Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

The mantra lives! The mantra lives!

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Don't you recall all the conservatives who urged that we intervene in Haiti for humanitarian reasons?

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I don't urge that we intervene. I'm just saying Dean can't say he was against Iraq, but for Bosnia because of humanitarian reasons, can he?

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I can't think of a fun right-wing sock. Just for Fun? Fluffy? Noooo. They are predictable and irrational. It's hard to do a good sock on the P board at all.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

The values that the left currently holds are those for which the right (rightly) believes compromising is not an option, and will not be until the left moves back towards the JFK model.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

were you on infirm? there were more socks, or maybe just lunatics, than here. but there were many that were fun. there were liberals that were fun, BT et al, and they certainly had "socks", but not the way atticus intended the word.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I enjoyed Fluffy. Where'd he go?

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

LDE seems to have seen some explanation from Dean, which I have not. So I suspect he can say that. I guess I tend to think the situations were different. Dean obviously is not a career diplomat, but he, like Bush, was a governor of a border state without any other apparent interest or background relating to foreign policy, and you guys seem to think Bush worked out all right. If you're really concerned about consistency, you could noodle about Bush's complaints about "nation building" during the presidential campaign -- at least Dean's comments go back several years.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Too many socks to bear on infirm. The ones that showed up for the periodic Israel/Palestine wars were sheer terror.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Point well taken. Larry Sr. was a bit of a ref screamer and he's probably not presidential timber either.

However, I have the same disdain for someone who would react to a terrorist attack against our troops by saying "bring 'em on" when neither he nor any of his family members are in harm's way. It was such a throwaway line, and I'm sure no one else in the world got as bugged about it as I did, but anyway, there it is. My political motivation laid bare. How's that for earnest and boring?

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Yea, but the troops loved it and that's who he was speaking to, and that's why they love him. You cannot be a good commander and chief and also by wishy washy.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I know of a few troops who didn't love it. But again, this was just my own irrational response.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Um, in Bosnia wasn't there like a mass civil war going on with random people shooting at each other and a general lack of any kind of regime? So we were going in to impose and keep the peace. Iraq had a bad and violent regime, but there was order and after they killed/crippled/imprisoned the people who rose up under the last Bush action thinking they'd get backup, it didn't seem as though there was any kind of generalized war thing going on. Of course now things are destabilized and arguably they are better off with an outside presence there than they would be if we up and left all of the sudden.

But I could be wrong on Bosnia. I wasn't paying attention to that stuff at that point in time.

Note that I'm not saying that Saddam's regime was good, just that it was relatively stable and there was order. The situation in Bosnia seemed very disordered and the labor force was getting killed off and infrastructure was getting destroyed.

Possible WMD Found in Iraq by Danish
 

Just an update:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108390,00.html

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I have no doubt that Bush is far more popular with the troops than was Clinton.

But, I would suspect that particular line by Bush did not play quite as well among the guys and gals hunkered down in Iraq hearing the occasional large explosions and sniper fire around them (or among their families). However, even if so, you won't find soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines saying so publicly, because that's not what active-duty service members are supposed to do.

The institutions, and their cultures, do control their responses to such things.

[Ignore a few folks popping off to reporters and/or web blogs.]

S_A_M

Possible WMD Found in Iraq by Danish
 

And if it's Fox News saying it, the mortar shells must have actually contained some kind of antidote for bio-chem weapons.

Is Fox News using "has learned" so it can wiggle out of it if it turns out to be completely wrong? Just wondering if there's good info-sharing on the right.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I suspect you are wrong.

Possible WMD Found in Iraq by Danish
 

I just assumed that's a tack-on that should be read: "We're not investigating this report too carefully, but others are, and this is what they've reported, not that you should believe them, because they're liberal crackpots."

Isn't it time for Bill O'Reilly to eat Hillary Clinton's shoe or something? Or is it call Bill Clinton a liar?

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I'd wager that many more of us than would like to admit it make their political judgments on similarly personal grounds. Basically, everyone has something that will just bug them and render them utterly unable to tolerate certain pols. Everyone's personal "smell" test, as it were. For some it may be an issue (abortion, schools), for some it may be a character test of some sort (going to church, your "yelling at small children" issue), but there is often something that just sparks some visceral reaction that drives some people bonkers.

Anyone who thinks they make all such decisions based on pure rational reasoning is a lunatic.

The war on terror and individual rights.
 

A glimpse inside the war on terror, from O'Neill's book by way of DeLong's blog:

• O'Neill, meanwhile, would head up the first active assault: the financial war [on terror]. But how? Over the next few days, O'Neill met with David Aufhauser, who, he decided, should act as an honest broker... organizing a fractious interagency group to track terror assets... seize some assets, and quickly. The President was to announce the new executive order on September 24[, 2001], launching the war on terrorism. He needed some assets to point to. "It was almost comical," Aufhauser said. "we just listed out as many of the usual suspects as we could and said, Let's go freeze some of their assets."

Not that this was enabled by the USA PATRIOT Act, but . . . .

Possible WMD Found in Iraq by Danish
 

Concur. SAM was just pointing out the soldiers over there support Dean over bush. They have an interest in hiding anything that radiaites that is found.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

So unstructured mass murder= we go in
efficient mass murder by an unchallengable regime=okay for now..............
I bet you got a couple cousins or siblings nicknamed 'Dolf.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

We did not exactly invade Nazi Germany to stop mass murder. We didn't go to war with them at all until they declared war on us after Pearl Harbor.

Two+ years earlier, with Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, England declared war on Germany after it invaded Poland. So maybe he should be your hero.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Is this true? Not Churchill?

