Waiting for Fitzgerald

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Hoo!

Hooo Hoo! Heh.

Strangely, I can actually imagine you making all of those noises.

No, wait, that's Howard. Never mind.

No, actually I suspect that Ty was referring to those getting the shit beat out of them . . .

You mean the ones caught bearing arms against our troops, picked up in war and interrogated, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or. . . wherever? The one's working for the noble cause of blowing apart little kids' bodies for the grace of allah? Or, at least, for some part of the personal profit they used to see under SH, and miss really really badly?

My turn to make noise. Boo effin hoo.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Spanky
In case you haven't noticed our resources are stretched a little thin. Soon as we wrap up Iraq we will keep up the march.

I'm hoping for Syria. I'm thinking we do one or two more, and Iran goes in its own popular uprising.

(ETA) - The big plan should really be to wipe out all of the ME hiding spots for the terrorists and the Islamacists, leaving them with the one last true enclave in which to hide.

Berkeley, I mean.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
Penske was right. Derision has totally replaced debate. And, given my memory of college soc, and the expansive meaning of "culture" in the lexicon, it's not serving you well.

Followed, notably, by this.

This baffles me. If I see you, over the border, in chains, your family dead at your side, and a thug aiming his gun at you for the final shot, do I have to debate the principled grounds for interfering with his governance? According to you, I do. Well, I won't. You can sit here and moralize and temporize while more die, and I sincerely hope you feel nobler for it.

There are several responses to your Solomonic declaration about people's irritation with Penske, but it would require a rather extensive review of Penske's ouevre over the last number of weeks, which I wouldn't really wish on anyone.

Instead, you've provided us with a simpler, and more direct, response. If our debates over foreign policy are invariably reduced to simple homilies about knocking down bee's nests or Iraq being akin to a thug murdering Ty's family, then I'd submit that this is "debate" in a loose form, at best.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
I'm hoping for Syria. I'm thinking we do one or two more, and Iran goes in its own popular uprising.

Good plan. Worked out well for the Shiites in '92.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
You said "We need not discuss the principled grounds for objecting to an effort to change another country's government because we can't, in any event, pull it off in these cases. . . ." in the context of a discussion treating Iraq, through example of all the other countries we haven't invaded yet. We stopped that thug from taking more shots. Your "in any event" implies a connection between your principled discussion of the newly listed countries and the original discussion.

See? I did that with nary an insult. Try it. Then call Sidd.

While the thug Hussein is no longer taking shots, it turns that Iraq is much more fucked up than might be suspected by those whose grasp on the situation there reduces to calling the head despot a thug.

Which is to say that if you think Iraq is a big success story, we have a lot to talk about before we get to matters of abiding principle. Which was, after all, my point.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
If our debates over foreign policy are invariably reduced to simple homilies about knocking down bee's nests or Iraq being akin to a thug murdering Ty's family, then I'd submit that this is "debate" in a loose form, at best.

I think my biggest problem with your side of this discussion is that you seem determined to treat it all as a theoretical Con Law debate, and totally and doggedly ignore the idea that the costs you seem so willing to leave incurred are being incurred by real people with kids and hopes and fears.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
Strangely, I can actually imagine you making all of those noises.

No, wait, that's Howard. Never mind.

Derision and debate, bilmore. Physician, heal thyself.

You mean the ones caught bearing arms against our troops, picked up in war and interrogated, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or. . . wherever? The one's working for the noble cause of blowing apart little kids' bodies for the grace of allah? Or, at least, for some part of the personal profit they used to see under SH, and miss really really badly?

Let's hope that some of them fall into this category, anyway. I'd hate to fling over the walls the flesh of some poor bastard whose whose crime was, say, standing around at a Baghdad market during a sweep. Then again, I suppose them's the breaks.

I also take it that you stand proudly with the 9 U.S. Senators. Far as I recall, none of them were from MN. I hope you write them and contribute actively to their defeat. Good news is, it'll fit well on a bumper sticker.

My turn to make noise. Boo effin hoo.

And kudos to you, my man. Get to work on that bumper sticker. It is political gold.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
While the thug Hussein is no longer taking shots, it turns that Iraq is much more fucked up than might be suspected by those whose grasp on the situation there reduces to calling the head despot a thug.

So true. I had NO idea there was tribal and religious factionism before all this happened.

Which is to say that if you think Iraq is a big success story, we have a lot to talk about before we get to matters of abiding principle. Which was, after all, my point.

Think back to pre-invasion. We had a discussion about the likelihood of success. I think that my prediction was very close to where we are today, and I'm quite pleased. It could have been much worse, and it's actually quite good, in a relative sense. (Relative for the Iraqis, certainly.)

Think back to pre-vote. We had a similar discussion. Again, it turned out far closer to my optimistic prediction than to your pessimistic one.

And now you want to tell me about how it ain't gonna work - about how it's all fucked up?

Hardly.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
I also take it that you stand proudly with the 9 U.S. Senators.

