Hopefully everybody remembers that “80 percent solution” idea where America would step into Iraq’s civil war on the side of the Shiites. The brilliant, apparently non-Jewish mind behind the title deserves a Medal of Freedom for that alone. As for the idea itself, guess where it came from? No points if you peeked at the post title.
I had my say earlier. Josh Marshall has a different take that you should go read if you haven’t done so already.
This is a really good example of how you can’t underestimate the Bush White House’s ability to up the ante and embrace a new policy even more ridiculous than those they’ve tried before.
[…] So now we’ve got ourselves aligned on one side in an inter-communal bloodbath with most of our allies in the region on the other side. It’s us against everyone else, on the side of a regional sectarian minority with close ties to Iran. Sounds great. Plus, did I mention that al Qaida views the Shi’a as heretics? So this new policy should help cool those waters too.Point Three. Do Iraq’s Shi’a see themselves as closer to the United States or Shi’a Iran? Anyone want to take a stab at that one?
Among other points that he gets right, indeed the biggest danger in forcing the White House to change course is their unerring ability to form a new policy even worse than the last one. It’s too bad there is no ballot box penalty for schizophrenically managing a war with an obsessive focus on short-term domestic political gain rather than long-term success. Wait…
The Other Steve
I won’t say it’s a bad idea. I’m also not going to say it’s a good idea.
No good can come from this.
But then no good can come from anything else we do.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
ThymeZone
I think Dickens wrote that.
Anyway, what we need, then, is a commission to study and tell us The Way Forward.
Oh, wait ….
ThymeZone
Okay, so let me get this straight. Our Big Dick Cheney wants to turn Iraq over the Shiites, which would align Iraq with Iran.
So, are these guys basically just fucking with us now? Just as they laughed their asses off over looking for WMDs under the Oval Office sofa cushions, now they are having a big chuckle over what to do with Iraq … while we wring our hands?
These are funny, funny people.
TenguPhule
Yes.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
Perry Como
More strong policy decisions from the serious thinkers. Everything else they’ve done has turned out great, I’m sure this will work out too.
Pb
I should have guessed it was Cheney, given his ridiculous “One Percent Doctrine”. Of course, if this “Eighty Percent Strategy” is a success (or not), then I suppose we’re next, and then they’ll try to implement their “Thirty Percent Strategy” domestically… that is, unless we start an “Eighty Percent Strategy” of our own, and get rid of Dick Cheney…
Zifnab
No no no. This all goes back to Tony Snow’s grand strategy. We ally with the Shia, they ally with Iran, we pull out when everything is “safe”, then we re-invade all over again. We get the Shia Iraqis plus the entire country of Iran all in one go. It’s brilliant!
Tsulagi
“80% solution.” LOL. You gotta hand it to these guys, if it weren’t so tragic as they’re actually running the country, they’d be comedy gold with the retarded shit they come up with on something like SNL. Guess you’re supposed to interpret the 80% as a borderline B grade for their Iraq work. And since they didn’t put “final” before solution, I guess we can all live in hope they have further brilliant plans to share with us.
Now after we help the Shia with a final solution for that pesky, unfavored 20%, what if they start coveting land and oil in the northern part and start shooting in that direction? Do we then move to the 55% solution helping the Shia whack the Kurds?
The Iranian president has got to love Bush. Probably quite happy dipshit doesn’t want to talk to him. No way he could negotiate for more than what our idiots in charge give to Iran.
ThymeZone
Exactly. Right now, to Iran, the US is the gift that just keeps on giving.
DougJ
Thank God the adults are in charge. This is truly a serious solution to a serious problem. One that Clinton created, of course.
p.lukasiak
actually I think its a brilliant plan…. First off, the Shiites don’t really want our help, so we are going to FORCE ourselves on them, helping them destroy the Sunnis in Iraq…but having achieved that goal, the Shiites look discredited in the eyes of the rest of the world because of their association with the Bush/Cheney agenda!
ThymeZone
Don’t look now, but a new blog is awfully tempting ….
TenguPhule
And speaking of bad ideas….
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061211/ap_on_sc/nuclear_winter
Something tells me this is going to be one of Bush’s ‘options’ to solve global warming.
ThymeZone
I like the idea, TP. A nice little nuclear exchange between Texas, and Utah, for example.
Amarillo has all the necessary hardware, I think.
rachel
First the “One Percent Doctrine” and now this “80 percent solution”: truly, they strain at gnats and swallow camels.
demimondian
Tsulagi…five marks extra for such a subtle Godwin.
Jake
And then Prezidint Jenna Bush can say they practiced genocide and launch a war to destroy the evil Shiites!
ThymeZone
We have always been at war with EastSunnasia.