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Yes. Chamberlain stepped down on May 9, 1940, and Churchill became PM the next day. John Lukacs has written some books about this period -- including, in particular, Five Days In London -- which I highly recommend. There were some (Lord Halifax) in the government who favored seeking a separate peace with the Germans around that time. Churchill resisted, with -- crucially -- Chamberlain's support.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

It was a joke. I tried to make it obvious enough that even Fringe wouldn't get mad. I mean, I called her a Nazi, get it? You aren't suppose to do that.
And the mass murder we turned away from was great in Asia pre WW2.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Was Lord Halifax the Lord of Remains of the Day, or inspiration I should say?

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

No idea. I read the book, but can't really recall anything about it now.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Interesting. With all the late night history channel and cspan I watch, I should have known that.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Ty, when you posted about Spalding, I though we were Ying/Yang politics, but harmonious culturally; but now this. It is perhaps my favorite novel.
the main charecter, A butler, had worked for a Lord who wanted to appease the Germans.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Are you trying to out me, you bastard? Stuff I tell you about my family really should not be revealed on the board.

Are you seriously saying that you can't see the difference between a huge civil war and a violent sadistic dictator? There's no way we could have characterized the action in Iraq as a peace-keeping mission. We were invading a sovereign nation that had well-settled borders and a government that was pretty well in control of the country (with some isolated pockets of unrest in some areas far from the capital).

Again, not to belittle either of the occasions I mentioned earlier (Kurds, uprising after first Gulf War), did Iraq have any mass murder stuff happen since, oh, the turn of the latest century? Domestically, things seemed fucked up but generally peaceful over there before we went in.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I thought we found some fresh mass graves.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

Since I can't even recall posting about Spalding now, the problem is surely with my short term memory, not my taste. I recall really liking Remains Of The Day, but am blanking on the German angle in it. Is it really central?

eta:

Never mind, Spalding Gray, got it. Was trying to remember a _____ Spalding. Maybe the tennis ball tsar. Did you ever read Impossible Vacation? A friend gave it to me, but I've never been moved to open it.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

If that is the case, and there was active genocidal activity that we knew about (or had strong reason to believe in) before we went, then I will partially concede the point. Though, that's not why they said we were going in.

I still, though, think there is a difference between going in to an area where there is a high level of active armed conflict and governmental etc. stuff is extremely unsettled and invading a sovereign nation.

(I have no idea whether the "sovereign nation" thingy makes sense or not but it sure sounds good, doesn't it?)

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

You'll find a lot of people saying that he killed one to two million over the last dozen years (forget about before that, since he was our ally). Here's how they get there:

Invasion of Kuwait and subsequent war: 100,000
(note that at the time the US said the number was much lower, since most of those who died in this war died in the US bombing campaign or, to a lesser degree, were Iraqi soldiers during the US invasion)

Suppression of Kurds: 100,000
This number seems to be used a lot, but I can't find where it comes from. Doesn't seem to be heavily disputed, and seems to be an estimate focused just on the 90s, not on what came before

Suppression of Shi'ites immediately post war in Kuwait: 100,000
This number seems to be drawn from thin air because all the other numbers above are 100,000; it is clear there are mass graves of hundreds of people from this period, but some say at most a couple thousand, others say 10 to 20 thousand, and the 100,000 number starts showing up when people are trying to get to 1 million

Iraqi dead in Iran - Iraq war -- 500,000
The numbers seem to go from 150,000 to 700,000, but a lot of people use 500,000; apparently Hussein threw this figure out a lot, but he was usually trying to say how evil the Iranians are so to build more war fever and may well have been overstating.

Then round up to 1 million, or, if you want to get to 2 million, assert 750,000 or more Iranians dead in the Iraq/Iran war and throw in a couple hundred thousand from pre 1990 and some estimate for the most recent war (has anyone heard an estimate from the US of numbers dead on the Iraqi side - I don't think we have an interest in seeing a big number here?)

[An interesting fact, simply noted as a data point, is that most of the deaths attributed to Saddam occurred as the direct result of a piece of metal fired from a US or Iranian weapon. And the most heinous activity, widespread killing of the Kurds, is activity we overlook in Turkey and positively condoned up to a point in time.]

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I've read everything he's ever written, and saw him read a few times. You will probably like him, even if you didn't like my other recommendation (Post Office).
His whole act is about being angst filled, zen, product of a strict New England yankee family, but looking for ways to deal. Later books showed him over the hump. I almost posted in reply to your notice post, not to worry because he wasn't suicide material. Turns out he tried in the last little bit. If he did its a loss of a really talented guy.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

That is the case. Also, Bosnia/Serbia were also soveriegn and by all accounts, Milosovich (sp?) had pretty good control over his country as well. Germany was also sovereign and Hitler had pretty good control over the coutnry too.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I don't use the 2 million number. The 300,000 mass graves are enough for me.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

The peer who is (or was) sympathetic with the Nazis has kind of become a stock figure in postwar British novels, esp. in the comic tradition of Wodehouse, Mitford, and Kingsley Amis. I'm thinking particularly of the bellicose brown-shirt in Wodehouse --- can't remember his name --- but it was really more a pastiche of aristocratic fondness for fascism rather than a depiction of a particular appeasement diplomat.

All I know about "Remains" is what I saw in the movie. And what I saw indicated it was probably better left as a book. I do recall something about the first boss --- the one before Christopher Reeve --- being disgraced because he'd picked the wrong side before the war started.

Dean Supported Unilateral Action in Bosnia
 

I'm guessing Hank chinaski tribute, based upon spelling, at least.