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You are here: Home / Flashback

Flashback

by Tim F|  July 19, 20065:46 pm| 17 Comments

This post is in: General Stupidity

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WTF.

And yes, via Atrios, Tom Tomorrow has magical powers of predicting the obvious.

***Update***

Another literary reference. If the end comes as a surprise twist then you slept through more high school English classes than I did.

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Reader Interactions

17Comments

  1. 1.

    Pb

    July 19, 2006 at 6:05 pm

    Around the same time, I was lampooning the administration for not going after North Korea, and I had a poll up about who would be next… Syria was #1, North Korea was #2, and Iran was way down the list. However, I might have skewed the poll a bit somehow. In any case, mad props to Tom Tomorrow! I might have to get his book now…

  2. 2.

    Steve

    July 19, 2006 at 6:16 pm

    Kevin Drum:

    Ross Douthat quotes Evelyn Waugh about the all-too-human hunger for war in order to warn that perhaps “after three years knee-deep in Iraq, after all the best-laid-plans and good intentions have gone so far awry, that the romance of warmaking would have faded somewhat.” In an update, he adds this:

    I do think that the remarkable popularity among my fellow conservatives of [Michael] Ledeen’s utterly-untethered-from-reality “faster, please” theory of Middle East affairs — even after the various debacles associated with our Iraq policy — does reflect the persistent appeal of a vision of foreign policy in which supporting war, war, and more war provides an appealing clarity, and a sense of moral superiority, amid the otherwise-difficult problems of modern political life, and the perplexing complexities of the global stage. At home and abroad, it allows you to cast everyone who disagrees with you as either an appeaser or an apologist for tyrants.

    This reminded me of Etgar Keret’s short essay in the New York Times about how he and his countrymen feel about the current war in Lebanon:

    It’s not that we Israelis long for war or death or grief, but we do long for those “old days” the taxi driver talked about. We long for a real war to take the place of all those exhausting years of intifada when there was no black or white, only gray….

    Suddenly, the first salvo of missiles returned us to that familiar feeling of a war fought against a ruthless enemy who attacks our borders, a truly vicious enemy, not one fighting for its freedom and self-determination, not the kind that makes us stammer and throws us into confusion. Once again we’re confident about the rightness of our cause and we return with lightning speed to the bosom of the patriotism we had almost abandoned. Once again, we’re a small country surrounded by enemies, fighting for our lives, not a strong, occupying country forced to fight daily against a civilian population.

    It is, often, not so much war itself that people long for, but the moral certainty that comes with it; thus the venom directed even toward those who are skeptical of war, let alone those who are resolutely opposed to it. It’s not that the skeptics prevent the hawks from getting the war they want — they usually don’t — but that they deny them the moral certainty they so desperately yearn for. And that cannot be tolerated.

  3. 3.

    Tsulagi

    July 19, 2006 at 6:32 pm

    Well, you knew it was coming. The stupidity of the PNAC boys knows no bounds. How long before the neotards start saying no problem, our troops will be dodging flowers and candies on the cakewalk march to Tehran. Iranian oil will pay for any insignificant reconstruction and security costs. The only reason that didn’t happen in Iraq was because of the hate-America MSM not printing enough happy news. Anybody who disagrees are just gay flag burners.

    Couple the earthly neotards with the heavenly Rapture nutcases in the Republican tent who can’t wait for everything to be way beyond FUBAR’d in the ME, and you can see this may already be a done deal.

    Maybe General Boynkin at the Pentagon has already seen Satan hovering over Iran. We need clear heads like his to continue to be in charge of intelligence gathering for the GSAVE. He and many others just know God has chosen W for greatness. Hell, he might even be the messiah.

  4. 4.

    sglover

    July 19, 2006 at 6:56 pm

    Why don’t the clowns on the Sunday gasfests just ask Kristol and his ilk, straight up, what’s keeping them from enlisting?

  5. 5.

    Pb

    July 19, 2006 at 7:01 pm

    Couple the earthly neotards with the heavenly Rapture nutcases in the Republican tent who can’t wait for everything to be way beyond FUBAR’d in the ME, and you can see this may already be a done deal.

    Those two groups by themselves get us to at least 23% of registered voters–33% if you include the actual ‘compassionate conservatives’ out there, so I’ll say 28%. Unfortunately, Bush doesn’t listen to registered voters–when he listens to anyone, he listens to registered Republicans, specifically, the most loyal and nutty ones–his base. And that’ll probably bring the number up to the same as his approval numbers amongst Republicans, which is likely around 70-80%. So if it’s all about pandering and political pressure, then it’s probably a done deal.

  6. 6.

    Ancient Purple

    July 19, 2006 at 7:20 pm

    William Kristol – Four-Star General of the 82nd Chairborne Division – Chickenhawk Air Force.

    Wow, Bill, you are so brave behind your Fox News commentator’s desk.

    Fight on, brave, brave soldier.

