Letters to the Editor
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Glenn: TYPO: 'bad gays'
Can you fix it?
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less ruth more filling
There may be an unlimited supply of explosives in Iraq, but there is not an unlimited supply of people who know how to wire the detonators.
It's chickenhawk "insights" like these that drive me up the wall, not least because we'll be hearing such drivel for a generation or more after the inevitable exit from Iraq.
Now, IANADW (I Am Not a Detonator-Wirer), but it seems to me that detonator-wiring is a learnable skill. Even if this "diabolical" scheme were to be put in practice, I have a hard time believing it would slow down the production of IEDs, EFPs, or any other of the alphabet soup of hellweapons for any more than the week or so it would take the insurgents to figure out this "potentially effective" ploy.
The idea that we can kill our way out of this - or any - conflict strikes me as a failure of imagination so profound that I marvel that these people can find their way home without help...
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Anecdotally, sounds about right
My conservative friends are the nicest people under most circumstances. But get them talking about anything relating to politics, terrorism, or the Iraq war, and it's as if Dr. and Mrs. Jekyll turned into Mr. and Mrs. Hyde before my eyes.
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People often misunderstand anecdotal evidence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
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and what's the score?
To Jonah Goldberg, to win the War in Iraq, we need to be more ruthless, which means we have "a single-minded determination to win."
Excellent. I'm all for winning. Who is it we're winning against?
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Poor RealLame
He doesn't even know what year this is.
(psst! It is 2007, not 1957 anymore. We're not afraid of communists anymore. Now it is the eeevvuull brown people from the Middle East.)
If Glenn is right about the Manichean mindset, they really, really do not understand liberals despise such tactics, no matter who uses them. They are willing to use them, and can't imagine their "enemy" being more moral than they are - which isn't much of a hurdle.
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Elephantman
I log onto Salon almost every day, and don't recall ever reading a letter that speaks of killing either Bush or Cheney, or muses about their assasination. If one were to surface, I imagine it would get quite a hostile response from many of the other writers. If you could document this claim of yours, I would like to see it. However, keep in mind that one anonymously posted letter - or two, or ever four - does not constitute a consistent theme of discussion, given the amount of letter writers that Salon has. Johann Hari indicates that such violent and racist items were, in fact, consistent themes on the on the cruise.
As for calling Bush and Cheney nazi's, fascists, and homicidal maniacs, I think that the shoe fits. Bush/Cheney came into office unfairly; have consistently shown contempt for the law, the constitution, and civil and human rights; and started an unnecessary war that has killed thousands of people. This is as close to a fascist dictatorship as we have ever come.
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There is a more ruthless scenario
We do need a real debate about what folks advocate when they talk about ruthlessness and strength. Those in power (such as the US in Iraq) can control populations through terror (i.e. ruthless exercise of power). Many ruthless leaders (think Mao, Stalin, Saddam Hussein) very effectively controlled populations through ruthless use of power. They destroyed entire populations to make a point to other populations. They killed indiscriminately as an example to others. In short, they ruled effectively through effective use of terror. Alexander the Great employed a similar tactic, I understand. The first few villages he raided in a given area, he would kill and destroy all. After word got out of his ruthlessness, he would enjoy conflict free surrenders of other towns. It takes this type of ruthless use of terror to govern through power alone. In Iraq, if the US chose, we could start out right destroying all communities (and everyone who lives in them) that have any type of insurgent behavior. This type of indiscriminate destruction of all life would make a point to other communities and would halt conflict. It would only take the indiscriminate sacrifice of thousands of innocent folks (including babies). Ruthlessness short of this type of wholesale genocide won't really work to control a population, if one tries to control a population through military power alone. Consequently, it really is important to understand what folks are actually talking about, when folks talk about exercising more power or ruthlessness to control the population. If the Goldbergs of the world are talking about more indiscriminate killing, imprisonment, torture, etc. to control the population through fear, they need to say so. We need to have a national discussion about whether the majority of us are at the point where we are willing to condone genocide to acheive peace.
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benjamain...
Elephantman and Matty D
How have the both of you managed to miss the point of Glenn's post entirely? He has shown that, unlike the Oreilly's and Malkin's of the world, he is not intellectually dishonest enough to take some incendiary quotes of a few anonymous commenters and ascribe them to a larger political entity/movement. Rather, his argument is that the selected sentiments of those anyonymous patrons of the NRO cruise are in fact ALIGNED with the powers that be at the National Review. Seriously, have you read Glenn's post in its entirety?
If you want to criticize, then show how Glenn is wrong in his reasoning, but these rather obnoxious, substanceless attempts at criticism while studiously avoiding the actual point of Glenn's post are annoying.
-- benjmain
I see it as an either/or -- either you want to make a serious point about the views and policy positions of Larry Kudlow, Jonah Goldberg, et al (hardly 'high-level administration figures' in any event) OR you want to take shots at the irresponsible jabber of anonymous cruise-takers.
The intellectually dishonest approach is to conflate one with the other. That is precisely how this Glenn Greenwald story has gone down.
As someone else said, to the extent that Bill O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin (again, hardly 'senior administration personnel') do the same thing, I condemn them equally.
I mean really, people; what would all of you say if Bill O'Reilly made a daily habit of plucking the three or four most outrageous things posted online by people like, well people like you all, and used that to argue policy differences with John Edwards, or even Katrina van den Heuvel? Stop right there; for those of you who say, "That's exactly what O'Reilly does!" (I don't know, if some of you know that to be true, you are watching O'Reilly a lot more than I do!) If you want to contend that about O'Reilly, I ask you all, how is this any different?