Is Sarah Palin the Moses, or the Howard Dean, of the Republican Party?
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113 comments:
she is the queen of
a new political scene
the hysteriocracy
jh
I sure hope she's not going to lead conservatives into 40 years in the wilderness! On the other hand, replacing Michael Steele wouldn't be such a bad thing. He's a less than scintillating leader.
I think she's sorta super! Conservatives don't have a leader on the political scene right now (though we have plenty on talk radio and on the blogosphere).
Palin'll do. It isn't the person, it is the message. During Obama's campaign we got a whole lot of personality without a lot of policy. We're paying the price for that now. Don't put your trust in a man who says "just trust me," and seems to live and breathe in the vaporously abstract a la "hope and change".
She may or may not have my support as a candidate (although, against Obama, I'd probably vote for a coelenthocanth.)
Palin is the Howard Dean, but not as book smart, but being hysterical is a pro for the righties, so that actually helps her as opposed to hurting her like it did with Dean.
She's a polarizing figure - Obama got a lot of supports from independents because he chose a V.P. who had experience in areas he did not as opposed to someone who merely filled a political void...
This showed humility on Obama's part...
Palin drove the independents away and motivated the base, so she was a bit of a draw.
In 2012, the base will be motivated (opposition party often is), so Palin ain't the way to go.
Though it'd be interesting if we got the Republicans with Palin/Beck, and Kirby is right that Obama's going to ruin America - then a third-party might have a shot.
Weee!
And emmy - you know better than to think that Obama was in any way unique about having a slogan. "Maverick" or "Rogue" are not policy positions either.
Obama's health care plan is a direct line from what he stated during his campaign, as is his approach to iraq and Afghanistan (especially Afghanistan. The lefties just covered their ears and went 'la la la' when he talked about the importance of Afghanistan in the war on terror).
People. of course, ignored the policy discussions and drew their own ideas about 'hope' and 'change.'
You so happen to disagree with Obama's basic approach to policies, which is fine...but this whole 'Obama is empty rhetoric' shenard is tired.
He had rhetoric And policy durin' zee campaign. You can have both, ya know...
Y'all are just bitter that Obama won the rhetoric battle.
Oh, and the person matters a lot - whatever ones basic ideology, how well a person governs has a lot to do with the Person, regardless of the ideology. Thus you can have trueblue conservatives that are bad leaders, etc.
Kirby's funny - he rails and rails against enthusiasm, and then is pro-beck and anti-Obama when the former is hysteria embodied and the latter gets chided for being spockish.
Oh if only Kirby had a center!
Fried pickle. Oh, sorry, wrong thread.
Peg Bundy.
Stu's comment is why Obama is getting trashed. It's tit for tat. We heard it for years that Bush was Hitler. Now of course he was ok.
Peg Bundy!
I love the crack, as there is a distant similarity, but it's just unbelievably vicious.
Funny as heck, I admit, but kind of jaw-dropping.
Comic characters are always sub-average. I'm sure we could find analogues for Obama, for Biden, etc., but then we'd be called racists.
It's amazing how the game is going.
I think I will probably end up reading her book. It can't be more vacuous than Obama's.
Also, it's possible that she does have a sense of humor. Peg Bundy at least did have that. (The actual actress is apparently an opera singer.)
Kirby—
To the extent that the analogy sticks, it is entirely because of how Mrs. Palin has managed her own "brand." I assume you've seen the Runner's World cover, (since reprinted as the cover of Newsweek). I didn't put her into spandex and pose her—she did.
Newsweek cover
No doubt you see her as fearless, willing to speak the plain truth as she sees it, etc. I see her as overly concerned about superficialities, someone who has abused the public trust to advance her own (and her family's) interests, and someone who is remarkably ill-informed and shallow.
She's good at rallying the base—they're used to looking at the pretty faces on Fox, and find her familiar and reassuring both in appearance and political positions.
And as for unbelievably vicious, this doesn't even come close to Letterman's crack about Palin (that her look is "slutty stewardess"), and lacks even 1% of the viciousness of Mr. McCain's joke about Chelsea Clinton. Peg Bundy murdered no one, terrorized no one, and entertained many. She's clearly a character of fiction, and moreover, Married with Children was carried by Fox.
I wish she would not dye her hair.
Highlight streaks are depressing.
In other news, the Thanksgiving poetry contest is no longer on the front page. This makes me sad.
What HAS been Obama's approach to Afghanistan? What is this guy's policy, anyway? Can anyone tell me what important game-changing decision he's made so far WRT Afghanistan? Unless indecision equals decisiveness and a cohesive strategy, someone has some explaining to do.
But clearly someone's been doing something right, what with the democratic process running so smoothly over there, Americans taking fewer casualties than ever before, and our "prime objective" (in lieu of the "diversion" in Iraq that someone, I forgot who, was so diligent in reminding us about,) capturing Bin Laden has been achieved! I hear he's on his way, right now, as we speak, to NYC to face a jury of his peers.
Hope and Change wasn't just a slogan, it was a way of being--a lifestyle choice, if you prefer. You didn't hear school children being beaten and made to sing songs praising the bravery of Mac the Maverick.
Many of my friends are having second thoughts--most of whom are quite intelligent individuals--about their choice. I think Palin reflects this frustration that people have. Obama was supposed to be a great uniter, someone who is white and black and asian and african and big-city and down-south folksy and erudite and learned and yet somehow managed to fart rainbows and give little children shiny candy-smiles.
Instead, so far, he's shown himself to be just another politician from another inner-city cesspool of corruption. He's an ideologue, and farther to the left than Palin is to the right, pushing him to the outer reaches of what American politics has traditionally called "liberal." All hopes I had of him being a liberal but ultimately pragmatic president have all but vanished.
GM -- I decided to put the Thanksgiving Contest back up on Tuesday, so that going in people will get another crack at it.
I loved your poem as well as P's, and will repost those two poems as well on Tuesday.
If anyone meanwhile wants to post a poem you have to go into the archives, but it's still possible to do it.
Some of the photos I've been posting have taken up a huge chunk of space.
Also, Stu's right that the comment is not as vicious as some by any means.
I think Palin's rallying the base might be sufficient to carry the nomination, possibly even to carry the national election. The problem with McCain is that he was pro-choice, and was a very lukewarm Christian at best.
So great numbers didn't show up for him, even though Palin was on the ticket to shore up those numbers. The perception of the ticket was deeply split. Had she been on top, they would probably have won.
National polls tell us how many like this person or that person, or their positions, but they don't tell us who will get out and vote. This is a hassle for many people.
Obama turned out African Americans in record numbers, for instance. They only make up about 10-15% of the electorate, but if that many comes solidly out, you get a huge number of votes, because usually less than 50% of Americans vote.
So you need to have a solid appeal to your base.
Republicans have an enormous evangelical base. Palin is an evangelical Christian. She has nothing in common with Peg Bundy wrt her beliefs.
We would never have seen Trig ever get born in the Bundy household.
to me her face is that of a dolphin
a squeeeky earnest happy dolphin
very positive ready to dance for a fish dolphin
can bounce a ball on her nose
jh
She's the poster child for community college education.
Oh, I like community colleges immensely. They are the only thing left in American education that is still related to reality.
My college is a kind of de facto community colelge for citizens from our county. There is still a plumbing and a welding and agricultural programs.
It's not all race, gender, class.
You can actually learn about trades and about business. I think this may be one of the things I like best about Palin. I liked the same thing abouit Bush. He was related to reality.
He could do things like ride bicycles, and cut brush.
If your car went ka-put in the desert, I bet Palin could get out and fix it no sweat.
Obama would invoke race, gender, and class, and it would accomplish nothing at all but self-victimization.
Palin or Bush would get out and fix the car, and off you'd go. They're totally functional, like the people at community colleges.
I love them, and believe in them. You can even still find a few Republicans in them -- not just hidden among the staff -- but on the faculty itself, occupying important positions.
I think it's important to be related to your community, and for the college faculty to know the kids whose dads are trying to make it with small time businesses.
Obama's programs are going to kill the business world by making it next to impossible to hire anybody. You'd have to read 2000 pages of the health care vomit in order to figure out how to not get put in jail for something or another.
Easier to just do it yourself, rather than hire anybody. Until that thing gets put away, the lights are going to go on getting dimmer and dimmer in this country.
Obama is a Harvard educated idiot.
Yeah Craig,
I got a CC education. Didn't have the scores for UF.
I had the scores to get in anywhere I wanted -- even got an offer from Harvard, but didn't have the money to go to those places (Bennington, St. John's, etc.).
I did a small part of my undergraduate education at Seattle Community College where I did several French courses (the 100 series). I loved those courses, and liked the students.
It was refreshing, and crisp.
The teacher fell off a cliff while hiking. Her name was Madame Gilbert. That was just after the end of 103.
I think community colleges are probably better than most universities for the first two years of college at least when most courses are now taught either by adjuncts or teaching assistants.
I taught at a community college for one term, but didn't get paid for it. In fact, I borrowed money to pay university tuition for the privilege of teaching. I could have continued if I'd been willing to continue paying for the privilege, but financial aid wouldn't bite on it. They told me to beat feet once they'd given me my consolation prize. A university education in the humanities takes longer and gives you more time and a better chance to arrange a marriage that can keep you from falling out of your social class. Are there support groups for people with advanced but useless degrees? Would government subsidies encourage the development of such groups? Is schizophrenia a suitable description for people who overdose on higher education? Deleuzians of grandeur need to be taken more seriously.
Social class seems to be a determining factor in many person's rejection of Sarah Palin. She's from the underclass, and therefore she's not to be respected. I find that many people in the blue states still think it's ok to dismiss someone for being a redneck, or being from a rural area, or not being able to speak correctly.
They did the same thing to W.
But many times the rural population have intelligent things to say, even if they don't say them with as much finesse as the Harvard-educated among us.
I think they often have common sense that is lacking in the elite, many of whom have never worked at anything more than community organizing (which seems to be a euphemism for trying to play the victim and get tax dollars).
I think the Peg and Al Bundies shouldn't be dismissed simply because they went to a community college at night. Many people didn't grow up with silver spoons in their mouths.
I didn't.
I remember in grade school other kids would make fun of my family because our car wasn't a Mercedes (I went to an accelerated program and graduated early but most of the kids were from extremely wealthy families and had tutors and had maids and all kinds of help).
I have a lot of sympathy for the Bundies, the Archies, the backwoods types. Lincoln was a backwoods type.
I'm for them, and for the community college kids. I think they often have common sense, and I find it wonderful that there are things like plumbers and welders, rather than just an upper class that is all crazy about Marxism.
I do see the great divide as being between Marxists (I now lump all Democrats into that category), and Lockean liberals (all Republicans).
I could be wrong about having redefined those categories, but I don't think I am.
I don't blame the left for going Marxist. I don't even think in most cases they realize where their rhetoric has been.
The Social Gospel people mean well. It's just that they've put Marx in front of God, and claim the real God needs to have a consciousness raising experience from Marx.
Sarah Palin is descended on her father's side from a major general who knew George Washington on a first name basis. Her mother's family were Catholic immigrants from Germany who designed and built railroad bridges in Wisconsin. Both of her parents were schoolteachers. Her uncle was a lawyer in Walla Walla who recycled Texas attorneys with substance abuse problems to Alaska. She's a redneck the same way George Bush is a cowboy. She's a born again redneck. The Assemblies of God is Pentecostal and was founded on pacificism shortly before WWI. It was one of the few denominations recognized by the selective service system as a valid basis for claiming conscientious objector status in both WWI and WWII. Veterans from both wars joined in large numbers until military veterans represented more than half of their membership. Yet the denomination abandoned its pacifist principles and its conscientious objector status midway through the war in Viet Nam.
We didn't!
Palin was a local yokel who managed--through good looks and family values--to mount a successful campaign for governor of Alaska. This is something she couldn't have done in any other state in the Union (except, perhaps, Hawaii), where remoteness and rural isolation give people a sense of separation from reality.
Then she abandons that job, has a "bio" ghost-written for her, and is interviewed prominently on television. This is obviously an attempt to explore the opportunity of running for high office in the next cycle. But what are her ideas?
The same old Republican saws: Low taxes, insulation from corporate risk, no abortions, charter schools, environmental exploitation, exporting of jobs, fleeing of capital, more foreign wars, adoption of Christian charities and installation of Christian theocratic principles, privatization of social security, elimination of public health initiatives and welfare, frozen minimum wage, increases in defense spending, anti-scientific attack on "green" technologies, etc.,--and while we're at it, open season on wolves, big-horn sheep, mountain-lions, and turtles. Have I forgotten anyone?
Sarah Palin is so cute she could be the weather girl on Good Morning, America. Actually, I can't think of a better place for her. And it just might come true.
On the other hand, all those stretch-marks! I'm not sure she has the right mouth feel to command adequate shelf-space.
GM is referring to the fact that his denomination did not get involved in the Vietnam War?
Craig's background geneology on Palin is useful.
Sources?
CF -- nuthin wrong with stretch marks on a lady.
KO -- Yes, the COB kept up its anti-war stance: though there were a lot of them who went to WWII (even though COB members automatically qualified for CO status).
Curtis, I'll take those old saws over these ones:
-confiscatory taxation
-class warfare
-politicized science
-perpetuation of racial grievance
-weakness and preening as foreign policy strategy
-judicial legislating
-abortion on demand
-weak economy based on marxist fetish
-artificially high energy and production costs due to government interference.
-mandatory public schooling
-leftist propaganda aimed at children in aforementioned schools.
GM, did any of your Brethren go to Nam?
Picklesworth -- thank you for pointing out the other side to Curtis.
I think people in the cities are totally disconnected from reality. They think socialism will help them.
It just means everybody gets ripped off by the Kafkaesque bureaucracy which soon enough grows its Stalins.
You can't tell the people in the cities anything, though. They don't have any experience of reality. They don't even know where their water comes from, much less their food, or their ideas.
They think we're nuts out here in the country, because we don't have any excitement. We have plenty, but it comes from prayer and watching kids grow, rather than from orgies and drug abuse.
Kirby -
No ground for you to stand on when judging certain lefties for being anti-rural.
You have the same level of prejudice, just in reverse (note your last comment).
The problem with some in rural America is that they don't believe urban America is real and that it is anti-American.
"you have cities on the west coast and on the east coast and America in between."
The problem with some urbaners is that they devalue the areas in which rural America excels, and believe that because ruralites have certain accents they're stupid.
America consists of Both rural and Urban people and places. This is obvious, but certain folk don't like to accept it, or have a kneejerkfuntime labeling those in the other type of living situation as 'evil' or 'stupid.' Laaaaaame.
It's bothersome, however, when the silverspooned pretend to be ranchhands. It's a matter of honesty. And Bush and Reagan didn't have it - playin' parts they were.
Real Americans BOWL, you know - if they're bad at that, but have a nice jumper, they must not be American!!!!
It's funny how political everything everyone says is.
The ol' motto is 'take the opposition's strength, and label it a weakness.'
People liked Obama because he seemed thoughtful and considerate, and this was refreshing post-Bush.
Now, thinking things through and making sure you get the best info. possible and having the balls to say 'nope, what you've suggested isn't good enough, go back and make it better' becomes 'dithering.'
Being good-looking becomes being 'shallow.'
Having a diverse background with a wide view of what America is means you're a 'usurper' or 'unAmerican.'
Being a good orator means you're nothing but speeches.
Following Keynesian economics means you're marxist.
Engaging with foreign countries and gaining leverage means you're weak.
Being committed to gettin' the job done in Afghanistan, while retaining high-office Repubs who did a good job near the end of Bush's admin, means you're weak on defense and unfit to be Commander in Chief.
Obama's more focused on Afghanistan after 10 months in office, and more dedicated to achieving victory there, and more active in raising troop levels etc., than Bush was after 7 years of war.
Bemoan the lack of progress in Afghanistan after 10 months of Obama, fine, but then weep and wail over the 7 Bush years that led us to where Obama had to start from...
There are some things Obama has done which I disagree with and/or go against who he campaigned as...
But y'all never talk about those. You just attack him for his moderate Democratic stances, and for the deficit spending which Bush was just a much a part of.
