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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / Fill Me In

Fill Me In

by John Cole|  December 13, 200810:12 am| 25 Comments

This post is in: Military, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing

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In a rant on the new Che movie, something I have less than zero desire to watch, Nick Gillespie states the following:

And you’ve got to ask: Who precisely is still debating Che’s methodology, other than, I don’t know, Lynndie England and various al Qaeda cells?

Can someone explain the Lynndie England reference? Not to downplay the Lynndie England monstrous behavior at Abu Ghraib, but I thought even Nick himself recognized that the failures there were due to leadership:

Hmm, how else to explain the abuse? Take a cue from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated it for the Pentagon. He told the Senate the abuse was due to “failure in leadership–lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision.”

What am I missing?

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25Comments

  1. 1.

    fastandsloppy

    December 13, 2008 at 10:22 am

    As a senior at Rutgers I had a class on Revolution in Latin America and the thesis of my final paper was essentially "Che Guevara was a total douche". I got an A.

  2. 2.

    T. Scheisskopf

    December 13, 2008 at 10:26 am

    I would chalk it up to that pitfall of all writers: attempting to be too clever by half.

  3. 3.

    uticas

    December 13, 2008 at 10:34 am

    the question is: what are you missing.
    the answer is: the historical significance of che (and a pretty good movie)

  4. 4.

    cleek

    December 13, 2008 at 10:40 am

    sound like he’s talking about Che being a torturer

  5. 5.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    December 13, 2008 at 10:44 am

    Tortured logic?

  6. 6.

    Paulie Chestnuts

    December 13, 2008 at 10:50 am

    Sounds to me like the conventional wisdom is all ‘revolutionaries’ after the Founding Fathers aren’t legit.

    Which doesn’t make sense to me — people generally don’t revolt if they don’t have real grievances (the types you will risk your life for). And obviously all revolutions fizzle out if you can’t persuade similarly-positioned others to rally around your cause.

    I’ll probably check this movie out, Soderbergh is a pretty solid director.

  7. 7.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    December 13, 2008 at 10:51 am

    What cleek said. I’ve looked for non-wingnutty links about Che and torture and found this from the Volokh Conspiracy, which seems a decent place to start, as it summarizes the charges found in a couple of books.

    I’m a flaming liberal who remembers the vile Contras in Nicaragua in the 80s, but I’m also not inclined to sanctify any revolutionary on the left. I can’t back up any of the assertions in the link, but it seems to be a good place to start looking.

  8. 8.

    kid bitzer

    December 13, 2008 at 11:01 am

    fastandsloppy shows the perils of those leftist universities. tenured radicals, teaching our children that che was total douche!

    that’s a cheap shot at lyndie england. she’s no saint herself, just a pathetic pawn. she took the fall for rummie and bush, and now she’s taking the fall again.

  9. 9.

    The Other Steve

    December 13, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Nickie boy, and the many wingnuts don’t seem to understand college town.

    People don’t wear Che t-shirts because they think Che was this really super guy they all want to have a beer with. 9 times out of 10, you ask a guy with a che shirt and they’ll tell you "I just bought it cause it looked cool". And the #1 reason college kids do what they do… apparently they get Nickie’s nickers all in a bunch. i.e. shock appeal. That is how the mind of a college kid operates.

    Plus, che t-shirts and other items are a great way to make money, and what better way to honor and remember the great Communist Leader then with Capitalism?

  10. 10.

    The Other Steve

    December 13, 2008 at 11:11 am

    Ok, so I’m reading the wiki piece on Che.

    And apparently what pissed off Che was while staying in Guatemala, the CIA decided to overthrow the democratically elected leader. Somehow this got into his head that the CIA was imperialist and oppressive.

    I can’t understand why he would think that. Obviously the CIA was merely liberating the country for the people’s best interest.

  11. 11.

    kid bitzer

    December 13, 2008 at 11:17 am

    @9

    "this really super guy they all want to have a beer with"

    please–he may have been a douchebag and a marxist loser, but he was surely not responsible for as much lawbreaking, torture, misery and death as george bush.

    bush–fuck, bush gives beer a bad name.

  12. 12.

    The Other Steve

    December 13, 2008 at 11:25 am

    please—he may have been a douchebag and a marxist loser, but he was surely not responsible for as much lawbreaking, torture, misery and death as george bush.

    Ironic, ain’t it?

  13. 13.

    Doctor Science

    December 13, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    As The Other Steve said,

    And the #1 reason college kids do what they do… apparently they get Nickie’s nickers all in a bunch. i.e. shock appeal. That is how the mind of a college kid operates

    The thing is, there’s nothing the wingnuts like more than doing things to get the DFHs upset. The difference is that actual Republican Party policies sometimes seem to have no other goal than "stick our tongues out at the liberals", e.g. "Drill Baby Drill!"

    Make T-Shirts, Not Policy.

  14. 14.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    December 13, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    that’s a cheap shot at lyndie england. she’s no saint herself, just a pathetic pawn. she took the fall for rummie and bush, and now she’s taking the fall again.

