Reviews of the president’s speech vary from Republican tepid to Democratic anxious.
I disagree.
President Obama’s speech at West Point was not eloquent. Good. What’s needed now are not oratorical flights, but clear plans that give assurance of success. The president presented the details of both plans and purpose, mission and strategy.
In a blogpost last night, I criticized the president for setting a time limit. In the morning, I realized that I made the mistake against which I always warn others: Never listen to an Obama speech until after you have read it first. The man never quite says what you think you just heard. He did not say that the troops would come home after 18 months. He said
After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.
BEGIN to come home. They will COMPLETE their return home, presumably, either when the job is done – or the war is deemed futile. That decision will be made later.
But here’s a decision that must be made now and renewed continually:
Having urged the president to honor his commitment to the Afghan war, we Republicans must honor our commitment to support him as he fights it. Given the public unenthusiasm for the conflict, there will be political temptations to “go rogue” on the president, if not now, then in the summer of 2010. That will be our test, for us to pass as the president has passed his. I know many Republicans and conservatives will say: “Hey – the Democrats did not give President Bush support when he most needed it.” Correct. They didn’t. And the country suffered for it. The right way to react to that dereliction of duty is not by emulating it, but by repudiating it. “For it before I was against it” has deservedly become an epithet for shameful wavering. Let’s not inflict it upon ourselves.
Politics would not be politics if Republicans did not exact some price for their support. For sure Republican leaders are entitled to close consultation on war policy and the larger national security strategy – and to more attention and respect generally than they have received from this administration to date, and not only Senate leaders, but House leaders too.
At the same time, demanding an extortionate price for support is tantamount to withdrawing support. The war is the war, healthcare is healthcare. Republicans should not take the first policy hostage to gain points on the second. We have to ensure that the political vulnerabilities exposed by this intensified Afghan commitment are protected, not exploited. We’ve said: All in, or all out. The president has gone all in. So now must we – and for the duration.
286 responses so far
1 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:53 am
I know many Republicans and conservatives will say: “Hey – the Democrats did not give President Bush support when he most needed it.” Correct. They didn’t. And the country suffered for it.
Really? Could you elaborate? How exactly would Bush have acted differently with regards to Afghanistan and Iraq without any opposition?
What is it that Bush wanted in this theater of operations that was not granted to him by Congress over the 7 years following the invasion of Afghanistan?
2 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:57 am
……..Actually David his deadline means whatever he wants it to mean depending on how events unfold……that’s the beauty of his strategy both militarily and politically ………he’s given the military what they want but put them on the spot to produce a result…….at home he’s also put the Republicans in a box of either supporting a unpopular war or playing political games…….the country knows this is a mess and they are not going to tolerate game playing……in Afghanistan he’s also put Karzai on the spot…….if Afghanistan is still a mess in 18 months time support for the war in the US will have evaporated completely and Obama will be able to say we gave it our best shot but nows the time to pull the plug.
3 trajan // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:13 am
Obama knows nothing about fighting a war and less about what this war and Islamist terrorism are all about. He has never used the word “win” in the context of the Afghan war or the broader war against Islamist terrorism. He will deserve support when he shows he is on the side of America specifically and the west more generally.
4 DFL // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:21 am
Al-Qaeda was routed years ago. If Osama bin-Laden, the reason for the invasion of Afghanistan, ever shows his head in public, he will be killed. Possibly he is dead already. There is no reason to remain in the backwater of Afghanistan. Better to leave and let the various tribes battle over the mountains, valleys and poppy fields of that country.
5 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:21 am
balconesfault:
I wonder if the Iraq surge would ever have happened. Or if it had, it would have happened much later.
The sequence was as follows:
Public opposition to the Iraq War grew, and the Dems won a big victory in 2006. Bush got the wake-up call. Within a week, Bush fired Rumsfeld, with his minimalist “small footprint” approach to the war.
Meanwhile, the Iraq Study Group had been commissioned to look into the war. Their recommendation, in the fall of 2006, was going to be de-escalation.
To head this off, Kagan and Kristol over at the Weekly Standard quickly drew up a counter-proposal in a kind of frenzy. They proposed a surge to restore order to Iraq. They proposed it to Bush around December 2006, and he agreed to it.
If the GOP had won in 2006, Rumsfeld might not have been fired. And he never thought a surge was necessary.
I really believe that it was necessary for the people, acting through elections, to send a wake-up call to Bush that they weren’t satisfied with the way the war was going.
6 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:22 am
trajan // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:13 am
“Obama knows nothing about fighting a war and less about what this war and Islamist terrorism are all about.”
……Unfortunately David there is a faction of the right that can’t help themselves as this little diatribe demonstrates…….you’d never think the president has just committed to send another 30,000 troops at a cost of 30 billion a year on top the 120 billion we’re already spending in Iraq/Afghanistan…..reason cannot reach these people
7 MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:23 am
David, you can be noble/patriotic and that is a trait which many Republicans place above self-interest or gaining a political advantage over the failing democrats… but let’s not rush to support Obama Messiah before he and his minions do the endless clarifying, re-clarifying and clarifying the clarified statements that will hedge and haw (and by haw, I mean turn to the left) his extension of the Bush-Cheney Plan into something that undercuts the troops and our allies and leaves the Afghani people to, once again, fend for themselves.
To issue an 18 month timeline –you say “begin” to withdraw troops and find solace in those words… I think it’s a recipe to engage in substantial draw downs for the pure partisan, political advantage of Obama just before the 2012 elections– is to nearly negate and certainly hamstring our forces. You can’t say to our troops and commanders, here’s the surge and it’s over in 18 months. It’s marking time for a soldier. It’s marking time for the Taliban, too.
It’s like Obama’s only lesson learned in this unfortunate delay and dithering is to now make the troops and commanders in the field dither and delay this winter, surge up and then cut & run in likely less than a year in-theatre. “I was in support of the surge before I was against it”.
I know lots of the DailyKos-sacks here like to argue that “this is the longest running war in American history” and toss around that this is also the most expensive war costing $1m+ per troop deployed… but those same troll-sacks are quiet when it’s observed that the war could have been over 9 months earlier if Obama hadn’t been a Ditherer in Chief these last 9 months and, further, those sacks are asked why is money now an issue when it wasn’t for the Stimulus Spending Spree ($2.7m per job) , the Auto Bailouts, the TARP 2-3-4 bailouts, the Cash4Japs plan ($23k per car), the Mortgage Freedom Fund ($11.4m+ per homeowner) and now the Health Scare Shaft.
At those rates, $1m+ per troop looks like a bargain.
I appreciate Gen McChrystal’s strong support of his CIC’s decision and even the restrictions in the timeline. I’ll defer to his judgment over Obama Messiah’s dithering anytime. But I don’t think anyone gains by calling Obama’s plan anything more than political pandering and partisan posturing for pure self-interest of Obama. You see a 30k troop surge and say “Great! It’s what we wanted”. I see the surge as surge-lite and the timeline makes the efficacy of the surge in great doubt. McChrystal says he can do it –I hope he can and he’s not just smarting from the last bitchslapping session with the Prez aboard Air Force 1
8 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:24 am
DFL:
No, they just crossed the border into Pakistan.
And they are operating in dozens of other countries.
You liberals need to get your story straight. Half of you are saying that al-Qaeda is no longer a threat; the other half are saying that it is a threat but it’s not in Afghanistan anymore, so we should put our effort elsewhere.
In the case of standing up to the bastards who murdered our people, this time it’s you liberals who are the “party of no.” You have no positive plan to put the terrorists out of business. All you want to do is shut your eyes and your ears and forget they exist.
NO WAY.
9 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:25 am
sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:21 am
……He’s not talking about Iraq…….balconesfault asked a question specifically directed at an assertion David made about Afghanistan……. viz.
” What is it that Bush wanted in this theater of operations that was not granted to him by Congress over the 7 years following the invasion of Afghanistan?”
10 oldgal // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:27 am
trajan: What specifically would he have to do to show you he is on the side of America and the west? What would constitute winning?
11 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:31 am
sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:24 am
“You liberals need to get your story straight.”
…….Actually Sinz you need to get your story straight…..we’re not really fighting Al Quaeda in Afghanistan we’re fighting the Taliban……as you so accurately pointed out:
” No, they just crossed the border into Pakistan.
And they are operating in dozens of other countries.”
…….And perhaps you’d like to give us a few refs for the claim “liberals” whoever they are say Al Quaeda are “not longer a threat.”
12 Carney // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:35 am
Frum makes some good points here. We need to be committed to victory in every front in the War on Terror.
For the inveterately political among us, look at it this way:
The Dems claimed to be Afghan hawks to buy themselves the “right” to be weak on Iraq.
Somewhat similarly, we need to back Obama in Afghanistan, in part to buy ourselves the political capital to criticize him for not being committed to victory in Iraq.
13 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:47 am
Carney.
We already won Iraq. Remember “Mission Accomplished?” It’s done we won get out.
14 RioRancho // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:50 am
Carney, what does victory on every front in the War on Terror look like?
15 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:52 am
Carney // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:35 am
…….basically I agree with your take with a couple of reservations which relate to majority public opinion at home……firstly 70% of Americans have written off Iraq as a misbegotten disaster…….reduced casualty counts and domestic issues have pushed it off the nightly news so it’s off the radar but the American public has made up its mind about Iraq…….on Aghanistan the country is more evenly divided but there’s little enthusiasm for it and it’s not going to take much to cause public support to collapse……Obama has come up with a sort of hail mary strategy where he’s put the onus on the military and the Karzai admin to produce a result……if things are bad in 18 months time he’s not going to get much resistance to a drawdown in the run up to an election
16 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:56 am
Bush was supported by liberals pretty universally following 9/11. The Afghan war was and in general is supported. The change came when Bush decided to take his eye off the ball and invade Iraq.
As the British enquiry is showing on a daily basis the reasons we invaded that country were bogus, we were lied to. That’s when the support went away. No one likes the idea that we were conned into a war of choice when the war of necessity was ignored and dithered over for 7 years.
I don’t expect any real support from Republicans for Obama in any area. They have set their stall out as the party of no ideas. Why would they change?
17 mlindroo // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:57 am
Trajan wrote:
> Obama knows nothing about fighting a war and less about what this war
> and Islamist terrorism are all about.
Um, many people would argue that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld etc. were every bit as clueless.
BarryS responded:
: We already won Iraq. Remember “Mission Accomplished?” It’s done we won get out.
Exactly.
Face it folks — had the war on terror been handled correctly, the Dems would never have won such lopsided victories in 2006/08.
MARCU$
18 Schwabcycler // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:00 am
We only have to support an effort calculated to win. We do not have to support this man and can continue to work for a regime change in D.C. that will thwart him in all he tries to do that is bad for our country. Duh.
19 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:07 am
Schwabcycler // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:00 am
“We only have to support an effort calculated to win. We do not have to support this man ”
……If only life was this simple
20 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:09 am
David. “being to withdraw” sure reads as a timetable. Please tell me any other successfully prosecuted war were there was a “we win by this date or we’re out” restriction attached?
Obama already failed his test when he spent 1/3 of a year pondering his general’s request. The weak, timid, foreign policy presidency of Barack Carter Obama has now been firmly estabished. From the Kremlin to Tehran to Caracas he is a laughing stock. And he’s going to get a lot of good young men and women wasted, just to placate his left wing base. This guy has got to go. The world is too tough a place for the sheltered intellectual who has never had to face a real challenge in his life or make a hard decision until now. If he could have voted “present” on this war he would have.
21 Carney // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:14 am
BarryS, Bush was NOT supported by liberals after 9/11. Michael Moore, later honored with a prominent seat of honor at the Democratic convention next to a former president, complained immediately that the enemy had hit a “blue” area rather than one of the hated “red” areas. The rest of the Left muzzled its hate as long as it could, knowing it would face a backlash, but thought it had a chance to backstab our country just a few short weeks after 9/11, when overthrowing the Taliban seemed elusive – and began dragging out their buzzwords of “quagmire”, “Vietnam”, “imperialism”, etc.
They were shamed into silence by our triumph weeks later, but soon slithered back out from under their rocks to rally for “peace” in Iraq. Somehow in those seething crowds of tens of thousands waving signs, walking on stilts, playing with puppets, wearing masks, I saw no protests of Saddam’s brutal tyranny, his 12 years of violations of the Gulf War ceasefire, or his war brinksmanship.
And none, once the long-overdue liberation at last began, protested the fighting OF OUR ENEMIES – only of America. If they were genuinely anti war, rather than anti-American, would they not condemn all violence equally – indeed, would they not condemn genuine an obviously genuine bigoted, warmongering, terrorist, torturing, aggressor and tyrant rather than hurling such terms at the President of the United States?
Michael Moore, honored with a prominent seat at the Democratic convention near a former president, called our enemies in Iraq the equivalent of the Minutemen.
Thus we see that the “anti war” crowd is not actually “anti war” – but anti – American.
Yes, the unity was squandered. Shame on those who ruined the mood of togetherness with their bitterness, hatred, and treason.
And no, there is no legitimate grounds for strategic disagreement on this issue. Iraq had violated the ceasefire terms, brazenly and contemptuously, for 12 long years. Our inaction and passivity in response had dragged on to near-pathological levels, failing to take real action even after an assassination attempt on former Pres. Bush. The sanctions were crumbling and everyone knew Saddam would regain access to dual-use materials and would soon present the world with a dilemma much like Iran and North Korea are now. We should have acted immediately on Saddam’s first instance of failure to cooperate with inspectors, or his first open sponsorship of terrorism. That we dithered so long is still shameful, but partially redeemed by our eventual manning up.
22 MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:16 am
Hey, the twin teamers of BarryS, RioRancho tag in with similar, uncanny duplication –can balconesfault, Mr Face, Moderate and a few other of the manufactured boys be far behind on this thread?
Raider, you say it well with: “The weak, timid, foreign policy presidency of Barack Carter Obama has now been firmly estabished. From the Kremlin to Tehran to Caracas he is a laughing stock. And he’s going to get a lot of good young men and women wasted, just to placate his left wing base. This guy has got to go. The world is too tough a place for the sheltered intellectual who has never had to face a real challenge in his life or make a hard decision until now. If he could have voted “present” on this war he would have.”
Obama channeled John F Kerry’s spirit… 18 months from now Obama will be addressing a Code Pink Convention or the DailyKos-sack Grand Parade and be able to say: “I was in favor of the surge before I was against it.”
23 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:17 am
Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:09 am
“Obama already failed his test when he spent 1/3 of a year pondering his general’s request.”
…….the right wing nuts are incorrigible because they are completely consumed with hate and anger ……as Obama pointed out the requested deployments by McChrystal were not scheduled until next year and so taking time to consider all the bad options didn’t make any difference…..and in fact he’s planning a faster deployment than requested…..but don’t let these little facts bother your little head…….happily, politically which lets not kid ourselves is part of the equation, he’s boxed buffoons like this in so that they are reduced to producing rants of which this is a fair sample
24 trajan // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:20 am
Oldgal, sweetheart, “winning” a war means you’re no longer part of the British Empire paying confiscatory taxes. And it means that American blacks are no longer enslaved and haven’t been since 1865. And you’re not speaking German if speaking anything at all.
“Finishing the job” is not the same as winning a war. Obama’s avoidance of ever talking in terms of winning a war speaks volumes. And if you don’t understand that I know where you can get a burka, cheap.
25 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:21 am
ottovbs:
But he won’t be appreciated for it either.
Obama is Commander-in-Chief.
If things go bad, it will be entirely his responsibility–the buck stops with him.
In fact, if things go bad, in 2012 Obama will be in the same boat that Bush was in 2006 with Iraq. He’ll have to change course–but he and his party will take a political “thumpin’,” as Bush called it. Bush did not gain in the polls after he announced the surge.
On this one, I wish Obama well. He made a tough decision. And from what he said to reporters, he KNOWS it’s unpopular even with his own party.
And the only way he can gain from this is if it goes well.
And I wouldn’t mind if it worked out that way. If his Afghan war policy goes well, then he DESERVES to win a second term.
26 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:23 am
Carney // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:14 am
“BarryS, Bush was NOT supported by liberals after 9/11. Michael Moore, ”
……..Michael Moore is about as important in liberal politics as Michelle Malkin is in Republican ones……..the country (like 70% of it) has decided that Iraq was a disaster and every day more evidence emerges that Bush did indeed lie the country into an invasion…..you should read BBC news and see what’s coming out in the early stages the Chilcot inquiry……..the British foreign office is blowing the whistle on Bush and Blair big time
27 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:27 am
catching up …
otto: sinz54 … He’s not talking about Iraq…….balconesfault asked a question specifically directed at an assertion David made about Afghanistan……. viz.
Actually, I was asking about the entire theater – and I appreciated Sinz’s comments. Hadn’t thought about it, but I think there’s a good chance that he’s right, and that Rumsfeld would have continued to mismanage Iraq for another 2 years had not an electoral slap in the face been issued in 2006.
I’m actually less impressed by the Iraq surge than most, mind you – I don’t believe that the troops themselves were as important as the change in tactics – to bringing the Sunni warlords into the process to defeating the Al Qaeda savages they were already sick of. At the same time, a lot of the decline in violence in Iraq was also a process of the dis-integration of the society that had violently taken place in the previous few years, as neighborhoods moved more towards Shiite/Sunni/Kurdish purity, and thus the neighbor-neighbor killing that had been taking place diminished. And it helped that Iran sent signals to al Sadr to cool his heels as the Americans and Sunnis took care of the Al Qaeda problem.
Then again, it seems like some of these pieces had already come together under Rumsfeld – the agreements with the Sunni warlords were worked out long before he lost power. So it is hard to say retroactively what would have happened had Rummy not lost his job … maybe he’d be being called a genius right now.
Interesting that the dichotomy here over who was to get the credit for Iraq is over two Princeton men – Petraeus and Rumsfeld.
Sinz: Half of you are saying that al-Qaeda is no longer a threat; the other half are saying that it is a threat but it’s not in Afghanistan anymore, so we should put our effort elsewhere.
Al Qaeda will always be a threat, in that Al Qaeda is now a brand. Any Islamic terrorist who wants to make America wet our pants in the future will slap “Al Qaeda” on his manifesto when he blows something up, and that will act like a 10x multiplier on whatever impact the effect of the terror would be. And given that I’m much more pessimistic about the possibility of forever eliminating the possibility of Islamic terrorism directed at American targets than Sinz is, I think we’re stuck with the brand, especially since 19 guys with boxcutters and plane tickets got America to spend about 2 trillion dollars.
That said, I don’t think we’ll ever see Al Qaeda operating in Afghanistan the way they did in the past. No President is ever going to allow terrorist training camps to be operated out in the open, the way Clinton did for years, and Bush did for at least 8+ months. Obama’s stepped up drone program in Pakistan has made it clear to the world – if you don’t deal with the problem of anti-American terrorists overtly being trained in your country, we will.
riorancho: Carney, what does victory on every front in the War on Terror look like?
I’d like to ask this of everyone who argues we have to be ready to spend hundreds of billions a year occupying countries to wage this war. We already know Sinz answer – it is when America is so safe from terror that we don’t have to have metal detectors at national political conventions or take our shoes off at the airport. In other words – for all practical purposes – never.
Marcu$: Face it folks — had the war on terror been handled correctly, the Dems would never have won such lopsided victories in 2006/08.
This is without a doubt true – particularly since handled correctly, it would not have been nearly the burden on the economy that it was. I still think our economic fundamentals over the last 8 years were flawed enough that a collapse would have eventually occurred even without the war, but Bush would probably have been able to pass the ball to President McCain or Hillary first. As it was, Bush was just a little off … had Bush’s Presidency ended 6 months sooner, his defenders would be blaming the collapse of the financial sector on McCain or Obama.
oldgal trajan: What specifically would he (Obama) have to do to show you he is on the side of America and the west?
That’s probably easy, from the perspective of many Republicans. Obama would have to fire Joe Biden, choose Sarah Palin to be his new Vice President, and then resign.
28 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:28 am
Carney:
Liberals are not the same as the radical left.
Bush was supported by liberals. In fact, even Bernie Sanders voted for military action against al-Qaeda. Polls showed that over 90% of Americans wanted to put al-Qaeda out of business, which meant that lots of liberals did too.
The hard-core left, constituting some 7% of Americans, opposed war.
I do NOT consider Barbara Lee to be a “liberal.” Nothing that comes out of her mouth remotely resembles anything John Stuart Mill wrote about. Barbara Lee is a hard-core leftist who for years was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
In fact, the list of prominent Americans who were or are members of DSA might surprise many.
29 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:30 am
sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:21 am
“if things are bad in 18 months time he’s not going to get much resistance to a drawdown in the run up to an election
But he won’t be appreciated for it either.”
…….You’re completely wrong…..it’s not perceived as his war…….such a decision will be greeted with a sigh of relief by the vast majority of the country as was Nixon’s withdrawal from Vietnam(he wasn’t blamed for defeat, Americans just wanted shut of the place)……if political conditions are as I suggest the Republicans are going to be between a rock and hard place on whether to campaign for further escalation of this war or support withdrawal…….in fact the more I’ve thought about this while blogging away this morning the more I think that Obama has threaded the needle in crafting the best military strategy for Afghanistan practicable and handling the domestic politics very skilfully
30 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:33 am
Otto…um, where did Michelle Malkin sit during the GOP’s 2004 convention? Where did Moore sit in the 2004 DNC? Oh right. Those pesky facts again.
I am not “consumed with hate” re; BO. That is the left’s territory when it comes to Bush. I AM consumed with concern that we have a weak, naive, child as president. I am concerned about my country. And about the servicemen and women being asked to enter into a dangerous mission at the behest of a man whose dithering shows his heart is not the mission.
There comes a point at which measured and careful reflection becomes hand wringing. Paralysis of analysis it is called. Maybe if Obama had run something, ANYTHING beofre aspiring to sit in the most powerful executive chair in the world, he may have learned a little something about decisive leadership other than how to vote “present”.
By the way, which Otto identity are you rolling out today?
31 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:38 am
It is not fair, though, to lable this as Obama’s war. Nor is it Bush’s. It is whomever was unfortunate enough to be living at 1600 Penna Ave on 9/11/2001.
By the way, for those on the left, 9/11 refers to a series of attcks on US commerical and military interests by a bunch of ISLAMIC (yep) hijackers who killed 3,000 of your fellow citizens…I figured you guys forgot.
32 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:39 am
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:27 am
“I’m actually less impressed by the Iraq surge than most,”
……..I’m totally unimpressed in a strategic sense…..you could say it achieved some tactical success as the level of violence has undoubtedly fallen but by no means disappeared……this as you suggest was largely achieved by putting the insurgents on the payroll and handing out sweetners of one sort and another to the other factions…….strategically it achieved very little……in fact you could say it worsened our position because it strengthened the position of the Shiite faction who are basically in the pocket of Iran…..otherwise all the old cracks remain…..we just papered over them……it also dramatically reduced US casualties so that was a good thing……so I’d say a tactical success but strategicaly it’s changed nothing
33 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:40 am
Raider: From the Kremlin to Tehran to Caracas he is a laughing stock.