For instance: The "Public Option" is not a leftist position. It's moderate Democrat - if we were talking about a Single-Payer plan, Then you could say he was on the far left.
But he's not. Sorry. You just have to deal with that fact, even as Fox News throws the 'czar' term around like it was the most evil word ever...a term that the administration rarely (if ever?) uses, and which the Republicans happily came up with back in the day but now use as a shallow weapon of attack.
"For instance: The "Public Option" is not a leftist position. It's moderate Democrat - if we were talking about a Single-Payer plan, Then you could say he was on the far left.
But he's not. Sorry. You just have to deal with that fact"
Sorry, but nope. Obama is on the record as supporting a single payer system and (this is key!) for using the public option as a means to get there. He's laid out his strategy already. Are we supposed to believe that now that he's president he actually just wants the public option? If the man had more credibility built up, maybe I'd buy it. But the fact is that his promises have been worth very little: he bailed on his commitment to use public funds for his campaign; he bailed on his promise to post bills for three days before signing them; he has talked about fiscal restraint while pursuing massive new spending programs like health care.
As for your other comments, you use a rhetorical device to dismiss any and all criticism of what he is actually doing (though you say that you have some undisclosed criticism of him). In the campaign, when his record was still thin, you could get away with this. The problem now is that he's beginning to accumulate a record. And those conservative accusations are gaining traction because they resonate with a lot of folks. At the very least they perceive them to be true, much like they perceived him to be eloquent, thoughtful and smart a year ago.
I second Picklesworth.
I was flicking through the channels last night and alighted upon the public station. I rarely watch it, because it too often has ancient documentaries about the Civil War, and about poor migrant people, and it wearies me.
But I came across something called the McNeil/Lehrer hour and to my astonishment there was a sentient Democrat on. She was the president of some university in Florida, and she was talking about health care with a Republican.
To my astonishment, they were both civil, yielded points to one another, and had a sense of humor about themselves. And one of them was a woman!
It was amazing.
I started to like the Democrats again, and thought, why have I demonized them? It's partially a matter of their take no prisoners STYLE. I can't bear the holier than thou assumptions of Democrats (who are now largely Marxists).
It's a kind of two-year-old fit that you have to deal with. I'm right, because I am right, because you are wrong, because I belong to the better party, because I am a good person. That's the extent of anything that seems to pass for logic.
But last night the woman was saying, with all due respect, and, I could be wrong, but.
She was a very ugly woman, but I sensed beauty in her, and liked her!
I still thought she was wrong, of course, but not AS wrong as I normally found Democrats. I felt a bit uncomfortable.
Things were not as black and white as they generally are for me. I had to admit that this red or at least pink individual, was actually ok, and had a good heart as well as a decent mind.
It's been a long time since I've thought that a Democrat was anything but someone who's been brainwashed by their education, or lack of ability to be open to alternative explanations.
It was really a neat experience. I might try to watch that show again at some point.
Brett—
You won't get many strokes from this crowd, but I agree. Amen, brother, lay it on!
Peace.
I was surprised to see in the newspaper a tiny article yesterday in which Obama did something I approved of. He was going to commend high school students who were good at science, so that they got strokes similar to those who play sports.
I thought this was functional. As usual, he had to lay into another group -- this time sports players, as if they don't matter, or have to be knocked down a peg.
You can be good at sports and at science, and this would be good for the student, too. Many of the top athletes in my high school went on to become doctors and other culturally appreciated things.
I don't think they are mutually exclusive.
But part of Obama that we learned to deeply distrust him is that he promised McCain he would rely on government funding for his campaign, and trapped McCain in that, and then went the other route, and had a 6-1 spending advantage.
No Republican will ever take that bait again.
McCain was fooled. McCain was also outfoxed by Bush in S. Carolina when his adopted daughter was rumored to be his own daughter.
McCain in the prisoner's dilemma always thought his counterpart would be honorable. That worked in the Hanoi Hilton, to some extent, perhaps, but in American politics, it will get you the short end of the schtick.
I think by now no one believes anything that Obama says any longer. He has tricks up his sleeve, and is a known liar.
I'm not saying he's better than Bush in that regard, but he's cut from the same cloth. Plus, it's not clear that he actually cares about this country.
And we've already had the first terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, but he's too dishonest to even call it what it was. Political correctness got soldiers killed, and even got a baby killed.
Of course, the left doesn't care about unborn babies getting whacked, but perhaps this would disturb the conscience of even the most hardened leftist, in the way in which the procedure was done.
It's very hard for me to listen to the left at this point.
However, I did start watching the Lehrer report at night. It's calmer and more sensible than MsNBC, and to some degree, I think I might open up a bit more if I watch that program from now on. The best part is that the last fifteen minutes are actually ARTS reporting. I can't believe. Last night: Arne Zane.
Oh, Picklesworth! What a delightful name! Right out of Dickens or Trollope!
Here's your list, with my emendations:
-confiscatory taxation
It was Bush who blew out the Federal budgetary surplus with an unnecessary war and tax breaks for the rich, not the Democrats.
-class warfare
It's the concentration of wealth in the top 1% of the population--instead of in a healthy middle-class--which causes class warfare. Your version of class warfare is actually the rich (and their corporate running-dogs) complaining about distribution of wealth.
-politicized science
If you don't like the science, then call it "politicized". Golly, empiricism and the overwhelming body of evidence. What political things they be!
-perpetuation of racial grievance
Yeah, I don't like it either. Maybe the quickest fix is to stop talking about it, and elect more minorities. That way, who can complain?
-weakness and preening as foreign policy strategy
I hear Obama is going to send another 38,000 troops over the Afghanistan, over the objections of most of his own party people. Doesn't sound like "weakness" to me--at least insofar as Republicans usually define it.
-judicial legislating
Yeah, upholding the Constitution and The Bill of Rights. Irritating, aren't they? But someone's got to do it, otherwise the government'll be looking up all our asses without our permission.
-abortion on demand
Sounds good to me!
-weak economy based on marxist fetish
The bad economy is largely the result of the exportation of jobs and capital away from our shores. China has the right idea: Become the manufacturing and export center of the globe. It's no mystery why they're now the rich ones, and we're deeper and deeper in debt.
-artificially high energy and production costs due to government interference.
Gosh, we have, like, what?--1% of the world's known oil reserves? There's always coal; would you like to live downwind of that? I wouldn't. Let's go back to Victorian times, the environment be damned!
-mandatory public schooling
Yeah, isn't it great? I was scholarshiped through Berkeley, and went on to get three graduate degrees, and I'm even a citizen! Maybe we should restrict post-secondary education to the ruling classes, the way it once was. That would certainly insure that the right sort of people maintain control over things.
-leftist propaganda aimed at children in aforementioned schools.
Ah, yes, the pledge of allegiance. "Under god." Not under any god I know, baby.
I think, when rhetoricizing, we all use rhetorical devices, W.B. I guess mine were just so good that you can't respond?
I was merely pointing out the gap between what Obama's actually done and many of the things he's been accused of. you could disagree with some of my sentiments, line-by-line, if you want...but so it goes...
A list of things that Obama has done which I either disagree with outright or am troubled by:
The adversarial relationship with Fox News.
The takeover of GM (haven't really heard much about it lately...what's going on with this?).
Reneging on some of his transparency claims, which goes along with what W.B. mentioned about putting bills on the internet.
Not as much focus on renewable energy and R&D as I would like (I would rather have had an early focus on huge, expensive infrastructure changes and R&D than the early focus on health care...I'm a bit of a technocrat, though, and would really like to see a huge portion of the budget put into technological development. I've played Civilization, and know that this one of the most important factors in a country's power. With globalization, it's the only real way we can create lots of jobs...by making stuff and inventing stuff other people can't. I still believe that this is the place where the left and right unknowingly connect, and which might lead to the doom of America: the left wants us all living in huts and to stop growing economically and populationally, the right wants to keep doing things the same way and caters to those huge corporations that profit hugely from doing things the old way, and they have backwards ideas about 'not playing God' and generally fear change.)
Caving into the Republicans and not having enough direct-job-creation in the stimulus package.
Not yet fixing the BCS.
Some of these things he's done have to do with having been naive about the office, and now facing reality - others have to do with having to make a bad choice among bad choices - and some have to do with flatout making poor decisions.
Whatever the case, Obama is still acting as a president very much how I thought he would. I don't get all the OH MY GOD HE'S NOT WHO HE CAMPAIGNED AS shenanigans.
Anyone who thinks that any politician is willing or able to 100% live up to their campaign promises does not understand life, and must not believe in two kingdoms.
And W.B. - it's the public option that everyone's attacking as socialist and communist...nothing to do with a singlepayer system, so that's a red herring, or a slippery slope at best.
your points are hard to refute because they are so broad, and would require a lot of heavy lifting. You did get me to watch the Lehrer hour, Brett.
My own suspicion about BHO is that he doesnt understand the tragic nature of life awaiting around every corner ++
Frank OäHara at Fire Island
found out ++ there are moments like that waiting for us all.
Its not a matter of a quick fix, and there is then a perfect world.
I think in essence thatäs what I object to in so much modernism.
Pounds crazy notions of how to make life wonderful.
Simply not serious enough about life.
I prefer a complete nut like Edwin Arlington Robinson.
I think he gets more of what life is ++ how tragedy waits for all of us, and madness, around every corner.
Munchs Scream, is closer.
Shakespeares Tragedies.
Hard to do this in comedy, but Corso comes quite close. I think he saw the horror.
The folks at Fort Hood saw the horror. While the writers at the NYT try to trivialize it, thats the real world that waits at every moment for the insufficiently terrified. The world is basically one of raw and unrelenting terror.
I dont think this dude from Hawaii with the everybody must get stoned attitude down deep sees this, and I fear for him that later in life he will see it when its too late.
God help him.
The modernists seem distinguised for their trivial concerns: which led to terrifying campaigns to make heaven on earth. Stalin in Russia and the enforced collectivization of the kulaks. Hitler's trivial final solution that led to the near extinction of a people. Pound's association with Mussolini.
Few were able to resist these blandishments, or the new ones: the sexual revolution, which is merely a lemming's inducement to take a short walk off a shorter plank. Everywhere I look there are short routes into death.
But there is only one road to life, and it's narrow.
And even that may be false hope.
I feel that the ccreation of equality between races and genders is essentially a trivialization of greater issues, a distraction from something much more ominous that's impending.
It's hard to articulate this. The cries of Isaiah, the terror that the ancient Jews knew in Babylon, all these things await us, and are all around us. There are peoples that would enslave us, as they have done to the people of the Darfur.
It's just a shot away.
That moment at Altamont is where I think the left leads us to -- and even through and after when the police and courts and sensible people clean up after a Manson or the Hell's Angels, they still take no responsibility.
Instead thinking about signifiers, or who belongs to what period, or some other trivial matter.
It fascinates me.
I'm at least partially with Schopenhauer and his notion of the monstrous nature of the world.
I clutch at one sole straw of light.
Obama strikes me as a comic figure who will more than get his for his trivializations. I feel sorry for him. He will end with nothing, a blasted out hollow of a man, without a shred of meaning. It's his destiny, it's so obvious.
Nothing can divert it. I wish I could. Let's pray for him, and hope that he can actually talk with God, and get something straight in his sad comic existence, and let's pray for ourselves as well.
Kirby, you can call my statements general, but you can't claim that's a negative since you stick mostly to hunches and broad characterizations - I don't trust the guy - teeth are too pretty - 'dithers' (which I say for shame on you for so shamelessly repeating the already-tired talking point verbatim. At least use your own diction;-)! "deep-down stoner" "doesn't get the horror of life." Such broad, unprovable, ununprovable statements. unbecoming a man of your intellect to practice what you denounce so vehemently and shallowly at the same time you denounce it. And, worst of all, 'marxist,' which to you has no meaning since it basically means "to the left of me."
Which is a real broad territory that has more ways of being described that are far more accurate than 'Marxist.'
Brett, fair enough. We're dealing in broad-stroke characterizations.
It's hard to be specific, when what we need is to be general, and hard to be general when what we need is to be specific.
The Crowley debacle said it all for me. Stu argued that that was a one-shot anomaly, and it may be, but I thought it combined the specific with a general trend against Obama as a race-hater in the style of his church, run by Reverend Wright.
Then again, everyone has buttons, which might bring out the worst possible self in an individual, and maybe Gates knew how to push those buttons, and did, and then Obama spoke before he could get himself in order.
The way in which he is reacting, or not reacting to the Hasan massacre, is also of interest, as a specific. It seems like an overly tame, very measured response, which indicates it doesn't really bother him, as the Crowley incident did.
It seems to speak volumes about his acceptance of a certain kind of Islamic radicalism as comprehensible, and, legal, on its own terms. Which seems to be also why he's trying to get everyone out of Gitmo and into the Federal courts.
He sees what they are doing as specific crimes, rather than as trends.
He saw what Crowley did, as a police officer, on the other hand, as a general trend that had to be violently denounced.
He seems to have his perspectives mismanaged.
At any rate, I don't think he sees things through a Lockean lense.
I think he sees them through a multicultural lense, that has been underscored and clarified by a crypto-Marxism emanating from his mentors Frank Marshall Davis and Jeremiah Wright, and perhaps fine-tuned by his friendship with the likes of Ayers and Dohrn.
But that's the general trend that I see, and those are some of the specifics.
Palin sees things more or less as I do, on the other hand. I think she has a Lockean lense, as do most of the so-called conservatives.
I see Locke as much more egalitarian and even-handed than Marx or any of his socialist derivatives (Social Gospel, etc.).
More functional.
You're doing a lot of hasty generalizing from a few incidents that you have judged through a pre-determined filter, Kirby. Giuliani thinks that putting terrorists on trial is good for America - well, he did in 2006, before he felt he had to disagree with Obama just for the sake of it...So I assume you judge him from that one incident the way you judge Obama?
In 2006 we had a member of Al Qaeda with connections to 9/11 on trial in an American court room...where was the right's histrionic doomsaying then? What's the salient difference between that incident and this one, apart from who's president's?
Hannity the other day said that this year was one of the coldest on record, when in fact it's the 5th warmest of the past 130 years... And remember when he used that false footage?
Are you ready to call him a liar? Because taking into account your previous approach to judging folks, you should be...
Palin plays the victim card, the gender card, too often and too well: "how dare you attack my family!!!!" "I had to leave Alaska because they were bringing up ethics violations all the time." "ya know, I do think they give me a rougher time about things because I'm a woman." "The McCain campaign treated me poorly..." etc.
Everyone's always out to get her, ya know...poor poor Palin.
It was fun when the right was all too happy to lambast Britney Spears' Mom for having a pregnant teenaged daughter, and then got all high-and-holy about STAY AWAY FROM THE FAMILY when people were talking about a politician - someone who actually matters, as opposed to Britney's mom.
I just want someone to found Boring News Network. A channel full of unexciting, important, in-depth investigative journalism, and with interviews of people who are expert in things other than creating controversy/yelling/regurgitating talking points.
Kirby—
Regarding Fort Hood.
Let's think for a moment about what might consistute a meaningful "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If you think we're going to somehow reconstruct them as model Christian countries, you're hallucinating—and you've set a goal that is inconsistent with US constitutional principles, as well as international law. So I'd like to assume that's off the table from the beginning.
Our dream is that these nations would reconstruct themselves as western democracies, perhaps (if we let a small measure of reality intrude) in the model of Turkey has become, if not what we think the US should be.
Can we get there from here? It seems doubtful in both cases, although perhaps more reasonable in the case of Iraq, which had a more "western" starting point than Afghanistan. But I think our hopes rely ultimately not on intimidation, but in persuasion—our goals can be acheived only if the Iraqi's and Afghani's believe that more open societies which value personal freedom, open markets, and democratic political institutions will better serve their needs than their present forms.
It needs to be understood that religion is a powerful force in both societies, and that Moslems are as committed to their faith—a faith based in belief in same God we worship—as we are. We injure ourselves by attacking their religion, and are better served by enlisting its support. To that end, US Moslems can play a crucial role as witnesses to the compatibility of American economic and political systems with Islam.
