Bin Thinkin'
Looks like Osama isn’t so dead after all. He’s back. He’s on TV. And he’s threatening domestic attacks inside the U.S. Isn’t that special? Oh, yeah. I forgot one other thing. Move over, Howard Fineman. Now Osama is also a pundit: "Based on the substance of the polls, which indicate Americans do not want to fight Muslims on Muslim land, nor do they want Muslims to fight them on their land, we do not mind offering a long-term truce based on just conditions that we will stand by," he said. "There is nothing wrong with this solution except that it deprives the influential people and warlords in America from hundreds of billions of dollars -- those who supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars." At least, that gives us a lead in finding him. Maybe we should be stopping any car in Pakistan with an “Enron-Halliburton 2004” bumpersticker. Yuks aside, the Osama sighting embodies several disquieting aspects. First of all, the world would certainly be a better place if he really had died – as some had been speculating in the last few weeks.
Third, Bin Laden’s threats are a stiff reminder that we are fighting the wrong war. The Bush administration was absolutely right in going after OBL and his allies in the wake of 9/11. Too bad they have carried out that task with all the efficiency of a Michael Brown.
Fourth, OBL also reminds us that the Bush administration’s ill-conceived policies in Iraq have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps it’s bluster. Perhaps it’s not. But Osama has taken up the Bush challenge and has agreed to make Iraq – at least rhetorically—a priority front in the war on terror. Somethin it absolutely was not before the Iraq invasion and the catastrophic occupation. Worse, the war in Iraq – by assessment of all serious analysts not on the GOP pad—has birthed and dispersed throughout the region and the world and entire new generation of Jihadists. Just like the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan shaped Osama’s generation of Islamic Fundamentalists (further nurtured by U.S. support and funding), our presence in Iraq grooms a new crop of armed and deterimed true believers.
Our children and likely our grandchildren will be living with – and perhaps dying over—the consequences and reverberations of today’s war in Iraq. That’s about the only aspect of this story of which we can be sure.
January 20th, 2006 at 1:16 am
Marc Cooper writes:
“Third, Bin Laden’s threats are a stiff reminder that we are fighting the wrong war.”
I interpret this statement to mean that our war in Iraq is wrong but some other war–(perhaps our small-potato, lamentably understaffed adventure in Afghanistan is right.) Can I get an amen?
Since I don’t have a single friend or family member or colleague who supports our noble, just and humane war in Iraq, I am inclined to take seriously people who think differently than I do, but I have never been able to sort out the folks who consider our Iraq adventure immoral and illegal and a crime against humanity from those who consider it ill-advised or, say, non-prudential.
Neither do I doubt the good faith of people who say that they are willing to prosecute war against the gay-hating, women-hating, free-speech hating, freedom-of- religion-hating facist psychotics who dream of blowing up Manhattan. Truly, I don’t.
I also accept that Bush is not doing a great job in killing them.
What I don’t accept is that the American Left has any constructive ideas about how to prosecute this war, because I have never heard any.
January 20th, 2006 at 7:55 am
OSB was recorded on audio tape–not video.
If you took some of OSB’s comments and asked if the quotes came from him or Howard Dean, a lot of people would guess wrong. (This is similar to “Was it Al Gore or the Unibomber?”)
January 20th, 2006 at 8:25 am
I have to agree with Woody. It does sound like he is running against Bush for President. He is even reading Bush’s poll numbers. LOL!
January 20th, 2006 at 8:33 am
Makes one wonder why he might think he has a chance against the others.
January 20th, 2006 at 9:08 am
samuel stott:
“the gay-hating, women-hating, free-speech hating, freedom-of- religion-hating facist psychotics who dream of blowing up Manhattan. ”
Why do you hate all Muslims? No wonder they want to blow us up.
Oh wait. Maybe you’re just stating a fact.
Wow. That’s a hell of a fact. The sort of thing a guy might place at the center of his thinking. Instead of sort of at the edge while fixating about other things.
I wonder if W has it at the center of his thinking?
January 20th, 2006 at 9:18 am
There’s your trypical ad hominem from Woody: bin Laden=Dean and Gore e.g. they are all terrorists. What a crock.
Here’s a suggestion for those of his ilk: give bib Laden a column on FOX next to Steven Milloy. Call it junk foreign policy. Oh yeah they already have one like that too. Never mind.
January 20th, 2006 at 9:30 am
That’s not what the comparison intends, Mark. I’m not sure what it does mean, it’s probably kind of subtle, having to do with how some people seem more angered by America’s flaws than by these demonic enemies, and hey, lo and behold, look who it has them talking similar to. Just a fact. Not sure what to do with it or if it even means much. Kinda feels like it means something though.
January 20th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Actually:Our children and likely our grandchildren would be living with – and perhaps dying over—the consequences and reverberations if we did not go in Iraq and remove the madman.
What would you rather have: two madmen operating unchecked? Or one behind bars and the other on the run? I think the choice is clear.
January 20th, 2006 at 9:56 am
“having to do with how some people seem more angered by America’s flaws than by these demonic enemies, and hey, lo and behold, look who it has them talking similar to”
So Howard Dean is “more angered by America’s flaws” than by al Qaeda ? That kind of thinking is crap. Anyone who operates on that sort of bullshit “analysis” as one of their political premises is going to be looking around wondering why the American mainstream considers them loudmouthed, lazy-minded loons in about 15 minutes. Go try to sell that nonsense in a coffee shop in De Moines. Believe it or not, most Americans - by far - don’t think anything like Woody and the half-assed Captains of the Right-Wing Web who truck in that garbage (anymore than they think like whiners or shouters of the far Left, for that matter). Woody lives in an outer ozone layer that’s rapidly beginning to disappear due to the emission by it’s inhabitants’ of copious amounts of noxious gas. (see polls on Bush approval, Iraq war, social security privatization, etc. for more on this trend.)