DougJ
Why we spoof:
From the comments in the CBS article on Bush’s 31 percent approval rating in their latest poll.
TenguPhule
DougJ, shouldn’t you rename that to ‘How Wingnuts have put us spoofers out of a job’?
It’s hard to parody the truly absurd, but we appreciate your hard work. :P
ThymeZone
We should spoof them only if we can encourage them.
Right now they are their own worst enemy.
Susan Molinari, longtime paid liar and GOP (ideological) whore … on Hardball, saying that the GOP looks forward in 2008 to “offering leadership … that’s our strength.”
Get it? Leadership.
Right now I don’t think the GOP could get people in this country to vote for Apple Pie.
TenguPhule
Sure they could, they’d just have to run a candidate against it.
ThymeZone
Somebody stop me, I just can’t help myself.
ThymeZone
Someday, after Bush is no longer president, Underwear Media will have editable posts.
Until then …..
Habadbabada blabbadaba oogalooga.
DougJ
Yeah, it’s tough, TP. I”ve been using that anti-polling idiocy (“I wonder what 922 people were asked, I know that the people we know are still 100% behind our troops doing what it takes!”) for a while now. It just seemed like something they would say. I guess I was right.
taodon
Maybe I’m a little crazy – but it’s almost like the Bush Administration WANTS all out whack fest in the middle east – like it may encourage the arrival of some special “individual” or something. *shrug*
I’m sure it’s just all the gas fumes I’ve been sniffing lately.
TenguPhule
It’s just you. Because that would imply that Bush and Company were working in a competent manner towards their goal…which of course goes against the Natural Order of the Universe.
ThymeZone
I think that the whack fest that can be known is not the true whack fest.
I don’t know what prompted me to say that.
TenguPhule
You can know the knowable, but you can’t know the unknowns if you don’t know the knowable which is not known because it’s unknowable which is why we have to stick to the known knowns.
For that mangling of English language alone, Rumsfield deserves to be flayed alive.
DougJ
Here’s the thing, though. I guarantee that no matter what happens in Iraq, the Brooks-Kristol-Bennet crowd will say that it was all for the best, aside from the things that were screwed up by the Democrat-induced hasty withdrawl.
Millions dead? All dead-enders. Clearing them out cleared the way for a new Middle East.
Either that or: millions dead? The fault of the Democrats who made us leave. Never mind that the first couple million happened while we were there.
That’s the beauty of their world view. It’s impermeable by reality.
ThymeZone
Ah, the Stormy Doctrine.
TenguPhule
I would disagreee. You don’t achieve that kind of craziness without making an active effort to subvert any hint of reality making an appearance. It penetrates…and is instantly corrupted by the Bored Collective.
TenguPhule
CaseyL
It’s kind of… hypnotic, isn’t it? How every single thing the Bush Admin does makes things worse and worse, and opens up entirely new and unexplored universes of Totally Fucked.
The quantum physics community should really be studying the Bush Administration. When it comes to black holes, and cosmic strings of Totally Fucked (that resonate throughout the multiverse, turning everything they touch to shit), the Bushies offer more proof than a dozen particle accelarators.
TenguPhule
POTD.
Mike
I read a post similar to this topic recently wherein ALL of the Bush advisors could be the “most wrongest”, simultaneously, due to SuperPositioning. It was quite funny.
DougJ
You’re right. I’m not sure how to describe what happens. I guess a wa-wa pedal comes to mind.
jake
Also true.
Your suggestion makes more sense than any of the official justifications given by this [m]Administration. If you are correct I bet Ol’ DeCider is getting rather impatient by now: “Hurry up and Rapture me you asshole! I want to sit on a cloud and spit on Billary!”
Maybe he’ll get tired of waiting and eat another Pretzel of Doom.
nichevo
“brilliant, apparently non-Jewish mind behind the title”
What was the point here?
person of choler
“…allies in the region….”
Which “allies in the region”?
Andrew
I always thought of it as more of a BDSM sort of thing with Condi in a dominatrix out (ie dressed normally) whipping George while he’s held down on his desk by Dick Cheney, who is wearing nothing but a ball gag and jock strap. And Laura Bush is crying in the corner.
Tim F.
If you are really that dense then explaining it won’t help.
nichevo
Tim F, you can get away with that because a) you are the poster – you control the horizontal, you control the vertical – and b) few posters or commenters on this echo chamber will challenge you.
But if you wrote it, you should be prepared to explain it. If you do not care to – because what you wrote is bad enough and you do not wish to step in it further – that’s sensible enough. However, laying it off on the reader is, if I may say it without being censored, chickenshit. It’s not the readers’ fault that you are a poor writer.
