Transterrestrial Musings

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We should not surrender in the face of barbarism.

...we should instead abet it outright, following Lieberman's stance.

This is the basic point that the Republicans, the Joe Liebermans, and the Rand Simbergs refuse to acknowledge, cannote refute, and for the most part refute to discuss. Namely, the war in Iraq is not a war between good guys and bad guys. It is a war between two factions of bad guys, and the US has taken sides. Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, is an Islamist with terrorist connections. Moktada al-Sadr has strings on him. These are just two examples of Islamists who marched in from Iran to run Iraq after the US overthrew Saddam Hussein.

It is not enough in this war for Americans to just tell themselves that the US fights for freedom. You have to look at the facts on ground, you have to see who the US has chosen as allies. It is then obvious that the US is losing the war in Iraq because even a superpower can't win a contradiction.

Posted by at April 21, 2007 08:26 AM

Rand, I very strongly disagree with Senator Lieberman's description of the opposition position on the Iraq war. Saying that it is stupid to drive screws with a hammer is not surrendering in the face of barbarism.

Yes, a few extreme Democrats may be defeat-o-crats but on the other hand -- when faced with the reality that driving screws with a hammer is not a productive use of our blood and treasure, the right wing chorus seems to be limited to a chant of:

"Shout down the opposition and pound harder!"

Posted by Bill White at April 21, 2007 08:30 AM

Oh and I also recall Joe Lieberman quoting from Scripture -- if the sound of the trumpet is unclear how will the people follow. (my paraphrase)

True. Therefore since GWB has lost credibility and is a lame duck we now need a new trumpet player.

Any suggestions?

Posted by Bill White at April 21, 2007 08:32 AM

The two sides aren't equivalent, unnamed poster.

Al-Qaeda is far worse. However, if the goal is getting rid of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, why can't we just let the Shiites do it themselves? They most certainly will. Al-Qaeda has no foothold in Iran for example. So why not allow them the job?

An Iraq that looks a lot like Iran is the likely final state anyway - a quasi democratic Islamic state.

Posted by Offside at April 21, 2007 08:33 AM

Joe Lieberman gets this one right:

Why were soldiers with PTSD discharged?
Senators ask for investigation into ‘upsetting allegations’
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Apr 19, 2007 16:53:13 EDT

Six senators have requested an investigation into what they call “upsetting allegations” that the Army gave personality-disorder discharges to 18 Fort Carson, Colo., soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries.

“There are allegations of commanders at Fort Carson, Colo., denying soldiers access to mental health care and instead ordering them redeployed for additional tours in Iraq,” states a letter to the Government Accountability Office. “We have also heard of cases in which service members with PTSD are diagnosed as having ‘personality disorders’ that the Army considers ‘pre-existing,’ thus depriving otherwise eligible combat veterans of disability benefits and much-needed mental health care.”

The letter, dated April 19, is signed by Senators Barack Obama, D-Ill.; Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Christopher Bond, R-Mo.; Joe Lieberman, I-Conn; Tom Harkin. D-Iowa; and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. It was also sent to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and Acting Secretary of the Army Pete Geren.

More using hammers on screws.

Posted by Bill White at April 21, 2007 08:38 AM

The two sides aren't equivalent, unnamed poster.

No, they aren't. The Shiite side is ultimately worse for American interests than the Sunni side. This too isn't particularly hard to see. The Shiite side is aligned with Iran; the Sunni side is aligned with Saudi Arabia.

There has been a certain amount of playing with names to obscure this basic fact --- again because the truth makes the war in Iraq look ill-conceived from the beginning. First of all, the real Al Qaeda isn't one of the factions in Iraq. One of the Sunni militias is a group called "Al Qaeda in Iraq". But Al Qaeda in Iraq is no more the same as Al Qaeda than Javascript is the same as Java.

But more importantly, Al Qaeda in Iraq is just one of many armed Sunni groups; it isn't the entire Sunni side. Al Qaeda in Iraq vs the entire Shiite side is not a parallel comparison. You could, for instance, compare Al Qaeda in Iraq to Moktada Sadr's militia. Well, Sadr is worse. He is about as medieval and he is much more powerful.

So, yes, the two sides aren't equivalent. We're fighting for the side that's actually more dangerous to us.

Posted by at April 21, 2007 08:48 AM

Posted by at April 21, 2007 08:26 AM

Not really. you have bought the Dem spin on the war.

Look, I oppossed going to Iraq...the problem is that the nutty righties who were all banging the gong to go didnt have a clue what they were talking about (I still hoot at the guy who predicted we could take Iraq with 50,000 troops)...

and the nutty lefties dont have a clue about reality now that we are there.

