I started to read the Times coverage of the wikileaks dump, and this was just too depressing to continue:
The documents also reveal many previously unreported instances in which American soldiers killed civilians — at checkpoints, from helicopters, in operations. Such killings are a central reason Iraqis turned against the American presence in their country, a situation that is now being repeated in Afghanistan.
They hate us for our freedoms. How could I have been so foolish?
cleek
duh.
durrrrp.
ahdoooyyyeee.
jonas
They do hate us for our freedom — particularly the freedom we have to kill innocent civilians in their country with no accountability. I’m sure if some foreign superpower were barging around our neighborhoods, shooting up our cars and killing our kids, we’d be a lot more understanding and take it all with gentle good humor. Not like those crazy towelheads over there.
cathyx
Yes, America has the freedom to kill anyone it wants. Even other Americans.
Linda Featheringill
Yes it is depressing. This one of the true costs of war.
American soldiers, when placed into a war situation, turn into something strange. Perhaps all soldiers do this.
But hey, it is more important to bitch about DADT. Gay people have the right to be killed or maimed or driven crazy or addicted to various substances or turn into monsters.
All of this absolute shit is what a lot of people are agitating to be an accepted part of.
I don’t understand.
Edited for grammar.
Jay C
Gee, ya mean that getting rid of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party won’t cause “ordinary” Iraqis to love America FOREVAH! and tie their fortunes to us? And all because of a few
million hundred thousandcivilian casualties? Ungrateful bastards…….Heckuva job, Dubya
kdaug
Said it on DougJ’s thread last night, and I’ll say it again – the fact that you (and Sully) have the insight and moral fortitude to see that you were, in fact, wrong, is why I read y’alls blogs.
There are many, many others who have neither (see Cheney, et.al.)
dadanarchist
but but but… juan williams!
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill:
I am a bit curious as to why you would suggest that war has a different effect on American soldiers. It seems almost like negative American exceptionalism.
Davis X. Machina
In the minds of Mrs and Mr. America, the torture and other abuse will wind up, like TARP and the rest of the bailouts, to have all happened during Obama’s zero-th term, between the ’06 election and 1/20/09.
Obviously the Bushies will want it that way — book tour coming up, and the anti-Obama left will want it that way, failure to prosecute murder and murder being the same thing and all, and the teahadis will complain that Obama didn’t do anywhere enough torturing back in ’06-’08.
As a nation, the Brawndo in us is strong.
beltane
Hoocouldaknown?
Marcus Fenix
@Jay C:
Bush is no longer President, so that particular blame game has lost its punch.
Cermet
But get real – that least no dogs were murdered …
joe from Lowell
@Jay C:
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Bush had toppled Saddam and quickly left Iraq, the way his father did in Panama.
Of course, that was never going to happen, because staying in Iraq (replacing the bases we’d left in Saudi Arabia, threatening Iran and Syria) was the point of Bush’s war.
But it’s an interesting counter-factual.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: God, that is a depressing thought.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: I am shocked, shocked, shocked, that when placed into a war situation, American soldiers behave exactly like all other human soldiers. That’s why us DFHs were against this pointless and criminal creation of a “war situation”. Every last member of the Washington neocon/media empire got their information about war from Hollywood movies, TV shows, and video games. They are a bunch of idiotic sociopaths who will never be able to wrap their empty little minds over the fact that they are directly responsible for the brutal deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.
me
Saw this at reddit. Each dot is a incident showing the location of 1 or more deaths (one random dot said 50 civilian deaths and 60 wounded).
Cat Lady
Killin’ ’em over there so we won’t have to kill ’em here.
/wingnut
Montysano
From the article:
I have to think that this refers to the period from 2004 (or so) on, after the Shock And Awe terrorist attack that began the war.
ChrisWWW
This is what happens when you try to turn soldiers into police. It’s not surprising and was totally predictable.
ChrisWWW
@Montysano:
In any case, America unleashed the sectarian war. We’re at least partly responsible for all the evils that flowed from the decision to invade and turn their country upside down.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: I could not agree more.
matoko_chan
meh…..sillie cudlips.
no one is talking about the real headline.
The Hacker Nation
Just Some Fuckhead
Fixed.
Oscar Leroy
Good job, Nobel Peace Prize committee.
Joseph Nobles
@Linda Featheringill:
I didn’t realize that some human rights were more important than others. Thanks for your insight!
I was certainly surprised to find out that I can’t be appropriately horrified about this story if I bitch about DADT. I’m sure the people who struggled to be able to join the Army while African-American or even just sit at a lunch counter would agree with you that such paltry little goals pale in comparison to these other violations of human rights.
However, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to stick to my basic position: that injustice is injustice wherever it is.
morzer
The saddest thing about the new leak is how little in it is really surprising. It tells us more about things we already knew from seeing the news and reading the papers – and fills in the blanks a little further. It will add to the disgust felt by much of the world when it contemplates our military adventurism, and it will have no impact on Middle America, much less the Beltway.
cleek
they hate us for our flypaper
Svensker
@joe from Lowell:
Why “topple” Saddam at all? Why was it our business? Who made the US the boss of everyone?
Oscar Leroy
@Davis X. Machina:
You are aware that Obama escalated our war in Afghanistan, right?
Holden Pattern
Those of us against the war were against it for these reasons — this is what happens to heavily armed young men trained to kill who invade and occupy countries where they don’t speak the language and don’t understand the culture. That doesn’t even count the other reasons: the arguments for it were complete and transparent fucking lies, and even Dick Cheney (when he was Bush I’s SecDef, and didn’t have a political reason to create endless war) thought that invading and occupying Iraq would be a black hole into which we’d sink blood and treasure with no reward.
The invasion of Iraq was straight-up murder-by-soldier, committed by the political leaders of the country, with the enthusiastic and bloodthirsty support of most of our fellow citizens. It may the the low point in our history (which, like the history of any powerful nation, is full of bad behavior).
cleek
@Svensker:
Jesus
ChrisWWW
@morzer:
The biggest difference is that this information comes straight from the military.
morzer
@cleek:
Well, he was born in Bethlehem, Ohio…
matoko_chan
And all the stuff that gets Greenwalds panties in a wad….the Unipolar Power wants to extend its hegemony of the physical world into the cyberworld….
WyldPirate
@Jay C:
Fix’d for accuracy.
Let’s spread the blame equally, shall we? Obama didn’t have to escalate–rather he wouldn’t have had to unless he wasn’t the nutless wonder that he is and wasn’t fearful of the wails from the Idiocracy about “weak on defense”.
matoko_chan
How do we fight this?
Dual citizenship.
:)
join the Hacker Nation and save Americas soul.
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: That is close to my reaction. Everyone who cares about this knows the broad outlines of what happened. The documents fill in details. Everyone who does not care about this, still does not care.
