM
going to war in any "hot" way with Iran would likely result in a gigantic clusterfuck?
Leech, I suspect that there are many things we agree on, but I have to say that 183 seems right to me. But it is not clear to me (although I only skimmed the thread) that you actually were advocating a ground war in Iran. Were you?
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 6:58 PM
ignore 189 [must remember to check comments on preview]
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:00 PM
But once the war is over and we have prevailed, we will be looking at a post war situation more similar to 1945 than now.
You know, in the real world, 1945 onwards was worse than now. I don't doubt that if there is a way to fuck things up more, this Administration will find it. But I don't know why you seem so gleeful about it. Are you shorting the US market?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:01 PM
187- re trade sanctions, I have never understood the logic that starving the children is prefereable to killing the soldiers.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:02 PM
192: Well, to be fair, they're not our children. Or our children's parents.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:03 PM
How are the children doing in Iraq today?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:04 PM
I think that that war should be evitable, and I disagree that the aftermath of the US's pounding Iran into dust would look like 1945.
Well, okay, it might, if you substitute the "American" part of "The American Century" with "Chinese."
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:08 PM
191- there are scenarios for a depression when the housing bubble bursts, like now. And I am not gleeful about that situation, but sanguine. I don't blame Bush for the current state of affairs, but pity him that it came on his watch. I truthfully don't think that Gore would have done better. I am afraid that the baby boomer's perpetual adolesence has caused all sides to refight Vietnam, when we are fighting at the gates of Vienna. We are looking for a Lepanto, which may not come.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:10 PM
188: Considering that the topic of the thread is whether it's a good idea, perhaps you can understand our confusion at what point you're trying to make?
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:12 PM
Except that, if I'm understanding the reference properly, we are not at any risk from Iran or all of the Muslim powers combined. You people need to get comfortable with our strength.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:12 PM
George Bush is Jan Sobieski!
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:14 PM
198- after Iran gets the nukes, the balance of power shifts, doesn't it? I don't think you can say we are not at any risk.
197- it may not be a good idea but it may be necessary.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:19 PM
Leech, the Bush administration has never had anything resembling an Iran policy---other than closing their eyes and hoping that the students overthrow the regime like Michael Ledeen promised, that is. Kenneth Pollack is a dirty word in most liberal households, but his book on Iran is basically about what an US policy on Iran should look like, and it involves a negotiated settlement, not war. His book came out maybe two years ago, and I don't see anything like his proposed policy coming out of this administration.
I don't know what Gore would have done--maybe not diss the Iranian offer of talks in 2003? maybe expand on Gore's work in counter-proliferation? maybe not gratuitously insult a famously nationalistic country with a very fragile opposition movement?--but I'm willing to bet that he wouldn't have kicked the can down the road to an impasse the way that Bush has.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:21 PM
155:
This part:
"The 1953 CIA sponsored coup against the duly elected Mossadegh"
from 150 was justifiable.
The rest was rubbish.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:22 PM
182- I need to get a pair of those.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:23 PM
We are looking for a Lepanto, which may not come.
Would you very much mind taking your grand historical analogies somewhere else? We're talking about killing actual human people here, not some four-war Quadrifecta on a fucking Risk board.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:27 PM
200: 198- after Iran gets the nukes, the balance of power shifts, doesn't it? I don't think you can say we are not at any risk.
Not unless they get several thousand. Heck, they'll never get a big enough arsenal to take on Israel, let alone us (or Russia, or China, or India, or (arguably) Pakistan). At most, they'll have slightly more freedom to engage in covert-ish actions. (We already have effectively total freedom, I assume we use it for better or worse.) So what? So did the Sovs., and they had a much bigger military, with a much bigger and better arsenal. We're still in a better state of affairs than at any time during the Cold War.
Bush has two more years. I'd like to think there's a limit to how hard he can fuck us, and how many of our future years he can commit us to spending on unwinding his mess. We'll see.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:33 PM
195- I think that the Chinese are going to have a bigger problem with the coming US recession than we are.
201- You're right about Bush's Iran policy and Pollack. I am no fan of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq or not negotiating with Iran. I think his "Axis of Evil" statement, while true, was impolitic. Or having made the statement, then do something about it. The half measures taken in Iraq are unfathomable. Why did he ignore the State Dept. plan? I am afraid that domestic political fighting has seeped into all areas of government and it has crippled our ability to act. Should Democtatic supporters in State and CIA sabotage the foreign policy of the elected, or because they "know better" should policy wishes be adjusted? Whig and Tories.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:34 PM
You're not about to call us watermelons, are you Leech?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:36 PM
how can a statement without content be true? "Axis of Evil" is like "whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis?" and contains the same amount of truth.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:37 PM
204- OK Matt,. I know that we're talking about real people. I know some of them who are there now. I have served with them. But we also need to remember that "they" are trying to kill us, too. And we need to take that just as seriously.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:39 PM
. Should Democtatic supporters in State and CIA sabotage the foreign policy of the elected, or because they "know better" should policy wishes be adjusted?
