Since the beginning of time, liberals have yearned to destroy the sun

Shit, I’m on the Sun Destruction Committee! That report was due yesterday! The mullahs, the interdimensional demons, and the Trilateral Commission are gonna have my ass on this one!

No, because then this type of bozo will try playing cutesy-poo word games, evasions, weaselings, et cetera.

Hit them in the wingnuts. And keep on hitting them there until they puke. Hey, they set the rules; now they get to live by them.

C.

This newly ever-growing Western left

Setting aside, to the extent possible, the odious content…how the frig can something be “newly ever-growing”?

In the same Goldberg column you link to, besides his “joke” that Juan Cole would fund the al-Aqsa martyrs, Goldberg attributes to him a belief that blowing up Israeli kids is an example of good judgment. While I don’t know what Goldberg’s stance on abortion is, this is roughly similar to saying, “Jonah Goldberg advocates killing abortion doctors.” Does Goldberg consider that to be reasonable rhetoric?

how the frig can something be “newly ever-growing”?

I wondered the same thing.

The Sun?!?! Now you tell me that’s what we’ve been trying to destroy. I’d been putting all my efforts into detroying the moon, and now it seems I had it all wrong. Sigh. And this comming just when I have papers due, and grading to do. I just wish I knew what to do about this sort of nonsense other than offer ridicule, but saddly, I don’t. It’s a sad day when anyone who’s not an idiot believes this, but even people who are manifestly not idiots (See- Steven Bainbridge) often at least have sympathy with this sort of tripe.

Oops. And “there” at the end of the second comment.

“I want the state gone: transform the situation to U.S. out of North America. U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether.”
Ward Churchill, April 2004

The United States of America,

48% traitors
51% idiots

I’m damn proud to be a traitor.

Best post title ever.

my my, what a vile and treacherous man Reynolds is.

Glenn’s wish came true. Don’t underestimate Glenn Reynolds.

Look, fellow travellers, we can’t destroy the Sun – yet. My solar-powered fetus-killing, gay-making, Islamification machine™ is almost ready to go into production. Be patient. Once our three main goals are achieved in 2012, then we can destroy the Sun.

Priorities, people, priorities.

Yes I did mean “anyone like Ascher” not “anyone like O’Toole.” As for Glenn Reynolds, his conduct during the Swift Boat episode speaks volumes.

Where does this kind of talk end up? What kinds of things become possible once rhetoric becomes so dissociated from the facts, that were unthinkable before? Are they just working up their nerve to commit mass murder?

How can we possibly provide a united front of evil if some of you can’t even get off of your lazy asses and help out around here??

Hey, back off, Girlfriend! My husband (heh, heh) and I are planning an especially raucous session of “Destroy the Family, the Cornerstone of Western Civilization” tonight, right after the “Changing Rooms” marathon on TLC. And then tomorrow we’re going shopping at Ikea–not because we need anything, but just because we like to flaunt our “lifestyle” in front of decent, normal suburbanites.

We can only do so much in one weekend, y’know.

Man, you guys are lightweights, like destroying the Sun is the puny and pathetic limit of your imagination. THERE’S A WHOLE FREAKIN’ UNIVERSE OUT THERE PEOPLE!! DO I HAVE TO DRAW YOU A PICTURE?

Okay, got a little excited there,but think of it. Gulags as far as the Hubble Telescope can see. And if there’s a multiverse–gives me goosebumps thinking about it.

Sun my ass.

Not to mince words, this is insanity

You mistyped fascism.

How many on the left are making any effort to distance themselves from Ward Churchill?

Shelby, there is a significant asymmetry at play in your example. I had never in my life even heard of Ward Churchill before Glenn Reynolds got all hot and bothered about him – and I actually read obscure Marxist academics. Be honest: had you ever heard of him before this contretemps?

Conversely, instapundit.com averages over 160,000 visits per day and is linked to incessantly by bloggers on both sides of the ideological divide.

It’s easy to think “not my problem — I don’t agree with him”

Even easier to think “not my problem – I don’t have the first idea who that is.”

Shelby,

While you’re intentions are good, I have to strongly disagree. What’s the next step? Loyalty oaths? I’m responsible for my actions, for my comments and for my behavior. Everyone else is responsible for their actions, their comments and their behavior.

I am not obliged to do an auto da fé every time some nutcase who claims to come from my side of the political spectrum decides to bloviate in such a way as to call attention to themself. I don’t expect that from the right; perhaps they can afford me the same courtesy.

I think it is appropriate that Liberals want to destroy the sun: there is a rightwing site which sells t-shirts that say “Nuke the Moon!” on them. Religion is alive and well in America, but it is a highly dualist religion where each side identifies themselves with Ahur Mazda, and the other with Ahriman.

Time for a fish fry, and sunfish taste the best! Wear proper head coverings! Haha.

*Curses!* Foiled again! My ingenious and diabolical plan to extinguish the sun, years in the making, was all set to come off without a hitch. And it would have been the most perfect liberal evil act in history too—if not for you pesky war-bloggers.

Ward Churchill is a friggin idiot. Do I get my wingnut credibility pass now?

As a center left voter of generally moderate views I have to say that I can’t see much difference between Jack O’Toole and Atrios. There seems to be an overall polarization, maybe that’s the way it always has been, but it does seem to be more bitter at present.

But I wonder what difference it all makes. For every Instapundit there is a DailyKos. For every Juan Cole there is a Jonah Goldberg. Does anyone change their minds? It appears that all this sort of debate does is cement pre-existing loyalties.

So, I’m supposed to think that the North Korean government is a liberal organization?

No can do.

the worst you can say about my side’s ranters is that they are somewhat paranoid.

Uh, no, that’s simply not true. The worst thing you can say about our side’s ranters – if by “my side” you mean “the left” – is actually something pretty horrifying: that the most extremist ones actively supported Islamist terrorists, or actively supported the mass-murdering monstrosities known as Stalinism or Maoism.

Be realistic here.

I mean, you could say that all those people “weren’t really leftists by definition”, but that would be disingenous, I think.

However, extremists like Lynne Stewart, or the Spartacist League, are a tiny minority in the western left, and still tinier in the US left.

Damn, he’s onto us.

Yes, as a leftist, I’m all over cuddling up to countries where little girls are beaten back into burning buildings by thugs who are enforcing radical islam on the populace with the consent and complicity of the unelected ruling class.

As a matter of fact, Laura and I had their ambassador and his wife over to the ranch soon after 9/11. Wanted them to know we didn’t hold it against them that most of the guys who slaughtered our people came from their country. I thought they might be a little sensitive about it, since she paid their rent out of her pin money.

So, we plan to manipulate adepts of a religion that most of us don’t deeply understand, and bend hundreds of cultures with which we have only a passing familiarity, toward the destruction of the West and bring its rich, powerful champion to its knees? If we could do that, how come we couldn’t win Ohio against a charming incompetent? The eliminationist strain batted around by Instacracker and his worse fellows would be funny, if it weren’t so serious. I suspect that this is a cheerleading for oppression.

Also, does anyone know how the Islamists stand on Social Security privatization?

Well, at least the question about whether “Reynoldsism” is a strawman has been definitively resolved. Yes, virtually the entire liberal Democratic west is opposed to liberal democracy and secretly in bed with Islamism. Just an airtight hypothesis!

they are somewhat paranoid.

Uh, no, that’s simply not true. (…) the most extremist ones actively supported Islamist terrorists, or actively supported the mass-murdering monstrosities known as Stalinism or Maoism.

I don’t see the contradiction here.

As a generally polite, arguably mild-mannered liberal, I could find some slight gratification in the thought that views like mine evoke fear and alarm from the other side…

That is, I would if I didn’t know that they felt threatened by everything else they encountered, from bare tits to Arab musicians, threadbare tyrannies and low-riding jeans.

Why is fear so addictive?

I don’t hear any of this “lefty treason” crap in my normal meat life.

Here in Australia, at work and at play, no one seems to give a shit about such things and would pretty much assume that anyone who criticised Howard, Bush or et al was not also secretly plotting the overthrow of western civilisation.

Sometimes the blogosphere really is a feedbacking echo chamber.

SOMETIMES the blogosphere REALLY IS a feedbacking ECHO Chamber!!

SOMETIMES THE BLOGOSPHERE REALLY IS A FEEDBACKING ECHO CHAMBER!!?!

“How many on the left are making any effort to distance themselves from Ward Churchill? “

It’s hard for me to distance myself from somebody I hadn’t heard of until last week.

Posted by Shelby · February 11, 2005 11:43 PM
“How many on the left are making any effort to distance themselves from Ward Churchill? “

It’s hard for me to distance myself from somebody I hadn’t heard of until last week.