Did it ever occur to you all that if the rest of the world considered the Taliban to be the threat that the US considers it … that we wouldn’t have to be committing our own troops right now?
If the Russians consider Obama a laughing stock, it’s because he’s continuing to throw our military into the valleys of Afghanistan, something they learned about long ago.
Sinz: I saw no protests of Saddam’s brutal tyranny, his 12 years of violations of the Gulf War ceasefire, or his war brinksmanship.
Ummm… maybe because protesting Saddam in the US would be as efficacious as Palistinians burning Uncle Sam effigies during protest marches? You’re faulting people who did not like Saddam for not being stupid?
On the other hand, those of us who opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning believed that there was no sense of realism as to what the cost and outcome of such an invasion would be, and yes, we doubted the evidence that Saddam had huge stockpiles of WMDs.
sinz: If things go bad, it will be entirely his responsibility–the buck stops with him.
Only if America still believes 18 months from now that nation building in Afghanistan is more importanat than nation building in America.
trajan: Oldgal, sweetheart, “winning” a war means you’re no longer part of the British Empire paying confiscatory taxes. And it means that American blacks are no longer enslaved and haven’t been since 1865. And you’re not speaking German if speaking anything at all.
Wow – bonus points for the biggest sidestep of a question today!
I didn’t know that the Taliban was trying to regain power in Afghanistan so that they could force the US to pay taxes to Great Britain, bring back slavery in America, and force us all to speak German. Should have read more about them … maybe this IS an critical war!
34 DFL // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:41 am
A perpetual war against all terrorists throughout the world not only is an invitation to financial ruin and big government, it is Wilsonian in endeavor and not conservative. The world can not be perfected, there will always be evil, and any attempt to eradicate evil is plain silly. The frenzy the neo-conservatives(whose roots are on the Left) have created not only has discombobulated many well-meaning conservatives, it has derailed conservatism from its true goals of smaller government and lower taxes.
David Frum has dedicated his site to pretty much ousting social conservatives from the Republican Party. A greater menace to the Republicans, as the shellackings of 2006 and 2008 give testimony to, are the neo-conservatives with their perpetual war on terror and the military conservatives who do the bidding of the neo-conservatives.
By reinvigorating small government conservatism by galvanizing opposition to his big government policies, President Obama has presented a gift to conservatives which we should be thankful. He can help us again by withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan and dare the neo-conservatives to make Afghanistan a campaign issue. My guess is that an overwhelming majority of Americans would be glad, as Pontius Pilot put it two millenium ago, to wash our hands of the turmoil in Afghanistan.
35 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:42 am
…….the right wing nuts are incorrigible because they are completely consumed with hate and anger ……
Same could be said about the left wing nuts during Bush. We are in a era of hyperpartisanship.
36 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:43 am
raider: And about the servicemen and women being asked to enter into a dangerous mission at the behest of a man whose dithering shows his heart is not the mission.
Does everyone know/acknowledge that long before the request for these additional troops had come through, Obama had already doubled the US forces in Afghanistan from what was there when he took office? Where was the dithering then?
Sheesh.
37 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:48 am
it has derailed conservatism from its true goals of smaller government and lower taxes.
What derailed smaller government is Bush proposing new federal programs like Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, Faith Based initiatives, TARP. To blame it on the war is just nonsense.
38 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:50 am
oldgal:
He should stop apologizing for America’s past every time he talks to a foreign audience. Despite our flaws, our mistakes, and our entirely human sins, America has done far more good than harm in the world. Hard-core leftists like Howard Zinn don’t agree. As President, Obama cannot afford not to agree.
He should stop reminding the whole world what a wonderful country America is for having elected him. (America would still have been a wonderful country even if its people had freely chosen McCain instead.)
Those would help.
39 The Afghan Speech (II) - Ross Douthat Blog - NYTimes.com // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:50 am
[...] this morning, while downplaying or minimizing the parts he doesn’t like. (So too with Reihan, David Frum, Pete Wehner, Jamie Fly, and [...]
40 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:51 am
DFL: A perpetual war against all terrorists throughout the world not only is an invitation to financial ruin and big government, it is Wilsonian in endeavor and not conservative.
Bingo. You cannot reduce the involvement of government in the economy when the size of our military industrial complex mandates big government. It is politically unsustainable to spend a huge portion of the federal budget on the military while shrinking social spending – and thus we’re stuck with the Reagan bargain, where he allowed Tip O’Neill to keep all his social programs in exchange for passage of all his weapons programs, and the first big explosion in our deficit resulted. And Rove knew that the senior vote would be critical in the 2004 election, so Bush pushed through expansion of Medicare so that he could be allowed to continue to wage war in foreign lands.
And if 19 guys with airline tickets and boxcutters can convince us to drop a couple trillion dollars, we have to always be ready to go out and spend another few hundred billion now and then in response to the next psychopaths who put America in their sights and get lucky.
41 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:54 am
You cannot reduce the involvement of government in the economy when the size of our military industrial complex mandates big government.
Oh please. Entitlements are what is killing the budget.
42 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:55 am
DFL:
Only as long as America remains safe from terrorist attack.
If (heaven forbid) another major terrorist attack occurs against Americans, they will very quickly turn against anyone who tried to disengage America from the War on Terror.
Sinec 2001, the CIA and FBI have broken up a dozen different terrorist plots, any one of which could have killed hundreds if not thousands of Americans.
Sooner or later, they’re going to miss one.
Then what?
43 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:57 am
Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:33 am
……Please do be real……Moore=Malkin……they are both extremists they cancel each other out…….needless to say you don’t address the substance of deploymnet timing which wasn’t scheduled until next year but just trot out the usual tired old superficial cliches that impress no one outside of the hard right……that’s what you’re reduced to and it’s a measure of the extent to which he’s boxed you in on this issue
44 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:58 am
balconesfault:
What is wrong with you liberals? Don’t you ever check your numbers first?
The amount of money we’re spending on Social Security, Medicare, and the rest of the social safety net, dwarfs what we’re spending on the Pentagon.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png
And the social safety net is NOT shrinking. Rather, as Obama correctly pointed out, entitlement spending keeps exploding upward.
You liberals just find military spending to be icky. You see cutting the military as a Holy Grail, to show how peace-loving you truly are.
I don’t believe peace is won by weakness.
Currently, the U.S. spends only 4% of its GDP on the military. In 1960, we spent 12%.
45 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:59 am
And if 19 guys with airline tickets and boxcutters can convince us to drop a couple trillion dollars, we have to always be ready to go out and spend another few hundred billion now and then in response to the next psychopaths who put America in their sights and get lucky.
What would you have done when the Taliban refused to turn over Bin Laden?
46 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:00 am
chekote: Entitlements are what is killing the budget.
You might consider that without the federal receipts from Medicare and Social Security, we’d have been much much more in the red over the last 3 decades. Do you really think that without these programs in place, that middle class Americans would have been willing to effectively pay a higher tax rate (income plus 18.6% SS/medicare withdrawals) than the wealthiest Americans since around 1985?
sinz: Sooner or later, they’re going to miss one.
Then what?
Given all the other structural problems America is facing, this will make the door to true fascism wide open for the first opportunist who has the desire and talent to take advantage. God help us.
47 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:02 am
What would you have done when the Taliban refused to turn over Bin Laden?
Pretty much everything we did for the first 12 or so months in Afghanistan. And then left, with the promise that if America is ever struck again from terrorists based in their country, the next time we won’t be so nice.
48 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:02 am
#46
Don’t move the goal post. You basically said that military spending was responsible for the bloated budget. Simply not true. It is the entitlement as Sinz as shown in post #44.
49 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:05 am
#47
So you would have left Afghanistan so that AQ could re-group? Talk about endless conflict.
50 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:05 am
Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 10:42 am
…….the right wing nuts are incorrigible because they are completely consumed with hate and anger ……
“Same could be said about the left wing nuts during Bush. We are in a era of hyperpartisanship.”
……..basically true but Republican grass roots anger is a much more potent factor in their party than it ever was in the Democratic party……not many dems spent a lot of time kissing michael moore’s butt but you’d be trampled in the rush of Republicans to kiss Limbaugh’s……..if you take a look at the ambivalence of the comments from Frum and some of the semi sane conservatives here and contrast them with the usual boilerplates rants it’s a fair example of the tensions that have been created on the right by this decision……as I said above the more I think about this the more I’m impressed with how Obama has threaded the needle politically and militarily (and I’m someone who’d have been much happier to see the plug pulled but I can see the political craft here)
51 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:06 am
Sinz The amount of money we’re spending on Social Security, Medicare, and the rest of the social safety net, dwarfs what we’re spending on the Pentagon.
Check my earlier response to Chekote. What percentage of the taxes collected are specifically collected for Social Security and Medicare. What percentage of the taxes collected for SS and Medicare have been paid out by those funds in the last 30 years … and what percentage have been used to cover up the shortfall in the federal budget between what we collect through income and corporate taxes, and what we spend to run the government?
Reagan’s bump in the Social Security taxes didn’t just shore up the SS actuarial numbers – they also made it possible for America to keep income tax levels as low as we have over the last 30 years.
52 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:07 am
balconesfault:
Ever since Vietnam, American liberals have been constantly pessimistic about defeating America’s enemies. Liberals came out of the Vietnam era believing that America can’w win, and maybe America doesn’t even deserve to win. Declinism is in their DNA. Remember how Ted Kennedy “predicted” the Gulf War would turn into a quagmire with 10,000 American soldiers killed?
But I’m the last generation of schoolkids who had to huddle practicing “Duck and Cover” drills in case the USSR attacked us. 40 years later, I got to see the USSR collapse. You liberals never thought that was possible. You thought the best we could get was some kind of permanent accommodation with them.
YOU WERE WRONG THEN.
And you’ll be wrong now.
My reading of history is this: If something is possible, it won’t get accomplished by people like you who have already proclaimed it to be impossible.
53 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:09 am
chekote: So you would have left Afghanistan so that AQ could re-group? Talk about endless conflict.
You’re far more pessimistic than I. The Taliban wasn’t allied with Al Qaeda, so much as Bin Laden was paying them a lot of money to look the other way. My contention is that they would no longer take the risk of allowing AQ to operate from their country anymore … and moreover, every other country out there where Bin Laden wanted to relocate would have learned the same lesson.
54 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:09 am
Otto. I ask again. Was Michelle Malkin given a seat of honor at the GOP convention? Was Moore at the DNC? Simple question and goes to your flase claim that Moore has no influence in democratic politics because he is, in your own words “an extremist.” What does that tell you about the state of the Democratic party?
When was the original timetable set? Has that been superceded by events? (Wars do that you know). If this was the plan all along then why would McChrystal ask for the deployment sooner? Why is this an issue at all?
55 MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:14 am
#48 Not only are they democrat entitlements breaking the fed bank, nearly all the spending engaged since Obama became prez has been for special interests and some for new entitlements (like the only thing wrong with America is there aren’t enough entitlements already) –and his Health Scare Plan will add an additional 29% to the fed govt entitlement spending total and make cutbacks in defense, border patrols, natl security, intelligence gathering, roads and bridges mandatory… or else it’s going to be a bloody battle about whomping tax increases.
balconesfault-BarryS-Mr Face-Moderate and the other manufactured characters love to move the goalposts… like many have noted here, they hope you won’t notice.
56 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:16 am
Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:02 am
“Don’t move the goal post. You basically said that military spending was responsible for the bloated budget. Simply not true. It is the entitlement as Sinz as shown in post #44.”
…….He was exaggerating when he said military expenditures were the only problem but at 21% of the federal budget they could hardly be described as an insignificant contributor to the deficit…..let me assure you that if you were running a business with a line item consuming 21% of the overhead it would get a lot of scrutiny……the real significance of the chart Sinz posted a link to is the small size of the discretionary element and even that when you get into the detail is mostly tied to must have local spending…….I’m all for a 5% real cut in govt spending once the economy gets moving again and the military will have to take it’s share (if Republicans aren’t willing to talk about that they simply aren’t serious about deficits…….a good starting point would be the 150 billion a year we’ll be spending in Iraq/Afghanistan when this deployment is complete
57 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:18 am
Sinz: 40 years later, I got to see the USSR collapse. You liberals never thought that was possible. You thought the best we could get was some kind of permanent accommodation with them.
Yeah, I got to hide under my desk too.
Now, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that liberals thought we could get to some kind of permanent accomodation with the Soviet Union without us actually going to war against them.
In other words … liberals were right. The Soviet Union collapsed because economically it was unsustainable. It wasn’t just a government run industrial program – it was a very poorly run government run industrial program (as opposed to the very intelligently run government run industrial program we face in China).
We have a permanent accomodation with them, achieved without direct conflict. It was called the Soviet Union giving up their idea of trying to maintain centralized control over a lot of peoples who didn’t want to be a part of the Soviet Union. And the US never had to drop one bomb on Moscow to achieve this.
58 Carney // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:18 am
I regret my post of 10:14am. I was intemperate and overstated my case, undermining whatever good points I may have made.
59 MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:22 am
Raider1, yesterday, Michael Moore called on his president, Barack Obama, to cut & run… to dismiss his military advisers and go rogue on Afghanistan. He compared Obama or a Bush-lite. It is an incredible statement on Moore’s part. He called on his rabble to pick up the phones and call the WH and he called on the rabble to go Code Pink on the Prez.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/open-letter-president-obama-michael-moore
Yeah, he’s nothing to the democrat party that Michael Moore. Otto is whistling in the wind with that lie.
60 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:25 am
Wow Balconsfault. Do you REALLY believe that line about liberals being right about the USSR? Come on dude. I lived through that. I remember libs caling Reagan crazy, a warmonger, etc. I remember Carter offering a campaign choice between “peace (him) and war (guess who). All the lefties were out there protesting everything from missle deployments to SDI. No one on the left EVER thought they’d see the Berlin Wall fall.
If you are obtuse enough to think that we are in the accomodation today that the peace at any price left envisioned, you are in denial, or disingenuous or both. Certainly millions more would be in chains today across Europe if your vision prevailed. Gimme a break.
61 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:25 am
54 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:09 am
“Otto. I ask again. Was Michelle Malkin given a seat of honor at the GOP convention? Was Moore at the DNC? Simple question and goes to your flase claim that Moore has no influence in democratic politics because he is, in your own words “an extremist.” What does that tell you about the state of the Democratic party?’
……one of these days you’ll learn to tell the wood from the trees…….of course Moore is an extremist and so is Limbaugh……now what does the fact that Republicans are falling over themselves to kiss Limbaughs butt tell you about the state of the Republican party……by contrast Moore’s real influence in the Democratic party is negligible
” When was the original timetable set? Has that been superceded by events? (Wars do that you know). If this was the plan all along then why would McChrystal ask for the deployment sooner? Why is this an issue at all?”
………McChrystal’s original request delivered three months ago was for a 2010 deployment my friend…….Obama is actually speeding it up by front loading it in the year……..You also seem oblivious of the fact that Obama has already deployed an additional 36,000 troops since taking office (there were 32,000 there when he took over)…..if this was all so essentiall why didn’t Bush deploy 100,000 men five years ago
62 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:30 am
Carney // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:18 am
“I regret my post of 10:14am. I was intemperate and overstated my case, undermining whatever good points I may have made.”
……I hope this is not irony because in fact you often make some very shrewd comments(I particularly liked one this morning on the relative political positions of Republicans/Dems on Iraq/Afghanistan) …..and I’m not being ironic
63 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:32 am
Carney – thanks – it happens to all of us sometimes.
There is one distinction I’d like to stick in here – the difference between being “anti-war”, and being against specific wars. There are a lot of us who believe that the US needs to maintain the capability to fight and win wars, and knows that there will be wars in the future that the US will need to fight and win … but who also believed that invading Iraq was just a really bad idea, destined to cost the us far more in man and material and prestige than it would ever buy us in security.
64 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:32 am
MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:22 am
“Raider1, yesterday, Michael Moore called on his president, Barack Obama, to cut & run…Yeah, he’s nothing to the democrat party that Michael Moore. Otto is whistling in the wind with that lie.’
……..yeah….. Obama sure took a lot of notice
65 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:35 am
Ok..so now that your Michelle Malkin argument has been completely torpedoed, you do the Otto two-step and change it now to a comparison of Rush Limbaugh (whom I would hardly describe as an extremist) and Michael Moore (whom no one can deny is NOT an extrmist). Unless you view Rush Limbaugh’s 18 million daily listeners as “extremists” as well.
Again, I do not recall Rush Limbaugh being honored at any GOP convention but maybe my memory is hazy. Nor do I recall Rush being the toast of Oscar night – no mainstream Dems in that crowd eh?
As to deployment, then, your thesis is thus: “There is no issue. If anything Obama, being the hawk he is, is accelerating a timetable — even though he was asked for a decision three months ago — and everyone except for reasonable Otto (2 or 3 today?) is a blathering fool.” Got it.
Dare I research this and pick you apart on both fact and context or does someone else want the Otto-bashing baton for a while? This is tiresome arguing with a blind ideolgue in all of his different identities.
66 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:35 am
otto: …if this was all so essentiall why didn’t Bush deploy 100,000 men five years ago
For one, this escalation in Afghanistan is only being made possible by the drawdown of troops from Iraq.
No McChrystal would have publicly called for a 100,000 US fighting force in Afghanistan five years ago … because every General in the US army saw what happened to Shinseki.
67 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:37 am
Raider1: Nor do I recall Rush being the toast of Oscar night
Wouldn’t Limbaugh have actually had to make or acted in (or done the soundtrack for, whatever…) a movie for this to happen?
68 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:37 am
Otto1…maybe you are privy to the inner White House but I would not presume to judge a mere 24 hours after receiving a plea from both his ideological soulmate as well as a key force in todays Democratic Party whether or not Obama took notice.
69 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:40 am
Balconsfault–I’m sorry. I am still wiping tears of laughter from your thesis of how liberals got the USSR pegged back in the 70s and 80s. Whew! Ok…now, I see that my argument about Moore missed the mark (it required an intellect to understand the nexus between Hollywood Liberal elites fawning over one of their own and the DNC that I see you just do not possess. No worries). By the way, you remember that consevartive documentary that won the Oscar? Oh right…
I guess though there are millions of free Poles, Czechs, Germans, etc. who owe you guys a debt of gratitude for winning the Cold War eh? LOL.
70 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:42 am
Raider1: as well as a key force in todays Democratic Party
Michael Moore? Really?
So THAT’s why the Democrats have pushed for return of taxes to pre-Reagan levels, a nationalized healthcare system, immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and called Bush, Cheney, and everyone else to Capitol Hill to provide sworn testimony under oath about the falsification of WMD intelligence in 2002/2003.
Because Michael Moore holds them in their sway.
I was wondering why that was all happening.
71 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:43 am
Balcon, did Michael Moore or did he not have a seat of honor at the DNC?
72 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:43 am
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:06 am
“Reagan’s bump in the Social Security taxes didn’t just shore up the SS actuarial numbers – they also made it possible for America to keep income tax levels as low as we have over the last 30 years.”
…….that and the growth in the economy and productivity particularly in the 90’s when there was a huge spurt……..the reality of course as old Bartlett has pointed out is that cutting spending is next to impossible because the discretionary bit is so small no one is willing to give up entitlements the demand for which is going to grow with an aging population…..the best you can hope to do is contain it and that it’s going to have to be paid for by higher taxes which in real terms are at levels not seen since the early fifties
73 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:49 am
Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:43 am
“Balcon, did Michael Moore or did he not have a seat of honor at the DNC?”
“Ok..so now that your Michelle Malkin argument has been completely torpedoed, you do the Otto two-step and change it now to a comparison of Rush Limbaugh (whom I would hardly describe as an extremist) and Michael Moore (whom no one can deny is NOT an extrmist). Unless you view Rush Limbaugh’s 18 million daily listeners as “extremists” as well.”
…….So did Barbra Streisand as far as I know…..it’s totally irrelevant because he has no real influence in the Democratic party…although I can see that as a conservative who is fixated on appearance rather than substance this might appear important…….and yeah Limbaugh is mainstream….god you’re pea brained
74 dannymk@gmail.com // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:49 am
You are not a conservative so please refrain from saying “our.” Though you are right. We must hope for success here.
75 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:51 am
Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:37 am
“Otto1…maybe you are privy to the inner White House but I would not presume to judge a mere 24 hours after receiving a plea from both his ideological soulmate as well as a key force in todays Democratic Party whether or not Obama took notice.”
…….Yes I’m sure Obama will be holding another press confernece in two days time announcing the deployment is cancelled because mikey moore is unhappy……pea brain
76 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:53 am
Otto2…tell me how you would view it if David Duke were given a seat at the GOP convention sitting in a seat of honor next to say Dick Cheney? Woud you still view it as “irrelevant’? Would you still see him as a man with “no influence in the GOP”? Mere “appearance”?
Anyone not drowning in self-delusional kool-aid care to answer this for the Ottos?
77 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:54 am
Raider1: Balconsfault–I’m sorry. I am still wiping tears of laughter from your thesis of how liberals got the USSR pegged back in the 70s and 80s.
Given that you’re the intellectual heir of Curtis LeMay … who called the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missle Crisis “the greatest defeat in our history.” … I’m not surprised.
I am not saying that the Soviet Union may not have held on longer without the US opposing it on a multitude of fronts. I will argue that had the hawks held sway and we had taken on the Soviet Union directly, the death toll and destruction would have been mind boggling.
78 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:58 am
Otto..I see you are adept at “Argumentum Ad Reductio Ad Absurdum.” I don’t recall me saying that in two days your messiah would hold a press conference and reverse his Afghan stance because of michael moore. Any more than a GOP president would reverse a policy based solely on a letter from, say, a prominent conservative given a seat of honor at the GOP convention. But that does not mean his views carry no weight…especially considering how closely aligned he and the REAL Obama (of the Rev. Wright, Bll Ayers school of thought) are on so many of the issues confronting us today.
Out of curiosity, when you guys (all of the Ottos) hear a fact, do you close your ears and just chant “I’m not listening”?
79 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:58 am
Raider: Otto2…tell me how you would view it if David Duke were given a seat at the GOP convention sitting in a seat of honor next to say Dick Cheney?
I find your comparison of Moore with David Duke to be specious. In 2004, Moore was a prominent representative of the anti-war movement, based on the success of his film. Since the Democratic platform of the time was that the Iraq War was a huge mistake, he fit.
David Duke is best known for being the former Grand Wizard of the KKK. If the Republican Party wants such a direct alliance with the KKK, the chips will fall as they will.
80 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:59 am
Raider
We had this conversation on another threat. There is a double standard regarding the loonies. The loonies on the Left “never have any influence” while the ” loonies on the Right” are treated as the leaders of the political movement. Otto will never admit he is wrong. But he is still a lovable guy.
81 rbottoms // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:59 am
“Good luck with that.”