@matoko_chan: Contra matoko_chan, this isn’t even some new world where people are getting information out and fighting a fight hat never before existed. The technology is new, but the urge to keep secrets on the part of the powerful is not new, nor is it new that some fight against it. Pamphleteers, muckrakers, investigative journalists, they have been among us for years.
cleek
@matoko_chan:
you do realize that governments all around the world have been involved in regulating the WWW since its inception, right ? in other words: welcome to 1992.
Oscar Leroy
@Joseph Nobles:
It’s simple, Joseph: Obama has failed miserably on DADT, so that issue must be dropped into the memory hole.
Jay in Oregon
@jonas:
Yet another example of American exceptionalism.
The same people who believe that we just need to bomb the Iraqis a little bit more and then they’ll fall in line will fall all over each other in the rush to claim that if some hypothetical invading force did the same thing to us, why, they’d never surrender! They’d never give up the fight!
morzer
@ChrisWWW:
Which, sadly, means nothing, except that they aren’t very good at securing data. Most people are maxed-out on revelations of what a pointless, brutal waste of time Iraq and Afghanistan are – except the right wing and their assorted Beltway fan boys. This information will change nothing in our political discourse, much less the course of the mid-term elections,
Omnes Omnibus
@WyldPirate: Explain again how Obama was involved in the invasion of Iraq.
Ajay
Freedom is not free. We must always support the troops and their actions. Besides, what is few thousand muslims used as target practice mean anyway? As long as they are not jews, Xtians, its all ok.
morzer
@Oscar Leroy:
He hasn’t failed yet, and I believe that we shall see DADT repealed and repealed for good in his first term.
J sub D
As soon as we get the Republicans out of office we can end these foolish wars.
Oh wait. Something has gone seriously wrong with the left/right memes.
Svensker
@WyldPirate:
Did Obama escalate in Iraq? I thought it was only Af/Pak that he amped up. Did I miss something in my recent not-so-interested-in-reading-the-depressing-stuff stage?
joe from Lowell
@ChrisWWW:
And let’s not forget exactly HOW we unleashed that sectarian war: by allowing international jihadists to flood the country and carry out a years-long campaign of anti-Shiite terror, done for the specific purpose of setting off a sectarian civil war.
An action they took for the purpose of stymying us.
The people who sold this war, who continue to defend it, cite the political consequences as their justification. It isn’t the anti-war faction’s argument that the architects of this war are responsible for the political outcomes – it’s those architects themselves, and their supporters, who make that argument.
So, yes, the consequences of the invasion of Iraq – the anti-Shiite terror campaign and the civil war it spawned – are, by their own arguments, on the heads of the Bushies. Noting that most Iraqis were killed by other Iraqis doesn’t absolve them of this.
Oscar Leroy
@cleek:
LOL. This thread sure went from “too bad America makes mistakes just like everyone else” to “so what if America makes mistakes? everyone else does, too” real fast.
Davis X. Machina
The guilty parties en bas are about to get rewarded, too.
That ‘war’ was never anything more than the world’s most expensive campaign commercial. Using war fever, and the victory bandwagon, the GOP were going to finally reduce the Democratic party to post-Mulroney Conservative size.
They were going to be able to appoint the judges, make the regulations, drive the fiscal and monetary policy, let the contracts, far into the future. They were going to have the state security apparatus and the media ready at hand to punish enemies and reward friends and fabricate reality deep into the next century. The oil was almost lagniappe — properly exploited, the win in Iraq was going to deliver everything.
And they fucked it up. They couldn’t even get doing wrong, right.
Lost two elections on the strength of their mis-, mal-, and non-feasance. Turned Bush II into George Who, the steely-eyed-rocket man into the invisible man. With some help from a real-estate bubble, to be sure, but they screwed the pooch. Had favorability ratings worse than those of chlamydia.
And now they’re coming back.
ChrisWWW
@Jay in Oregon:
Hell, they are going crazy now over the ginned up “Mexican invasion.”
joe from Lowell
@Svensker:
Why are you asking me? Did I propose any such thing?
Let me explain what a “counterfactual” is: you take the actual facts of history up to a certain point as they actually happened, and then you speculate about what would have happened if, at a certain point, events had gone off on some other course.
Capice?
Cacti
Good thing we’re out of Iraq…
Except for our giant, permanent imperial outpost…
And the 50,000 non-combat troops that are still there.
morzer
@Davis X. Machina:
But at least Joe Klein and Chris Matthews got to see his crotch in a flying suit. Makes it all worthwhile, really.
joe from Lowell
@WyldPirate:
Obama escalated in Iraq?
Really?
Huh. You’d think something like that would have made the news.
Oh, no, I get it: he escalated from 170,000 troops all the way up to 50,000, as he continues towards his ultimate goal of a complete withdrawal of all the troops.
That bastard.
cleek
@Oscar Leroy:
of course that’s not even close to what i said.
this stuff is not new. it’s been going on since the beginning of WWW time. and it usually manages to get defeated.
jonas
@WyldPirate: I don’t understand. Obama was not in the Senate when the AUMF resolution was voted on and frequently spoke out against it as a candidate.
He’s always been in favor of our mission in Afghanistan, however, which as been nearly as successful in making the Afghanis and Pakistanis admire us for our freedoms.
wilfred
Such things were not reported by the Western press, with a few exceptions, but they were certainly reported by the hundreds of Arabic language television channels, which routinely broadcast images censored by the American press. They still do.
Whatever. Time to look forward, I say. Fucking Iranians.
morzer
@joe from Lowell:
Addition by subtraction. It’s the Randy Moss trade as applied to warfare.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: The plan to remove troops is proceeding according to its schedule unless I am very much mistaken. What is happening in Iraq is not escalation, rather the opposite. It may not be happening as fast as some might like, but that does not mean it is not happening.
joe from Lowell
@morzer:
Quite right. And when it is repealed, I’d like to see all of the commenters who were so wrong treated a bit differently than those who were so wrong in their predictions about the Iraq War.
Sadly, I suspect we won’t, and that the people marching around screeching about Obama, the great homophobe, will continue to be treated as very serious people whose opinions need to be listened to, just like Bill Kristol.
Bob Loblaw
@cleek:
In the rare interest of anti-glibness, it’s the American energy consumer that’s to blame. Every single foreign policy and military choice we make stems from the way we make our society work and move.
@Oscar Leroy:
His election was a triumph of civil rights progress and diversity everywhere. It inspires us all…except for those Pashtuns out in Waziristan who get lit the fuck up by Hellfires every week. They have to celebrate in spirit. For the peace, yo.
Larry Signor
From the NYT article:
Svensker
@joe from Lowell:
Yuh, but my counterfactual was “what if we didn’t invade Iraq at all and in fact stopped all the crap and treated them as a normal country”. Just trying to move the window, overton-wise.