(No disrespect to Steve Jandreau intended. I almost did the same thing myself…)

What’s most striking is Ascher’s irrationality and distance from reality. Does he know nothing about 20th century history? Doesn’t he realise that except in France and Italy most of the western Left was never pro-soviet (WW2 excepted)? Doesn’t he know what politicians like Attlee, Bevin, Blum and Ramadier were doing at the beginning of the cold war? Can he back up his statement that the western Left (and not just a few insane groupuscules) is supporting terrorism with actual evidence? He ends up sounding like one of the Communist hacks George Orwell quoted in Homage to Catalonia. Did Glenn Reynolds actually think before agreeing with these comments?

Saigon Downer, nothing takes the sparkle off a one post gag that depends on a formating stunt like being mistaken for someone else’s multiple posts.

Although I think Steve J got it.

The last unitalicized line was supposed to be part of the quote… oh never mind.

What everyone has already said about Ward Churchill — his obscurity, the extent to which his views are out of step with the vast majority of both liberals and the left, and the willingness of the left blogosphere to separate itself from those views quite unprompted — are all correct.

But it’s worth adding one more thing to this litany. Even Ward Churchill’s “bets” are not on “radical Islam.” Gareth Wilson quotes Churchill saying “I want the state gone: transform the situation to U.S. out of North America. U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether.” Certainly opposed to the U.S. But where’s the support for radical Islam?

I certainly don’t know Ward Churchill’s beliefs in any detail. But, as this quote suggests, he seems if anything to be something of an anarchist. Last I checked, supporters of “radical Islam” tend to be theocrats who believe in a robust and repressive state.

What’s the point? Churchill is, once again, a side show. We have still yet to see a _single example_ of a leftist, however obscure, who’s supporting radical Islam. Even Churchill won’t fit the bill.

Gareth Wilson quotes Churchill saying “I want the state gone: transform the situation to U.S. out of North America. U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether.”

ben, I read that interview, he was talking of some crazy futuristic/nostalgic idea of substituting the US with a sort of Native-American style alliance of small nations. (I’m one of those who never heard of Ward Churchill until last week, so I had to go and look up some interviews and articles to get an idea.)

Doesn’t sound much like a caliphate to me. But what do I know.

Here’s the rest of that quote:

bq. So what does that look like?
There’s no U.S. in America anymore. What’s on the map instead? Well let’s just start with territoralities often delineated in treaties of fact—territoralities of 500 indigenous nations imbued with an inalienable right to self-determination, definable territoralities which are jurisdictionally separate. Then you’ve got things like the internal diasporic population of African Americans in internal colonies that have been established by the imposition of labor patterns upon them. You’ve got Appalachian whites. Since the U.S. unilaterally violated its treaty obligations, it forfeits its rights—or presumption of rights—under international law. Basically, you’ve got a dismantlement and devolution of the U.S. territorial and jurisdictional corpus into something that would be more akin to diasporic self-governing entities and a multiplicity of geographical locations. A-ha, chew on that one for awhile.

A-ha, yeah, dude. That would be, like, so cool. Although, I personally would prefer a confederation of free-love hippie communes where private property is abolished, except for private cd collections, whose theft is punished by sentencing the culprit to three months in a recording studio with squeaking monkeys.

I think my vision for the New America would be more feasible, too.

Everyone on The Left(tm), please, distance yourselves from me now, or be forever damned by association.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(I have a feeling I know which listed crime Churchill could be, like millions of others, actually found guilty of, but I’m not a snitch.)

Sorry, that’s a typo. I know, of course that your name is Sebastian.

You’re an idiot

there’s part of us that would like American governmental power to be given a bloody nose

No, there’s a part of you that feels that way.

This is what happens when you read too much Instaborg.

The solution for that is: don’t read Instaborg.

The problem is that Big Media takes their cues from him and the other right-wing crazies, so we have to read him to figure out what bullshit trial balloons are being launched so we can have a hope of countering them before Big Media starts trumpeting them to all and sundry.

Brilliant post.

Rebranding the right shouldn’t be so hard, should it? I mean, what if NOW started a campaign against the advocacy of traditional sex roles by Pat Robertson and Ayatollah Khamenei, while the Union of Concerned Scientists criticize Putin and Rumsfeld for encouraging proliferation, and human rights groups criticize the slaughter of innocents in Fallujah and New York. We need a concerted effort to show that right-wing is right-wing across the globe, one that will make it clear that the fellow travellers these days are Republicans.

And, I’d add, directly on topic: Who is it, really, who misses so much the Soviet Union? I don’t think it’s us American liberals, who by and large enjoyed seeing the fall of a totalitarian empire and the peaceful maturation (in some places, at least) of democratic institutions. No, Ascher and his acolytes are engaging in that right-wing sport: projection. These are people, as a group, who longed for an adversary like the one who threatened dear old Dad–literally, in the case of the Kristol family– because it called our nation to high purpose. Some of them, I read, greeted 11 September with horror, of course, but also with a relieved sense of calling and a rush to that well-thumbed volume of Winston Churchill’s orations. One can see it in the rhetoric today that inflates a virulent few fanatical criminals, and fat, impotent mass-murdering tyrant like Saddam Hussein, with the Third Reich or Stalin. And, I think, that’s the crime of us liberals, as far as the Ascher-ilk is concerned: we think Osama bin Laden is beneath contempt and should be scrubbed out as a matter of course, but is man who can’t destroy our polity, and we viewed Saddam Hussein and see Iran without real worry, confident in our power to crush any nation should it strike. We won’t agree that these petty thugs are the challenge of our time and that we are called to eliminate it and establish an empire suitable to us it its place.

What I was trying to say was that, given that the left would generally prefer the US not to act in the way it does in foreign policy, things which make it more difficult for the US to act in the way it does in foreign policy have something to be said for them, specifically, that they make it more difficult for the US to act in the way it does in foreign policy. In the huge majority of cases, that’s nothing like the be-all-and-end-all, but it is a consideration of some kind, even if that consideration is vastly outweighed by the horror of violence against anyone. It remains a consideration, I think, probably a prudential consideration, but a consideration none the less. Think of it this way: if there hadn’t been a substanial resistance/insurgency in Iraq, there probably be marines in Iran. If it’s a good that there aren’t marines in Iran, that’s something in favour of the resistance/insurgency. Obviously, blowing innocent people up is wrong: it’s wrong when Americans do it, and it’s wrong when Iraqis do it. But that doesn’t destroy the fact that successful resistance to American power prevents it being used elsewhere.

We want to destroy the sun? In broad daylight??

Is this what comes from asking why Osama came after us? Is there no conceivable reason why this question should be asked? As I recall, his six or seven points
all made sense.

St. Reagan also bears significant responsibility for inspiring terrorists by his tail-between-the-legs retreat from Lebanon in the early 1980’s following the attack on the Marine barracks. Don’t ever think that bin Laden didn’t take note of that.

“reject” should be “regret” (in the faith that the last comment went through).

I don’t hear any of this “lefty treason” crap in my normal meat life.

You live in Australia. In America, it’s real. No, your conservative relatives don’t hate you personally, but you’re different, you’re just misguided and will come around.

They have forceful yet soothing electronic devices in their homes that tell them all day every day that Liberals are evil and out to ruin the nation, gently easing them back into the fold after scary, nauseating moments when people like you make them think otherwise.

The ‘want to destroy the sun’ bit is over the top, of course, but there’s not denying there has been some level of cozying up to the Islamofascists on the left. On the far left, we find Saddam’s new buddy Ramsey Clark, for example, and Lynn Stewart.

Less extreme, we have Michael Moore’s idyllic picture-postcard images of pre-war Iraq. And then there is the purely pragmatic (I almost said ‘Machiavellian’) cozying of the type we’ve seen in the comments here, to wit:

“…we do think that one of the ways to stop America from running round the world, invading places, f*cking them up and exploiting their resources is by people making it difficult for them to do that.”

In other words, we don’t support the goals of the Islamofascists, but hey if their terror helps frustrate the U.S.’s purposes in the world–well, we’re willing to overlook suicide bombings, the imposition of sharia, the repression of women, etc.

What else? Well, we have the grudging…always heavily qualified support of the Iraqi election (like the elections in Afghanistan before them).

We have Juan Cole passing on the speculation that Iraqi liberal bloggers may well be CIA agents based on no evidence at all…for no reason other than their form liberalism includes supports Bush in Iraq.

We have leftists on American college campuses embracing Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

And so on. So yes, article in question is over the top. But there’s no denying there’s a DEEP current of anti-Americanism on the left that regards Bush’s America as a greater danger to the world than the Islamic terrorists. I doesn’t strike me that most commenters here are even disputing that.

Deceptive quoting in this post. Although Reynolds does link to Ascher’s article the only piece he quotes, and agrees with in his post, does not include any of the material quoted here. He may or may not agree with the bolded statement – why not ask him? – but “Sigh. I wish he were wrong.” doesn’t apply to it.

Hmm, I’ve been called a Nazi and racist by leftists for a decade. I’m not feeling your pain much.