~Wolverine, X3
82 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:53 am
…..Your boilerplate rants are getting as tedious as those from motor mouth…….and michael moore is not David Duke although only someone like you would think so…….he’s like Limbaugh a semi respectable extremist…..more people watched his movie than listen to Limbaugh btw if that’s your measure of mainstream …..Duke is not respectable by any measure …..none of this is particulary relevant to this thread which is about the mistake Republicans will be making if they play politics over the Afghan war but I guess you can’t help yourself
83 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I AM of the Curtiss LeMay school of how to beat Japan in a war. Perhaps you would have viewed the continued subjugation of the Philippines, China, Malaysia, etc. as the desired status quo though right? Another great liberal victory against totalitarianism. Like the cold war!
Not sure how I got that label. I didn’t recall LIBERALS (today’s definintion) solving that stalemate. I recall blockades and a compromise on Turkish missles but whatever.
84 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:02 pm
And Michelle Malkin is not Michael Moore Otto5. (A new one is appearing…exasperated, corner Otto).
I notice that you dropped the Michelle Malkin comparison altogether. Moving the goalposts now huh?
85 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 11:59 am
“The loonies on the Left “never have any influence” while the ” loonies on the Right” are treated as the leaders of the political movement.”
……..Chek……are you seriously telling me you believe Moore to be as influential with the leadership of the Democratic party as Limbaugh, who fulfills a somewhat similar function as a drummer on the right, is with the leadership of the Republican party……if so my respect for that objectivity that you just can’t keep submerged however much you try, is going to take a big hit I’m afraid
86 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I will say this: if the GOP plays politics with this war then they deserve the wrath of teh country. Peopel are tired of Washington games when brave Americans’ lives are at stake. I wish POTUS all the success in this surge and hope it works…for the good of this great country.
Time to get back to my real job.
87 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I intend to give President Obama’s surge plan a decent chance to see how it works out.
I’m going to withhold judgment until our troops escalate against the enemy and the combat situation develops some more. In a year at most, we’ll know if President Obama’s calculated risk has succeeded.
I’m giving President Obama more consideration than liberals gave Bush’s surge, when they “predicted” its total failure from the beginning.
And it’s more consideration than ultra-liberals like Joan Walsh are giving President Obama now, who have already decided in advance it’s going to fail.
I wish our troops well.
And I wish President Obama well–in this endeavor at least.
88 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:10 pm
chekote,
said otto: “…if so my respect for that objectivity that you just can’t keep submerged however much you try, is going to take a big hit I’m afraid”
if you lose the respect of the revered otto, then my respect you have gained! the guy is an egomaniac… you can observe evidence of this fact by his 1,200 posts/day.
89 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:12 pm
84 Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:02 pm
“And Michelle Malkin is not Michael Moore Otto5. (A new one is appearing…exasperated, corner Otto).
I notice that you dropped the Michelle Malkin comparison altogether. Moving the goalposts now huh?”
…….Malkin is an iconic figure……..I could just as easily have said Coulter or Hannitty…….do you have to keep demonstrating how small minded you are…..I can understand why you focus on this trivia but it can’t hide the fact you are loosing the big argument which is supposed to be about Afghanistan and national security…..and not irrelevancies like drummers of the malkin, moore, limbaugh type……Obama has boxed you….. so support him and our guys or get out of the way
90 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:16 pm
WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:10 pm
“if you lose the respect of the revered otto, then my respect you have gained! the guy is an egomaniac… ”
……whilst willyp of course is noted for the infrequency, modesty, clarity and brevity of his contributions
91 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Raider1 // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:06 pm
“I will say this: if the GOP plays politics with this war then they deserve the wrath of teh country. Peopel are tired of Washington games when brave Americans’ lives are at stake. I wish POTUS all the success in this surge and hope it works…for the good of this great country.”
….agreed
92 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:18 pm
sinz: well, Obama is basically throwing in with the neocons, at least for the short run.
I would hope that neocons will at least support him on it, or they will be laid bare as pure political opportunists.
Joan Walsh, for what it’s worth, is at least consistent. She didn’t believe that any surge of forces was warranted before Obama called for it … and she’s not today.
If neocons continue attacking Obama because he put up timelines (which I suspect will be very popular with Americans who are already sick of what will by summer 2011 be a 9+ year occupation of Afghanistan), and because he didn’t thump the podium (seriously – that was one criticism last night), and because he took some time to deliberate before sending Americans into harms way against a Taliban that is already far smaller than our current force in Afghanistan … they’re basically laying down a marker that they shouldn’t be considered serious people.
93 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:20 pm
are you seriously telling me you believe Moore to be as influential with the leadership of the Democratic party as Limbaugh, who fulfills a somewhat similar function as a drummer on the right, is with the leadership of the Republican party……
I think Moore and Rush have legions of fans who share their point of view. Both fan bases are key constituencies in their respective political parties but I don’t believe that Moore and Rush have a stronghold over the direction of their party. I also think that Rush’s influence is greatly overstated. If Rush was this all powerful power broker in the GOP, McCain would have never gotten the nomination. Rush despises McCain. Has for years. Same goes for Graham. Despite Rush’s dislike Grahan won the GOP nomination and was re-elected with no problem.
The problem with the GOP is that we have a small cadre that is very, very, very loud. But they don’t reflect of the majority of Republican voters. It is up to the rest of us to stand up and put them back in their place. A process that is happening. Slowly but it is happening.
94 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:24 pm
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:18 pm
“If neocons continue attacking Obama because he put up timelines (which I suspect will be very popular with Americans who are already sick of what will by summer 2011 be a 9+ year occupation of Afghanistan), and because he didn’t thump the podium (seriously – that was one criticism last night), and because he took some time to deliberate before sending Americans into harms way against a Taliban that is already far smaller than our current force in Afghanistan … they’re basically laying down a marker that they shouldn’t be considered serious people.”
……you’ve summarized the situation perfectly…….I’m not optimistic that they will resist playing politics with this but as even Raider above concedes they are taking a hell of a risk if they do
95 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Well, McChrystal is happy with Obama’s decision. That’s good enough for me. I find the kneejerk opposition to EVERYTHING Obama does stupid and counterproductive. Also, I don’t understand why some people are getting hung up on the word “win”. Who cares if Obama uses it, not uses it? Totally irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that our military is getting the resources it needs to get the job done.
96 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:32 pm
…….I’m not optimistic that they will resist playing politics with this but as even Raider above concedes they are taking a hell of a risk if they do
Politicians play political games no matter the party.
97 stuiec // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:32 pm
(1) It’s wonderful that David Frum is opposed to the straw man that he’s constructed about Republicans holding Afghan war funding hostage to, say, healthcare. Because that’s what it is: a straw man. It’s more likely, in fact, that the President will be required by wavering Democrats to support their most leftward domestic policy goals as the price for their tolerance of the Afghan war. As the President himself said in his speech, in his mind war policy is NOT independent of domestic priorities — and he declared that his appetite for fighting the war will evaporate if he can’t afford to fund his domestic priorities at the same time.
(2) The problem with a timetable — whether to start or to complete a troop withdrawal — is that it forgets a basic fact of war: the enemy also gets a vote on how the war goes. I recall leaders like Washington and Lincoln and FDR declaring unequivocal war aims, mainly total victory, but never trying to promise a date certain for accomplishing those aims. In fact, I don’t recall our national leaders setting timetables on wars until maybe Korea, definitely Vietnam. Obama’s timetable is a transparent effort to position himself as a war ender in 2012, and it probably means that the Taliban will hold in reserve sufficient capability to launch a re-intensified insurgency in 2011 in the knowledge that Obama must, for domestic political reasons, be seen to be reducing American troop levels in Afghanistan in 2011 regardless of facts on the ground.
98 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:20 pm
“I think Moore and Rush have legions of fans who share their point of view. Both fan bases are key constituencies in their respective political parties but I don’t believe that Moore and Rush have a stronghold over the direction of their party. I also think that Rush’s influence is greatly overstated. ”
……..I agree with your job descriptions for both these guys but do you really see the Democratic leadership let alone the president falling over themselves to apologize to Moore if they made disparaging comments about him which is exactly what happened when Republican leader made disparaging comments about Limbaugh……I’m not sure I completely buy your last para…….several studies, focus groups etc have now been published which suggest that what I’ll call Palinism for shorthand has won the hearts and minds of at least two thirds of the GOP……that’s the 20-30% of the electorate who are self identified conservative, think Bush did a great job, love Palin, worry about where Obama was born etc……..then there’s the next 15% of the electorate who now call themselves indies but are still basically Republicans giving you around 40% ish which is the GOP vote outside of suicide candidates like Landon, Goldwater or Palin that they can count on…..you think the moderate Republicans are winning……I don’t
99 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Otto
When was the last time a Democrat called Moore a “entertainer” or “inflammatory”? I don’t recall ANY Democrat criticizing Moore. Maybe Lieberman who was chased out of the party for not subscribing to the Moore line on Iraq. So actually, a case can be made that Moore is much more influential in Dem circles as evidenced by Lieberman being defeated in the primary. While Rush is less influential since his least favorite candidates – McCain and Huck – finished 1st and 2nd in the Republican primary.
100 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:49 pm
stuiec // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:32 pm
“Obama’s timetable is a transparent effort to position himself as a war ender in 2012, and it probably means that the Taliban will hold in reserve sufficient capability to launch a re-intensified insurgency in 2011 in the knowledge that Obama must, for domestic political reasons, be seen to be reducing American troop levels in Afghanistan in 2011 regardless of facts on the ground.”
…..the enemy gets a vote but so do we……wars are very much a matter of who holds the initiative…………in terms of the political dimension at home although coming at it from different standpoints you and agree somewhat……I’d say it gives him the flexiblity to go in either direction depending on how events unfold…..that’s the beauty of the political and military strategy he’s crafted….it’s very cunning…..As for the Taliban they are faced with a dilemma…..attempt to disrupt security operations and face bruising battles of attrition……or go to ground and watch (perhaps?) as the Karzai administration and NATO build a credible domestic security apparatus that will be much harder to beat when we leave……they don’t hold all the cards by any means in the context of the next couple of years
101 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:51 pm
stuiec: I recall leaders like Washington and Lincoln and FDR declaring unequivocal war aims, mainly total victory
No no – you don’t get off THAT easy.
For Washington, victory was the British granting independence to America. Everyone knew exactly what that meant … no timeline was necessary.
For Lincoln, victory was Southern seccessionists laying down their arms. Everyone knew exactly what that meant … no timeline was necessary.
For FDR, victory was the surrender by Germany and Japan to terms dictated by America. Everyone knew exactly what that meant … no timeline was necessary.
What is your definition of victory in Afghanistan? The Taliban to lay down arms? Do you really think that’s going to happen at this stage?
102 akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I support the mission, the Generals and our troops. I don’t have to support Obama’s weak half-in strategy. He laid out the objectives, and he never once said we’re going to win or achieve victory. McChrystal and Petraeus literally wrote the book on how to fight these wars, but Obama decided to play politics instead of committing 100% to winning our mission.
We have to destroy Al-Qaeda, weaken the Taliban and strengthen the Afghan military and government so that Afghanistan and the Swat valley can no longer be used as training camps and hideouts for Muslim extremists. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda have stated that their primary objective is to obtain nuclear weapons in Pakistan, to reclaim Afghanistan, and to continue terrorizing the world of non-believers.
The Afghan people don’t hate us, but they don’t trust that we are going to stick around long enough to help them stabilize their country and route the Taliban. They fear the Taliban, but they will choose to join them if they don’t see a better option. We have to be that better option, along with the Afghanistan military and government.
103 Lavaux // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I caught the president’s speech and thought it was spot on until he expressed his views on the source of America’s moral authority. Wrong. Very and disturbingly wrong.
Last century America stood against and overcame the threats of totalitarianism, national socialism and international socialism (otherwise known as Soviet communism and Maoism) because they are antithetical to liberty. Yes, liberty.
The century before America let oceans of its own blood to put an end to slavery because it is antithetical to liberty. Yes, liberty.
We are not a nation who has submitted its founding documents, ideals and sovereignty to preemption by the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights because it is antithetical to liberty as we understand and practice it. Therefore, our moral authority cannot be judged according to this document. Yet this is precisely what Pres. Obama declared, and on this he is dead wrong.
Nevertheless, I want Pres. Obama to succeed as America’s Commander in Chief. Consider the alternatives. I also want Pres. Obama to fail miserably as a socialist reformer and become a one-term president. My desires are what’s best for America because socialism is antithetical to liberty. Therefore, the GOP must do what’s required to send Mr. Obama back to Illinois in humiliating defeat three years hence.
And don’t give me that tired B.S. about how “socialism” requires the state to own all or a substantial part of a nation’s capital. About 30 years ago when it became clear that dirigisme was doomed to fail miserably in Europe’s socialist democracies, they privatized almost all of the capital they had nationalized just 3 or 4 decades before and began collecting their revenues in the form of income and excise taxes. They did this because they wised up and realized that seizing a company’s profits through taxation is better than owning it outright because they don’t own the liabilities as well. Add to this their realization that they can impose ever more onerous social obligations on private companies and their shareholders through regulation, thereby enabling them to pat themselves on the back for keeping tax rates static in the face of perpetual economic malaise, and you’ve got modern day socialism. This is precisely what Pres. Obama wants to bring to America, and in this he must fail and fail miserably.
104 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:47 pm
” Maybe Lieberman who was chased out of the party for not subscribing to the Moore line on Iraq.”
……the reason Moore doesn’t attract Dem comment is because he isn’t important within Democratic party dynamics and Limbaugh is immensely important with the Republican ones ……Lieberman was chased out of the Democratic party for disagreeing with Michael Moore?……..Lieberman was chased out of the Democratic party for disagreeing with what had by then become the almost universal Democratic position on the Iraq war and is now the comfortable majority opinion in the country…….chicken and egg?……but if you think Moore is more influential than Limbaugh within their respective parties I’m afraid we’ll have to disagree…..I don’t think you’re ever going to see any laments on liberal blogs about the malign influence of Moore’s comments on the party’s image as you see them here about Limbaugh and the reason for that is because he isn’t very important
105 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Lavaux, thank you, for a refreshing post!
Now why don’t the others, Frum included, get it?
106 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:12 pm
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:51 pm
“For Washington, victory was the British granting independence to America. Everyone knew exactly what that meant … no timeline was necessary.”
…….Actually Washington’s situation was much more blurred than was the case with the Confederacy or the Axis powers, in fact his strategery bears more than a passing resemblance to that of the Taliban (who we’re fighting in Afghanistan not AQ), or Mao, or Frederick II in the seven years war: all he had to do was keep an army in being and with access to warmaking capacity; it didn’t matter how many times he was defeated just so long as remained in the field…..to some extent this was also true of the civil war which is why Winfield’s anaconda strategy was so slow ……it’s also why ultimately without the full COIN committment and even then it’s a gamble, we can’t win in Afghanistan because ultimately the Taliban can do their equivalent of the long march, put their weapons away, cultivate the poppies and wait for better days
107 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:15 pm
……the reason Moore doesn’t attract Dem comment is because he isn’t important within Democratic party dynamics and Limbaugh is immensely important with the Republican one
You can’t prove that. Maybe they are too intimidated to take him on. The point is that you can’t come to your conclusions without making a bunch of assumptions. No one has criticize Moore so we don’t know whether Dems would apologize as Steele did.
I don’t think you’re ever going to see any laments on liberal blogs about the malign influence of Moore’s comments on the party’s image as you see them here about Limbaugh and the reason for that is because he isn’t very important
Or it could be that the Dems agree with him and his lunancy. You can’t prove your point. However, I have substantiated my point that Rush is not as influential as you seem to think since his least favorite picks finished 1 and 2 in the GOP presidential primary.
108 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Lavaux: Therefore, our moral authority cannot be judged according to this document. Yet this is precisely what Pres. Obama declared, and on this he is dead wrong.
Huh … I heard Obama say that our moral authority stemmed from our support for “human rights and .. the light of freedom and justice and opportunity and respect for the dignity of all peoples.”
You say liberty.
Potato, potato.
That said, is there something about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that pisses you off?
109 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:22 pm
103 Lavaux // Dec 2, 2009 at 12:54 pm
“And don’t give me that tired B.S. about how “socialism” requires the state to own all or a substantial part of a nation’s capital.”
……Do get caught up with the times……Democratic socialism which is the predominant political system in Europe regardless of whether socialists or conservatives are in power (and here to a large extent) has evolved and runs a mixed economy……and btw the performance of most European economies has not been very different ot ours over the last ten years
“this is precisely what Pres. Obama wants to bring to America, and in this he must fail and fail miserably.”
………would you like to give us a list of the companies Obama is anxious to nationalize (and don’t mention the car companies, AIG, and some of the large banks in which we hold large blocs of pref stock because most of these were de facto taken on by the Bush admin)
110 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:22 pm
otto: we can’t win in Afghanistan because ultimately the Taliban can do their equivalent of the long march, put their weapons away, cultivate the poppies and wait for better days
We can’t win in Afghanistan … because Afghanistan is not ours to win or lose.
I mean, we COULD win, if we wanted to establish Afghanistan as an American territory, another Samoa or whatever. Then we would be in charge of security, and “winning” would mean holding the country.
But really, what we want is the Afghan people to “win”. In this sense, they’re kind of going to have to make up their minds that spilling their own blood to keep democracy alive is worthwhile.
If the Taliban goes into remission … they fear losing everything … because that action will make it much easier for the Afghan government to train forces and be prepared to defend the government (something they didn’t seem to be pressured to do too much in the last decade, given where they’re at right now). They have to keep up a constant pressure, or their window of opportunity may disappear.
111 donabernathy // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:27 pm
bwhahahaha
AQ is in Pakistan and we are sending troops to Afghanistan….. hahahahahaha……. when he said he had been to all 57 States I just though he was Stoopid….. Now I know he is a clown that need a map.
roflmao
112 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:15 pm
“You can’t prove that. Maybe they are too intimidated to take him on.”
…….They tremble at his name…..I can’t “prove” that Palin is only in it for the money however I’m able to pass a reasonable value judgement
“Or it could be that the Dems agree with him and his lunancy.”
…….Some probably do but they are much less significant a factor than those that feel the same about Limbaugh in the gop
“However, I have substantiated my point that Rush is not as influential as you seem to think since his least favorite picks finished 1 and 2 in the GOP presidential primary.”
…….nothing to do with their perceived electability relative to Limbaugh’s choices?
113 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:34 pm
105 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:04 pm
“Now why don’t the others, Frum included, get it?”
……Probably because he inhabits the real world not fantasy land
114 akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Notice the stark contrast in speeches!!
President Bush’s Afghanistan speech, 10/7/2001
GEORGE W. BUSH
Statement given after the start of the US and British military strikes on targets in Afghanistan on Sunday, 7th October 2001.
On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan.
These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taleban regime.
We are joined in this operation by our staunch friend, Great Britain. Other close friends, including Canada, Australia, Germany and France, have pledged forces as the operation unfolds.
More than 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and across Asia have granted air transit or landing rights. Many more have shared intelligence. We are supported by the collective will of the world.
More than two weeks ago, I gave Taleban leaders a series of clear and specific demands: Close terrorist training camps. Hand over leaders of the al-Qaeda network, and return all foreign nationals, including American citizens unjustly detained in our country.
None of these demands were met. And now, the Taleban will pay a price.
By destroying camps and disrupting communications, we will make it more difficult for the terror network to train new recruits and coordinate their evil plans.
Initially, the terrorists may burrow deeper into caves and other entrenched hiding places. Our military action is also designed to clear the way for sustained, comprehensive and relentless operations to drive them out and bring them to justice.
At the same time, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan.
The United States of America is a friend to the Afghan people, and we are the friends of almost a billion worldwide who practice the Islamic faith.
The United States of America is an enemy of those who aid terrorists and of the barbaric criminals who profane a great religion by committing murder in its name.
This military action is a part of our campaign against terrorism, another front in a war that has already been joined through diplomacy, intelligence, the freezing of financial assets and the arrests of known terrorists by law enforcement agents in 38 countries.
Given the nature and reach of our enemies, we will win this conflict by the patient accumulation of successes, by meeting a series of challenges with determination and will and purpose.
Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader. Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocence, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.
I’m speaking to you today from the Treaty Room of the White House, a place where American presidents have worked for peace.
We’re a peaceful nation. Yet, as we have learned, so suddenly and so tragically, there can be no peace in a world of sudden terror. In the face of today’s new threat, the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it.
We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfil it.
The name of today’s military operation is Enduring Freedom. We defend not only our precious freedoms, but also the freedom of people everywhere to live and raise their children free from fear.
I know many Americans feel fear today. And our government is taking strong precautions. All law enforcement and intelligence agencies are working aggressively around America, around the world and around the clock.
At my request, many governors have activated the National Guard to strengthen airport security. We have called up reserves to reinforce our military capability and strengthen the protection of our homeland.
In the months ahead, our patience will be one of our strengths — patience with the long waits that will result from tighter security, patience and understanding that it will take time to achieve our goals, patience in all the sacrifices that may come.
Today, those sacrifices are being made by members of our armed forces who now defend us so far from home, and by their proud and worried families.
A commander in chief sends America’s sons and daughters into battle in a foreign land only after the greatest care and a lot of prayer.
We ask a lot of those who wear our uniform. We ask them to leave their loved ones, to travel great distances, to risk injury, even to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives.
They are dedicated. They are honourable. They represent the best of our country, and we are grateful.
To all the men and women in our military, every sailor, every soldier, every airman, every Coast Guardsman, every Marine, I say this: Your mission is defined. The objectives are clear. Your goal is just. You have my full confidence, and you will have every tool you need to carry out your duty.
I recently received a touching letter that says a lot about the state of America in these difficult times, a letter from a fourth grade girl with a father in the military.
“As much as I don’t want my dad to fight,” she wrote, “I’m willing to give him to you.”
This is a precious gift. The greatest she could give. This young girl knows what America is all about.
Since September 11, an entire generation of young Americans has gained new understanding of the value of freedom and its cost and duty and its sacrifice.
The battle is now joined on many fronts. We will not waver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail.
Thank you. May God continue to bless America.
115 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:39 pm
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:22 pm
otto: we can’t win in Afghanistan because ultimately the Taliban can do their equivalent of the long march, put their weapons away, cultivate the poppies and wait for better days
“We can’t win in Afghanistan … because Afghanistan is not ours to win or lose.”
…….an untypically abstract statement from you if may say so……particularly since in the next para you say we can if we are willing to commit enough resources to turn Afghanistan into a colony…..leaving aside the question of who the hell would want to……you’re mixing abstractions and materiality
116 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:48 pm
114 akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:37 pm
‘Notice the stark contrast in speeches!!”