I would make fun of this with some personal insult (in my insecure attempt to fit in here) but I have no idea what you mean. I can stand proudly with many people. Is Barbara Boxer gonna be one of them? Then, well, no.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
I think my biggest problem with your side of this discussion is that you seem determined to treat it all as a theoretical Con Law debate, and totally and doggedly ignore the idea that the costs you seem so willing to leave incurred are being incurred by real people with kids and hopes and fears.

I think my biggest problem with your side of this discussion is your insistence that we're all just ivory tower idealists who clearly don't have a stake in the game, and that you, alone, possess the sense of how things really work in the world.

But I'll stand over here with McCain and his 89 colleagues who clearly have an impaired understanding of risk, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American in wartime. You're over there with the Noble Nine, plus Bush and Rumsfeld. Have fun.

[bilmore]

Did youse guyz already have the Miers discussions?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
I would make fun of this with some personal insult (in my insecure attempt to fit in here) but I have no idea what you mean. I can stand proudly with many people. Is Barbara Boxer gonna be one of them? Then, well, no.

I'm referring to the Senate's amendment to the Defense authorization bill last week, in which 90% of the Senate told the Bush Administration to go fuck themselves over their strident desire to have the flexibility to do pretty much whatever they want with detainees.

But if one of those 90 Senators happens to be Boxer, and you're uncomfortable standing with the group because she's there, I suppose that's cool, too.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
So true. I had NO idea there was tribal and religious factionism before all this happened.

I only wish the Administration had been better informed than you were.

Think back to pre-invasion. We had a discussion about the likelihood of success. I think that my prediction was very close to where we are today, and I'm quite pleased. It could have been much worse, and it's actually quite good, in a relative sense. (Relative for the Iraqis, certainly.)

Think back to pre-vote. We had a similar discussion. Again, it turned out far closer to my optimistic prediction than to your pessimistic one.

And now you want to tell me about how it ain't gonna work - about how it's all fucked up?

Hardly.

We've been there for how many months, and there is one battalion of 800 Iraqis (read: Kurds) capable of fighting on their own. At that rate, success it right around the corner.

On the basis of what's happened, I think my feeling back then that all sorts of things could go wrong is looking pretty prescient. Needless to say, I'd rather it was working out well. But it isn't.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
I'm referring to the Senate's amendment to the Defense authorization bill last week, in which 90% of the Senate told the Bush Administration to go fuck themselves over their strident desire to have the flexibility to do pretty much whatever they want with detainees.

Ah, that. Yeah, I stand proudly with the nine.

What you saw was a power play by McCain, pulling a PR move that effectively pulls power from the executive branch that needs to stay with the executive branch. Do they need investigation? Yeah. Did the military actually want some specific guidelines? Yep. Was this - pulling the authority away from the proper power division - the right way to do that? Nope. That was simply McCain starting his campaign.

Honestly, Panske's appreciation for this guy baffles me. All I can figure is, he thinks he's better than Hilary, and is the only one who can beat her. He might be right about that.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Well, to start with, you're using the word "culture" in a way that is completely divorced from the way the rest of us educated, English-speaking people use it -- indeed, in a way that kinda sorta misses the point of my original post. I believe you understand this, on some level.

Ty – you are claiming that the words you were using had a different definition than the definition you know and I know you were using. Here is what happened.

Originally posted by Spanky
A moral relativist might say that in Arab countrys these rights are not part of their culture so it is both arrogant and naive to think that we can impose a system to protect these rights. Hello Ty.

Then You said:
Ty might say that you shouldn't try to haphazardly change a culture, since government doesn't do that well. You might call this the "conservative" position.

Then Bilmore said:
The people at Treblinka were happy for a less- than-perfect result. So, apparently, were many Iraqis.

Bilmores comment made perfect sense considering the initial comment. The discussion was that since rights and such were not respected by a culture it would be naive to try and impose such concepts on a culture that did not respect them. You said that government should not try to haphazardly change a culture ( a culture that does not respect rights and democracy).

Bilmore pointed out that we changed the culture of Treblinka (we imposed our ideas of freedeom and individual rights on a culture where such rights were not respected – in Treblinka) and it seemed to work out OK. Logical retort.

Then you say: It's uncanny, the way that you intuited that when I was referring to "changing a culture," I really meant "stopping a Treblinka." Wow.

Actually, Bilmore’s conclusion made perfect sense.. If it not OK to try and change the Iraqi culture so it respects human rights, why would it be so crazy to change the culture of Trebllinka, where there were no respect for human rights. .

Then you said: If you seriously think that my reference to changing culture meant that I would oppose liberating Treblinka, you should go back for remedial kindergarten.

I guess I need to go there to, because if you don’t think government can do a good job of changing culture in other countrys, then the US should not have been able to do a good job of changing the culture at Treblinka. Or changing the culture of the country that created Treblinka.

The term culture in this whole exchange referred to a people in a certain geographic areas respect for individual liberties and human rights. The culture in Treblinka did not respect such rights. Don’t try and pretend that when you were discussing culture you were referring to style of dress and celebration rituals.