But demagogues like Glenn Beck have attempted to frame these wars, not as wars simply against terrorism, but quite specifically as wars against Islamic terrorism, and so positioned Islam as our enemy. This is treasonously stupid, for it most assuredly gives aid and comfort to our enemies. It assures that they will be unified against us, and that they won't listen to a thing we have to say.
And in this, Obama's reaction to the Fort Hood murders is exactly right. By framing this as the action of a single, disturbed man, he avoids framing it as an "Islam as our enemy" moment, and so avoids working against our national goals.
Brett, good hit on the Palin mom deal. I think part of the difference is that Britney Spears has no redeeming values. She's so nuts that she's under the care of her father, and has been in and out of insane asylums, am I correct?
Palin is quite sensible, and her teenaged daughter has the kid and is going to do the right thing. Both that kid and Palin's Trig will be fine.
Anyone anywhere near Britney Spears is bound to come out a loser, by comparison. You find interesting comparisons but they're not really equivalencies.
Stu, the problem with Afghanistan and Iraq is that they were both exporting terror. Afghanistan was a launching pad for Bin Laden's cult. It had to be changed in terms of its regime.
Both countries are still officially Islamic, and in Afghanistan it is against the law to be Christian. Anyone who changes into a Christian is an apostate, and is met with the death penalty.
To my knowledge, we haven't challenged that. We've only tried to help more moderate Muslims into power.
But if we are to get a prescription right for any given problem, I don't see how it helps to fudge on the description.
Hasan was an Islamic terrorist. He said as much. He said the Akbar thing, he contacted a Yemeni terrorist many times for instructions, and he gave talks, and had on his calling card, Soldier of Allah.
To not call it what it is puts other soldiers who may have similar commanders in their ranks at risk. It's incredibly foolish.
You cannot appease the terrorists by calling them something other than what they are. They are Terrorists.
Whether their god is also our God is debatable. Most Muslims would not accept that idea. Most Christians would not accept that idea.
Most Jews would not accept that idea.
Jungians of course would, and there are many Jungians mixed in, but they are wrong about everything. They would also say that the god of ancient Egypt is the same as Christ's father, and also the same thing as Zeus.
They just put everything in a blender and call it god.
Underneath everything else is a war for the territory of Jerusalem. It's a real estate dispute.
These are difficult issues with enormous differences. It doesn't do us any good to muddle the nomenclature.
Kirby—
Stu, the problem with Afghanistan and Iraq is that they were both exporting terror.
Al Qaeda was the terrorist, and there is no question that the Taliban government of Afghanistan was providing protection and support to Al Qaeda. This is why Democrats and Republicans alike supported the invasion of Afghanistan.
The case w.r.t. Iraq is less clear. That they had exported terrorism is unarguable, c.f., the attempt to assassinate GHWB in Kuwait. But the US under Clinton had effectively responded at the time. The post-9/11 justification for war was, depending on how you look at it, evidence either that the Bush administration was gullible and self-serving in its assessment of intelligence, or criminal. In any event, the pre-war justifications proved to be false. The failure of the right to acknowledge this reality continues to cause our country active harm.
In any event, these issues are immaterial to the issue that I raised, which did not address why were are there, but rather what we might hope to accomplish given that we are there, and how we might hope to get out.
In Hasan's case, clearly he bought in to Beck's framing that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were wars against Islam. And Hasan reacted much as we would have reacted to a declared war against Christianity. As so, Beck is effectively an unknowing co-consipirator in Hasan's attack.
Reinforcing the framing will simply give others justification to act as Hasan acted, whereas an appropriate framing will cause faithful Muslims in US military service to do what only they can do in convincing the citizens of the countries we now occupy that they're better served by adopting our economic and political structure. Hasan was a criminal, enraged by the treasonous stupidity of Beck et. al. to act treasonously himself. Again, it is not Islam that is our enemy, it is terrorism, murder, etc. It is your side that is muddling the waters, and in so doing, are inflaming our enemies, and so causing the deaths of our soldiers, and making it all the more difficult to obtain our goals.
Whether their god is also our God is debatable.
No. With respect, no. It is not debatable. Islam accepts the Old Testament as scripture, as do we, and as do the Jews. Islam recognizes Jesus, Moses, etc., as prophets of their faith. Only a few Jews, Christians, and Muslims are so profoundly ignorant of the history of their respective religions to argue otherwise.
Separately, although I think the quality of comments have increased since you've gone to approving comments, it has had one undesirable quality so far as I'm concerned—they give you an extraordinarily privileged position. My comments essentially never appear without your rebuttals. Whereas, my rebuttals of your points are often substantially delayed. Take it for what it's worth.
So far I've put all the comments that I've gotten through. The problem is that I only look at them a few times a day. When I see a comment, I try to comment on it if it is addressed to me.
This does probably provide a disadvantage for those who would like their comments to sit for some time without my responses.
It's something I don't know what to do about. We could move to a closed club and allow only members to contribute.
I'd prefer to avoid that.
It seems to be either all-open or all-closed.
My preference would be to allow inner members who I trust to be reasonable to comment at will, and then to moderate other people's comments from there.
I did edit out two comments by Meg, in which she flipped her lid wrt my characterization of Hasan as a Muslim. She said he was a Muslim like the marine in some case was a marine when he killed 13 children. I couldn't follow the logic.
I'm trying to let comments through that are at least logical and don't require tremendous amounts of conversation to adjust them slightly toward reality.
But if you want, I can delay my responses for at least four hours, or something from the time I read them.
Kirby—
But if you want, I can delay my responses for at least four hours, or something from the time I read them.
I'm not actively proposing a solution at this time, nor arguing for acting in has. Just identifying what I see as an issue. I may be the only one.
No, I think you've identified an advantage that I possess as the moderator. How to moderate that advantage is something that we can all think about.
I tried to think about whether the God of Muslims, Jews, and Christians is the same God.
I don't think it can be, because in Christianity Jesus is the son of the father in a trinity. Since neither the Jews nor the Muslims accept that set-up, it can't be the same God. For us, Jesus is God.
For the Jews, Jesus is a man, albeit a fairly enlightened one.
I think that for the Muslims, he's a minor prophet.
It may be salutary to stress continuity. Let's say you're a Jew in WWII and you want to stress the fact that you and the guy who's about to do you in by flipping a switch are both human, and both have the same God.
It might help your case some if you can get the SS commandant to buy it.
But you probably can't.
It might help to stress continuity with some Muslims. But I doubt if it would help with Ahmaninajihad (I can't remember how to spell his name, so threw in the joke at the end -- forgive me!).
I think the president of Iran, for instance, has said that he denies the holocaust altogether, doesn't believe that there are any gay people in Iran, and he thinks America is the great Satan. You can stress continuity all you want, it's not going to help.
Or do you think it is?
With the Taliban, likewise, it's not going to help.
If you look at the history of Islam, it's a different one, to say the least. Within the first two generations, they are at war with one another, ultimately coming to the Shia and Sunni split. It's genocide from then on.
We had this split too in Christianity but it didn't happen until 1520 or so, when Luther puts up his 95 theses, and it's war for a few generations.
At this point, Christians are all fairly chummy again.
It's unthinkable at least for a Protestant to want to blow up Catholics, or vice versa (Ireland is an exception, but there are other issues there, having to do with land).
I think it's probably a good idea if we can stress continuity if it's sound, and if it's reasonable, and if both parties will allow for this reciprocally.
I don't think we know yet what set off Major Hasan. He may have been mentally ill. If so, then it's problematic that no one around him noticed.
He may have been acting according to some kind of mentally sane code, on the other hand. Again, it's odd that no one noticed.
He may have watched an episode of Glenn Beck, and then decided to kill his fellow soldiers, slaughtering the woman, and her unborn baby, and now, per Stu, we can lay all this at the foot of Glenn Beck.
If we coiuld just get Glenn Beck off the air, we could all live in peace! Perhaps!
No more tea parties, no more opposition to Obama's czars, let a thousand Acorns bloom into mighty oaks, and all that.
But in general, we have had a strong first amendment right for free discussion here, and if you get rid of Beck, you get rid of that altogether.
I'd rather leave Beck in place, and instead, get rid of any potential Major Hasans.
We're a pluralistic country, and yet we are united.
It's a pickle.
Ok, the games here are about to begin. I have a lot of trouble getting on the computer during holidays since I'm competing with four little maniacs who want on sites like Disney.com, barbie.com, luigi and mario racing car sites, one citizen who wants to check her own gmail, and then the wife, who wants to watch the latest Finnish TV news.
They line up and gently tap their feet. At any rate, I think I will get one more turn around 8 pm, when I will let your last comments through for the night, and then, while tiny teeth are being brushed, I may get the chance to pop through one more comment!
Meanwhile, we are going to eat, and then let the games begin.
Best to all, and thank you for our continuing conversation. I learn much, and have much to be thankful for.
Kirby—
I tried to think about whether the God of Muslims, Jews, and Christians is the same God.
I don't think it can be, because in Christianity Jesus is the son of the father in a trinity. Since neither the Jews nor the Muslims accept that set-up, it can't be the same God. For us, Jesus is God.
For us, Jesus is one of three persons of God. However, I think the equation Yahweh = God the Father = Allah is indisputable. In that sense, and that is a very strong sense indeed, we worship the same God. Do the Jews and Muslims deny that Jesus is a person of God? Of course. But there is much more that these three religions have in common than differentiates us.
It might help to stress continuity with some Muslims. But I doubt if it would help with Ahmaninajihad (I can't remember how to spell his name, so threw in the joke at the end -- forgive me!).
We're both Lutherans, both sinners, and both forgiven. There's no issue there :-). As for Ahmadinejad his grasp of reality seems tenuous. Would that his grasp of power was likewise. That said, it seems to me that his failings are similiar in kind, albeit greater in degree, than Bush's failings. There is the same basic certainty in his own rightness, and the same co-dependence on the most reactionary elements of his religion.
I think the president of Iran, for instance, has said that he denies the holocaust altogether, doesn't believe that there are any gay people in Iran, and he thinks America is the great Satan.
Indeed, he does.
You can stress continuity all you want, it's not going to help.
I stress continuity with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as great monotheistic religions with a common heritage. This is by no means an argument for continuity with everyone who claims to profess one of these religions. I would (and have) drawn a distinction between the people of Iran and its current government, as represented by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. Would that Beck showed similar subtlety.
If you look at the history of Islam, it's a different one, to say the least. Within the first two generations, they are at war with one another, ultimately coming to the Shia and Sunni split. It's genocide from then on.
We had this split too in Christianity but it didn't happen until 1520 or so, when Luther puts up his 95 theses, and it's war for a few generations.
So the Gnostics, Marcionites, Montanists, Docetists, Arians, Manicheans never were? Nor the Donatists and Nestorians? Nor Pelagians? And the Roman Catholic schism from the Orthodox Church, it never happened either? Some of those controversies did indeed involve the violent power of the Roman Empire, either on behalf of, or occasionally against, the fathers of orthodoxy. There is a great deal of Christian history that you're not accounting for in your argument.
At this point, Christians are all fairly chummy again.
I would say less so than a decade ago, and I am not speaking in reaction to US issues, but instead to a sudden increase the distance and intolerance between Protestants and Catholics world-wide.
I don't think we know yet what set off Major Hasan. He may have been mentally ill. If so, then it's problematic that no one around him noticed.
His position that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were "wars against Islam" was noticed. There was a failure to reaction. I think that part of this is the extreme deference members of the officer corps have shown one another. A future Hasan will have to send out fewer warning signs than this one did.
If we coiuld just get Glenn Beck off the air, we could all live in peace! Perhaps!
This is neither necessary nor sufficient. My point, though, is that demonizing Islam is counterproductive, and clearly there is a straight line from this demonization to the Fort Hood mass-murder.
A happy Thanksgiving to all!
Huh - I feel like a comment I wrote before Stu's did not make it up...maybe it got swallowed by the internet, or maybe my timeline is confused, or maybe Kirby censored me - in any case, Kirby, let me know if it came through (it started out by pointing out the fact that there IS an equivalency with regards to Britneymom and Palin...) or not - if it got swallowed by the universe, I want to rewrite something similar...if not, then just post it!;-)
Scroll back up to 12:34 for the Spears comment, Brett.
I haven't censored any of the regulars since we started this new format.
I did censor two of Meg's comments. I regret having done that, now, but they came in just after the J debacle and was still annoyed at the nonsensicality and lack of logic in his posts.
Her post argued that Hasan was a Muslim about as much as a marine who had killed a bunch of kids was a marine.
I think it was nonsense because the marine had no strategic goal and no other marine would do what he had done, nor would they approve of what he had done.
On the other hand, many Muslims have blown up crowds of innocent people, and have in particular killed American soldiers. Moreover, I'm sure that in the Muslim world, there are many people who celebrate Hasan's activities.
In the world of the marines, no one celebrates the murder of small children.
At any rate, I should have let the comment go through, but was in a censorious mode, tired of the unfunny nonsense perpetrated on my comments box at the time.
Kirby—
On the other hand, many Muslims have blown up crowds of innocent people, and have in particular killed American soldiers.
Please remember that we're the political descendants of people who sometimes picked off British soldiers from behind stone fences, rather than just forming lines and facing off the way civilized men did at the time.
Likewise, we have no need to use car bombs to kill civilians. A hellfire missile launched from a drone suffices for us, and if maybe there's a legitimate enemy in the crowd, that's justification enough to us to offset any number of civilian casualties.
Evidently asymmetrical warfare is o.k. with you, but only so long as we're the ones doing it.
Consider partisan warfare in conquered nations during WW II. Their tactics—attacking logistical units, sabotage, the intimidation and even murder of collaborators—are exactly the tactics that you find objectionable now, and somehow specifically indicative of Muslim forms of warfare. In fact, we're getting the reception that invaders have always gotten Google Sicarii, and you'll see what I mean. Indeed, we as a culture have often glamorized violent resistance against an occupier, including the murder of civilians, c.f., "The Dirty Dozen." How do you distinguish between this and the celebrations of our enemies at successful attacks against us?
I believe you see a distinction in that our cause for invasions arre just, and moreover that partisan resistance to a just invasion is criminal. We can argue about whether the two invasions were just or not, but it hardly matters. I believe the distinction you're making is self-serving, and moreover meaningless to the occupied nations. Violent resistance comes out of the experiences of civilians under hostile foreign occupation.
Have you considered any of the statistics for excess civilian deaths in Iraq as a consequence of our invasion? Bush admitted to 30K, and this is a very low estimate—most independent observers give estimates in the mid-six to low-seven figures. We have committed, directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, the effective equivalent of somewhere between 10 (per Bush) and 300 9/11-scale events on a country with a population of 1/15 of ours. If our 9/11 experience justified our response, what sort of response is justified by their experience?
First, best Thanksgiving wishes to all. . . .
stu's predictable either/or dichotomy (that the Bush administration's justification for the invasion of and regime change in Iraq was either "gullible and self-serving in its estimate of intelligence, or criminal") simplifies the tense prelude to the invasion and ignores Saddam Hussein's own bellicose threats to unleash massive terrorist attacks on the US before his ouster.
Nevertheless, stu's overriding purpose in his last posts seems to be an equally predictable demonisation of the right, in particular of the right-wing radio commentator Glenn Beck. Since I don't listen to his commentaries, perhaps stu would kindly point out the blanket condemnations of Islam as a religion that stu attests he makes. In any case, calling Beck et al (who are these others, one wonders?) treasonous co-conspirators with a murderous jihadi terrorist like Hasan is a gargoyle caricature hot off the huffing and puffing left-wing press (not to mention stu's truly perverse likening of Ahmadinejad and Bush as both dependent on the "most reactionary elements" of their religions). I understand their disappointment (expressed by no few major media commentators as well) that yet another incident of terror and violence was plotted and perpetrated by a fanatical Muslim and not a fanatical Christian. But a backup blanket strategy of accusing American conservatives of "inflaming" radical Islamists rather than reacting to their outrages around the world is hardly persuasive to anyone but those always-blame-America-or-at-least-the-West narcissists on the doctrinaire left. On Robert Spencer's "Jihad Watch" one reads how widespread and routine are global incidents of intolerance and violence perpetrated by Muslims (and often abetted by Muslim clerics, judges, and officials) supposedly acting in the name of their faith. And even speaking of these things is not beyond the stifling reach of pc censorship, as Spencer notes recently:
"Nonie Darwish, the executive director of 'Former Muslims United' and author of 'Cruel And Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law,' was scheduled to speak at Columbia and Princeton Universities last week, but both events were canceled under pressure from Muslim groups on campus.