……and over seven years later we had about 32,000 troops in Afghanistan; a resurgent Taliban; a corrupt govt; a massive strategic mess; and bin laden holed up in Pakistan which was becoming destabilized….. but otherwise everything was roses in the garden…..the gap between rhetoric and reality or when the rubber hits the road
117 Obama Loses Eloquence // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:58 pm
[...] about fifteen minutes, and it seems I was not the only person who tuned out. From the left and the right, bloggers noted how boring the speech was. The one thing that liberals and conservatives agree on, [...]
118 jcelephant // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:01 pm
When Reagan was faced with the prospect of whether or not to install Pershing II missiles in Europe or demanding that the Soviets “Tear down this wall” THAT was a test. When George Bush 41 was faced with Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, THAT was a test. When Bill Clinton was faced with the prospect of liberating Kosovo, THAT was a test. When 9/11 happened for George W. Bush, THAT was a test.
Dithering for over 90 days on a decision to AFFIRM his own CAMPAIGN promises and to continue to validate the sacrifice of the men and women in uniform, then giving a speech that essentially maps out a Vietnam-like exit from Afghanistan, is NOT a test. Its mouthing the words and hoping something happens.
Obama has been tested this yr. He has watched South America go one-by-one down the path of dictatorship. And at every turn, he has glad handed with the dictators (Chavez, Castro) and blasted the democrats (Columbia, Honduras).
He has been tested on the economy and has DONE NOTHING for the private sector.
Giving a speech that basically was a re-hashing of Vietnamization is not a test. ITS LAZY.
119 akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:01 pm
ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:48 pm
114 akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:37 pm
‘Notice the stark contrast in speeches!!”
……and over seven years later we had about 32,000 troops in Afghanistan; a resurgent Taliban; a corrupt govt; a massive strategic mess; and bin laden holed up in Pakistan which was becoming destabilized….. but otherwise everything was roses in the garden…..the gap between rhetoric and reality or when the rubber hits the road
~~~~~~~~~~~
Bullshit. When we first went in, we removed the Taliban government, destroyed most of the training camps and made a valiant, but failed, attempt to capture bin Laden. Then, we dug in to start training Afghan forces and police, to continue to battle Taliban insurgents, and help install a new president and government. No one was sitting on their hands, and it was years before the Taliban began their resurgence, mostly because of their support from Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The Taliban has continuted to grow, and Bush and his administration never stopped evaluating and studying the best paths to ally the Afghan people with our forces and strengthen the Afghan government. We started our drone attacks in the Swat valley, targeting Al-Qaeda leadership. We have spent much time and treasure building the infrastructure in Iraq and trying to decimate the poppy industry. Yes, in hindsight, more troops would have helped, but because of the surge in Iraq, sending massive numbers of troops was not an option for a while. Bush had done a thorough reevaluation in 2008, and he left the reports and recommendations for Obama, agreeing to not make them public first. Obama used those recommendations to deploy the troops he has already sent to Afghanistan this year, and he used those recommendations to proclaim his “new” strategy in March.
I’m sick of the meme that Bush did nothing in Iraq. It’s a lie. And, it’s an insult to the military and their accomplishments over the last 8 years. War never goes as planned. Conditions and challenges change. That’s why you don’t advertise deadlines, and you go all in when after you’ve made the decision to go to war. Our military understands that, and unfortunately, they also understand that some commanders politicize the war and make compromises and decisions based on their popularity, their careers, and the way the popular winds are blowing at the moment.
120 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:10 pm
otto, i realize you’re cynical and resigned to the status quo, and frankly i don’t care to change that about you. you’re set in your ways, and that’s fine by me.
however, you can at least recognize the dual problems of negatively birth rates and huge immigration that plague the economic system of europe. as is obvious to any student of economics, if you lower productive output, through say regulation and taxation, you will raise prices and ceteris paribus, lower the standard of living. so what to do, if you’re the government? import an immigrant underclass to pay for the social services to citizens.
Lavaux, I wouldn’t waste your time. Quite apart from value judgments, those who dismiss economic laws are missing an entire strata of pertinent analysis. Monsieur Otto wouldn’t recognize a withering critique of a social system if it hit him smack between the eyes.
121 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:16 pm
does anyone else feel that legalizing the poppy trade might be a good concession to make in order to achieve victory? do we really need to spread our drug war to a war zone of far more importance?
122 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:18 pm
“Obama Passed His Test,
Now Republicans
Face Ours”
Looks to me from all the comments from Patriotic Republicans here that the result of the test is…………………………..FAIL
123 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:18 pm
SINZ excluded!
124 MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:19 pm
automaticBS’er ‘pines in with “Your (Raider1) boilerplate rants are getting as tedious as those from motor mouth”…
Now there’s some textbook projection from our Village Idiot; more than 4 commenters here have proven the rip-&-read talking points that Otto pulls from the DailyKos and HuffPo pepper his rants and those talking points have usually been discredited or retracted by the original far Left bloviator.
Then, in the best tradition of balconesfault and all his manufactured characters, Otto gets pegged or nailed on it, so he moves the goalposts, changes topics or tries to spin away into another layer of more talking points to support the last set of talking points.
The TrollTribe are the ones who tediously repeat themselves, Otto. I know you’d like to project that knack or knock onto others, but it’s all theirs, baby. You, on the other hand, change your story so often that we can’t keep track of whether you’re the lifelong Independent from a GOP family, a faux intellectual with high blood European roots (or is it ruts), a disgruntled defender and former priest in the Temple of Obama, or just a garden variety know-it-all with an opinion worth nothing on everything.
Son, your typical rants here don’t even rise to “tedious” –they’re stuck somewhere near irrelevant.
Like this DailyKos-sack talking point: “… and over seven years later we had about 32,000 troops in Afghanistan” –what Obama had was a plan crafted by Bush-Cheney, partially implemented by Obama beginning in Feb 09, kept secret from the far Left at Obama’s request and expanded with his speech in Dec 09. The only innovation Obama brought to the game was to dither to a point where the Taliban had one of the most successful years to date since the Soviets hightailed it out of there in 1988 and the mujahideen under a young Osama bin Laden killed an estimated 680 Soviets that December. The last Soviet troop was gone by Feb 89… 2 months.
Obama, the Ditherer in Chief, gave the Taliban this year, the most successful year since the Soviet’s left Afghanistan… 300+ US troops killed while Obama dithered.
Who’d have thought the Taliban’s best ally was living in the White House? Must have been all those democrat party bumber stickers we saw during the campaign: “Another Terrorist Talibaner for Obama”.
125 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:24 pm
jcelephant : Dithering for over 90 days on a decision to AFFIRM his own CAMPAIGN promises
Once again – during the campaign, Obama pledged to put in 3 more combat battallions. That was done long ago, and even before this increase he had doubled the size of our forces in Afghanistan. The decision to add more troops is a different matter, although consistent with his theme that Afghanistan continues to be the critical front on the war on terror. Taking some time to get the strategy right, and also to make the Karzai government realize we’re not a blank check, is also consistent with that theme.
When Reagan was faced with the prospect of whether or not to install Pershing II missiles in Europe or demanding that the Soviets “Tear down this wall” THAT was a test.
Perhaps. Also those were tests that didn’t require American men and women to be separated from their families, and placed in harms way. A little easier decision, don’t you think?
He has watched South America go one-by-one down the path of dictatorship. And at every turn, he has glad handed with the dictators (Chavez, Castro) and blasted the democrats (Columbia, Honduras).
It seems that Honduras is working out just right, doesn’t it? And we didn’t have to endorse a military coup to get here. And how has Chavez or Castro’s positions improved now that Obama is in office, versus the gains that they (Chavez in particular) had made in the previous 8 years?
126 akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:25 pm
WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:16 pm
does anyone else feel that legalizing the poppy trade might be a good concession to make in order to achieve victory? do we really need to spread our drug war to a war zone of far more importance?
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The poppy industry in Afghanistan is what funds the Taliban for the most part and Al-Qaeda somewhat. The farmers need crops that they can sell to legitimate markets, not the warlords who in turn fund the terrorists. We’re not trying to eradicate the poppy industry for moral reasons. It’s purely a tactical issue, at least as far as our current actions in Afghanistan go.
127 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:26 pm
awk: I’m sick of the meme that Bush did nothing in Iraq.
Oh, he did a lot, alright. Ask the Iranians. They are a lot happier.
128 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:30 pm
akw,
well then why don’t we make it legal? let the farmers sell their crops under our protection, and not the taliban’s? i don’t claim to know ANYTHING about this, but it seems that poor people will always look to improve their lot, and if option is poppies, we’re not going to stop them. they might as well work for us instead of them.
if, after we’ve won the war, we’re so insistent on waging war on the plant, we can take it up then.
129 akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I actually made a typo; I meant Afghanistan, not Iraq. My whole post was about Afghanistan, and I inadvertently typed Iraq.
130 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:34 pm
willy: if you lower productive output, through say regulation and taxation, you will raise prices and ceteris paribus, lower the standard of living.
Such rhetoric wholly excludes the concept of balance between regulation/taxation and gross productivity in determining the standard of living.
For example, in simple terms, you could be seen as arguing that emissions ergulations on cars and refineries drove up the price of gasoline in Los Angeles … and thus the standard of living for Los Angelinos has reduced as a result.
However, while the population of Los Angeles has tripled in the last 60 years, annual peak ozone levels have been more than cut in half.
Do you really believe that Los Angelinos would happily exchange a tripling of smog, rather than a halfing of it, in exchange for the higher standard of living afforded by cheaper gasoline over that time period?
131 akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:37 pm
WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:30 pm
akw,
well then why don’t we make it legal? let the farmers sell their crops under our protection, and not the taliban’s? i don’t claim to know ANYTHING about this, but it seems that poor people will always look to improve their lot, and if option is poppies, we’re not going to stop them. they might as well work for us instead of them.
if, after we’ve won the war, we’re so insistent on waging war on the plant, we can take it up then.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I agree that that strategy sounds a lot easier! I would imagine that it was decided that American soldiers shouldn’t have any part in the drug trade, as it’s illegal worldwide. It’s definitely an uphill battle trying to eradicate it and replace it with legitimate crops, though. Poppies are much more lucrative than anything else they could possibly grow there, and the drug lords use bribes and threats against the peasant farmers to keep them in line.
132 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:39 pm
akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:01 pm
“Bullshit. When we first went in, we removed the Taliban government”
…….that was the easy bit……otherwise my description of the state of affairs in Afghanistan/Pakistan on January 1, 2009, was 100% accurate…..the road to hell is often paved with good intentions
133 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:41 pm
awk – sorry for jumping on it, then – have made similar mistakes myself.
We certainly did make progress in Afghanistan, primarily in the first few years. By 2005, 30% of Afghans strongly supported the US military there, with another 50% slightly supporting our military. By this year, that had slipped to 10% of Afghans strongly supporting, with 50% still slightly supporting.
In 2005 America’s favorable/unfavorable rating in Afghanistan was 83%-14% – that was a tremendous accomplishment.
By December 2008, that had flipped … to 47% – 52%.
Accomplishments can erode.
134 MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:43 pm
BlankHead offers: “awk: I’m sick of the meme that Bush did nothing in Iraq. Oh, he did a lot, alright. Ask the Iranians. They are a lot happier.”
The Iranians are happiest now… like the Taliban, they love the fact that America elected a weak, dithering, vacillating president who is afraid, most of all, to decide. Anything.
Just like the Iranian protesters and Islamic clerics were tickled pink in ‘78 when Carter started marching down the line of hanging the Shah out to dry on human rights… and turning that once great kingdom into the world’s most violent Islamic Republic.
Oh yeah, let’s ask the Iranians if they’d rather have Obama in the White House or McCain-Palin. Bush made the Iranians and their nuclear arms ambitions a major focus… the Obama Messiah thinks BigHugsHeal will resolve the conflict and threat where Cowboy diplomacy could not.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure BlankHead that the Iranians are far, far happier that Obama is in and Bush or McCain are not. Hey, I’d be willing to pay for your airfare for you to go ask ‘em directly.
135 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:45 pm
WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:10 pm
“otto, i realize you’re cynical and resigned to the status quo,’
…..It’s certainly true I’m resigned to reality
136 MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:45 pm
automaticBS’er says, on removing the Taliban, “that was the easy bit”.
Really? How come your hero SlickWilly couldn’t do it and all he was able to do in 8 yrs is get an aspirin factory bombed to show the terrorists America meant business… and the not the usual Oval Office business SlickWilly was more interested in.
137 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:52 pm
akw // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:31 pm
“I actually made a typo; I meant Afghanistan, not Iraq. My whole post was about Afghanistan, and I inadvertently typed Iraq.”
………A Freudian slip?……I’d actually figured out you meant Afghanistan…….I assume from the tenor of your comments you’ve spent some time there and while one can respect and applaud the under resourced efforts we’ve made it doesn’t alter the ultimate reality of where we were when Bush left office
138 jcelephant // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:56 pm
baclonesfault:
On Afghanistan:
In July of 2008 Obama promised to support Afghanistan not only in its security sector but also in reconstruction, development and economic sector. 3 Battalions hardly accomplishes that, nor does his additional 35k of troops. It is once again his half-measures rather than his execution of the full effort. You seem to blindly accept that 3 battalions is enough to satisfy the obligation of Afghanistan. It is not. Stop the revisionist history.
On Reagan:
It is obvious that you have NEVER had anyone in your immediate family serve in the Armed Forces, otherwise you’d never be stupid enough to write: “those were tests that didn’t require American men and women to be separated from their families, and placed in harms way. A little easier decision, don’t you think?”
Have you ever served in NORAD? Have ever served on a nuclear sub? Have you EVER walked the wall at GITMO or the Korean DMZ? Have you ever guarded the American Sector in Berlin?
NO you have not. I hate to break this to you, but most of those duties REQUIRE SEPARATION and are VERY HARD on families.
On Honduras:
The events have worked out because Honduras ignored the President. President Obama’s initial, knee-jerk reaction consisted of labeling the actions by the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court as illegal and called it a military coup-d’état. In fact the opposite was true. Honduras is democratic despite the berating of the US State Dept and Obama.
I cannot fathom how this site purports to be a forum for conservatives and yet I am arguing with an obvious liberal.
139 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:56 pm
136 MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:45 pm
“Really? How come your hero SlickWilly couldn’t do it ”
……Ever heard of a Casus belli?….probably not
140 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:57 pm
balcones, two suggestions:
1) re-read the definition of rhetoric
2) understand what i write
141 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:58 pm
jcelephant // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:56 pm
“I cannot fathom how this site purports to be a forum for conservatives and yet I am arguing with an obvious liberal.”
……actually it’s founded on the premise of making the tent bigger……sounds like you’d be happier at Redstate or similar where everyone agrees with you
142 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said Wednesday there was a “tension” in President Barack Obama’s speech at West Point Tuesday night between the goal of winning the war in Afghanistan and the goal of ending it.
“I think you heard some tension last night, understandable, between the desire to win the war, if you will, to achieve objectives on the ground, to do it as rapidly as we possibly can, to deploy as quickly as possible, build the Afghan forces, Afghan authorities and transition,” Petraeus said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “And then that other dynamic, again, understanding the challenges at home and assuring individuals in Afghanistan, and that is to end the war, to begin that transition that he talked about that starts in July of 2011.”
The top U.S. general in the Mideast region said the president’s case for the strategic value of Afghanistan would help hold together the mission there, going forward.
“I think there was a very powerful case made last night for the importance of the mission in Afghanistan,” he said. “Our overriding objective, of course, has to do with Al Qaeda.”
Asked to respond to the criticism, from officials including former Vice President Dick Cheney, that the Obama administration had been “dithering” over its strategy for the war in Afghanistan, Petraeus praised the White House’s deliberative approach.
“This process was actually quite good,” Petraeus said. “it was a very substantive discussion. Everybody’s assumptions and views were tested. I think out of this have come sharpened objectives, a very good understanding of the challenges and the difficulties and what must be done.”
143 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:01 pm
WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 2:57 pm
balcones, two suggestions:
“2) understand what i write”
……not always easy
144 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:02 pm
otto, one does not make the tent bigger by burning down the tent!
145 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:05 pm
BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:01 pm
““This process was actually quite good,” Petraeus said. “it was a very substantive discussion. Everybody’s assumptions and views were tested. I think out of this have come sharpened objectives, a very good understanding of the challenges and the difficulties and what must be done.”
……….well he would say that because Petraeus is a thoughtful and intelligent soldier and not a dumbass like Sanchez or that other bonehead Franks who was in command when we invaded Iraq
146 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:06 pm
144 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:02 pm
“otto, one does not make the tent bigger by burning down the tent!”
….so according to you Frum is bent on burning down the Republican tent?
147 jcelephant // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:13 pm
ottovbvs:
There are enough liberals in the Democrat Party. And I believe this is about conservatives, not Republicans.
148 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:17 pm
jcelephant // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:13 pm
“ottovbvs:
” And I believe this is about conservatives, not Republicans.”
…….the two are essentially synonymous
149 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Why are the wingnuts here so far out in right field on this. General David Petraeus considers the evaluation to have been well conducted and timely. He says that the plan is a good one. Republican Gates says the same thing. General McChrystal is satisfied with the deployment especially the troops being sent 7 months BEFORE he requested them to be deployed.
If all these professional non Liberals are happy and satisfied with the process and outcome why are the first chairbourne here with their vastly superior tactical knowledge so enraged. I believe I know the answer but perhaps they can tell me?
150 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:20 pm
jcelephant: In July of 2008 Obama promised to support Afghanistan not only in its security sector but also in reconstruction, development and economic sector. 3 Battalions hardly accomplishes that
Again, during the Presidential Debates, Obama made clear what his committment was. 2 to 3 additional combat battalions. He fulfilled this committment almost immediately. That he is willing to commit additional forces above this, and bring us to a troop level about 3x what Bush had, shows that he is committed to at least making an honest effort for Afghanistan. That said, I really believe that if the Karzai Government doesn’t step up, and the Afghan people keep re-electing it, we’re pissing away our young men’s youth.
It is obvious that you have NEVER had anyone in your immediate family serve in the Armed Forces, otherwise you’d never be stupid enough to write: “those were tests that didn’t require American men and women to be separated from their families, and placed in harms way. A little easier decision, don’t you think?”
My dad was career Army. He spent a couple years in the late 50’s being a tripwire with the armored infantry on the Eastern Border of Germany.
Now, I might be off, historically, but I’m pretty sure that long before Reagan took office NORAD was being run and we had nuclear subs sailing the seas and Marines and soldiers were standing the fenceline at GITMO and the Korean DMZ, and the American Sector in Berlin.
So forgive me for not considering Reagans decisions to not dismantle these things to be some sort of test in courage.
The events have worked out because Honduras ignored the President. President Obama’s initial, knee-jerk reaction consisted of labeling the actions by the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court as illegal and called it a military coup-d’état. In fact the opposite was true
Obama never labelled actions by the Honduran Congress or Supreme Court to be illegal. They were not the ones who took over the country. The Supreme Court had correctly ruled that the President was acting illegally, but did not declare the remedy for that which the Army carried out.
There was nothing to ignore. Obama did not make any ultimatums, draw any lines in the sand, apply sanctions, send in the troops, etc. He didn’t recognize a government which took power outside the rule of law. Now that there is a legitimately elected President, we can once again recognize Honduras government.
151 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:23 pm
1) re-read the definition of rhetoric
2) understand what i write
Come on, man. That’s weak. You make an unqualified blanket statement, and I note that sanity requires qualifiers, and you blame it on me not understanding rhetoric?
That’s one of the reasons the Republican Party has so much power vested in the most extremist factions these days … because nobody calls them on rhetoric, and fealty to unrealistic rhetoric becomes the rule whereby someone’s right to be a Republican gets judged.
152 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:26 pm
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:20 pm
“My dad was career Army. He spent a couple years in the late 50’s being a tripwire with the armored infantry on the Eastern Border of Germany.”
…..I was a part of the trip wire in the early sixties for awhile…..very boring apart from the Cuban Missile Crisis
153 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:34 pm
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:20 pm
……you must recognize jcelephants popourri is the usual throwing eggs at the wall strategy and hoping something sticks……Afghanistan?……Honduras?……what’s the connection?……Zero……this is how these guys think……they’ve raised the non sequitur to an artform
154 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:41 pm
this is how these guys think……they’ve raised the non sequitur to an artform
Well, it does seem sometime like trying to catch a glass of water from a garden sprinkler. You might eventually fill the glass, but it takes a lot of time, and you’re going to get soaked in the meantime, and an awful lot of water gets wasted.
The real value in a site like this, imo, isn’t namecalling (hint hint) but testing exactly where ideological boundaries exist. When those are defined, you can figure out where some common solutions can be achieved – because common solutions can actually be agreed upon by parties with disparate ideologies. That’s the basis of democracies actually working, rather than just turning into disfunctional chaos or shameless horse trading.
155 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:43 pm
otto: …..I was a part of the trip wire in the early sixties for awhile…..very boring apart from the Cuban Missile Crisis
Ahh – but the beer!
156 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:45 pm
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:43 pm
” Ahh – but the beer!”
……Ahh but the Frauleins…..and the occasional Frau……very adventurous
157 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:56 pm
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:41 pm
“The real value in a site like this, imo, isn’t namecalling (hint hint) but testing exactly where ideological boundaries exist.”
………I think you’re broadly right…….however you seem much more tolerant of stupidity than myself……probably age and natural irascibility in my case…….have you ever come across that officer classification table that originated I believe with the Great German General Staff before WW 1 ……down the vertical axis you had …..very intelligent……intelligent…….stupid…….and on the horizontal axis……lazy……..industrious…….very industrious……lazy and very intelligent officers were earmarked for high command…….very industrious and very intelligent for staff work…….lazy and stupid for line infantry……..the stupid and very industrious were eased out of the service…..could be apochryphal but it’s always struck me as funny
158 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:04 pm
balcones writes:
“Come on, man. That’s weak. You make an unqualified blanket statement, and I note that sanity requires qualifiers, and you blame it on me not understanding rhetoric?”
in response to my previous comment:
“if you lower productive output, through say regulation and taxation, you will raise prices and ceteris paribus, lower the standard of living.”
there’s nothing to qualify. taxes reduce output. regulations, aside from protecting private property, lower output. of course we prescribe to necessary regulations that are in place to preserve our air quality and general safety, but such regulations do not require ~80,000 pages (the federal register). this is not a blanket statement; it’s a recitation of supply and demand.
therefore, most taxes (except those used to fund legitimate functions of government, and (ok… MOST) regulation lower the standard of living, all other things equal. the logical outcome is that population shrinks to adjust to the the lower level of prosperity.
the opposite can be observed during a productive boon, e.g., the industrial revolution, where population in england exploded. from wikipedia:
“According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, the population of England and Wales, which had remained steady at 6 million from 1700 to 1740, rose dramatically after 1740. The population of England had more than doubled from 8.3 million in 1801 to 16.8 million in 1851 and, by 1901, had nearly doubled again to 30.5 million.[52] As living conditions and health care improved during the 19th century, Britain’s population doubled every 50 years.[53][54] Europe’s population doubled during the 18th century, from roughly 100 million to almost 200 million, and doubled again during the 19th century, to around 400 million.[55]“
159 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:19 pm
“the opposite can be observed during a productive boon, e.g., the industrial revolution, where population in england exploded. from wikipedia:”
…….this is what happens when you move from a subsistence agrarian society to an increasingly industrialized one……where the difference between mass starvation and plenty depends literally on a good harvest……it was also the case that in Britain along with the industrial revolution there was an agricultural one……the enclosure acts which peaked between 1740 and 1780 did away with the three field system of cultivation……development in manuring and livestock breeding by people like Coke improved both arable and fatstock productivity
160 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:28 pm
of course we prescribe to necessary regulations that are in place to preserve our air quality and general safety, but such regulations do not require ~80,000 pages (the federal register).