Since I am Jewish, I must be especially dense, as I do not get it. Let me reach here…is this supposed to be reminiscent of “Final Solution,” so I am supposed to recoil at the very phrase without even learning what it means? Okay, that might make sense, in the absence of:
(for instance)
THE ONE PERCENT (SOLUTION) DOCTRINE by Ron Suskind (TPMCafe)
The Seven-Percent Solution, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche by Nicholas Meyer
But, those literary precedents existing, the shock value is diminished.
Hey, I’m not telling you to lay off Jewish jokes or anything. It would be nice if they were funny, that’s all, and if you were willing to stand up for them. Maybe if there were any Jewish posters on this board, you could run your material by them for a humor check. Here, I got one for you free:
Q: Why do Jews have such big noses?
A: Because air is free.
See? Teh funny!
The merits or otherwise of the stated plan being an entirely separate issue, from which your irrelevancy has detracted. Ill-advised whimsies in your posts do detract from consideration of the issues, you know; they aren’t cost-free.
But at least it is clear that Cheney, Bush, et al are poopy heads, so why don’t you stick to that level of soi-disant humor? That’s what your readership wants to hear.
Better still, dispense with all the personalization and stick to the issues. But that would take all the fun out of it, because you can’t disagree anymore without hating your opponent.
Steve
Yeah, uh, I’m Jewish, and I know of other regulars who are as well. Maybe you come from one of the corners of the Internet where it’s assumed that liberal blogs are all some sort of anti-Semitic hate fest, but in the actual world I inhabit, 87% of Jews voted for Democrats in the last election.
The point, which was pretty freakin’ obvious, is that the use of the word “solution,” in combination with a plan that centers around the death and/or persecution of members of a religious minority, is really really tone-deaf. Because Hitler had a rather infamous “Final Solution,” you see.
I’m awfully confused about what the title of Ron Suskind’s book has to do with anything, but I sense your mind may not work in quite the same way as everyone else’s.
TenguPhule
nichevo, welcome to your Irony of the Day.
nichevo
Steve, I assumed nothing. I asked quietly for an explanation – maybe I had missed something that was actually clever? – and was attempted to be brushed aside with a reed. If any plan with “Solution” in the name is off limits, well, I guess the bad guys will have to get a thesaurus. Any other words we own?
As for the book titles, that was to demonstrate, to exemplify, that the cherry on “* Solution” has been popped. Just like every atrocity is now a “Holocaust” (which, personally, I find much more annoying, but then again those getting wiped out are entitled to their feelings).
And specifically in terms of the One Percent Doctrine, Cheney and the Administration have already been there, so you are, or Tim is, a bit late to the party. Or is “Doctrine” cosmetically different enough from “Solution” to satisfy you? Surely the Nazis used “doctrine” too. Are we now to discredit vegetarianism because Hitler was one?
As for Jews voting Democratic, what can I say? “Two Jews, three opinions,” as you well know. Are you more interested in the social-program jazz or in the “Kill me, world” planks? At least it goes to demonstrate against the Jews-are-so-smart stereotype.
BTW, are you a poster or just a commenter like me?
Tim F.
Yep. That was the point and as predicted you continued to miss it, nichevo. None of those other “solutions” that you mention have anything to do with the government-sanctioned slaughter of an ethnic minority. For us to get involved in it, and then name it that, strikes me as both catastrophically stupid and culturally tone-deaf.
And oh yeah, I’m Jewish too. Bring some friends and we’ll have a minyan.
nichevo
Okay, TenguPhule:
Let’s see, so the following:
is personalization and hatred? If so, I apologize. I was thinking more of stuff like
It’s very amusing to attempt the use of my words against me, but if you understand the problem as I see it, you’re really just handwaving. When I say “you can’t disagree anymore without hating your opponent,” I see that as a well illustrated statement of fact (I can pull plenty more quotes if you want to die on this hill). Certainly cool, objective, dispassionate criticisms of the Administration’s policy seem hard to find here (or many other places), and when you find one, you sense the teeth gritted trying to hold back the political Tourette’s.
Nonetheless, it is not itself meant as an insult or expression of hatred. But I want to be sensitive to your concerns. How could I say it more nicely, that your passions appear to command you?
…I suppose the Tourette’s comment above was unbearably hostile for you, and more irony. But having known Tourette’s sufferers, the description is really pretty apt.
However, you will then fire back with how “cranial impaction syndrome,” or some such, so accurately characterizes the Administration’s policies, outlooks, personalities, yadda yadda yadda. And of course you will KNOW in your hearts that YOU ARE RIGHT. Good thing there’s no William S. Burroughs “RIGHT Virus.”
The funny thing is, I bet we could discuss the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Cambodian killing fields, etc., without one tenth as much vitriol as we see applied to the least little verbal infelicity of Bush or Cheney.