Remember, we are talking about Columbia University, where Ahmadinejad was welcomed like a returning king." (11/25/09)
stu's reckless charges of treason might more responsibly be aimed not at conservatives but at Hasan (whom stu hasn't to date ventured beyond his pc stupor to call but a "criminal"). While I think it legitimate to call Hasan "deranged" in the common--though not clinical--sense, I'd be sceptical of his pending "insanity plea," for the whole idea of "mental illness" (except as a metaphor, such as an economy or joke can be "sick") seems shaky and unprovable. Murder, terrorism, and treason--all fair charges in Hasan's case.
I haven't googled Sicarii yet.
The colonials were shooting at uniformed members of an occupying army.
Just war requires that one distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, AND that one identify oneself as a combatant.
Hasan did not identify himself, and in fact infiltrated another army, disguising himself as one of us, and then turned on us.
Do you think that that is just war, Stu?
Hussein was lobbing missiles into Israel, and helping to pay for same, intended to kill citizens.
Al Qaeda attacked a civilian building when they hit the World Trade Center - killing all kinds of people, and again, they took over a civilian plane, driving children and women and people from all nationalities into the building which in turn contained all nationalities and religions. It was sloppy, to say the least, and deliberately sloppy at that.
Has the US Army done this?
There are collateral deaths in Iraq, but they were never the primary target. We could have wiped out Bin Laden years ago under Clinton but he refused to give the order to take out Bin Laden because it would have meant also harming women and children.
I think the US is largely playing according to the rules of Just War. One of the rules is to identify yourself as a combatant, and also to only attack those who are also identified as combatants.
We did indeed hide behind stone fences while the British marched in uniforms. However, this changed the rules of the war, but the colonials were still identified as soldiers.
when you say "directly or indirectly" you slide over this, as if there is no difference.
I do think that when Churchill firebombed Dresden, he was acting disproportionately. When he said he wanted German homes to burn, he was acting disproportionately, but at that point he was fighting for the very survival of Britain, which had been mercilessly bombed for years. When we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we were acting outside of the rules of just war.
However, in those instances we were attacking a population that had done just that in Nanking and all over the Asian theatre: enslaving other populations, educing their women to whores, and slaughtering people indiscriminately.
When we hit from the air with drones, I don't think we are ever attempting to hit civilian targets, or to wipe out children. It's just that from the air, it's difficult to see what you're hitting, and the terrorists are refusing to identify themselves, and are using civilian populations as a shield, hoping that we in the west will mind our manners, while they do not.
Bombing from the air as Clinton did in Yugoslavia causes lots of unintended casualties on the other side.
There is a universal logic of war that is accepted by all civilized parties and is intended to reduce civilian casualties. Once one combatant leaves those aside, I don't think we have to stay within them, either. It is suicidal to do so.
Stu's getting a little bit relativistic on this one.
Hasan was a Muslim, of course, the same way McVeigh was a Christian.
Christians happen to have gone through an enlightenment and a growth period that means that sort of religious war is not a direct outgrowth of faithclaims anymore.
Islam's a young religion. They're 500 years behind Christianity. The Christianity of 500 years ago wasn't nearly as kind or life-loving as what we have now.
Maybe it's just a matter of time - in centuries - before small groups of adamant followers of a certain faith who kill, kill, kill! pretty much go away...
And before things like women's rights come to the fore.
The problem with Islam these days isn't Islam itself, persay, it's that they're too fundamental/conservative.
Evangelism through murder, intimidation, and rape used to be quasi-commonplace among the Christians.
Now we just have annoying TV broadcasts. A trade up, if you ask me.
I don't think Stu's 'direct line' from Beck et al. framing our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as kinda-wars-against Islam to Hasan's actions makes sense...
That being said, the more we define who we're fighting in specific terms, the better. Fox News has a hard time being specific, which is why my grandparents say things like "well you can't reason with those Arabs or Muslims or whatever you call them."
But to call that the direct reason for Hasan's murderous rampage is a huge leap...
And Kirby, I did have another post that I wrote, but the internet swallowed it (meaning I probably left the page before submitting on accident). If I get the time or inclination, maybe I'll go back through and re-write it (will probably be better that way than the first draft, anywho).
JADL—
I was wondering when you'd weigh in.
I believe that honesty on the part of the right is overdue with respect to the invasion of Iraq. If Hussein was bellicose, it was because we were threatening him, and clearly meant business. We claimed to have certain knowledge that he possessed illegal weapons of mass destruction. We know now that claim was false, and Hussein knew it then. From his point of view, a case was being made for war based on charges that he was innocent of. How was he to respond if mere innocence was not an adequate defense? Clearly we intended to see him dead, and did. The certain knowledge we claimed to have proved to be false. How do you explain this, if neither incompetence nor criminality is involved?
Nevertheless, stu's overriding purpose in his last posts seems to be an equally predictable demonisation of the right, in particular of the right-wing radio commentator Glenn Beck.
I would like the right to acknowledge the reality of the past eight years, not just 9/11, but what we did ostensibly in reaction to it. Some of the later (and the invasion of Iraq specifically) cannot be justified, and until the right acknowledges this, and the culpability of its heros and itself, we have no way to move forward as a nation. The problem has is not the left's complaints against the right, it is the right's obsessiveness in maintaining its self-delusion, and the distortions that result therefrom.
stu's reckless charges of treason might more responsibly be aimed not at conservatives but at Hasan (whom stu hasn't to date ventured beyond his pc stupor to call but a "criminal")
I have already characterized Hasan's actions as both criminal and treasonous. Quoting myself from above: Hasan was a criminal, enraged by the treasonous stupidity of Beck et. al. to act treasonously himself.
While I think it legitimate to call Hasan "deranged" in the common--though not clinical--sense, I'd be sceptical of his pending "insanity plea," for the whole idea of "mental illness" (except as a metaphor, such as an economy or joke can be "sick") seems shaky and unprovable. Murder, terrorism, and treason--all fair charges in Hasan's case.
I agree with much of this. My only reservation is that I think "mental illness" is a reality (e.g., schizophrenia, depression, etc.). But I am extremely skeptical of the use of mental illness as a criminal defense, as most psychiatric disease does not involve loss of moral knowledge. I think that the burden of proof ought to be heavy, and lie solely with the defense. Moreover, I think its use ought to entail specific consequences, i.e., an insanity plea ought carry with it the presumption that the defendant will be committed. Moreover, juries should be able to find a defendant "guilty and insane," entailing both criminal penalties and commitment. As for "temporary insanity," this should never be admissible as a defense.
In the meantime, I think a further reaction should wait until JADL has had a chance to consider the points I made in the comments immediately preceding his. Under the current commenting policy, I doubt he has. I invite him to answer also the questions I posed for Kirby.
Right, stu, right.
Let me just address a couple of comments you made.
Hostile elements the world over have declared war against Christianity. Take, for example, Red China. Roman Catholicism is outlawed—those caught worshipping are taken from their homes in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Do Catholic priests in China go on shooting sprees of Godless commies because they’re oppressed? Do Catholics around the world run out into the streets upon hearing the news of a dozen or so commies dead at the hands of a priest, shoot AK-47’s in the air, dance and ululate?
These United States are not an oppressive environment for people of any faith. I know you’ll feel free to disagree. If anything, certain behaviors considered criminal or immoral in our society are deemed acceptable in certain communities and they’re overlooked in the interest of “tolerance,” “political correctness,” and “cultural understanding.”
If one wants to talk about party-affiliated denial of past mistakes causing our country harm, let’s talk about the pirates of Somalia. The failure of the left to acknowledge the reality of the culpability of B.J. Clinton in the rise of piracy continues to cause our country, and every country that must use the Suez canal to carry out economic activity, active harm.
As for Adoshem=God the Father=Allah. According to the Koran, Allah is exalted. He is so very exalted that he shall never stoop to taint himself with humanity. Allah is unapproachable. His is not the love of a father for his children, but a will to spread worship of him throughout the world, at the point of a sword if necessary. It could be construed as a simple difference in techniques in proselytizing, in spreading the good word. . . if it were not for one fact. God the Father’s most significant act in so far as we his children are concerned (after the Creation of the universe) is the act of Christ. The Koran teaches us that Allah would not corrupt himself with humanity, and could not/would not have a son. So if we Christians take the Koran at its word, Christ was not the son of God, for God could have no son. We end up with a self-contradictory god—not only in Word, but in Nature and Essence.
The very nature of God’s love for his children for Christians is that of the sacrifice of himself in the God-person of Jesus. If Jesus were not the God-person, but an enlightened man, or a minor prophet, the cornerstone of our faith is fatally eroded. I cannot see how a single God can have two so completely different, fundamentally contradictory natures. The picture one gets is more of the Kali, a split deity, rather than our loving Creator and Savior with a single, predictable nature (whose covenants and promises mean something).
And, yes, I too have noticed the uncontrollable violence in the streets between the Prots and the Caths. Worse than MS-13. Seriously. What distance and intolerance are you talking about--the fact that the Pope maintains the correctness of the Faith? I would be surprised if your congregation had as its leader a man (or woman, or wymoon) who maintained that the ELCA was on the wrong side in its difference from the beliefs of Kirby’s congregation. Everyone knows that Christians have more in common than they do differences—that Catholic assertion of Catholic beliefs should make you think us “intolerant” and “distant,” from our brothers and sisters in Christ is just silly.
Al Qaeda attacked a civilian building when they hit the World Trade Center - killing all kinds of people, and again, they took over a civilian plane, driving children and women and people from all nationalities into the building which in turn contained all nationalities and religions. It was sloppy, to say the least, and deliberately sloppy at that.
Indeed, but Al Qaeda is not Iraq. Hussein would have killed bin Laden given a chance, as bin Laden was a much more real threat to Hussein than he was to us. The fact that we have real enemies in no way justifies our crimes against imagined enemies. Don't you think that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties as a result of our actions is sloppy too?
Has the US Army done this?
Consider the Iraqi civilian casualties that are a direct consequence of the US invasion. The only differences I see are (1) we've killed a hell of lot more people than al Qaeda, and (2) it was definitely al Qaeda policy to target civilians, whereas I do not believe that killing civilians is our policy.
But a more direct answer to your question would be "yes," c.f., Wounded Knee, Dresden (we were a part of that too), Curtis LeMay's strategy of night-time incendiary bombings of Japanese cities.
The difference between us isn't in how we see the national aspirations of the US, it is in whether or not we're willing to consider the possibility that we as a nation might have fallen short of those aspirations. To me, it is not enough that we seek to be judged as a nation based on our aspirations—we need to be judged (and so, to judge ourselves) against them too.
We did indeed hide behind stone fences while the British marched in uniforms. However, this changed the rules of the war, but the colonials were still identified as soldiers.
How? By the fact that they were shooting at British soldiers? You're being ridiculous.
when you say "directly or indirectly" you slide over this, as if there is no difference.
No, I'd say it's that you view "indirect" as a perfect defense.
I do think that when Churchill firebombed Dresden, he was acting disproportionately. When he said he wanted German homes to burn, he was acting disproportionately, but at that point he was fighting for the very survival of Britain, which had been mercilessly bombed for years.
Pretty shaky history here. When the Allies firebombed Dresden, it was because it was a transportation bottleneck for German troops retreating from the Soviets. The tied had long turned. The question was no longer "would the British hold out," it was "how long would the Germans hold out, and how much suffering all around would be necessary before they hung it up."
When we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we were acting outside of the rules of just war.
However, in those instances we were attacking a population that had done just that in Nanking and all over the Asian theatre: enslaving other populations, educing their women to whores, and slaughtering people indiscriminately.
The crimes of one's enemies do not, and never have, justified crimes of retribution.
When we hit from the air with drones, I don't think we are ever attempting to hit civilian targets, or to wipe out children. It's just that from the air, it's difficult to see what you're hitting, and the terrorists are refusing to identify themselves, and are using civilian populations as a shield, hoping that we in the west will mind our manners, while they do not.
No, but we're killing them just the same. If our children were dead, I don't think we'd be satisfied with an, "oops, my bad... ." If we kill them, we're responsible for their deaths. Don't you get it?
Kirby—
The colonials were shooting at uniformed members of an occupying army.
Well, that's the history we like to tell. The Hessian's at Trenton might have told a different story. You might like to read up on the fate of Tory civilians, too.
Just war requires that one distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, AND that one identify oneself as a combatant.
So, it is your opinion that revolutionary guerilla fighters were unjust?
Hasan did not identify himself, and in fact infiltrated another army, disguising himself as one of us, and then turned on us.
This is wrong, at least so far as I know. Hasan was not a sleeper, introduced into a foreign army with the expectation that he would carry out a suicidal mission. He was a US citizen, a professional psychiatrist, and someone who entered the officer corp of our military, presumably with honorable intentions. He turned against us because of how he came to understand the war, and my earlier point is that the anti-Islamic framing of the war by the right-wing noise machine seems more likely than not to be the source of this misunderstanding.
It seems to me, though, that he is in some very rough way comparable to von Stauffenberg. Where I would draw an important distinction is that von Stauffenberg tried to kill the person that he saw as the source of evil (Hitler), whereas Hasan killed and wounded people who were no more responsible for US policies that he objected to than he was himself.
Do you think that that is just war, Stu?
No, but I do think you misrepresented the situation, and I also think that there are problems with the notion of a just war. I believe that the laws of war are equally binding on the just and unjust alike, and that our willful violation of those laws of war cannot be justified on the basis of our 9/11 injuries.
Hussein was lobbing missiles into Israel, and helping to pay for same, intended to kill citizens.
Undoubtedly. But that was not our justification for going to war, and had we used it, we would certainly have lost the support of both the Saudi's and the Turks. Moreover, the number of Israeli casualties is fairly small: 8 killed in 2008, perhaps someone can find statistics for other years. One of the standards of law is the notion of proportionality. Even a couple of dozen civilian deaths per year does not justify the killing of hundreds of thousands.
(to be continued...)
Just wanted to note that I liked the way in which Emmy broke down the Muslim/Christian divide. Extremely well done, I must say!
I'm hoping Picklesworth will also jump in here. I need some help. I have to correct fifty papers by tomorrow, and am only stopping to let comments through.
A question for Stu to consider -- are we the aggressors in Afghanistan and Iraq, or are we on the defensive?
In Afghanistan, we are defending ourselves from a known terrorist haven.
I don't know what we are doing in Iraq.
Maybe Bush had damaged intelligence or maybe the weapons are there, but are still hidden, or were hastily removed.
At this point, however, we are on the defensive, because if we leave, Iraq will become the new terrorist haven.
in between, we have a very aggressive third party, possibly worse than the other two, with Iran.
They were sanctioned yesterday by a UN committee. So it may mean a third offensive is on its way, and now we have two borders to attack from, and possibly the Soviets will help us from the north.
Again, I see it as defensive. They attacked our embassy under Carter.
Reasonable points from many.
First off, I am by no means an apologist for Hasan. I believe that what he did was gross moral evil, have said so, and moreover I believe that what he did would be judged as such by the great majority (albeit, not all) of his co-religionists. And although I think Brett often talks good sense, I don't think it will do to argue that Hasan had some sort of superficial faith (as we might posit McVeigh did). Instead, I see Hasan as someone who was sincerely committed to Islam, and who sincerely came to see the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars against Islam. The train went off the tracks when it came time for him to answer the question, "and now what?" Clearly, he chose not to participate in an evil as he saw it, and I think that most of us would have felt him to quasi-honorable in a misguided sort of way if he had said, "I will not support this, it is evil, do to me what you will," in the mould of Jesus and other non-violent resisters. But he didn't do this, and so now we're left to agree that he's evil. I think where we disagree is in assessing the roots of that evil, which I do not think it is reasonable to assign to Islam itself.
I'm not arguing for Hasan, I'm arguing against those people whose irresponsible statements I believe played a role in his coming to believe that the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were wars against Islam. I suspect that if Hasan had continued to believe that these wars were against terrorism rather than against Islam, we'd have never heard of him.