Let's be leave aside democratic rule issues for the moment and admit this: we do know better. You see grudging admissions of something like this from (IIRC) Ross Douthat occassionally. We just have the machinery in place to handle the modern world, particularly with its multiculti facets, and y'all don't. I honestly wonder sometimes if we need some sort of affirmative action program for conservatives, or to just dump money into southern universities with the explicit program of developing a conservative intellectual edifice.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:40 PM
208- right- the Iranians and the North Koreans aren't working together on missle development or nuclear proliferation. My bad.
207- no pits, please.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:43 PM
But we also need to remember that "they" are trying to kill us, too. And we need to take that just as seriously.
Possibly our willingness to continue to support far and away the most powerful armed forces in the history of the world ought to count as seriousness of a sort? By and large that sort of thing seems to have done pretty well at keeping other folks from trying to conquer and rule the U.S.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:43 PM
210- 40years of Democratic control of Congress will do that. An actual affirmative action policy of hiring "conservatives" in junior positions at State and CIA would be a great idea. Call my alma mater, Claremont McKenna.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:47 PM
"they" are trying to kill us, too.
Al Qaeda is trying to kill me. I favor taking the fight to them. Iran isn't trying to kill me; it may be sponsoring some of the people fighting in Iraq, but that's a war on their border that we started and there's no evidence that they plan to take it to our shores.
The innocent people in Iran who you're saying it may be necessary to blow up certainly aren't trying to kill me.
So shut up with your "they."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:49 PM
And to follow on SCMTim's 210, I would assert that this administration effectively does not have and has never had a foreign policy as regards Iran. Inasfar as we have an Iran policy, it's a cockeyed hope for "regime change," which has effectively subtracted from our real-world options. If Democratic-leaning CIA Iran hands are still trying to influence policy, that would be a good sign; in their place, I would contemplate suicide.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:49 PM
213: Right, because State and CIA are located in the legislative branch, so the number of those years in which the Republicans controlled the executive is completely irrelevant. And 12 years of GOP control of one or both houses of Congress is far to short a time for so benighted a bunch to pull its collective head out of its ass.
And for that matter, why bother? Poppy Bush was a lot of things, but demented about the Middle East wasn't one of them.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:51 PM
An actual affirmative action policy of hiring "conservatives" in junior positions at State and CIA would be a great idea.
Dude, this is already happening. You want to be recruited into the CIA or State, go to BYU.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 7:52 PM
214- Al Queda and Iran are two seperate issues to be sure. They have a mutual interest in seeing our power and influence diminished. Can we get get the Persians and Arabs, who have fought for centuries over the Middle East, and which includes a religious component to the split to mutually coesist whithout one dominating the other? Maybe, but not in my lifetime.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:03 PM
217- I'm too old, or I'd do it.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:04 PM
Just wait until the Mongol hordes get the Bomb.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:10 PM
Thank you all for taking the time to respond to my less than orthodox opinions. Let me leave with this. If this is the existential threat to our very existence that we have been led to believe, then why hasn't the Republican Congress authorized the expansion of the active duty military? We have stop loss and IRR call ups because we need 2 more divisions. It won't take a draft, but a serious approach to fighting this war. War bonds, higher taxes etc. If not, then what the heck are we doing? We have the means , but not the collective will. And if that means that the people vote these guys out because the people don't want to fight this war, then that is what should happen.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:14 PM
If this is the existential threat to our very existence that we have been led to believe...
It isn't.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:19 PM
OK, I'll bite: I think that's actually what he means, as well. Either these crack waffles are delicious or what he's saying is that he doesn't think war is a good idea but it appears inevitable so it might as well be fought balls-out (and, tangentially, that it's not a huge threat because the same Republicans pounding the war drums are the ones who aren't significantly enlarging our military).
On the other hand, like I said, crack waffles. I could totally be wrong.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:24 PM
"the Iranians and the North Koreans aren't working together on missle development or nuclear proliferation."
See, that's a statement with content, and it can be evaluated for its truth, relevance, etc. I don't think the Iranians and North Koreans are out, generally, to proliferate nuclear weapons. But they may share information. So if President Bush were to say, "Hey, the Iranians and North Koreans may be sharing information," that is a statement that could, potentially, be true.