Hitler killed six million Jews, plus, and I bet nobody here would call him a poopy head. Stalin? Anybody wishing he would have choked on a pretzel or been flayed alive? Oh but they’re dead – then again, you probably wish less ill for Saddam Hussein. When people speak of his crimes, many of you leap to defend or ameliorate or justify his actions. To say “Saddam Hussein was even worse than George W. Bush” is probably a strain.
I do think that many of you have gotten to the point of liking to be angry. Tell the truth, don’t you miss having Rumsfeld to kick around anymore?
nichevo
Wonderful, Tim. Your sense of humor is more leaden than last year’s latkes, but it exists. Happy Hanukkah, btw.
I didn’t not get the point, I just didn’t think it was very trenchant. Maybe I was just hoping there was more there there.
Meanwhile, again, the policy is what should be of concern, not what it is named. Is the crisis in Sudan more or less horrible because of what it is or is not called? But you are content to wallow in the emotion.
Tim F.
Oy, I’m being judged by a guy who told a big nose joke. The shame.
For a guy who claims an interest in dialogue you seem to do an awful lot of baiting and very little thinking. You see my friend, this is the usual problem with the more literate disruptors. You are plainly smart enough to irritate most commenters into ignoring or cursing you yet you mistake a single offhand comment for the point of two separate posts. The only solution I can work out is that the second sentence in this post so enraged you that you didn’t bother to read any further.
Help a brother out, nichevo. Do you really think that my point is solely to criticize a semantic decision, or did you misspeak?
nichevo
To be perfectly honest, Tim? If I hadn’t seen that bit, I would have probably ignored the whole post.
I come here occasionally to see if there’s anything worth looking at or diving into. This blog has a good rep some places and like everybody else, I like to think of myself as “open-minded.” I usually find consistent political Tourette’s here, but for some reason keep coming back – typical Jewish masochism, probably.
Anyway, I have been looking at far more substantive analyses of future scenarios for Iraq – pick a side, don’t pick a side, pick two sides against a third, what about the wider region, is chaos good for us, is a strongman good for us, is partition good for us, and so forth. A glance at this and it seemed pretty clear to me that it would just be more bashing.
I mean, do any of these comments get into whether the policy is a good idea or not? No, it’s all scat. Which is where all these posts seem to go.
So the only thing that interested me was the rather, I thought, gratuitous swipe at Jews (with shit this loose, everything looks like a swipe – what was the last nice, positive thing anyone has posted on this board about anyone or anything?), which I decided to ask about. I immediately glossed over “Final Solution” as I thought nobody could be so lame, and wondered if there was something REALLY witty I had missed.
So if you want to discuss what to do in Iraq, great. But since your brilliant commentariat has already shown that there is nothing to be done, why bother your beautiful minds with dissent?
BTW, please class me with the naive idiots rather than the evil vultures. I thought we were doing a wonderful thing, trying to free the region of its centuries of shackles. I didn’t want to steal any oil or convert anybody to Christianity or Judaism. I guess I took “Three Kings” too seriously; I didn’t know that George Clooney meant that it was a good thing that we screwed the Shia.
There are all kinds of implementation issues that don’t please me a bit. In an atmosphere of serious discussion that didn’t make me think of harpies, I’d be happy to open up about it. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not trying to do good, and more importantly, that we’re not committed.
(And IMHO if Clinton were doing this, you’d mostly have your tongues up his butt, as would the press and probably the UN. This matters, because to flatter y’all, we would be doing much better with the help of these institutions rather than their opposition. But that’s another story.)
TenguPhule
Iraq is screwed. Substantive analyses only disagrees on how much lube will not be present at the final buggering.
And you have a right to be just as wrong as you want to be. Darrell was feeling lonely, I’m sure you’ll make great friends with such a common interest in mind.
nichevo
Ah yes, tengpile. The great thing is that I can be responding substantively to a substantive post and then get crap from such as you. Please to explain the difference between Iraq being buggered and Iraq not being buggered, and demonstrate how you have tried to help.
Given the narrowness of your quote, I suppose you feel that this enterprise would not have had more liberal support if led by a Democrat?
Steve
It’s pretty astounding how people will pop in with comments like this and then act surprised that no one wants to engage with them at some highbrow level. Really now. You don’t even have the excuse that you tried to have an intelligent discussion and were rebuffed; you came in flinging feces from the very start.
Many of us would enjoy having an intelligent discussion with someone who brings a conservative viewpoint. But it’s hard to imagine that you’re the guy for the job, when you show up accusing everyone of being shrill anti-semitic Saddam lovers. Tell you what, why don’t you just hang out in the corner with Darrell and enjoy making snide comments about the moonbats, because for all your protestations, you don’t seem the least bit interested in having an intelligent conversation. You just want to “prove” that lefties aren’t the ones interested in reasonable discussion, so you can pick up your sense of moral superiority and go home.