January 20th, 2006 at 10:02 am
What you say about the negative consequences in terms of numbers of terrorists may be true, Marc, but it may also not be. There is polling data and anecdotal evidence that if we are perceived as seriously trying to back democratic movement in the Middle East - and that is a decision that is not entirely up to W, whether he intends it or not - our stock might rise and may already be rising in some places.
I think it’s related to the possibility (that’s all it is) that backing off from the war would essentially have meant agreeing to the French approach: treat Hussein as a guy we could work with. (After a relatively short middle ground of a few last fruitless inspection rounds and a rising tide of “leave Iraq be” finally destroying the sanctions.)
Whatever you think about his WMD intentions at that point, isn’t there something also depraved about that decision? Isn’t it at least a cousin of the what we all agree was a nasty habit we fell into during the Cold War?
January 20th, 2006 at 10:08 am
It’s all subjective of course, reg, but yes: that is exactly what I think about Howard Dean. And any number of people on that side. Just looking at where the visceral anger seems to come from. Maybe I misunderatnd. But I haven’t seen a whole lot of angry, “don’t mistake our disagrements for disunity against you” speeches roared at with equal approval by the base . I’ve seen grudging statements to that effect. That’s all I’ve seen.
And I see evidence for it in all the half-assed ways the threat gets subtly downplayed in forums like these.
As for who the “mainstream” considers to be loudmothed galoots or whatever, I think that’s still up in the air.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:12 am
The Saudis have Bush by the balls, and Bin Laden knows this.
The relationship between the Saudi aristocracy and the Bushes runs deep.
Many of the Saudi aristocracy may find Bin Laden annoying, but he is still part of their society, and they have told Bush to lay off. There are more pro-Al-Queda members of Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure than any Iraqi, Iranian or Syrian governments…even the Pakistani government would give the Saudi’s a run for their money in the Al-Queda love-fest.
How convenient that the Bush administration doesn’t have the guts to confront “our allies†on it.
Georgie Boy has to kill someone, like he’s killing darkies and heathens somewhere for what “they didâ€, (keeps the right-wing nationalists busy) as long as those darkies and heathens are not part of Saudi aristocracy.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:21 am
This is not something I’ve been fed by network liars. I’m not saying it to spread a lie to support my point of view. It almost is my point of view, and it’s somethig I believe very strongly.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:49 am
Neo:
Houses of cards like that analysis are vulnerable to the slightest piece of evidence against them. Like, isn’t it true that the Saudis were opposed to the Iraq war? How on earth did W manage to get out from under their thumbs on that one? (You may know something secret and dark about that situation.) (In fact I’m betting on it.)
And he must have distracted them somehow during the recent raid in Pakistan. Or do they just want bin Laden spared; any other al Q members, go for it?
January 20th, 2006 at 10:53 am
The problem is our president.
He can’t allow pluralism and all-American patriotism to work, because when it does his involvement with the corrupt Saudi Aristocracy would come under a microscope.
Better to have an authoritarian and right-wing nationalistic base protecting him..forget protecting the nation.
January 20th, 2006 at 11:01 am
The Saudi’s say they’re against a lot of things, what they say don’t mean shit.
They may sincerely believe Bin Laden is bat-shit crazy and making life harder, but that sure don’t mean they’re gonna let Bush get him. Most right-wingers know Bush is full of crap, but that don’t mean they’ll let him face impeachment, let alone prison time.
There are way too many Al-Queda roots in Saudi society. I mean these are real connections, none of that crap they said Hussein and Iran have/had:
—————————————————-
THE DUAL MONARCHY
When an attack on a residential compound in Riyadh killed 17 people and wounded 122 in early November 2003, U.S. officials downplayed the significance of the incident for Saudi Arabian politics. “We have the utmost faith that the direction chosen for this nation by Crown Prince Abdullah, the political and economic reforms, will not be swayed by these horrible terrorists,” said Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in Riyadh for a visit.
But if any such faith existed, it was quite misplaced. Abdullah’s reforms were already being curtailed, the retrenchment having begun in the wake of a similar attack six months earlier. And despite what was reported in the American press, an end to the reforms was exactly what the bombers and their ideological supporters hoped to accomplish. To understand why this is the case — and why one of Washington’s staunchest allies has been incubating a murderous anti-Americanism — one must delve into the murky depths of Saudi Arabia’s domestic politics.
The Saudi state is a fragmented entity, divided between the fiefdoms of the royal family. Among the four or five most powerful princes, two stand out: Crown Prince Abdullah and his half-brother Prince Nayef, the interior minister. Relations between these two leaders are visibly tense. In the United States, Abdullah cuts a higher profile. But at home in Saudi Arabia, Nayef, who controls the secret police, casts a longer and darker shadow. Ever since King Fahd’s stroke in 1995, the question of succession has been hanging over the entire system, but neither prince has enough clout to capture the throne.
More:
The Saudi Paradox
January 20th, 2006 at 11:32 am
Pure coincindence, today’s poll at the Kos - :
http://www.dailykos.com/poll/1137742415_nANToluZ
Who do you despise more?
George Bush 162 votes - 41 %
Osama bin Laden 229 votes - 58 %
I’m not sure what I think about that. If taken at face value, are the numbers good news or bad news? I don’t know. Can they be taken at face value? Some people will answer “Bush” to be naughty; others might answer OBL when they think to themselves they’d better, even if it’s not the visceral emotion they feel, which is the subjective situation I believe is not uncommon.
January 20th, 2006 at 11:41 am
Some will call Kos people the fringe; I call them the core of the base.
