Reminds me of contemporary observations from pre-Third Reich Germany: Hitler was a buffoon, a blowhard, just another crazy, etc.

And FDR was, in my estimation, one of our greatest presidents. Yet Japanese Americans still got sent to concentration camps.

Weren't you making fun of we lefties for saying this shit a couple of years ago, Mr. Ogged?

As opposed to making fun of us for using subject pronouns instead of object pronouns, which would be totally justified.

I'm really glad he said it, but I can't help but think that all that does is put him into the "looney" category for most Americans. Try to imagine a major Congressional Dem citing him on the floor of the House, or on TV.

The only heartneing thing is that this guy seems to be from a pretty mainstream place; if he can see it, then maybe a lot more people will start to see it - for real.

I dunno -- don't you think we're swinging back from the brink (without even arguing about how close to the brink we were)? I can't see people happily acquiescing in any major curtailments of civil liberties any more -- a couple of years ago, maybe, but voters are getting cross with that sort of thing.

5: But if there's another major attack, equal to or greater than 9/11 in scope?

Bob Somerby of Daily Howler can be a nag about the War on Gore thing, but every few weeks he notes, almost in passing, that, in the current culture, we are one event from the end of America As We Know It.

And he's so fucking right.

The anti-muslim sentiment, sure, but that still doesn't seem to be getting worse -- it's stabilized at a lousy, but not particularly concentration-camp-inciting, level after 9-11, and I think if anything it's settled down from there.

On the other hand, I live in a coastal enclave, and don't know what's going on out there in Real Ammurica.

6: But do you think that's likely? I agree that it would have a huge effect, although I'm not exactly sure what, but I just don't see it happening.

This is exactly why I tell people not to just dismiss the Pat Robertsons of the world as irrelevant loonies. They represent a very large constituency, and that constituency wholeheartedly believes in an America nobody here would be willing to live in.

5: I think we've stopped approaching the brink, maybe even turned away, but I'm not sure we're out of range. We need a lot more counterprogramming to undo the damage of the past (1)5 years of propoganda.

Plus, think about the literally millions of Americans who lust after such an event as Their Moment - from Reynolds and the Powerlosers to the Rottweiler and the other nutcases. They will be out in force within seconds, promoting the most fascist solutions imaginable, and they'll convince a lot of people while we Blue Staters will be discussing What It Means. Americans are still primed to jump towards insanity.

Is this the same guy as the Unitarian minister who gave a sermon along these lines about 3-4 years ago? The transcript of it was passed around the internet for a little bit.

No, he's the son of a Presbyterian minister and a journalist by trade (although Harvard Divinity-trained).

Hasn't the rightwing gone so far lately as to equate association with Harvard Divinity with association with the Manson Family?

Weren't you making fun of we lefties for saying this shit a couple of years ago, Mr. Ogged?

No.

I don't think we're nearly "out of range." Things might be calmer now, but if there's another attack, a lot of people will react by thinking that the stupid and violent reaction was right all along, and lots of people on the left will either sympathize or think there's nothing to be done, the reaction is "natural," etc. We'll be truly fucked for a long time.

Chris Hedges has long been villified by the right for telling the truth.

By the way, the commencement address linked at 15 is worth reading.

I don't think we're nearly "out of range."

I don't think so either, and it won't take a large-scale terror attack to demonstrate just how close to the edge we are. All it will take is the bottom falling out of the housing market and a wave of foreclosures.

- a couple of years ago, maybe, but voters are getting cross with that sort of thing.

I haven't seen anything suggesting that they're bothered by the civil liberties issues.

I think it really unlikely that anything so horrible will come to pass. And if it does--if there's a serious fascist movement in the US--there's a better than even chance that we'll have the numbers, and that we'll be able to burn them and everything they love to the ground. It's important to stay positive.

In related news, Pajamas Media seems to (shockingly!) have been wrong about Khamenei being dead (or else Iran is up to shenanigans to disguise his passing, or they've mastered some sort of Islamofascistic Lazarus technology that will doom us all. Given the non-retractions of the Jamail Hussein clusterfuck, I expect soon we will learn that the real lesson here is that liberals hate America.

there's a better than even chance that we'll have the numbers

I don't think that's true at all. Remember how it was after 9/11? Even most of the liberals wanted blood. I'd be happy if it were 80/20 round 'em up and nuke 'em/don't.

if there's a serious fascist movement in the US

No "if" there. The movement exists, and they currently control the executive branch of the federal government.

there's a better than even chance that we'll have the numbers

They have the guns.

17: Although I agree with Hedges' analysis, I think that the weak underbelly of the Christianists is that they don't, actually, offer anything of economic value to their marks (obv. they offer some social services of value, but I mean big picture, populist stuff). Point being, the story that's been told, about how wealth is there for the godly, while offering social/spiritual salves for the dispossessed, only works while the hearers continue to grasp onto a middle class lifestyle. The megachurches offer nothing to someone who has hit bottom - the message is the same, and won't resonate anymore ("I already put my faith in Jesus, and look where it got me").