TenguPhule
Substantive response? That’s what you call your beyond parody silliness? You are merely trying to pick a fight with anyone you can, regardless of whether or not your claims have any merit (which they don’t).
Stop trying to find the pony in Iraq.
This folly was not have been carried out by Clinton in the first place, for one. And second, the only war cheerleading being done has been by ballsucking rightwingers. You were sold a lemon, trying to say ‘but what if a Democrat’ is pure fallacy at this point.
Tsulagi
I’m sure that is IYHO. In mine, all I’ve seen in your comments is nothing but air. The type provided aides in the Oval Office.
Ah, always the sure mark of the flatulent, persecuted (in their humble opinion) incompetent: “If Clinton was doing this you’d love it!” To meet the standard, though, you really needed just a bit more whine in your delivery. But thanks for your version.
Steve
I’m pretty sure I know what would happen if a Democrat had gotten us into a mess like this. His name was Lyndon Johnson. As I recall, the left didn’t exactly cover for him.
A mere 21% of the American public still approves of Bush’s handling of the war. At what point will these dead-enders realize that maybe, just maybe, the overwhelming majority of the public are simply correct on the merits? You’d think people would have a little self-awareness when they catch themselves arguing that the entire world, except for them, is magically blinded by irrational Bush-hatred.
nichevo
Steve, I shall not characterize you, except to say that you either misunderstand me or misrepresent me. I have accused no one here (let alone “everybody”) of either anti-Semitism or pro-Saddamism.
…Let’s pause here. Agree or disagree with the above? Well, prove it or retract it.
What feces? OK, I did say that your rhetoric against Bush, Cheney and anyone in the Administration or who agrees with the Administration is harsher than against anyone in current or recent history. I provided several examples. You decline to refute this, preferring to attack me personally.
I say to you again that you are ruled by your passions. Perhaps I should simply make allowance for it but it does no hard to remind you periodically that you sometimes begin to talk like crazy people.
…Oh, this is pointless. I have no stenographic record of ever statement “you” have made; any example of bilious rhetoric I show, you will say “He said that, not me.” Do I really have to dig through transcripts, or is it enough to say that you have found nothing on this thread, including my quotes of tenguphule, et al, that enables you to see my point?
TenguPhule: as usual, your semantic content approaches zero. If you actually try to say something I will try to respond to it.
Tsulagi: Just as I was saying: Nobody asked you.
Meanwhile, whether you would have backed Clinton, JFK, FDR, Abe Lincoln or Genghis Khan doing X is of course irrelevant in one sense; however, in the sense that a substantial portion of the opposition to this effort has been on a partisan basis, in the sense that it was not in e.g. the Kosovo conflict, it is relevant.
Some people are, and have always been, constitutionally incapable of believing that anything done by this Administration can work, or indeed whether it should, Bush having been “selected” and all that. To them (I shall not say you), al-Quaida or Iran or Kim Jong Il are not the enemy, Bush is. That is, Bush is a greater threat than they.
As their obstruction has a self-reinforcing effect, to some extent it can be said that wishing CAN make it so. I freely admit that the Administration failed to account and compensate for this factor, among many other mistakes; but it was still a factor. Remember the brief pretense of national and international unity? How glad some must have been to remove those masks at the first opportunity!
And if you honestly discount the role of the media in setting public opinion, well, what more is there to say?
nichevo
Oh, the Bush-hatred is beyond dispute. It may be argued whether it blinds you to reality or not, but the venom is certainly there, and I am pretty happy with your choice of the word “irrational.”
At one point your views were the minority and you did not see fit to abandon them in a fit of “self-awareness.”
But that is beside the point, as is reopening of Vietnam – at least it will spiral beyond the attention I have to spare tonight. The real point is, the important point is, this notion that “Iraq is lost.”
Okay, so Iraq is lost…what next? Great, let’s say you get some election fodder out of it. Does your vision go beyond that? Where do we go from here? No answers. Just a lot of complaints about how bad things are. No ideas on how to fix things, or how to deal with the next can of worms. Just acceptance of failure.
Okay, so we are to lay down and die? Or what? Iraq isn’t going to stop happening just because we leave. It isn’t going to stop affecting us. I’m not hearing a lot of ideas here that sound better than “stay the course” or “tweak the course” or “go big” or “get smarter.”
You all seem to want to run away. And you seem to think that is enough. I thought you all were the geniuses here. Okay, geniuses, what next? Since you crave power, have gained some and aspire to more, surely the question is not irrelevant?
