Letters to the Editor
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Prox. Warning
fwiw, I think you have a point there.
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Prox. Warning
fwiw, I think you have a point there.
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@Jkalos Yeah: I would like to get that guy Kagan up one morning and take him up on a ten mile run. Just before breakfast.
Not me. If that's the best he can do when he knows he's going to be photographed, just imagine how he looks first thing in the morning.
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Mandatory Service
I am liberal!! BUT....
The framers did not anticipate having a standing army at all times.It was one of many things that the Founding Fathers did not anticipate (like armor-piercing bullets and executive privelege).
But I would LOVE for all nationally elected officials to have served in the military. As enlisted men/women.
There are lessons that can be learned in the service of others that can't be when you are dependent on others to service you.
As for the chickenhawk experts in the media...the media created them and the media can take them away. Viewers and readers need to make it clear to the ownership that we care about that.
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well...
"If the neo-cons had served in the military or seen combat that would make them less personally reprehensible, but they would still be completely wrong about all their views."
I don't see that it makes a blind bit of difference. Would Hitler have been doubly reprehensible if he hadn't served in the Bavarian Infantry during WWI? Why should it make any difference to an assessment of their motives or character?
"Of course, the open question is, would they still hold those views if they stood to lose anything of value out of them? That McCain is equally crazy suggests not, but then I think he is sincerely deluded whereas I think the neo-cons are disingenuously so. That's just one read and probably not worth much."
I agree with your last sentence.
"As for cheap shots, these characters have been crying treason at their opponents for 5 years, I feel no remorse over pointing out their personal cowardice."
Can you find a quote from Kagan,Kristol and Hanlon et al that uses the word treason(ous) to describe their opponents?
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@jkalos
There's a whole lotta hyberbole there. Just an acute hyperbolic episode.
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@ProWar
t's the hypocrisy of the 'chickenhawk' argument that's repellent though: it's generally made by people arguing against a point of view they'd have no respect for no matter who is holding it. It's just an opportunistic cheap shot.
The critique of the war never was, in whole or in part, that the people who hatched lacked military experience. That's a pathetic straw man that I don't think anyone here is dumb enough to see as ignorance on your part.
"Chickenhawk" was always a pejorative aimed at war cheerleaders who saw it all as a video game, who had no real appreciation for it but felt no compunction against cheering other people on to die. Christ, Madeleine ("What's the point of having this great military if you can't use it") Albright was a chickenhawk.
People who are and were wrong about the war were wrong despite their military credentials or their lack thereof.
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Oh Lord!
But I would LOVE for all nationally elected officials to have served in the military. As enlisted men/women
Yup, that's just who I want, too! People who elected to sign away their moral agency and self determination, just as soon as they didn't have their prents, one or both, to tell them what to do.
They'd be wonderful.
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D. Mooser
I can imagine your scenario, I'm sorry to say.
And I've been placed in untenable positions in the past because of racial and personal animus. That rock and that hard place can meet very quickly when you assume the goodwill of others.
I guess I'm relying on the enlightened self-interest of the Generals to prevent the worst.
Foolish of me, really.
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Proximity Warning
It's the hypocrisy of the 'chickenhawk' argument that's repellent though: it's generally made by people arguing against a point of view they'd have no respect for no matter who is holding it. It's just an opportunistic cheap shot.
Liberal hypocrite Adam Smith:
In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.
Liberal hypocrite George Orwell:
The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.
Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
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.
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Of course...
I copuld make a joke about high veteran suicide rates, and term limits, but it would be making light of a tragic situation.
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@Jkalos
I guess I'm relying on the enlightened self-interest of the Generals to prevent the worst.
I'd rather rely on their survival instinct. Which an Obama administration (they would call it an admonishtration, cause they think it's talking bad about them behind their backs) would, I most definitely feel, do. I hope so.
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Glenn
I just don't see how you can form a belief about what someone meant in a speech that you haven't listened to. I did listen to it. The whole point was that the Iraqi population is tired of fighting. They won't fight any more. The only real problem that we face there is Al Qaeda. Iraqis want a civil, peaceful society and ever since the Surge happened, they aren't fighting any more.
Ironically, I dismissed a friend's beliefs about Obama's race speech because he hadn't listened to it...and, again, I'm not defending Kagan at all.
My only point is that the only civil war discussed in the media before the fighting in Basra erupted was primarily Shia/Sunni conflict; it therefore makes sense that it was the civil war Kagan was referencing, especially since Basra had not happened yet.
I'm not saying Kagan's right. I'm not saying he's an expert on Iraq, and your responses insinuate (falsely) that I am. All I'm saying is that Kagan was probably not talking about the civil war you use to "prove him wrong" (and if you look at all my text, you'll see qualifiers like think, if, believe, probably, etc).
don't you think it's still worth pointing out that 3 supposed Iraq experts all got together to proclaim how great things there were and less than 24 hours later, substantial instability and violence broke out?
Yes, it is worth pointing out. I'm glad you did. But your own quote of Kagan from Charlie Rose's show is enlightening in this regard.
The Iraqi people do not want to fight a civil war between sects.
This new fighting is not between sects. That is the only weakness I see in your argument. In every other regard, you are correct.