Not saying that a Depression would lead to people abanding megachurches, but I don't think it would strengthen their hold. Whereas a terrorist attack is conveniently external, and can be blamed on those familiar partners, radical Islamists and radical Secularists.

18, 21: Sorry, Jim Morrison, we have neither the guns nor the numbers. This is why Dems need to start talking about the national illness that struck after 9/11, so that people can start to construct their own stories that aren't based exclusively in fear.

But I'm not aware of anyone outside of the blogosphere telling this story (Fahrenheit 911 theoretically did, but it was so Bush-centric that I don't think people really got it, even those who paid attention).

Many civil rights, sexy and unsexy, are simply gone, and they probably ain't comin' back.

20: And those that didn't were laughed at as puppet-wielding hippies or p.c. wusses.

The distinction that matters is between fascism as a political agenda (the Republicans) and fascism in terms of political structures, which thankfully we don't yet have. I can see us going a long way (further) towards things like internment camps for Muslims and encroaching on the 1st and 4th amendments for "information" purposes--I mean, effectively the various stuff that's happened under the patriot act violates pretty much every single amendment in the Bill of Rights. What I wonder about, though, is whether or not people would stand for actually suspending an election, or dissolving part of the Congress, etc. Suspending disbelief in Diebold is one thing, and maybe it would be enough to just go through the motions. But I do find it hard to imagine people putting up for long with the more obvious trappings of a police state.

Which isn't saying anything other than "if they go that far, there will be a resistance."

But I do find it hard to imagine people putting up for long with the more obvious trappings of a police state.

Really? I find it hard to imagine people organizing a meaningful resistance. What would you do?

What would you do?

Blog! Teh powerz of teh Intarwebs will save us all!

(Or, you know, not much.)

I find it hard to imagine people organizing a meaningful resistance.

I find it hard to imagine any meaningful resistance not getting crushed in a matter of days.

I haven't seen anything suggesting that they're bothered by the civil liberties issues.

They weren't back in the days when there were commies under every bed and sailing up the Mississippi from Cuba either. My nicely pink high school classmates (Great Neck) polled overwhelmingly against most of the Bill of Rights.

It all depends on leadership. The history books indicate the kill-em-all, do-whatever-it-takes impulses are just below the surface at all times in all places.

Resistance shmesistance, and there won't be any need to dissolve Congress, because this stuff will be popular. That's the point. People will want this.

In Rome they never gave up the trappings. The Senate continued to meet, continued to vote on things, at least through the first few hundred years of dictatorship. I'm sure they'd let us keep the trappings.

But I do find it hard to imagine people putting up for long with the more obvious trappings of a police state.

Maybe it would help me if you spelled these out. What I see already in place is nearly ubiquitous video cameras in public places, the government asserting a right to listen to your phone calls and open your mail, secret prisons conveniently offshored, holding US-born citizens without trial, etc. And it's only a few wussy liberals and pointy-headed libertarians even making polite objections to the current state of affairs.

B shifted the conversation from fascist policies to fascist institutions, ogged. Try to keep up.

26/27: Define "meaningful resistance." I'm not thinking "start a civil war." I'm thinking shit like, yeah, blogging (for all you laugh): the samizdad were a meaningful form of resistance, teaching slaves to read was a meaningful form of resistance, organizing RAWA from exile was a meaningful form of resistance. I can easily see myself doing that sort of thing. Taking up arms, no, probably not. But that's not the only thing that counts.

I agree with Elder Bio.: leadership is key. Even F'ing Gerald Ford stepped up the plate, as Frank Rich's latest made clear. Now we see what kind of a country we have when the president is the problem, and leadership has to come from elsewhere. I'm hopeful, but it could go very bad.

32: Okay, for instance. Despite the War On Your Carryon Liquids, we don't have armed riot police patrolling most airports, which most Americans found kinda freaky in Europe in the early 90s. We've had cops shaking down kids on streetcorners in poor neighborhoods for decades now, but I imagine that if cruisers started patrolling the neighborhood I live in now and addressing high school kids walking home via p.a. or shining searchlights into people's yards, that the good voters of my town would be (figuratively) up in arms. Yes, the government has the right to search my mail, but if Joe and Jane American start finding out that the Xmas presents they and their neighbors sent arrived opened, or never arrived, that they'd make more than a few polite objections.

Resistance shmesistance, and there won't be any need to dissolve Congress, because this stuff will be popular. That's the point. People will want this.

What's popular (briefly) is the angry action. But there are people on our side (OK, it's only mcmanus and Emerson right now, but still) willing to offer a Lefty angry action plan. We're fine, as long the weenie, elitist liberals don't fuck up the New Hate. Viva the Crazy Old Men!

