Letters to the Editor
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"Of a total of 840 U.S. sources who are current or former government or military officials, only four were identified as holding anti-war opinions"
So concluded the classic June '03 report by fair.org titled
Amplifying Officials, Squelching Dissent.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1145
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Funny that Walt is mentioned
Walt is persona non grata after he collaborated on that book about the Lobby.
Gee, wonder if the lobby has anything to do with who is judged and not judged as Serious about Foreign Policy? If you 100% support our paranoid and stalwart ally Israel, and agree to fight endless bigoted wars and support bigoted occupations against the scary brown people it fears on its behalf, you are considered serious, otherwise you are an antisemitic bigot, and bigots are by definition extreme and not to be taken as serious or "objective", unlike the establishment approved bigots that rant on and on and on telling lies about perceived evil Arabs and Muslim subhumans.
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@shooter242
Some considerations for the anti-war crowd......
* There is no room for conversation in your position. "War is bad because people get killed." End of discussion. What else are you going to say to fill up airtime?
Neither is there room for discussion in the matter of whether 2+2=4. And your side is convinced that not only does 2+2=5, but that we are actually getting richer because of it.
* Why would it have been better to gamble, that Saddam has no weapons, no bad intent, and is just posturing?
Because 1) many experts claimed he had no weapons 2) of course he had "bad intent", that's why we hired him: he was a mean bastard and 3) he was clearly just posturing because he was clearly broke.
* If said gamble is wrong ten,hundreds, thousands, millions of American lives are in jeopardy. Why isn't that a concern?
Why aren't ten, hundreds, thousands, millions of Iraqi lives part of your consideration?
* Lastly, I'd love to hear the anti-war crowd explain to the nation, why they were willing to lie down for Saddam.
I don't know what "lie down for Saddam" means, is this something I did?
Why did our government sell him chemical weapons to kill the Kurds and then use that violence as evidence why he needed to be ousted?
The willingness to leave the country "defenseless" after a life-altering terrorist act is not a position that can be taken seriously. Ergo, no interviews.
Please explain how I am any safer now that your American Idol has killed so many civilians and wasted our treasury.
You only feel safer because there's less brown people around. Just admit it.
By any halfway reasonable standard, we are MORE insecure than prior to the Iraq war, and that's a fact.
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would be royals...
In past epochs the ebb and flow of foreign affairs was held closely by those in royal courts. Common people were not expected to have any say on what or why or where the royals decided upon regarding declaring wars,making treaties and casting who was in and who was out regarding foreign affairs.
We know Europe for hundreds of years was often pulled into conflicts based on what monarchs felt,believed or were compelled to act on based on perceived slights or religion.
In these supposed more enlightened and modern times what one country does or does not is not seen as the province of royal whim or quirk. Indeed in our American Democracy the power to declare War and attack/invade was quite carefully prescribed by the early Americans who put together our Federal system.
We know that how Americans chose to treat the Native Americans over and over in ways that honor had little to do with that Americans are fully capable of overlooking the inconvenient to get to the desired.
We know that WW1 was not popular with many Americans who did not want to become involved in the rapacity of that conflict yet WashingtonDC found a way to drag Americans into it.
WW2 after December 7,1941 fell upon Americans and to this day enjoys iconic status as the "good war" for many Americans but surely Americans left ghosts to linger in both Japan and Germany of not so glorious warfare tactics.
Korea grew out of late WW2 American foreign affairs mistakes.
Vietnam was the outcome of flawed American Cold War thinking,poor historical understanding and greatly mistaken confidence in American Militarism.
With the attack,invasion and occupation of Iraq Americans have now fallen into a new example of Vietnam with the Cold War having been changed out for GWOT with a heavy side of oil wars thrown in for good measure. Iraq plainly was not historically understood in March 2003. Confidence in American Militarism was fully overstated in March 2003.