I’m thinking it probably wasn’t too painful for you at the time. You seem to enjoy prodding “leftists” (a group you don’t really know very much about, at least judging from your writings on the subject) and making them yell.

By and large, readers to the left of yourself who still visit your site are big fans of the same kind of communication you enjoy. If you spend your time hunting for Bad Things to hang a lefty label on and squabbling with people who share your kink for squatting near the water source, you’re most likely going to have a – special – view of the world.

But there’s no denying there’s a DEEP current of anti-Americanism on the left that regards Bush’s America as a greater danger to the world than the Islamic terrorists.

That Bush’s America as a greater danger to the world (indeed, the greatest danger) than the Islamic terrorists is the most obvious and commonly accepted opinon in the world. And who if not the World should know what’s the greatest danger to the World?

Michael Moore’s idyllic picture-postcard images of pre-war Iraq

It sure was idyllic compare to what it is now; so what’s the problem with Moore’s images? If a place is not perfect you have a right to bomb it into the stone age – is that it?

Hmm, I’ve been called a Nazi and racist by leftists for a decade. I’m not feeling your pain much.

That’s ok!!! you’ll get over it!!!

I h’ve been called unAmerican, AntiAmerican & a traitor despite having served 4 years in the Corps by shit-heads who have never worn a uniform in their lives & who can’t wait to send other people’s kids to war!

But there’s no denying there’s a DEEP current of anti-Americanism on the left that regards Bush’s America as a greater danger to the world than the Islamic terrorists.

On a really bad day if every thing goes their way the average Terrorist Organization can kill a few thousand people, on a bad day Shrub can turn this planet into a radio active lump of stone orbiting an unimportant star at the edge of a not particularly noticeable galaxy.

MW: You’re grossly mis-characterizing Juan Cole’s reference to another blogger’s speculation that American interests might “astroturf” in the Iraqi blogosphere for American consumption, given the minority views certain Iraqi bloggers represented and past acts of clandestine public diplomacy by the United States. (Not to mention the recent exposure of Administration pundit-buying.) You can read the account of this smear on his own website. What Cole actually did was insufficiently reprehensible to tar liberals, so it had to be exaggerated by the Noise Machine.

Liberal objections to the Iraqi elections amount to simply not being tearfully swept away by their only having taken place. Will they result in a stable government, and an independent one, that has the backing of the Iraqi people to the point that the government can field police and military forces sufficient to monoplolize violence, yet preserve liberty? Or will they lead to civil war or, as so far in Afghanistan, a kind of tribalist criminal enterprise? Because, this isn’t the first triumphalist incident we’ve witnessed in the past two years, and some of us are kind of worried that we could spend $200 billion and thousands of lives, not a few of them American, and end up with a “Saddam Lite” or a theocracy with “the imposition of sharia, the repression of women, etc.”. (And we’ve sown Iraq with Islamist suicide bombings on the way.) We want results, not genuine televised, heartfelt sentiments at Iraqi polling stations that are later disappointed, or nearly-staged moments of televised Iraqi gratitude in the SotU gallery.

As for Palestine, we want an enfranchised Palestinian people living independently alongside a Jewish republic, or we want a single, larger non-ethnic state uniting Israeli Arabs (including the Palestinians) and Jews in its governance. The general Left no more supports Islamic Jihad’s rocket attacks than the general Right supports Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian schoolgirls. Hard for me to see this desire as either anti-American or anti-democratic, but then, I’m not killing time before the Rapture.

If there’s a deep current of anti-Americanism on the Left, I neither see it here or anywhere. What we demonstrate is a refusal to drink deeply of the Flav-r-Aid that is being poured out by the national greatness crowd, or to acknowledge that Bush is somehow supernaturally ordained as our Generational Leader and to be granted extralegal authority. Indeed, it’s our unwillingness to redefine Americanism away from a love for our historic rule of law, our eagerness to lead by example, for transparency and accountability in government, and into some kind of providential, nationalistic imperialism riding on a cult of personality that the Right finds most infuriating.

Hey Phonecian, my brother is a Marine who has lost friends in Iraq, and he is himself going to be deploying there himself in a few months. I would very, very much like to see what happened if you or one of your fellow keyboard guerillas expressed those same sentiments face to face.

Hey Phonecian, my brother is a Marine who has lost friends in Iraq, and he is himself going to be deploying there himself in a few months. I would very, very much like to see what happened if you or one of your fellow keyboard guerillas expressed those same sentiments face to face.

Thank you for that well-reasoned and rational response to my analogy. As I understand it, the Soviet veterans of the Afghani adventure were a bit upset with people condemning the war when they got home, too.

Which, I guess, made Russian occupation of Afghanistan okay, right?

Try harder, Andrew. I’m not an American; explain to me what the moral difference between the two situations is, rather than blustering about your brother being able to kick my ass.

If you honestly cannot figure out the difference between the U.S. in Iraq and the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan, then there is really no way to have a conversation with you. So by all means, sit there cheering on each bombing from the comfort and safety of your living room feeling smugly superior to the evil Americans.

If Americans can’t understand this perspective, try this as an analogy: how did you feel during the eighties when you heard about the Soviet Union being given a bloody nose in Afghanistan? Assuming that, as I did, you felt a certain grim satisfaction at the thought, did that mean you supported everything the mujahadeen stood for, or just their right to fight for their freedom against an occupying empire?

That is EXACTLY the problem–those on the left see the two situations as analogous. They see an equivalence between the gulag-building, show-trialing, totalitarian Soviet Union and the United States. That, in a nutshell, is IT. Thank you.

If you’ll recall, the Soviet Union did not invade countries in order to set up democratic regimes and withdraw (as the U.S. did in Japan and western Europe after WWII). Instead, the U.S.S.R. invaded to set up client states and re-invaded them periodically as necessary when they started to get too liberal and democratic (first East Germany, then Hungary, Czeslovakia, and Poland). Remember the Iron Curtain? Remember how they used to shoot people who tried to ‘escape’ from their own coutries?

So no I don’t see Afghanistan in the 80’s and Iraq in the 00’s as analogous because *I* see fundamental differences in the nature of the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. and their goals in the world?

Those on the left? Some do. Peter Beinart definitely does, for example. But many clearly just don’t.

In response to my denial that Lynne Stewart is our elusive leftwing supporter of Islamic fundamentalism, Gareth Wilson writes:

“I don’t know how I ever managed without Wikipedia. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Stewart
Acting as a defense attorney is fine. What she did wasn’t, and the flurry of liberal groups sticking up for her right to organise terrorism is shameful.”

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know much about the Stewart case (I already have admitted as much). But here’s how the Wikipedia article that Gareth linked to describes the position of Stewart’s supporters:

“Supporters of Stewart alleged that the Government was charging her for her defense and speech for the rights of her client. They believed that Stewart’s efforts to release communications from her client were part of an appropriate defense method of trying to gain public awareness and support. They also expressed alarm that wiretraps and hidden cameras authorized by the Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act had been used by the Government in order to gather evidence against Stewart, which they called a violation of attorney-client privilege. Some of Stewart’s supporters have included the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who both filed amicus briefs in support of Stewart. They expressed fear that the prosecution for zealous defense tactics could cause attorneys to become fearful of defending alleged terrorists and deprive individuals of their constitutional right to due process.”

I don’t see any support for radical Islam in any of that. There are all kinds of arguments one might make against this defense, but the argument is simply not at all on the correctness of Stewart’s clients’ political views, let alone their terrorist tactics.

Nor is there anywhere in this Wiki article any suggestion that Stewart — who is significantly more politically radical than many of her supporters in this — herself shares her clients’ politics. The legal claim against her is that she violated an agreement with prosecutors not to “use [their] meetings, correspondence, or phone calls with Abdel Rahman to pass messages between third parties (including, but not limited to, the media) and Abdel Rahman.” She was convicted of violating these rules. Even if she did violate these rules, and even if these rules were constitutional, there’s no reason to think that she did so out of political sympathy rather than a desire to win her clients’ case.

I love it when people like Jonah Goldberg bemoan being called a “maroon” by Juan Cole and in the process proves he is a “moron” by not knowing how to spell the word that best describes him.

IIRC, we invaded Japan because they attacked us, and Germany because they declared war on us. If this had been a grand crusade for democracy, we would never have allied with the USSR. And, FWIW, we still haven’t entirely withdrawn our troops from either Germany or Japan.

You know, I’m not going to try to convince you that there’s a fundamental difference between the remaining U.S. forces in Germany and Japan and, say, the Soviet forces in Czechoslovakia in 1968 or in eastern Europe generally until 1989. The point is that YOU don’t see the difference (or don’t see a great difference). If that’s still your worldview at this point, I really don’t see a lot of hope for the power of persuasion.

But surely you must have some inkling why people who *don’t* share your viewpoint find it so profoundly offensive? Or can’t you see that either?