32 - And yet the cameras really are ubiquitous in England, but the Brits seem to be less down that garden path than we are.

Don't expect any actual oomph from me. I'm old and tired But not mute yet.

My belief is that about 30% of Americans would immediately accept fascism (the Republican core) and that maybe 3-5% knowingly want fascism. In a disorderly situation, 5% is a lot.

The 30% or so who don't usually seem to notice what's happening seems to be turning against Bush. That's my hope, anyway. The way our system works, Republicans get a lot of support from people who have no real idea what's going on -- "low-information voters" or, in my terminology, "ambient voters" (who pick up their politics from the air during the several weeks before the election.)

So maybe things are getting better. I've actually been more optimistic since the 2006 election than I've been in years. But I expect Bush et al to give it at least one more very hard shot.

They'd make more than a few polite objections.

Now, yes. After bombs start going off in malls or the water supply gets contaminated? Not a chance. There are plenty of people willing to fly naked in handcuffs now, and those aren't all from Folsom Street.

So maybe things are getting better. I've actually been more optimistic since the 2006 election than I've been in years.

Exactly the way I feel. And come the counter-Revolution, old age will be no excuse. Start hitting the treadmill.

No, no. You run on the treadmill. You hit the heavy bag. This workout program will never get anywhere if you can't keep the equipment straight.

Isn't the defining variable everyday pain-in-the-assitude? If it doesn't actively encumber one's daily life (the way cameras and wiretaps don't), then there's likely never to be meaningful resistance. In times of crisis, I'm sure patrolling military and the like, to the extent they don't hamper one's trip to starbucks or commute to the office park in the morning, are likely to go similarly unprotested.

I would go further to suggest it's part of irrational optimism (just as something like 90% of drivers think they're above average, so too I bet 90% of americans think they'll never be wiretapped), but that's an empirical thing about which I have no proof.

Thank you, Tim. This thread is doing well on its own, just carry on.

I might suggest a study of 1930-35 Germany. Hitler & the Nazis did face resistance, but I suppose everyone thought this too will pass, just a cycle, I've got a family to feed, I don't like violence whatever. I am not sure.

1) I don't know the probability of a catastrophe, a paradigm shifting event or process. I think 100%.
Whether the Soviet Union breaking apart, or Kuwait, or 1994, or the impeachment, or 9/11, there is always something.

2)I don't know how Americans will react. I am feeling better about it then two years ago. There is no counter-narrative out there in case of Emergency to the Right's, except for the New Deal. 10-20% of a country can take it over, if only for a short while and very messily. If we sit thru it and hope they burn themselves out it could be like Germany.

3) The Media scares me. Unlike Emerson, I don't think Klein and Broder are stupid and venal, I think they are smart and venal. Venal isn't strong enough. I just got a bad feeling, like watching the CEO of my company sell his house and slowly exercise his options. The Media knows Bush isn't quite thru yet.

When did I ever say that Klein was stupid? But I will freely admit that I think that the cognitive parts of Broder's brain are approaching the Schiavo state. Given his state of fuctioning it's really impressive the way he manages to feed himself, find the doors in and out of rooms, etc.

Hi David! Just kidding! No incivility intended, just a little joke among friends. We're laughing with you, not at you. Ha.

Or was he saying that the media are not, like me, stupid and venal, but rather smart and venal? That would be hurtful.

All it will take is one Hiroshima-sized bomb, downtown in any of 50 cities, and people will buy whatever the Prez tells them they need.

Some critics will say, "hey, whose watch allowed this to happen?" and "hey, what about the Constitution?" and they'll be shouted down.

The comparison upthread to the Roman Senate post-Augustus was spot-on.

Oh .

We are in Revolution. I love Pelosi and the House Democrats, really love them, but they think they are in Reform. Already they are thrown off balance. Bush has via a Left-Coast prosecutor thrown a Cunningham supoena flood on them (see Next Hurrah) and Pelosi is already changing the agenda to the War instead of Domesticism, holding hearings in the next few weeks. But she is still following her base.

I expect a tipping point this spring. What may be key is how crazy the right gets. Read Neiwert's archives. Imagine say, Trevino taking an axe-handle to a lefty blogger, and the Justice department saying "We just can't control these guys unless.." There be fascism, it encourages and uses street violence, it is bottom-up in the worst way. This is theory, and history.

The left organizes and talks, organizes and talks, until the people peacefully cry :"Save Us" and then we lefties say, "I have an idea." Cue New Deal. The left runs on ideas and patience. The Right on emotions and force.

The anti-muslim sentiment, sure, but that still doesn't seem to be getting worse -- it's stabilized at a lousy, but not particularly concentration-camp-inciting, level after 9-11, and I think if anything it's settled down from there.