Perhaps not all 80,000 pages – but regulations are extremely complicated things, and require a great deal of specificity, and even then many many parties will come to the table declaring that they are different in some way and thus require modifications to the regulation. And it adds up.
I seriously hope you’re not using population statistics as a measure of historical quality of life, given that the countries on this planet that have the LOWEST gdp are those with the highest population growth rates.
We task government with creation of regulations because we perceive as a society that our quality of living will increase with those regulations. For that matter, not working 80 hour weeks decreases the money I have available to buy a bigger house or car … does that decrease my quality of living? I’d say not.
161 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:35 pm
…….One more try guys……the best statement I’ve read anywhere today on the reality Obama is dealing with in Afghanistan……if you want a reasonable, sane and logical statement of the case by someone who is an Afghan sceptic but is getting behind Obama’s decision as David is also urging the right to do.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/the-morning-after.html#more
162 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:41 pm
WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:04 pm
“there’s nothing to qualify. taxes reduce output. regulations, aside from protecting private property, lower output.”
……..you do talk the most incredible nonsense at times…….is the tax burden and level of regulation in this country greater today than in 1900?……and is the GDP in both inflation adjusted absolute and per capita terms greater or smaller?
163 ednorman // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:41 pm
This is an interesting discussion but I think that you’re missing the bottom line which is that the only reason to stay one day more in Afghanistan is to prevent the Talibanization of Pakistan and Pakistan’s nukes. Anyone who thinks that we or anyone else can prop up the Karzai regime and/or the Afghan army in 18 months to the point that we can safely leave has to be the President of the Optimist’s club. Afghanistan is a completely different culture and situation from Iraq. Iraq was at least a relatively modern country with a reasonably modern infrastructure. Afghanistan is a tribal wasteland where the central government, if it can be called that, never really had any control outside the large cities. If we’re going to leave in 18 months we may as well leave now and save a lot of money and lives. The result will be the same.
164 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:42 pm
balcones:
“Perhaps not all 80,000 pages – but regulations are extremely complicated things”
You should not confuse regulation in general, or private sector regulation, with government regulation. Private sector regulation is flexible and accommodating to consumer demands. Government regulation is rigid, based on bribes from interest groups, and often used to stave off competition.
“I seriously hope you’re not using population statistics as a measure of historical quality of life, given that the countries on this planet that have the LOWEST gdp are those with the highest population growth rates.”
Why are growth rates higher in third world nations? Lower levels of technology make for lower levels of productivity. Hence, each human is more marginally important (note: not more productive) than they are in the developed world, because they help ensure enough necessities are produced. For example, a farm with 8 hands is a much safer enterprise than a farm with 4 or 5, especially in the context of low technology and relatively high incidence of death/incapacitation. This observation, low per capita GDP and paired with high birth rates, validates the principle that the division of labor increases productivity.
165 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:48 pm
“….One more try guys……the best statement I’ve read anywhere today on the reality Obama is dealing with in Afghanistan……if you want a reasonable, sane and logical statement of the case by someone who is an Afghan sceptic but is getting behind Obama’s decision as David is also urging the right to do”
Otto, that was a great article by Sully. Asking the fringe nuts here to read and understand such a position is hopeless. They are incapable of reason.
166 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:48 pm
ednorman // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:41 pm
” If we’re going to leave in 18 months we may as well leave now and save a lot of money and lives. The result will be the same.”
……unfortunately the result will be the same whether we leave in 18 months or 18 years time unless we are prepared to hazard all on a multi trillion dollar, indefinite occupation of the country with a garrison of over 600,000 troops for at least the first 8-10 years…..are Americans willing to sign off on that…..are you……can we afford it……this is the best blend of the militarily possible with the politically acceptable that we’re likely to get as Sullivan explains
167 stuiec // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:51 pm
“What is your definition of victory in Afghanistan? The Taliban to lay down arms? Do you really think that’s going to happen at this stage?”
The definition of victory in Afghanistan is a state (in both the sense of a nation and a condition) in which the tribal leaders see allegiance to the official government as preferable to alignment with the Taliban, such that those tribal leaders oppose any attempt by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to create safe havens within Afghanistan. That’s what a counter-insurgency strategy is all about.
168 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:52 pm
BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:48 pm
……It is…..despite his hobby horses of religion and gayness (and shakiness on economics) he’s an outstanding center right commentator and exactly nails the situation with this piece……why the hell the nyt gave their ed page gig to Douhat and not Sullivan is beyond me
169 stuiec // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:55 pm
And as predicted, the Democrats in Congress declare war on President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy:
Rep. Woolsey: Majority Of Dems Will Vote Against War Funding
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/02/rep_woolsey_majority_of_dems_will_vote_against_war_funding_99367.html
170 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:55 pm
BarryS:
I think they’re taking President Obama’s setting of a timetable as a sign of cowardice on his part. Not so.
Timetables can be changed.
In fact, so far, President Obama has failed to meet a lot of deadlines: Getting out of Iraq ASAP; closing Gitmo by the end of the year; health care reform by August. So why should this war deadline be any different. It’s more of a guideline, a symbolic statement of Americans’ impatience that the war be over with soon. It’s NOT a line drawn in the sand, IMHO.
If you look past the timetable and look at what President Obama proposed for war this coming year, it’s a judicious plan to make the most of a bad situation.
He took an uncomfortably long time to come up with it. But at least we can see that he did his homework.
171 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:55 pm
WillyP: Private sector regulation is flexible and accommodating to consumer demands.
Perhaps this is one of those “I don’t understand rhetoric” things … but what do you mean by private sector regulation, as something separate from government regulation?
Meanwhile, I still can’t see your point about greater population growth as being indicative of greater quality of living, given the evidence to the contrary. Pretty much everyplace in the world outside of Utah, as people’s quality of living increases they decrease their birth rate.
172 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:57 pm
stuiec: And as predicted, the Democrats in Congress declare war on President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy:
When in our political dialogue did opposing anything suddenly become declaring war?
173 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:59 pm
says otto: “you do talk the most incredible nonsense at times…….is the tax burden and level of regulation in this country greater today than in 1900?……and is the GDP in both inflation adjusted absolute and per capita terms greater or smaller?”
Honestly, I don’t give you enough credit for your inability to be imaginative. What a ridiculous and specious correlation. A legitimate question is: would we benefit from more or less regulations? What about more or less taxes? I realize thinking is not your forte, but come on… try to be a just a bit formidable.
174 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:01 pm
169 stuiec // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:55 pm
And as predicted, the Democrats in Congress declare war on President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy:
……woolsey is part of the leadership then….. is that right?…….some minor member of the caucus says something and it becomes a reliable prophesy……. this prediction is worth about as much as your general perspicacity…….if I had to bet I’d say two thirds of democrats in the house will vote to fund the deployment…..grudgingly in the main but that’s the way they’ll go
175 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:01 pm
balcones, why don’t you read this book.
http://mises.org/Books/bureaucracy.pdf
176 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Just out of interest McCain during the election said he knew how to get Bin Laden. Has he told anyone yet because I would sure like to know that secret he is keeping from the rest of us. In the mean time he is doing his “get off my lawn” act 24/7
177 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:07 pm
173 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:59 pm
“Honestly, I don’t give you enough credit for your inability to be imaginative. What a ridiculous and specious correlation.”
……YOU made the correlation old boy ……Instead of the usual bs…..why not be formidable enough to answer the question…….higher tax/regulatory burden in 1900 v 2009?…….higher or lower gdp in inflation adjusted terms?
178 Lavaux // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:09 pm
109 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:22 pm
“……Do get caught up with the times……Democratic socialism which is the predominant political system in Europe regardless of whether socialists or conservatives are in power (and here to a large extent) has evolved and runs a mixed economy……and btw the performance of most European economies has not been very different ot ours over the last ten years”
Do get caught up with the times? Is this progressive code for casually dismissing a classical liberal statement, or is it a mindless progressive commentary on any valid recitation of history? Do interpret.
Oh, and btw the performance of most European economies has been very different from “ours” due to monumental variations in national accounting standards, e.g. if Sweden applied the DOL’s regime for measuring unemployment, what would Sweden’s real rate of unemployment have been for the past 20 years. Anyone who has studied national accounting or welfare state economics should understand that making such comparisons between countries is dodgy at best, particularly when all countries are notorious for cooking their books.
“………would you like to give us a list of the companies Obama is anxious to nationalize (and don’t mention the car companies, AIG, and some of the large banks in which we hold large blocs of pref stock because most of these were de facto taken on by the Bush admin)”
If Pres. Obama doesn’t mean to nationalize these companies, then why doesn’t he sell or transfer their stock to private owners? See, your logic fails because it assumes that self-professing conservatives always act according to their ideology. I get the sense that you’re too fancy a boy to have had a high school football coach, so you may not know what usually happens when you assume.
That aside, taxation and regulation are equivalents in kind when it comes to imposing social burdens on entities organized for the purpose of making profits. So your point re nationalization would be? Oh, do get caught up with the times.
179 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:10 pm
To all conservatives out there nitpicking Obama’s speech like a bunch of yapping chihuahuas, at least he didn’t follow George Will’s advice on Afghanistan.
180 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:12 pm
173 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:59 pm
……I know you barely remember one thing you say but just to remind you of the correlation you made
“WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 4:04 pm
“there’s nothing to qualify. taxes reduce output. regulations, aside from protecting private property, lower output.”
181 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:14 pm
If Pres. Obama doesn’t mean to nationalize these companies, then why doesn’t he sell or transfer their stock to private owners?
He will, give him some time. The companies need to be on a decent footing before they are turned back into the market. Otherwise they will fail straight away with millions of jobs at stake. When Bush was forced to socialize large parts of the economy there was no timetable.
182 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm
178 Lavaux // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:09 pm
“Do get caught up with the times? Is this progressive code for casually dismissing a classical liberal statement, or is it a mindless progressive commentary on any valid recitation of history? Do interpret. ”
…….the usual limpid, crystal clear blather
“Oh, and btw the performance of most European economies has been very different from “ours”
…..apparently the esteemed Bartlett who has spent a lot of time studying welfare state economics…..considerably more than you I’d say doesn’t agree with you
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/12/europe-america-taxes-health-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html
“If Pres. Obama doesn’t mean to nationalize these companies, then why doesn’t he sell or transfer their stock to private owners?”
…….who’d buy it……ready to lay out your life savings for a slice of GM or AIG are you?…..eedgit
183 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:32 pm
stuiec: The definition of victory in Afghanistan is a state (in both the sense of a nation and a condition) in which the tribal leaders see allegiance to the official government as preferable to alignment with the Taliban, such that those tribal leaders oppose any attempt by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to create safe havens within Afghanistan. That’s what a counter-insurgency strategy is all about.
That is a worthwhile definition. Now, while I understand you would not want something like this to be tied to a “timetable”, so I’m not going to play that rhetorical game … but I do wonder if there is some sort of pricetag that you would not be willing to exceed for this to be achieved? 1 trillion more spent? 2 trillion? 5 trillion?
The interesting thing in all this is that the GDP of Afghanistan is 28 billion dollars. We will probably be up to spending about 100 billion dollars a year there after Obama’s new force increases are in place.
Experts say there are about 400 “major tribal networks” in Afghanistan.
Can anyone else think of a way to persuade what must be around 400 tribal leaders (add in the dozen or so declared “warlords”, however they factor in) to repel the Taliban for less than 100 billion a year?
A LOT less?
184 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:33 pm
otto, no, you don’t get it.
taxes REDUCE output, ceteris paribus. regulations (i.e., laws concering commerce that do something other than protect private property) reduce output ceteris paribus.
note to self: remember it is difficult for a liberal mind to grasp abstract concepts.
185 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:35 pm
WillyP balcones, why don’t you read this book.
http://mises.org/Books/bureaucracy.pdf
Because I have a lot of other things I would rather read, along with the substantial amount of technical and regulatory material my job requires me to sift through?
Although if you can explain to me in your own words what Private sector regulation means, and defend your statements about it, that might persuade me that there’s something there worth picking up.
186 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:40 pm
balcones, i won’t.
not because i cannot, but because my time is more effectively spent educating others, rather than un-brainwashing you.
i hope i’m sufficiently offensive. i’m surrounded by statist witchdoctors, and regard civility as improper when confronted with indomitable obstinacy.
187 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Willy P, you are loosing badly just give up. Your ideas are idiotic in the extreme. In another thread you wanted to drive the USA back to the 17th century for goodness sake. You preach Anarchy.
188 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:51 pm
willyp: taxes REDUCE output
Perhaps in a vacuum. That all depends on what government does with the tax money. There are certainly things government does with taxes that increases demand for certain goods, either through direct purchase or by secondary purchases made by recipients of social spending programs.
And increased demand encourages industry to increase output.
Government can also spend the collected taxes in ways that facilitate new economic activity – consider development of the internet, or the interstate highway system, or building huge dams throughout the country that transformed previously uninhabitable lands into high yield real estate, either via flood control or by providing reliable water supply – and thus promote output.
Sure, if Government just collects taxes and pisses the tax dollars away that will mean a dimunition of output.
Regulations, similarly, can increase output. For example, a poor environmental performer can “use up” a piece of land, contaminating it enough that it would require money far far in excess of the land value to ever remediate it enough for anyone else to want to put it to productive use. From a property rights point of view, one could argue that “Joe Blow bought the property, but as long as contaminants are not leaving it then it’s nobody elses business”. However, as a society we realize that eliminating the productive value of a piece of land will in the long run harm our overall productivity, and thus we regulate against it.
189 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:54 pm
WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:33 pm
“note to self: remember it is difficult for a liberal mind to grasp abstract concepts.”
…..instead of that…..why don’t you answer the question
“taxes REDUCE output, ceteris paribus. regulations (i.e., laws concering commerce that do something other than protect private property) reduce output ceteris paribus.”
…….this of course would explain why in the period 1940-1945 there was a huge increase in output that paralleled an unprecedented increase in both taxes and regulation…….the same happened in Britain btw…..note to self……remember willyp NEVER answers simple questions but always substitutes a smokescreen of blather
190 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Me: Although if you can explain to me in your own words what Private sector regulation means, and defend your statements about it, that might persuade me that there’s something there worth picking up.
Willy: balcones, i won’t. not because i cannot, but because my time is more effectively spent educating others, rather than un-brainwashing you.
Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Although if any of the others who learn from you what Private sector regulation means find the term provides great insight into the working of the economy that would benefit me, I’d be happy to hear from them as well.
191 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:57 pm
balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:51 pm
willyp: taxes REDUCE output
“Perhaps in a vacuum. That all depends on what government does with the tax money.”
……..This guys brain is a vacuum…….as in my little WW 2 example it all depends as you say on what you do with the tax money
192 WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 6:03 pm
that’s nice guys.
on the bright side, at least i’ve managed to bring out the real frum supporters in full shrill -
a bunch of liberals!
193 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Willy – given where you seem to be drawing the line in the sand – that any taxation or regulation (except for those that protect property rights) inevitably leads to a decline in productivity – I’d say that there has never been a President in the last 80 years, Republican or Democrat – who you would not say is a liberal. I limit this only to 80 years because I haven’t looked closely enough at those preceeding this period.
194 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 6:18 pm
WillyP // Dec 2, 2009 at 6:03 pm
“on the bright side, at least i’ve managed to bring out the real frum supporters in full shrill -
a bunch of liberals!”
…….since you just got demolished ……you revert to the ultimate insult…….libruls……aaarrrgggghhh
195 Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Um, Otto, productivity increased in World War II because there was a war going on. High taxes in the 1930s did nothing to bring about a recovery, and high taxes in the late 1950s and 1970s were causal effects in economic declines. Lowering taxes earlier in this decade helped bring about a recovery, but a combination of too-free money and an unbalanced housing market ended that.
196 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Hey Jay!
Good to see here. Don’t be too rough on Otto. He is a loveable snob. Kinda like Frasier Crane.
197 AmericanMuser // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:21 pm
You know, last night President Obama had a golden opportunity to demonstrate that the world’s only superpower is lead by a tough, determined, world leader, able to make difficult decisions. Instead, President Obama chose to take a hedged, triangulated position between those in America that support the war in Afghanistan and those that oppose it. There was more nuance in the President’s address than there was determination and resolve, which is unfortunate for America and for international security around the globe.
There really are no good options for America and the situation in Afghanistan. Looking backwards into the rearview mirror does us no good; we are where we are and fair or not, the President is forced to look ahead and play the hand he has been dealt. As evidenced by the delay and lengthy deliberation regarding additional troop commitments, President Obama is learning that it is more difficult to actually lead a nation than it is to merely campaign to lead a nation.
Whether the best course of action is committing more troops or withdrawing could be debated by reasonable people, but it is less important than commitment and dedication to one or the other, with resolve. The President needed to get it right last night—either we’re all-in or we’re out—and he failed, choosing conditional commitment and putting his weakness and equivocation on full display for the world.
Rather than attempting to placate his left flank by holding back 25% of the 40,000 troops requested by General McChrystal, the President could have demonstrated he was in it to win it, giving the general the 40,000 troops he requested. Why hold back 10,000 troops? If ever an ounce of prevention were better than a pound of cure, this would be it—give the general what he is requesting and “get ‘er done.” The left is not placated by his gesture to send 30,000 more troops and hold back 10,000, and history informs us well that underwhelming the enemy or relying on the pathetic troop commitments of our allies is a recipe for disaster and defeat.
Clearly, the ultimate pusillanimous act last night was announcing a troop draw-down in 18 months. This was not leadership, but a cowardly act that undermined any attempt by the President to even feign commitment, again serving only one purpose, to unsuccessfully attempt to appease the left.
The left and right are not happy with the President, nor is Middle America, which wants us out of Afghanistan, best achieved by either a total commitment to get out or bucking-up and committing overwhelming force. Giving General McChrystal less troops than he requested and announcing a draw-down in 18 months are jellyfish maneuvers, difficult to rationalize other than through a purely political prism. Middle America deserves leadership from President Obama and knows all too well that the only thing in the middle of the road is a dead possum on a dotted white line.
http://americanmuser.wordpress.com
198 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:25 pm
AmericanMuser // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Stop pimping your website here.
Your analysis is bogus.
199 Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Hi. Chek.
200 Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Personally I think Obama should have given McChrystal all he wanted and let things happen as they would from there.
201 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Jay has it occurred to you that maybe we don’t have 40,000 active available rested combat troops to send. They have been doing multiple tours of duty for 9 years now. Morale is bound to suffer as a result if you decrease R and R times to shorter and shorter periods.
Obama is in a no win situation. There is no good option given what he was dealt. He has already doubled the troop level in the country during the last 10 months. McChrystal asked for troops in the spring. He is getting some now, more later.
202 Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:37 pm
If that’s the case, Barry, then that’s fine. We’ll see if that’s how it works out though. I’m not a reflexive Obama basher, but to this point I have to winder if he’s willing to commit to doing what needs to be done to win the war and bring the troops home. If he’s doing the right thing and it works out, then I’ll be the first to praise him for a sound strategy.
203 Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Winder=wonder. I can’t spell obviously.
204 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Thanks Jay.
Please define winning for me.No one here on the right will do so. They bash the President for not winning but will never lay out what winning is. Can you please explain it to me.
205 Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:44 pm
My definition of winning would be ensuring Afghanistan is stable enough to no longer be a haven for groups like Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately that won’t be an easy process simply because of the disjointed nature of the country. It probably could have been accomplished by now, but Bush got sidetracked into the Iraq War only a year and a half after entering Afghanistan. To this point, Obama has shown no more inclination to complete the mission in Afghanistan than Bush. That may be changing though. We’ll see. I certainly hope. All those who have fought and died in both countries deserve an end to these conflicts.
206 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Thanks Jay. I appreciate your common sense way of looking at things, something that is in short supply. Prepare for being labeled a liberal troll
We need fair minded people on both sides of this debate.
I agree with your definition of victory. My problem is that short of invading with Pakistan’s assistance the mountain region and exterminating the Taliban and AQ, there will always be the possibility of them just holing up there and wait us out for ever. The other problem is the tribal rivalry within Afghanistan. They have been rivals and allies sometimes both at the same time for centuries. Not exactly suitable material for a stable government!
207 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Don’t forget also that Obama has ramped up the “silent” CIA war in Pakistan. That is the great untold story at the moment. We are probably gaining greater success there than we ever can in Afghanistan.
208 CentristNYer // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:27 pm
“Personally I think Obama should have given McChrystal all he wanted and let things happen as they would from there.”
McChrystal is a military guy. That’s the prism through which he views the conflict in Afghanistan and it’s his goal to ask for as much as he can get. Obama is the Commander In Chief. He has to balance not only those military considerations, but the political realities on the ground, the budget limitations, the domestic politics and our overall strategic interests. McC’s request was not realistic.
209 stuiec // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:00 pm
“Can anyone else think of a way to persuade what must be around 400 tribal leaders (add in the dozen or so declared “warlords”, however they factor in) to repel the Taliban for less than 100 billion a year?
“A LOT less?”
Some people can. Like this guy.
http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/wp-content/themes/stevenpressfield/one_tribe_at_a_time.pdf
One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan
Maj. Jim Gant, US Army Special Forces
210 Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Well, people can call me a liberal troll if they want. I call things as I see them most logically to be. Wars are not issues that should be exploited politically by either side. Republicans and Democrats both have done it. It’s just sickening hen they do so. If Obama succeeds in Afghanistan, then all the better. If not, then he deserves the opprobrium and probable political defeat that will come his way. As for me, I just want two things:
1) A victory for the US that will cripple or at least severely hinder the ability of terrorists ever to come again
2) The end to the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts
Whether Obama is the man who can bring this about is yet to be dsetermined. He’s the quarterback now. All depends on his being able to execute a successful series of plays.
211 trajan // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:03 pm
As the first person to dare to broach in this thread the concept of actually winning a war many hours ago (see comment 3) I am incredulous at the number of people who don’t seem to know what winning a war means. It means beating the crap out of the enemy, terrorizing them a la Sherman’s march to the sea, a la Curtis Lemay bombing the hell out of Japanese cities, a la Dresden. It means totally demoralizing the enemy to the point that they are screaming Uncle! and realizing they are backing a dead horse, bringing them to their senses. Not popular sentiments today in the west, in the EU and now in America. We are so civilized. It’s not the Obama deficit that is going to ruin it for our children and subsequent generations but our timidity and lack of resolve in the face of an existential threat. We are not and should not be in Afghanistan to protect Afghans.
