Letters to the Editor
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Drezner gets SERIOUS
http://danieldrezner.com/archives/003454.html
Monday, August 20, 2007
TAKING GLENN GREENWALD SERIOUSLY[...] After hearing reports about, say, YearlyKos, in what way are the outsiders you want included in the conversation more ideologically diverse? Indeed, would a netroots-driven foreign policy community be any more tolerant of ideas than the group you've been lambasting?
[...] If Greenwald wants a serious dialogue, I'm happy to engage him.
posted by Dan on 08.20.07 at 09:32 AM
Drezner's seriousness: Ha! Gotcha! I'm rubber and you're glue! When progressives get together, and they're all progressive, then they're not diverse!
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More from http://danieldrezner.com/blog/
http://danieldrezner.com/archives/003455.html
Monday, August 20, 2007
Darn that ideological rigidity!!http://foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3924
[...] Chastened by the fighting in Iraq, the U.S national security community also appears eager not to make the same mistakes elsewhere. For instance, though a majority—83 percent—do not believe Tehran when it says its nuclear program is intended for peaceful, civilian purposes, just 8 percent favor military strikes in response.
posted by Dan on 08.20.07 at 02:50 PM
Paraphrased Drezner (he wouldn't object to paraphrasing, would he?): That proves we experts aren't always pro-military-intervention! (Cause now some of us experts are against military intervention in cases like Iran, where the Pentagon wargamers tell us that the likely outcome would be really bad).
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War Is An Abomination No Matter What
can we get one thing clear: war is an abomination. Anyone that doesn't think so is indisputably psychotic. Whether or not one can invent rationalizations to convince themselves that it is either sometimes necessary or a preferred tool to achieve one's ends doesn't change the fundamental nature of war as a horrific human and environmental calamity. If every civilized being can't start with a belief (as opposed to lip service) in that simple concept, humanity is in very, very bad shape.
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The "Use of Force" Dodge
The ability to consider the use of military force keeps coming up as yet another measure of Seriousness.
Here are two situations which would have more than surpassed typical FPC standards for justified use of force, but had any great power used force to intervene in these situations, the FPC would likely have recommended total and nuclear war to oppose them.
(1) When the fascist toadie and U.S. client tyrant Augusto Pinochet deposed the elected government of Chile on 9/11/1973 and began slaughtering the political opposition and human rights related personnel, surely France or the Soviet Union or China would have been fully justified in using military force to overthrow the illegal Pinochet regime to restore a legitimate, UN-recognized government and to stop the slaughter of civilians, as well as in freezing or blockading the US' covert supply of funds and equipment to the tyrants' forces.
(2) When in 1981-1982 the US-backed, supplied, and directed Guatemalan dictatorship began hunting down and killing their Mayan Indian hill-dwelling population in an actual genocide, surely again some world superpower such as the USSR or Great Britain should have been fully justified in attacking and destroying the Guatemalan government, as well as the US' regional CIA offices and stations to stop their supply and support of the genocidalists.
Now, here are two situations in which the use of force to stop a tyrant and to end an immediate threat to civilians would clearly be justified on a simplistic level.
Yet not even the UnSerious Left recommended bombing Santiago or Guatemala City, because they knew it would make life even worse for the local populations, and they didn't recommend a superpower attack on the US' CIA stations which were assisting & directing these murderous and genocidal tyrants, since they knew it would lead straight to a Western-civilization ending nuclear war.
So, it's not that FPC types are somehow 'mature' enough to consider the use of force as necessary; they are simply those 'experts' who are disciplined enough to urge the use of force by the US whenever it suits the desires of US power elites.
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Ouch!
Nailed it.
There's an almost zen-like quality to his attempt at rebuttal. In order to be considered serious you have to be serious. In order to be serious you have to be considered serious. Then you go and interrupt his meditations.
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Guess the FPC are all Salon subscribers now,
Oh wait, they just now are thinking maybe that war surge is not working -
The Terrorism Index
Third Semi-annual, Nonpartisan Survey of Foreign Policy Experts from the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/08/terrorism_index.html
US Foreign Policy Experts Oppose Bush’s Surge by David Morgan
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/20/3290/
US Foreign Policy Experts Oppose Bush’s Surge by David Morgan
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-08-20T081152Z_01_LAU029396_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA-BUSH.xml
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question for you
"We single-handedly prop up tyrannical governments in scores of nations using financial and military aid."
"Scores" of goverments? Please name the >40 (at least two score) "tyrannical" governments we are single-handedly propping up with financial and military aid.
I can certainly come up with several, but 40 is a pretty high number...
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emperor's new clothes
Drezner's gabble, and Glenn's response, simply prove that the Emperor and his new clothes is alive, and well.
What else is the US FPC right now but an emperor naked and afraid? I think Glenn has it exactly right. These guys are all truly frantic to cover their asses, now that *everything* they've written, thought, and worked for over nearly the last decade has been shown to intellectually, not to mention morally, bankrupt.
These guys ALL know exactly what the score is, and they're desperately trying to get the scorekeeper to change the scoreboard right out in plain sight.
Unlike GW Bush, who really is mysterious when it comes to this kind of thing (utter cynic or deluded frat-boy?), these guys in the FPC are simply cynics. They're way too smart not to know that their day will be completely done if they acknowlege the reality and magnitude of their error.
Lewis Lapham's essay in the latest Harper's drills a new hole in every one of these guys, making the case that war is a bankrupt way to advance the human experiment. Maybe, at one time, long ago (say, 3000 years ago?) war made sense. Maybe even in the late middle ages it made sense as a method of population control.
Now? Now it makes no sense at all. The day of the alpha-male and his adolescent drives, and his enablers, is clearly over in a world of 6 billion people and nuclear weapons.
These guys really should think about covering their little testicles and that tiny straw dangling between them. Because, if there were any justice in this world, their day would be done, and we'd *hang* them all from those little testicles.
The work is a lot harder now, boys. It's called *diplomacy* and *compromise* and it's not a game for dumbass adolescents.