I always bring it up in these threads, but The Plot Against America really is very good at characterizing how hard it is to take the pulse, and how you can still be right to be paranoid even if the stormtroopers never hit the streets. If we don't wind up with concentration camps, there will nevertheless be a positive fascist instinct in America, just perhaps not a particularly well organized or widespread effect. We do man concentration camps, just not on domestic soil and not in great numbers, and they do have the approval of many Americans (even if not the majority), even when it is fully explained what goes on inside them. So it's likewise difficult to know whether and when to use words like "fascist" because the new nazis don't goosestep, don't call the camps Gulag, and so on. (I recall this argument being used by living and breathing administration defenders--not ironically--when Amnesty International used the word to describe Guantanamo.)

But then you hear conservatives mutter about fleeing for Australia, and that sounds deeply unserious.

47: I don't know. I think Bush has blown it, he is too lazy and delusional. Very second class dictator, worse than Saddam.

McCain has it in him, but he is old.

I simply can't predict. That is the nature of Revolution. You know it is about time, America has been coasting since the 60s.

>I've actually been more optimistic since the 2006 election than I've been in years.

Me too. I think the democratic congress can do alot to prevent additional crazy bush evil.

Bush is an unpopular lame duck president with no clear successor. Things are going to fall apart for him pretty soon.

I am also very optimistic.

Hey folks, here, what happens if Saisegly or Ogged gets picked up and sent to Gitmo?

I don't think I have to flatter y'all to make my point.
The Stollers and Kleins and ilk know their backs are covered.

Stoller is right. It is different than the sixties.

I think 49 gets it about right; yes, the current Republican party policies are fascist, and yes, a lot of Americans either put up with this or actively approve. That's a given. I don't think we'll end up with extermination camps, though we obviously have torture camps and incarceration. I think there would be active resistance to obvious media censorship. Restrictions on travel--not inconvenience, but actual restrictions--would, I think, not be something people would just swallow.

Basically I think that even if we, say, suspended elections, we would end up with a generation or two of fascism ala Italy. I don't see us ending up with a situation as extreme as, say, Chile under Pinochet. If there were an actual takeover or suspension of the forms of government, ala mid-30s Spain, then yeah, I can see a civil war-type situation happening. I can see us with a lot of the things that characterized Nazi Germany. But I also think that, as with Germany, an American fascist/imperialist state would meet pretty stiff world resistance, and that there'd be internal resistance as well. I'm not blithely saying "oh, the people will never let that happen!" I'm just saying that bleak statements that Americans would allow the basic forms of government to be upended are, I think, too sweeping.

44 - Bob, the world could use more of your paranoia (in all seriousness), but the comparison to German in the '20s, let alone the '30s, is untenable, I think. One of the reasons people were willing to go along with Hitler was the very real breakdown of order going on. If you represent our Spartacist League and the fascistic creeps at Red State and Little Green Footballs are our Freikorps, we're still in good shape.

It's hard for me to imagine even Bush's most lickspittle and contemptible appointees treating the assassination of a Walther Rathenau analogue -- Nancy Pelosi, say -- with the kid gloves (and tacit approval) that Ernst von Salomon got.

The polls on these issues are not great. However, they swing 20 points, sometimes 30 or 40, depending on how you phrase the question, and they are very consistently not as bad as the Congressional debates would suggest. And people trust this administration less every single day. I'm not saying that the American electorate doesn't have its nasty streaks and its very bad qualities--I am saying that politicians, and the press, and too often us, assume those things and resign ourselves to it in a world-weary way before there is evidence for it.

I do worry a lot about what would happen in case of another attack. It would be nice *not* to have the suspension of habeas for any green card holder lying around in the statute books like a loaded gun if and when that happens. (And I know Bush would veto it--but hasn't anyone heard of a tacking an amendment onto a-hard-to-filibuster-or-veto appropriations bill?)

And I know Bush would veto it

Wouldn't it be good politics to pass a bunch of good bills, knowing full well the President would veto them? Restore habeas; single-payer healthcare -- even just for kids -- wouldn't that make wonderful sense? We are the party who think you should have rights, they aren't?

53: Americans have already allowed basic forms of government to be upended -- it's just that it's being applied in gradual stages, so that at each particular stage things seem "normal" enough that it's hard to incite open revolt, and afterwards the changes seem so entrenched that revolt appears useless. If you had asked the average person to predict things like Guantanamo Bay and the overseas gulag, no-fly lists, anti-habeas corpus laws, warrantless wiretaps and the ICE roundups ten years ago, they'd have laughed you out of the room. But since most of these things made gradual appearances with little splash in the press, and they directly affect relatively marginal constituencies for the time being (peace and labour activists, Muslims, illegal immigrants) it seems to have been hard to arouse mainstream interest in actively opposing them.

A long time can be spent undermining the basics of governance at the expense of marginal people before the mainstream notices. It's like the ice shelves in Greenland and Antarctica that quietly rotted away for years and now, when it's pretty much too late to stop it, are on the verge of collapse. American democracy seems at a similar place, though at least the underpinnings there can be restored... if the opposition is dedicated, "extreme" and partisan enough to do it.