That is EXACTLY the problem—those on the left see the two situations as analogous. They see an equivalence between the gulag-building, show-trialing, totalitarian Soviet Union and the United States. That, in a nutshell, is IT. Thank you.

Gulag-building – check.

Show-trialing – check.

Totalitarian – getting there.

And, mw, you may recall we are talking about Iraq in 2005, not Japan in 1945. You didn’t invade Iraq “to promote democracy” – that became the excuse post facto.

And I’m not an American, I wasn’t bought up to consider the US to be God, the USMC to be the Holy Ghost, or whatever idiot is in the White House to be Jesus Christ Almighty. Arguments about how good Americans think themselves to be, how great apple pie is, or how fluffy little puppy dogs are really neat simply don’t impress me.

It’s a simple task, despite all of Andrews huffing and blustering. Explain to me, as a resident of a liberal democracy outside the US, exactly what the moral differences between the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the US occupation of Iraq are.

Though who knows, perhaps there is record of Afghanistan’s religious establishment insisting on elections and the Soviets acquiescing.

So you’re claiming that the fact that, after it invaded, the US faces operational constraints forcing it to bow to Iraqi demands in order to reduce resistance makes the actual invasion and occupation morally justified? If the US could have gotten away with ignoring Sistani, it would have.

I also have a feeling (though I could be wrong) that the resistance to the Soviet occupation did not involve a minority of the population of the country that wanted to make sure that it kept rule against the majority of its population.

Uh-huh.

“An earlier Iraqi estimate put the number at 40,000 fighters and 200,000 supporters. I personally suspect that estimate is closer to the truth. Except that I think the difference between a fighter and a supporter is fluid. Iraq has large numbers of battle-hardened veterans from the 8 years of the Iran-Iraq War and from the Gulf War. The Baath remnants can pick them back up when the Americans anger them and put them to work in guerrilla operations. The Baath remnants also know where the 250,000 tons of missing munitions are, and can supply these to downstream cells.”

“So I fear I think the US military is just being highly optimistic with these figures. The evidence from the recent Zogby poll is that 52 percent of Sunni Arabs say that attacking US personnel and facilities is justified. I’d say that comes to over 2.5 million supporters, and those are the ones who will openly admit it to a pollster.”

And as for the Shi’ites…

“Actually, the election results are not likely to enhance American influence over Iraq. According to the reliable Arab-run polling firm, Zogby International, more than two-thirds of Iraq’s Shi’ites want US forces out of Iraq either immediately or once the elected government is in place”

Well, Phonecian, even if we accept the very upward estimate of 200,000, I’d say that 200,000 out of twenty five million represents a distinct minority, somewhere along the lines of .8% of the population. Or let’s go with 2.5 out of 25 million. That leaves us with ten percent of the population. So yes, I would in fact say that this represents a minority of Iraqis trying to impose its rule on the majority. Though perhaps my arithmatic is wrong.

“So you’re claiming that the fact that, after it invaded, the US faces operational constraints forcing it to bow to Iraqi demands in order to reduce resistance makes the actual invasion and occupation morally justified?”

Oh, well, shit. You got me there. Except, of course, that that’s not what I said. Read what I wrote. Totalitarian dictatorships generally don’t bow to the demands of a countries religious leadership; they generally do things like try to terrorize them into submission. Strangely, though, the only people from whom Sistani has been in any danger have been Sadr’s faction and the Ba’athists.

Nor am I arguing that the U.S. will gain increased influence in Iraq with a Shi’ite government.

I am, though, arguing that the U.S. is in fact morally superior to the U.S.S.R.

You know, I’m not going to try to convince you that there’s a fundamental difference between the remaining U.S. forces in Germany and Japan and, say, the Soviet forces in Czechoslovakia in 1968 or in eastern Europe generally until 1989. The point is that YOU don’t see the difference (or don’t see a great difference). If that’s still your worldview at this point, I really don’t see a lot of hope for the power of persuasion.

mw, I disagreed with your description of the U.S. in WWII, and after WWII, in relationship to Japan and Germany. What makes you automatically assume that I also disagree with you characterization of the USSR during and after WWII in Eastern Europe? And how can you assume that I am in any way drawing an equivalence between the US in Germany and Japan, and the USSR in Czechoslovakia?

All I said was that the US did not go to war with Germany and Japan because they wanted to impose democracy; the US went to war because it was attacked. And the troops did not withdraw, as you suggested they did. Just because one insists on the facts, and is willing to criticize the US (though I’m not sure that I even did that in this case), doesn’t lead to some sort of slippery slope of equivalence to any other regime that one might criticize. Stop putting words in my mouth, and stop assuming that you know what I — or “the left” — think about the USSR, or anything else for that matter, without solid evidence that we think that way.

I’m going to make one last comment and then leave Phonecian to his fantasies of killing U.S. troops. The U.S. invaded Iraq with several goals in mind, viz., to remove a regime that was hostile to the United States of America, to show the Islamic world that the U.S. was not afraid to engage in military action, and to establish a government in Iraq that was more or less consistent with accepted international norms of human rights and friendly to the U.S., though not necessarily in that order.

That the part of that goal was to bring a regime that allowed various freedoms previously not experienced by the Iraqis marks a very large difference between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. The Soviet Union had no plans to install a government responsive to the people of Afghanistan.

One can argue about the good of the invasion (and the general consensus among troops who have been to Iraq is that it’s going to be all but impossible to ever unfuck the country), and whether or not it was justified. But when you start talking about Americans as agents of an evil regime bent on conquest, you are engaging in idiot fantasizing.

On a final note: I am pretty sure that most European and American leftists do not enjoy the thought of Americans dying. I think that in general the posters and the commentators at CT for the most part believe that the Republican party has some severely fucked up ideas about what is good for the U.S. and world in general, but also desire good for the U.S. and world in general. Would be bomb-throwers like the “Phonecian,” though, are worthy of nothing but contempt.

Done.

It’s a simple task, despite all of Andrews huffing and blustering. Explain to me, as a resident of a liberal democracy outside the US, exactly what the moral differences between the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the US occupation of Iraq are.

Explaining would be simple, but not necessarily short and would be a complete waste of time–as I am sure it would make no dent at all.

But that’s not the point. The point is that GIVEN you believe tha the US already has the equivalent of Soviet gulags and Soviet show-trials and is well on the way to Soviet style totalitarianism — can it be any mystery to why leftists such as yourself are perceived and portrayed as they are by those holding opposing views?

Such differences, after all, are not minor differences of opinion between ‘friends’. And I find it strange that people here should be shocked to find those on the right villifying them. To the brother of the marine, your viewpoint is villainous (just as to you, the Marine’s mission is sufficiently evil that you would be glad to see him dead). So why would anybody expect polite criticism between the two camps here?

As it happens, despite living in a deep blue U.S. college town that went about 85% for Kerry, my barber was recently called back to serve. He got there just in time to help provide security for the elections. I think it is an incredibly important and worthwhile job. Anybody who thinks the opposite–that it would be have been a good thing for him to have been blown up while he’s was doing that…well that person is–objectively–his enemy (and mine, too, given that I support what he’s doing).

The U.S. invaded Iraq with several goals in mind, viz., to remove a regime that was hostile to the United States of America, to show the Islamic world that the U.S. was not afraid to engage in military action, and to establish a government in Iraq that was more or less consistent with accepted international norms of human rights and friendly to the U.S., though not necessarily in that order.

There seems to be one item missing from that list…WMDs.

Was this not the principal US goal? And if it wasn’t, how do justify nine months of lying to the American public and the world by the Bush administration (which is what it must have been had disarming Saddam not been the principal — or even the only — goal of the invasion)?

Ted – There is a difference between “helping” and “rooting” I don’t think Instapundit or any sane pro-war writer is saying the left is “helping” with arms, material, intelligence, etc., terrorists–but many in the left are rooting for the terrorists to win, especially in Iraq. They want a chastised America and, ulimtately, perhaps, a reduced America. I do think also some on the left seek to help the terrorists by advocating for them in areas of public debate, by calling them “insurgents” by moral equivalance and a host of other rhetorical devices designed to maximize America’s “wrongness” and minimize that of everyone else…

The U.S. invaded Iraq with several goals in mind, viz., to remove a regime that was hostile to the United States of America,

When did Saddam ever show any indication of attacking the US?

to show the Islamic world that the U.S. was not afraid to engage in military action,

This is a ridiculous justification for war, and doubly so since not many doubt America’s willingness to go to war.

and to establish a government in Iraq that was more or less consistent with accepted international norms of human rights and

friendly to the U.S.

Now we’re talking. This is probably Bush’s reason for tricking America into invading, but it is demonstrably not the reason America invaded.

The US should get there troops out of Europe and force the EU to start defending themselves. Once they have to start paying their own way, and fighting on their own, I am sure that they won’t be so self righteous.