Cat Lady
@Jay in Oregon:
Resolving that dilemma would require empathy, which would require admitting that brown skinned people might be just like white skinned people, and that would lead to some… uncomfortable… conclusions both here and abroad. Instead, it’s God Bless America Only, and only the white male part as God and the Founders intended, and everyone else up against the wall. QED.
morzer
@joe from Lowell:
I imagine they’ll move on to complaining that he hasn’t married another man. Preferably a white one to show his commitment to gay marriage and diversity.
joe from Lowell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Apparently, to quite a few people, it does mean exactly that.
The withdrawal isn’t happening, and it never will be happening, right up until the last troops are withdrawn.
At which point, the issue will be in the past, and therefore irrelevant to any evaluation of this president, and the people for whom the withdrawal was never happening will move on to complaining about how something else they want isn’t happening fast enough, and therefore isn’t happening at all.
Theoretically (perhaps when the last soldier in the rear guard is actually crossing into Kuwait), there will be an instant when the withdrawal is actually happening, but now we’re down to the quantum level.
Cacti
The war in Iraq was sold on a pack of lies.
Congressional dems were complicit.
No one will ever be held accountable and nothing anyone says on this board will ever change that.
Cause that’s just how we roll in our representative democracy.
Omnes Omnibus
@wilfred:
You are right about this. The problem is that I don’t think anyone is going to have his or her mind changed by these documents. I paid attention as these events were happening, I was against the war, and I am horrified by the torture and the general brutality. The Wikileaks documents don’t change that. Someone who approved of the war, hates muslims, and want the US to torture won’t have his mind changed either. A person who paid not attention probably won’t pay attention now. There is the possibility that someone will look at these documents and have a road to Damascus moment as John Cole did with Terri Schiavo, but these effects will be on the margin. I think the primary value of Wikileaks is as an addition to the historical record.
morzer
@joe from Lowell:
These are the people who finish off a good breakfast and then protest because they haven’t yet been given dinner.
joe from Lowell
@morzer:
Ah, but when he does, how long do you think it will take before we hear about his intolerable, heteronormative endorsement of marriage?
morzer
@joe from Lowell:
Somewhere between sixty seconds and two whole minutes?
joe from Lowell
@Cacti:
Some Congressional Dems were complicit. Tom Daschle and Dick Gerphardt, for instance.
Others, like Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi, led the charge against the war.
Ultimately, Congressional Democrats voted against the AUMF by a 58%-42% margin.
And that record will never being expunged. That’s just how our representative Democracy rolls.
BobS.
@joe from Lowell: The elder Bush didn’t leave Panama. He just stopped slaughtering people. There were more than a dozen bases there until 1999.
The United States rarely leaves anywhere once it establishes a military presence, which has resulted in 130 countries around the globe hosting the American military.
Ross Hershberger
Michael Moore, if you can stand him, actually had something really clear and direct to say about our reckless disruption of Middle Eastern countries degrading our national security. It was W/R/T the Williams kerfuffle but it’s relevant in a larger context.
Nick
@Davis X. Machina:
That’s probably a good thing since torture and abuse of anything Muslim is a popular thing in the country
matoko_chan
Cole…..do you see what is happening?
Just like that fucking WEC retard Bush was fooled into an immoral, unjust and UNWINNABLE war in Iraq…..Obama is being fooled into an immoral, unjust and UNWINNABLE war on the Hacker Nation……and by extension….any citizen of the Web.
in the guise of protecting us.
all the slaughter and torture and bombing was done in our name with our approval.
we need to acknowledge that….its healthy for us to see this.
maybe if we get our noses rubbed in it enough it wont happen anymore.
And now our government is planning to become the America-Fuck-Yeah Internet Police and shutdown any crits of America.
we are on our way to becoming China, politically if not economically.
war on the Hacker Nation is unwinnable, you know. we will just degrade ourselves and become a police state in trying.
Did you see Serenity? I was following the WL twitter stream yesterday at 3pm MST when wikileaks tweeted
For me that was just like when Mal broadcast the Miranda video from Mr. Universe’s secret terminal.
Can’t stop the signal.
Donut
On the same day of this info dump, the Chicago Tribune published an article quoting George W. Bush as saying that his greatest mistake was not privatizing Social Security.
I’m sitting here watching over a two year old and a four year old, so I don’t have any kind of time to write, let alone do I have a wide platform on which to draw the contrasts between what this man did, and what his party will do given free rein over government again, but they are there.
Nick
@joe from Lowell:
When it’s repealed and the homophobes in the military respond by beating up and raping gay soldiers, Obama will be accused of coddling them and allowing it.
wilfred
Iraqis and other Arabs sure will. The Iraqi people have screamed for years for prosecutions of private contractors. This appeared just the other day:
@Omnes Omnibus: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/world/21contractors.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=blackwater%20prosecutions&st=cse
People want justice. They won’t get it. The article includes this:
It does ok when we detain thousands of people who end up tortured. This is what a colleague said to me today. There is no answer.
MikeJ
@morzer: I was depressed last night to see that there were people who just couldn’t be happy with the Yankees losing and had to complain that they didn’t like the people who beat them.
There are people who complain that the gold they find is too heavy.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: not but it is NEW TECHNOLOGY.
and it scares the shit out of our military and the oligarchs.
we have a choice here….like we did in Iraq when we found no WMDs……
refuse to admit we were WRONG and lose our souls…..or do the right thing.
if America launches a webwar against the Hacker Nation, we will lose our souls and become a police state.
and we will still lose. the info-war, like you point out, is eternal.
Can’t stop the signal.
Dave Trowbridge
Check out the interactive coverage in Der Spiegel if you want to really get into the data, and understand what it can and cannot tell us.
joe from Lowell
@BobS.:
I consider stopping a war to be a meaningful change worth noting, nonetheless.
And they were there before the war, too, with the Panamanian government’s support. In other words, they weren’t an outgrowth of the invasion, the way Bush intended the invasion of Iraq to establish an expansion of America’s military presence into Iraq.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Can’t stop the
signalscreeching.Fixed it for you, Tokie.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
Well this was all a bit much to read before finishing my morning coffee (here on the west coast).
morzer
@Dave Trowbridge:
Der Spiegel is a misunderestimated treasure.
joe from Lowell
@Nick:
Ahem: “Dammit, there should have been some research and a training protocol developed to avoid these things! And also, the public opinion polling and the Secretary of Defense’s report are a SLAP IN THE FACE!”
Comrade Luke
So of course the current headline article at the NY Times site is how the Wikileaks founder is on the run and “chased by turmoil”.
Ignore the leak, attack the leaker.
Omnes Omnibus
@wilfred:
I hate to be cynical about this, but I don’t think that the majority of the people care all that much about this issue. I think that they are more concerned with everyday issues of survival and getting ahead in the world and, when they are not, they prefer to relax and be distracted from their worries.
morzer
@Comrade Luke:
Has anyone interviewed this turmoil of which they speak?
JWL
“How could I have been so foolish”?
You want to talk foolish?
How could I have voted for John Kerry in 2004? I knew, as stone cold fact, that Kerry had endorsed the Big Lie war in order to be elected president.
I voted the criminal ticket that year.