I suspect the Republicans will collapse under the weight of Bush before getting beyond the proto-fascist stage this time around. And it will take something more extreme to push the dominionist base into more violent action (instead of just rehearsing in violent blog fantasies and mailing poison to SC justices). The collapse of the American dollar, for instance.

It's hard for me to imagine even Bush's most lickspittle and contemptible appointees treating the assassination of a Walther Rathenau analogue -- Nancy Pelosi, say -- with the kid gloves (and tacit approval) that Ernst von Salomon got.

Don't kid yourself. It wasn't so long ago--and prior to 9/11--that a Red Senator suggested an elected American President might , for safety's sake, not want to visit his state. It only took 30 years to convict De La Beckwith. And it's not like we didn't have a spate of assassinations in the sixties.

57: Those things aren't *forms* of government (except habeas). They're changes in the extent of basic rights, or the content of certain laws--which is different from flat-out suspending the BoR or eliminating, say, the right to a defense attorney. True, *some* people no longer have that right, and that's certainly bad enough, but it's not quite what I'm talking about.

Wouldn't it be good politics to pass a bunch of good bills, knowing full well the President would veto them?

I think I overheard MY saying something about this when he was recording his Bloggingheads bit—something about the Democrats restrictions on the war to military budget legislation, which forces the President to either accept Democratic stipulations or veto military funding.

58 - Yeah, and if in 1964 you suggested that there might be a political movement designed to scapegoat Southern African-Americans and willing to engage in violence against their supporters to achieve its political aims, you'd have been right. But did you see prominent -- or even non-prominent? -- politicians voicing support for Eric Rudolph? Did judges give him a five-year sentence because they essentially agreed with him? Asking history to follow nice verse form is difficult. Even if I posit that a lot of the jingosphere is following an essentially fascistic model (catch me on a bad day and I might), it seems more Falangist than anything else. We're America -- if we slide into fascism, we'll do it with due respect for the paper shell of the Constitution and an awesome soundtrack with soaring choirs and maybe a guitar solo.

Also, sad to say, both Medgar Evers and Fred Korematsu are evidence that you don't need to posit that we're slipping into Godwin's Law territory to do terrible things to the civil rights of minorities in America.

One index of fascist sympathies are tolerance for the murder of abortion doctors or federal agents. There's a fair amount -- Claude Dallas and the doctor-killers Kopp and Rudolph got a fair amount of sympathy and some support. It may be less now that it was 10-20 years ago.

People organized to kill don't need a numerical advantage, but the armed minority does need active or passive support from a considerable group.

59: Right, more context / content of governance than forms per se. But illustrative of how alarmingly hollowed-out the content can become while still preserving the forms.

61: A Falangist country with nukes and a global reach would be pretty damned alarming, I think.

63 - You'd just have something to use to replace the labor unions in the coalition, as I think we have the religious and nationalist components lined up. (This is, no joke, one of the reasons I have a viscerally negative reaction to Amway; the fact that they're rapacious thieves trading on the idiot dreams of others would obviously be another.)

I dunno, I've been thinking about this stuff for over half my life now, and my level of paranoia is pretty dissociated from macro-events at this point. But I freak the hell out if I think a cop might have seen me do something illegal.

Here's the thing: just on an economic basis US fascism can't look like German or Italian or Argentine fascism. If there's a 9 p.m. curfew, where does that leave Miller Brewing Co. (and by extension Cargill and Conagra)? If there's only 2 TV channels, who's going to buy the new 108" model (not to mention the $700 remote)? If every liberal schoolteacher is replaced with an army officer, why bother taking the Kaplan test prep course (or picking up US News & World Report)?

The people who benefit most from a surreptitious and fairly milquetoast security state are not the anarchist intriguers. The ruling class, not just in this country, but globally, depends for its very existence on a certain kind of Americanism -- not too hott, not too cold, just right.

Having said that, of course there is always a fascist tendency ascendant in US political discourse. How else can they maintain labor discipline among the laziest people in the world? The thing is, it's not even as organized as the Freikorps. What are the KKK, the American Family Association, Operation Rescue, the Minutemen? Simply outsourced brownshirts with the added benefits of plausible deniabilty and an endless supply of patsies and fall-guys.

I don't think the average leftist in this country has much to worry about for the forseeable future. Sure, they might make an example of one or two of us (they do it all the time, under every administration), but overall, it simply isn't cost-effective to repress people who are basically happy to go along to get along. I'd put the chances of any massive crackdowns as about the same as they are for a massive general strike -- slim to none unless a lot of things change both here and abroad.

That's all for now, I'm going to narcotize myself with imported cultural product, then take a pill and get to sleep early so I can get up and work just a little bit harder tomorrow -- gotta keep those productivity numbers up...or else.