I am, though, arguing that the U.S. is in fact morally superior to the U.S.S.R.

The US is a country of 300 million people. The USSR was also a country of almost 300 million people.

If you really think (and I don’t doubt that you do) that US morally superior to USSR, you’re are nothing but a chauvinist pig.

But if what you mean is that the current US leader is morally superior to the last leader of the USSR – Michael Gorbachev – then you’re only an idiot.

Watching lefties like Alpers and Phoenician equivocate the US with the Soviet Union while not noticing they just proved Reynolds point is just delicious.

Regarding Iraq, I have no truck with anyone who would cheerlead the death of an American, or an Iraqi who is not trying to kill that soldier or another Iraqi, for that matter. I know no American liberal who does.

I do recall, in the matter of cheerleading for sudden death, Fox News showing, in 2003, a video of bombs striking downtown Baghdad at night, set to the finale from “The 1812 Overture”, as though it was summer concert in the park, as though no one was actually underneath those bombs. Well, no one for whom, in the judgement of the American to which Fox plays, the time hadn’t righteously come. I was appalled then, and I am now, and I’ll advance this idea: It’s this kind of nationalist revel that makes non-Americans (See “Phoenecian”, above) divine the outlines of the post-war USSR in the USA. We’re not as cruel as it was, not by a long shot. Not yet, but we’re not quite as scared of a repeat of the kind of national trauma that was 22 June 1941 as was Stalin in 1945. Yet. We’re not as destitute or isolated as the USSR of 1980. Yet. But we’ve also just conquered a nation that demonstrably posed only the feeblest threat to the United States, supposedly motivated by an attack that came from a country and individuals with no connection to it. We’re also building permanent military bases in Iraq, and we’ve demanded that the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated with the “sovereign” Iraqi administration be ratified if only a majority, not a supermajority, of the Iraqi assembly agrees. (This matter was the major sticking point in transfer negotiations last June, according to Larry Diamond.) We’ve not treated Iraqi oil revenues with transparency. We’ve not established security for ordinary Iraqis, while we’ve done much better keeping Americans safe in Iraq–such safety as can be had. We’ve tossed aside legal and humanitarian conventions in the treatment of an occupied people, where it’s suited us. We’ve gone and greased our slide into grasping colonialist power pretty well, even if we’re not at the bottom. Yet.

Speaking of cheerleading, which brings to mind human pyramids, I often wonder whether those who loudly minimized Abu Ghraib, and officially-approved extralegal treatment of non-Americans, here, say on the radio airwaves, considered the deleterious effect that sadism had on the mission of Americans in Iraq. I don’t think those were liberals.

The Bush presidency has been a catastrophe for the country, with deep and long-lasting harm on many levels. The wingers crowing in an attempt to score points are utterly oblivious to the clear evidence in this thread of one of the worst aspects: much of the rest of the world has lost its respect for America.

It may appear to be automatically true to the US right-wing that we are the shining city on the hill. Thanks to George Bush and his followers, the image of the US instead for many people in the world is that of a colonial occupier and torture state.
I thus view opposition to Bush as a deeply patriotic and moral matter.

Chris, go read Phoenician’s posts yourself, especially where he/she/it explicitly denounces terrorism while expressing neutrality at combat between Iraqi rebels and US soldiers. Being “not an American”, Phoenician has no duty to support US troops over their enemies. You also ought to re-read Alpers’s posts since nowhere in any of them does he equivocate the US with the USSR.

It doesn’t help that so many people insist their own side’s ranters are not nearly so extreme as the other side’s.

That’s what the mainstream media thinks. That’s why ‘balanced reporting’ is often halfway between sense and nonsense. All the White House has to do is spruik 100% nonsense and the USA gets to act 50% brain damaged — on issues of the White House’s choosing.

It gets even worse when Democrats and “liberal commentators” talk 20% nonsense just to be perceived by “reasonable” people as “credible”.

There is an Axis of Stupidity made up of nations where the big lie works. Under Bush, the USA has joined it.

I meant to add to my last post: All this talk about WWII might seem desparately off topic, but in fact, it’s very illuminating.

The fact that what I’ve written above has been aggressively misread to suggest that I believe there’s an equivalence between US postwar behavior in Japan and Soviet postwar behavior in Czechoslokia speaks volumes about how the right ended up claiming that we on the left all support Islamic fundamentalism.

Somehow, a short statement that in no way, shape or form indicated a belief in the purported equivalence (an equivalence that, for the third time, I utterly reject, on the off chance that this is simply an honest misunderstanding) was simply assumed to argue for the equivalence.

What remains unclear to me is whether those who persist in claiming that I am suggesting such an equivalence: 1) honestly misunderstood me (in which case I’ll happily accept their apology, and we can all move on); 2) are arguing in bad faith; 3) assume that I, as a lefty, am arguing in bad faith, so I must _really_ believe that the US was just as bad as the USSR, even if I repeatedly deny it; or 4) something else that I’m just not thinking of at the moment.

Let’s not fool ourselves. The rightwing need radical Islam as much as vice-versa.

Otherwise, why would anybody cuddle up to Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld for protection?

“How many on the left are making any effort to distance themselves from Ward Churchill? ”

I don’t see why I have to. Until last week, I had never heard of him.

The U.S. invaded Iraq with several goals in mind

So many advanced, in fact, that any rational observer would conclude they made them up as they went along…

Interesting, however, that the US is building bloody big permanent military bases in Iraq and has done its level best to privatise the Iraqi oil industry into the hands of overseas (i.e. American) companies, though.
but many in the left are rooting for the terrorists to win, especially in Iraq.

There are terrorists in Iraq. However, we don’t necessarily assume everyone trying to kill Americans is a “terrorist”. Like it or not, many people see a certain right on the part of any people to take up arms and fight an invading army, even if that army happens to be American.

So who exactly are “the terrorists” in your comment above?

Chris, go read Phoenician’s posts yourself, especially where he/she/it explicitly denounces terrorism while expressing neutrality at combat between Iraqi rebels and US soldiers. Being “not an American”, Phoenician has no duty to support US troops over their enemies.

Thank you, CT.

Watching lefties like Alpers and Phoenician equivocate the US with the Soviet Union while not noticing they just proved Reynolds point is just delicious.

I find it fascinating, Chris, that right-wingers exhibit such an inability to actually read.

My analogy was between the US in Iraq and the USSR in Afghanistan, and in particular the view the rest of the world should have of these events. To paint that as “equivocating” the US and the USSR would get a failing mark in any freshman college essay.

The growing parallels between a “gulag-building, show-trialing, totalitarian Soviet Union” and the post-PATRIOT US are a seperate matter.

Look, imperialism is imperialism. The imperialist nation feels entitled to violate other countries sovereignty in the name of the imperialist’s professed national ideals. Both the USSR in Afghanistan and now the US in Iraq behaved as imperialists. Both professed noble national ideals. A difference between the U.S. and the USSR is that in its own territory the U.S. does a much better job of living up to those ideals than the USSR did. But overseas we have only a sketchy and spotty record of genuinely respecting the rights of citizens in other nations. This is not too surprising, since imperialism by its nature tends to erode liberal and democratic traditions.

Again, I don’t want to try to talk you out of this belief — I doubt I’d succeed. But try to grasp the gulf between somebody who believes what you do–that ‘imperialism is imperialism’ and that outside their own countries, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. did not behave so differently and people who believe something like the following — that the U.S. was largely responsible for defeating and freeing the world from the two worst tyrannies in history. That unlike the Soviets and unlike the European colonial powers, it has consistently shown a lack of imperial impulses by liberating occupied allies and defeating enemies, helping to set democratic governments, and then withdrawing (except in those cases where some troops remain by invitation of the democratically elected host governments–and in those cases, the U.S. forces are not involved in local politics and leave when asked–Subic Bay, for example).

Now, again, I’m not trying to persuade CT folks that this latter view is correct — only that it there is a huge gulf between it and most of the opinions expressed here…and that, therefore, strong antipathy between groups holding such opposing views is just not surprising.

mw,

look, the view you expressed about Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan is more or less the view I am expressing about American soldiers in Iraq. I think this is what Phoenican is saying as well, although, I’m not Phoenican, so I don’t know. I think your blindness about a lot of American foreign policy is deeply unfortunate: Vietnam as Afghanistan, Latin America as Central Europe don’t seem to me wildly implausible comparisons. However, that’s a separate argument. You seem to accept that there is something to be said for otherwise terrible actions that restrict the power of an organisation which you have independent reasons for wanting the power of restricted. That is the position I am advocating and so we don’t seem to disagree about that.

mw,

look, the view you expressed about Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan is more or less the view I am expressing about American soldiers in Iraq. I think this is what Phoenican is saying as well, although, I’m not Phoenican, so I don’t know. I think your blindness about a lot of American foreign policy is deeply unfortunate: Vietnam as Afghanistan, Latin America as Central Europe don’t seem to me wildly implausible comparisons. However, that’s a separate argument. You seem to accept that there is something to be said for otherwise terrible actions that restrict the power of an organisation which you have independent reasons for wanting the power of restricted. That is the position I am advocating and so we don’t seem to disagree about that.

sorry about the repeat post – you might want to do something about your software. The ‘blindness’ claim should have read ‘what I take to be your blindness’. Apologies for that too.

