Letters to the Editor
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"The default position is (ALWAYS) bombs away!"
Eerily echoing Glenn Greenwald, The New Yorker's august, deservedly revered commentator, Hendrick Hertzberg savagely opines, in a Radar Online interview, on the "really pathetic", "pitiful" "shit" that now passes for Serious Punditry among the consistently, spectacularly wrong Beltway elite, particularly at Fred Hiatt's WaPo editorial page:
"It's much harder to damage your career by consistently supporting war & cruelty than by consistently supporting peace & love. The default position is bombs away."
(Via Greg Sargent's Horses Mouth)
With Broder, Lowry, Hiatt, Kagan(s), O'Hanlon, Pollack etc., there is NEVER a point at which being completely inaccurate about everything, word-for-word repetitiously, wrongly, upbeat, becomes a personal or professional liability. Never.
Nonetheless, most of these Extremely Wrong People are intelligent, well educated & apparently sane. I just can't believe after so many years, so many wildly inaccurate predictions & laughably wrong pronouncements, so many toxic denunciations of those who (correctly) differ, they don't even have the humanity or integrity to be a a little more equivocal or embarassed. (I've given up on hoping for shame.) I'm also astonished that among Broder, Lowry, Hiatt et al, none of them apparently has a peer, lover, family member or friend who can or will say in a way they can believe that they're really embarassing themselves. Again & again & again. As more & more of their previous compatriots (Sullivan, Fukiyama, Friedman, Hitchens, Brooks, Cole, countless White House aides etc) abandon the sinking ship of their collectively Titanic certitude, I'm sure there must be a temptation to not be the last seer aboard declaring it's "clear seas ahead!" but their stalwart predictions of impending victory give no clue such realism among the Serious & Masculine, is remotely likely or imminent.
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Lambert
The Conservative movement wants to break the government and privatize its functions. They've been ideologically commmitted to that for years, and when Bush seized power, they followed through.
So, why doesn't the Army fall under that general heading?
After all, if the Army is broken, then mercenaries can assume its functions, right?
-- lambert
Wednesday, October 10, 2007 08:54 AM
I've been saying for a year now that Smirky's real goal remains as it has been from the start: to destroy the military he hates and fears because of his own failure in it.
He surrounds himself with chickenhawks and power-fellators, and goes out of his way to humiliate real soldiers (Colin Powell.)
He slashes the budget for salaries, combat and death benefits, family support, military health care and veterans benefits.
He sends too few soldiers into battle with not enough equipment, armor, vehicles, weapons, ammunition, training, relief or support.
He undermines the troops with bad or no diplomacy, murderous contractors and incompetent civilian support.
Lambert is dead-on: Smirky, Darth and the Pervs are determined to utterly destroy the military. Nothing else makes sense.
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as a taxpayer of the state of tennessee
I really don't want Glenn Reynolds spewing his crap on my dime. He's welcome to his opinions, but shouldn't he be doing some work since we're paying him to do so -- not write in his blog.
Ah, tax dollars at work. People on the "right" get to blog or send their b.s. overseas on the airwaves to troops on our dime, and others are fired from universities for their views.
The amazing thing is that despite this amazing forum the government gives the "right"...they're still losing (maybe because people hear their views?).
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What do we win?
The trouble with these cheerleaders is that they've decided on an enemy--"the terrorists"--that they can't pinpoint on a map. So "the enemy" ends up encompassing a lot of people who aren't really our enemy. In fact, in the beginning, weren't we just going into Iraq to liberate the Iraqis from an evil dictator? Yet years later, it's suddenly okay to bomb Iraqi civilians like we bombed Germans in WWII, because they're the enemy (or in the general vicinity of the enemy, or just not hostile enough towards the enemy for our liking). Killing 500,000 of them isn't a big deal. As a result, many of these people are now really our enemy. And that probably suits the cheerleaders just fine, because it creates a broader target. Getting broader all the time.
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Who is winning and who does it help?
Anyone ever notice that none of us, especially folks like Lowry, are saying that the Iraqis are "winning and/or losing" the war? Isn't it their war now? Who is "the war" against anyway? Who are the combatants? Didn't the Iraqis have a big election in which they formed a government of elected representatives? Aren't they a representative republic now? If we left that country this very second, who would be left fighting and how long would it last?
It occurs to me that I really don't want us to "win" the "war" in Iraq. Setting aside, for the moment, that what we are doing over there is not waging a war but instead occupying a country, whose people despise us now, in order to secure a regional position and steal natural resources. Setting aside that our illegal war was won ages ago when we defeated Saddam's army. Setting all of that aside and going by the fantasy land, wingnut definition of what is happening over there, I still don't want us to win.
I want the Iraqi people to win and the truth of the matter is that they don't win if we win. If they win then they will be able to work out, amongst themselves, be it trough all-out civil war or peaceful means, their own future. Some self-determination. They will be able to restore their country and will be in charge of who to hire to help them do it. If we win none of that happens. The Iraqi people will be screwed just as the American people are screwed. Their government will be a puppet, faux republic/democracy as we have here. One that is controlled by the elites/aristocracy. And it won't even be controlled by their elite/aristocracy -- it will be controlled by ours.
Now the argument could be made that if we don't win then Iran wins and, as far as the Iraqis are concerned, that would probably be just as bad as us winning. Ok, perhaps, but that just further illustrates the problem. No one cares about what is best for the Iraqis. No one. So the Iraqi people are having to choose between Haliburton, McDonald's and Wal-Mart or Shi'ia dominated sharia law. Neither are good choices. I feel for them.