Another difference is that the Weimar Republic never quite existed. Neither the left nor the right accepted its legitimacy except tentatively and provisionally (and opportunistically). Even the pro-Weimar people weren't very enthusiastic. And it wasn't just grumbling, but included active defiance of law and often murder.

I take back the previous comment above that the new fascism doesn't resemble previous models. Second verse, same as the first.

54: It took me a while but I decided I am ok fine wih being compared to the Spartacists. They might have been premature but the stakes were very high. Russia alone turned into a disaster. Russia + Germany might have saved millions of lives. Hungary might have made it in that situation, and Austria was fairly close.

66: Hard to even imagine such times. But I cannot believe we are in a post-cataclysmic, post-historical Fukuyma (pre-9/11) world.

I'm more optimistic than I was in, say, 2005, but I also worry that anti-Muslim feeling is coalescing. Before 911, most average Americans didn't really know enough about Muslims to have strong feelings about them (even with all the spooky Arab terrorists in movies), but by now we've all read plenty of online Protocols of Islam. That kind of prejudice is, I fear, becoming more easy to tap into.

That kind of prejudice is, I fear, becoming more easy to tap into.

Among the traditional Blue constituencies, I think that's only true of the porn stars. I don't mean to minimize that loss, but we can survive it.

There was a lot of hateful talk around that Dubai Ports World deal.

#28: I find it hard to imagine any meaningful resistance not getting crushed in a matter of days.

What about Iraq? The lesson of that war is that a bunch of people with crude weapons can harrass, if not defeat, a conventional army for a very long time, if not indefinitely. And Americans have plenty of quite nice weapons, thank you very much. Wolverines!

I should add, they can harrass a conventional army so long as the army is reluctant to really use its full force — i.e., carpet bombing, free-fire zones, nukes, whatever. I assume our new fascist overlords would show us at least that much courtesy.

We carpet bombed the shit out of Vietnam, and covered its countryside with free-fire zones. We still lost.

Among the traditional Blue constituencies, I think that's only true of the porn stars.

Right. Just like the reaction to the Black Panthers. When people, liberals included, are frightened they tend to eliminate the source of the fear. Or pay others to make their omelettes for them.

We carpet bombed the shit out of Vietnam, and covered its countryside with free-fire zones.

Not really. While the restrictions on engaging the enemy in Iraq are much tighter, the most similar US war in that regard was Vietnam. The restrictions on attacking the enemy were notorious. Indeed, the notion of the existence of the term "free-fire area" is, I believe, a development from the Vietnam war. Traditionally, everything is a free-fire area unless denoted otherwise.

I posit a Godwin's Law regarding Godwin's Law.

As the length of a thread increases, the probability of someone mentioning that as the length of a thread increases, the probability of someone mentioning that as the length of a thread increases, the

76: Um, you're saying that designating anything that moves in an area populated with civilians as fair game was standard U.S. military procedure in, for example, Korea or Germany during our war experiences there?

And it's unclear, but are you also disputing that we bombed the shit out of Vietnam?

I think the debate centered around the idea that we could have bombed a lot more of the shit out of North Vietnam. There were people advocating the use of nuclear weapons on Hanoi, as there always will be.

Korea, from the little I've read of it, seems like it was a thoroughly nasty war.

79: That's kinda true. Cambodia, otoh...

81: Um, what's kinda true?

And regarding Vietnam, the argument continues to be made (with a straight face somehow) that if only we had sent in an additional 206,000 troops following the Tet Offensive, we would have won. Makes Bush's escalation plans for Iraq seem so paltry.

Also, regarding "The restrictions on attacking the enemy were notorious", could you flesh that out a bit? Do you mean rules of engagement designed to reduce civilian casualties?

That -- comparatively -- Vietnam didn't have the shit bombed out of it. It was Cambodia (and Laos, IIRC) that got truly hammered.

What about Iraq?

Putting down domestic unrest is an entirely different ballgame than a foreign occupation. The US government has lots and lots and lots of good intelligence on its own cities, citizens, infrastructure, etc., and long-standing and reliable relationships with every law enforcement body in the country. Also, it's a lot easier moving National Guard from Tennessee to Ohio (and keeping them there) than it is from Tennessee to Baghdad.

Speak the same language, come from the same culture, and a much, much larger percentage of the population that recognizes the government as legitimate and would support it and work with and for it. Home field advantage is pretty huge, all in all.

What I've read suggests that massive bombing of North Vietnam was politically problematic, most people suspecting that bombing the shit out of an entrenched, popular, nationalist government would not lead to productive negotiations.

Putting down domestic unrest is an entirely different ballgame than a foreign occupation.

Yes, but you also have to prepare for the troops' identifying more with the unruly. As they say, the difference between a riot and a revolution is when the troops don't fire.

