Letters to the Editor
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Just so...
Ondelette, quoting someone else:
h/t to casual_observer
I think the jist of Barnett's approach is part of a growing trend by the extreme right to blame the american people when things start going poorly for the radical agenda.
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Note well: does anyone here think that ANY member of the right-wing noise machine will EVER admit to being horribly wrong about any of this? No.
When everything they have advocated for proves to be ineffective, counterproductive, actively dangerous and morally bankrupt, do you really think Malkin and Goldberg and Kristol and Limbaugh, and whoever else will EVER admit to fault? No.
So, they will have to find someone to blame.
The last time the GOP and its enablers supported the expansion of our involvement in a civil war--Vietnam--and lost, they spent 30 years blaming those against the war for everything. The war we see now, and the crimes against the constitution and against the american people, are, in many ways, evidence of the success of that lie: that those against the Vietnam war were the reason we "lost." Half of America, the half that voted for Bush twice, probably believes that lie entirely. Along with all the other lies.
When Iraq is finally proven to be equally disasterous and we have either withdrawn, been driven out, or have a small force there forever, the GOP will blame those of us against the war, once again. What will that ongoing lie produce next time?
Note also that the one time in recent memory when the Democratic party supported intervention in a civil war, in Bosnia, the result was hardly tidy, but the Democrats, and clinton, did get the job done, as the GOP screamed bloody murder. Where have all those GOP partisans been as we lose far more in Iraq?
The corruption, the hypocrisy and the sheer dishonest of the GOP over the last six year defies the language to describe it. In the past, lying on this scale has resulted in revolutions and busy tools of execution.
We won't have that here.
But maybe we should have. Guillotine a few key heads and I wonder how long the plutocratic right in this country would stay quiescent? Probably not for long. They're like roaches. You can't kill them all. And they breed in the dark.
What then, is the remedy? Do we really think the fascist wing of our politics will ever give up? Ever give in? Ever admit they're wrong? Nope. Their power, their status, their very LIVES depend on them NOT admitting fault. Not ever. Not even a little. I don't know what you do about that kind of stubborness.
'course..ol' Joe Stalin knew what to do. Thankfully, we're not there. Yet.
But it does leave us a nasty problem: what do we do about these people, who seem genuinely deranged, and appear to have the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old? I don't know. But I do know this: we better think of something, and fast, because these crazy people are not going away, and they're not giving in, and they're not going to admit they were wrong about nearly everything. They're going to fight like cornered weasles to keep power and status..and I'm not sure the country can take it.
Look where we are. It's not a good situation. And with water-shortages, fossil-fuel shortages, climate change and loose nukes (not to mention a financial system that is nothing more than an elaborate ponzi scheme) staring us in the face, the last thing we need is these crazy people having any say in the future.
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@kitt
Are there people on radio, television and newspapers calling people who choose not to be astronauts, teachers or medical assistants or doctors, traitors and unpatriotic, un-American "fags" and terrorists or terrorist sympathizers?
No, and there aren't people calling those who don't volunteer for the army that, either, except here on Salon and in similar forums. Being an astronaut or teacher isn't for everybody, and neither is being a soldier. It's a volunteer army.
The "chickenhawk" gambit is just a crass way to avoid debate, and Democrats are eager to avoid debate because they still, after all this time, do not have a credible strategy for fighting Islamist violence.
Democrats get called pussies not because of whether they have military records, but because they advocate running away from conflict and giving in to threats and basically shrieking like little girls at the first sign of violence, which is pretty much the default pussy position. John Kerry, for instance, doesn't have a pussy's biography, but he ran for president on the pussy platform. It's pussyism as political ideology.
See the difference?
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You deserve a pat on the head, shooter242
Out here in the real world, war hasn't been formally declared as a function of Congress since 1945 (1941?). What other illusions are you laboring under?
That's right. So why don't quit with the whole "we are at war" meme?
Rhetorical question, btw.
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@anon
@kitt
Are there people on radio, television and newspapers calling people who choose not to be astronauts, teachers or medical assistants or doctors, traitors and unpatriotic, un-American "fags" and terrorists or terrorist sympathizers?
No, and there aren't people calling those who don't volunteer for the army that, either, except here on Salon and in similar forums.
Bullshit. There is nothing more need be said. If you are denying that Limbaugh, Coulter, Hewitt, Savage and the rest of the lynchmob haven't been freely using those words to lash out at everyone who is not on their "team" you are either blind and deaf, or a liar.
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As long as we're discussing the real world
I know some little girls who're a lot tougher than you are, anonymous. Big girls, too.
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@shooter
'You think Bush and Clinton (who didn't serve) "aren't qualified to take a stand on the moral issues of military service in the present-day war."?'
No, I think many of us here are merely disturbed by the willingness of someone who has never faced the horrors of warfare to stumble so boldly into this particular clusterfuck.
Moreover, our great Republican Leadership and the punditry that supports it love to lay on the hyperbole about how this is the greatest challenge of our generation, the greatest threat to our well being, etc etc. I, for one, reject those ideas.
The folks in the executive branch of our government went to war in Iraq on false pretenses, against the wishes of most of our allies, and dare to insist (still!) that this fight is critical to our welfare as a nation. Bullshit. And to make things worse, they (and their supporters) certainly don't often act like they mean it.
Unlike some on here, I don't believe you have to serve in warfare to support the act of war. But what do you do, exactly? Post on blogs? Put a ribbon on your car, a flag on your lawn? If this whole scenario was really so critical to our well-being, our government would ask more of its population. And the 25% of the population that is still delusional enough to think our presence in Iraq is going to have a positive effect on the region or our nation down the road: where is their sacrifice?
If unwilling to sacrifice, do they even believe their own crap? The proof is in the pudding.