212 Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:07 pm
If winning requires a scorched-earth strategy, Trajan, then I’m all for it. We should not be there to protect the Afghanis but to protect our own interests. We must do what is necessary to win regardless of how ugly it is. It’s damn near impossible to win a PC war.
213 CentristNYer // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Trajan:
The victories you’ve described are against conventional enemies with conventional militaries pursuing conventional goals with conventional weaponry. The idea that you think we can “terrorize” an enemy that embraces martyrdom is pure fantasy.
214 BarryS // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:18 pm
trajan, you assume we are fighting a conventional war, we are not. The Russians tried the traditional scorched earth type of war and they failed. The Taliban do not have tanks, conventional structure, barracks, uniforms, a normal way of warfare.
The only way to eliminate the Taliban would be to eliminate a great deal of the population of Afghanistan and Pakistan. You cannot separate the two. The only way is to join forces with an agreeable Pakistan and go for it in the tribal mountain border area. We have a 12 to 1 advantage in troops at the moment. When the reinforcements arrive we will have a 20 to 1 or thereabouts advantage.
We are 8 years in why did Bush not win?
215 Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Yuo may not need to terrorize enemies who embrace martyrdom, CNY, but you can wipe them out. When Britain invaded Afghanistan, the local advisors told the Governor General to kill all those known to be possible malcontents and assert Britain’s interests with a heavy hand. He tried to be PC with them and lost his life as Britain was humiliatingly forced to withdraw back to Pakistan and India.
216 Chekote // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:32 pm
I think we need to focus our efforts on defeating the Taliban, AQ. I think we have wasted too many resources fighting the drug war in Afghanistan. We have unnecessarily angered Afghani farmers by destroying their poppy crops. Let them grow them. Let them use the revenue to rebuild the country. We in the West need to stop blaming our drug problem on less developed countries.
See you tomorrow Jay.
217 CentristNYer // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Jay // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:18 pm
“Yuo may not need to terrorize enemies who embrace martyrdom, CNY, but you can wipe them out.”
Wipe them out? Ridiculous. The scorched earth campaign that would be required to do this would inflame the middle east like never before and would create an army of western-hating martyrs ready to take their place. For every Taliban fighter you killed with this kind of campaign, you’d create ten more.
218 sinz54 // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:35 pm
trajan:
The advent of global television and the Internet makes it much harder to sustain public support for that kind of war.
General Harris and General LeMay didn’t have to contend with CNN or al-Jazeera having on-the-spot reporters and cameramen in Dresden and Tokyo, showing the horrors inflicted in civilian men, women and children by Allied bombs in real time, as the bombs were falling and firestorms were erupting. Broadcasting those horrors right into every American and British living room. They didn’t have to contend with YouTube, in which every enemy civilian with a video camera can post to the Internet what war looks like from his side.
Now if you’re a religious fanatic or Nazi fanatic, you can steel yourself against the thought that you’re killing women and children much like your own family. You may even believe that the ones you’re killing are subhuman and don’t deserve to live anyway. But if you’re a civilized human being, it’s a lot harder to watch a YouTube video of the enemy’s women and children being incinerated and think “Oh, well, they asked for it!”
219 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:35 pm
So far there have been three attempts to define “winning the war.” Stuiec (#167) thinks it means a state wherein the tribal leaders are able to prevent safe havens in Afghanistan for the Taliban and AQ. Jay (#205) thinks it means the country is no longer a safe haven for AQ only. And, brilliantly, Trajan (#211) thinks it means killing the enemy.
As for preventing a safe haven for AQ, they’re not in Afghanistan. They’re in Pakistan. We could stay in Afghanistan a hundred years and we wouldn’t be any safer from AQ because they could simply remain in Pakistan, Somalia or any other failed or weakened state. They don’t need Afghanistan to mount an attack on the U.S. They could just use San Diego or Boston again.
As for a safe haven for the Taliban, we are not going to eliminate the Taliban and we shouldn’t spend lives and money trying it. The Taliban did not attack us. While they are definitely sympathetic to AQ, they are, from their perspective, currently trying to rid their country of an occupying force. More U.S. troops won’t persuade them to be any more cooperative than was the case with the Sunnis in the Iraq surge.
220 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Sinz wrote: “General Harris and General LeMay didn’t have to contend with CNN or al-Jazeera having on-the-spot reporters and cameramen in Dresden and Tokyo, showing the horrors inflicted in civilian men, women and children by Allied bombs in real time, as the bombs were falling and firestorms were erupting.”
I don’t disagree that widespread knowledge of the effects of war make conducting a war less tenable (and that’s a good thing). But, the horrors of WWII were also more palatable because they seemed commensurate with the threat we faced. AQ is not, nor will it ever be, an existential threat to the U.S. It’s greatest blow will not be in lost lives, but in a damaged economy and a fearful society.
221 athensboy // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Jay, you sound quite reasonable, but I differ on the scorched-earth policy working in Afghanistan. Russia killed one million Afghani’s and firebombed Afghan villages by the hundreds. They also brutally tortured civilians by the thousands. They still couldn’t win. Couldn’t the CIA, Special Forces, and Predator drones just continually kill Taliban leadership until the Taliban laid down their arms? Billions of our tax dollars and the blood of our sons and daughters is too high a price to pay.
222 Conventional Folly » Getting Behind Obama’s Afghanistan Policy // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:19 pm
[...] — have a duty to say “President Obama, we are with you on this.” David Frum is absolutely, 100 percent, corrent. Obama’s is a move that will, in all likelihood, cost him dearly on the left (as my former [...]
223 MI-GOPer // Dec 2, 2009 at 9:33 pm
When all the inner TrollTribe defense of Obama –our newly minted Warrior in Chief– subsides, the simplest truths about his political calculations remain. He’s giving the military some of what they asked for but with a clock ticking down 18 months (yes, my Rent fan liberals that is 47, 335, 389 seconds –you can hum it while watching Rachel Madcow and Jon Stewart give you the news) and this season’s bad weather will soon begin in Afghanistan and that means little moves that isn’t already in near-glacier status… giving the military leaders 30k troops for a surge that ends in 18 months is madness –you can’t telegraph these things to the enemy.
On the Democrat side, he’s given the far Left a little bite of anti-war meat by suggesting the surge is measured, short term and when it ends, those bucks are coming home to the Great Liberal Causes. Like some on the Right here –and they aren’t many– his commitment seems tentative, insincere and overly qualified. And, to most, they don’t believe him. On his Left, they don’t believe him.
And all the while, he sends incredible undercutting messages to our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan and around the world… wait out the Americans, keep your powder dry, this president is weak and makes decisions not on principles but on his judgment of what’s best for his political expediency and advantage. And your best bet, Talibanners and fellow terrorists, for helping him divorce America from the War on Terror is to let the Americans appear to win-with-honor, stabilize Afghanistan in 47, 335, 389 seconds or less and then depart so you can return to killing each other with a vengence usually reserved for Israeli zealots.
The simplest truth: Obama and the Taliban are now working in concert on the same, shared goal. Wait out the Americans and let us get out of Dodge, you can have the country back and do as you will.
No wonder the 1st year under Obama has been the most successful year for the Taliban since they drove the Soviets out in Winter, 1988-89. 300 American soldiers killed this year for all the dithering and delay… and no one seems intent on holding Obama accountable for the slaughter.
224 Lavaux // Dec 3, 2009 at 3:34 am
108 balconesfault // Dec 2, 2009 at 1:18 pm
“Huh … I heard Obama say that our moral authority stemmed from our support for “human rights and .. the light of freedom and justice and opportunity and respect for the dignity of all peoples.”
You say liberty.
Potato, potato.
That said, is there something about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that pisses you off?”
You’re kidding, right? No? Then you’re not aware that rights impose corresponding obligations, and vice versa. So let’s say that I have the right to food, housing, clothing, medical care, a job with six weeks’ vacation per year, maternity/paternity leave with income replacement, disability benefits, industrial insurances, a retirement and a pension. Don’t these rights impose the obligation on others to provide these things? Indeed they do, and there goes their economic liberty out the door.
Potato, potato? Not quite.
Positive human rights impose positive human obligations, and positive human obligations erode human liberty. This is why the proper obligor on human rights is the state, not society, and the obligation should be negative, e.g. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Ever heard of the human right secured by this text? How much does it cost you every month in withheld income taxes?
That said, what pisses me off about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is that it’s loaded down with positive human rights creating corresponding positive human obligations that erode human liberty. Now compare this document with America’s Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Get the picture?
BTW, what is the freedom, what is the justice and what is the opportunity whose light America should be shining on the world? You realize that if I say “hope and change”, I might be hoping for a very different kind of change than you are, not so? Is Obama gonna pay your bills?
225 Lavaux // Dec 3, 2009 at 8:01 am
182 ottovbvs // Dec 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I read the article you cited by Bruce Bartlett and would like to thank you for advocating my case.
First, my point is that socialism is antithetical to liberty. So is totalitarianism, but that wasn’t my point. Mr. Bartlett advocates imposing a federal VAT on America that most Americans would bitterly oppose to pay for the spending they bitterly oppose. Therefore, he’s advocating my case.
Second, Mr. Bartlett cites economic statistics compiled by state actors who cook their national books and studies relying on the same to argue that living standards and economic growth in European socialist welfare states are the same or better than in the U.S. Why is doing what can’t be done reliably proof that it can be done reliably? (Today I heard someone say that liberals are born without the logic gene. I think that explains your posts.)
Third, I’ve lived in Sweden for 7 years, Germany for 5 years and Switzerland for 3 years. Guess what? Mr. Bartlett is arguing out of his arslet (or Arsch, if you prefer German to Swedish). Switzerland is by far the best place to live of all three countries because it’s the least socialistic, but it’s not anywhere near as wonderful a place to live as the U.S. Why? Liberty, economic opportunity, the freedom to invent one’s own vision of happiness and mold one’s life to it, among other things. American expats like me know this fact viscerally from long experience while economists like Mr. Bartlett have only their books and papers full of specious data and heads full of risible ideas.
Yes, let’s surrender our liberty to really smart people – conservatives! – like Bruce Bartlett because they know how to live our lives and spend our money and find happiness better than we do. Road to serfdom, indeed.
226 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 8:47 am
Lavaux // Dec 3, 2009 at 8:01 am
” First, my point is that socialism is antithetical to liberty”
…….since all the countries in Europe have systems of govt that are social democratic as I pointed out this would mean a suspension of liberties there when in fact all these societies are much less policed and lawyered than the US ?…..London has roughly the same population as NYC and a third of the policemen that NY considers necessary.
“Third, I’ve lived in Sweden for 7 years, Germany for 5 years and Switzerland for 3 years.Switzerland is by far the best place to live of all three countries because it’s the least socialistic, but it’s not anywhere near as wonderful a place to live as the U.S.”
…….Somehow I don’t think the Swedes, German’s and Swiss would agree with you……I lived in Britain for seven year in total(3 college and 4 work), two in Germany (service) and four years in France(work) and while different (amazingly Britain/France were both actually much less bureacratic than the US for example) the experience of living there was quite as enjoyable as living in the US (the food in France is infinitely better)
” Mr. Bartlett have only their books and papers full of specious data…..American expats like me know this fact viscerally”
………yes let’s not bother about data and reasoned analysis…… let’s put all our faith in prejudice and how we “feel”……..yes we’re nothing if not narcisists
227 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 8:54 am
trajan // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:03 pm
” We are so civilized.”
……..yes the Russians tried this in Afghanistan just as the Germans tried it in Russia…..neither were particularly successful……that you even suggest such nonsense in the context of today indicate just how out of touch with reality you are.
228 sinz54 // Dec 3, 2009 at 9:36 am
ottovbs:
You seem to be unable to make up your mind
whether to give Obama’s plan a decent chance (at least a year) to work,
or whether to write it off now as doomed to failure.
Some of your posts indicate the former,
and some of your posts indicate the latter.
With me, there is no ambiguity:
Obama did his homework.
He came up with a plan that might, just might, stabilize the country enough for a stable society to take hold. That’s enough to deter al-Qaeda from infiltrating Afghanistan in force again.
I’m going to give Obama’s plan a chance to work.
I’m sorry if that doesn’t appeal to ideologues of either the Left or the Right.
Too bad for you.
229 sinz54 // Dec 3, 2009 at 9:48 am
SpartacusIsNotDead:
They’re not anchored to Pakistan. They free-lance.
al-Qaeda thrives on chaos. They’re as much nihilists as they are Muslims.
If Afghanistan slips back into chaos, they will infiltrate Afghanistan, much as they infiltrated Iraq after the collapse of civil order there, and much as they migrated to Chechnya to aid the Chechen rebels there fighting the Russians.
I believe Hillary properly sees Afghanistan as a plug to keep al-Qaeda bottled up in Pakistan. If Afghanistan is stabilized, al-Qaeda won’t move back in there.
Finally:
What I’ve observed is that when modern liberals talk about national defense issues, they play a never-ending game of bait and switch.
To them, the war we’re fighting is always the “wrong” war, and the “right” war is always somewhere else. But soon as we start fighting this other war they said was “right,” they start telling us that the “real” war is somewhere else.
The whole argument of the Dems in the 2008 campaign was that Bush “took his eye off the ball” with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and instead invaded Iraq.
Now we’ve got liberals saying that the “real” war is in Pakistan, which can be dealt with by U.S. air strikes, and so the war in Afghanistan should be stopped too.
And next stage comes from Marcy Winograd, who is challenging Jane Harman in the Dem primaries, who is arguing that even air strikes against al-Qaeda in Pakistan should be stopped.
Bait and switch.
It’s all a lie. The truth is that modern liberals hate military action, they don’t believe America should be a military superpower, and they genuinely wish that Presidents didn’t have the military option available for anything less than a nuclear attack on the nation. Modern liberals are a disgrace to the memories of FDR, Truman, and John F. Kennedy. Modern liberals, permanently mentally damaged by Vietnam, are of a very different stripe.
They should just tell us how pacifistic they truly are (McGovern did), rather than trying to pretend they are staunch defenders of the nation who know where the “real” war is. It’s always just out of reach.
230 MI-GOPer // Dec 3, 2009 at 9:56 am
sinz54, automaticBS’er is just doing the Kerry-Obama Flippy-Flop Thingie… he can deem the policy doomed to failure in the same breath as he mans the barricade against the barbarians attacking the Temple of Obama… pitchfork at the ready.
Otto’s perfectly consistent for a liberal. And he’s the perfect example of why Obama failed at West Point. Obama, in essence, sought to win over those who disagree with him on nearly every other issue by moving to the Center… and he earned more distrust from those he needs to believe him on most other issues.
It’s all a replay of the dynamics during Immigration Reform. Bush and McCain sought to build a bond with liberals (who disagreed with them on nearly every other issue) and, in so doing, famously earned the distrust of those they needed to believe in Bush-McCain on most other issues (soc cons). Bush saying it wasn’t all about amnesty was unbelievable to the Right… just as Obama trying to be Warrior in Chief is inauthentic to the Left. And he needs the Left to be solid priests in the game of Worship at the Temple of Obama.
For instance, if it comes time for Obama to Cut & Run on the public option –even a triggered public option– I doubt liberals will be ready to trust him that he’ll “do it another day, soon, just vote now”. It’s why Michael Moore’s outrage will serve to unsettle the Left and draw a reference that maybe Obama isn’t they guy they thought they were electing.
You gotta feel for guys like Otto who are caught on thin ice without a paddle, without a coar, without the leader they thought they were electing on an issue that should be an Anti-War moment, not a surge-lite taste test.
231 MI-GOPer // Dec 3, 2009 at 10:09 am
sinz54 “The whole argument of the Dems in the 2008 campaign was that Bush “took his eye off the ball” with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and instead invaded Iraq. Now we’ve got liberals saying that the “real” war is in Pakistan, which can be dealt with by U.S. air strikes, and so the war in Afghanistan should be stopped too.”
And you seemed surprised that liberals would engage in such rank dishonesty with other peoples’ lives, with international commitments? Oh come on. Click those heels three times Dorothy and grab the pooch, the balloon is almost ready for Kansas. It’s political partisanship. It’s calculation. It’s exerting leverage wherever leverage can be gained.
Senator Levin (D), Chair of the Senate Armed Services Co, said it this morning: “A surge in Afghanistan is a bad idea because we can’t ever win there. Our troops are asked to do an impossible job, against an impossible foe, in an impossible land where democracy is impossible. I lived the Viet Nam experience and this is more like Viet Nam than any American military experience since.”
In June, 2004, he was saying that Afghanistan was where we really needed to be and not in Iraq. Afghanistan was the “winnable war” and the “correct stage for the War on Terror” –of course, he was trying to raise doubt about Bush-Cheney in the hope that Kerry-Edwards could win. Imagine democrats being so partsian as to use any wedge for political advantage???
Shocking.
232 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 10:27 am
Lavaux, I don’t think you will ever convince otto that economic liberty is superior to the welfare state. He is very much against learning economics qua economics, and focuses exclusively on history. History is terrific to study and learn from, but not very useful for developing a theoretical framework.
As Mises explained, if one were to study only the “empirical” observations at Grand Central Terminal, the shuffling and bustling of people to and from work and home, he could draw no meaningful conclusions. Only knowledge of intentions, motivations, and purposeful action would allow the “scientist” observing the commuters to draw accurate conclusions. Economics is a science of deductive reasoning, based on the fundamental axiom of human action, and its method has much more in common with pure logic than, say, the methods of physics or biology.
If otto, and for that matter BarryS, balcones, sinz, and Frum himself, were interested, which they are clearly not, they would not incessantly pester me for answers, but instead spend 40 minutes reading an article of Bastiat (http://bastiat.org/). Seeing as how I am doing little more than making the case of the classical and Austrian economists , there is no reason why I should have to reinvent the argumentation wheel every time some dope says “taxes don’t reduce output!” or “what do you mean ‘private sector regulation?’” All sense is replaced by emotion for these ignoramuses.
It’s very funny, though, their arguments for interventionism. They say we’ve been saved from a complete economic meltdown. They say we’ve averted another Great Depression. They say but for TARP and the stimulus, unemployment would be 25%. And the Fed, they say, is a wonderful tool for economic management. Yet looking around, with unemployment continuing to mount unabated for 22 months and the price of gold skyrocketing, all the signs for remaining in the economic doldrums are in place. Bernanke, otto et al., Obama? “Nothing to see here.”
I think one of the following scenarios will develop -
1) The government won’t be able to take the slow growth for too long, and will try to intervene once again, because that is the instinct of the State. This will make things worse.
2) The debt/inflation will cause a currency crisis. The first years of this century will be the only years using fiat money.
233 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 10:39 am
Sinz: They’re not anchored to Pakistan. They free-lance.
al-Qaeda thrives on chaos. They’re as much nihilists as they are Muslims.
Bingo. Free-lance is the right term.
Al Qaeda is distinct from the Taliban, or Saddam, or the Iranian Mullahs, or any other group that has a goal of territorial control. Al Qaeda isn’t fighting over territory – they’re fighting over an ideology. And it’s not all some network that’s masterminded out of caves in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
For example, look at “Al Qaeda in Iraq”. Originally al-Zarqawi called it “Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad”, which came together in Iraq soon after our invasion, and it wasn’t until late in 2004 that he started calling it “Al Qaeda” and declared loyalty to Bin Laden.
Why would he do that? Go figure – it increased his profile manyfold. Suddenly the media really started talking about him. That’s what we’re faced with now … anytime some crazy wants to make himself scarier, he can slap on the Al Qaeda name and get 100x more attention.
And nihilist is also right – Zarqawi had no problems with killing fellow Muslims when it served his purpose of destabilizing Iraq. He wasn’t targeting Americans or even American agents – he was just into killing, which is the main reason the Sunni warlords eventually were willing to be bought into the process of wiping out Al Qaeda in Iraq – as long as Zarqawi was on the loose, they couldn’t protect their own people, and a warlord who can’t do that loses his power.
And next stage comes from Marcy Winograd, who is challenging Jane Harman in the Dem primaries, who is arguing that even air strikes against al-Qaeda in Pakistan should be stopped.
Bait and switch.
Umm – if you think that this is some sort of grand design you really don’t understand Democratic politics. Will Rogers words “I don’t belong to any organized political party – I’m a Democrat” still ring true.
These things you’re talking about don’t represent “bait and switch” – they represent a serious difference of opinion within the Democratic Party. As opposed to Republicans, who have pretty much expelled anyone you’d call a “liberal Republican”, there are most certainly liberal Democrats and conservative Democrats, particularly on an issue by issue basis. The Afghan strategy is showing this, and the healthcare debate is showing this.
The Democrats who do not favor this increased escalation in Afghanistan fully supported Obama when he fulfilled his campaign pledge and put 3 new combat battallions in Afghanistan, doubling Bush’s force there. They are balking on a second escalation. This is actually political courage, since they are taking on the sitting President as to whether his stated goals … both to increase our committment to Afghanistan AND to continue to spend the money needed to turn around the US economy … are compatible.
Would that Republicans had placed such a reality test on Bush during his 8 years in office, we might be in a far better place today.
234 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 10:39 am
just because i’m unfortunately not eloquent, here is a section of bastiat that summarizes, roughly, my societal beliefs with regard to economics:
“It was fashionable, at one time, to laugh at what is called the social problem; and, it must be admitted, certain of the proposed solutions were only too deserving of derision. But there is surely nothing laughable about the problem itself; it haunts us like Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s banquet, except that, far from being silent, it cries aloud to terror-stricken society: Find a solution or die!
Now the nature of this solution, as you readily understand, will depend greatly upon whether men’s interests are, in fact, harmonious or antagonistic to one another.
If they are harmonious, the answer to our problem is to be found in liberty; if they are antagonistic, in coercion. In the first case, it is enough not to interfere; in the second, we must, inevitably, interfere. ”
http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basHar0.html#To%20the%20Youth%20of%20France
235 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 10:48 am
WillyP – what gives man the right to own real estate?
Mind you – I’m not calling into question this right. You would no doubt define me as a statist, and I hold to the opinion that without the power of the state to guarantee property boundaries, we could only own so much real estate as we could defend with our own guns.
But I am curious, in absence of the state circumscribing liberties by guaranteeing property boundaries, how do people maintain their property rights?
236 MI-GOPer // Dec 3, 2009 at 10:51 am
balconesfault-BarryS-MrFace-Moderate-RioRancho character dujour offers: “Would that Republicans had placed such a reality test on Bush during his 8 years in office, we might be in a far better place today.”
We were in a far, far better place.
Our enemies knew our President was strong and our resolve was great and he believed in the mission at hand.
We didn’t have a culturally conflicted, weak CIC who felt more at home with muslim clerics than he does with US troops.
