"Next question, please."
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Posted on 12/31/2007 9:24:06 AM PST by K-oneTexas
All perfect predators are extinct.
Iran will get what it is asking for, but in the end what it is asking for - are ashes.
I think there’s some interesting pattycake stuff going on between Iran & the Iraqi Kurds — some of them at least. Most likely the Communist-PKK groups fighting the Turks. Enemy-of-My Enemy stuff.
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What is good for the Democrats is bad for the country and what is bad for the country is good for the Democrats. It’s as simple as that.
The author believes that the anti-war Democrats are just fools. I disagree. Many are just fools, but many others (Reid, Pelosi, Murtha) are evil. There are still others (Rosie O’Donnell) who are both.
saving
They don’t so much want the US to fail as George Bush to fail. If the US has to go down with him, well, that’s an acceptable price to pay.
First, when we ask the question we should specify which Democrats, because it isn't all of them. Moreover, opposition to the war was slow in nascence and became stronger only as (1) the intervention began to become less dynamic, and (2) certain keepers of popular culture began to relive the same emotional pungency they reveled in during the later stages of the Vietnam war. And so when we say "Democrats" here we really mean that portion of the party that sees the war in terms of partisan politics and has arrogated to itself the label "anti-war."
I think that the population in question can be divided into three broad categories by motivation, and obviously there is a great deal of crossover. Those categories are those who view the war (1) in terms of domestic (U.S.) political dynamics, (2) in terms of a belief in the illegitimacy of nationalist ends in international relations, and (3) in simple terms of a stubborn refusal to admit an exception to the broad principle that committing violence is to be avoided at all, or nearly all, costs.
The first category subsumes those for whom Iraq is a distant place which has no effect on their daily lives except insofar as it may be used as a lever to place their tribe into political office and displace the other. These people are the ones insisting most furiously (and antihistorically) that Iraq had no WMD and hence constituted no threat to the U.S. It was all just a ploy for domestic power, you see, and backlash against it is nothing more than an equally legitimate thrust for power. These are the Reids, the Pelosis, most of whom couldn't have found Iraq on a map before it became a club to use against the Other Side.
It is the second category that the author is really addressing here. There is a political paradigm I rather loosely term internationalism that is to a great degree an outgrowth of a popularized and diluted version of a belief in international socialism. One of its main tenets is that nationalism is an antiquated construct that is to be transcended by an extranational approach to relations between people, that international relations are to be decided solely by negotiation and consensus, and that efforts against this trend are atavistic desires for a return to a more brutal world. In this paradigm there is no room for a hegemon, and if one appears it is more vital to oppose it than to examine if perhaps its nationalistic ends aren't, in the long run, better for the world. They aren't better for the paradigm, and that's what counts.
This does require a rejection of Judaeo-Christian values and not a few of the old Greek and Roman ones that preceded, all of this in an effort for transcendence to A Better World that exists in the imagination of every utopian. This is, above all, a utopian credo. It is not restricted to Democrats although in the United States that is principally where it resides. It exists in every Western country that boasts an university. I think it is what the author was grasping for with the term "Liberal Mind."
This is a profound cultural and intellectual movement with a wide canon of literature to support it. To oppose it is to be accused of a preference for bestial violence, as if that were the only alternative to its historical inevitability. It is for that reason that its adherents sneeringly refer to its opponents as "conservatives" whether they are actually proposing conserving anything or merely marching off in a different cultural direction. The internationalists won't have it because they can't afford to.
Lastly, there is the vague and often admirable detestation for violence in the abstract. If it is wrong, it is wrong always and for everyone, and there is no difference between those who employ it in offense or in self-defense. The real world is not, however, amenable to such primitive generalizations, but it takes a good deal of mental discipline not to fall back on their simplicity out of pure exhaustion.
All of this is simply intended to illustrate why certain people respond to "why do you oppose the Iraq intervention" with the simple rejoinder "because it's wrong." Well, why is it wrong? I think in many people's views this is why. All IMHO and subject to furious debate as usual.
Happy New Year, everyone!
“do democrats really want us to fail in iraq?”
as curly would say, “why, soyt’nly!”
Do Democrats Really Want Us to Fail in Iraq?
yup
“do democrats really want us to fail in iraq?”
begs the question, “are democrats really the socialist, revolutionary, pseudo-intellectual, subversive rats that they show themselves to be?”
Yes as do some defeatist RINOs
I thought the hypocrats have made this abundantly clear.
We have treason, espionage and sabatoge of the highest order by key politicians and it all gets swept away....I'm speechless about the devastating effect this all could have on our National Security. A MUST READ....
“The author believes that the anti-war Democrats are just fools. I disagree. Many are just fools, but many others (Reid, Pelosi, Murtha) are evil”
YESSS!! You hit that one out of the park. The author is far too kind to these ‘Rats
The Dept. of State needs to be purged.
ping
American Thinker has become my favorite.
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I am sick of the dem's constant whining about going into this war unprepared.
There was a very good article in my newspaper yesterday by; E. Thomas McClanahan, titled;
"Congressional Democrats are next Iraq hurdle".
Almost all of America's wars have been marred by incompetence, strategic blindness, intelligence failures and sheer bungling.
We were caught off guard by Pearl Harbor. We were unprepared for the German offensive that triggered the Battle of the Bulge. The North Korean invasion of the South caught us flat-footed. Later, several hundred thousand Chinese troops slipped into North Korea before our forces were even aware of their presence.
In World War I, we sent poorly trained and equipped troops into the meat grinder of trench warfare. We misjudged Japanese strength on Okinawa. In 1942-43, we ordered thousands of air crews to fly disastrous raids over German cities in broad daylight.
The arrival of the right strategy and the right commander usually comes only after a long series of disasters and foul-ups. In Iraq, the right man turned out to be Gen. David Petraeus, who advocated a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at separating jihadists from the general population.
I particularly like this quote by Victor Davis Hanson;
"Victory isn't achieving all of your objectives. It's achieving more of yours than your enemy does of his."
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