January 20th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Neo: Do you belive there’s anyone - here, or almost anywhere for that matter - who doesn’t know these things?
January 20th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
You know them…but you would, still, rather kill the wrong people.
Most lynch mobs knew they may be getting the wrong people…but mob rule and hanging darkies was more important than allowing a courtroom get to the truth.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
While ignoring your odd assumption about who i want to kill, can I take it you want to kill the Saudis?
January 20th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
“We need to kill more Saudis!” - okay. I have been misunderstanding the basic anti-war critique.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
It’s a subtle and realistic approach to the problems we face, you have to grant it that.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
“I’m not sure what it does mean”
Then how do you know? I’m saying that’s what it means. Ad hominem by analogy.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Oh, well played Mark.
Seriously - it’s not worth the effort. Go buy a logic book.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
“Or one behind bars and the other on the run? I think the choice is clear.”
To review: one was behind bars, of his palace, and the other was on the run. So what Mr. Meade was your point? By the way how did you reall like Howling Wilderness? Actually read it?
January 20th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
No problem: Fallacies
January 20th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
If some prefer to rail at Bush than OBL, it’s not necessarily because they underestimate the threat from OBL and radical Islam. They’re pissed at Bush’s politicization of the threat, his use of it to score domestic political points. If Bush had really tried to unify the country around a serious, well-planned response to OBL and Islamism, much of the solidarity on this issue following 9/11 would have remained. However, the war on terror as a tool to demonize Dems would have played less well in campaign speeches and at the Republican convention. I would argue that many on the right take more delight in demonizing Howard Dean than in working seriously to eliminate OBL and his movement.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Mr. York:
Despite the terrible situation in Iraq, I believe things would be worse if the madman was still in power. I believe I am able to have that opinion. Will you grant me that?
Howling Wildness: I stand by my review. Read it: I actually got a review copy. Mr. York there is much you dont know about me (or care to know) other than we disagree. But I will say this without Mark York’ s comments most blogs are not that interesting.
I do admit when I posted my amazon review I got a chuckle at your imagined response.
Also, I know you wont believe me, but I also read your first two books.
Finally, my point was now that the madman is behind bars, I believe we are safer as a world in the long run. Additionally, I think Bush has put the pressure on Bin Ladin and he is less effective. Bush can stand on the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium and throw out the first pitch. Bin Ladin hides in a cave.
You have every right to disagree with my opinions because we are Americans. I disagree with everything you say and stand for but I will never stop you from saying anything.
Lets keep on fighting. Because once we stop, America becomes a bit less free.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
evets -
Thank you for your existence, as I’ve said to Marc Cooper before.
Yes, one of W’s main crimes is not seeing the importance of unifying the country. I happen to believe he was faced with a rather irrational opposition form the beginnig; but it is very true he did not bend over backwards to understand its legitimate concerns and explain the Iraq war as fulyl and honestly as he would be morally required to.
It is a long discussion, the degree to which the war on terror/islam has been primarily designed as a tool to demonize dems. I perceive it less that way than you do undoubtedly. I’d say the Dems have brought on some of their own demonization.
There was always available a strong critique of the Iraq war that would have been immune to the kind of demonization you probaly have in mind.
January 20th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
“I do admit when I posted my amazon review I got a chuckle at your imagined response.
Also, I know you wont believe me, but I also read your first two books.”
Well I got chuckle based on the curious note that the review mentioned nothing contained in the book. Mine sure did. A review copy? From St. Martin’s? No I don’t believe that, but possibly you were the one who bought my two books? You didn’t review them that’s for sure. If you could mention something contained in them not found online I’d be more convinced. But do it at my blog not here.
Back to politics. Safer? You can hold that opinion, but it’s open to debate, which is what this is. I say no, since it’s obvious we aren’t. Poorer, hated, and still chasing the same ghosts would be the evidence for my side. No, your opinion has some serious logical flaws.
January 20th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Paul -
I speak as one who supported the Iraq invasion and now feel like a fool for having done so. Since the presence of WMD wasn’t the main cause for my support, the fudging of WMD evidence is not the main reason I feel foolish (though it angers me, and ultimately hurt the cause). Simply put, I never anticipated the ineptitude of the planning and prosecution. This seems to have come in part from a triumphalist worldview which disdained all caution and self-examination and in part from The Republican disbelief in the efficacy of centralized government. This hyper-libertarianism apparently explains the initial indifference to the chaos which followed the fall of Baghdad. When Paul Bremer shrugged off the chaos and crowed about lowering the Iraqui taxation rate I knew we were off the rails and had taken the idea of “creative destruction” to new heights. I’m know there were some who opposed the war reflexivley, but I’m just as sure my feelings aren’t that rare among Democrats.
January 20th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
I just caught this implied slam.
“I disagree with everything you say and stand for”
What pray tell is it that I stand for in your mind?
Caveat. Meade believes the world was created in six days. Accoring to comments on my blog. It’s his opinion and he has every right to it. But critically though ahh….
January 20th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Whores for wars like it hard!
Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!
And that ain’t no snark.
Bush has this nation chasing ghosts in the Middle East, just so his relationship with the Saudi aristocracy stays healthy.
And as long as right-wing nationalists care only to put darkies in their place, Bin Laden and Al-Queda get’s away with mass murder.
January 20th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
John S. Meade,
So you believe in an objective truth?
January 20th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Mr. York:
As a Christian I certainly do believe that. Am I to understand you are now attacking my right of religious freedom.
January 20th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Neo Dude:
No Disambiguation
January 20th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
NeoDude,
Not at all…so how do you know what is true?
January 20th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Sorry.
John S. Meade,
So how do you know what is true?