  7. 7.

    jaime

    July 19, 2006 at 7:31 pm

    Anybody who disagrees are just gay flag burners

    I thought anybody who disagrees are Jesus hating abortion lovers.

  8. 8.

    Tsulagi

    July 19, 2006 at 7:49 pm

    Of course you can’t forget about the mid-terms. We had Iraq for the last set four years ago. It’s been such a success story, why not Iran now.

  9. 9.

    ChristieS

    July 19, 2006 at 8:14 pm

    god…all I can think is that they all just need to …well, dying would be helpful.

    Just kidding, Mr. NSA-man. Really, it was a joke. I’m channeling Coulter. And I meant my statement only as much as she did all of hers.

    Rage doesn’t cover my feelings now. I’ve gone beyond it.

  10. 10.

    demimondian

    July 19, 2006 at 9:29 pm

    _Flowers for Algernon_ is not assigned for any Lit 101 course for which I’ve seen a syllabus, Tim. (But that’s OK, _FfA and other stories_ in a particularly dogeared edition, is up on the bookshelf next to me.)

  11. 11.

    tBone

    July 19, 2006 at 10:11 pm

    demi, you dishonest Leftist kook – Tim didn’t say Lit 101, he said high school English classes. It was assigned reading in my high school, fwiw.

  12. 12.

    fwiffo

    July 20, 2006 at 6:43 am

    tBone, you whackjob, it can’t possibly be assigned reading in middle school if it’s not also assigned in college.

    It was assigned reading in my high school, fwiw.

    That statement is absurd on it’s face.

  13. 13.

    tBone

    July 20, 2006 at 8:45 am

    it can’t possibly be assigned reading in middle school if it’s not also assigned in college.

    Huh? What are you talking about?

    It was assigned reading in my high school, fwiw.

    That statement is absurd on it’s face.

    Whuh?? Why is this absurd?

  14. 14.

    Krista

    July 20, 2006 at 11:21 am

    I also seem to recall reading it in high school, actually. And it’s not the type of story I would have bought and read of my own volition, so it must have been assigned.

  15. 15.

    Steve

    July 20, 2006 at 12:54 pm

    Since we all know Iran is next on the hit list, very interesting post from Laura Rozen:

    Leading Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji is sitting on something many people would only dream of: a personal invitation to the White House today to meet with top U.S. officials overseeing the United States policy toward Iran, including the National Security Council’s Elliot Abrams and State Department’s Iran nuclear negotiator Nicholas Burns. It’s even been dangled before him that President Bush may drop by the afternoon meeting of Iranian opposition activists. But Iran’s most famous former political prisoner, who arrived in Washington earlier this week for a month long U.S. tour after six years in Iranian prison says, while tempted, he’s not going to accept the invitation. And he’s not the only Iranian pro-democracy activist choosing not to go: among the others are former Iranian Revolutionary Guard founder-turned-dissident Mohsen Sazegara; student leaders Akbar Atri and Ali Afshary; Iranian American human rights activist Ramin Ahmadi; and Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah. Their demurrals hint at the complexity of the relationship between those Iranians seeking democracy and regime change and the American administration that says it has the same goals there.

    “Democracy is not machinery that can be exported,” Ganji told me, through a translator, at a ceremony Monday night where he was the recipient of a press freedom award. “Democracy needs social infrastructure. Another precondition of democracy is to live in urban areas. Another precondition is a division between the public and private sectors. Another precondition is the separation of government from civic society, and the separation of religion and state. Another is tolerance”

    “Can you make a society that is urban, tolerant, democratic with $75 million?” Ganji asked, referring to the money the Bush administration has sought this year from Congress to promote dissident forces in Iran. “You could not even do that with $75 billion,” he concluded.

    So who is coming today to the White House? According to Iranian sources, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, a 30-year-old Iranian writer, student leader and former political prisoner who has become close with former Reagan-era Pentagon official and neoconservative thinker Richard Perle; Bijan Kian, an Iranian American Republican activist and businessman from California who has sought a position on Iran policy in the Bush administration; and Abbas Milani, an Iranian scholar at Stanford University.

    As Pooya Dayanim, a young Iranian American activist from Los Angeles who is also declining the White House invitation, put it, the Bush administration officials want to ask the Iranians, “What the hell is it that you people want?”.

    Ganji does have a message for the Bush administration, but it’s one he’s asking the press to convey for now. “I advocate change of the regime in Iran,” he says. “But that regime needs to be changed by Iranians themselves.”

    UPDATE: An Iranian source just informed me that the entire meeting was cancelled.

  16. 16.

    fwiffo

    July 20, 2006 at 1:29 pm

    Sorry tBone, I thought everybody in this thread was trying to do funny Darrell impressions. I admit mine could have been better.

  17. 17.

    tBone

    July 20, 2006 at 2:23 pm

    I wondered if that was what you were getting at. I would have been sure if only you’d remembered to leave off the last period

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