As for Emmy's comments, she's certainly right that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam tend to different views of God. That's not the issue I raised, though—I raised the point that these are the same God, based on history and shared scripture. Muslims have long acknowledged the category of "people of the book," i.e., people who worship the one God, as revealed through the Hebrew scriptures. But I think that the variation of opinion that Emmy finds between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam can be found within Christianity, and perhaps even within Judaism. The real difference is that in (modern) Christianity, it is more normal to view God the Father as being at least somewhat approachable and personal, whereas it is more normal in Islam to view Allah as distant and abstract. Still, you don't need to look long or hard to find Christians who believe in a distant, judgmental God.
As for my remark regarding Protestants vs. Catholics, what I'm seeing is a redefinition, and arguably, and abandonment of an ecumenical process that began with the second Vatican council. I did not attempt to fix blame. But as late as a decade ago, it was possible to hope for a reconciliation that was deep enough to result in a meaningful union between the Catholic Church and the Churches of the Reformation (Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed) within our lifetime. I do not consider it possible in today's environment. Does anyone disagree? Does anyone think that we are better served by today's clearer divisions, than by ecumenical hopes of a half-generation ago?
I think one problem is branding. The denominations and the sub-divisions are also markets, and it is to their benefit to make themselves distinctive as such.
Two kingdoms, again.
On the other issue, I don't know if we can find peace with Islam.
Some countries such as Morocco seem to be relatively happy wrt us.
Others, like the Iranian regime, profoundly hateful. But their peoples are not necessarily against us.
The broader peace will have to come from a definitive settlement of the Israeli question.
We think they have the right to exist, as it was promised in the Balfour Declaration.
Much of the Islamic world doesn't see their right to exist, and moreover, it's an enormous embarrassment that not only are they there, they've made such a prosperous nation out of it.
They have universities, a free press, an amazing army that can hold off billions of lunatics, their average wealth far exceeds for instance the people of Egypt next door even after the Egyptians stole everything they could frmo the Jews and told them to get the hell out shortly after the 7-days war went so badly for them (timeline is a little flaky in my mind, but no Jews can live in Egypt today -- this has been true since about 1966).
Is there any way toward a just peace for the Palestinians?
I think that's the real problem that OBL has exploited.
Personally, I like the Jews and am on their side. I have no interest in the Palestinians, and wish they would just disappear.
But obviously, they won't, and haven't. They are not a particularly funny people, and I tend to not care about a group unless they have some pretty good comedians.
People without humor strike me as less than people.
It's a failing of mine.
Until they produce the equivalent of a Seinfeld, I'm with the Jews.
But I'm just one person, and have no governmental power.
All the money of OBL should be rather put into educating a few of his ilk to put out hilarious sitcoms. Then of course we Americans will listen.
Cosby changed the face of American blacks when he took out Malcolm X and inserted an avuncular doctor. That's someone we can all live with.
Fat Albert is someone we can live with.
The image of a nutcase with an AK-47 isn't something we can live with.
If the Palestinians want American recognition, they have to put all their cultural strength into the development of sitcoms.
Americans deal with all our moral problems through Sit-coms.
even the bible is a Sit-com, as evidenced through Friends, and so on. The moral squabbles in Seinfeld are straight out of the OT.
Translate your rage into humor, and we'll listen. Otherwise,we shall invade, and set up TV studios, so at least you have a chance.
Afghanistan now has national talent contests, with women playing accordions and telling jokes. It's a good beginning. In ten years, they'll be up to snuff, and we'll tune in.
At this point, however, we are on the defensive, because if we leave, Iraq will become the new terrorist haven.
Iraq is undeniably a breeding ground for terrorists today, and also undeniably to the degree that it is because we made it so. GWB said, "bring it on." They did, and now a substantial fraction of the US military is tied down in fighting a war that should never have been fought, and it seems incredibly unlikely to me can be made to end well.
in between, we have a very aggressive third party, possibly worse than the other two, with Iran.
Yeah, and don't forget North Korea. It's not a easy world, nor a safe world. I think it's crazy to argue, as you do, that our presence in Iraq increases our flexibility in responding to the challenges of Iran and North Korea. If anything, it ties down our troops, and costs us international political capital at time when we need it.
In the long run, I'm more hopeful than you are about Iran. I think that our best strategy right now is for containment, and to let the internal opposition to Ahmadinejad, have the time, space, and distance from us that it needs to overthrow him.
North Korea is a more difficult strategy problem.
Again, I see it as defensive. They attacked our embassy under Carter.
Again, your history is a bit selective. I'm sure the Iranians would point to the 1953 US supported coup that installed the Shah in the first place. Honestly, they have a better case.
Kirby—
A question for Stu to consider -- are we the aggressors in Afghanistan and Iraq, or are we on the defensive?
We are tactically aggressors in both theaters. But there is a crucial difference: our presence in Afghanistan is legitimate, and strategically defensive in the sense that it is in response to an attack on our nation, whereas our presence in Iraq is strategically as well as tactically offensive.
I don't know what we are doing in Iraq.
A damaging admission. I honor you for your honesty in making it.
Maybe Bush had damaged intelligence or maybe the weapons are there, but are still hidden, or were hastily removed.
The burden of proof is on us. It's a burden we haven't met, even though we claimed certain, irrefutable proof at the time.
I believe that characters like Ahmed Chalabi had political aspirations in a post-Hussein Iraq, and he was willing to say or do anything to bring about that post-Hussein precondition. To that end, he was willing to tell the US what it clearly wanted to hear, and to provide access to others who would do likewise. We were played, but we were played because the Bush administration amateurs took over from the CIA pros, who better understood Chalabi. Of course, once corrupt information entered the system and was declared authoritative, it corrupted the interpretation of ambiguous intelligence, c.f., those notorious "biological weapons trailers." It's kind of like playing a game of Sudoku, and making a mistake—that mistake leads in turn to others, until you have a hopeless mess, and an outright contradiction. At that point it's all but impossible to sort out the valid inferences from the invalid inferences.
That said, I think that the real roots of the war in Iraq lie with the failed assassination attempt by the Iraqi's against GHWB in Kuwait after the first gulf war. The 9/11 attack simply created an environment in which the second Gulf war could be attempted. I don't believe that the Bush administration had the slightest idea of the tar-pit that they were dragging us into, although many others at the time did.
That said, I think that the big questions of today aren't so much those of were we right, or were we wrong (although I think the US political dialog is going to be fouled up until the Republicans come to their senses on this), it is what are we going to do now that we're in this awful situation? To that end, I believe our optimal strategy involves engaging and empowering legitimately progressive elements within the Islamic community. The hard part of this is how to do it without delegitimizing them in the process. In this, I believe that Beck, et. al., are actively working against the strategic interest of our country. When politicians do this sort of thing for political advantage, how do we judge them? How then should we judge Beck, who is doing it just for the money?!
(continued...)
stu:
I've no time now for a longer response to the broader issues you touched on in our wartime history. But more specifically, as you may recall, there were causes other than the threatened use of WMDs that determined the Bush
administration--as well as many prominent among the Demo opposition--to claim a "ius ad bellum" or just cause for war with Saddam Hussein and his hateful and oppressive regime: his threat to extended peace and security of the region, his murderous tyranny wrt his own people (including his use of chemical weapons against them), his defiance of repeated UN mandates, and his harbouring of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations. It may be fairly argued whether those causes justified the costs to Iraqis and to us that resulted from the invasion (Brett as well as Kirby might agree with you here--and btw, I'll agree with Brett that the spectre of a Hasan driven to terrorism by conservative talk show voices is quite a stretch), but it is hard to argue that the promises of peace, justice and democracy in Iraq have not been significantly advanced as a result of the invasion and later the successful "surge" strategy (coupled with increased Sunni opposition to insurgent terrorism and violence) almost universally disparaged by the Demo opposition--falsely as it turned out), and this in turn has favourably impacted our own security.
And while we haven't realised all our national aspirations (and the debate between the left and right of how best to effect them continues), we've presented by our imperfect example an admirable and defencible alternative to the intolerant supremacist, radical Islamist, Sharia-law nightmare promoted by our terrorist enemies, including Hasan.
Kirby—
The broader peace will have to come from a definitive settlement of the Israeli question.
Something we can agree on.
Is there any way toward a just peace for the Palestinians?
I think that's the real problem that OBL has exploited.
Personally, I like the Jews and am on their side. I have no interest in the Palestinians, and wish they would just disappear.
Allow me to point out the screaming inconsistency between the first and third paragraphs of the quote above. I think that setting up the state of Israel, and denying the legitimate rights of the Palestinians as inconvenient, got us to where we are today. And I'd note that Lebanon and Palestine, pre-war, shared many of the virtues you rightly attribute to the state of Israel.
At this point, I think it is unrealistic to imagine a solution to the Palestinian question that does not involve the survival of the state of Israel.
Let me say here, because I know that my position will otherwise be misconstrued (and probably will be anyway) that I think that Jewish aspirations for a nation of their own after the disaster of Holocaust were legitimate, and I think that British were well-intentioned (if in some ways misguided) in doing what they did to enable the creation of the state of Israel. The strategic miscalculation was in the belief that the Arabs were politically and economically weak, and would remain so.
And then oil was discovered in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, and in Libya. Libya! The ironies after the African campaign of WW II! And this oil has funded a belief on the part of many Arabs that Israel could be destroyed, the Jews evicted, and status quo ante-Balfour reasserted. Oil has funded Arab economic and military power, and even if we eliminate our dependence on oil, it will ultimately succeed in bringing the legitimate rights of the Palestinians back to the table.
In the end, I believe that reparations will be necessary, but this will be possible only with the support of the Arab states, and they have different agendas, and substantial internal complications. This isn't going to be easy, and our presence in Iraq is hardly helping matters (although certainly Hussein would have been an obstacle to any peace process).
Ok, it's a Sudoku puzzle gone awry, but one that we nevertheless can't just move on from. One could argue that everything post-Eden is a Sudoku puzzle gone awry.
So humor might help.
I don't think we can begin to deal with populations without humor. That's a beginning. The Islamic world needs a better sense of humor.
And we need to find a more engaging way to talk with them.
I would argue that the humor of the North Koreans is leaving a little bit to be desired, as well.
One place where I think you are not allowing either Bush or Beck their due is that they both possess an amazing sense of humor.
Beck is having tremendous fun on his show. As is Limbaugh.
Compare the unsmiling tenor of Lehrer, or the lunacy of Anderson Cooper, who almost never smiles, or dares to crack a joke.
The Fox program is partially so popular because all its top people are quite humorous. Now that they have Imus, it's practically non-stop laughter around the clock.
O'Reilly has that comedian from SNL on every night almost, and he makes amazing jokes.
I suspect that the left's flatness in this regard and its turn toward terrorism ala Weathermen, and other manifestations, is why they have been out of power for so long.
Even Obama is seriously humor challenged.
Bill Clinton was pretty good, and enjoyable.
I'm not sure what humor is, but humorless seems to present an almost entire lack of perspective, of human sweetness, and decency. Of course there is sick humor too (Caligula apparently never stopped laughing).
At this point GM will step in and say what do you know about Caligula. Everything we know about Caligula was faked up by that rascal Suetonius.
Just saying that there can possibly be too much levity in one person, too.
A nice balance is to be sought, eh?
As the Canadians would say!
Whatever else terrorists seem to be lacking in -- whether it's Manson or Hasan or that nut up in North Korea, -- they could all use a little lightening the f. up.
Btw., don't forget to vote on best poem, in the contest. You have until midnight, but I'll send the comments through one more time at about 8:10 pm.
Possibly again at about 11 pm this evening, if I can squeeze in some time. Not sure if I can. Papers up to my eyeballs, and all of them are pretty good.
Sorry Kirby, my bride and I drove 10 hours through the rain and night in order to celebrate Thanksgiving at her grandma's house. We also got to share the news that we are going to have a baby (first one). So we're darn thankful!
So what I'm saying is that I've fallen way behind on this thread. I've skimmed a bit, but a lot of this is just garden variety, liberal puffery. Stu seems to be demanding a level of perfection that just isn't possible. I'm not interested in conforming myself to utopian thinking. Colonialists weren't perfect. Americans in Iraq haven't been perfect. The Soviets in Afghanistan weren't perfect. It's just really hard to figure. ;)
"Still, you don't need to look long or hard to find Christians who believe in a distant, judgmental God."
That's true, stu, but I'm really more interested in the fact that almost all Christians take the God-person as the great Sacrifice, given up so that we can hope to approach God so our sins may be forgiven. Even if one is a part of a Christian sect that denies the wholly divine / wholly human nature of the God-person, God gave himself a Son through the human body of Mary. This is a God who would have been desirous of a Son, and engaged in the will/act of creating/coexisting with one.
Whether or not it is desirable to approach this God on a personal basis is a matter of personal preference. Even in Christianity's most ritualized forms, there are organized methods for addressing Him in a personal way (the confession of sins, the petitions, prayers for the sick, prayers for grace). I think you will agree that most Christians see it as a desirable thing to become closer to God through prayer, and through "conversations" with the Bible.
The God-person, the person of Mary, and the human nature of Christ Jesus are central to Christianity (though some may de-emphasize the role of Mary.)
The fact of God being contained within a human existence, born of a human mother is not what one would expect from a god so exalted that he would never condescend to have a son, and certainly not via the filth of a human female's vagina.
It is a matter of a self-contradiction at the most fundamental level that cannot be possible if our God is the God who gave us Jesus, born of Mary. This is one of those occasions where it must be either/or. There is no both. God cannot both be the Father of the Savior Jesus born of Mary, and so holy that any connection with humanity is considered degradation and a corruption. The essence of Christianity is in the importance of God in our daily lives, how He works His Will through us, teaching us every step of the way how to be better people, live a more Christ-like life.
There is only obedience in Islam. God's will, once revealed, is permanent and inflexible. All (Muslims or Infidels) are liable upon pain of death and damnation to obey. Infidels can expect molten lead to be poured down their throats as just reward. Apostasy is punishable by death. Thus is the will of Allah.
Christianity reaches out and asks people to accept God's love in their hearts. It embraces human betterment, artistic and scientific advancement, the ennoblement of all human lives as sacred. Islam reaches out and asks people to accept their role as human slaves to an indifferent god while offering them nothing in this life but restrictions of liberty, limited social roles, few prospects for education and enlightenment, and the satisfaction of having been a good slave. If you are female, you can rejoice in having been a good slave to your husband and to Allah! Double the fun!
Of course, I speak of radicalized communities of Islam. There are many people throughout the world who are faithful Muslims who know the value of education, freedom of speech and assembly, and only want to secure these blessings for their brothers and sisters in the faith.
But the way I see it, saying that the god of Islam is the same in deed as the God of Christianity is rather like suing a man for paternity who is not only a virgin, but has also had a vasectomy at birth.
Kirby,
What’s your favorite Seinfeld episode? After “The Chinese Restaurant,” I was a devoted fan. Jacques thinks it’s nothing but adolescent sex and toilet jokes. I'm not sure that comedy and humor ranks very high in Muslim priorities. Maybe that's because many Muslim countries are poor and miserable 3rd world pits, and not very much is funny!
stu:
I've no time now for a longer response to the broader issues you touched on in our wartime history. But more specifically, as you may recall, there were causes other than the threatened use of WMDs that determined the Bush
administration--as well as many prominent among the Demo opposition--to claim a "ius ad bellum" or just cause for war with Saddam Hussein and his hateful and oppressive regime: his threat to extended peace and security of the region, his murderous tyranny wrt his own people (including his use of chemical weapons against them), his defiance of repeated UN mandates, and his harbouring of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations. It may be fairly argued whether those causes justified the costs to Iraqis and to us that resulted from the invasion (Brett as well as Kirby might agree with you here--and btw, I'll agree with Brett that the spectre of a Hasan driven to terrorism by conservative talk show voices is quite a stretch), but it is hard to argue that the promises of peace, justice and democracy in Iraq have not been significantly advanced as a result of the invasion and later the successful "surge" strategy (coupled with increased Sunni opposition to insurgent terrorism and violence) almost universally disparaged by the Demo opposition--falsely as it turned out), and this in turn has favourably impacted our own security.