January 20th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Yowsa this thread is nutso.
Marc, I wonder if the phrase, “command any real forces,” elicits the wrong image. I imagine his only contact these days is with long time supporters/family members who in turn have thier cadres. Bin Laden I’m sure commands very few men but he may guide many more. And, most important, nobody needs Bin Laden.
To attack westerners in the middle east all that’s necessary is tragically motivated young men. To attack inside the U.S. they also need substantial funding. I still think they way to prevent future attacks is to follow the money. I’m aware that’s easier said than done, but it’s the kind of task that requires police work and tough diplomacy (toward investor nations- Iran, the Saudies) - not invasions.
January 20th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
It would be interesting to trace Bin Laden’s appearances in relation to Bush’s polling numbers. Bin Laden is a murderer, but he is not an idiot. It seems obvious that he wanted Bush reelected, and he wants Bush in a position of being able to claim that he is the only one who can fight terrorism, because Bush has no more idea than the man in the moon what he is doing. And that makes Bin Laden’s life easier.
January 20th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Not all Christians believe that. And no I’m not, but if you were to say the moon is actuallymade of cream cheese that would put your religious beliefs up against a known objective truth. You’d lose, and on the face of it because that belief fails the reality test. Meaning that you as the holder of that belief have a conflict with testable reality.
You are free to be as foolish as you like but please let’s not celebrate blatant ignorance as a positive trait. The idea stands or falls on merit. If that is your contention, it just isn’t true.
January 20th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Actually, OBL and Bush are symbiotic with each other. The criminally negligent campaign against a terrorist group that consists, at best, of 20,000 people has resulted in the comedy of Tora Bora, the biggest American military failure since Jimmy Carter sent the planes to rescue the hostages, and then the wonderful bounty of spending, what, 100 million dollars per terrorist to protect our homeland — especially such places as Wyoming and Mississippi, prime targets all. So, turning a real attack into an excuse for porkbarrel spending after ignoring threats to the U.S. in 2001 (for which Bush should have been immediately impeached), his zombie come out in their masses year after year and, paying no attention to the fact that OBL still exists and is flourishing in the territory of our “ally”, Pakistan, they blast the Democrats. It is to laugh. But many of those supporters of tough policy (that is, tough if you consider that the spending of what, 400 billion dollars, so far has decimated maybe a thousand Al Qaeda members) come out and rah rah Bush whenever the evil OBL emerges to thumb his nose at the country. However, many of these hardline Bush supporters have jobs in which they are either directly on the Defense industry tit or indirectly, so they’ve made out like bandits. Too bad we have a spoiled adolescent as our Commander in Chief, but I guess the real betting should be on who will die of old age first, OBL or GWB?
January 20th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
There has been another ELVIS sighting; oh I mean Osama, or just another Psychological Operation (PSYOP), by NSA—OBL conveniently appears whenever “Bushie†is in trouble.
Seems Bush and the NSA are in a little hot water over domestic spying—it’s a good time to go into our “spy storage closet†and dig up another OBL TAPE—keep the public all revved-up!
Let’s have a “Jerry Lewis Newsathon,†analyzing every compelling word of Osama’s tape—the pundits on the right can reaffirm why we have to kill all the EVIL-DOERS.
Below is a little history of the jihad—we go back even further than the 80’s—Islamic Fundamentalism was our preferred choice over Communism—nationalizing energy sources is not helpful for Empire Building—it gets in the way of Halliburton and Bechtel.
The Islamic “jihad” was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia with a significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:
In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166,…[which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal.
The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies — a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, … as well as a “ceaseless stream” of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan’s ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.4
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan’s military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam:
Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology, that holy Islam was being violated by the atheistic Soviet troops, and that the Islamic people of Afghanistan should reassert their independence by overthrowing the leftist Afghan regime propped up by Moscow.
January 20th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
It’s a tangled web we weave indeed. The hypocrisy of most supporters requires a blind eye to all history of anywhere. They see none of it, but the enemy and general population of these countries sure does. They also see many myths that aren’t true, but the manipulative nature of US policy provides a nice cover for anything these people care to blame, real or not.
January 20th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
“It’s all subjective of course, reg, but yes: that is exactly what I think about Howard Dean”
That’s your problem, because what you wrote regarding Dean is totally crazy.
But go back to checking for Koz commenters under your bed. All 229 of them, or whatever who hate Bush more than Osama. (I hated my tight-assed, right-wing high school English teacher more than I hated Kruschev, incidentally, because I had to deal with the bastard on a daily basis, so maybe those responders aren’t quite as crazy as you deem them, but there’s too much nuance in that argument to try to float it on this thread, so I’ll leave it alone.)
Here’s another Koz poll. http://www.dailykos.com/poll/1137764665_dhdNCdwE
I don’t have a clue what it means in the larger scheme of things,* but you are welcome to read into it what the core of the base are thinking, and thus America’s future under the Democrats. Or not…
*Actually I do have a clue what it means which is nothing, but if I said I thought these things were totally meaningless and people who use blog comments and such as generalized evidence of anything about “the other side” need a reality check, posting the link would have seemed even more ridiculous. You realize of course that these polls are posted by commenters…you can’t even find them on the Koz homepage. Most of them have joky answers and are completely silly. I’d be embarrassed to use something like this as evidence of anything, other than how silly it is to use it as evidence of anything.
Here’s another “Koz poll”: http://www.dailykos.com/poll/1124901264_vGcuKKJF
Nuff said…
January 20th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
Democrats on the move folks. Don’t count out the American people just yet.
Pew Report
January 21st, 2006 at 12:52 am
Mark A. York Says:
January 20th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
“Democrats on the move folks. Don’t count out the American people just yet.”
