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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Your point about principles and when to resign and how we cannot get inside the situation of the person to see how they are negotiating the problem seems dead on to me. There comes a time when you have worked your way up in a system and began to realize things about it you simply didn't see before: and then you have to ask yourself what to do now, because you are in a place no one else with your new insights could possible be in (because having those insights from the outset would have precluded you ending up there). So you try to balance it out: how much good can I do, how much can I ameliorate this situation, etc. etc. And at the end of the day from the purist point of view they will always say: why were you in there? Why didn't you leave sooner. A nice quote from Peter Berger seems apropos:
"Fanatics have a big advantage in politics: They have nothing else to do. This is what Oscar Wilde had in mind when he quipped, "The trouble with socialism is that it takes all of your free evenings." The rest of us do not have this advantage. Our free evenings are taken up with family, hobbies, vices. Even if we bring ourselves to act politically, we do so without the comfort of absolute certainty enjoyed by fanatics. We are rarely truly sure. We cannot suppress all doubts. We weigh the pros and cons of possible actions."
You hang in there hoping to have good effect and always not quite sure and doubting yourself and hoping you do some good. And then someone says to you: well, you resigned, didn't you? I could respect you if you did that. And they have no idea what you were able to do or tried to do.
quickstrategy --
"RE: Colin Powell. Woodward's three books about the current admin (but largely State of Denial) seem to show Powell surrendering his principles gradually ... either out of a desire to influence things in a positive way, or out of a desire to be close enough to his boss, the President, to influence things in a positive way. What the 'positive way' was is probably something it would take brain surgery to figure out. I'm not convinced he didn't know he was spouting bullshit when he went to the UN ... i think he was willing to supress his doubts for the reasons above."
Colin Powell was the first person to investigate -- and cover up -- the My Lai massacre.
Principles? When he walks into a room, any principles in the room leave it.
And he has as much as admitted that he knowingly lied to the UN and world. Recall that press briefing he was giving in the Middle East which was suddenly interrupted as result of "technical difficulties"? And with that lie he knowingly greased the skids -- facilitated -- the throwing away of "his" soldiers lives for what he knew was a fraud and waste.
And what was his position on the war crime of torture, which not only cannot be made legal, but also any ATTEMPT to make it legal is illegal? As a member of the "Principles" committee he participated in the planning of it down to finest details.
Powell has always been a fraud and a brown-noser. And a disgrace to both military and country. Which is why he's a Republican.
That in no way was anything close to a threadjacking. It is very germane to the questions we have been discussing about principles, integrity and loyalty. The Cheney military propagandists may or may not have examined those three things, but it is clear that they let personal loyalty, ignorance and goals override the service they gave to their nation on active duty. They had to know that they were getting propaganda briefings and if their ties to the defense industry prohibited them from telling both sides of the issue, they should have insisted that the broadcasters provide “experts” with opposing views.
Although I think I understand their rationalizations, there is no excuse for not doing anything and everything to prevent an unnecessary and tragic war from happening or continuing. Part of the problem may have been one that Gen. Abizaid was not presented- through ignorance/arrogance, not understanding the culture, politics and wide range of influential regional players and individuals. Just one political example, not realizing such a basic truth, that the Shi’a with ties to Iran who had endured 70 years of oppression under the Sunis, would ever do anything but want to rule the country as a sectarian government and only would pretend to want a Democracy or secular government and that civil war would be inevitable.
So these generals and colonels rationalized that it was their job to talk about military operations and cheer for a war victory instead of warning that Iraq was not a threat to the US and that so many American men and women would be involved in a civil war quagmire that would result in terrible death and destruction. Their loyalty was terribly misplaced and still is because they also have supported the surge and passed out the nonsense that we are now winning. Winning what?
The odd thing, the irony, is that in the final analysis I agree with bucky and some anarchists. I started out as an anarchist, and moved on, like most anarchists. Where we disagree is that he thinks it is the means to an end. I think it is an end, and the means have yet to be settled on. Mostly because we are just no at that place in the evolution of political consciousness. I think I'll defer to Chomsky, not Rothbard.
The first known use of a term that has been translated as "libertarian" in a political sense was by anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque[21], who used the French term libertaire in a letter to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857.[22] The word stems from the French word libertaire (synonymous to "for liberty"), and was used in order to evade the French ban on liberty publications.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