And while we haven't realised all our national aspirations (and the debate between the left and right of how best to effect them continues), we've presented by our imperfect example an admirable and defencible alternative to the intolerant supremacist, radical Islamist, Sharia-law nightmare promoted by our terrorist enemies, including Hasan.
Emmy, I love some of the ideas in Seinfeld: like, what constitutes a meal? Jerry's argument with George over this just killed me. Jerry said you had to eat at least two things -- bread AND soup would constitute a meal, but just soup would be a snack. George said if you put the bread into the soup it was still a meal.
Or a stew!
Sorry, Stu, I couldn't resist!
There's a sense with liberals that it's ALWAYS our fault, and if we just said sorry sorry sorry enough the world would forgive us. This is why we get Obama running around the world bowing his head and shuffling about, saying sorry sorry sorry. I find it funny. It's another amazing attempt to control the world, as if only we really matter, and everything is in our control. It's like the Jungian sense that our dreams are entirely about us. That's the American dream.
But history also takes place elsewhere.
Who was the Glenn Beck of Mumbai who got the residents of their famous hotel all shot up?
Who was the Glenn Beck of the Darfur that got them all enslaved and genocided?
I hope everything goes all right with your pregnancy, Picklesworth! At some point you will perhaps reveal yourself to us!
At any rate, our best hopes are all with you and your lovely and talented bride!
Kirby
Kirby—
I don't think it is a liberal tenant that it is always our fault. I wonder, conversely, if it is a conservative tenant that it is never our fault. I look at our current situation, especially w.r.t. Iraq, and I see a strategic disaster. You yourself say that you don't know why we're there. Isn't it a conservative principle that we should avoid foreign entanglements without a clear justification, a clear exit strategy, and a clear sense that our national interest will be served? It seems to me that the Iraq war does not satisfy any of these tests. Afghanistan is another story.
Mr. Picklesworth;—
I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I understand that you're currently an intern at a Lutheran Church. It is currently my privilege to serve on the lay committee for my congregation's intern. May your life of word and sacrament prosper, and may you be a blessing to all whom you serve. Congratulations, also, on the upcoming blessed event. Being a father is perhaps life's greatest challenge, but perhaps also it's greatest reward.
You suggest that I'm demanding a level of perfection that isn't possible. Let me try and respond more directly. As a country, we've had high aspirations, and a strong belief that our style of democracy, our tolerance of religious diversity, and our freedoms, represent a better model for the rest of the world than the systems that went before. I think it is inevitable that with such high standards, we will fail from time to time. I think we need to be honest with ourselves when we do, and use such occasions as opportunities to recommit ourselves to those values. And I think that this is a time when we have deviated much farther than usual from those values.
It is with our nation just as it is with us as individuals: we are both sinners and saints, and self-understanding comes with the honest acknowledgment of both poles of our character.
JADL—
I've no time now for a longer response to the broader issues you touched on in our wartime history. But more specifically, as you may recall, there were causes other than the threatened use of WMDs that determined the Bush
administration
I think you want to be careful here. The justifications for war shifted over time. I believe you're mixing in some post-invasion justifications, cooked up after the original justifications proved unsupportable. I trust you can see the problem with that.
There is absolutely no denying that Hussein was a vicious dictator. Certainly I will not. The problem for the US is that "regime change" is not a legal justification for war. Pre-emptive war, particularly when there is no evidence for immediate agression by one's putative enemy, is not a legal either. Past aggression, for which sanctions have been applied, is not a legal justification for war. Possessing WMD in defiance of UN sanctions was a legal justification, unfortunately, it does not appear to have been a true one.
it is hard to argue that the promises of peace, justice and democracy in Iraq have not been significantly advanced as a result of the invasion and later the successful "surge" strategy (coupled with increased Sunni opposition to insurgent terrorism and violence) almost universally disparaged by the Demo opposition--falsely as it turned out), and this in turn has favorably impacted our own security.
The situation in Iraq is complicated, and the history we have is the only history we'll have. At this point, though, I'm profoundly skeptical of this line of argument. We have 140K soldiers and marines tied down maintaining a fragile peace. It's hard for me to accept that deploying 10% of our entire military force in the Iraqi theater, with the out-of-theater support of a like number, while expending an incremental 700 billion dollars, has improved our security posture. Certainly, I think even you would find it unarguable that these resources could have been expended (or not expended) to our greater benefit. Heck, we could have paid reparations of $70,000 to every living Palestinian, and bought our way out of the Arab-Israeli conflict for that much money, and foregone the causalities.
That things are not as dreadful now as they were a few years ago is unarguable, but there is every reason to worry that Iraq will be the next Somalia after we leave. I believe that the current relative quiet in Iraq has more to do with the sectional armies laying low and waiting for us to leave, than with any deep permanent change in Iraqi culture, even giving full faith and credit to the Sunni awakening.
And while we haven't realized all our national aspirations (and the debate between the left and right of how best to effect them continues), we've presented by our imperfect example an admirable and defensible alternative to the intolerant supremacist, radical Islamist, Sharia-law nightmare promoted by our terrorist enemies, including Hasan.
I agree, but with significant caveats. I think our aspirations are better, and I think that historically, we've done a better job than most countries in living up to them. But I think that blinders (and here, it seems to me that you're better aware of the true state of affairs than some in this venue, if perhaps more guarded about admitting our failures) serve us poorly. And it's hard for a scholar (especially a mathematician) to forget the contributions of Islamic scholarship and culture during our own dark ages. Radical Islam is not the historical norm, although it is a challenge of our time.
Bush blundered in Iraq, or so it seems.
As soon as he announced I thought, oops. Mistake. I think the PNAC idea captivated him to an extent, and he thought we could remake the Middle East as democracies.
To an extent, that has actually succeeded.
If you take the Lockean logic as underwriting any advance into any country that doesn't support the central values of life, liberty, health, and property, then the attack on Iraq is justified.
But I think he was skewed by his dad's legacy there and how Saddam had defied him.
We didn't need to take out Iraq right then. It's a bit like Obama trying to get his healthcare bit done right now when the economy is already in a freefall.
These guys have an agenda, and aren't always very flexible. They ram em through, and the rest of us pay the consequences.
That said, Iraq went a lot better than I had ever dreamed.
The Kurdish north seems stable. There's a lot of unrest in the Sunni triangle, but otherwise things are pretty well squared away, so we've made a full circle.
There remain many points to mop up.
Remember about Hasan, that until we hear his side of the story, we haven't heard his side of the story, so we can't speak for him.
There's always more to a story than we think.
I doubt if Beck kicked him off any more than Beck kicked off Mumbai, or the Song of Roland that stopped the Saracens.
I don't think Beck is quite as influential as all that.
I doubt if anybody in Darfur has ever even heard of Glenn Beck.
He's been more or less a sleeper cell in the Fox lineup until he went after that Maoist czar and got him to tumble out of the firmament within a week. He also seems to have done in Anita Dunn.
But he's basically a rodeo clown with some hunches, and a good strong rope.
I suspect Hasan was in touch with people from Yemen and elsewhere who were getting him fired up. It wasn't Beck.
If it WAS Beck, then Beck also got all those people killed in Mumbai, and in Kenya, and in the Darfur.
Either all Beck, or none. What say you?
Stu,
Certainly you are correct that we must acknowledge failure and recommit ourselves to our principles. Perhaps you are riled by the failures that I'm more willing to forgive and vice versa? In any event, I don't mean to be grouchy.
Emmy,—
It was recently my privilege to take a class in Christian Theology from Phil Hefner, a highly regarded (one might even saw revered) emeritus professor from LSTC, as a part of diakonia (Lutheran training for the synodical diaconate). Phil argued that only Christians have Theology. I think you know me well enough to suspect that my initial intellectual stance towards claims of Christian particularity is one of skepticism, albeit with a willingness to be convinced.
Phil pretty well convinced me this position is right, at least as regards Islam if not Judaism. Certainly, Islamic scholars are first and foremost scholars of the law. Yes, revealed religious knowledge and their own particular traditions play a role, but a fatwa is (in the words of Wikipedia, and this conforms with my understanding), "a religious opinion concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar."
It seems to me that Islam, even at its best, is an extreme example of a religion driven by works-righteousness, and even if that criticism is cast in theological language that Lutheran appropriated as a cudgel against the Catholic Church, I hope you'd agree that it encapsulates much of the same criticism that you're making.
And I find your discussion of the way Christians view God, and specifically the person of Jesus and what this implies about God, to be beautiful and inspiring, if perhaps a bit optimistic as regards the objective state of theological understanding of many of our co-religionists. Sadly, Christianity has often been (mis-)used to support an unjust social order, just as Islam is being misused in certain countries today. But I thank you for reminding us of our ideals.
But I do think that Islam is being judged in this country as though its most radicalized elements are normative. You yourself acknowledge as much, and I appreciate that generosity. I've made the point that Islam, during our dark ages, preserved and indeed augmented much of the knowledge of the ancients. This remains preserved even in our language -- our modern system of notation for the natural numbers is "Hindu-Arabic." Algebra is the symbolic manipulation of abstract quantities. Algorithm is our word for a computational recipe. And so it goes.
Getting back to my original point, though, I think that our best hope for dealing with radical Islam is through moderate Islam. That we as Christians have a different understanding of the nature of God than even moderate Islam is given. But I think we injure ourselves by demonizing Islam, as this tends to drive moderate Islamics into the radical camp, whereas our interest is served by having the traffic go the other way. To this end, I believe we are better served by emphasizing points of continuity rather than points of difference. Doing so does not require denying those differences.
Kirby—
We didn't need to take out Iraq right then. It's a bit like Obama trying to get his healthcare bit done right now when the economy is already in a freefall.
This is a different argument than what we're currently having, but let me stick up for my guy. Increases in healthcare costs are the biggest threat to the US government's budget today, and have had a profound impact on US economic competitiveness. Indeed, I think it is fair to attribute a good portion of Ford's and GM's problems to the impact on their respective bottom lines of increased healthcare costs. Obama's effort to get heath care reform done is a major part of his effort to deal with long-range structural problems in the budget.
There's always more to a story than we think.
I doubt if Beck kicked him off any more than Beck kicked off Mumbai, or the Song of Roland that stopped the Saracens.
Indeed. Do you want to lay odds that the shouting will ever die down for enough for Hasan's story to be heard? I'm doubtful. His actions were simply too prejudicial.
The notion of a link between Beck and Mumbai is, of course, absurd. But there is an interesting model (or anti-model) there. The partitioning of India into India and Pakistan has hardly stopped sectarian violence between Muslims and Hindus. What's happened in Iraq is a de facto partitioning. Where Sunni and Shi'a once lived side-by-side, you now find only one or the other. If anything, I suspect that partitioning makes reconciliation more difficult to achieve, because monolithic neighborhoods are intrinsically insular.
I suspect Hasan was in touch with people from Yemen and elsewhere who were getting him fired up.
Is there any evidence for this? It certainly may have happened this way, but I don't think it is necessary to invoke foreign extremists to explain it.
People do get fired up by their religious commitments. Why, recently, a man in this country was driven by his religious commitments to murdered another man, who at the time was engaged in Christian worship. Many on this blog thought that the murder was justifiable, or held sympathies that were more with the murder than the murdered. It seems to me that the first-order difference between these two was access to greater firepower on Hasan's part together with a greater target concentration.
Either all Beck, or none. What say you?
That this is an idiotic choice. We've all sinned, Beck too. But none of us are so ambitious as to have committed all possible sins. Not even Beck.
Kirby:
I loved that one too! I think one of my favorite bits is Festivus and the airing of grievances--that's my family all over! Not the wrestling, though. That, and the "master of my domain" episode where Kramer lasts all of 10 seconds. The "scooter chase" after George pretends to be crippled always has me gagging with laughter. Brilliant show, that! I love it!
Have you ever seen the Office? It's one of those shows--either you love it or you hate it, I think. In my opinion, the British version is cleverer though Dwight, the office creep-o in the American version, is probably the best TV comedy character since George Costanza! I used to like Arrested Development, too.
Stu:
"Heck, we could have paid reparations of $70,000 to every living Palestinian, and bought our way out of the Arab-Israeli conflict for that much money"
And why would we want to do that? Is there any reason on earth we would want to give a pack of thugs and gang-lords $70,000 each? What would they DO with $70,000? And what would WE have to make reparations for to the Palestinians? You can buy a lot of guns, rockets, and ammo for that cash. Israel would probably be no more than a smoking pit. Anyway, do you think people can be bought off from wanting their own homeland? Do you think the human longing to have a place to call home is something that can be bought and sold?
The last stimulus package could have given over $100,000 to each American man, woman, and child. Get some perspective, yeah?
I disagree about Iraq. It was absolutely necessary. It's easy to forget the trajectory that we were on. The trajectory was called "we're not serious. we'll live up to our rules and you do what you like." That trajectory was going to get us killed. Our enemies are not interested in such things. They are, however, interested in taking advantage of our weaknesses. Bush's great strength was that he absolutely surprised them. He "broke" the rules. 1. He didn't allow himself to get tied up by the U.N. (which exists to abet evil.) 2. He didn't declare victory and go home (to satisfy our urge for dramatic action), but he stuck it out in the face of withering criticism (not quite winning the pr battle, but not ultimately losing it either.)
So what's the upshot of this rule-breaking? He changed the game. He put those who would harm us on the defensive and he introduced the thought that we might viciously attack them wherever they hide. This was effective war-making. Our enemies depend on us defeating ourselves and Bush wouldn't buy into it.
Now I have no doubt in my mind that many in the anti-war camp were standing up for their principles. Good for them. We need them to stand up for those principles. But if we actually let them call the tune, then we are in deep trouble.
Oh, and BTW, this civilian trial of KSM is just the sort of foolishness that our enemies thought they could count on before. We will injure ourselves playing political games and making pretend that we're moral. Military tribunals are legal in this instance and they aren't evil either, but we will go with the alternative because it sends some kind of "message" about the kind of people we are. The message received? We're not serious about winning.
Emmy—
do you think people can be bought off from wanting their own homeland?
Actually, yes, I do. Get the Palestinians out of the camps and into real houses. Provide them an opportunity to become full participants in an economy, any economy. Give them reason to believe that their children will live better lives. A few generations, and the issue will recede. But so long as the Palestinians live in camps, there's no getting past this for them.
Oh, and tactically, I wouldn't give it to them all at once. Dole it out, with future payments on a regular schedule, but contingent on good behavior.
The last stimulus package could have given over $100,000 to each American man, woman, and child. Get some perspective, yeah?
The stimulus package was $787 Billion. The US population is is about 308M. The stimulus is less than $2,600/person. Your sources need to learn how to do arithmetic.
Picklesworth's defense of Bush's going out of the box, and really giving the radicals a serious fight is noted.
It was like Sherman and his march to the sea. It did end the war.
If a war isn't about winning, but just about having a slow bleed, then that's what we're doing now. You can't have a war without fighting, and fighting hard, and killing people.
I think the left thinks that any kind of war is always bad, and we should always have peace.
But peace, as Augustine said, can be bad.
Leaving Saddam in place, or leaving the Duvaliers in place, or leaving any kind of Caligula type in place (Kim Jong-Il) is always bad.
It's a bad peace that allows this kind of thing to drone on while hundreds of thousands languish in prisons.
War is a good tool at times.
The Democrats during the Civil War dithered, and if they had run the country then, we would still have slavery today.
I think the problem with Iran at this point is that no one is willing to help the uprising, as Lafitte and others helped up definitively rid ourselves of the British.
One of my favorite battles in American history: Andrew Jackson in New Orleans. He enlisted the pirates' aid, and whipped the British regulars.
I love that battle.
Another favorite: Zhukov's victory at Stalingrad.
I still don't know what Hannibal was doing hanging around outside Rome for so long. Dithering?
Mr. Picklesworth—
We disagree on Iraq. Kirby considers your defense of that war "spirited." I consider it fundamentally misguided.
We call ourselves a nation of laws, and a nation that respects the law. Proving that we will violate international law at will is counterproductive when our objective to convince other nations to honor their obligations under international law. What are we teaching? What values are we representing to the world? That they're simply not powerful enough to violate the law at will, and we are? What do you think they'll do in the face of such a lesson? Accept their place in the world and hew to the law, or seek such power as enables them too to break the law with impunity?