On to a larger point.

the democratic party is now inhabited by a bunch of people who are "madly seeking perfection"...I saw some meathead explaining how we have to come up with laws to "defeat evil"...as if evil responded to law.

There is a good and a bad side in Iraq. The bad side wants chaos and counts on the wimps in the US who are "please just stop the killing" to allow them to prosper...The good side probably wont win any awards aat a Jefferson day dinner, but then again Iraq isnt the US and the US of today isnt the US of Jefferson's time.

The twits on both the left and the right have lived in a country that requires almost no sacrifice of them to live their mealy mouth existance for so long that they now live in the world of make believe.

In the real world there is evil. There is also good but the good is rarely perfect and while that is sad...evil on any venue is evil.

While you are debating about how both sides in Iraq are bad, we would leave with our tail between our legs and the evil side would rejoice in that just like 9/11 where 2 out of the 3 planes coward in fear at their deaths, they had won another one.

We should put you and Whittington on an island. He can shout "The Reds are coming" and you can chant "Give peace a chance".

Robert

Posted by at April 21, 2007 09:04 AM

True. Therefore since GWB has lost credibility and is a lame duck we now need a new trumpet player.

Any suggestions?

Posted by Bill White at April 21, 2007 08:32 AM

That is going to be the theme song of the GOP primary.

Robert

Posted by at April 21, 2007 09:05 AM

The good side probably wont win any awards aat a Jefferson day dinner,

That sounds very insightful, Robert, except that you haven't said anything about what the so-called "good side" is really like. I, for one, draw the line at suicide-bombing US embassies. If the "good side" suicide-bombed a US embassy, as al Dawa did in Kuwait, then "the good is rarely perfect" is not an acceptable excuse.

I think that you may have been misled by Bush's shaking hands with Maliki et al and calling Maliki "the right man for the job". You may have figured, yes, they are shady, but surely they don't have connections to Islamic terrorists who attacked the United States. Well, that is a naive inference.

Posted by at April 21, 2007 10:16 AM

However, if the goal is getting rid of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, why can't we just let the Shiites do it themselves?

I should add that this comment, Offside, makes a lot of sense. We have wandered into a civil war that isn't really our business. We cannot prevent atrocities in Iraq; we shouldn't stick around to take credit for them. Instead of paying a lot of money to participate in this dirty war, it would be worth money not to be involved.

Again, with the provisos that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is not part of Bin Laden's Al Qaeda and is only one part of the Sunni insurgency; and with the proviso that some of the Shiite militias are just as evil as Al Qaeda in Iraq is.

Posted by at April 21, 2007 10:22 AM

Posted by at April 21, 2007 10:16 AM

Debating the unnamed comic particularly when I am signing with a geniune identification, one that is well known period and easily traceable to a person is annoying in itself, but that person who for all I know is Elizabeth Edwards pontificating from the cheap seats is even less.

The people who founded OUr little Revolution were far from angelic. Anyone who thinks that they were "unique" in terms of people who change history is pretty historically impaired.

They were unique in terms of what htey were "kind of' seeking (a government of the people) but even that wasnt perfect.

Your argument is that Carter shouldnt have dealt with Begin (spell) because back in the bad old days he was blowing up the KingDavid hotel...I dont like that kind of behavior, but in the absence of the 'left' world where everyone is perfect in their ideology, I can seperate dealing with people who are "less" while oppossing people who are pure evil.

Joe Stalin was certianly not the belle at the ball, but on the other hand he seemed preferable to the Big A.

Our "guys" (and gals) in Iraq (and Afland) are not perfect but 1) there are few "perfect" people in the mideast and 2) they are much better then the opposition, which is a "culture" buster...at least if one views the situation through the prisim of western culture. I DONT KNOW what we will have created in 50 years from dealing with the likes of Malaki, anymore the FDR could be critized for dealing with Papa Joe and tracing the cold war back to his keeping Papa Joe in power...

but at least "contemporary" feelings are that it is the best of all possible course.

"YOUR COURSE" seems to be to just "come home"...and do what? What LIndbergh was suggesting with HItler.?

You strike me like all the lefties...a lot of pie in the sky solutions that depend on "evil" acting "normal" if only "good people" will accomdage them. Sorry not my cup of tea.

If you want something pathetic go listen to all the airphone calls from teh people on planes 2 and 3 on 9/11...and remember at one point in our history we had people who stood against their own army knowing that this would cost them their lives.