We had a CIC who often visited the troops, consoled military families in private, shared their love for America and Liberty and Honor… not a CIC who used caskets and cadets as props in WH stagecraft and, only with his election as president felt good about America.
We had, in the worst year of Bush, 155 US soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Since Obama has been in power, he’s doubled that to 300 troops and given the Taliban their most successful year to date since they kicked the Soviets out in the winter of 1988.
Funny, the Bush-Cheney years look a lot better by comparison. At least then, we were winning the wars Obama is now signaled he is willing to lose… if the Taliban will just share his goal and wait him out.
47, 335, 389 seconds is all it will take. Yeah, Bush-Cheney look real good by comparison –unless you want the Taliban resurgent and find comfort in the destruction and death of military personnel.
237 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 11:02 am
We were in a far, far better place.
Our enemies knew our President was strong and our resolve was great and he believed in the mission at hand.
Ahhh. … that’s why Bush permanently secured Iraq and Afghanistan, albeit in slightly more time than it took to win WWII, and left Obama with only the need to leave small forces in each state to protect our diplomatic missions. Because our enemies were all cowed by Bush’s resolve, and withered away.
We also had a President who never ONCE visited Dover AFB to pay tribute to those who had made the ultimate sacrifice, nor got his DOD to authorize paying for families of the deceased to be at Dover to see the return of their loved ones to this great country (that’s right – under Obama, the DOD has started paying for families to be on hand at Dover).
If in 2003 someone had tried to define winning in Iraq as “by 2009 will be able to have less than 160,000 troops there in order to stabilize the country”, they’d have been subject to the highest levels of mockery.
If you’re trying to retroactively define what Bush did as “winning” now, you deserve the same levels of mockery that you would have deserved then.
238 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 11:07 am
balcones, I like the way you’re thinking. I can’t say that I understand how I’ve been labeled an anarchist… I’m not.
“You would no doubt define me as a statist, and I hold to the opinion that without the power of the state to guarantee property boundaries, we could only own so much real estate as we could defend with our own guns.”
With the exception of a few economists of the Austrian school (Rothbard, Hoppe, Block), most good economists are/were classical liberals. They believed the state’s primary function was to defend property rights from injury or seizure, and to adjudicate disputes. Hence a police force, military, and court system. On the flip side, most are/were against the state entering into general commerce outside its constitutional purvey. So the most important thing to an economist, I’d say, is truly limited government.
I’m not going to answer your question directly because I am not not familiar enough to begin expounding Locke.
239 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:09 pm
They believed the state’s primary function was to defend property rights from injury or seizure, and to adjudicate disputes.
Ahh – but do you see how this primarily sets the state in the position of defending wealth? Which from a theoretical position might be fine and sustainable. But when wealth is distributed extraordinarily unevenly through society, and when one’s access to wealth might not be strictly limited by birth, but is highly correlated to birth, the sustainability of this model breaks down.
The wealthy classes will by and large always function in ways that seek to expand their wealth, and to pass down the largest amount of wealth possible to their decendents. There are certainly exceptions and outliers, but this is a truism.
And while we believe in free markets, the reality is that there is never completely a free market with respect to information – wealth will always buy access to special information that will allow the owners to concentrate more wealth. Wealth gives the ability to take higher risk gambles which deliver higher payoffs, that someone without wealth can’t afford to take.
Eventually, the model you talk about will always minimalize the middle class, since the wealthy will use their wealth and information as levers to divert wealth from the middle classes to their pockets.
And a nation without a healthy middle class can only maintain property rights via more and more draconian police action, eventually devolving into some form of enforced feudalism.
240 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Sinz wrote: “If Afghanistan slips back into chaos, they will infiltrate Afghanistan . . . ”
I agree, and it would certainly be better if Afghanistan could develop a stable government capable of preventing AQ’s return. That, however, leads to the obvious questions of whether Afghanistan is capable of doing this and, if so, how long will it take; how much will it cost America in lives and money; and, as Rumsfeld once wondered about Iraq, will our continued presence there create more terrorists than we kill?
There is absolutely nothing in Afghanistan’s history, nor our modern history that indicates than any of these questions can be answered in a way that justifies America staying in Afghanistan, and no one (neo-con or otherwise) has provided any evidence to the contrary. Instead, it’s all hope and conjecture.
Since AQ can go to any weak or failing state, the rationale for staying in Afghanistan suggests America should follow them to any of those other weak or failing countries and embark upon nation-building. That is an sure-fire path to America’s ruin.
241 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Spartacus: it would certainly be better if Afghanistan could develop a stable government capable of preventing AQ’s return. That, however, leads to the obvious questions of whether Afghanistan is capable of doing this
Or a corollary question … can Afghanistan is capable of doing this without the Taliban being some part of that government?
I think Obama believes the answer to that question may well be “no”, which indicates to me that has more pragmatism in him than the whole of the Bush Administration.
For further evidence of that pragmatism … note that during the speech he didn’t talk about us pressing this war to promote Afgan civil rights, or to protect their women, or whatever.
His charge, instead, was “what we need to achieve to secure our interests”.
In that sense, the Bush Administration was far more “liberal” than Obama.
242 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Sinz wrote: “What I’ve observed is that when modern liberals talk about national defense issues, they play a never-ending game of bait and switch. To them, the war we’re fighting is always the “wrong” war, and the “right” war is always somewhere else. But soon as we start fighting this other war they said was “right,” they start telling us that the “real” war is somewhere else.”
These are really strange statements in light of the fact that Obama, who you’ve claimed to be a classic liberal, just increased his commitment to the “right” war and there’s been no uproar among congressional Democrats. Your arguments are not based on facts.
Another thing you, Bush and many other conservatives seem to have failed to grasp is that doing the right thing late is not the same thing as doing the right thing. Iraq absolutely was the “wrong” war and Afghanistan was indeed the “right” war. By not putting in the resources to capture OBL and destroy AQ when we had the opportunity, we’ve probably lost the chance to win the right war. Although, I am prepared to believe that Bush may have had the foresight to see that the U.S. could not be any more successful in Afghanistan than the USSR and, therefore, we should not embark upon a large-scale military effort there.
243 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:38 pm
balcones (or should i say, baloney!),
“The wealthy classes will by and large always function in ways that seek to expand their wealth, and to pass down the largest amount of wealth possible to their decendents.”
That is true for everybody, not just the wealthy.
I would ask you where wealth was more concentrated – in the Soviet Union with a virtually unlimited government and vast bureaus for every sort of social service, or the United States; in America in the 1800s with no peerage system, or Great Britain with a history of aristocracy; in classical Athens in which only 10% of the population were fully legal citizens, or nearly capitalist classical Rome; in North America or South America since their European discovery? It is not sloppy thinking that originally defined monopoly as arising from government privilege.
As for higher risk/higher reward… well, yes, but also higher losses. Those with the most have the most to lose, too.
Of course, when you get right down to it, the real American aristocracy are the bankers, who have essentially found a mutually beneficial arrangement with the Federal government: they buy unlimited government in return for the assurance that the taxpayer will be put on the hook in the event of insolvency. The Federal Reserve, as Murray Rothbard explained perfectly, is a cartelization device.
244 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:43 pm
“they buy unlimited government” …. that is, unlimited government DEBT**
245 MI-GOPer // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:49 pm
O/T: balconesfault, first off let me say it’s a great step in honesty that you haven’t succumbed to using one of your alternate characters in this thread to play the troll game of appearing to have opinion on your side. You’re well on your way to beating the addiction.
O/T. I’m surprised that you can claim Obama’s prosecution of the War of Necessity in Afghanistan is going so well since this is the bloodiest year ever for American and NATO troops and, to date, we’ve now lost 302 soldiers in Obama’s first year of vacillation, dithering and weakness… as soon as Obama was elected, the Taliban began working to overrun forward bases and testing military resolve. The Taliban knew that America had elected a Celebrity in Chief, not a leader. They just didn’t know how weak and deep the weakness ran.
Obama gave them his answer by dithering and delaying what is now seens rightly as a simple extension of the Bush-Cheney Plan that they prepared and briefed his senior staff on last fall… and Obama asked to keep secret from the Far Left base… well, the Taliban heard Obama say “We’re reviewing…” and they began planning on how to influence that decision of a weak CIC by turning up the heat, killing twice as many US troops as they had in any other year of the war… they thought they could destroy the resolve of this weak president.
Surprise, surprise. Polls and political preservation got it the way and trumped even the weakness of Obama. Obama was told he could gain some Independents and Republicans on the single decision of extending the Bush-Cheney Plan and presto-change-o, political calculation replaced his spine for the moment. BTW, I think Obama’s pollsters were wrong.
You are stuck with a president who’s decision to limit the surge has now put our American troops on the same goal glidepath as the Taliban. You’re stuck with a president who’s decision to limit the surge has sent a message to all our allies –including those in Pakistan reluctantly fighting the Taliban– that America can be counted on as long as it is politically expedient to Obama.
Bad message. Bad statecraft. And all the caskets at Dover can’t make this president appear presidential again –like HumptyDumpty… Obama fell off the wall and the cracks showing ain’t pretty to anyone.
By the way, Bush didn’t have to go to Dover –he spent more time with the troops as President than Obama can ever do in his single term. He was one of them. They knew it. He shared their mission. They knew it. He didn’t belittle them as “…people who couldn’t get into a community college” like John Kerry did. Bush visited the soldiers on the front line, in-theatre, while alive and talking.
Obama chose to stand at a casket because he is interested in real soldiers or being a real CIC; he said at West Point that isn’t his primary job. And it was “a” single casket because no other military family that day would hazard their son as prop for the Celebrity in Chief’s PR stunt. That you find great value in it is not surprising; you are an anti-military liberal and democrat, after all.
246 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Balconesfault: “the Bush Administration was far more “liberal” than Obama.”
On this issue as well as many others. The same can be said of the Reagan Administration. Sinz argued on a different thread that younger conservatives have no interest in intellectualism or erudition. I don’t think that is true at all. I think they’re interested in these things, but an intellectual evaluation of conservative ideology reveals that it has no practical application to governance. You can be a conservative intellectual (and there are many), but if you try to convert your conservative ideology into governing policy, and if you’re intellectually honest, you will realize that you will end up with bad results.
247 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:51 pm
To be fair, I should have said “you will end up with bad results or you will have difficulty getting elected at the national level.”
248 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Spartacus: I am prepared to believe that Bush may have had the foresight to see that the U.S. could not be any more successful in Afghanistan than the USSR and, therefore, we should not embark upon a large-scale military effort there.
You give him credit for more than I.
I think Bush is capable of believing – wholly believing – what is expedient for him to believe. He is not retrospective, he does not appear to challenge his own beliefs, once embraced. This has always been a source of his political strength, even while turning into a massive political weakness for the Party which followed him for 8 years.
Thus, I think that Bush had absolutely no doubt in his mind that we would find WMDs when we invaded Iraq. Big stockpiles of them, hidden from inspectors, and active WMD programs, that would all vindicate his decision. There was no gamble in his mind – but simply a faith-based certainty that when he believed something it is true.
I think Bush also completely believed that Iraq would be a war that would be quickly settled. That we would take out Saddam, set up a provisional authority, that US companies would jump in to take advantage of the oil and human resources there, and that the Iraqi people would gratefully accept this jump from the chains of Baathist socialism into the prosperity of free market corporatism and welcome the massive permanent bases we built in Iraq as a noble act by Americans to protect Iraq’s newfound freedom and prosperity from the fundamentalist crazies and despots surrounding them.
I’m sure that Bush also believed that this success in Iraq would lead to by 2004 America being able to quickly take Syria, and then to move on to Iran, and before the end of his second administration to wholly transform the Middle East into stable democracies allied with America that marginalized radical islamists, while providing platforms for us to launch attacks on those who gave harbor to terrorists.
For each of these things, I would bet that Bush would put his certitude at well over 90%, if he would even harbor some kernel of doubt at all.
And in Afghanistan, I think that Bush knew we needed to keep less troops there in order to have the troop levels needed to occupy Iraq … and so he believed that we didn’t need more troops in Afghanistan … that “Mission Accomplished” was just that, and the hard work was all done by summer 2002.
He believed it because it worked for him to believe it, and because life makes more sense if you don’t second guess those things that are convenient for you to believe.
249 sinz54 // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:53 pm
SpartacusIsNotDead:
Not quite.
For several reasons.
1. Not all failing states are Muslim. It’s only failing states that have Islamist regimes or have large numbers of radical Muslims that offer opportunities for al-Qaeda.
2. In some regions of the world, failing states that give al-Qaeda opportunity can be assisted by regional actors. That’s what happened with Somalia in 2006, when a small number of U.S. Special Forces assisted Ethiopia to invade Somalia to dislodge the Islamists there. That removed a haven for al-Qaeda that U.S. intelligence had suspected was there.
It’s just that the unique locale and terrain of Afghanistan make it highly unlikely that anyone but us can do the job.
3. Osama bin Laden is too old and too sick to be globe-trotting. I expect that he, and the rest of al-Qaeda’s top leadership, will remain in Pakistan.
4. The Afghan-Pak region has a unique problem: It’s al-Qaeda terrorists within driving distance of arsenals of nuclear weapons. It therefore requires our special attention.
Securing the world’s nuclear stockpile to keep it out of the hands of terrorists used to be a cause celebre of American progressives–until they realized this might take military action (as it’s taking now in Afghan-Pak). Then they scuttled away from it, as they scuttle away from anything, anywhere, anyplace, anytime, that might require the use of force.
250 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:58 pm
MI-GOPer O/T: balconesfault, first off let me say it’s a great step in honesty that you haven’t succumbed to using one of your alternate characters in this thread to play the troll game of appearing to have opinion on your side. You’re well on your way to beating the addiction.
Let me say it’s a great step in civility for you to not start off a comment with name-calling. However, I fear that I will never be able to convince you that I have never used another name on this board. That is sad, but refer to what I just wrote about George Bush – you have no doubt on this because it is convenient for you to have no doubt. I’m sure the others you think are me laugh as I do every time you lump us together, but then none of us have developed much reason to respect your opinion anyway, with your pit bull style, so it really doesn’t harm our opinions of you.
O/T. I’m surprised that you can claim Obama’s prosecution of the War of Necessity in Afghanistan is going so well since this is the bloodiest year ever for American and NATO troops
First, I didn’t claim his prosecution of the war is going well – I said he had made good on his campaign pledge to put in more troops long ago. Second, doubling the number of troops, and in particular increasing the number of troops who are out in the valleys of Afghanistan and not hunkered down in Kabul or their bases will of course increase the number of casualties. Do you forget how much bloodier Iraq was for US troops at the beginning of the surge?
251 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 3, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Balcone @ 248,
Generally, I share your low opinion of Bush, but I think it was possible that he thought (or more likely was convinced by Rumsfeld) that both Iraq and Afghanistan could be won with very little military effort. I belive that, in the process of persuading him of this, Rumsfeld and others probably told him of the Soviet Union’s experience in Afghanistan. I do believe Bush entered office with a disdain for the concept of nation-building. Thus, when Rumsfeld told him of the failed Soviet endeavor, that example resonated with Bush and he wanted to make sure he avoided that.
252 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 3, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Sinz @ 249,
Your 4 points are all valid, but they don’t seem to undermine the general proposition that if a failed state, wherever it exists, needs to be made stable in order to prevent an AQ safe haven, America will go there, sacrifice as many American lives as necessary, spend whatever it takes and stay indefinitely in order to achieve this. I do not believe the amount of harm AQ can cause the U.S. is great enough to justify this cost.
More importantly, the country simply does not have the money to do this. We will go broke and lose our power, which is AQ’s true goal. The attached link is long, but you will probably find it very interesting.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200409/cullison
253 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Spartacus: Generally, I share your low opinion of Bush,
Note that this is not necessarily a low opinion of Bush whole cloth.
It is a low opinion of Bush as President of the United States, particularly over this last decade.
History will show us that there are times when an unwavering faith in whatever one believes can lead to successes that seem miraculous … and that doubt is only a pathway to failure.
The problem is that Bush took over an America that was in pretty freaking awesome shape in 2001. And even after 9/11, we didn’t need the huge gamble in the Middle East that Bush believed we would win in order to achieve the security levels we have today.
If his gamble paid off, Republicans would be clamoring to have his face carved on Rushmore. And that was what Bush longed for … it’s likely the reason he ran multiple companies into the ground during his business career, his absolute belief in what he thought would happen transforming into certitude, and his ability to convince himself that the long shot would pay off.
254 Lavaux // Dec 3, 2009 at 2:13 pm
232 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 10:27 am
You’re right about otto. He doesn’t see the world as it really is but as he would like it to be, and he’ll never be able to do otherwise because his vision of the world satisfies some deep psychic need.
I was a lefty until I started paying taxes for real. My first paycheck stub revealed that Uncle Sam and Olympia had taken a third of my income right off the top. I began looking around at the world and noticed it hadn’t gotten even one smidgen better even though I was now paying a third of my income to make it better. What gives?, I thought.
That got me to thinking about social problems. What is a social problem – when two or more people have the same problem? If that’s the case, then there will never be an end to social problems because there’s no end of trouble in this life but one, death. And if the only way government can solve social problems is to throw money at them, then there’s truly no other limit to the amount of money government can throw at social problems except the amount of money it can tax, borrow or print. Maybe the third the government was taking from me was being largely wasted on Quixotic nonsense, I thought, but at least it’s not two thirds so perhaps I’ll just let it slide and go along to get along.
Then I moved to Sweden. There the government took two thirds of my income, which wasn’t stellar to begin with. Sure, health care and day care didn’t cost much, but forget about getting ahead or putting any money away or ever achieving financial independence. The more you make, the more they take. The polity and society are set up like a Whack-A-Mole game: If your head ever pops up above the mean level, they’ll whack it back down for you. Most Americans, including me, would find this kind of thing most dispiriting.
Strangely, there were even more social problems in Sweden than in America despite what the Swedish government was telling anyone not Swedish. In the meantime, I worked on some projects with the Government Offices and the Tax Authorities and learned first-hand from them how they cook the national books according to standards set by the Social Democrats in the Riksdag who were far more interested in looking good than procuring useful data.
No longer could I ignore reality or go along to get along. The welfare state is not a good exchange for liberty. It sucks the hope and ambition out of people and mows down anyone who tries to grow above the prescribed level, and it doesn’t put an end to social problems. It’s based on lies, cooked books and ruthless force, and heaven help the guy who says so to the wrong crowd. In view of all of this, I became a hard core classical liberal.
Otto is the kind of guy who can live in Sweden and shut his eyes to everything that gives the lie to his beliefs. I’m not. What good is the faculty of reason to one who continuously lies to himself?
He’s like the global warming fraud deniers. We can show them that the most prominent climate scientists advancing global warming massaged their raw data to make it fit their theory, then destroyed the raw data to cover their tracks, then conspired to shut out and shout down all dissenting or skeptical scientific papers and opinions, then further conspired to cover their tracks by violating or ignoring public disclosure laws, all the while lying to the news media and the political classes. We can show them all of this, and they’ll shrug and say, “So what?” “Global warming is happening because it should be happening; man is destroying the planet and must be stopped.” The same would apply to the Recovery Act, unemployment, ACORN, the nutty Czars, etc.
Re the scenario that may develop, I think both have a good chance at occurring. I won’t put any fiscal or monetary policy mistake beyond this president and this Congress. They are just like otto.
255 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 2:45 pm
lavaux,
yes, governments invent problems as an excuse to collect more money. it’s one of the surest truisms in political history.
otto, well i don’t quite know what his deal is. he seems well educated and articulate, yet deeply torn. on one hand, he is a consummate liberal in thought and attitude. on the other hand, he spends what appears to be his entire day on a (purportedly) conservative website. he is a deeply dedicated keynesian, and yet chooses the republican odd man out – bruce bartlett – to make his case, and not, say, krugman. he is derisive and condescending, yet does not feel the need to fully reconcile his positions to valid criticism.
this is unseemly, and i’m sure i’ll immediately regret posting this, but i would hazard that the serviceman in him is at war with the cambridgian. how else do you explain the liberal who looks for conservative approval?
256 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 2:52 pm
WillyP: this is unseemly, and i’m sure i’ll immediately regret posting this, but i would hazard that the serviceman in him is at war with the cambridgian. how else do you explain the liberal who looks for conservative approval?
Much simpler … Otto (and other liberals or moderates who visit this site) aren’t seeing approval – but enjoying a clash of ideas that doesn’t take place when you only spend your time on more monopolar forums. Often this gives you the ability to refine and reframe your own beliefs as you respond to criticisms from others, particularly those you respect … depending on your mindset, it can even change your beliefs on the edges as you are exposed to arguments or data you wouldn’t normally come across and reconcile them with what you knew or thought you knew.
I seriously doubt that anyone will have an epiphany and change stripes from this interaction – I think it takes bigger movements in the real world to achieve that. But conducted with respect and honesty, these dialogues can be intellectually challenging and fulfilling.
257 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 3:07 pm
balcones, 3 comments:
1) does not explain his affinity for bruce bartlett
2) mental stimulation is difficult when you refuse to take your mask of condescension
3) you never responded to my earlier post directed at your criticism of a free market (243)
cheers
ok, 4) i do regret posting that
258 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Lavaux // Dec 3, 2009 at 2:13 pm
232 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 10:27 am
You’re right about otto. He doesn’t see the world as it really is but as he would like it to be
……..perhaps that’s why I spent 40 years in business and ended up running a company with nearly 4000 people in it
“I think both have a good chance at occurring. I won’t put any fiscal or monetary policy mistake beyond this president and this Congress.”
……it would take rather a lot of talent to repeat the series of mistakes made by the previous conservative Republican admin that resulted in the near collapse of the US financial system and the worst recession since the war……you might also want to take a look at who has presided over the largest increases in public debt since the war…..Reagan and Bush 2
259 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 4:07 pm
sinz54 // Dec 3, 2009 at 9:36 am
“You seem to be unable to make up your mind
whether to give Obama’s plan a decent chance (at least a year) to work,
or whether to write it off now as doomed to failure.”
……..I have no problem making up my mind….it’s doomed to failure……the only strategy with the remotest possibility of success is to spend trillions to turn Afghanistan into a colony(I attached a link above to some musings by Sullivan which exactly capture my thinking)……you really need to develop a bit of nuance Sinz to be able to tell the difference between what my personal views are and my interpretation of what the president is trying to achieve both militarily and politically
260 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 4:11 pm
WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 2:45 pm
“this is unseemly, and i’m sure i’ll immediately regret posting this, but i would hazard that the serviceman in him is at war with the cambridgian. how else do you explain the liberal who looks for conservative approval?”
…….not just econo-babble but psycho-babble too
261 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 4:52 pm
WillyP: balcones, 3 comments:
1) does not explain his affinity for bruce bartlett
That’s easy. Krugman you’d dismiss out of hand, so Otto is intelligent enough to realize that there’s no value in bringing him to the table. Bartlett has a chance of persuading people here, since he has his conservative bona fides, and thus his critiques of the Republican Party can’t be dismissed as “trolling”, as some here so obsessively label any challenging ideas.
