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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
It's a contagion of brain damage, and it started in the neocon movement, entered the president's brain through the already-infected vice-president. It's spreading to our GIs after laying low the punditocracy.
when people would be too embarrassed to:
> Cheer for endless wars that they and theirs will never fight?
> Politicize the DOJ?
> Disclose a CIA agent for partisan gain?
> Demand rule of law while at the same time demanding their perjuring friend be pardoned?
Who raised these people to be such thoughtless ghouls anyway?
The time has come for people outside the blogosphere to emphasize what chickenhawks these guys (and gals) are and to organize in a way so as to pressure WaPo et al., to publish other voices (petitions, ads, etc.), particularly voices of people who've been right about Iraq.
These guys are very much like a disheveled, grossly overweight couch potato whose most strenuous exercise a walk from his TV set to the kitchen to get more beer and potato chips. He sits in front of his television, screaming at the supremely conditioned players on the screen to hit each other even harder and more viciously.
If troops want more time at home, Kagan says, there is an easy way to achieve that: "win the war we're fighting."
At the same time, they say this will be a “generational war” that will go on for decades.
If troops can’t come home until they “win” and we know they won’t “win” for many, many years, what’s that going to do to the morale of the troops?
How are we going to get people to join the military if they are confronted with these two seemingly contradictory ideas? Why would they join the military if they know that their needs (to have a family or any sort of life outside of a “permanent war”) are dismissed so cavalierly by “military expert” Fred Kagan.
Some expert.
Who raised these people to be such thoughtless ghouls anyway?
We know who President Bush's parents are, so no comment there.
Cheney's gene-pool isn't something I care to look into.
Ditto on Gonzales.
The Kagans are the sort of "egg-heads" the Right looked down on back in the 1950s, so I suppose its a matter of them going native.
They and their ilk aren't the sort I'd want in the military anyway; don't look like they'd be able fire a gun without loosing bowel control. The only problem with them is the clowns in the White House are listening to them, who themselves shouldn't even be there in the first place.
If troops want more time at home, Kagan says, there is an easy way to achieve that: "win the war we're fighting."
!!!!?????!!!!!
(Would it be Quakerly to want to paste that guy a good one, right in the snoot?)
My anger at the Bush administration and the neocons behind it is significantly large. But, my anger towards congress, democrat and republican, which empowered the adminstration and continues to roll over on its back and toss money Bush's way, all the while mouthing platitudes to the masses back home, is...well, damn, there's just no way to describe it any more.
Our system of government is so hopelessly corrupt and morally bankrupt I have little hope for its repair. Little hope, period.
I would be surprised if the Army and Marine Corps doesn't already keep track of "how long every individual servicemember had spent in either Iraq or Afghanistan, how long they had been at home". How else could a tour be extended, to day 15 months, unless they knew how long the pre-extended tour was?
OH MY GOD that photo! Why do neocons all look as though they hide in the bushes near school yards to sniff children’s bicycle seats?
Have you no eyes? Has your Bush hatred completely blinded you, Glenn?
Have you not seen the pain the Kagan family has suffered? The hours of show prep they have endured for their many television appearances? The rehearsals for their many meetings with high officials? The sneers from dissident bloggers?
My, god, man, have you no humanity left?
With this shameless batch of War Wimps (the late, great Mike Royko's term for Chickenhawks) providing the "intellectual" and "moral" justifications for the neocons' endless wars, at some point our soldiers will say "Enough!"
That they haven't already is testament to their valor and professionalism.
Fred Kagan authors the Plan for Victory i.e. surge and his wife Kimberly writes The Iraq Report to tell us how it is succeeding. What's wrong with this picture? Why Kristol and all these people are considered experts is beyond me.
Wabanatta:
Who raised these people to be such thoughtless ghouls anyway?
This reminded me of a story a friend of mine told me just last night. He also lives in the DC area, and he was in a 7-11 one recent night when some drunk women in their mid-to-late 20s came in. They started relentlessly making fun of the (black) cashier - I don't know what they said, but my friend said it was vicious.
Then, one of them bragged that she was a "political appointee" in the Justice Department. My friend asked her if she was Republican and she said yes. (He then quipped, "You're admitting that?")
This is, of course, just an anecdote and not really "proof" of anything. But it is yet another example of the way so many of these bullies and braggarts behave.
I can write a simple database here in about 15 minutes that will automatically generate most of the data that Kagan feels is too complex to deal with. The Pentagon can get in touch with me anytime.
I like to look at the people who are able to demand that others go and sacrifices their lives. It's interesting to look at pictures of sociopaths. Creepy, but intriguing.
Glenn's book, and the neo-conservative movement, I wonder if it can be all tied together to understand how likable, normal humans, can support such mean-spirited policy. You all know the drill: endless war, torture, habeas corpus, politicizing everything in sight, Etc.
Glenn gets to the "good versus evil" justifications in the book, but maybe something psychological goes in a mob of authoritarians that creates a sort of contest to see who can come up with the most brutal and uncivilized policy for others to carry out as a means to compensate for their own lack of courage or something. I don't think the people are necessarily sociopaths, but the neocon movement seems to create policy that could be described that way, i.e., no consideration at all for the welfare of those outside the neocon orbit. Dead Iraqis don't matter to them at all. Soldiers can fight endlessly to support neocon stupidity. Bush can mock the pleas of someone sentenced to death, and so on. The movement seems to have not a bit of empathy, let alone compassion, and yet people like Rove (D. Broder breaks quail with him) and the rest.
Maybe this is just looking at authoritarians from a different angle, but something is going on here that might be good to understand since these people are not going away anytime soon.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