Sorry, but you are wrong. Americans won’t vote the Dems into power until the Dems get a coherent war policy. They don’t have one and they refuse to get one. They lose.
January 21st, 2006 at 6:23 am
No…they have to keep calling Republicans liars and wimp-ass pussies. The average American obviously doesn’t give a flying freak about “coherent war policy” or Bush would have lost.
Republicans are LYING CORUPT WIMP-ASS PUSSIES and that has to be repeated over and over AND OVER.
Republicans get away with stupid policy because they don’t waste time developing them…they’ve been getting away with “so what we’ re inbred rednecks, we ain’t Democrats!”
January 21st, 2006 at 6:55 am
Frame that!
January 21st, 2006 at 8:38 am
“We live in a democracy. The people voted….twice”
Frame that.
January 21st, 2006 at 8:43 am
We live in a republic, jr.
And just because a sliver of a majority likes acting stupid, it don’t mean the whole nation has to suffer.
January 21st, 2006 at 9:05 am
Mark, you have the passion to be an excellent public service politician some day.
In the mean time, you’ll have to grow older and solve the anger issue.
Jim Sr.
January 21st, 2006 at 9:12 am
That would be NeoDude above. Sorry Mark.
January 21st, 2006 at 10:32 am
No herr Stott they have one: follow the evidence before allowing themsleves to tossed into the fray by paid players such as Bush et al. Glad to hear I’m not an angry old man Jim. Disagreements will no doubt follow.
January 21st, 2006 at 10:54 am
reg -
I stumbled across the poll completely coincidentally, as I said. I wasn’t presenting it as conclusive evidence either way. The fact that it’s a poll deep within the “community” over there, and not a public display prodded by Kos himsef, may actually increase its trustworthiness: they perceive themselves as talking among themselves. As such, I’m somewhat heartened by the results, to tell the truth.
There is plenty of serious discussion out there on the significance of sites like Kos for the future Democratic party; there isn’t much that says it’s trivial. Dismissing the meaning of things found there as unworthy of attention is avoidant, and I suspect you realize that. It provides a glimpse at the core of the most emotional, most strongly “passionate” base.
For the right, sites like Free Republic - which arguably contains some of the same kind of hatefulness, although to my mind it doesn’t usually compare - are just part of the scene. For the left, sites like Kos and Atrio and DU are giants, dominating the new medium
In past decades, it was undoubtedly true that the Republican party and conservatism was the main home of intellectually unserious nonsense. The poles have shifted, is what I see going on. The left today is the home of stupid aggressive dissent as its main defining characteristic, just as the right was formerly defined by stupid sullen attachment to the status quo. The characteristic those two things share is/was an utter inability to perceive they might be wrong about their basic worldviews, or about important details.
There is plenty of stupidity on both sides, always has been. But when I want to see an honest discussion of the issues, with an open assessment of what “the other side” says, I far more frequently find it on the right these days. Marc Cooper is a precious exception, and I find it impossible to believe that he will for very much longer consider himself to be on the same team, in some improtant sense, as a dishonest man like “Bob” Scheer.
Yesterday, at the National Review’s writers’ blog called The Corner, there was a heated debate among several of their writers on the need for conservatives to take conservaton issues more seriously. There is heated debate frequently there about a range of issues, inlcuding the wisdom or lack thereof of the war. Very often, when Jonah Goldberg or Rich Lowry recive e-mails that make a good argument against their own positions, they post the e-mails without comment.
If anybody here is interested in the alternative view on the NSA issue, say, or on the treatment of terror suspects - on the latter, at least a discussion taking into account the dilemma they present - look for the writings of Andrew McCarthy, former prosecutor and a lead prosecutor in the first WTC bombing case.
I was reading about the shame of Jack Abramoff and related months, even over a year ago on conservative sites and magazines. And there is plenty of real pressure in the conservative world to deal with this - and the entire corrupt culture it hints at - actually, not superficially.
I don’t see a lot of pressure in the liberal world even to acknowledge the possibility of a problem in the poisonous effects of race-baiters in its politics, or of the stranglehold of the teachers’ unions.
As for dean, I really would love to have it identified for me when he was prompted to seething, vein-bulging anger at the shenanigans of the Islamic fascists of the world.
January 21st, 2006 at 1:26 pm
I read about four paragraphs of that one and I think you’ve got your head so far up your ass it ain’t worth the time to pick it apart - it would be incredibly easy (”the poll is more significant because it’s buried deep in the site and is a product of a commenter than if Koz posted it”, etc.), but really anybody who thinks Free Republic is saner and more civil than Kos is too silly. Also, if you think the “giants” of the Democratic party like…uh…Atrios…are crazier and more poisonous than the “giants” the Republican party like Grover Norquist, Rove, and the Religious Right, again, you’re beyond trying to convince of anything. And if you think The Corner is some paragon of reasoned discourse that doesn’t exist on the “left”, obviously you’re completely ignorant. Ever heard of TPMCafe ? Ever read Kevin Drum. TPMCafe provides space for the smartest, most serious discourse on the internet, left or right. Makes The Corner look like the mental midgets and hacks they mostly are. You’ve got a script memorized and, frankly, I think you’re shadowboxing with V.1.1 or whatever of yourself.
January 21st, 2006 at 1:37 pm
I got to the Scheer crack. It’s clear Paul wants an honest discussion about what the so-called other side thinks, but when we do it’s debunked as biased left nonsense. We get that message.:Reformed liberal running on newfound fear. Seen that before.
January 21st, 2006 at 1:56 pm
I just want to make one more point in general on this bin Laden tape - have you noticed that all of the slimeballs and slugs on the rightward gasbag circuit have siezed on a call for more attacks on the U.S. by Osama as an opportunity to attack - drum roll - Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy. Oh, and these are the serious folk who reserve their rage for the right targets. This is just horseshit…doesn’t even make it up to the bullshit meter.
