Letters to the Editor
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The new neocon mantra......
Past performance may not be indicative of future results.
I simply can't beleive the current farce has been able to play out as lond as it has.
Good luck with that surge, joe. We'll check back in another freidman to see how it went.
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Military opinions will impact legislators
Wonderful piece GG, I had not seen the op-ed, but will. I don't know if the audio is available or not--and in a way, would rather see the transcript than listen to it. Same with your radio three-way the other day. I think you did very well, but those things are a little too similar to WWF wrestling to suit me.
It's particularly hopeful to see the officer corps coming out as it is. Slowly, but surely. Voices like Odom's will have a particular impact on republican legislators. I note that in yesterday's senate manuvering, a significant number of republican senators did not vote. Views like Odom's will keep pushing them, especially.
Yeah, yeah, nonbinding I know. But after 6 years, it's starting and I'd rather focus on that.
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a respectful salute/bow to SusanMc
O, the cumbersome brain-dead from military service is irksome, SusanMc knows. When you 'hit' your flar foot boot on foreign land, the surviving private seasoned warriors say, "Forget all the lies you heard stateside. You want to get out of war alive, James, A.? Well, look out for each other, and tell the bullets to swerve out of the way. This ain't a duck-duck goose-Party. You are a private 'grunt.' You are a human being. The politicians sent you here as 'fodder.' Frankly, it's sad, but true. At times you got to 'hit-the-dirt. In real war, when metal fly's via the air and a squad-Sargent yells, "Bullets," red-commie rifles...And 'Get-down-man sure Enough don't mean, "Boogie!" dance! There are more war casualties caused from dancing. into combat situations. Get-down means belly crawl along and don't get shot. Bring the troops home. Protect the privates. Protect the Middle Easter lands from legal-con-frauds who steal real estate. Odum, please, tell the crooks 'um truths. General Eisenhower want a few good generals like Odom-you. thanks.
The snow was a squall. It was here like curds in the buttermilk culture. Now, we need to get the 'fly' to shoo-shoo from the curds spoke's person for protection of 'we people.' Hey, when and in what whey...can we get'um out of the White House. hint. Mr. Snow? It's becoming a pig-sty-turd of a big mess in Washington. yep. eat some curds and whey?
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Democracy by ventriloquy doomed to failure
Awesome interview! One of my favorite parts:
HH: But then…now, that’s where I get confused, because are you arguing that there’s just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support…
WO: No, I’m saying that we can’t do much about it. I’m saying if you’re going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You’re going to fail at that. I’ve been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.
Practical experience is indeed the best teacher.
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Telling It Like It Is
If a general believes what he's saying, and has reason to believe it, he doesn't have to explain why he believes it. Take it or leave it, either you know what he knows or you don't. It's a wonderful thing to see when the general happens to be talking to a weasel like Hewitt who knows neither what he believes nor why he believes it.
For folks like us, it's not so easy. If you listened to Glenn take on Mr. Gaffney the other night, you know what I mean. The object of a person engaged in political dialogue is to persuade those listening that what he believes is correct, which means that evidence -- truncated evidence in the case of a radio interview -- must be marshaled and delivered, which means dependent clauses, which means that both folksy and brusque and dominating are out as a style. I think Glenn mentioned himself in one of his comments how difficult this is, especially when a battle of personalities is -- as it almost inevitably will be -- a significant part of the argument.
Politicians have always had this problem. Nixon's furtive and paranoiac style was obvious to anyone who cared to peer around the lens of ideology; Gore was indeed wooden, possibly because he'd been convinced by his advisors that what he believed wouldn't get him elected unless he fudged it. It took someone with the self-confidence of an FDR, a Truman, or a Reagan to dispense with the claptrap of focus groups and speak as themselves.
That doesn't mean that they were right, just that it was easier for them to get their points across, because people trusted their delivery -- the fact that their personalities were obviously integrated ones -- even when there wasn't much content in the message being delivered, or when the message itself was too complicated.
My take on this phenomenon, which is known to everybody, and has been dissected over and over, is that it's perfectly okay to judge a politician by his personal qualities. To judge his program, on the other hand, one must look to the ideas he endorses, and the arguments which others present under his endorsement. What books has he read, which policies of the past does he refer to with approval, which does he reject, etc., etc.
That's where we come in. We help find the ideas, we keep them before the public. If we do our jobs properly, we help the public decide which ideas are plausible and which are not, which policies are helpful, and which are not. We also -- and here Glenn is a master -- help rebut the ideas we don't believe are worthwhile, and expose the sophistries of those who defend them dishonestly.
Seen in this light, politics isn't quite so complicated -- there's a natural division of labor, and a place for everyone to contribute. Call it the genius of democracy.