Sorry to comment after only skimming the thread, but I just want to reassure ogged that he is shrill. I'm still surprised by how much resentment and anger there is over this war among people I meet here in the south. The public's turned on Bush in a rather big way, and won't be so quick to trust him again, even in the face of another attack.

89 is me

you're saying that designating anything that moves in an area populated with civilians as fair game was standard U.S. military procedure in, for example, Korea or Germany during our war experiences there?

No. No matter what fire control measures are or are not in place, it is not--generally speaking--OK to target civilians. On the other hand, in prior wars there was much less emphasis placed on avoiding civilian casualties or destruction of buildings or infrastructure than there was in Vietnam or in the present war in Iraq. There are reasons, particularly in Iraq, for the differences. But strong differences there are.

Do you mean rules of engagement designed to reduce civilian casualties?

I mean the rules of engagement intended for whatever purpose. For almost all of the war, Cambodia and Laos were simply off-limits--safe havens the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong took great advantage of--and these restrictions were political. Even in Vietnam itself, there were significant restrictions--particularly in South Vietnam, but also with respect to bombing North Vietnam--on fires. It is, frankly, a myth that Vietnam was subjected to the wholesale bombing you describe. It was bombed, no doubt. And many people were killed--including many civilians. But the restrictions on fires in Vietnam were significant and there were a host of things that in prior wars would have been attacked--even in North Vietnam--that were not for a variety of reasons, many of them political rather than strictly humanitarian.

It is, frankly, a myth that Vietnam was subjected to the wholesale bombing you describe.

From wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder

"On December 31, 1967, the Department of Defense announced that 864,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on North Vietnam during Rolling Thunder, compared to 653,000 tons dropped during the Korean War and 503,000 tons in the Pacific during World War II. In all, over both North and South Vietnam, 1.6 million tons had been dropped, exceeding the U.S. total in World War II of 1.5 million tons."

absit Godwin, but I'm surprised at the complacency engendered here by one set of election results in people who were seriously shrill three months ago. You do know that the Nazi share of the vote in Germany fell by 4% (2 million votes) between July and November 1932? That the left had a plurality in the Reichstag after November?

One major event...

#86: Home field advantage is pretty huge, all in all.

Which is why I've always been puzzled by people who say "We're fighting terrorists abroad so we don't have to fight them at home". Fighting them at home would be an awful lot easier and more pleasant. For a start, the population would actually be on our side. We'd speak the language. The police wouldn't be corrupt - well, they would, but they wouldn't actually be composed of sectarian death squads.

re: 92

The press of work (I have to be in court all day watching one of our more senior partners work his magic) prevents a longer response, but if you read the linked Wikipedia article, it talks about all the limits, especially early on, placed on where attacks occured. Hanoi or Haiphong were never attacked like we attacked German or Japanese cities in WWII. And as the article notes, Johnson eventually forebade bombing the North at all.

No matter what fire control measures are or are not in place, it is not--generally speaking--OK to target civilians.

That would be great consolation to the men, women, children, and babies we incinerated in Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, etc. If they weren't already dead, that is. [/bitter]

9#: I'm more cheerful. Relative. This is the first good news of any kind since 1996, and I was never a Clintonista either.

There also seems to have been a change of direction, if only slight.

what happens if Saisegly or Ogged gets picked up and sent to Gitmo?

We send them teddy bears?

89/90: Is there anyone you *don't* think is shrill, Michael?

He means shrill in the good buttsex way, B.

Chamberlain!

I won't presume to speak for Michael, but Barry White -- he's not shrill.

101: Yeah, I was thinking that good buttsex isn't the kind that induces shrillness.

It's hard to be shrill once you're dead.

103 to 101, not 102.

Poor Michael. Look, in the post I used the word "shrill," and all Michael is saying is that yes, as far as he can tell, the country is more against Bush than I think, so my concerns are overblown, ie, shrill.

Whew, a defense against my emasculating rhetorical question! Thank god, I was afraid I'd have to figure out what to do with yet *another* bloody cock; the freezer's getting pretty full.

Silly, when you emasculate someone you don't cut the cock off. You've been doing it all wrong.

That's just the part she saves, LB.

Yeah, I know what to do with sweetbreads.

I'm with the doom-and-gloom crowd. Even if the armed fascocops start shaking down the middle-class neighborhoods. People are really fucking stupid about this; one of the main responses to the wiretapping/datamining mess has been 'well, they're only tapping the terrorists, I have nothing to hide. Why are you worried -- what are you doing?'

I'm sure the Millers down the street musta done something, or else why would they have been arrested? We live in suspicious times and we can't be too careful. Their fault for attracting attention. What were they thinking?

People cheered for Hitler. We're not immune.

Guys, guys, guys. The Christain Fascists will come to power when society collapses because of the oil crash. Duh.

I'm not even kidding, actually.

Speaking of the collapse of society, Children of Men is the best-directed film of the year. Extraordinary.