Do you have any criteria as to goals? Let alone a notion of how to achieve them? Aside from winning elections and distributing wealth?
Steve
Okay, I’ll play this game.
But you didn’t accuse anyone here of sticking up for Saddam. Right.
Here’s a bonus.
Which was preceded by:
But you didn’t “assume” there were no Jewish posters on this board – a bizarre thing to assume, incidentally, unless you harbor certain preconceptions about liberals – right?
You appear to seriously believe that people here are harder on Bush than they would be on Hitler. Your evidence appears to be that there are more anti-Bush comments here than anti-Hitler comments. In fact, you may be right, as I’m not sure a single denunciation of Hitler has appeared on this blog today!
Does it feel good to pretend that if everyone is pissed at you, it’s not because of anything you did, it’s because they were all predisposed to be pissed at you? Is that an easier line to take than defending the Bush Administration’s actions on the merits?
I remember the “pretense” of unity after 9/11 very well, actually.
I remember John Ashcroft saying that those who raised concerns about civil liberties after 9/11 “aid terrorists” and “give ammunition to America’s enemies.”
I remember when Tom Daschle raised extremely mild concerns about some of the administration’s military spending requests, and Republicans like Tom DeLay and Trent Lott immediately accused him of giving “aid and comfort to the enemy” by daring to “criticize President Bush.”
I remember how gleefully the Administration rushed to make the creation of the Department of Homeland Security into a partisan political wedge in order to win the 2002 elections.
It’s a free country, and you can continue to blame the “angry left” for all the partisanship, but the historical record will not be kind to your arguments.
nichevo
Oho, the historical record. Yes, we must all wait for the historical record. I quite agree.
…Go ahead, then, say it. Was Saddam Hussein worse than GWB? How much worse? Much worse or just a little worse? Why? For that matter how about the kids, since they always seem to get dragged on. Were Uday and Qusay better or worse than Barbara and Jenna Bush? Uday never had his guards beat up and his cell phone stolen.
Do you want a “Terminal Velocity via Chemical propulsion out of a large tube penalty” for Saddam? How about a “BDSM sort of thing?” Does he “deserve to be flayed alive?” Do you want to “start an “Eighty Percent Strategy” of our own” on him?
See, no. If you share my views, you believe Saddam Hussein was a cruel and evil man who tortured and killed many people , caused great destruction, and deserves a crueler death than any we have the power or the inclination to mete out to him.
With enough wriggling, you might even be led to say so. But would you say it with the same enthusiasm? Would it give you pleasure to say? Would it affirm a deeply held belief in you to do so? Would you be all “Yay, Saddam is gonna die, yippeecayay! Boy, I’m glad he’s gonna get what’s coming to him, him and all his cronies! Burn baby burn!” about it?
How about Hitler? Let me guess: Set a new standard for evil in our time. Did great harm to many. Glad he’s dead, wish he had been caught and tried and we’d seen the body.
Stalin? “While communism is a fine system in theory that has never been fairly tried in practice,”
(excuse me, laugh break, ROFLOLOLOLOL)
“his reign unfortunately coincided with numerous errors and bad things done in his name. While the Soviet Union’s power in the world never regained its heights after Stalin’s time, his death is probably a net benefit otherwise.”
Castro? “Well, they have universal health care and high literacy, and Batista was a poopy head.”
Now try it with Bush. Can we get a : “Bush failed to control domestic spending and promoted what some feel was an agenda overly influenced by evangelical Christians at the expense of [science/liberal orthodoxies]. While his economic program appeared to generate good results, it had the appearance of unfairness.
His conduct of the war after September 11, 2001 failed to anticipate or accept certain widely held beliefs about the society of Asia (esp. Southwest and Central Asia) and Islam, resulting in an inconsistent approach to the threat of global chaos and Islamic imperialism. He also failed to manage certain aspects of communications, public relations, etc., which magnified these failures and allowed opposing forces to find new and effective angles of attack.
Furthermore, insufficient resources were appropriated to conflicts such as Afghanistan/Pakistan and to Iraq, resulting in excessive post-conflict violence killing several thousand Americans and on the order of a hundred thousand Asians, while delaying a conclusive result.”
Right, when somebody on this board talks like that about Bush, you let me know, okay? I mean, sanely. Without scatological insults. Without blood in their eyes. Without sounding as if they personally want to throw the switch on him and everybody he ever met.
nichevo
Oh, and my reference to Jewish posters was conditional. Didn’t assume there were; didn’t assume there weren’t.
On a side note: How ’bout that Jim Webb?
Now, now, say whatever you want about Allen, I am not here to prate of George Allen. Fine, you’re glad he’s dead, whatever. I ask you merely to look at Webb for a moment.