January 21st, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Didn’t the Right claim Clinton was destroying liberty and our great republic?
Yeah, they have a sense of proportion.
Their right-wing Alpha Male has close ties to the same communities that support Bin-Laden and that’s just coincidence.
January 21st, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Somehow they don’t detect that tie anymore than they know the Bush family history of arms fortunes since 1917. There’s no logical way to blame anything on Dean and Kennedy except wantin gjustifiable answers to legitimate questions.
January 21st, 2006 at 8:49 pm
reg, you’re slipping in my estimation. Makes me kind of sad. Again: why the insults? I really don’t think I’m doing that so much your way. Is it simply uncontrolled anger?
From what I’ve read of TPM Cafe and that kdin of thing, and I read Josh’s site every day and argue with him quite a bit directly, and yes they’re not bad, but no in fact they don’t usually forthrightly adress the actual best arguments coming from the right. They adopt a rational tone but consistently argue out of soem pretty serious level of ignorance (willful or otherwise) of those opinions. It’s just what i think.
Sicen you evidently don;t bring any greater level of knowledge of those opinions than they do, you may not be able to pick up on it.
Have you read Andrew McCarthy super-carefully,reg, going back day after day like I do to Josh marshall? Do you uderstand what he things abotu Hussein and al Qaeda, and are yo able to give a dry, substantial refutation of those beliefs? I, um, doubt it.
Go to hell on teh script memorized thing, reg. Apparent’y I cross an unforgivable line when i say somethign you strongly disagree with.
I will perhaps someday post a column I wrote about Scheer - about hs Jessica Lynch coverage - that backs up my ideas about that creep.
January 21st, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Creep? This tag negates thought. You’re cooked.
“in fact they don’t usually forthrightly adress the actual best arguments coming from the right”
In fact they always do. The fact is the best arguments are pathetic on the right. Convince me with substance they are not.
January 22nd, 2006 at 1:16 am
Ostensibly this is a thread about Bin Laden, but notice how quickly it became a thread about what villians Republicans are.
Plenty to criticize there, and yes, plenty to get angry about, but I don’t understand how any American can spend more energy and ingenuity hating Republicans than Islamist terrorists.
Its impossible to hold a party together when parts of the party, however critically, call for an American victory, while another part premises their position on an American defeat, while yet a third part is openly sympathetic to Baathist dead-enders and Islamists. You Lefties should really think about kicking this last element out of your supposedly Big, Tolerant, Liberal, Nuanced, Better-educated Tent.
I have had my say, for which I thank you. Let the ad hominem begin!
I can imagine the Dems
January 22nd, 2006 at 5:52 am
Samuel and Paul -
Re: “… but I don’t understand how any American can spend more energy and ingenuity hating Republicans than Islamist terrorists.”
Bush had near universal support on this issue and threw much of it away (some would have dissipated as a matter of course). The Kos poll Paul cites is not dispositive and I believe both you and Paul know it. It has more to do with Reg’s comments on his high school teacher (whom he hated more than Kruschev) than with a substantive reflection of Democratic opinion on OBL and Islamic terrorism.
If you’d substituted Clinton for Bush and given the poll to Republicans the results would probably be similar; if you’d done this in the 90’s when OBL was already a known menace and Clinton the symbol of cosmic evil the results might have been identical to the Kos poll (or worse). I would have argued from those results that the Repiblicans were demented when it came to Clinton, not that they were soft on terrorism.
Remember that the Republicans refused almost uniformly to back Clinton on the Balkans. Don’t be so sure that they would have behaved honorably had a Dem been in the White House on 9/11. A truly honorable and effective president could have muted some of the post-9/11 partisan schadenfreude. Not all of it, but some.
Bush didn’t try hard enough to make that happen.
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:10 am
Part of the difference in the situations I see, evets, is between some deranged political leadership on the right - during Clinton’s term, and continuing to the present time - and teh actions and thought evidence in the base itself: and in teh left’s case, that part of the base that is most vocal and considers itself to be the most informed and intellgent poeple in the country.
I’m not sure what Poll you’re talking about - the Kos poll? I’ve already said it wasn’t dipositive of anything.
I’m not sure it’s true the Republicans almost universally refued to back Clinton oon the Balkans; I’m very not a lot of Repblicans called Clinton teh world’s worst terrorist. Any non-backing, I’m pretty sure, was based on teh wisdom of doing it.
As I’ve said, yes, W is at least partly to blame for the opproprium he gets. Although, it is very true that according to pols, a very large portion of the left was as incensed about Afghanistan as they are about Iraq.
Mark, you’re not really worth responding to usually. I’d just point you to your own language and ask you to consider that before saying any kidn of language proves any absesce of thoguht. I reserve teh he word “creep” for someone who lies. Scheer lies. I’m a purist on journalists who do that. Again, if you care, perhaps I’ll post a column I wrote that got printed in the Star-Trib that analyzes an example.
“The fact is the best arguments are pathetic on the right. ”
That sentence comes pretty close to proving every point I make here about lack of thought on the left.
“Convince me with substance they are not.”
The Lord helps those who help themselves.
January 22nd, 2006 at 10:25 am
“but I don’t understand how any American can spend more energy and ingenuity hating Republicans than Islamist terrorists.”
This is an false analogy fallacy: a rhetorical “either or” not based in fact. In short the characterization is false, and the user is a liar.
Dems are made for the Republican failing to get bin Laden. Instead running off to get a sure thing: the sitting duck Saddam. Well we got him which was easily predicted. The country is still up for grabs. And bin Laden still at large. Try reality over cheap rhetoric and go back to logic school.
