Letters to the Editor
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@Arne Langsetmo
We do. One letter name. "W".
Very True. W is more like a full fledged purple robed imperial sort than the tin pot type.
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He Who Must Not Be Questioned
Shorter Petraeus: "We are winning the war in Midasia. We have always been winning the war in Midasia."
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@cocktailhag (?)
There is really only one question for you. Would your fever dreams of cataclysm have ever been such a threat had we done the smart thing, and stayed OUT of Iraq?
The smart thing? You certainly have the right to an opinion that Bush should have put 300 million people at risk against the possibility that Saddam was bluffing.... but then again you have no responsibility for that particular gamble. In other words it's very easy to be a "hindsight hero" and complain that Bush did the wrong thing. OTOH if YOU were wrong, tens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of people would die. I'm glad Bush called the bluff.
Now then, there is no such thing as a "wayback" machine. You can whine, complain, and kvetch in your martini all you like, but we are there now and the CURRENT realities must be dealt with.
Perhaps rather than make a disastrous show of our weakness to exactly those we seek to dominate, basically because guys like you and Lowry like to cheer wars, not fight them, and certainly not pay for them?
People like you are our weakness. Make life miserable for the US for a while and folks like you will sell your souls in order to make the "pain" stop and make sure the entire world knows how fragile you are. Truth be told though, this isn't about lives for most of the left. It's about political points and the effort to garner influence.
You people dreamed up an idiotic war, and then lost it. Decisively. Permenently.You've already lost the war, why do you feel you can win the argument?
Exactly my point. You've given up, bought the farm, shriveled up into nothing. We'd still be living in caves if everyone had that attitude. Every success comes at the price of failure as a learning experience, often multiple failures. It took Edison 200 failures to refine the light bulb. You would have said screw it and sat in the dark. That's weakness. Sticking with it has brought some slight improvement in the political situation.
Maybe you can relate to the cliche that it ain't over till it's over.
All the consequences we now face are thanks to people like you. Legitimate anger at unconscionably inhumanity and bloodlust is not a temper tantrum. It is what any normal people in this situation feel. -- Cocktailhag
So, they preferred life under dictatorship. I guess then we should join forces with all the totalitarian dictatorships around the world. How do you feel about killing monks? All for it are you? Not me.
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@ Jordan
OK.
Back to politics. But we wouldn't be liberals if we didn't go on a bit about gender/sex issues. Only conservatives keep this stuff in the closet, uh, stall.
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@Cocktailhag
Fair enough. I shouldn't be taking a proscriptive tone anyway. Who made me the referee?
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About Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson is perplexed that Mr. Bush and the congress are so unpopular. He has a theory though. He figures that since everything is coming up roses in Iraq now, the disgruntlement of the US population must be about something else. Perhaps, the economy or just the embarrassment of our nation going broke. He says this in spite of every available poll from nearly every source stating that the Iraq quagmire is the most concern to a Americans. Far above all other concerns.
Oct. 4th from Hanson on Real Clear Politics:
"The Iraqi war remains unpopular, but good news has emerged recently about the surge and Iraqis joining Americans against the terrorists. We haven't had another 9/11, and the Europeans - especially France and Germany - seem far friendlier.
Instead, our anger with our political leaders more likely originates over money - or rather the lack of it. Americans believe that their rich country is either going broke or is seen as a global spendthrift that can't pay for what it charges. And the worry over insolvency gets worse at a time of conflict - which, as the Roman statesman Cicero once remarked, is often decided by money, "the sinews of war.""--Victor Davis Hanson
http://tinyurl.com/33lxt9
But if you read the polls listed at Polling Report.com, according to poll after poll the situation we find ourselves in Iraq outweighs, in all polls, and in some polls outweighs everything else by far, over every other situation facing us.
So much for the Military and historical expertise of Victor Davis Hanson. Or is it just dishonesty that causes him to post an article that is contradicted by all available evidence?
http://www.pollingreport.com/prioriti.htm
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chickenhawk
Come on guys.
You try to pass yourselves off as Smart Guys, and about half the commenters here rely upon the Chickenhawk trope. Is General Patreus a chickenhawk? Oh, I forgot. He's merely dishonest. (But at least he's not a pussy, right, or a "limp dick", right? Very nice. Nothing junior high about that argument...)
You realize that the Chickenhawk argument doesn't work against somebody like John McCain, right? In other words, with McCain, one would have to actually address the merits of his argument about Iraq, given that he spent 6 years being tortured in Viet Nam? Or is McCain dishonest too?