    No, absolutely not. Every day Rumsfeld called Lyndie and told her not to torture anyone. However, Ms. England (having learned in high school what would really cause Muslims physical and mental anguish) took it upon herself to commit abuse.

  15. 15.

    ATinNM

    December 13, 2008 at 12:39 pm

    What the frick is it with the obsession of Conservatives with decayed rotten corpses of leaders of defunct political movements?

    Should we be all twitterpatted about a Fourth Servile War pushed by the lingering memory of Spartacus?

    Che died in 1967. He’s DEAD. Get over it.

    The International Commie Menace is 50 people arguing the vital issue – enthralling all mankind – whether the Soviet Union was a decayed worker’s state or just another manifestation of state capitalism.

    It’s gone. It’s an ex-parrot. It squawks no more.

    Only someone really strange thinks a bunch of university students wearing a cool t-shirt (h/t to The Other Steve) has any chance of leading to a dictatorship of the proletariat, socialization of the means of production, and the inevitable nationalization of their toaster for the People’s Breakfast Soviet #63.

  16. 16.

    Nicole

    December 13, 2008 at 12:50 pm

    My husband and I honeymooned in Argentina and the two biggest iconic images for sale on Tshirts, postcards, magnets, you name it, were Che and the Simpsons. (Eva Peron was a distant third). I ended up buying a Tshirt of Homer showing off a Che tattoo.

  17. 17.

    Funkhauser

    December 13, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    I missed the part where Lynndie England started small proxy guerrilla wars in hopes of stirring a peasant uprising, or the part where she and al Qaeda tried to make other the New Man, who was selfless and completely servile to society, in order to increase the Iraqi sugar harvest. Che was vile, but he was vile in ways that Nick completely misses.

    I wondered about the Che image still all over Latin America. I think part of it is fashion chic, and part of it is the continual disappointment with everything else. Che’s opponents certainly haven’t done a great job of making the lives of their citizens much better. And as for the CIA and Guatemala and Chile and the Dominican Republic and El Salvador and Nicaragua and Guatemala and… well, let’s just rename that airport outside DC to Jacobo Arbenz International Airport.

  18. 18.

    Dr. Squid

    December 13, 2008 at 1:04 pm

    Chalk it up to conservatives being morons.

  19. 19.

    Nicole

    December 13, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    @Funkhauser:

    I wondered about the Che image still all over Latin America. I think part of it is fashion chic, and part of it is the continual disappointment with everything else

    As amusing (and infuriating) as some of the comments on the Volokh site are, I do think one of them hit the nail on the head about the popularity of Che stuff in Latin America- the poster said the fashion statement isn’t about Che himself; it’s about the things he opposed. Like a lot of revolutionaries, he did really awful things in pursuit of what was once a noble goal- relieving suffering of the poor. Maybe it happens because the ideology takes over any sense of reality. All I know is, it seems that a strong middle class is the best bastion against those kinds of social upheaval, which makes me even more depressed and angry over the Right’s continual work to turn us into rich and poor.

  20. 20.

    LiberalTarian

    December 13, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    I dunno. The idea that Lyndie England gave anything very much gives me pause as to whether the author gave his sentence much thought.

    It never surprises me who quickly conservatives disavow their heroes. Lyndie England was one of theirs. You can tell by reading the comments. Now that they don’t need her any more … UNDER THE BUS!!

  21. 21.

    JoePo

    December 13, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    I think all those conservatives who make this an issue should just start wearing t-shirts with Batista on them. That’ll show… uh, someone.

    fastandsloppy, when I was a senior at Marquette I wrote a paper on why Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was not a douche bag. Forgive me if I think mine was a more worthy topic.

  22. 22.

    Nicole

    December 13, 2008 at 1:35 pm

    Also, I saw Chair, Off-B’way last night. Apparently police states are bad. So nice to learn that- there I was, thinking they were kinda kicky, kinda fun, kinda kooky… but no, in fact they are bad. I’m so glad the play was there to set me straight.

  23. 23.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    December 13, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    Only someone really strange thinks a bunch of university students wearing a cool t-shirt has any chance of leading to a dictatorship of the proletariat, socialization of the means of production

    But. . . but. . . but we just elected a socialist marxist as president!

  24. 24.

    Blue Girl

    December 13, 2008 at 4:10 pm

    Seriousness alert…has anyone else read the SASC report that came out Thursday, and should have resulted in Rumsfeld being carted off to The Hague by sunrise Friday?

    If you will indulge me a bit of blogwhoring, my partner and I read it and wrote a post we are rather proud of that got zero attention yesterday because it wasn’t auto-bailout related.

  25. 25.

    AnneLaurie

    December 13, 2008 at 6:24 pm

    I wondered about the Che image still all over Latin America. I think part of it is fashion chic, and part of it is the continual disappointment with everything else.

    So, the "Che image" is the Latin American equivalent of the "Stars’n’Bars" flag/image in the U.S.?

    A symbol stolen from a disgruntled faction of the working class, co-opted by spoiled young patricians, and then turned into fashion-graffitti by trinketeers hawking cheap crap to political illiterates?

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