2) mental stimulation is difficult when you refuse to take your mask of condescension
take off? I think what you consider a “mask of condescension”, I consider an “elevation of the dialogue”. Clearly, I think my ideas to be better formed than yours, just as you consider yours to be better formed than mine. I consider it condescending for someone to not respond to a question of mine, but just to say “go read a book”. We all have our flaws, I guess.
you never responded to my earlier post directed at your criticism of a free market (243)
I didn’t really accept the way you put the question – but since you asked again:
I would ask you where wealth was more concentrated – in the Soviet Union with a virtually unlimited government and vast bureaus for every sort of social service, or the United States; in America in the 1800s with no peerage system, or Great Britain with a history of aristocracy; in classical Athens in which only 10% of the population were fully legal citizens, or nearly capitalist classical Rome; in North America or South America since their European discovery? It is not sloppy thinking that originally defined monopoly as arising from government privilege.
Wealth, being possession of material good that one can own independent of state fiat, and pass to one’s decendents, was virtually non-existent in the Soviet Union. Certainly there was unequal distribution of privilege, since the Soviets were as corrupt in how they practiced communism as they now are in how they practice capitalism (and I assume that they were all corrupt under the Czars). It seems to be a society that naturally gravitates towards corruption. But anyway, the US certainly has a much greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the few individuals than the Soviet Union, although you can basically say that in the Soviet Union all wealth was concentrated in the hands of the government. Access to that wealth was regulated by a few, although who the few were was not determined by birth.
I’m not sure what time period in the history of Great Britain you are referring to in your comparison with America in the 1800s, so that is very difficult to respond to. For example, in 1873 80% of the land in Great Britain was owned by 7000 people, most of the titled. In the 1970’s land ownership by the aristocracy was down to 32%.
I can’t comment on Athens and Rome, being much more versed with their literature than their economics.
Comparing North and South America has flaws, because to certain extents the United States played no small role in helping keep wealth concentrated in the hands of the few in South America. That said, I see the large landed aristocracy of South America in large part to be the natural result of historical governments who saw their primary role as being the protection of the wealth of the few.
262 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 5:30 pm
balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 4:52 pm
“That’s easy. Krugman you’d dismiss out of hand,”
…….And there’s also the fact I’m uncomfortable with aspects of Krugman……..his basic economic philosophy is sound (Bernanke hired him at Princeton and he does have a Nobel…….Willy is still waiting for his) but he’s a bit inclined to overdo it as for example when he was demanding the govt nationalise the banks around the start of the year……..it wasn’t necessary and that has been proved by subsequent events (eg. we now have BoA and most of the other banks now paying off their loan in their entirety)…..his other hobby horse is that the stimulus should have been bigger and while I agree with him to a limited degree (maybe another 250 billion for infrastructure) it wasn’t passable and I think Obama/Summers/Geithner/Romer etc put together the best and most effective parcel of programs in the circumstances…..not perfect but it’s working and will have the economy in full recovery mode by the summer of next year but Krugman goes on endlessly about it…..he’s simply wrong again…..I like Bartlett for the reasons you enumerate plus the fact he explains things in layman’s terms and backs up his comments with data
……..As for Willy and Laveaux it’s hard to know what to make of them……raider/mi-goper etc are not hard to fathom…..they are not unlike those intourist guides one used meet in the old Soviet Union (programmed to rant nonsense at various decibel levels)……..Willy and Laveaux on the other hand are real flat earthers who actually remind me of CA hippies from the sixties with their rather strange obsessions and narcissism (sorry some psychobabble)
263 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:03 pm
frankly i don’t mind the condescension so much as the ignorance. one cannot legitimately claim to like politics and not enjoy the art of put downs.
normally i don’t just tell people to “read a book.” i must be cranky.
the reason i recommended that book (it’s short) is because it cuts to the essence of the problem. without profit and loss statements, facilitated by accounting, there is no meaningful way of evaluating trade-offs. thus, although a socialistic society can identify areas that are clearly lacking, i.e. require more resources, they never know where to curb current resource consumption. accounting is a tacit admission of the problem of scarcity. without profit and loss statements, you could identify that A is lacking, but not know whether it is more less detrimental to sacrifice B or C.
the essential feature of bureaucratic management is its adherence to rules. rule based operations have their place; as mises points out, you would not want a police force operating according to profit and loss (some would disagree, but as a subscriber to the ideal of the rule of law, i do not). rigidity is fine for policing, but impotent for creating a dynamic and progressive society that responds accurately to the needs and wants to society. this is why the soviet union (and all other communist countries) failed, and possibly also why it was a severe police state. that mises predicted the failure of socialism back in 1920, and prophesied how its maladies would emerge in the real world, strictly byway of his own mental cognition (that is, not through empirical “evidence”) should provide enough impetus to pick up one his books.
men are corrupt as surely as men are good. the only insurance against corruption is limiting power. markets limit power because each dollar serves as a vote. governmental power, on the other hand, tends to grow; not only that, but it tends to grow MORE rapidly the more it fails! observe the new deal – hoover’s policies of interventionism failed, FDR doubled down when elected, only to tripled down later. by the time the united states had entered the war, we were already a managed economy. and unlike market enforcement, which amounts to purchasing decisions and abstentions, political power is enforced through physical coercion.
as for 80% of the land being owned by the ~7,000 ennobled, i think that proves my point quite well. thank you for the statistic.
otto, what business were you in? not the name, the industry. just curious… really.
264 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:06 pm
otto: eg. we now have BoA and most of the other banks now paying off their loan in their entirety
On the other hand, from what I’ve been hearing the banks have been extremely tight about supplying credit to the marketplace.
Did Bernanke hire him at Princeton, or Blinder? Of course, I’m biased about Blinder, since I had him for Econ 101.
It’s a close call on Krugman versus Obama on the size of the stimulus. I agree that Obama went for what he could get through Congress … and the way it’s structured it will probably guarantee him re-election in 2012 barring another 9/11 (or 100 Hasans). Krugman’s advice, on the other hand, should have been embraced by the Dems in Congress who will have to run for re-election in 2010, since they’re the ones who will bear the brunt if your timing on the recovery is off by 6 months or so.
And note that there are some sizable players in the US economy who might consider diminished Democratic Congressional power to be a reasonable tradeoff for a few month delay in the recovery.
265 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:22 pm
balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:06 pm
“On the other hand, from what I’ve been hearing the banks have been extremely tight about supplying credit to the marketplace.”
…….Two of my kids both work in the financial industry…….they say there is no shortage of credit the problem is finding people, who want to borrow (of course the absurdly generous loan terms have disappeared as they should)…..and this reflects what my own local bank manager tells me……he’s looking for customers to borrow
……Bernanke was head of the economics dept at Princeton and hired Krugman around 98 I believe
“And note that there are some sizable players in the US economy who might consider diminished Democratic Congressional power to be a reasonable tradeoff for a few month delay in the recovery.”
…….this sounds mildly paranoid……in my experience in business most people are intent on ploughing their own furrow and have a window not much longer than this years budget……a mass conspiracy to keep activity low to disadvantage Democrats is not something that’s going to have much appeal to anyone trying to make this years nut
266 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:23 pm
WillyP: men are corrupt as surely as men are good. the only insurance against corruption is limiting power. markets limit power because each dollar serves as a vote.
Right. The flip side of this, as I pointed out before, is that wealth tends to concentrate in ways that disadvantage the great majority in society. You believe that governments gravitate towards socialism because they simply are an entity which naturally wants to take power. A counter-argument is that people ceed some measure of power to their government in order to protect themselves from the natural tendency of the pure free market to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few. It is not a power grab for voters to call for a government provided social net, any more than it’s a power grab by government for voters to call for a police force.
In fact, let’s compare police force and social security.
Both requre taxation to sustain.
Both provide some level of security to citizens in the society.
Neither removes all responsibility for security from the individual at the levels we fund them – I still need to lock my house and my car, and the 10K/year my mother gets in Social Security after my father passed away wouldn’t go very far.
In your world, if I’m correct, citizens electing to have government provide security from crime is a reasonable function. Citizens electing to have government provide them security from abject poverty is a power grab by government. Am I correct?
267 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:29 pm
263 WillyP // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:03 pm
“otto, what business were you in? not the name, the industry. just curious… really.”
…….25 years in the oil industry….ops, strategic planning and marketing…..then about 15 years in manufacturing(auto parts and construction equipment)
268 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:35 pm
otto: a mass conspiracy to keep activity low to disadvantage Democrats is not something that’s going to have much appeal to anyone trying to make this years nut
agreed, and I’m not fond of such conspiracy theories. certainly for the majority of the players in the business community, it would make no sense, since in a competitive marketplace ceeding ground to a competitor for anything can have long-term ramifications.
That said, there are some players in the marketplace who enjoy positions that aren’t under such pressures, and who can easily countenance delaying certain capital expenditures and hiring for a short period of time if they see the long term payback as being great enough.
I guess I was particularly soured on the idea of corporations working for the common good when I heard that Enron was running their tax division as a profit center unto itself. Thus, if that profit center found that $1 in taxes could be saved by Enron doing something entirely unproductive with 95 cents, they were incentivized to piss away the 95 cents andn save paying the dollar to the government. That might have worked for Enron stockholders … but for the country as a whole it is a disaster. Particularly when that now incentivizes companies to have lobbyists beseeching Congress to allow them to get $1.05 in tax savings for pissing away the 95 cents next year (or maybe 97 cents, when you also factor in the cost of the influence).
I will happily be proven wrong on this, and will readily admit that even failure of the economy to recover on the schedule you posit won’t be any kind of proof that my suspicions are founded. But I think Krugman had good sense that some more “goosing” was in order, particularly if one abhors the hardship that comes from a large unemployed component to the workforce, and the Conservadems who helped limit the size of the stimulus may have inadvertently helped speed their return to the private sector.
269 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 7:07 pm
268 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 6:35 pm
” agreed, and I’m not fond of such conspiracy theories.”
……Most medium and large corporations are huge flywheels that have a life of their own…….I can’t even imagine fruiters like the Koch brothers sitting in a boardroom and deciding to postpone a chem plant just to piss off Obama……as I said I’d like to have seen some more in the infrastructure area but 375 billion most of it to be spent this year is a lot of dough……as a benchmark consider the highways bill passed every five years….it’s the biggest single infrastructure appropriation and runs around 500 billion spread over five years so notionally 100 million a year…….the stimulus is going spend around 300 billion in infrastructure in one year……it’s a hell of an injection ……..it’s one of the reasons cat stock has gone from 23 to around 59……the other reason btw is the cheap dollar which (pace Willy’s garment rending) is actually not as cheap as it was in the late spring of last year when you had to pay nearly 1.60 for a euro…..so I’m optimistic
270 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 7:08 pm
’so notionally 100 million a year……’
…..billion of course
271 MI-GOPer // Dec 3, 2009 at 7:39 pm
balconesfault-BarryS-MrFace-Moderate-Demo-RioRancho et al offers: “However, I fear that I will never be able to convince you that I have never used another name on this board.”
That’s because I don’t buy into fantasy and the evidence of your actions and activity is transparent and compelling. Honestly, I don’t care what you might plead because the intellectual dishonesty and rank manipulation of your actions –trollish if there ever were any– make you unworthy of respect.
Civil discourse for the purpose of examination requires all parties to operate in an honest, fair fashion. You and the tricks you employ here prove you aren’t sincere or earnest in this blog’s goals of rebuilding the conservative movement and returning the GOP to majority status. You’re here, like automaticBS’er, to irritate, inflame, incite, annoy, disrupt and distract those of us here with genuine purpose. It isn’t like there aren’t other forums at CNN or the Economist or NBC News or NPR blogs that you could spread your seed… no, you need to do it in a conservative forum dedicated to rebuilding the Party and that says T-R-O-L-L like nothing else, Mr Multiple Names.
272 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 7:48 pm
MI-GOPer … I suggest that you take it up with Mr. Frum, and demand that he disqualify all the names that he finds are coming from a common URL.
If he refuses to do this, I would suggest that you leave, since obviously the board is not going to be managed in a way that pays proper fealties to your particular version of reality.
For example, if people here constantly used vile, abusive language, or issued threats, I would be appalled at that conduct being tolerated, and would most certainly leave.
So are you just too gutless to send Mr. Frum this message and give him such an ultimatum? I suspect that you are. Either that, or you just have no real confidence in the convictions you spout.
273 balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Oops … obviously, I meant a common ISP.
But the point still holds … clearly, if you are right and Frum refuses to do anything about eliminating me and all my supposed incarnations, then he is disrespecting yourself and all other conservatives here with his neglect. He is running a forum that is absolutely unworthy of your presence, and nothing good can come from your continued participation here.
Frum doesn’t deserve you, MI-GOPer. Really. Red State does, FreeRepublic does, all of those sites that would have kicked me and my many supposed incarnations to the side long ago all deserve you. FrumForum does not. Save your time, lower your blood pressure, go where you are wanted and loved!
274 ottovbvs // Dec 4, 2009 at 8:27 am
balconesfault // Dec 3, 2009 at 7:48 pm
MI-GOPer …
…..balconesfault……you carry sweet reason to a fault……this guy is clearly off his rocker…..best to ignore him apart from maybe the odd poke with a pointed stick if you want some mild amusement from his antics
275 sinz54 // Dec 4, 2009 at 10:40 am
SpartacusIsNotDead:
We have no way to bound the harm that al-Qaeda can cause us.
First of all, the threat that thousands of Americans can be incinerated in hours has caused America to turn much of its public gatherings and public places into armed camps, with security measures everywhere. What liberals like you fail to understand is that a central tenet of human civilization is that of all the ways to die, premeditated murder is the most morally heinous. That goes back to the story of Cain and Abel. And hence preventing murder justifies spending enormous resources, more than preventing other types of deaths due to accident or disease.
Secondly, the fact that al-Qaeda attacked America and got away with it has meant a real and lasting diminution of U.S. power and prestige and nfluence in the world. Allies and potential allies now see the U.S. as a nation that can’t win, even after it’s been attacked on its home soil. Why should they be allied with a loser?
Thirdly, we have no way to know if 9-11 was the upper limit of what al-Qaeda is capable of. Prior to 9-11, your fellow liberals ridiculed the notion that America could ever suffer a major terrorist attack like that from Islamists. We found out the hard way that al-Qaeda can inflict more damage on us than had been inflicted since Pearl Harbor.
Only a few years ago, the CIA broke up a plot to bomb TEN airliners inbound to America with liquid explosive bombs. If that plot had succeeded, the carnage might have exceeded 9-11.
What potential terrorists now see is: a) you can attack America and get away with it; b) if you want publicity, you have to find a way to create a bigger terrorist attack than 9-11.
That’s a very dangerous position for America to be in over the long haul.
276 ottovbvs // Dec 4, 2009 at 10:51 am
sinz54 // Dec 4, 2009 at 10:40 am
“We have no way to bound the harm that al-Qaeda can cause us.”
………We also have no way to bound the likely harm caused by a national Cholera outbreak, a 100 foot Atlantic tsunami, or an asteroid hitting the planet……..we face many threats and you have to produce a balanced strategy for dealing with them…….the chicken little “what if” so dear to your heart isn’t particularly constructive in that process
277 balconesfault // Dec 4, 2009 at 11:13 am
Sinz: Secondly, the fact that al-Qaeda attacked America and got away with it has meant a real and lasting diminution of U.S. power and prestige and nfluence in the world. Allies and potential allies now see the U.S. as a nation that can’t win, even after it’s been attacked on its home soil. Why should they be allied with a loser?
Funny enough, had we simply stopped after the invasion and initial stabilization of Afghanistan … Al Qaeda’s bases destroyed, their Taliban hosts driven from power, a huge multinational coalition including even Iran, participating with the US to force Bin Laden to resort to hiding in caves and sending out the occassional videotape … we would have been viewed as a victor. The operations would have cost far less than 100 billion, we’d have sent a message, and any nation would be on alert that harboring terrorists put their government and military on risk of destruction.
What military leader in the world would allow his government to put his forces at such existential risks for the sake of some fundamentalist crazies?
The Taliban did so probably because they didn’t even know the extent of the terror that Bin Laden was planning (it’s a pretty big leap from embassies and the USS Cole to New York and the Pentagon). There’s no evidence they were in on the planning. Hell – there’s decent evidence that even many of the 9/11 hijackers didn’t know that they were actually involved in a suicide mission, rather than a traditional hijacking.
Nonetheless, after our invasion of Afghanistan, the message was sent clearly to everyone around the world … the US would not limit ourselves to little tactical strikes and surgical commando missions if our homeland was struck. And that message was victory.
Miring ourselves in nation building is where we sowed the seeds of the US being a loser. We were too stupid to cash in when we were way ahead, instead deciding that success in the easier game presaged success in the more difficult one.
278 MI-GOPer // Dec 4, 2009 at 11:17 am
AutomaticBS’er chimes into the echo chamber: “balconesfault……you carry sweet reason to a fault……this guy is clearly off his rocker…..best to ignore him apart from maybe the odd poke with a pointed stick if you want some mild amusement from his antics”.
Not at all, Otto.
You’ve just gotten tired of being out-thought, out-debated, and out-smarted.
You and the highly dishonest balconesfault were allowed unchecked freedom here to Bash Bush and spread the Great Left Lies willy-nilly. Now that people are holding you accountable and you have no valid refute, you fall back to the ol’ Saul Alinsky rhetoric and playbook: “work to isolate your opponent”, “seek to discredit them by the use of belittling humor”, “find forced agreement with others to make the debate appear to support your position” and so forth.
In the end, informed opinions like those advanced by my side win the day. Trollish dishonesty like yours and balconesfault ruins your credibility.
You can still post. You can even try to use the echo chamber and make it look like the flow of conversation is going your way. Or, like balconesfault and his pals, you can even try multiple named postings to make the thread’s discussion appear to support your corrupted view.
In the end, it doesn’t of course. You know it. The rest of us know it. And you’re reduced to snide, little petty comments that expose you for the irritant and annoyance you’ve tried to be throughout.
At least balconsefault has admitted, like rbottoms, that he’s here to irritate and annoy –first and foremost. For both, it’s like sport. I think it bring drama to their otherwise pitful lives.
279 balconesfault // Dec 4, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Or, like balconesfault and his pals, you can even try multiple named postings to make the thread’s discussion appear to support your corrupted view.
Really? You’re going to keep on this specious allegation?
Are you too gutless to demand that Frum ban multiple postings from the same ISP?
Or have you already done so, and been told that you’re delusional, and decided to continue the charade anyway?
I suspect the latter is true, but await your answer.
280 ottovbvs // Dec 4, 2009 at 2:09 pm
MI-GOPer // Dec 4, 2009 at 11:17 am
” You’ve just gotten tired of being out-thought, out-debated, and out-smarted. ”
…..in your dreams you deranged little man…….you’re the blog joke ……everyone site has one and you’re it
281 Lavaux // Dec 4, 2009 at 2:17 pm
258 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 3:57 pm
“……..perhaps that’s why I spent 40 years in business and ended up running a company with nearly 4000 people in it”
So the 4000 people in the company you ran is a world? Let me guess: You ran Disneyland! Logic is not your strong suit, is it?
Now to your second error.
“……it would take rather a lot of talent to repeat the series of mistakes made by the previous conservative Republican admin that resulted in the near collapse of the US financial system and the worst recession since the war……you might also want to take a look at who has presided over the largest increases in public debt since the war…..Reagan and Bush 2”
Who writes the laws, Congress or the president? Who wrote the CRA, and to which party did they belong? Who signed the CRA into law, and to which party did he belong? Who founded ACORN, and which party do they serve? Which president impeached Congress to jack up the regulations on Fannie May and Freddie Mac, and to which party did he belong? Which congressmen told this president to take a long walk off a short pier, and to which party did they belong?
Please tell me you don’t really believe that Democrats are blameless in causing the financial crisis. If you do, then you really are completely detached from reality and not worth talking to.
Take this with you when you go: Most Americans, including me, blame the federal government, both parties and the financial sector for the financial crisis. Pres. Bush retired almost a year ago. There’s plenty of blame to go around for the sorry state the economy is in, and heads must roll. Democrat heads are on the chopping block because they’re in charge and they’ve done little to create jobs while unemployment climbed over 10%. Let the axes swing, baby!
282 ottovbvs // Dec 4, 2009 at 2:45 pm
281 Lavaux // Dec 4, 2009 at 2:17 pm
258 ottovbvs // Dec 3, 2009 at 3:57 pm
“So the 4000 people in the company you ran is a world? Let me guess: You ran Disneyland! Logic is not your strong suit, is it?’
…..the superficially dumb remark seems to be your speciality(Sweden has more social problems than the US ……or Sweden cooks the books when the US has been running two wars off the books for seven years!) …….the 4000 folks I’m talking about had to exist in the real world not Disneyworld
“Who writes the laws,”
……The Republicans apart from a brief interlude in the senate had control of both houses of congress from 1994 to 2006 when most of the relevant legislation was written and from 2001 to 2008 they had control of the white house…..thus for at least six years when the crash was incubated and hatched they were in complete control of the executive and legislative machinery of the country…….trying to spread the blame around aint going to play in Peoria however you squirm around buddy…..any more than your predictions of a double dip recession
283 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 4, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Sinz wrote: “What liberals like you fail to understand is that a central tenet of human civilization is that of all the ways to die, premeditated murder is the most morally heinous.”
Really? And the you base this on the fact that you and I disagree on whether the country can afford to write a blank check (both in lives and money) in order to stabilize a backwater like Afghanistan?
Tell me, what does it feel like to have a burst of stupid like that?
284 SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 4, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Sinz also wrote: “We have no way to bound the harm that al-Qaeda can cause us.”
We have no way to bound the harm from any of the threats we face. So how do we pay any price to prevent all of these unbounded harms?
285 ottovbvs // Dec 4, 2009 at 5:04 pm
SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 4, 2009 at 2:58 pm
“Tell me, what does it feel like to have a burst of stupid like that?”
…….How would he know?
286 sinz54 // Dec 7, 2009 at 9:56 am
balconesfault:
On that point, you and I are in total agreement.
Bush’s theory was that exporting “democracy” (as measured by the number of elections, no matter how corrupt and ineffectual) at the point of a gun is going to deter further terrorism. I think we can now say that Bush’s theory has been refuted by actual evidence.
Though I doubt that the Muslim world would have considered our action in Afghanistan to be a real “victory” as long as the chief plotters of 9-11, including Osama bin Laden, escaped. As I said, what they saw is that you can plot an attack that devastates whole square blocks of an American city and kills thousands of Americans–and then escape to plot more attacks another day. Still, they would have been impressed with the speed and effectiveness of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, as you said.
I can assure you that if some anti-Muslim terrorists blew up Mecca, the Muslims would pursue those terrorists to the ends of the earth, destroying anyone and anything that got in their way until those terrorists were destroyed.
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