Getting into Iraq was far easier than getting out of Iraq can or will ever be. We are told the "surge" is succeeding and that "victory" is ours if we wait long enough. It should be plain to see Americans can not kill or spend to "success" in Iraq. No matter what the most often tilted and pre-loaded pro and con "expert panels" may be floating or selling.
According to the "experts" as displayed so very often from the pages of the big "reputable" media and screens of big "best TV news" purveyors Americans count much more than Iraqis in Iraq today. The coverage of this Iraq invasion/occupation has been terribly tilted repeatedly. Much like what passes for coverage of the Israeli/Arab Palestine Conflict.
Any so called "both sides" presentation of Iraq these past five years has been most often distorted and repeatedly flawed in start points,fact and truth abide and supposed "expertise".
Dick Cheney,like the royals of past eras,is quite content to give Americans a "so?".
Others such as Hanlon,Kristol,Kagan,Perle and Lieberman types act and conduct themselves like they are royals as well. All members of a collection of "acceptable and safely known" media American pundits who have had repeated and predictable exposure these past five years.
Who are we commoners to inquire or suggest?
Hence the "so?" and those DFH bloggers and upstarts put downs.
It is time to take the money power away from them all.
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Symbology
Near the end of the last thread, ToneinDC, in response to an earlier comment of mine, referred to the Potomac as being not much to see -- green sometimes, brown at others -- he made it seem pretty unsavory.
From his handle, I imagine that he sees it in or near the city. The urban vantage point isn't usually the best place to see any river. Stuff gets thrown into it, and the sky above it rarely casts auspicious reflections.
When I spoke of the Potomac, I was thinking of looking down from the top of a grass-covered hill with Mount Vernon behind me, which gave me quite a different perspective, even though I was very conscious of the slave quarters just on the other side of the main house from me.
I was speaking symbolically, of course, and symbols often seem simply disruptive to people who must deal on a daily basis with a more mundane reality. As with the Potomac, so also with the rest of Washington. The great themes of American history, and American political theory are from a time in this country when everything seemed both new and possible. That is no longer the case.
When Glenn and others try to apply such themes to present day Washington, they are brushed away. They aren't -- or don't seem -- relevant to the current meeting with a lobbyist about the upcoming appropriations bill, or to the latest gossip about which Senator has just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, or up the skirt of one of his interns.
The great busy machinery of a million ambitions grinds on, and no one bothers to look up. Everyone knows that the river is green, and probably has sewage in it. They'll get 'round to it in due course. In the meantime, how could anybody have anything to offer who isn't up to his elbows in the current project? No city appreciates amateurs, and Washington appreciates them less than any other city I can think of.
Frankly, I don't see much symbolic difference between a Cheney who thinks that we don't understand the true glories of war and civilization, and a Charlie Rose who's somehow incorporated an embarrassingly obsequious shuck and jive into the very roots of his personality. Both are servants of a master which can't be located, yet exists nevertheless.
The poisonous certainties of the status quo aren't invulnerable, especially over time, but they're difficult to attack from outside the citadel. One way which shows promise is to attack the logical fallacies inherent in their daily compromises, as Glenn does. Another is to attack the symbolic perversions which they rely on for their justification. The former works best with those already trapped inside, I think. The latter works better with those who aren't already committed to the warren of low expectations, and in looking at their own lives, wonder exactly what it's all for.
The demagogues have understood this; they're always the first to understand, and the most energetic in applying their understanding. The right to life, marriage between one man and one woman, stay the course, control our borders are all good examples, as are the false dichotomies of left and right, pro-war and anti-war which plague us even here.
If we want to fight them over what, after all, is the meaning of our common heritage, I can't think of a better way than to ask them to compare the Potomac we once had in our mind with the present conduit for industrial waste, or the Washington once thought of as a shining city on a hill to the dispensary from which bombs are exported to a less deserving world. Once both those visions are present in our minds, we'll have to choose between them or risk schizophrenia. What that choice will be can never be a foregone conclusion, no matter how pressing the business at hand may be.