But "Axis of Evil" is like "Nobody Gets Me Lucky Charms." It says nothing. Some speechwriter, appended "Axis Powers" to "Evil Empire" to try to trade on both connotations, to try to make a nasty sounding monster. This is irrefutable: the words don't mean anything.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:24 PM
I disagree that, even with a draft and as much money as you like, we have the means to pacify Iraq, Iran, and a country to be named later (Saudi Arabia or Syria?) I think that's what you're calling for. But even if we could succeed in occupying those countries, we just couldn't defeat the resulting insurgencies.
And even if we could, it wouldn't be worth it. Starting a war requires a serious reason, which has not been on offer.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:25 PM
"If not, then what the heck are we doing?"
Well, precisely.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:25 PM
223- Bingo
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:30 PM
I disagree that, even with a draft and as much money as you like, we have the means to pacify Iraq, Iran, and a country to be named later (Saudi Arabia or Syria?) I think that's what you're calling for.
I bet we could. But it would take a long time, we'd be monsters by the end of it, and we'd be worse off, besides.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:31 PM
we are fighting at the gates of Vienna. We are looking for a Lepanto, which may not come.
With all due respect, TLL, that is just a steaming pile of crap. Idealist shares your delusions of an imminent reestablished caliphate, but at least he realizes the clusterfuckicity of attacking Iran.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:34 PM
228- I'm afraid it will come to that.
Posted by Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:38 PM
I hope that was fun for everyone, trying to decode what our Leech friend was saying.
I'm still not sure I understand, or that it's something that's worth knowing.
As I write this comment, I am experiencing a Zen-like calm.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:42 PM
230.---Ok, so start educating yourself on the other options available. Because the all-out US vs. Islam
clusterfuckwar is hardly inevitable, or at least it shouldn't be.And don't let me catch you talking about the 12th Imam after all this superpower-enabled fatalism.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:44 PM
The 12th Imam, revealed!
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:52 PM
I think we all need to step back for a minute and realize that we have no power. Not me, not Armsmasher, not Jackmormon, not LizardBreath, and -- thank God! -- not Tassled Loafered Leech. None of what we say has any effect on anything -- not even giving yet another small morsel to the Republican slanderers, who would normally hit up Daily Kos or (in days gone by) Democratic Underground, rather than Unfogged. I will never be quoted, and neither will any of us, at least not about this. We are not among the media elite. We are in a little corner somewhere.
In a corner being calm....
Jesus will rescue us in the end, I'm sure.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 8:55 PM
Well, at least TLL help explains my general pessimism and paranois. It obviously isn't just Bush, Cheney , Rumsfeld, and the Neocons. It is not just a bunch of dittohead bullies who will back down at a loud "boo". It is one third of the country with an irradicable worldview and a lifetime committment. War or no war, it will still be war.
Some weird moral calculation leads to wish the war was at home. The Iraqis and Iranians don't deserve this. Somehow I think we do.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 9:04 PM
228- I'm afraid it will come to that.
Just to be clear, you're afraid we'll be "forced" to pre-emptively attack Iran, Saudia Arabia, and Syria? How? Why?
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 9:08 PM
No TLL the world would not be better off, like 1945. The fucking goddamn 50-75 million dead were not fucking better off for WWII. We would be the aggressors, the bad guys and we would utterly damned, as damned as the Germans. Damned.
I am suddenly reminded of the chapter in Doktor Faustus where Leverkuhn is composing his masterpiece while the child Echo is screaming, dying of migraine in the next room. Leverkuhn incorporates the screams into the finale.
Damned. Damned to hell forever.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 9:12 PM
Pessismism
I went kinda nuts over at Crooked Timber, but God I love the guys like Mann so much. Mann was a liberal exile form Nazi Germany, but the book he wrote was a cry of the damned. Leverkuhn was Mann himself, was Germany, was also modernism and the Enlightenment and the demonic sacrifice of the heart to Reason, the return of the repressed Drunken Master
America too thought it had buried its devils, its curse, its ancient sins and guilt. The end of racism. But the frat-boy shook off the borrowed skin and unfolded his great bat wings and took flight.
I think we are damned.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 9:46 PM
You know, rather than killing off a shitload of them, a smaller shitload of us, and assorted bystanders, let's bring back the idea of settling things by combat between champions. Their president and our president, mano a mano. Dress them up in clown suits, give them each a chainsaw, and let them have at each other. May the best brushcutter win.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 10:22 PM
Damn, fucked up and left off the best stuff:
Like you, the Krell forgot
one deadly danger...their own subconscious hate
and lust for destruction.
The beast.
The mindless primitive. Even the Krell must have
evolved from that beginning.
And so those mindless beasts
of the subconscious...had access to a machine
that could never be shut down.
The secret devil of every soul on the planet...
all set free at once
to loot and maim...and take revenge and kill!
My poor Krell!