And goddamn me for doing it…
joe from Lowell
Don’t damn yourself, JWL.
That war would have ended four or five years sooner if Kerry had won, regardless of his cowardice in voting for the AUMF.
Tim Connor
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: The printing press was new technology once. Bound books as opposed to scrolls were new technology. This is entirely the same fight.
wilfred
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m talking about the victims, actually. But they are invisible.
Nick
@wilfred:
No, they got the justice they wanted, that’s the problem.
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Except that no-one seems to have objected when the codex was developed. There wasn’t a fight about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: The turmoil declined to comment and referred all further questions to its publicist.
BobS.
@joe from Lowell: Sorry. I thought when you wrote “if Bush had toppled Saddam and quickly left Iraq, the way his father did in Panama” the implication was that Bush I “quickly left” Panama.
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
It must have been busy trying to buy the governorship of California….
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: yup.
But now we have teh internet.
Orders of magnitude in information dissemination.
This war is as old as homo sap, dude.
The Pythagoreans try to spread information….the Kylonists try to control information….for the “good” of the yeoman farmers.
Choose a side.
it aint hard…the manicheanics are simple.
PIGL
@Omnes Omnibus: I think it depends on training. Professional soldiers do not act that way. Bloodthirsty gung-ho rascist storm-troopers do.
I do not have any information on which sort of training American soldiers receive, but I have read remarks from British and European soldiers about ‘poor fire discipline’.
Given how some Canadian forces have acted in historical times (WW1, Somalia), I can’t point too many fingers. Except that, when the First Airborn was shown to have engaged in gratutious torture of prisoners, the Prime Minister did the honourable thing, and the regiment was disbanded in disgrace. I’d like to see something similar happen in the United States….
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: Are you sure? I would not be surprised if there were people running around saying that this new technology would make it too easy for the wrong type of people to read things and that the campaign against the Dacians would be compromised as a result.
joe from Lowell
@BobS.: Ended the war quickly. Ceased carrying out operations. Did not try to pacify or control the country.
Clear enough now?
Tell you what – can you come up with any differences on your own between what our military did in Panama after Noreiga was overthrown, and what Bush II did in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown?
jwb
@beltane: Actually, these fantasies were not even derived from Hollywood films, which frequently show soldiers devolving into a Bezerker state and recognize it as a real psychic cost of war.
J sub D
@joe from Lowell:
Would have or might have? I find the discrepancies between what elected politicians campaign on and what they actually do make it difficult to state what a politician would have done if elected with any certainty whatsoever.
joe from Lowell
@J sub D: Fortunately, I don’t have to base my estimation of Kerry on “what he campaigned on,” but am familiar with his record as a political activist and officeholder, going back thirty years.
So, I can use the phrase “would have” with a high level of certainty.
(Frankly, if all I knew about Kerry was what people who’d never heard of him learned during the 2003-2004 presidential campaign, I probably wouldn’t think very highly of him, either.)
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
The first reference to the codex as a format is in Martial (first century AD), who praises it for being convenient. The scroll remained the dominant form for non-Christian writings until the 4th century. I have never seen a reference to anyone actually disliking the codex as opposed to the scroll. Scrolls were unwieldy, inconvenient, tore easily… and you needed arms like an NFL lineman to get to the end of your “book”. Also too, there was no change of content implied in the shift from one to the other. It wasn’t really a radical shift in technology, the way that email was versus a letter.
Stillwater
This actually made me laugh.
James E. Powell
@Holden Pattern:
this is what happens to heavily armed young men trained to kill who invade and occupy countries where they don’t speak the language and don’t understand the culture
And, let’s not forget, have been submerged in propaganda that tells them that the culture is inferior and hostile to Americans, and that the people are in some way responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
morzer
@Stillwater:
I have visions of Tokie on board an enormous city made of boats lashed together, heading out to sea slowly but with perfect faith in finding paradise before the toilet paper runs out.
BobS.
@joe from Lowell: Like I wrote Joe, sorry for my not realizing that “quickly left” is synonymous with “stopping a war”, “Ended the war quickly”, “Ceased carrying out operations”, or “Did not try to pacify or control the country”.
Omnes Omnibus
@PIGL:
I would argue that any soldier when pushed beyond his/her limits will behave poorly. The way in which the poor behavior manifests can vary. Studies have been done as far back as the end of WWII indicating that there is only as certain amount of time that a soldier can stand to be in combat. I believe (can’t find the cite right now) that the studies showed 180-240 days f exposure rendered soldiers ineffective. This effect was cumulative.
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: Pedant.
jwb
@Nick: I agree with your assessment, unfortunately. I think most people just want to forget it and get out. But the political landscape does not currently allow the option of getting out, which basically makes the forgetting part impossible. That’s the political quandary.
Davis X. Machina
@morzer: But there was an indeterminate loss of texts — the ones that never got copied over onto codices, and as a result failed to even get to run the preservation gauntlet of Late Antiquity. (I have had ‘Dark Ages’ dinned out of me, finally, but it’s a struggle.)
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Is this the point in the program where you demand that I keep the government out of your Medicare?
morzer
@Davis X. Machina:
Yes, but that has almost nothing to do with the shift to the codex. Books were lost before the codex appeared – in fires, due to rarity, the cost of copying, lack of interest, low literacy rates, the habit of anthologizing famous/key passages and dumping the rest of a text etc etc.
What mattered in the preservation of texts was their function, the institutions they served, their cultural significance, the climate in which they were produced and in which they existed, and sometimes pure luck.
I would add that what makes the difference in preservation of texts now is printing – that’s the radical technology that changed the game. In the days of the hand-written codex you find books being lost – and sometimes we can even say who was the last person to see a complete copy of a given text. Michael Choniates, for example, was almost certainly the last person to own complete copies of the Hecale and Aitia of Callimachus – and lost them when the Franks took Athens in the early 13th century.
matoko_chan
@Stillwater: you will be laughing out of the other side of your mouth when President Palin creates the American version of the secrets act. but that will be too late.
Svensker
@Nick:
I think he’s talking about the Iraqis, who certainly have had absolutely no say in what was done to them by us. THEY did not get the justice they wanted and probably never will. Unless they come over here and slaughter us in retribution — which we, of course, we would find reprehensible.
Svensker
@morzer:
Prove it.
Edited to add: oops, looks like you pretty much did.
sparky
@joe from Lowell: um, no, there is no real withdrawal, unless you mean that Iraq is the new South Korea.
NYT:
Democracy Now transcript (edited):
…
no doubt there will be people here and elsewhere who will continue to defend Obama no matter what, as party loyalty is more important than, well, anything else including pesky facts, apparently. fortunately for americans, Obama is continuing the grand Bush II tradition of saying that reality is whatever he says it is.
matoko_chan
The side that wants control of the information is winning, in case you didnt notice.
morzer
@Svensker:
No, you prove it. I don’t know of a single person who objected to the introduction or use of the codex. There are no recorded satires, no texts de codicibus, no mentions of debates pro and con. If you want to make an argumentum ex silentio, be my guest.