It's only January 9th, Drymala. Keep your powder dry.

It came out last year, smarty.

Well then why didn't you say "the best-directed film of last year", smartless?

Anyway, can't wait to see it.

Pan's Labyrynth too.

That one's the second-best directed film of last year. I don't know what's in the water in Mexico, but it's giving us some damn good films.

I don't know what's in the water in Mexico

Fecal coliform bacteria.

It is, frankly, a myth that Vietnam was subjected to the wholesale bombing you describe.

all the limits, especially early on, placed on where attacks occured. Hanoi or Haiphong were never attacked like we attacked German or Japanese cities in WWII.

However limited the targets, 3.2 billion pounds of explosives is, to put it mildly, a whole heck of a lot, and qualifies as being bombed the shit out of in my book (and that figure is only up until 1968). Maybe it doesn't rate "wholesale" for you, because there were no Dresdens or Hiroshimas, but it's not like these were precision munitions being used, and Haiphong and Hanoi certainly were bombed very intensively. I really don't think I'm propagating a myth.

However limited the targets, 3.2 billion pounds of explosives is, to put it mildly, a whole heck of a lot, ...

Agreed. I was trying to come up with a way to wrap my mind around such a large number.

My atlas says that Vietnam is about 128k square miles ... 640 acres to the square mile ... density of copper ... 16 inch balls ... 6.0 x 10**23 ... there are 20 streets to the mile and 8 avenues ... 16 acres in the World Trade Center site ... okay, let's assume a perfectly spherical chicken of uniform density ...

That's roughly one 160 pound bomb for every standard square block in Manhattan, or a 650 pound bomb for every WTC sized site, across the country. Sure, there'd be a lot left standing, but that's a biggie sized portion of bomb.

I think Idealist may have taken 'wholesale' to mean 'indiscriminate', but I usually take it to mean a large quantity.

That's roughly one 160 pound bomb for every standard square block in Manhattan, or a 650 pound bomb for every WTC sized site, across the country. Sure, there'd be a lot left standing, but that's a biggie sized portion of bomb.

Let's see, if they used 100 million rounds of rifle ammunition, and each bullet hit one person then, my God! we depopulated all of southeast Asia. Or maybe not.

Less sarcastically, since the bombs were not dropped that way, it does not mean much. The great failure of bombing as a replacement for ground operations was one of the the big lessons from Vietnam (although anyone paying attention in WWII already knew that).

I think Idealist may have taken 'wholesale' to mean 'indiscriminate', but I usually take it to mean a large quantity.

I was responding to We carpet bombed the shit out of Vietnam, and covered its countryside with free-fire zones, which I thought implies indiscriminate. If I misunderstood and the only point was that over the course of the Vietnam War we dropped a whole big bunch of bombs, then sure, yes, we did.

although anyone paying attention in WWII already knew that

Well, they would have known that if they hadn't been to busy burying copies of the USMC Small Wars Manual from the thirties so they could better screw up Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Some Context to our friendly righty's discussion of Vietnam.

Shorter Pat Lang:While the surge and troops are not totally irrelevant, the new plan involves using air strikes on Baghdad neighborhoods. We will probably lose in Iraq, but dudes, those Iraqis will remember we were there. If we leave any alive.

I am never certain if the Right isn't just more informed and focused, or if the left doesn't give a shit.

I heard a report on the radio a couple weeks ago about a gun fight on the open streets in the middle of the day. It was between two different militias, battling, essentially, over turf. A US military helicopter hanging there over the streets, firing into the area, presumably targeting, um, the bad guys.

This was in Baghdad.

What's even crazier, maybe, is that I heard that one panicky-sounding clip filed by an NPR reporter, and that was it. Not particularly newsworthy, I guess.

It's all bad from here on out.

the new plan involves using air strikes on Baghdad neighborhoods.

The "surge" is a new (bad) plan but close air (or artillery or armor) support for infantry has been the American Way of War for quite some time now. It's a mercantilistic notion, killing the other guy while taking the minimum risks and damage to yourself. A "warrior culture" doesn't get that, counting coup, appearing fearless, standing tall, is important to them, so they'll fight and die.

Not "surge". "Escalation." Call a farming-implement-not-a-racial-slur a farming-implement.

"Surge" sounds hopeful, like something you'd do while surfing up a big wave to catch an even bigger wave. "Escalate" is what happens when they say you need 100,000 troops, or to leave, and you get 20,000 in 5,000 troop batches made of troops (bets Cala) that just have their tours extended.

I'm really hoping that the election marks a turning point and that we've bottomed out on this bout of American fascism. What concerns me is what'll happen when Congress first really says "no" to something Bush really wants.

Say the new Congress refuses to fund the "surge" escalation. Bush then goes to the IRS and demands the money his staff says it'll take, pursuent to his unlimited unitary executive power with regard to the conduct of war. And then? Damfino.