At the same time, committing substantial forces to Iraq meant that adequate resources were not available in Afghanistan to effectively pursue the fight where our actual enemies were. So that war still festers, and Obama bin Laden still lives.
I don't see "effective war making" in this. I see a private feud pursued with public means, at tremendous public cost in lives lost and diminished, treasury expended, and national influence lost.
And so it seems to me that the difference between us, and please understand that I always prefer to seek common ground, and I suspect that there is much common grown between us, but I also feel that differences are worth understanding. It is not that you're willing to forgive, and I am not. More fundamentally than that, you see the Iraq war as a good thing, and pursuing it as being so much in our national interest that flouting international law was worthwhile (or even, and I'll gladly accept correction if I overstate your position) and absolute good in its own right.
So you see nothing in what was done there for which forgiveness is an appropriate response. Whereas I see in that same decision to flout international law a strategic defeat, as it meant that we set aside our victory conditions by the very means we used to pursue them. In the end, I think it is misguided to forgive unacknowledged, unrepented sin, because this does not lead to healing, but only to continued sickness. Once sin is acknowledged, with acceptance of the consequence of sin, then and only then is forgiveness conducive to healing.
And I hope I don't come across as either grouchy or unhumorous, either. I don't see self-flaggelation as a worthwhile end, only on occasion as a necessary means. My goal is healing.
"Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream."
Stu,
You mentioned that we should try to lean toward the faces of Moderate Islam.
We know the faces of radical Islam.
Aside from Karzai, who would you say are the intellectual voices for a moderate Islam? Who are the faces of such a moderate Islam?
Who do you think is a funny Islamic imam with whom we could have a chummy and mutually illuminating dialogue?
I admit I don't know much about that area, or those specific people.
My sense of things is admittedly filtered through western sources. After 9/11 I remember Hamas and others shooting AK-47s in the air in celebration.
Are there however some moderate Palestinians somewhere?
My understanding is that they pretty much all want to drive the Jews into the sea.
Homeland is a tricky term as it recalls Nazi thought, but it can't be entirely discounted on those grounds alone.
Native Americans also sought and received tribal areas (I don't know if there are any tribes that are entirely satisfied with what they received, however).
Most people have a hometown, or something like it, and think about it as a place worth preserving.
Home isn't, by itself, something to be scoffed at.
The Jews have been in diaspora since the Romans scuttled Jerusalem in AD 70. But memory of a homeland persists.
Of course there is also the idea that home is in heaven, and that it is only there we belong, and the rest of this is a sojourn in alienation.
thy father's house has many mansions: one pastor told me that God will think up a beautiful apartment for us as a gift upon our death.
Mine would be in a very quiet very very quiet version of the Times Square Marriott -- do you know the one I mean with the immense atrium, and from the glass elevator one can glimpse 40 stories or so from top to bottom, and which now has an enormous Christmas tree in it, with balls?
(Many State Capitols are afraid to erect these now for fear of the angry secularists who want WE BELIEVE IN NOTHING to be put up next to the tree, but at least at the Marriott there they still have the tree!, or so I think, maybe they too have caved into pressure from the left.)
At any rate, who are the faces of moderate Islam?
Who are the faces of moderate Marxism?
When the angry Marxists come to my blog, they usually do so as poltergeists without faces, without even names, and simply want to burn my house down as rapidly as possible.
Sarah Palin won't do that to me! Which is one reason (among many) why I like her.
I'd prefer a more central and more intellectual figure like Giuliani, but I think his positions wrt abortion will keep too many on the right from voting for him. He will get the dwindling pool of financial conservatives, and not much else.
We need someone who will unite the right against the blandishments of the left if we are to win in the voting box again. We particularly need the entire south, and at least a few states in the north.
Huckabee can win the entire south, I think. He might also take a few states in the north (Wyoming, and Alaska, and a few others).
It would depend on who he was running against.
I'm having a hard time getting on the web, and the server is down from time to time throughout the day. I'll try to send comments through as I can -- probably at least once more before 9 pm, if not twice.
Kirby—
War is a good tool at times.
The Democrats during the Civil War dithered, and if they had run the country then, we would still have slavery today.
True enough. But I think it is important to realize that, at least as regards civil rights, the parties "changed sides" during the 60's. Eisenhower tried to pass civil rights legislation in the 50's, and was blocked by the Democrats. Johnson succeeded where Eisenhower failed, but only at the cost of losing the south. The former strongholds of the Republican Party, Ohio excepted, are now strongholds of the Democratic Party, whereas the Republican Party's home turf these days correlates very strongly with the states of the former Confederacy.
I don't think Lincoln would recognize his party today, but Strom Thurmond would.
I think the problem with Iran at this point is that no one is willing to help the uprising, as Lafitte and others helped up definitively rid ourselves of the British.
The problem is that we can't provide overt help without discrediting the people we're trying to help. This has much to do with the particular difficulties of US-Iranian history, and while I don't believe that US misadventures in Iraq have helped a whit, I also think it is misguided to place the blame for this particular problem there.
One of my favorite battles in American history: Andrew Jackson in New Orleans. He enlisted the pirates' aid, and whipped the British regulars.
Figures. You do know that that battle was fought after the Treaty of Ghent had been concluded, and so it was a meaningless battle, except to the casualties, and of course to Andrew Jackson.
I think it is a bit odd to talk of "favorite" battles, except when speaking of battles in which one was personally engaged. That said, I'd prefer to look to battles from which we might reasonably expect to learn something. Midway is a favorite example, in which an inferior force, through superior use of intelligence and better luck, was able to inflict a devastating defeat on a more capable opponent. Few battles can match Guadalcanal for dramatic tension, nor illustrate quite so well how combined arms interact. But the battle that required the most sacrificial heroism under the most difficult conditions? My candidate would be Chosin Reservoir.
Kirby—
We know the faces of radical Islam.
Aside from Karzai, who would you say are the intellectual voices for a moderate Islam? Who are the faces of such a moderate Islam?
An excellent question. You've pointed to Morocco as an Islamic country which has a long tradition of self-interested peace with the west. Turkey has made itself over into a secular state, albeit with a strong Islamic voice, having made much the same calculation as Morocco. Egypt and Jordan are states that will have to be involved, and perhaps are ready to be. Certainly, a solution to the Palestinian question that is reasonably satisfactory to the Palestinians, and which is seen as having been made possible by the voices of moderate Islam, would greatly increase the prestige of moderate elements in those countries. I'd also look to the small Gulf states: Dubai, Bahrain, the UAE, and possibly Kuwait.
It might also be worth considering a possible role for one or more of the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union: e.g., Kazahstan or Turkmenistan. I don't know these countries well enough to make any distinctions between them. And I have my hopes that a post-Ahmadinejad Iran will prove to be moderate as well. Unfortunately, we're not there yet.
Are there however some moderate Palestinians somewhere?
If by this you mean, are there Palestinians who would be satisfied with a reasonable measure of justice, are there Palestinians who are first interested in decent and productive lives for themselves and their children, then clearly the answer is "yes."
Stu,
Wait a second. I still haven't read through all the comments, but one thing you wrote struck me:
"We call ourselves a nation of laws, and a nation that respects the law. Proving that we will violate international law at will is counterproductive when our objective to convince other nations to honor their obligations under international law. What are we teaching? What values are we representing to the world? That they're simply not powerful enough to violate the law at will, and we are? What do you think they'll do in the face of such a lesson? Accept their place in the world and hew to the law, or seek such power as enables them too to break the law with impunity?"
What strikes me about this is that you believe in something that you call "international law." Something to which sovereign nations are bound, apparently.
Further, you seem to be saying that it is a moral imperative for us to bind ourselves with this law so as to be a good example, in the hope that other nations will similarly bind themselves to this law and behave themselves.
I regret that the creation of such international bodies as the League of Nations and the United Nations might lead us to believe that any international body has sovereignty over our nation. No president or Congress has the right to subject this nation to any such thing without amending the Constitution.
Nor do I expect any other nation to hew to such a body. And clearly our enemies do not, whatever we might do. As has been proven time and again, nations will pursue their perceived self-interest. Neglecting to pursue our own is fundamentally immoral because that is the primary role of government, to protect the people. The League of Nations was a colossal failure because it did not recognize this basic idea. Nations fobbed off responsibility onto this international joke and millions died for the illusion.
But hasn't the U.N. done better? No, it's a detestable organization. Nuclear weapons have kept the peace, such as it has been kept, for the past 64 years. The U.N. is populated by passive aggressive manipulators with who call up down and bad good. Just look at any "Human Rights" commission.
I'll gladly grant that we have been wrong in supporting such foolishness and that we have set a bad example in that regard.
Mr. Picklesworth—
I do believe in international law, which is comprised of a large number of treaties into which various nations entered into of their own free will. E.g., the Geneva convention is binding upon those countries which are signatory to it, and this includes the United States.
No president or Congress has the right to subject this nation to any such thing without amending the Constitution.
In the United States, entering into a treaty requires the initiative of the executive branch, and the advice and consent of the Senate (Article II, Section 2, US Constitution), which the Constitution defines as requiring a ratification by a 2/3rds majority of the members of that body. According to the Constitution (Article VI) Treaties made by the US are coequal with the Constitution and Laws passed under it, and superior to any State Constitution or Law, and Judges (both Federal and State) are obligated to accept this. Entering into a treaty does not require amendment of the Constitution—the Constitution we already have provides for the process, within the framework of checks and balances for which it is best known.
Nor do I expect any other nation to hew to such a body. And clearly our enemies do not, whatever we might do.
The US prosecuted Japanese war criminals (like Tojo) after WW II for violations of the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, which prohibits aggressive war. This charge was only possible because Japan signed Kellogg-Briand. The sanctions regime that was in place against Iraq after the first Gulf war is based on UN action, and its power derives from a number of treaties, including Kellogg-Briand. Limitations on possessing and using weapons of mass destruction are based on a number of international treaties, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iraq was signatory to those treaties.
Indeed, you may recall that the US justification for war was based on the premise that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that it was violating of post-Gulf war UN sanctions. If you eliminate the notion of international law, you also eliminate the ostensible justification for the US invasion of Iraq, and reduce the prosecution of Japanese (and more recently Serbian) war criminals to judicial murder.
If you believe the UN has been political, sometimes ineffective, often profligate, and sometimes just plain silly, you can count me in agreement. But denying the existence of international law is extreme.
Emmy, I didn't neglect your notice of the Office as a fun show. I just didn't really know what to say. I do think Dwight is an inspired character -- the office suck-up gone berserk. I like all the characters. The only remotely normal people in the office being Jim and Pam.
One of my favorite episodes is when the boss goes on a survival weekend in Pennsylvania and Dwight decides to keep an eye on him.
My wife recently got the first 4 years of the show and watched them in a three week period. I'd been telling her about the show for years, when she finally just watched every episode, laughing and now depressed that it's over.
I grew up about 40 minutes south of Scranton, so I know something about the area. I love how no one ever does any real work in the program. People around the world watching it must wonder.
One day the boss has to sign documents, and Pam keeps telling him it's time to sign them. And he puts it off, and puts it off. Finally they are two hours into overtime and he makes everyone fake his signature.
I've temped in a lot of offices like that. Quite hilarious.
There's one Hollywood guy who thinks he can make my novel into a TV series from the viewpoint of a temp, and is in a different office every week.
I think that would be great fun, too, but one of the things about having a permanent office is that it gives time for the characters to grow on you. I couldn't stand Dwight for about two years, and thought he was just a creep. Now I see the humor in him, and can't wait to see what he's going to do in any given situation.
How would you stack The Office next to Seinfeld?
It takes me a long time to get into anything. Back in the 90s I never watched Seinfeld. My friend Brian Evenson kept inviting me over to watch it, but I didn't know what it was.
And the Office was at least two years in before I got cracking on it.
Now people are talking about Facebook, and I've gotten 200 invitations to join up and be friends with people on it, but I don't even know what it is yet.
I had similar problems with Derrida, and postmodernism. I neglected to know about it. One of my problems is that when I decide to know something about something, I usually want to know everything about it, so it slows me down somewhat.
I don't think we've ever had a dweeb like Dwight ever become loveable before in the history of the sit-com. He's my favorite character so far, but I also like Stanley, and some of the other background characters whose main response to the shenanigans is to hold their holds and get out a Tums.
Sorry, I meant hold their HEADS and get out a Tums.
Stu and Picklesworth -- Hannity has been particularly violent about disregarding the UN. He thinks the laws it enacts are always against our interests.
International law is hardly my bailiwick.
I do think that as in domestic law self-defense ought to be a right, and ought to trump other laws. So if someone is in your house and wrecking things and threatening the children, you ought to be able to blow them away.
In the same way, if a country keeps sending such people into your nation, you ought to be able to go into their nation, find the culprits and blow them away. Therefore, I think we ought to be able to go into northern Pakistan and kill everybody associated with al Qaeda either with drones or with a sufficient land force to do the job.
I still can't understand how Iran should be able to be considered within legitimate international law since they still have never had to sufficiently pay for the hostage crisis in 1977. You're not supposed to be able to go into other embassies and kill and imprison its ambassadors.
They kept our staff hostage for over a year until finally Reagan got them out a week into his term.
Carter was apparently helpless to do anything.
I think they were afraid that if they didn't do something under Reagan's watch he was going to blow their country to smithereens. With Carter, they felt they could count on him being a sweety pie.
With Reagan, on the other hand, they knew the jig was up, and they had to surrender the hostages or their cities would be in ruin by the end of the month.
There's something to be said for that!
Republicans have always thought that war was a legitimate response. At the inception of the party there was the Civil War.
Democrats on the other hand dither and try to appeal to the finer instincts of another nation. Which in the case of many is like appealing to the finer instincts of a steroid-laced rhinoscerous. Good luck with that in terms of Ahmadinajihad, whose finer thoughts include wanting to destroy every last Jew, and every last Christian, and for good measure, throwing all the gay people in the pit.
It's incredible to read Farnoosh Moshiri's novel The Bathhouse and thinking about the finer instincts of that particular sect of Islam. They were shooting teenagers. But in order to be lawful, they would rape them first, so that they had committed a crime.
And we want to approach these people on the basis of mutual law?
Stu,
I'm aware of constitutional treaty making powers. However, these powers do not include giving away sovereignty, which is the specter that I see when "international law" gets bandied about.
The Kellogg-Briand pact was an abomination. It's a perfect example of what not to do.
It is unfortunate that we have participated in the perpetuation of such dangerous ideas. It is of the utmost importance, (a moral imperative even?) to avoid further entanglements such as the International Criminal Court and any kind of environmental regulation regime.
(continued...)
I still can't understand how Iran should be able to be considered within legitimate international law since they still have never had to sufficiently pay for the hostage crisis in 1977. You're not supposed to be able to go into other embassies and kill and imprison its ambassadors.
They kept our staff hostage for over a year until finally Reagan got them out a week into his term.
The Iranians killed no one in the hostage takeover, and it is clear that this was not a planned action of the revolutionary government of Iran, but rather of a militant student organization. Their initial success generated popular support, and so was sustained.
As for Reagan freeing the hostages, it has since been established that members of Reagan's election committee (no one, AFAIK, believes Reagan had knowledge of this) negotiated directly with the Iranians to get them to extend the crisis until Reagan could be elected and take office. There would be no "October surprise" for Jimmy Carter, due to high treason on the part of Reagan staffers.
And I think you need to look into the details of the '53 Iranian coup.
Kirby—
Hannity has been particularly violent about disregarding the UN. He thinks the laws it enacts are always against our interests.
The US enjoys a remarkably privileged position within the US as a permanent member of the security council. As such, it can veto any resolution proposed by the general membership, and has not been shy about exercising this right (the US has exercised its veto 82 times, second only to the USSR/Russia at 123). The UN passes nothing without our approval.
I'm not starry-eyed about the UN, it has its problems, including frequently incompetent and occasionally corrupt financial management, as well as providing a stage for some truly despicable human beings. But the notion that the UN can pass laws that are against our interests simply ignores our veto power, and as such is risible, and proof that the person who claims it is a blithering idiot.