Update: I accept your concession. BTW how will you survive now the Jets have a bye week? What will you do with your Sunday afternoon?
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: My point was simply that as new technologies that democratize the dissemination of of information have become available, some people in authority have always resisted. People in power do not want negative information to get out if they can prevent it. Wikileaks, to my way of thinking, is a digital version of the Pentagon Papers. In fact, I would say it has less significance because the document dumps so far have shown what has happened in the Middle East while the Pentagon Papers showed how the events in Vietnam cam to happen.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: How is it winning if the information is getting out?
frosty
@Jay in Oregon: That same line of reasoning goes back at least to WWII.
The British being bombed by the Luftwaffe declared “Never surrender” while the RAF expected that area bombing in Germany would break the people’s will.
Svensker
@morzer:
It could be a problem and, indeed, the day won’t have quite the normal shine. But I am OK with watching men in tight pants who play for other teams run around and hit each other, so I should be able to get through it just fine.
J sub D
Does anybody still believe that US “combat troops” have all left Iraq? Those of us paying attention have known it was a semantics game for quite some time.
NY Times, March 31, 2010
joe from lowell – I get it. John Kerry was uniquely moral, honorable and trustworthy in your eyes. The first politician since George Washington who could not tell a lie.
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: My use of the development of the codex was poorly chosen. The printing press and the invention of writing were better analogues.
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
The problem is that the codex isn’t really a new technology, as much as a more convenient reformulation of an old one. Codices were still hand-written, which means that all of the limits implicit in that technology carried through into the new form. Gutenberg et al are really the radicals – and that’s because there suddenly is a new potential for wide-spread, even popular, dissemination of texts cheaply and quickly. You don’t see people protesting about codices because the rules of the game hadn’t fundamentally changed.
Update: we seem to have reached a bipartisan consensus.
joe from Lowell
@BobS.: You should be sorry, since playing dumb is the mark of a low and dishonest person.
If you don’t actually have anything to say about the very clear, unambiguous point I made, kindly stop bothering me.
morzer
@Svensker:
Shall you be watching the Bills suffer and chuckling evilly – or are you feeling compassionate?
Omnes Omnibus
@J sub D: How many are there now? How many were there before? Do you have any evidence that the plan to remove troops by the end of next year is not proceeding?
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: I already conceded. I also used the printing press as an example in my original comment on the topic. Green balloons. Green balloons!
joe from Lowell
@sparky:
We’re in the midst of withdrawing all of our troops from South Korea, after having reduced them by over 2/3 in the past year and a half?
Really?
That’s funny; you’d think something like that would make the news.
Nice goalpost-moving, though. Now that you realize you are utterly, completely wrong in your doom-saying about Obama continuing the occupation of Iraq, you’re reduced to pretending that the State Department employees having security details means the war is ongoing.
You should just stop talking about the subject, and try to salvage some dignity. This weasel-word behavior is embarrassing.
Svensker
@morzer:
I’m apparently one of the only Jets fans who doesn’t absolutely loathe all the other teams in the division (except the Patsies, of course, who are the devil incarnate, Brady/Belicheck DIAF). Unless we’re playing the Bills or Dolphins in which case they should graciously lose. Actually hope the Bills do well — they have some real talent but awful luck combined with some bad decisions. Feeling quite compassionate.
joe from Lowell
@J sub D:
Nice strawman. Let me know if you have any response to anything I actually wrote.
For instance, the part where I explicitly stated that my opinion was based on what he said during the campaign.
You could have just written nothing, you know.
morzer
@Svensker:
I don’t know whether anyone hates the Bills. They seem much too like innocent little teddy-bears ambling through the badlands without a clue as to what lurks in the shrubbery. I agree with you about the Patsies though. It seems Jets and Dolphins fans can reach consensus on something at least!
morzer
@joe from Lowell:
Sometimes I wonder whether J sub D is seeing the same words on the screen as you and I. How on earth did he get the idea that you felt any such sentiments towards Kerry?
joe from Lowell
@J sub D:
All of the troops engaged in combat missions have left Iraq. That’s what the phrases “the war has ended” and “the combat troops have left” mean.
Troops capable of fighting are still in Iraq, in ever-decreasing numbers, but they are not engaged in combat. To those who have been paying attention – as opposed to fighting a rearguard “NO, I WASN’T WRONG!” action, this is utterly predictable.
Once again, here’s the route for withdrawal that was laid out in the SOFA two and half years ago:
1. Drawdown begins in early 2009.
2. Combat and patrols end Summer of 2010. Troops back to bases, not manning checkpoints or the like.
3. Troop levels down to 50,000 by August 2010. (We were actually a bit ahead of schedule on this one.)
4. All troops out by the end of 2011.
I love watching people realize that we’ve hit items 1-3 exactly as Obama promised, and pretend that being at Step 3 is proof that we’ll never implement Step 4, because they can’t stand to admit that a Democrat president is ending the war.
joe from Lowell
@morzer:
I had the temerity to support him in the 2004 campaign, rather than borrowing Nick Gillespie’s leather jacket, leaning against a wall, blowing out a stream of smoke, and muttering “It’s all just bullshit, man.”
Ergo, I light a candle to him every night at the shrine I built in my bedroom.
J sub D
@Omnes Omnibus:
50K now. The vast majority of them “guys who can shoot straight and go get bad guys”.
The drawdown, maddeningly slow as it is, is still on what was essentially Bush the Lesser’s schedule. I fault Obama for not accelerating it, but I’m not gonna hit the streets over it. I fervently hope by the end of next year the only troops in Iraq will be a few dozen marine embassy guards. With the inability of the Iraqis to form a government (Hell, the Italians could have formed three different ones by now) I’m not betting on it though.
Stillwater
@matoko_chan: The side that wants control of the information is winning, in case you didnt notice.
Yes they are. But America’s soul (what’s left of it) certainly isn’t hanging in the balance of a decision to require back-door access to encrypted data transfers. And the police state is already here, which will be further demonstrated by the enactment of a law requiring back-door access to encrypted data transfers.
MC, the war you want to wage was lost long ago.
matoko_chan
@Stillwater: nope.
like i said….i choose dual citizenship.
i will also be a citizen of the Hacker Nation and contribute and spread information.
im a quellist, remember?
getting out to who?
the teabagger blogs are already spinning it.
even juicers bought the Assange is a rapist spin.
morzer
@joe from Lowell:
But do you use scented candles? That’s the point that requires bi-partisan investigation by Joe Lieberman and Ken Starr.
J sub D
@morzer:
Let me recap for the slow among us.
joe from lowell stated what Kerry would have done if elected. I suggested that might have done would be a better phrasing. Joe responded that, no, he was certain what a politician he has likely never met, certainly not closely assciated with, would have done.