After a million years
of shining sanity...they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 10:22 PM
227: Though I disagree that war is inevitable, I agree that they present no real threat or the hawks would be trying to expand the military. I'm not sure I buy the balls-out-or-nothing approach. While it's obvious that in order to pacify Iraq we needed more troops than we used, I also think there were strategies available that wouldn't have required as great a degree of pacification. Though I may well be wrong, it is my impression that had we not so aggressively de-Baathified the civilian bureaucracy and dismantled the army, instead merely decapitating Saddam's power structure and then giving those in the government who already knew the levers of control a chance to use them to better ends, we wouldn't be in this situation.
I mean, I understand the lure of expected, hoped-for finality in a Total War scenario. I don't think it's accurate, however. If there were a way to just kill everyone else and have it make everything better, I'm pretty sure someone would have hit on the right methodology over the course of human history. As it stands, I can't actually think of a single war that eradicated every vestige of the problem it sought to solve, no conflict whose core was not somehow passed down to another generation.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08-30-06 11:09 PM
I'm not sure I buy the balls-out-or-nothing approach. While it's obvious that in order to pacify Iraq we needed more troops than we used, I also think there were strategies available that wouldn't have required as great a degree of pacification.
Perhaps, but there's not much precedent to suggest that's the case. Pacification just always seems to involve killing a shitload of people. And insurgencies, if anything, are easier to sustain these days, especially in urbanized areas. The urban areas largely negate our air advantage, and the global proliferation of light arms means they have access to rifles every bit as good as ours. (perhaps better, ccnsidering the environment)
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 2:41 AM
re: 242
There have been successful counter-insurgency campaigns in the past. It's just very hard to do.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 4:02 AM
they present no real threat or the hawks would be trying to expand the military
Sadly, I don't think this follows. The hawks have demonstrated that the actions they're willing to take bear no relation to any real problems that we actually do face. You could reason "If North Korean nuclear proliferation were a real problem the Bush Administration would have had a policy toward them besides sitting around with its thumb up its ass for five years," but you'd be wrong. They really do think that they can do what they want without willing the means, and that anyone who points out problems with their approach must be a Democratic supporter sabotaging the policies of the elected -- just because they know better!
Of course anyone who thinks that we do face an existential threat from the Middle East is a moron. Nuclear terrorism (which is a problem, would've been nice if we'd elected the guy who demonstrated some awareness of this issue) could lead to an unrecognizable fascist state in America, but that's because the hawks are eager to implement unlimited power for themselves. The existential threat is from within, not from without.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 6:39 AM
Given the increased effectiveness of insurgency, you'd think we might consider just cutting our losses and letting other countries run their own affairs, rather than invading, massacring, and torturing them -- because damn, invading, massacring, and torturing them is expensive and kills American troops! I mean, shit!
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 6:40 AM
Uh oh, Adam's losing his zen-like calm.
There have been successful counter-insurgency campaigns in the past. It's just very hard to do.
We don't seem to be very good at doing hard things these days.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 7:14 AM
I haven't caught up on the comments since yesterday yet, but I think this is worth posting. Media Matters caught Hannity saying this on his radio show yesterday:
HANNITY: This is the moment to say that there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the speaker.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 8:15 AM
There have been successful counter-insurgency campaigns in the past. It's just very hard to do.
I think it's getting harder. With past insurgencies you often had one side of the fight much better armed. With the widespread production of Kalashnikov style rifles, that's just not the case anymore. Modern food production and the subsequent urbanization isn't helping either. We can't cut them off from supplies, we have a hard time finding them, and they are well armed. I'm not quite ready to say it's impossible to put down insurgency, but looking at Chechnya and Iraq, I wonder if it's impossible without the cooperation of the resident population. And in Iraq we just don't have it.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 9:38 AM
244, & others: Well said, and points taken. Mainly I was trying to meet TLL halfway, but it's a line of reasoning to which I, myself, can be quite susceptible. A little reality-orienteering is always welcome.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 10:10 AM
If Hannity wants somebody to die so that Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the Speaker, the obvious way is to hire a suicide bomber, which he may already have done. I recommend throwing Hannity in jail for public terrorist threats against a potential member of the presidential line of succession.
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 10:20 AM
The existential threat is from within, not from without.
This I believe entirely.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 10:29 AM
I recommend throwing Hannity in jail
You can try! He'll only go underground to continue the fight.
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 08-31-06 10:51 AM
After A good nights's sleep I am not nearly as pessimistic as yesterday. A hot war with Iran may not be inevitable. After all, we were able to fight a cold war with the much more powerful Soviets, who were causing trouble across the globe as oppossed to the Iranians, who really are only playing in their backyard. But I agree with Matt in post 244, should nuclear terrorism reach our shores the reaction by either a Republican or Democratic President will not be pretty. The challenge to our liberty is internal.