“The US should get there troops out of Europe”

You know, la, no one’s stopping them. If they want to leave, they’re more than welcome to. If they want to stay, well they’re not always very welcome, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it anyway, except the US. You might want to consider that pesky fact that the decision to keep US bases in Europe, or anywhere else, is entirely a matter of US policy. They’re not here to do favours to anyone today, it’s their own decision, their own interests, your own money. If you don’t like it, complain to the Pentagon budget department. Thanks.

If they want to stay, well they’re not always very welcome, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it anyway, except the US.

Oh, BS. Any European country that wants US troops only has to ask them to leave. Remember Subic Bay?

people who believe something like the following — that the U.S. was largely responsible for defeating and freeing the world from the two worst tyrannies in history

mw – first, that currency has already been spent. I am perfectly entitled to be politically anti-american today, while at the same time celebrating every year the anniversary of the allied liberation from nazism and fascism. Because today is 2005, not 1945. Today’s policies are not yesterday’s policies; today’s context in which those policies operate are not yesterday’s.
Secondly, while some people with your views are so keen to spend that anti-nazi anti-soviet currency as if to preempt any possible criticism of today’s policies, you seem entirely forgetful, or unconcerned, about the history of US involvement in _supporting_ some other very bad tyrannies, in Europe itself (Spain), in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Asia, in the past, and in some countries, still today.

Because “freeing the world from two of the worst tyrannies” was not part of a moral campaign or humanitarian effort, it was part of a military and political strategy, like all countries have always had, the bigger their power, the bigger their strategies. Some call it imperialism, some call it strategical interests, some call it superior strength. Pick your preferred definition. But one thing is sure. No foreign policy of any country, much less any superpower, is decided on moral grounds alone. It may have morally desirable ends in one area, but that’s not its motivation. So it won’t shun from immoral ends and immoral means in another area, as long as they fit that strategy.

Disagree all you want with the comparison between the Soviets in Afghanistan and the US in Iraq (and it was obvious to everyone that it wasn’t a comparison between the US and Soviet empire themselves). But you cannot be that selective with history in assessing the overall effects of certain policies, and you cannot ascribe exclusively moral motivations to them based only on what positive outcomes they have had in one respect, or one geographical area only. You have to be a little more honest than that.

“Oh, BS. Any European country that wants US troops only has to ask them to leave. ”

Yeah? In a letter to Santa? Please. The US has put in place military agreements to keep their bases where _they_ want (and to, amongs other things, grant all its military personnel total immunity from prosecution under the laws of that country, so that, as I’m sure you read in the linked story, dumb pilots who do dumb things that result in people being killed can get away with it).

Since “la” was so very intelligently expressing the intelligent and oh so original suggestion that the US should remove all its bases from Europe because that would somehow be a mortal blow to European interests, I thought it would be useful to point out the painfully obvious fact that the interests and decisions to keep US military bases anywhere on this planet are the US own. If a superpower keeping military bases all over the planet is only doing so out of sheer love and generosity and a desire to protect the poor natives from themselves, then Santa is real, too. Everybody needs some illusions. Some are just more arrogant, dumb, and dangerous than others.

mw – first, that currency has already been spent. I am perfectly entitled to be politically anti-american today, while at the same time celebrating every year the anniversary of the allied liberation from nazism and fascism. Because today is 2005, not 1945. Today’s policies are not yesterday’s policies; today’s context in which those policies operate are not yesterday’s.

Given that you think the benefits of American power were all achieved by 1945, I’m guessing you don’t live in, say, Poland or Lithuania or what used to be East Germany? Or Kuwait? Or South Korea? And I’m pretty damn sure you weren’t living in Afghanistan under the Taliban or Iraq under Saddam. YOUR country may have realized most of its benefits from American power by 1945 (though don’t be too sure–what kept those expansionist Soviets on their side of the iron curtain for 50 years?) but others did not necessarily share your good fortune.

No foreign policy of any country, much less any superpower, is decided on moral grounds alone.

Sometimes it is — Kosovo, East Timor. But agreed–usually it is not. But that does NOT mean that the U.S. doesn’t intend to build, support, and leave in Iraq and Afghanistan decent, independent, democratically elected governments in place of the brutal tyrannies that were there before. That is what matters to me–not the mixture of motives behind the actions.

you seem entirely forgetful, or unconcerned, about the history of US involvement in supporting some other very bad tyrannies, in Europe itself (Spain), in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Asia, in the past, and in some countries, still today.

I’m neither forgetful nor unconcerned about that. Some of these have been serious, indefensible mistakes, no doubt about it, while others have involved difficult tradeoffs — for example, how hard should the U.S. push for democratic reforms in Egypt and Jordan right now given that the cooperation of those two governments appears essential for progress between the Isrealis and the Palestinians? Is the answer obvious to you? (It’s not to me).

you seem to accept that there is something to be said for otherwise terrible actions that restrict the power of an organisation which you have independent reasons for wanting the power of restricted.

That’s what I am arguing. I am not arguing that the purposes of the USSR in Afghanistan and the USA in Iraq are morally equivalent. I may think that. You have no way of knowing, since I have said sweet FA about that. What I have said is that I don’t like US foreign policy, that I think that it would be better if the US didn’t invade places and f*ck them up.

Yes, I KNOW that’s what you’re arguing–that the U.S. is a power that needs to restrained, that the world would be better off if the U.S. did not achieve its goals in Iraq and elsewhere and that, for that reason, you see the Iraqi insurgents as performing a useful function however nasty they might be.

That is enough — more than enough — to put a huge distance between us, is it not?

After all, I think the world will be a MUCH worse place if the U.S. does NOT achieve its goals in Iraq. I further believe that the Iraq under Saddam and Afghanistan under the Taliban were about as f*cked up as any human societies have ever been and that, as a result of the U.S. invasions these places will have been left vastly better off (though positive outcomes are not as yet guaranteed and I believe the opposition of western leftists is having the effect of encouraging the insurgents–they do pay attention to western public opinion).

I short, I think you are dead wrong–dangerously wrong–on the most important geopolitical issue in the world right now. Our differences are not trivial, are they?

Subic bay: yes, occasionally the U.S. temporarily pulls back from a basing area. Temporarily. Remember when we gave back the Panama Canal? That didn’t last long. And U.S. troops got the right to operate in the Phillipines again in 1999 under the VFA. In fact with greater territorial access than we had at Subic Bay. So the Phillipines got to spend a whole 8 years (1991-99) out of the entire 20th century without U.S. troops on their territory.

But, on the other hand, they were fighting for not just for an unjust cause but in support of truly evil social system that had, over its 60 year life span, enslaved and murdered millions of its own citizens (and stunted the lives of all who escaped murder or imprisonment).

Again you are confusing domestic and foreign issues. It doesn’t matter whether a country inside its own borders is a communist hellhole or a enlightened utopia; what matters for the rest of the world in judging it when it invades another country is how it respected the rule of law, whether it was an aggressive war, and what its motives were. By all those criteria, the US is at fault. Hell, the USSR had better reason to be in Afghanistan than the US has in being in Iraq; Afghanistan was a real threat (albeit minor) to the USSR.

So yes, I wanted to see the Soviet Union defeated in Afghanistan (and everywhere), but I took no pleasure in the deaths of Soviet soldiers.

I believe the words I used were “a certain grim satisfaction”.

But I would not have objected and acted hurt if a Soviet citizen had considered me one of the enemy—the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. were enemies, for good clear reasons.

When a large power aggressively invades a smaller country which is no threat to it, why should other small countries consider it a friend?

that the U.S. was largely responsible for defeating and freeing the world from the two worst tyrannies in history.

i, The USSR did the lion’s share against the bigger of those two tyrannies, MW.

ii, That was 60 years ago. In 1879, Germany was just united under Bismarck and busy with social reforms making it possibly the most progressive countries in the world. 60 years later…

Exactly, exactly, exactly! You think that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are like Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. I fundamentally, categorically DO NOT believe that.

And yet, when pressed on why, all you can come up with are domestic differences between the US and the USSR. Would you care to explain to us why you think that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are not like Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan?

What’s the second worst tyranny in history?

That would be Nazi Germany.

The first would be the Mongols.

mw

“What I have said is that I don’t like US foreign policy, that I think that it would be better if the US didn’t invade places and f*ck them up.