Then I got snarky because that is complete fanboy bullshit.
morzer
@J sub D:
The slow among us? Do we need your spiritual autobiography as well as your egregious misreadings of what Joe from lowell was saying?
Stillwater
@matoko_chan: i will also be a citizen of the Hacker Nation and contribute and spread information.
As a citizen of Hacker Nation, you must then also realize that the passage of laws restricting the free flow of information won’t do much to actually restrict it, right?
joe from Lowell
@J sub D:
BZZZZZT!!! Let’s go to the tape:
Basing predictions of a politician’s future behavior on his past behavior, and having a sufficiently-long record to draw a confident conclusion, is now “fanboy bullshit.”
Whatever.
matoko_chan
So? there will be a way around it…..and soon we will have quantum encryption….i know a lil bit about that….. and that tech, while being developed by the government, will be leaked to the Hacker Nation..because it belongs to us….we are developing it.
because the government cant develop it without Hacker citizens.
the way Manning was caught, was the gov turned Lamo by waiving his prison sentence and 60k fine.
in a technology race the technologists have dual citizenship.
as the war escalates, with more invasive laws, the hacktivists will do end runs around the law with tech. the cudlips will be caught in the information control loop.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: The WikiLeaks info is getting out on the internet, to newspapers, and to those people interested in seeing it.
The Assange criminal investigation is irrelevant to the value of the data. Wagner was a horrible person, but he wrote quality music. Assange may or may not have done anything prosecutable under Swedish law, but no one challenges the accuracy or validity of the documents he is releasing.
If you are concerned that people will spin data… Well, they will. Data is always subject to interpretation. It is out there now and people are using it. You can’t get pissed that people are using in ways that you don’t like and still be taken seriously.
Chyron HR
@matoko_chan:
Just out of curiosity, is “Hacker Nation” a subset of the cool kids at the Apple Store, or vice-versa?
joe from Lowell
@morzer: The problem here is, J sub D is a “pox on both houses” libertarian.
Like most of these people, he is entirely caught up in a process of using his partisan narrative as a means of judging whether something is true, or whether someone is reliable.
Partisans of the left and right are at least aware of the possibility of confirmation bias – of the possibility that their judgement may be skewed by a desire to believe ideas or people who adhere to their preferred storyline, and to disbelieve those who depart from it. They at least recognize, on a theoretical level, that their partisan narrative can lead them astray.
For people like J sub D, however, their “pox on both houses” partisan story line is seen as an inoculation from the possibility of such confirmation bias. An opinion that a Democrat would do something right where a Republican did something wrong must be wrong – must be biased, in fact – because it doesn’t fit the “two peas in a pod” narrative. The “both sides are just the same” position on any argument must be the right one, because it’s the one that isn’t influenced by partisanship in favor of one side or another.
So, for me to say that John Kerry’s bio provides ample evidence that he would have withdrawn from Iraq upon becoming president must be a reflection of my own bias, because for that to be true, it must also be true that the choice between the Democrat and the Republican was a meaningful one.
matoko_chan
@Stillwater:
Not to us.
:)
matoko_chan
@Chyron HR: read the article or be quiet.
WyldPirate
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fuck off. I’m talking about Afghanistan and you know.
Now run along and bury your nose back up Obama’s ass.
Nick
@J sub D:
What’s your definition of “combat troops?”
If you’re definition is the military definition of troops sent on combat missions, then yeah, that’s pretty obvious they are left Iraq.
If you’re definition is any single American serving in the military, then, hell, we still have combat troops in England.
Nick
@WyldPirate:
True, I mean it’s not like he said he would do it from the moment he announced he was running for President.
It definitely is cowardly and “nutless” to keep a campaign promise. He clearly only said he’d send more troops into Afghanistan in 2007 because he was afraid of what conservatives would say about him in 2009.
WyldPirate
@joe from Lowell:
Surprise, surprise. Another terminal, dumb-fuck Obama apologist.
Go fuck yourself sideways. Same shit is happening in Afghanistan. It was sheer idiocy to escalate there. History–fucking centuries of it–indicated it would be a waste.
Obama flippantly wasted lives over a stupid campaign comment that was solely geared to demonstrate he wasn’t “weak on defense”.
He’s wasting hundreds of billions of dollars and destroying thousands of lives with fucking posturing.
Get in line to behind Omnes Obnoxious-fuck to go find some Obama underwear to sniff.
Martin
@J sub D: You’re suggesting that we should have left people behind in Iraq defenseless?
WyldPirate
@Nick:
It’s the rationale. It was never going to work to begin with. Those people in Afghanistan like living the way they do. They like the warlord shit.
And what they don’t like is us over there kicking in their goddamned doors, trampling their crops and blowing up their fucking wedding parties and leaving cluster bombs and shit like that to blow up their children
It’s a waste of lives and money. That’s the goddamned point.
How fucking stupid are you? What the fuck do you think the result is going to be next year when the draw-down starts? Peace, flowers and candies thrown at the troops?
joe from Lowell
@WyldPirate: Actually, I thought you were talking about Iraq, too. After all, the quote you “fixed” was
Omnes Omnibus
@WyldPirate:
There was no reference to Afghanistan in your comment. You were responding to a comment about Iraq and you stated that Obama escalated. I can’t be asked to determine what you meant to say. I simply responded to what you said.
Alex S.
John, you’ve gone through a process that most other people are too scared of. It’s probably this fear of self-reflection that causes the epistemic closure on the right.
joe from Lowell
And what is it with the gay-sex imagery from the firebagger?
Grow up, little boy.
Amir_Khalid
The real issue in the wake of the Wikileaks document dump, it seem to me, is what comes out of this. Whether the politicos and the US mainstream media take up the issues raised. Will the details be acknowledged; will crimes exposed be investigated and prosecuted; will policy, strategy, policy and tactics be reevaluated, and replaced with something saner, more humane and more likely to work?
If this was what Wikileaks had in mind, they picked a strange time to publish. US politics and political media are in the thick of election season, and all they’re thinking about right now is who wins this next round of musical chairs. There’s enough to embarrass political incumbents that they won’t feel any great urgency to take this up right now. Or maybe ever. Once the first rush of outrage has passed, they’ll all be like, you know, “Meh.”
The example of the Pentagon Papers is not heartening. Daniel Ellsberg was hounded and prosecuted by the Nixon administration. I doubt the Lyndon Johnson admin would have done differently. And since then, US policy seems to have grown no wiser or more circumspect.
joe from Lowell
@WyldPirate:
Wow.
Now do black people!
Gee, you can’t imagine how hurt I am that you don’t respect me.
You know what? I think you should expect to see that quote a whole lot if you keep commenting here.
Slightly Less Wild Pirate
@Omnes Omnibus:
I suggest, sir, that you perform an implausible sex act, either by yourself, or with an African-American holding high political office.
Nick
@WyldPirate:
The goal to bring democracy to Afghanistan is stupid, to goal to crush Al-Qaeda there is not. Unless you want to make the argument that we should just forget about terrorists who are organizing to kill us (for whatever reason) because it’s just too expensive or we’ll never win anyway.
or am I sounding like a neocon now?
