Well… I hate to tell you this, but if those are your standards, you’re going to have to find some other species with whom to discuss politics.

Tom T. makes up a genre of people who don’t exist (those who were pro-war and take credit for “fighting the war on terror”)

Christopher Hitchens:

I consider myself to be in the front line, and everyone in the United States to be. That’s what’s different, precisely, about this war. So the whole point is that civilians are probably in more danger than people in uniform.

Andrew Sullivan:

One thing the [Iraqi] blogger gets right: “American public opinion is a matter of life and death to us here, at this particular time.” That’s why some of us are still fighting in a different and far safer way over here as well.

I could go on, but we both have lives to lead.

In any case, thanks for your kind words about the original post.

Yes, of course.

You can’t make a moral equivalence between cheerleading the country into a war of choice, versus opposing a war of choice.

Moreover, it’s a little weird that, given the events in Turkey we’re discussing, you would bring up a right wing nationalist trying to whip up anger over some perceived slight. I hope you perceive the irony involved.

Yes, I understand that. However, as I said above, the point I was making was not that every person in Turkey has vowed to hate America forever. It was that there was something very specific that many Turks are apparently angry about, yet Americans are mostly unaware of this.

Also, to be honest, I did take away from that link that one of the people involved is an idiot. But the idiot is not Tom Tomorrow.

Either way, your original blog entry made a good point, and if I would have realized it wasn’t done by Tom T., I would have pointed out the more moderate excerpt, agreed with your basic point, and moved on.

Yes, I understand that. However, as I said above, the point I was making was not that every person in Turkey has vowed to hate America forever. It was that there was something very specific that many Turks are apparently angry about, yet Americans are mostly unaware of this.

Also, to be honest, I did take away from that link that one of the people involved is an idiot. But the idiot is not Tom Tomorrow.

Moreover, it’s a little weird that, given the events in Turkey we’re discussing, you would bring up a right wing nationalist trying to whip up anger over some perceived slight. I hope you perceive the irony involved.

However, I think the turks understand that while they are sort-of our ally (and we won’t know how far that goes until we need them), we are not their ally.

And to lesser extent that’s true for britain. They are definitely our ally, but we are mostly not their ally.

The only superpower doesn’t have or need allies. We accept lackies if they have something that’s useful to us, and they do whatever we want, and they accept that they have no influence on our policies.

Clearly this is how it is with our allies turkey and britain.

But with israel it’s reversed. We are israel’s ally, but israel is not our ally.

And sure, he was taking a lot of offense at his interpretation of a harmless cartoon back then, but he didn’t burn down any embassies or make death threats.

The reason you call Tom Torrow an idiot is becasue you got reamed in your own comment section. Nice of you to come here so you can get it again!

The reason Tom Tomorrow is an idiot has to do with this.

But then I think they didn’t have photographs of the capture.

Not necessarily. The US could continue suppoting both suppression of Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey and Kurdish separatist movement in Iraq. Why not? Stranger things have happened.

Entirely apart from arguing which side is justified, doesn’t this imply that the USA is likely to have to choose between turkey and kurdistan at some point?

We never quite had to choose between turkey and greece, we were able to keep both of them in NATO even though we made sure that turkey was far better armed. But this time, isn’t it likely we’ll have worse problems?

I don’t see that it was particularly embarrassing about the bags and all. Isn’t that how we treat anybody we capture? Journalists? Captured US contractors? Sunnis, shias, kurds, turkmen iraqis? Why would we treat captured turks any different from the ways we treat anybody else we capture? I’m sure if we happened to capture UN officials or SAS guys or whoever in the wrong place at the wrong time in iraq, we’d point rifles at them and put bags over their heads too.