Letters to the Editor
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But, Glenn...
All those war opponents were such Dirty Fucking Hippies...
As George W. Bush said, not so famously, on July 4, 2001: Who cares what they think?
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You can Digg this ..
here
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The protest marches
Does anyone besides me remember the huge protest marches before the invasion began, and how all the newsprint pictures of it were carefully cropped to depict much smaller crowds than there actually were? (With "reporting" to match.)
I would appreciate it if someone could post some links to those pictures.
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My mistake ..
some tags are not allowed ... ugh!! ... anyway .. Digg this story here:
http://digg.com/politics/The_ongoing_exclusion_of_war_opponents_from_the_Iraq_debate
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Whither Anti War?
Anyway, I just heard from Karl Rove that a majority of Americans want to *stay in Iraq forever*!! So, it's settled, then. It's so much easier when Republicans sort out my thoughts for me.
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Kiss it Charlie
Charlie Rose is hardly neutral or even fair. Rose grills liberals and kisses the feet of conservatives. I can’t watch Charlie anymore his tongue bath of Laura Bush was disgusting.
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Patriotism and Iraq
In what is purported to be the bastion of free speech nothing sends a shiver up the spine than an attack on one lack of patriotism and lack of allegiance to the flag. A favourite attack mode of the righthas emasculated the Friedmanites and their ilk. Somewhere along the line Liberals felt the need to prove their hawkishness on foreign policy and their open support for war against Islamists. The Right was never going to be in a position to criticise the Serious Liberals on the fight Islamic Terror.
The Friedmanites, with their units, their temporising, their yes, but and their refusal to look at the carnage being wrought in the defence of American values are determined to show their toughness.
The MSM, afraid of the same accusations make sure that trenchant critics of Bush's war in Iraq don't get face time on TV. Having been boosters of the Drive to Iraq ( or Baghdad or Bust?) they have made some efforts to show the awful side of the war. It is too little too late. The enablers are still at it: witness Kyra Phillips (CNN) interviewing Gen Petreaus. The impression I came away with was Phillips the hawk and Petraeus the realist. That is how our discussions are distorted. Up is down, black is white...Oh Hell.
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Overton Window
Glenn - wasn't sure if you were aware of the concept of the "Overton Window":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
The concept refers exactly to the comments you make at the end of this piece about the acceptable range of political commentary. The massive right shift over the last forty five years has made Harry Truman's war time investigation of War Profiteers treasonous by today's standards.
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"Acceptable opinion" is not only narrow, it's selective and filtered
Atrios has frequently said that the range of acceptable establishment political opinion in the U.S. spans the suffocatingly narrow gamut from The New Republic to National Review. The substantial body of opinion to "the left" of the pro-war New Republic is excluded as fringe, while there is nothing substantial to the right of National Review. There is no outer boundary on the Right. In exactly the same way, the range of acceptable establishment views on war spans the suffocatingly narrow gamut from faux "war critics" like Gelb, Packer and O'Hanlon to war lovers Richard Perle and Fred Kagan. In the establishment press, anyone outside of that narrow range is Unserious and more or less invisible.
"All those war opponents were such Dirty Fucking Hippies..."
Many of the expert critics were neither on the far left or far right. The problem is that they often counsel diplomacy, talking to Iran and other states in the region, as a means of facilitating the withdrawal from Iraq. That's just not done. Obama comes closest to that. Odom isn't a paleocon and he is a true foreign policy expert in every sense of that term. He's a liberal Eisenhower Republican which puts him in the same spot as a John Dean and others. I'd call him a centrist in today's poltical landscape.
Odom with Amy Goodman, 10/2005.
LT. GEN. WILLIAM ODOM: Well, I’m trying to think like a strategist. And in war, as well as in politics and diplomacy, one has to know when to withdraw and when to attack. And this was a misguided attack, and it requires a strategic vision and moral confidence to turn it around, the earlier the better. But as the evidence piles up, I think my judgment is being borne out.
I said before the war in February that if we invade Iraq, this will serve primarily the interests of two people: Osama bin Laden, because it will make Iraq safe for al Qaeda, and it will allow him to have access to kill Americans, which he cannot do in the U.S. very effectively; the second party that would benefit greatly would be the Iranians. Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, and they fought for eight years, and Iranians hated that regime as much more than we did. Therefore it was very much in their interest, and it is clearer now that a Shiite majority will probably end up in control in Iraq, and it will not be pro-American, and it probably will be an Islamic religious republic.
So that’s—those kind of outcomes were foreseeable, and then I didn’t say anything about it for a year, and pointed out that exactly these things were happening. And I was asked about in August why—whether I thought that journalists were doing a good job in pressing this issue with the President. And the answers you’ve just read are the ones I gave...
LT. GEN. WILLIAM ODOM: Oh, yeah. Look, that’s what happened in Vietnam. I mean, I, for different reasons, I had a similar view in Vietnam. By the way the troops don’t mind you debating the issue back here. I mean, I was in Vietnam. We—a lot of us wondered why there wasn’t more debate. We wondered why mainstream people were not debating it. And they let the fringe left anti-war movement blame us, blame people in uniform. I went over and spoke the other day—you know, I don’t have politics, right or left. I’ve never been a Republican or Democrat. And I have worked in the Carter White House, and I’ve worked in the Reagan White House.
So partisan—this is not a partisan politics issue. Congressman Walter Jones, who can hardly be called a conservative is a very—I mean, a liberal, is a very conservative Republican from North Carolina, who invented the term “freedom fries” to replace the “French fries” label, has now enrolled a resolution to Congress, calling for a withdrawal. And I was surprised to get calls from him, asking me to come over and attend a small press conference that he had, where he has a small group of Republicans and an equal number of Democrats behind this. And the point I made—the only reason I went and joined them was that I would rather see people on Bush’s side and responsible mainline Democrats carry this issue than let it go out to the fringes. And that’s where it’s headed.
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/4/ret_army_general_william_odom_u