Nick
@Amir_Khalid:
No, they’re too busy questioning to credibility of the Wikileaks dude with his “controversial” personal life.
Omnes Omnibus
@WyldPirate:
That’s very clever. Did it take you long to come up with it or did you get help?
Svensker
@Amir_Khalid:
Nothing comes of this. Assange was probably of the impression that dumping right before the election would have an effect, but he was wrong. No one (except a few DFHs) cares about this stuff. That’s what foreigners don’t get about Murka — we just don’t give a shit about stuff that doesn’t fit the narrative, and this doesn’t.
Edited to add: Remember right before the 2004 election, where Kerry started talking about the thousands of tons of weaponry/explosives that had been stolen in Iraq and how it would be used against American soldiers and it was all Bush’s fault? You probably don’t remember, unless you’re a DFH, cuz no one cared about that either. The only reason anyone cared about Abu Ghraib was because there were pictures.
Omnes Omnibus
@Svensker: Not only that, the people who do care already know a lot about what happened.
Mark S.
I’m late to this party, but this from the Guardian article:
Nothing of course will happen to this fuckstain lawyer, but in my dreams I can imagine him being disbarred and shipped off to the Hague for war crimes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mark S.: There was some nuance that the experts from the Guardian found (did the people unequivocally indicate that they wanted to surrender, did they get into a vehicle that might have weapons, etc.), but that statement is mind-blowingly dumb.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Now be fair. He only asked his mommy how to spell “obnoxious.” Then he ran back to his room, put his Pirate hat and eyepatch back on, and started waving his plastic sword again.
Amir_Khalid
@Mark S.: I take it that you also dream of courts-martial for the fuckstains aboard that helicopter gunship, who killed two guys waving the white flag just because it wasn’t convenient to accept a surrender.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir_Khalid: I would be in favor of such a court martial. I would note that the pilots would be able to use their calls for advice and their reliance on the orders from their HQ and the advice of counsel as part of their defense. This is not an “I was following orders defense.” Soldiers are taught that orders are presumed to be lawful and must be obeyed unless they are certain that the order is not. In this case, they questioned the situation. They were given legal advice about what their situation was, and they acted upon it.
J sub D
@Martin:
I’m suggesting, no, I’m stating, that 21 months is enough time to do a complete withdrawal of all forces from Iraq and leave the Iraqi government to take care of its own interests.
I’m completely unconvinced that Iraq will be any stabler come December 2011 or that the Iraqi government will be any more able to maintain the fledgling democracy we installed at gunpoint.
The whole mission had fail written all over it when Bush the Lesser started it and delaying Iraq’s return to an authoritarian government by another 18 months is a waste of treasure and goodwill.
It turns out that, this really came as surprise to some, that some cultures are not fertile ground for secular democracy with respect for human rights, that attempting to plant democracy in such an environment is a fool’s errand.
Omnes Omnibus
@J sub D:
ETA: Telling the generals to get troops out is one thing. Once you have done that, it is a military operation and it makes sense to let them plan it. It is what they do.
Army War College graduate, are you? Command and General Staff College at least, right?
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: FYWP.
morzer
Before everyone dives back into the hacker nation hands-in- panties-athon or Obama is Dr Evil circle jerk, it’s worth reading this neat little primer on reality as opposed to teabagger/glibertarian fantasy:
http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010104222/false-things-public-knows-they-go-vote
Amir_Khalid
@J sub D:
Rather, it might be that few, if any, cultures are fertile ground for large-scale sociopolitical engineering imposed on them by a foreign military power.
J sub D
@Nick:
You’re making some sense. Al-Queda is gone from Afghanistan. They’ve been gone for years. We are fighting the Taliban for control of their country. Al-Queda is now in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other dysfunctional states. Time to exit was 5-7 years ago.
What we should have done in Afghanistan is a punitive expedition, fuck up their infrastructure, kill all of the government and al-Queda we could find and gone home with the reminder that we can do this anytime we fucking want to.
I’m a johnny come lately on the internet (2006 I believe) so I have no internet proof that this was my position back in 2001/02, thus I am subject to being criticized for displaying 20/20 hindsight. You can take me at my word that it was. Or not.
The best we can do, not an ideal scenario by any means, is play whack-a-mole with these folks (stateless terrorists) and beat the crap out of the chicken shit countries that harbor them. Sucks for everybody, doesn’t it?
J sub D
@Amir_Khalid:
Both.
kay
@morzer:
I can’t believe we’re still rebutting this particular conservative lie.
People may die, but this lie never does. It’s back! A whole new generation of conservatives can now repeat it.
It was completely debunked in 2005, when former President Bush ran around the country for weeks repeating it.
He finally, finally dropped it from his spool ‘o lies about Social Security, but only because he took it too far and claimed the stat meant that African Americans were being “cheated” by Social Security, because he twisted the truth that African Americans have a higher infant mortality rate, and presented that as having something to do with average longevity, which are, of course, two different things.
That’s when people noticed, because that’s so patently ridiculous even the press couldn’t cover for him.
Here’s Paul Krugman, with his usual clarity, in 2005.
kay
@morzer:
This should run as a crawl underneath every cable news show, until the anchors read it, and really grapple with that concept. The difference between life expectancy and adult longevity. Just let them ponder it, until it starts to dawn on them.
Because, incredibly, they’re repeating the lie again. Less than five years after we beat it back with a stick.
It’s like the estate tax/family farm lie. It won’t die :)
Cacti
@joe from Lowell:
Another way to look at would be 29 of 50 senate democrats voted for it.
With Lincoln Chafee’s nay vote, the dems could have defeated the Iraq Resolution on a party line vote. But 58% of them wanted to get their war on.
Svensker
@Amir_Khalid:
You keep talking as though Arab/Muslim cultures/people were normal, regular folks. That’s crazy. We all know that they are subhuman demonoids who are at once stupid and incompetent, yet fiendishly clever and immensely powerful. They don’t even love their children! The only thing those kind of people understand is force of arms.
Edited to add: at least, that’s what some of my wingnut rellies seem to “think”.
Nick
@J sub D:
There’s the argument I was looking for.
This is perhaps very true, but that means we either need to send troops to the aforementioned places or give up militarily and just hope we can swat them like flies.
maus
@kdaug:
Sully doesn’t see WHY he was wrong, though. He continues to happily play the mark and seek out other people to scam him.
Amir_Khalid
@J sub D: Europe in feudal times definitely did not look like fertile ground for secular democracies with a concern for human rights. But they do have them there now.
I’m wary of the condescending notion (held by people like Svensker’s rightwing kin and, it must be said, some lefties too) that there’s something about the Afghans, or anybody, that makes them not care much for democracy and human rights. I mean, come on man, what human doesn’t want his human rights?
