Letters to the Editor
Scientician
Published Letters: 525 Editor's Choice: 1
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To wit: meretricious
[Read the article: Nepotistic tough guys and their coddling parents]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]2. But you never really (expressly) come out with your point: is your point merely that a gaggle of weenie boys--whilst hiding behind their parents'skirts--talk tough but don't have the courage of their convictions? If so, that would seem to apply to many of the persons who frequent blogs such as this one, i.e., those who claim the Republic is going down the constitutional tubes but seem content merely to sip their Starbucks, shake their heads in dismay, and peck away at their computers with comments such as "Glenn, I couldn't agree with you more." Not exactly a Profile In Courage that, is it?
Certainly if there are people in blogs who talk up the prospects of revolutionary action, giant marches on washington and large scale civil disobedience campaigns but fail to show up for same when and if they transpire this sentiment could apply.
But the hanging implication of this paragraph seems to be than anyone who believes Bush's regime has behaved disturbingly close to despotically and has negative future implications for the course of American democracy has some obligation to do the above things, and if they don't they're just a latte sipping coward content to watch the world go down the drain.
This would require that 60s style activism is the only route to change and that we all know this as a fact. We can argue about the truth of the former idea, but even having that argument disproves the latter requirement.
So don't hold us to some notional standard we ourselves do not proclaim and then tut about hypocrisy on the left. Glenn has complained (rightly) about how often accusations of hypocrisy are wrongly made. Here is another such example.
Yes, some few bloggers do fail this standard you advocate, and Glenn has called such out from time to time. However you didn't specify this minority so the reader is left to assume you are speaking of bloggers generally. Unless you're prepared to show that the general blogger argues for the overthrow of the Bush admin, but fails to act on that sentiment, your inference falls flat.
My read is that the general blogger pushed for electoral change, and got some measure of it in 2006. Now that this has proven disappointing in so far as effecting the needed change, some have despaired and others have begun to push for even more electoral change (including primaries of particular Democrats).
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Jordan Orlando:
[Read the article: Nepotistic tough guys and their coddling parents]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your post on page 5 about the general mode of attack by Glenn's self-appointed gadflies is spot on and required reading. You have synopsized their general failure in a highly comprehensible way.
My name is a link to that page, the post is the first one for any that missed it. It is precisely the general mode of attack Glenn's opponents take here, and it is tiresome, distracting and pedantic.
I'd rather they attacked Glenn for spelling mistakes, it would be slightly less tedious.
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About just wars and causus beli
[Read the article: Nepotistic tough guys and their coddling parents]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I note the debate about grounds for invading a country and wish to comment. A great fear of mine about the Iraq debacle is that it has discredited the very notion of humanitarian military intervention.
The classic Just War theory is outlined by other posters here, namely that a nation must be acting in self-defence, either in response to an attack or a looming actual invasion (say, such as the 6 days war). I agree with this generally, but I am not such a fan of unlimited state sovereignty to commit atrocity within its borders.
I won't essay what grounds and mechanisms should be used to determine when humanitarian military intervention should be attempted justly, I just wish to argue that some conditions exist where it would be. Kosovo in 1999 might pass or fail that bar for different observers, and Iraq in 2003 most definitely fails that bar in my estimation.
As an aside, the general incompetence of the Bush Administration in running the Iraq invasion and occupation, particularly when viewed from a humanitarian perspective (eg they secured the oil ministry but not the museum of civilization) certainly doesn't help the case.
So that suggests that a just humanitarian intervention also requires sincerity on the part of the invaders towards that goal, and not that it be used as cover for other goals (oil).
It's possible the grounds for this may eclipse the ability of humans to run such a thing. I've heard not unconvincing arguments that for any good the Afghanistan invasion may have done, it probably killed more people than the Taliban would have if left in place.
(Of course, Afghanistan was not justified solely on humanitarian grounds, as there is a case about its support for Al Qaeda and thus that the Taliban were a state aggressor in themselves).
So I could understand someone arguing that the conditions for a just humanitarian military overthrow of a despotic or genocidal regime are too high for humans to ever achieve it, that the costs of such a war will always eclipse the benefits, but I do not accept the argument that sovereignty is always supreme, and thus no other state has the right to intervene for that reason.
The difference may not matter in practice, but the underlying morality is important. If we do not have the right to invade a country killing its citizens for absolute classic sovereignty reasons, than we do not have the right to send aid to opposition movements or set up broadcasts just over their borders or a host of other non-violent forms of intervention. If we argue that military invasion just makes things worse but we do have a right to intervene short of that where we think we can do more good than harm than our options are not so restricted.
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"nepostititues"
[Read the article: Nepotistic tough guys and their coddling parents]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks to 6Stringer for the inspiration, with his/her use of the word "nepotist"
The neo-cons are just nepostitutes.