Remember that cartoon in the Dem primary? Anti-Christ and all that?
Leave alone the general, that’s too confusing. Just this about the primary against Miller and the cartoon ad…
Let’s say Webb is not an anti-Semite, that he’s just unconscious of such things, being a Marine, Scots-Irish, his son’s combat boots are too tight, whatever his out is…
Had he not one Jewish friend or staffer to say to him, “Jim, let’s take a pass on that one?”
Just checking goose/gander sauce: you disliked the (Cheney, so you say) reference to an 80% Solution, and derided the lack of resonance I found in it. How did you feel about the Webb campaign?
No tu quoque, just wondering how you personally feel. No, felt; I’m sure his dissing Bush at the reception pays for all now; but at the time, what you thought of it.
nichevo
PS: You want to talk hopeless? Try Lebanon.
http://www.michaeltotten.com/
What can/should we, or what should who, do about that? How is this our fault? (Because it’s gotta be our fault, right?) Who wants to bet more people die in that mess than in Iraq? Now THOSE people are screwed.
Steve
Uh, I don’t know a single Jew who found the “infamous” Webb cartoon to be anti-semitic in the least, and I asked several because I was frankly puzzled by the accusation. Playing that card was really cheap, and it pushed me from not much caring how the primary turned out to strongly wanting Miller to lose. As for you, you’re not helping the tribe by crying wolf like this.
nichevo
No, for real? You didn’t mind that cartoon a bit? I certainly didn’t care who won that primary other than that. Okay, maybe you’re Webb’s Jewish friend.
nichevo
And NO I AM NOT ACCUSING YOU OF ANYTHING. Accepting your story, it is obviously possible that a Jew could have signed off on that ad. It makes me curious, but I won’t dig into your background to obsess over it. You didn’t even find it in questionable taste?
…Well, now you know one, and if you knew people I knew, you would know more. Maybe it’s a regional thing. I think I must have run into you on that thread back then, there was some vehement guy back then defending him.
Let us agree to disagree, I suppose. There’s no more point in my calling you blind than in you calling me paranoid.
Steve
Uh, in all seriousness, I asked around. I couldn’t find a single Jew who thought that cartoon looked anti-semitic. It was a pretty good likeness, I guess, but I missed the memo that says if a guy looks Jewish it’s anti-semitic to draw him. Marc Fisher from the WaPo was pretty honest about the whole thing:
I grew up in a nice Jewish neighborhood and I’m pretty familiar with what anti-semitism looks like, whether it comes from the right or the left. And as a good liberal I’m probably more inclined than some to credit accusations of racism, sexism, you name it. But this allegation was a zero from day one.
nichevo
And I as a good
fascistconservative try to offer the benefit of the doubt. Especially as Webb, a Reagan appointee, might have some good ideas and so forth.But, on the other hand, my father is an advertising executive in New York for the last forty years. One thing you learn in that business is to be extremely careful of even the appearance of an unintended message. When you are cartooning somebody, it is all too easy to slip into caricature.
Even something as obviously unintentional as Burger King’s swirly cone design that looked to somebody like “Allah” in Arabic script – stupid as I thought it was – would never pass if someone could catch it. And many, many people are supposed to look at a thing to catch it.
So even if it looked net innocent (and I wonder about those 22 people – folks are so ignorant these days; any older people? any Europeans? it might not get spotted in a mall. Did they see the whole ad or only one picture?), there should (IMHO) have been SOMEBODY in the production chain who had an itch.
While an extremely sensitive, educated Gentile might have caught it, I would certainly imagine that anyone who caught it would likely be a Jew. I dare say that stereotype might meet reality if I say there would be a few Jews in the chain at a New York ad agency.
What I’m guessing is that there are few, or none, in Webb’s campaign. Not sure he has much use for them. Any positive signs to the contrary? I might be easily persuaded.
…Listen, I hope you’re happy. The Unit is on, tty after 10pm.
Steve
Lowell Feld of raisingkaine.com, who was one of Webb’s main internet guys, says he was one of eight Jewish staffers on the campaign. Not sure why I’m bothering to respond to a guy who looks at this set of facts and concludes that he’s “not sure Webb has much use for Jews,” though.
I think, on balance, your ratio of partisan cheapshots to interesting comment probably makes you not worth it.
nichevo
1) Do what you like. You are free to judge. But of course if we drop this so fascinating thread you’ll lose the opportunity to tell me how virtuous this (IMHO) rabid politicking really is.
2) If I cared enough, I would ask if there is further info from Feld, or contact info. However, I don’t. Hell, Michael Kinsley spoke up for Pat Buchanan, and if you don’t think Buchanan’s got a problem with Jews, I agree we have nothing further to discuss.