Logic 101
January 22nd, 2006 at 10:30 am
Paul I find you tedious and disinegenous but that’s your burden not mine. As for your worth it wouldn’t add up to 2 cents based on those blank answers to my questions and this: “Scheer lies.”
Put up or shut up. Prove it.
January 22nd, 2006 at 11:36 am
“reg, you’re slipping in my estimation.”
When I start posting comments from the denizens of Free Republic in order to prove how foolish the “core of the base” on the other side is, tell me I’m slipping. Meanwhile, I can pull stuff out of the mouths of their major pundits - Fred Barnes is looking particularly stupid right now with his fellatial new book on Bush (maybe since it’s “Bush” it’s cunnilingual…not sure about that…other than that it’s a bad joke) - in order to prove how foolish the GOPers are.
And I’ve said it before, so I’ll say it again. The people at NRO’s Corner are mental midgets and supremely dishonest in comparison to Josh Marshall. (Josh Marshall rose head and shoulders above those clowns and the level of their arguments the day he put Larry Diamond on line to discuss his book on the criminal negligence that has characterized the Iraq occupation. And The Washington Monthly in general and Drum in particulary totally mine the best arguments and premises of the GOP in their articles and discourse. To argue that they don’t do AT LEAST as good a job of this as fucking National Review is, again, horseshit and I think you know it.) Also the stuff you wrote above - and I’m referencing it from memory, so I won’t get specific - about how the right-wing was concerned about Abramoff before it became a public issue may be true in some self-serving, nervous-about-exposure sort of way - but the fact of the matter is that as soon as the Delay indictments first hit, the knee-jerk reaction was to defend him against an “over-reaching, partisan, Democratic prosecutor”. I’m sure you can find some quotes from a David Brooks column to counter this, but it wouldn’t be an honest assessment of “the core of the base”. I think you are full of it. You can take that personally, if you need to, but since I don’t know you personally, it’s really all about arguments that don’t wash on their face and strike me as some combo of dishonest and/or ignorance (willful or otherwise). Which, of course, is sad.
January 22nd, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Oh, and here’s Andrew McCarthy giving the best arguments of the “other side” (you know…shameless opportunists who don’t care about our national security) their due:
“…if Senator John McCain has his way, the most urgently needed intelligence will be lost.
McCain has attached an amendment to next year’s defense appropriations bill. It is two parts grandstanding and one part suicide…”
Yeah, Andrew…go get ‘em with that refined rhetoric and high-minded discourse.
January 22nd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Jim Russell Says:
January 21st, 2006 at 9:05 am
—————————
Angry? I’m smirking as I write my ravings.
Do I have to have smiley faces at the end of every sentence?
;} (happy?)
January 22nd, 2006 at 12:18 pm
It is sad when good liberals crossover and fall for fallacious reasoning out of newfound fear. Fear affects everyone differently, but can become the Great Justifer just as media bias myth is the Great Explainer. Once infleunce by those anything will fit the formula. On its face is where arguments live though. It’s a different story there
January 22nd, 2006 at 10:51 pm
Scheer wrote two commentaries in June of 2003 that strove to present the Jessica Lynch rescue as a fraud from start to finish - the rescue utterly unneeded, orchestrated very probably from the White House - when there were plenty of facts available at the time of is writing to make that notion utterly ridiculous.
There’s a very good chance some people here still believe that, which is simply evidence that Scheer knows it doesn’t matter when he lies, given the gullibility of his fans.
The most that can be said actually happened is that some PR flacks exaggerated Lynch’s heroic fighting before her capture, based on a misidentification (her follow captured or killed soldiers did fight like the stories said; she didn’t because her gun jammed); and the same flacks may have mistrated that there was fighting at the hopsital when there was none.
But the rescue was genuine, in that it was undertaken in genuinely risky conditions, the rescuers had no idea who these doctors were at the hospital, and the area was still a combat zone.
Whatever exaggerations or mistakes in the coverage, they were quickly corrected, the White House made no attampt to get in the way of the corrections, and there is and has been absolutely no evidence that the White House had anything to do with any of it.
Scheer lied about the extent of fhe mistakes/exaggerations, when the story of what really happened was already out, and lied about White House involvement in any of it when there was and has never been any evidence of their inolvement in the episode.
Reg, your selective quotes of McCarthy are absurd. You pick the quotes that can make him sound like a hateful hothead while ignoring the arguments leading up to them, arguments that lead to the emotion he feels, which is based on: the whole situation and dilemma has to do with the fact that captured al Q members proved very quickly to be immune to our previous interrogation techniques, so what kind of increased pressure is advisable or morally permissible if any? It’s a dilemma. All he’s insisting on is that we admit there’s a dilemma in the context of admitting that the stakes me in fact be incredibly high. The Democrats want to ignore that.
Leftists tend to like ignoring the moral dilemmas so they can identify themselves with what seems to be uncomplicted moral high ground.
Mark, I know the arguments you should be making better than you do. Would you be interested in private lessons?
January 22nd, 2006 at 11:42 pm
The thing that’s hard about the “lies” i might try to convince you of on something like the Lynch episode is that many/most of you probably believe the stories I’ve satisfied for myself are very obviously untrue. It’s because you’re prone to believe the worst about W and his crew and so feel absolutely no need or desire to check out the details.
So the points abut the Lynch rescure, boiled down, are this:
It may be true that some doctors at teh hospital tried to return her before the rescue, but there is absolutely np evidence that anyone on thw American side knew this, and any shots fired at the doctors as they were approaching (if that happened) were honest shots in a chaotic situation.