Really, it must be nice to have alternative arguments in your holster for every occasion: those who served and have contrary views are dishonest; those who didn't serve and have contrary views are chickenhawks.
Clearly, it would be beyond the pale to assume, on the merits, that reasonable minds can differ about a complex topic. And what fun is it to sit at your keyboard, behind the courage of your on screen persona, and concede that?
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The Nobel Prize for Wishful Thinking
Should go to Lowry and Reynolds (US) for their theory that if you say "We're making progress," and "We're winning," enough times it will change the hard reality.
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@Crusader1145 re "scare quotes"
Crusader1145:
Nasty Hit Piece
[...] calling people names and using "scare quotes" might satisfy some inner child's rage but it just comes across as, well, childish.
[...] I have read a number of Victor Davis Hanson's articles and even a book or two of his.
[...] I find him to be quite sensible and knowledgeable in his area of expertise, which is history in general and military history in particular.
- - Crusader1145 - - Wednesday, October 10, 2007 10:34 AMThe noble V.D.H., of course, wouldn't uses "scare quotes" and make pathetic arguments.
Oh, wait . . .
http://realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/10/the_pseudohistories_of_the_ira.html
October 12, 2006
The Pseudo-Histories of the Iraq War
by Victor Davis HansonThree recent books about the (*) "fiasco" (*) in Iraq — Cobra II by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, State of Denial by Bob Woodward and just plain Fiasco by Tom Ricks — have attracted a lot of attention, and sales. All three well-written exposés repeat the now well-known argument that our government's incompetence and arrogance have nearly ensured America's failure in birthing democracy in Iraq.
It's worth noting, though, that many of the authors' critical portraits rely on private conversations and anonymous sources. The most damning informants in these books are never identified and so can't be questioned. [...]
- - Victor Davis Hanson
(*) emphasis added (*)
billmon on VICTOR DAVIS HANSON via the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20061203000051/http://billmon.org/archives/002828.html
October 13, 2006
FiascoVictor Davis Hanson is dictating straight from his rectum again [...]
Note the print equivalent of air quotes around the word "fiasco" -- a way of signaling that Hanson, who has spent the past three years staunchly denying that the Titanic has hit an iceberg, is determined to go down with the ship.
[...] I have been reading Tom Ricks' Fiasco (definitely no air quotes) and I can testify that Hanson's assertion is a libelous lie. The book is brick solid -- with extensive named sources and backed by ample documentary evidence, including classified Pentagon memos, Centcom and ORHA pre-war "planning" (I use the term loosely) materials and the bureacratic detritus left behind by the Coalition Provisional Authority (a.k.a. the GOP branch office on the Tigris).
The book is also meticulously, and at times excruciatingly, detailed -- 496 pages worth, covering virtually every major event (and a lot of minor ones) in the history of the occupation (or at least, through 2004. I'm still slogging through the last half, so I'm not sure how far Ricks takes the story.) Fiasco, in other words, is as meaty and authoritative as Ricks' early reporting from Iraq was shallow and wrong.
Fiasco does have its flaws. Ricks still has a tendency to put military officers -- or at least, those who are his sources -- up on pedestals [...]
Needless to say, these aren't the kind of shortcomings that are likely to concern Victor Davis Hanson. My suspicion is that he's much more ticked off by the things Ricks got right -- such as his unusually blunt and honest (for a Washington Post reporter) analysis of the role played by the neocons and their Pentagon moles, and his withering account of White House haplessness, especially once it became obvious in the fall of 2003 that Iraq was going South in a hurry.
Small wonder Hanson is reduced to sniffing about anonymous sources. He's just following the old lawyer's advice: If you've got the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you've got the law, pound the law. If you don't have the facts or the law on your side, pound the table.
It may seem odd that I'm defending Ricks, given some of the harsh things I've written about his reporting from Iraq. But I guess my attitude is that if Tom Ricks is going to be criticized, it bloody well should be from the left -- not by some pompous neocon windbag who thinks he's the reincarnation of Thucydides.
There's more truth about the war in Iraq in the worst paragraph Tom Ricks ever wrote, on his worst day as a reporter, than there is in all the deluded crap that Victor Davis Hanson has churned out over the past three and half years, at the National Review and elsewhere.
- - Posted by billmon at October 13, 2006 05:22 PM