Letters to the Editor
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Jackson Diehl needs oxygen
What is at least as distressing to me that John McCain thinks it funny to sing 'Bomb, bomb, bomb,...bomb, bomb Iran' is that the Deputy Editorial Page Editor of The Washington Post, Jackson Diehl, thinks that John McCain and Joe Lieberman are "two of our more principled senators".
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Naive...
It should be seen as being fundamental that only "real warmongers" get to invade sovereign nations,declare who are/is "the enemy" and who are/is "Americas friend".
So G.W.Bush,Dick Cheney,Richard Perle,William Kristol,Paul Wolfowitz and the tribe of warmakers,deathdealers and bombdroppers who back them could/can twist/deform laws and rules to invade Iraq on false premise and outright lies,capture and kill Saddam and bring on war crimes and civilian mayhem/misery of great scale. Now of course the Americans want to transform this illegal invasion of Iraq into a Israeli Palestine styled occupation of Iraq. With the war from the air kill/destroy component ramped up to compensate for the unsustainable ground assaults and realestate holds.
Only the real warmongers can do this. And John McCain surely is a American Warmonger.
The American political media having been early on tethered to WH and Pentagon propaganda hurl in and about Iraq pretty much peddles this day in and day out.
The "surge" is working,there is less violence,Iraq is now better,Iraq wants Americans to stay...the lies are many and deep.
The warmongers must make all effort to sideline any real or serious change from current American warmongers stand on Iraq.
John McCain can do "bomb,bomb,bomb Iran". He is a real warmonger.
Barack Obama? He will be portrayed as a surrender monkey,a white flag waver,a defeatist.
The American War/Pentagon Party has members in both the GOP and DEM parties. The American Corporatist Party does as well.
Barack Obama will have to find a level of integrity that can withstand lots of pressure. The American Militarists want more money,more power. The Pentagon Party is fully entrenched in WashingtonDC. Barack faces some very real opposition.
Barack Obama will need to be "naive" just to get pass/around all this dug in place American warmongering/warprofit WashingtonDC clutter.
Getting American warmongers out of Iraq is not going to be easy for a President Barack Obama.
The American warmongers will resist,smear and defame Barack Obama on this repeatedly. I hope Barack is naive in his belief that Americans need to get out of Iraq.
Otherwise conventional WashingtonDC thinking will cripple him on Iraq.
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Geriatric Pot Calling Charismatic Kettle "Naive"
Obama's comments about bombing Pakistan were, despite their hypothetical nature, surprisingly stupid and disappointingly bellicose. The correct, approved, Village response is, as we all know by heart, that "no options are off the table".
Battle-hardened Clinton knew that at the time & rightly rubbed Obama's perfectly formed nose in it. However, for Jaundiced McAngry to come along, months later, with this as an anti-Obama talking point is utterly laughable. McCain criticises Obama for "broadcasting" bombing Pakistan as "naive", after his tuneful advocacy to "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"? WTF? Unfunny jokes aside, his actual position was made crystal clear (01/29/06): "There is only one thing worse than the US exercising a military option - that is a nuclear armed Iran."
McCain's spittle-flecked enthusiasm for bombing other countries has been a consistently "broadcast", even singular, theme of his candidacy. For him to kvetch about Obama's naivete is like Karl Rove complaining about partisanship.
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The Last Thing McCain Wants Is To Win The "War On Terror"
The Republicans are facing a situation similar to that of the early '90s when George H.W. Bush had a "vision thing" limited to destroying Communism and lowering capital gains taxes. When Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed and people lost their fear of attack, most Americans decided that there was no reason to keep the whining toady of corporate capitalism in office any longer. If Osama bin Ladin was actually captured or killed and Al Qaeda was destroyed, the only issue remaining on which McCain has strong convictions is that corporate taxes are too high and, perhaps, that we should accommodate the excess population of Mexico and other nations in allowing them to come and work here. Very few Americans would support him on either of these stands.
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On not bothering the people with details
To add to Glenn's point, what's naive in the opinion of McCain and other (non-liberal) warmongers is not so much that you give your putative enemies prior notice of your tactical intentions, but that you give the people who elected you -- your real enemies -- an opportunity to discuss the potential consequences of your policies.
That is something which you quite literally can't have, not if your freedom of action as an imperialist is to be preserved. The silence of the electorate is fundamental to the modern state, at least to one which aspires to any prominence in the world.
As Glenn has so often pointed out, this has little to do with the traditional left/right definitions of our current political mythology. What it does have to do with is what it's always had to do with -- the competition of elites for power, and their abhorrence of being inconvenienced in any way by a debilitating debate about their actions which prevents them from being carried out in a timely fashion. If it's clear to most rational observers that we'd be better off at this point with more Prince Hamlet in our politicians than Attila the Hun, it's equally clear that we'll never get it; not at least, until the Washington Post and New York Times do.
Unless, of course, we outflank them, which is what many of us, including Glenn, are trying our utmost to achieve.
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Which leaves me wondering..
the only taboo topics are talking about military action actually connected to 9/11 -- such as what Obama discussed and, as you say, the role of Saudi Arabia.
Why is it taboo to speak of these things?
Who enforces the silence?
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and their abhorrence of being inconvenienced
and their abhorrence of being inconvenienced in any way by a debilitating debate about their actions
If anyone doubts that WT again nails it, take the same words and apply them to the horrible inconvenience being experienced by the necessity of getting warrants for wiretaps. The horrible indignity of having to ask permission is so bad that they're almost tempted to let the terrorists get away rather than be subjected to it. At least as long as they can shift the blame......