Yes, I KNOW that’s what you’re arguing—that the U.S. is a power that needs to restrained, that the world would be better off if the U.S. did not achieve its goals in Iraq and elsewhere and that, for that reason, you see the Iraqi insurgents as performing a useful function however nasty they might be”.

The first of these claims is true: I do think the US is a power which could do with restraining.

The second depends on what you think the US’s goals in Iraq are. We differ about that. If you thought what I think about the US’s goals in Iraq, I think you would agree with me. Likewise, if I thought what you think about the US’s goals in Iraq, from what I can gather about what you think the US’s goals, I would probably agree with you (although that wouldn’t justify the invasion, so far as I’m concerned).

The third claim depends on your precise interpretation of what a useful function is: if you mean, I’m prepared to support them, even though I think they are wrong, that’s not true. However, if you mean, they are wrong, I have no desire to see them win, I do not support them, but, despite being outweighed by all this, there is the consideration that they stop the US from invading some where else to be said in their favour, it’s true of me. You might not think there is a difference, but if there isn’t, by your own logic, you supported the Taliban by thinking the mujaheedin were performing a useful function in causing problems for the soviets. I assume you didn’t and don’t. By your own logic then, you must allow me the same position of differentiating between support and thinking there is one thing about some group which is to be said in their favour.

You and I do differ, obviously quite substanially. While I think there is something to be said for American foreign policy in a number of cases, I think its current course is not something we ought to be particularly sanguine about. You disagree. This is a substanial difference. This is not what I am claiming we agree about. I am claiming we agree about the central claim I have been making in every comment I have made in this thread, that

“there is something to be said for otherwise terrible actions that restrict the power of an organisation which you have independent reasons for wanting the power of restricted”.

The argument about the rights and wrongs of American foreign policy is a separate one. You might disagree with me about either, but they are separate issues: one is a claim about what kind of attitudes are consistent, which I might well be wrong about, and the other is a claim about American foreign policy, which I also might well be wrong about, but which nothing you have said is remotely likely to convince me of (Afghanistan vastly better off: in thirty years, maybe. Iraq, you must be joking).

Rather famously, the Indonesian massacre in East Timor began exactly one hour after the airplane carrying Ford and Kissinger left the runway in Jakarta. The US *supported* the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. When after decades of struggle, the East Timorese had got the attention of activists around the world, the US government hinted that, maybe, it would be nice if the occupation ended. There was no actual action on the US’s part.

On Iraq, and other invasions: has everyone forgotten the principle of self-determination? It’s supposed to be a fundamental democratic principle. The political form of Iraq is up to the people who live in Iraq, not anyone else. Those who fight against US occupation are entirely justified in doing so.

ANDREW REEVES:”The U.S. invaded Iraq with several goals in mind”

“But make no mistake – as I said earlier – we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about.” -Ari Fleischer Press Briefing 4/10/03

Don’t worry wacko, when all Europeans have become terrorists due to their governments not shipping all those damn foreigners back to where they belong (or to internment camps, which would be even better), then the US can just bomb Europe all over again and liberate it! So that in a hundred years, Americans will still be telling Europeans to shut up and be thankful.

Now, the question is: why are uncritical supporters of all policies of their superior-strength power so desperate for approval and ego boosts from people they despise? Isn’t that a sign of weakness?

Again you are confusing domestic and foreign issues. It doesn’t matter whether a country inside its own borders is a communist hellhole or a enlightened utopia; what matters for the rest of the world in judging it when it invades another country is how it respected the rule of law, whether it was an aggressive war, and what its motives were.

It may not matter to YOU whether a country inside is a hellhole or not, whether a tyrant has a history of killing his own people by the hundreds of thousands, but it matters very much to ME.

I find the idea that a ‘legal’ war can only be authorized by the UN (the organization whose ‘human rights’ commission has recently included Libya, Cuba, Sudan, and Syria) is absurd.

But…but…the point of this exercize was not to convince you to see things the way I do, but to RECOGNIZE the deep divisions between us.

I don’t see why you should be surprised that I find your views on these topics…repugnant, and I won’t be shocked if you return the favor.

Which, getting back to the original topic, is why it’s kind of silly for CT types to get all offended by the target article–given the differences in views, that kind of thing it is to be expected, isn’t it?

But…but…the point of this exercize was not to convince you to see things the way I do, but to RECOGNIZE the deep divisions between us.

I don’t see why you should be surprised that I find your views on these topics…repugnant, and I won’t be shocked if you return the favor.

Which, getting back to the original topic, is why it’s kind of silly for CT types to get all offended by the target article—given the differences in views, that kind of thing it is to be expected, isn’t it?

mw,

I don’t expect to you to find our views attractive, or even non-repugnant. I do expect you not to distort those views when arguing against them (and I should think you’d want the same from us). Just because you find a given view repugnant does not mean that it can be reduced to any other view you happen to find repugnant.

Ted’s original post objected to Nelson Ascher, Glenn Reynolds, and company’s argument that (to quote Ascher) “all our leftist friends’ bets are now on radical Islam.”

This is not a mere distortion or exaggeration. It’s entirely untrue. In this whole, incredibly long thread, nobody has so far produced a single example of a leftist, however obscure, who’s “betting on” (either in the sense of supporting, or in the sense of counting on in some other way) radical Islam. It just ain’t so.

I for one have no interest in having Glenn Reynolds like what I believe (indeed, at this point I’d be a bit worried if I found myself agreeing with him about anything). But anyone who’s at all interested in honest, democratic debate about issues of public concern _should_ care about all sides in that debate representing opposing arguments fairly and debating in good faith. Unfortunately, neither of those things is taking place. And the situation is _not_ symmetrical.

No, it’s not being obtuse. It’s more like a cult, supremacy cult; every empire has one, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to function. It’s not based on anything rational, it’s just a matter of faith, faith in the divinely ordained destiny, “assumption of the unique moral value of the US, of a mission to redeem the world by spreading the American way of life”. If this is simply ‘being obtuse’, then every religious person is obtuse.

Hey, we’re Americans. We shouldn’t have to choose between being feared and being loved. We want it all, baby.

And I bet you want it _now_, too?

Damn. See what you’ve done there, uncle kvetch. Now I got that Queen song running through my head. That should teach me to ask naive questions to seasoned imperialists!

This site has long held the position that it is acceptable to tar ones opponents with the radical speech of anyone ideologically associated. This has been demonstrated time and again any time someone uses Jerry Fawel or Pat Robinson to represent the voice of all 60+ million Christian fundamentalists in the United States. Now suddenly, there is an issue with the application of guilt by association?

Michael Moore who portrays pre-war Baghdad as idyllic

Jesus, MW, get over it already. He filmed a scene from the street with children and ordinary people doing ordinary things. Such as had been filmed by reporters and tv crews for years. Because, you know, ordinary people existed in Iraq and they did ordinary things even before being Liberated by the Forces of Good. But of course, to you and your ilk, the point of that scene is not to show the real people who were about the get bombed, naaah, that would be too banal. No, it has to be Pro-Saddam propaganda. Yawn…

And what about the scene with the Iraqi woman crying and cursing over her relatives being bombed and killed? Oh the outrage. Oh the scandal. People being bombed should only be smiling and grateful! The fact he filmed that woman definitely proves he was supporting terrorists! and Saddam! whatever the relation between the two was!

It really shows that people like you are just not used to dissent, even the blandest, mainstream, Disney-produced, million-dollar Oscar-winning kind. No wonder the real radicals and far leftists, however utterly insignificant they may be, send you people right into a frenzy. You cannot even conceive that anything to the left of Kissinger could exist.

I don’t call snarkiness “support” however, I call it “schadenfreude.” Now schadenfreude may be unkind and it may be childish, but it isn’t “aid & comfort.” It isn’t a conspiracy. Unless you’re arguing that uncharitable words provide “aid & comfort” to the “enemy,” I don’t think they begin to meet the definition for the widespread “support for radical islam” which is being alleged here.

Nobody said it was conspiracy. But it’s not just attitude–it a consistent pattern of looking for and trumpeting the worst news while ignoring everything else and when there’s any choice, putting the worst possible spin on everything.

Does this rise to the level of ‘aid & comfort’. I dunno — I don’t have a precise definition of that, but I would say it does materially worsen the chances of a successful outcome. How can the insurgents not be encouraged by leftists here predicting their strength and the inevitability of their success? Is it just chance the Bin Laden has recently been working from the same talking points as the western left?

When I see people who would clearly prefer to see things go to hell in Iraq, with islamists of one stripe or another taking over, rather than have a decent government (and run the risk of Bush being able to claim any kind of vindication) — well, you can put whatever label on that you want — call it “schadenfreude” rather than “support for islamic radicals” if you like, but the effect is the same.

It may not matter to YOU whether a country inside is a hellhole or not, whether a tyrant has a history of killing his own people by the hundreds of thousands, but it matters very much to ME.