3) It also happens that I went to a high school that had a Holocaust section in its library. In which were archived many relics of WWII, including vile Nazi propaganda. Of which I saw echoes in the cartoon.
But even a moderately well educated twenty- or thirtysomething might never in his life have seen a copy of Der Sturmer or the like. So I can’t insist that you see what I see.
4) Webb seems quite clear that he has little use for anybody not a current or former Marine. Unless he has numerous Jewish war buddies, they might not otherwise be well represented in his Scotch-Irish set of acquaintances. But it’s nice to know that his campaign is not “restricted.”
5) Don’t get me wrong, I think Webb is an equal opportunity nut. It’s hard to imagine him being ruder to a Jew than he was to President Bush. But, again, you probably think that was fine and great and inspiring, so let’s drop it.
TenguPhule
It’s simple, we leave. Your tired little strawman can’t seem to grasp that little point. The party is long since over, time to go home.
Trying to fix Iraq is like trying to put a raw egg back together after it hit the pavement, not gonna happen and all you get for your trouble is a big mess on your hands.
I call bullshit on understatement by several orders of magnitude that you resort to in addition to the outright fabrication and pure fallacy in your defense of Bush and his policies.
I don’t know about you, but I take having the leader of the USA lying and getting a lot of people killed and taxpayer dollars wasted for nothing as a direct result of his actions and decisions to be something to be at the very least, upset about. Obviously, you do not.
It is impossible to have a civil disagreement when one side is allergic to reality. Please let us know when you’re ready to rejoin it.
TenguPhule
Shorter nichevo: My bullshit is the truth so quit trying to argue with me about it.
TenguPhule
One Rumsfield is more then enough, thank you very much.
nichevo
TenguPhule, no no no no no. You missed the part that asks, What next? You think we leave and time stops?
As for your next section, I could try and unravel that, but why bother? Let’s just say that whatever accusations you want to pile onto mine (and I thought I did okay for a capsule summary of what might be said that Bush did wrong), do you think you can do so civilly, without words like “bullshit” and “allergic to reality?” That would be the point.
So far you have contributed nothing. Steve at least tried to act like a person. If I decide to rejoin you (as I said, I don’t come here often), perhaps you’ll be ready for that.
nichevo
TenguPhule, I’m sure you impress yourself very much.
Good for you!
nichevo
TP, another of your problems is that you cannot seem to recognize that folks can actually have a difference of opinion.
TenguPhule
There are many things we could do, but Bush won’t do them.
Simply leaving is probably impossible because Bush won’t do it either, but we need to start somewhere.
When we have a start, then we can plan for what happens next.
Until then, asking ‘what next’ is kinda pointless.
TenguPhule
And you would be wrong, which seems to be par for the course so far. You have spouted fallacy after fallacy, dressed up bullshit under the pretense of ‘civility’ and displayed an appalling allergy to simple reality, to the extent that you don’t merely have a difference of opinion, you aren’t even operating in the same world as the rest of us.
nichevo
The fact that you presumably believe this is sound thinking is best evidence why you are “worthress, worthress rike Arec Bardrin.” The contradictions you can offer within a single post are, just, somethin’.
Isn’t invading Iraq, then figuring out what comes next, at the core of what you believe most despicable about this adventure? If someone had said that to you in March 2003, wouldn’t you have a) laughed b) knocked their rhetorical teeth down their throat?
And if you come back swinging with a Tu quoque, well, aren’t you supposed to be so much better than those now in power, and capable of avoiding all their errors? Now, how is that supposed to work – magic? Or do the Wahhabbis just read your mind, know you mean well, and let bygones be bygones?
Again, your low grade mentality weakens your entire polemical front. All the insults you use…but how could anyone be insulted by such as you? Congratulations, you learned some words – fallacy, allergy, irony, par, bullshit – and have decided to see how many times you can use them in a single day.
All very shiny. But semantic value = zero. Insult value? Consider the source.
In the words of Bruce Lee, don’t waste yourself. I certainly see little point in further telling you your faults. It’s not as if you’re likely to improve…wash an ass’ head, and you lose both your time and soap.
The sad part is, I bet you think you’re a big fat brain.
TenguPhule
No, that would be the decision to invade in the first place.
Going in without a plan was fourth on the list.
And you still just don’t get it.
We could come up with as many plans for getting out of Iraq as you could possibly want and *NONE* of them would do any good because Bush just won’t do it. He won’t listen to his own people trying to save face for him, he’s not going to listen to us.
The Democrats have *ALREADY* offered a plan which was rejected. Whether or not it’ll work is debatable, but it’s their plan, not mine.
I just want the troops out as fast and safely as possible.
So spout your bullshit someplace else.
Darrell
What plan was that?