Reports of Lynch fighting heroically before her capture were a. perfectly plausible; b. based on honest military misintepretation of battlefield communication passed along by a pr flack; c. quiclyl corrected with absolutely no interference from anyone remotely connected with the White House.
I don;t recall where the stories of fighting in teh hospital itself came from, or how widespread they were, by they also were quickly corrected with no interference from above, and the inaccuracies of that story served to obscure the fact that the rescue proceeded through an area that was still a war zone and was in fact, from the perspective of both the rescuers and Lynch, a risky endeavor.
So bascally, to repeat: the inaccuracies were locally based, attributable at least as much to over-eager press reporting as to any hyping by PR guys, somewhat undesrtandable, and served to obscure the undeniably reisky nature of the operation. And had nothing to do with the White House.
Scheer chose not once but twice to make the case that the whole edneavor was a charade, part and parcel of the BS White House operation, utterly unnecessary and comparable to “Wag The Dog;” and he did this not merely based on skimpy evdence but after his own sources and journalists he was referring to were saying that version of things was nonsense.
He consciously misrepresented reality in order to make the administration in this case seem as venal as possible; in doing so he also trivialized the experiences of both Lynch and her rescuers.
Eric Boehlert at Salon was guilty of similar BS, incidentally.
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:49 am
“Reg, your selective quotes of McCarthy are absurd. You pick the quotes that can make him sound like a hateful hothead while ignoring the arguments leading up to them, arguments that lead to the emotion he feels”
Oh my, Paul. I forgot. We aren’t supposed to use “selective quotes” here. That would be wrong. (Of course, “selective polls” are okay. Also, anyone reading McCarthy’s argument can see through it and recognize that his statements about John McCain are slime. McCarthy rests his entire case on the “ticking bomb” scenario - which is a fundamentally dishonest argument.)
As for asserting Bob Scheer is the guy we should abjure for manufacturing falsehoods about the Jessica Lynch story, you slide far into the abyss. There’s a dishonesty problem afoot in your argument, but it’s not Scheer’s. The military - at a fairly high level - started the controversy by releasing an essentially fabricated version of events complete with an edited video tape. Your tortured rationalization of every issue that was taken with the story doesn’t debunk a single one of the critics facts, only their interpretation. Perhaps Scheer shouldn’t have written “White House”, but left it at “Pentagon”. Perhaps this was “inartful wording”. Your contribution to the Lynch saga is an obvious attempt to put positive spin on a version of the events that was proven to be blatantly and deliberately dishonest in the first place. Taking the side of liars doesn’t give you license to call their critics the liars because you think their interpretations may have exaggerated the scope of the proven dishonesty.
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:02 pm
That’s ludicrous. Take some lesson is context yourself. You’re a perfect new winger recruit with pitiful reaosning like this Scheer interpretation. Exaggereated=lies? Perhaps you should ask the president this question? Lynch’s characterization in retrospect was accurate and the initial claims (co-opted by the WP and not exactly a liberal bent) of the government were not. You’re disingenous and low-caliber if this pathetic case is best you have. Side with liars indeed.
January 24th, 2006 at 10:18 am
mark, you’re like a kitten with a new toy on this “new winger recruit” idea. You’re not worth my time in trying to convince you that I am capable of rational thought, because you’re not. I’m done talking to you.
reg, first, on the selective quotes thing, all quotes are selective. I don’t think i used the poll for example to say sweepingly that it portrays everything about the left or proved my point. Whereas you used Mccarthy’s quote as a tactic to avoid answering or confronting his argumetns, which you still haven’t done.
As for Scheer, you’ve backhandedly acquiesced to my point in saying that I’m trying to divert attention from the dishonesty that took place.
No I’m not. if there was some serious level of bullshit at some point in all of this, that’s very bad. But that’s a different discussion (and one we’d also probably disagree on, by the way; there was a Washington Post mea culpa article a couple weeks after the incident that did a good job of describing a train of mistakes, over-eager PR guys, and over-eager reporting. Which, again, were discovered and began to fall apart literally imediately, which, as I tried to convey, is not a trivial fact in deciding whether this was some kind of conspiracy).
My point is Scheer: he labeled the thing an utter fraud, debasing both Lynch’s experiences and the genuine heroism of the rescuers. He labeled the thing a calssic WH-perpetrated wag-the-dog incident. He did these things in defiance of facts that if he didn’t know he is careless to the extreme; i actually do him a favor of a sort in deciding he was dishonest.
In calling the rescue a fraud he quoted the work of a British journalist who had said - unequivocally and before Scheer’s column - that the rescue was not at all a fraud. The journalist was merely in the process of uncovering the reality I describe above.
The point I’m making about Scheer stands on its own. His columns were clear, undeniable dishonesty. They were lies. They helped propagate a well-worn myth of the left that stands to this day, and to be truthful, I believe that was his intent. He played his readers for suckers, and it worked, and if I were you, and Marc Cooper, that would make me very very angry.
January 24th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
I’ll stack my evidence of rational thought against yours any day, particularly after this Scheer smear. Apparently “over eager PR guys” aren’t really part of the misrepresentation of the Lynch meme? Unlike liar James’ Frey, Lynch actually set the record straight on the “GI Jane guns blazing” fantasy the media were sold on by the miltiary minders. Don’t they answer to the Commander in Chief. Please, spare us the pained logical contortions.
January 24th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
“Whereas you used Mccarthy’s quote as a tactic to avoid answering or confronting his argumetns, which you still haven’t done.”
I repeat, *anyone reading McCarthy’s argument can see through it and recognize that his statements about John McCain are slime. McCarthy rests his entire case on the “ticking bomb†scenario - which is a fundamentally dishonest argument.*
January 31st, 2007 at 11:45 am
Keno…
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