Tell me, in the sentence “[W]hat matters for the rest of the world in judging it when it invades another country is how it respected the rule of law, whether it was an aggressive war, and what its motives were”, what part of “when it invades another country” are you having problems understanding. They’re not difficult words; you can look them up in a dictionary.

I find the idea that a ‘legal’ war can only be authorized by the UN (the organization whose ‘human rights’ commission has recently included Libya, Cuba, Sudan, and Syria) is absurd.

This is because you are (i) ignorant of the facts and (ii) ignorant of history.

Regarding (i), I recommend reading the UN Charter, articles 25 and 39-42.

Regarding (ii), you may note that the UN was set up on the 24th October 1945. During the period 1939-1945, a lesson had been learned on the desirability of a “legal” right by sovereign nations to declare war unilaterally.

“In this whole, incredibly long thread, nobody has so far produced a single example of a leftist, however obscure, who’s “betting on” (either in the sense of supporting, or in the sense of counting on in some other way) radical Islam. It just ain’t so.”

But of course such examples were produced. Lynn Stewart. Ramsey Clark. Phoenician who supports the terrorists blowing up marines.

Hey, MW, go back to my posts dated February 12, 2005 08:44 PM and February 13, 2005 10:38 AM.

Where the hell did you learn to read, lad?

When I see people who would clearly prefer to see things go to hell in Iraq, with islamists of one stripe or another taking over, rather than have a decent government (and run the risk of Bush being able to claim any kind of vindication) — well, you can put whatever label on that you want — call it “schadenfreude” rather than “support for islamic radicals” if you like, but the effect is the same.

When I see people who would clearly prefer to burn fossil fuels in their cars, with associated CO2 and monoxide pollution, rather than have their cars run on moonbeams and the energies given off by crystals – well, you can call that “facing reality” rather than “polluting the earth”, but the effect is the same.

Or, to be more serious, the real choice in Iraq is not between a theocracy and a secular democracy. The real choice is between Iraq emulating Iran and Iraq emulating Somalia.

Good article on the rights that all of us stand to lose when the government persecutes civil rights activists like Lynne Stewart as “terrorists”:

http://www.slate.com/id/2113446/

mw – How can the insurgents not be encouraged by leftists here predicting their strength and the inevitability of their success?

Supposing pompous nonsense deserves an answer.

Further supposing anyone who is not embracing optimistic uncritical approval of US policies vis a vis Iraq and/or terrorism is a leftist (that would enlarge the definition of leftist from far left to centre-right), and that these far-left to centre-right leftists being bitchy, angry or even schadenfreundlich are thus giving moral aid and comfort to the insurgents and/or terrorists, in post-liberation Iraq or anywhere else, _and_ that these characters give a shit about what American or European far-left to centre-right leftists think.

(Imagine the scene, Falluja, morning, insurgents headquarters, guy logs on to the internet, and after browsing their favourite leftist weblogs and newspapers of choice in 10 different languages, exclaims to fellow comrades:
– Hey dudes, the leftists are with us!
– Really? wow, that’s awesome!
– Blimey, just this morning I was having a crisis of faith, thinking that what we’re doing is maybe completely immoral and counterproductive and tactically useless except to create more destruction and death which offer more post-facto rationalisations for intervention in Iraq as part of anti-terrorist strategies, but then I read a post on Daily Kos, an editorial on Libération and an opinion piece on Haaretz that said the US policy for Iraq is all fucked up, and I found new strenght to continue the fight against the oppressors!
– Yeah brother! Praised be the leftists from the Great and Little Satans! Now I’ll get some tea and croissants, we need to celebrate!]

Questions:

– how did they end up kidnapping and killing some of their leftist supporters, such as European reporters, some of whom working for overtly _communist_ newspapers?

– how come the Iraqi communist party are not only denouncing the insurgents but also among the most strongly opposed to Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq? The Iraqi communist Party doesn’t count as “leftist”, but Michael Moore, who by communist standards would be nearly right wing, does?

– how do these insurgents and/or terrorists screen out their leftist supporters from the pro-bushite patriots when they attack US military? how do they screen out the pro-bushite from the anti-bushites among the Iraqi civilians that end up dead in bombing attacks?

And if we apply this reasoning to 9/11 itself, how did the attackers screen out the leftists and the anti-bushists and the pro-Palestinian and those opposed to US foreign policy in general, from the pro-bushite, pro-Israel, pro-Great Satan folks?

Mw, the only difference between your statement and Ward Churchill’s premise in his essay on 9/11 is that for you, the little Eichmanns are on the left, defined as encompassing everyone who is not happy about US foreign policy.

Think about it.

Feel free to continue seeing all forms of dissent as comfort to the enemy (typically, that notion had to be enforced by dictatorships via repressive and murderous measures, but it’s surely encouraging to see people embrace it spontaneously! a sign of the progress of democracy!). After all, why hold the people who are actually in power accountable for anything they do, when you can easily shift the blame on those who are not in power and whose criticism and opposition is so pathetically ineffective it couldn’t even stop Bush and all his comrades being re-elected with the very same policies?

Now I’ll shut up because the enemy may be listening, and we don’t want anyone in Iraq getting second thoughts about democracy. The notion that dissent equals pro-terrorist treason might make them commit mass suicide. Which objectively wouldn’t be a good start for liberated Iraq.

And if we apply this reasoning to 9/11 itself, how did the attackers screen out the leftists and the anti-bushists and the pro-Palestinian and those opposed to US foreign policy in general, from the pro-bushite, pro-Israel, pro-Great Satan folks?

There was an ad in the Nation telling them not to show up at the WTC that morning…

Phoenician in a time of Romans,
Most Phoenicians in the time of Romans were more Greek than the Romans. And the lonely hold outs in Carthage joined the club after Hannibal pissed off the Empire. So in the time of Romans, you might as well call yourself a Macedonian or Seleucidian as Phoenician. Same culture, different sculpted rocks to pray at ;)

“But I don’t have any problem at all with Iraqis blowing up or shooting American soldiers engaged in occupying their country after an illegal invasion.” So this is probably what was going on in the average Romans mind when Roman armies were nailing up thousands of Phoenicians to crosses to pay back Hannibal’s “illegal” invasion.

How sad you must be when you are hoping Democracy will fail in Iraq and the Americans will go home defeated. How utterly sad for you. Did you know the only time the Phoenicians were able to regain self-rule was the short period they were a semi-republic. About as close to a Democracy as was back then. And here is a modern day Phoenician hoping against Democracy. No wonder Phoenicians took it in the ass all through history.

So in the time of Romans, you might as well call yourself a Macedonian or Seleucidian as Phoenician. Same culture, different sculpted rocks to pray at ;)

Jesu Christi on a pogo stick, what can you say about such ignorance?

Phoenicians – coast of Syria, i.e. modern-day Lebenon. Carthage was a colony. Biblically, these were the Canaanites. Invented the alphabet. To the EAST of the Greeks, around 3000-1000 BC.

Macedonians – well, Macedonia. To the NORTH the Greeks.

Seleucids – Empire spanning Persia to Syria, post-Alexander. Around 300 BC.

It’s like confusing the USA with the Aztecs…

By the time Rome ascended to the world stage, Phoenicia had been assimaliated into Hellenistic culture,

This is correct…

which was my point.

“So in the time of Romans, you might as well call yourself a Macedonian or Seleucidian as Phoenician.”

This is still not true, anymore than pointing out that England, Australia and America share the same Western European culture means an Aussie can call himself American.

Or you could mean more of a metaphor that you are from an ancient learned culture in a time of crass westerners.

Actually, I picked the nom-de-guerre after 2 minutes thought just to indicate that I was (a) not American and (b) from a nation dependent on trade. Nothing more.

How absolutely wonderful for you. Perhaps when the US scores points with Lebanon by bending Syria over, making them leave Phoenicia, you can hope for even more US deaths.

Jet, dear child, the only person responsible for these unnecessary US deaths is Georgie Bush. I don’t “hope” for them – I’d far prefer it if the US had exhibited some measure of sanity and not unilaterally bombed and invaded another country.

However, since the US has decided to do this, the deaths of American soldiers have been some sort of restraint on future actions. In that the US is waving the sabre at Iran and Syria, the high death rate of American soldiers in Iraq is a good thing; it may constrain the US from deciding to murder considerably more Arabs and Persians in the near future.

You do realise that far more Iraqis have died than Americans, don’t you? You do realise that each and every Iraqi was just as much a human being as an American, don’t you?

If two or three thousand American fatalities in Iraq now prevent fifty or sixty thousand Iranian fatalities in Iran later, this is a good thing, surely?

May your children hear every word you say and grow up to realize how fucking wrong you were.

So far I, and the majority of the world who disagreed with Bush’s invasion, have been right. Where are the WMDs? Where are the Iraqis throwing flowers? Where’s the peace and stability?

Asshole.

Fool.