I do think that as in domestic law self-defense ought to be a right, and ought to trump other laws.
International laws do not prohibit self-defense, although they do to a certain extent limit means, e.g., the use of chemical weapons is prohibited. For those of you who say that our enemies "always" will break their obligations under international law, I think it is worth noting that neither Russia nor German used chemical weapons during the Second World War, even at moments when their national survival was in doubt.
So if someone is in your house and wrecking things and threatening the children, you ought to be able to blow them away.
Indeed, but even in domestic law you're not allowed to gun them down on the street later. While our response to 9/11 in invading Afghanistan was legal, and indeed fits within a natural extended notion of self-defense that gives individuals (absent an effective police power) to pursue and disable an attacker.
But there is no self-defense justification for our war in Iraq. There was no connection between al Qaeda and Iraq (excepting, of course, the in the lies that Chalabi's associates told Cheney, and he took in hook, line, and sinker). There is nothing in natural law that permits an injured party to attack an uninvolved third party.
Therefore, I think we ought to be able to go into northern Pakistan and kill everybody associated with al Qaeda either with drones or with a sufficient land force to do the job.
Actually, this is something Obama suggested, and he was widely viewed as naive at the time. This is a more complicated situation than you describe. Pakistan is a country with massive internal divisions, and a country which has been a limited, but real, ally in our efforts in Afghanistan. Speaking realpolitik here for a moment, I believe that Bush's and Obama's routine attacks of terrorists operating within Pakistan have been counterproductive (and Obama has been more guilty of this than Bush). I understand the tactical problem associated with safe-havens for the Taliban in Pakistan, but I think our strategic goals are to incapacitate al Qaeda and the Taliban. To do this requires head shots—we have to kill bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and their high-level associates. Going after low-level soldiers and terrorists simply makes it more difficult for us to get the actionable intelligence we need to take out their leaders.
Mr. Picklesworth—
I'm aware of constitutional treaty making powers. However, these powers do not include giving away sovereignty, which is the specter that I see when "international law" gets bandied about.
The Constitution sets no limits on the nature of the treaties that the US enters into. The traditional interpretation of treaties by the US Judiciary has been to view them as "contracts between nations," which is my understanding as well. It is conventional to use the phrase "international law" to talk about the systems of treaties now in place, and certainly no innovation on my part. It's you who is giving the phrase an unconventional meaning and you who is projecting your unconventional meaning of this phrase onto me. So let me reassert that I am using the phrase in the conventional manner, and ask you to re-read my earlier comments with this understanding.
The Kellogg-Briand pact was an abomination. It's a perfect example of what not to do.
You then either (a) you don't know what the Kellogg-Briand treaty was, or (b) are the only person I know of who argues that nations have an unlimited right to wage aggressive war. If the later, then what's the problem with WW II German invasions of Poland, France, and Russia? Or with Japan's invasion of China? You're good them, right? Iraq's invasion of Kuwait—that's just a nation acting according to its own best interests, and while it might justify a strategic response on our part to protect our own interests in the region, it is certainly no justification for either sanctions against Iraq.
These are logical consequences of your position, as you have explained it. Have I misunderstood something?
OK, it's clear that the order of comments doesn't survive the approval process. Please read my previous three comments in reverse order...
Stu,
I like the head shots notion.
It's hard to know to what extent radical Islam is the creation of a few who need to be taken out, or is a kind of thing with its own internal laws of motion, which can only be stopped wholesale.
One of the things I enjoyed when our house was attacked by an onslaught of carpenter ants was to discover that carpenter ants -- individual soldiers -- cannot feed themselves. They must present the food they find to the queen, who gives them a cut. It's the ultimate pyramid scheme.
So I found a product called Amdro which is poisonous but resembles food crumbs. The soldiers take this to the queen, and it kills her. She then has three backups. when those are gone, the entire colony dies within a few days.
Meanwhile, the exterminators were coming and killing individual ants with some kind of dumb powder that blocked their breathing apparatus. This was stupid because it turns out that a carpenter Queen can lay 100,000 new soldiers in a day, if she's healthy.
So the thing is to go after the queen.
I don't know to what extent radical Islam resembles carpenter ants. But you have to figure out the structure of a thing before you can figure out how to destroy it.
It took me about five hours online to figure out the structure of carpenters. I should have done this more quickly, but I am stupid.
I assume that someone in some office is studying the structure of Islamic terror and that we're not just trying to kill them soldier by soldier. That might even be counterproductive as you note.
One article in a paper said that they are having trouble getting new soldiers because they want them to drive bomb vehicles into the enemy. And even within the far-goofy layers of Islam, most people would prefer to live another day, I suppose.
I haven't really looked into it, but I am hoping the CIA has some structural thinkers on its staff. Every army has a structure, and a method of mobilization. You have to attack the structure, not individual manifestations.
So to that extent, we're in agreement.
I'm not sure mollification through appeasement or sucking up to a moderate model will work. Not sure it won't either.
Things seesaw. The Republicans tried a moderate candidate last time out. It didn't hunt. Next time out, expect someone like Huckabee or Palin to get the nod from the upper echelons. They need to win, and now they know they must feed the hungry far right to get votes.
Last time out they nearly won with a goofball with no frenzy of attack who was virtually indistinguishable in his policies from the Democrat.
He had no stomach for using the gay marriage issue, or other clear demarcations, or using the immigrant problem, or anything else.
Palin or Huckabee can attack those issues, but either way, they have to think about firing up their base, and getting people fired uip to vote. The Democrats had that last time around. Partially it was the 6-1 or the 8-1 spending differential.
Partially, it was the war.
Partially, it was the lackadaisical dithering of McCain over what to do , and the split between he and Palin over the demographic they wanted to mollycoddle.
Whatever it is, if you want it to succeed, you have to think structurally.
I just hit PUBLISH ALL, if I know the names.
Then read them later.
I think they are all of a piece. That is, I can follow your logic!
Kirby—
I think I'm just going to forget the "continued" stuff. So a single message may generate multiple replies. Not a problem, but there are some odd order changes taking place. I'm sure you're doing the easiest, most obvious thing.
Was it a mistake for Bush to have Moussaoui tried in our courts and imprisoned in Colorado?
Or are we just anti-this-sort-of-thing since it's Obama doing it now?
Kirby--
I think what I like about the Office and Seinfeld is that they're both shows about nothing. What Seinfeld manages to do, and set out to do from the very beginning, is to take non-events that have hardly any comedic quality and turn them into a laugh riot.
The guy who wrote for Seinfeld, Larry David, now has his own show called Curb your Enthusiasm. Watching that show is like watching Seinfeld, except without Jerry's sort of likeable put-upon personality.
What worked for Seinfeld just BOMBS, in my opinion, when you replace 4 core professional comedic actors with a cast of 30 or 40 people without any distinct personalities or utility except to act as a foil to the supposed brilliance of the main character, Larry David, who plays himself.
You can almost hear Jerry Seinfeld delivering some of the lines and they would have been hilarious! But when Larry delivers they fall flat on their faces.
I guess it's yet another sad case of a fairly funny writer who thinks he can get into the acting biz.
The Office has a fairly large cast of characters, but the entire show is devoted to their development and interaction rather than to "plot". Sure, stuff happens, but mostly as you so rightly pointed out--nothing gets done!
I think what I tend to like in comedies like the Office is the absence of a "laugh-track." I don't need some sound-board mixer telling me what I should think is funny. It also gives the jokes a more dry, ironic feel. A show without a laugh-track relies on the actors' comedic timing, which I feel many American actors just don't learn.
I love Stanley, I LOVE Phyllis and I was SO happy for her when she married Bob Vance. Phyllis is kinda dumpy and middle aged but he dotes upon her hand and foot and it makes me just wanna say AWW! The "sexy" temp's story arch was pretty brilliant, and I loved Jim's sweet revenge at the end of it.
'Course Jim and Pam are probably the best TV couple I've ever seen.
I fear for the actor who plays Dwight that he might get typecast because of his role in The Office, but he's so brilliant at playing the creep. I think my favorite Dwight-centered episode was the one where Jim and Pam take a romantic weekend holiday at Schrute Beet Farm--Beets Motel I think it was called.
I don't think one is ever going to find a comedy so well executed as Seinfeld, but Office definitely comes close.
Do you find laugh-tracks distracting? I hate it when the sound guy cuts off the end of a joke just so you can hear the audience laughing!
What's your opinion on The Office v. Seinfeld? Have you seen Curb Your Enthusiasm yet? It's on HBO, so maybe you haven't. I don't know--I think it's a fail.
Who would you want to play the Temp in your Hollywood TV series? If they asked your opinion on the casting of the lead, who would you suggest?
Stu,
So are you saying that you believe that international agreements based on principles (Kellogg-Briand, the UN), as opposed to arrangements based on self-interest (NATO for example), contribute significantly to the keeping of peace in the world?
Emmy, I think Ben Stiller would be the perfect candidate to play the Temp character in my series.
I don't know if the Office stacks up against Seinfeld yet.
There is something in writing that I can only call lyricism, and I think it's rather important. Kerouac and even Truman Capote have that quality, and even Hemingway does, to an extent.
I think writing isn't very good without it. To Kill a Mockingbird has it.
I don't think that Lovecraft has it.
I don't think that Norman Mailer has it.
I don't think John Irving or Toni Morrison has it.
Can we say that TV shows have it, or not?
For instance, I think that Get Smart had it, and the old Addam's Family shows. But the Munsters didn't have it.
The Monkeys almost had it, but didn't.
I think Seinfeld certainly had it.
I can't tell yet if the Office has it.
It's something about dream-dragging. That is, the show is very real, and yet is so dipped in imagination that it has a taproot into mad ink of some kind.
I think some mathematicians probably have this, and others don't. I think Abel probably had it. Gauss had it.
I don't think that Andrew Weil at Princeton has it.
I am not sure about mathematics.
It's something like poetry, as opposed to reporting. I do think something is happening with Dwight.
Mr. Picklesworth—
You're dodging my questions, but I'll take yours...
So are you saying that you believe that international agreements based on principles (Kellogg-Briand, the UN), as opposed to arrangements based on self-interest (NATO for example), contribute significantly to the keeping of peace in the world?
I think this is a false dichotomy. Kellogg-Briand should take certain options off the table, e.g., the previously common maneuver of suppressing domestic dissent by starting a war. [This, BTW, seems to have been an element in Japan's decision to go to war against China in '37.] So you can say that it is based on ideals, but pragmatically, it means that nations can be (somewhat) less concerned that their neighbor's domestic difficulties may drag them into a war. E.g., I doubt either we or Mexico, each with our domestic troubles today, contemplate war, unlike 1848. Where self-interest enters the equation is that a violation of Kellogg-Briand should give rise to sanctions (as it did when Iraq invaded Kuwait), and the UN plays an important role in specifying those sanctions, although as a general rule, enforcement is left to neighboring states, or the occasional superpower.
Likewise, consider the Geneva conventions on warfare, the treatment of POWs, noncombatants, etc. It's certainly possible to observe that the Geneva conventions have not been perfectly observed, but I think it is also clear that they've had a huge impact on the way war is waged, at least by major combatants. So are the conventions an instrument of principle or self-interest? Both. The aspect of principle is fairly obvious. But we also have an interest in the welfare of our soldiers and citizens, even if they are out of national control (e.g., as prisoners, or under occupation). One of the pragmatic problems that follows from our mistreatment of combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan under the Bush administration (and sadly, I'll note that recent reports indicate that some of this has continued under the Obama administration) is that it weakens our expectation that our soldiers and civilians will be treated according to these accords in future conflicts. Tit-for-tat is an all-too-common strategy, and the US, for all its moralizing, seems often blind to the precedents that it sets. And this has been an especially acute failing of our political right, IMO.
As for the UN, I believe (its problems notwithstanding) it has been helpful in maintaining the peace. You point to nuclear weapons by the major powers as a stabilizing force, and I think was true so long as only major powers had nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the number of nuclear powers is growing, and with it the likelihood of use has grown tremendously. Is the UN a perfect body? Of course not, but I think you're missing a lot when you point to the failure of the League of Nations as if this proved the inadequacy of the UN. Many of the features of the UN (e.g., the security council structure, and the requirement that the superpowers have someone on hand 7/24 to represent their country in the security council) were designed avoid some of the problems that made the League of Nations impotent at the start of WW II. They are structures with similar goals, but very different polities.
Conversely, NATO certainly has idealistic elements, and this has been especially apparent in recent years, as former Warsaw Pact nations have sought membership in NATO, not merely out of concerns of the threat of renewed Russian nationalism, but also as a way into a particular economy and culture.
Stu, sorry. I wasn't trying to dodge any questions; I was simply trying to see through to the heart of our disagreement. It occurred to me that you have more faith in the efficacy of international agreements than I do, and so I was seeking to clarify.
You asked whether I was good with countries waging war purely out of self-interest like Germany invading Poland and France or Japan invading China. Not at all. Self-interest does not equal morality. Their perceived self-interest in these cases was noxious. But no international agreement prevented them from acting. Good intentions and paper do not prevent such things.
Kellogg-Briand didn't have any sanctions against those who were signatories but broke their promises.
Has something been added since that does allow for sanctions?
Apparently Nuremburg used it as one of the ways they killed Nazis after the war, bu I don't think there were originally such ideas present in the pact (that there would be clear sanctions).
Mr. Picklesworth—
It occurred to me that you have more faith in the efficacy of international agreements than I do, and so I was seeking to clarify.
I believe this is true. This is hardly to say that I believe that they're perfectly effective, just that they are somewhat effective, whereas I think you credit them with no effectiveness whatsoever.
You asked whether I was good with countries waging war purely out of self-interest like Germany invading Poland and France or Japan invading China. Not at all. Self-interest does not equal morality. Their perceived self-interest in these cases was noxious. But no international agreement prevented them from acting. Good intentions and paper do not prevent such things.
Of course not. But where the UN has been effective is in providing an imprimatur to specific sanctions, granting enforcement to specific powers, and providing for coordination. These are not negligible contributions.
Kirby—
Kellogg-Briand didn't have any sanctions against those who were signatories but broke their promises.
Has something been added since that does allow for sanctions?
In the current international security regime, the UN has the power to set and enforce sanctions for nations that violate Kellogg-Briand. I'll leave it to Hannity to explain why the general assembly, which he sees as so inimical to US interests, has not passed a resolution condemning US intervention in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Indeed, the UN passed enabling resolutions for US intervention in both theaters, (although it is now arguable that the US evidence w.r.t. Iraq was falsified—which means credibility problems for us in the future). Moreover, the UN has called conferences, e.g., on the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and obtained commitments for rebuilding of civilian infrastructure. I suppose it is possible to argue that $4.5B coming out of the Tokyo conference is a drop in the bucket, but at least it's one drop that won't come out of US taxpayers.
Kirby—
Things seesaw. The Republicans tried a moderate candidate last time out. It didn't hunt. Next time out, expect someone like Huckabee or Palin to get the nod from the upper echelons. They need to win, and now they know they must feed the hungry far right to get votes.
It looks as if Huckabee's out. He pardoned the murderer of the Tacoma police officers, who'd have been in prison otherwise. If he run's, he'll get the Willie Horton treatment in the primary.
No communists there, just a Pastor/Governor who believed that salvation in the next world would entail good behavior in this.
I agree that Huckabee's out. He's already being Willie Horton'd on MSNBC.
He was on Fox last night saying he had his sentence commuted to 47 years from 92 (the man was only 16 at the time).
Washington State judges apparently let this man out on 15 grand bail even though he had reportedly raped a 12-year old.
We don't know for sure that it is this man (Clemmons, is, I think, his name).
If it IS him, then, Huckabee's a goner in terms of presidential ambitions. He's the new Dukakis. And seeing what the Republicans did to Dukakis, the Democrats will be very eager to get their licks in.
Kirby—
If it IS him, then, Huckabee's a goner in terms of presidential ambitions. He's the new Dukakis. And seeing what the Republicans did to Dukakis, the Democrats will be very eager to get their licks in.
The Democrats won't get a chance. My point is that he's going to get the Dukakis treatment in the Republican primary if he runs. This sort of thing is only useful in the general election if it comes out late.
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