Letters to the Editor
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Best sentence this month ...
"People who need to feel brave, resolute and strong by casually sending others off to war have long provoked the disgust of decent people -- long before the "chickenhawk" term or Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney existed." -- GlennGreenwald
Best one sentence I have seen out of you in some time; and the whole post was wonderful. Damn fine retort.
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Chickenhawk Fred Kagan
And we've got some fighting ahead of us.
Yeah, I can tell he's ready to "take it to the enemy" by the size of those flabby jowls. He's gonna beat 'em to a bloody pulp just by flapping those flabby jowls all around.
Do I have permission to vomit now?
Cheers,
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It's all clear now,
Obviously, Neoconservatives are all adherents to "The Secret".
Readers of UT, all we need to do is "ask the Universe" for what we want and BLAMMO!
Or maybe they are crypto Scientologists, in which case we are all really and truly fscked.
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thanks
longtime reader, first time poster.
i've become convinced that nothing short of impeachment is going to stop bush, or i should say cheney, from continuing to dig us in deeper in iraq. they truly don't care about the costs.
with the resignation of fallon, we are truly one step closer to bombing iran and further widening this war. i only hope the top brass who agreed with fallon can hold the wall.
i think many of the readers here may like my blog which mixes history, literature and politics much like scott horton at No Comment.
in any case, you are one of the few sane voices out there.
www.david-sullivan.blogspot.com
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Kagan / O'Hanlon - Mockery of Courage
I cannot stomach these two slime talking tough, as if they know jacksh*t re war strategy and/or the costs of war.
How do we make sure that their "journalistic" careers take a well-deserved nose-dive?!
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@Sinash
The civil war that is breaking out now is an intra-Shia war. Allegedly, Iran is encouraging members of al-Sadr's Mahdi army to defect and continue the violence. And we all know that Iran is Shia, not Sunni.
Where is this allegation coming from? I listened to Ret. Col Douglas MacGreggor (National Defense University) on the radio, just 2 weeks ago, and he laid out the loyalties in Iraq quite differently. The faction that is closest to Iran, and could conceivably be getting signals from them is Hakim and his Badr Brigade -- which would be Maliki's side of the fight, the Iraqi forces. Muktada al Sadr, he said, is a nationalist: he is for Iraqi's first, and is as suspicious of Iran as he is of the U.S. His forces are the Mahdi Army.
MacGreggor also indicated that al Sadr has far more popular support. Maliki's support is the U.S. and his partner's (Hakim) which is Iran. He has virtually no support at all within the country, Sunni or Shia.
And Glenn is right. I can't recall the two main Shia groups, the Government/Badr/Iran people and the Mahdi Army ever having had any sort of alliance. Only that al Sadr felt Iraqis shouldn't kill Iraqis when they have a more significant enemy in their country.
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@ hyberbolic derbig
yeah I got ya. I have had hyperbolic episodes myself.
by the way: do you mean that enlightened general quote for someone else? (I didn't say that).
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@ Alkaline
The basic problem is that traditional military tactics assume you can tell who the enemy is. This is problematic when the enemy is mixed with, and indistinguishable from, civilians that you're pretending to protect.
Minor correction: "This is problematic when the enemy are the civilians that you're pretending to 'protect'."
Cheers,
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A Towel for Mr. Greenwald, please, and some new pants!
Best one sentence I have seen out of you in some time;
buckyl
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Once more into the breach!
Kagan said that he wanted to make one last point "before I turn it over to my brothers from Brookings." They're brothers in combat.
With a steely resolve not witnessed since their fifth viewing of Saving Private Ryan, Commander Kagan and his tattered Band of Brothers once more took up arms in Glorious Battle, their first triumphant milestone accomplished as they completed check-in at the Washington, D.C. Marriott front desk, their penmanship unsullied by the harrowing rental car journey as they decisively signed their names at the desk, calloused hands still as steady as the moment they embraced their tender wives and babes farewell.
Always together, the staggering band huddled and pressed against the aggressive current of heated air passing from the hotel lobby vents, struggling arm-in-arm against the punishing gales of the mediocre jazz music emanating from the hotel bar, which they did not artistically appreciate in the slightest.
Then, with a mighty Surge, they hurled their numb and beaten bodies into the elevator, the doors mercifully sealing them from the harsh world outside. A moment's respite, bathed in the soothing trickle of the elevator music. Then the fateful beep came, portending their grim arrival at their floor, and their minds and muscles seized stiff once again for the solemn mission's next phase.
Having finally breached the threshold of his room (a paltry "moderate"-level quality suite), Commander Kagan threw his exhausted, sweat-drenched body against the wall adjacent to the minibar, gasping for air. Sliding along the wall ever closer to the minibar, he freed himself from his battle gear - the briefcase, the tie, the suit jacket, all falling to the carpet - and finally reached the glass case of provisions. Commander Kagan's parched lips yearning for moisture, he fumbled for the nearest single-serve bottle of Scotch, and feverishly struggled to tear its lid free.
He had made it, and now he had Sustenance. But would the scant quantities of whiskey and scotch in his shelter be enough to carry him through the night and into the early day when he would be forced to regale, for an entire two hours, the storied accomplishments of his beleaguered band of warrior-scholars in their struggle to ensure Victory in Iraq?
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Pro War:
No, Kristol is careful to only imply treason, not to use the word.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/20/ledeen/
For instance, Kristol -- attacking Columbia University President Lee Bollinger's invitation to New Adolph Hitler President Ahmadinejad to speak -- says today: "A perfect synecdoche for too much of American higher education: they are friendlier to Ahmadinejad than to the U.S. military." So is Bollinger anti-American? A Traitor? As always, Kristol merely leaves the dirty innuendo against anyone who opposes more wars against Israel's enemies, but always lacks the courage explicitly to make the argument.
All the neo-cons use the same playbook. But they have plenty of allies willing to throw the T word around:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200606270010
They are cowards, in many ways and that as a class and remarkably to a man (and they are all men, another item begging for comment). If not-serving was the only evidence for this, your point would be fair, but we have plenty of corroborating evidence for the proposition that neo-conservatives are despicable chickenshits.
They're the manipulative kids in school who start rumours that end up in fist fights which they giggle at from the sidelines.