Amir_Khalid
@J sub D: Europe in feudal times definitely did not look like fertile ground for secular democracies with a concern for human rights. But they do have them there now.
I’m wary of the condescending notion (held by people like Svensker’s rightwing kin and, it must be said, some lefties too) that there’s something about the Afghans, or anybody, that makes them not care much for democracy and human rights. I mean, come on man, what human doesn’t want his human rights?
Amir_Khalid
@J sub D: Europe in feudal times definitely did not look like fertile ground for secular democracies with a concern for human rights. But they do have them there now.
I’m wary of the condescending notion (held by people like Svensker’s rightwing kin and, it must be said, some lefties too) that there’s something about the Afghans, or anybody, that makes them not care much for democracy and human rights. I mean, come on man, what human doesn’t want his human rights?
Amir_Khalid
I’ve inadvertently posted a comment thrice. Can a front-pager make sure two of them get deleted? Kthxbai.
tkogrumpy
@Amir_Khalid: That’s a winner comment.
Mnemosyne
@J sub D:
Fix’d for accuracy. In what country, ever, has democracy immediately flourished after they were invaded by a foreign power?
REN
@cacti
When the oil is gone we will leave.
And in the meantime the people that Jullian keeps on the run from ,will eventually catch up to him.
matoko_chan
@Svensker: and this time there are pictures.
@Amir_Khalid: trudat.
lets be honest….that fucking WEC retard Bush thought we would be greeted as liberators, and that muslims would embrace “secular” democracy…..we dont have secular democracy. there is no such thing as secualr democracy. we have judeochristian democracy. America has a judeochristian democracy with a judiciary made of quasi-secular meritocratic elites that keep the christian majority from kicking the shit out of the rest of us.
until the demographic timer goes off we are living in Jesusland.
so our troops were not liberators, or armed social workers….they are missionaries with guns.
so building elementary schools doesnt work when there are no secular law schools.
when muslims are DEMOCRATICALLY EMPOWERED TO VOTE they vote for Islam.
Iraq is 99% muslim. A-stan is 99.6% muslim.
consent of the governed.
matoko_chan
@Mnemosyne: actually it is impossible to proselytize judeochristian democracy in 99% + muslim nations. Islam is EGT(evolutionary games theory) immune to christian proselytization.
matoko_chan
no Amir.
they dont care for JUDEOCHRISTIAN democracy.
actually they are immune to it.
islamic democracy would have been fine.
Mnemosyne
@matoko_chan:
Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world and yet, strangely, they have a secular democracy. To look at non-Judeochristian countries, India has been a democracy for over 60 years and is still majority Hindu.
It’s almost like the problems democracy has in the Middle East have more to do with the politics and history of the Middle East than it does with the religion of Islam, isn’t it?
J Edgar
Yes, apparently that item was so depressing that the douchies on main stream radio could only talk about leaks involving Iranian trouble-makers. So, leaks are really awful and endanger the troops, unless they are leaks the media likes.
Mike G
@Svensker:
Twenty years ago they crossed out “Russian commies” from the aforementioned sentence and replaced it with “Arab/Muslim cultures/people”. That was their last intellectual exercise and they don’t want to go through such a thing ever again.
Being a wingnut means not having to hold more than one idea in your head per lifetime, and apply it to every single situation regardless of what happens in the world.
Kyle
@kay:
Chimp: “They want the federal government controlling the Social Security like it’s some kind of federal program.” – 11/2/2000
Who thought this imbecile was qualified to be President? The teatards screaming “Get the government out of my Medicare”?
Mnemosyne
@Mike G:
I wish you were joking, but I swear I read somewhere that during the Iranian Revolution, the US State Dept. folks kept referring to them as “Commies in turbans” and trying to figure how Moscow was controlling them. Because, of course, it was impossible that the Iranians finally got fed up with the abuses of the Shah and rebelled. Nope, it had to be the Commies inspiring them to do it!
Nick
@Mnemosyne:
are we making exceptions for countries that were previously a democracy? cause, Italy would be one. If we’re giving a few years downtime, you had West Germany too
matoko_chan
@Mnemosyne: please dont be thick.
Iraq is an islamic democracy. Turkey is an islamic parlimentarian republic evolving from a Kemalist dictatorship– AKP is an islamic party.
Indonesia is a presidential republic with majority islamic parties. Israel is a jewish democracy. India is a hindu democracy.
democracy means the consent of the governed.
there are no truly secular democracies that i know of.
Germany claims judeochristian status too.
France maybe?……..
matoko_chan
@Nick: yup, there must be substrate like in germany and italy. there is no substrate in Iraq or A-stan to support judeochristian democracy. the lawyers are the clergy. there are no secular lawschools. the populations are +99% muslim.
that is the flaw at the heart of the bush doctrine and of COIN (local village BD)– when muslims are empowered to vote democratically, they vote for Islam.
obviouso except to stupid people and WECs i guess.
matoko_chan
lets battle
Odie Hugh Manatee
@morzer:
Fix’t.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Bob Loblaw:
Fix’t.
The Institute For A Meaningful Apocalypse
Amir_Khalid
@Nick: It only takes one psychiatrist to change a light bulb; but the light bulb must really want to change.
Mnemosyne
@matoko_chan:
That’s right, I forgot I was talking to someone who makes up her own terms and then acts like the rest of us are dumb because we don’t buy into a term that only she uses.
Please point me to the place in political science where they give specific definitions for “Judeochristian democracy,” “Hindu democracy,” and “Islamic democracy” and give us all of the points of difference between the three. Otherwise, you’re just making shit up, as usual.
ETA: Also, shouldn’t Israel fall into the “Judeochristian” democracy camp? Or are you unable to even keep the theory you made up straight in your own head?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@The Institute For A Meaningful Apocalypse:
Gee, who could have guessed that they have internet access in Afghanistan? Assange must be really surprised about this development.
I’m not.
@Mnemosyne:
Fix’t.
patrick II
@Amir_Khalid:
No human that I know of doesn’t want his human rights. The problem is they may not be quite so concerned about other people’s human rights — especially if it might lessen their own power, money or prestige in any way.
Amir_Khalid
@patrick II: There’s a difference between wanting one’s rights as a human, which is what I was referring to, and wanting unfettered power over others, which is what too many people in power want.
Brighton
Julian Assange and Robert Broden are not guilty. We still have a first amendment. Donald Rumsfeld is the one we should be chasing down and prosecuting.
matoko_chan
@Mnemosyne: there is no such thing as secular democracy.
give me proof by contra-positive if you can.
@Amir_Khalid: problem is, America is still just the latest version of Big White Christian Bwana.
Missionaries with guns.
sure, rule of secular law would be great instead of fundie reactionary shariah……but it cant be done.
we just spent a trillion dollahs, 5000 soljah lives and killed one or two hundred thou civilians.
The result is another islamic state with shariah in the constitution and religious political parties where the mullahs still call the shots….which is gettin buddybuddy with Iran.
What was the mission again?