Those people on those airplanes are like the far left...cowering in corner saying "Lets be friends".

Not me.

Robert

Posted by at April 21, 2007 10:58 AM

they are much better then the opposition

You keep repeating that the Shiite Islamists are better than the Sunni Islamists. But where is the evidence? I'm not saying, by the way, that we should have no dealing with Islamists; I believe that you should keep your friends closer and your enemies closer. The point is that we are following a split-personality doctrine that the Sunni Islamists in Iraq are evil, the Shiite Islamists in Iran are evil, but the Shiite Islamists in Iraq we "good guys who are less than perfect". Except for the one named Muktada al-Sadr, who is evil too.

This is inconsistent to the point of guaranteed failure. The US simply can't decide whether the Shiite Islamists are or aren't unmitigated evil. On Tuesday they are, on Wednesday they aren't. That is why Rand, for example, called the question a "straw man". Of course he's against Shiite Islamists. He just doesn't realize that in backing the war in Iraq, he's also for them.

I am not saying that you should never deal with Islamists. I am of the school that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The point is that there is a difference between a pragmatic accounting and self-contradictory war. Iraq has many different hostile interests and evil agents; it then makes no sense to hold up a fake torch of liberty at a cost of $100 billion per year. That is what Lieberman is doing --- he's lumping together all Iraqi barbarism as if it's all on the same side. That position is too dishonest to have any chance of success.

Posted by at April 21, 2007 11:38 AM

You strike me like all the lefties...a lot of pie in the sky solutions that depend on "evil" acting "normal" if only "good people" will accomdage them. Sorry not my cup of tea.

Also, you have no business accusing me of promoting pie-in-the-sky solutions. I have never done that. The war in Iraq is the pie-in-the-sky solution, actually. If you read the President's own "victory defined" document, it's a load of Norman Rockwell visions of Iraq's future. My position is that this kind of extreme, and extremely dishonest, optimism is terrible for America.

If the question is improving Iraq, either economically, culturally, or politically, we should be looking at a 50-year policy. The war in Iraq is unsustainable for 50 years, or even for 10 years. It is running out of gas so fast Bush's only remaining goal is to run out the clock until January, 2009. The next president will send the troops home and it will look like defeat.

Posted by at April 21, 2007 11:47 AM

In another thread Rand commented that people should have a hard time making wildly inconsistent arguments, and I responded that, ha ha yes, but apparently they don't.

Case in point. Mr. at says the President's guesses for the future of Iraq are wildly -- even dishonestly -- optimistic, it's all "Norman Rockwell" optimism. Sounds like he's advocating a conservative, cautious approach to predicting the future, doesn't it? Like one should be very careful about allowing one's hopes or fears to influence your thinking. Good to measure stuff, not try to guess.

But in the very next sentence, almost, he guesses wildly and pessimistically about what will happen in Iraq. The war effort will collapse soon (although it has been easily sustainable for 4 years so far), the next President will (emphasis his) do this and that, and it will look like defeat. He knows what the Shiites and Sunnis will do, even though they themselves are quite evidently confused about what exactly they want, and rarely speak with any kind of united voice.

All guesses. All theories. No different than the folks in 1862 who thought the war with the South was lost (and they were wrong) or certain folks in the Wehrmacht in 1942 who thought the war with the Allies was lost (and they were right).

You'd think after admonishing his opponents for allowing hope to interfere with cold logic, he'd not allow fear or hope (for his domestic agenda) to interfere with his. You'd think anyone who strongly advocated hard-headed realism in foreign policy would remember how very unpredictable wars have always been -- how almost no predictions of their length and outcome have been accurate before, in essence, the war was over. You'd think after laughing at the speck in his brother's eye, he'd notice the beam in his own.

But it doesn't work that way. Strange.

Posted by Carl Pham at April 21, 2007 12:41 PM

...it's like he almost sucks the charm out of a room.

Posted by Rand Simberg at
07:36 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)

There is a word for that which should be in the lexicon - "dementor" as in
"Harry Reid, a known dementor, walked into the room. Immediately a great chill descended making hearts dark and fearful," courtesy of J.K Rowling:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementor

Not that I agree of course, but still..;-)

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at April 21, 2007 02:53 PM

"We should not surrender in the face of barbarism."

Lieberman has an unwitting flair for irony.

Rand: "Can someone explain to me how a man with as much negative charisma as Reid ended up being Senate Majority Leader?"

As opposed to his predecessors? What could be said about Bill Frist and Trent Lott that couldn't better be expressed by a shiver and/or dry heave?

Posted by Brian Swiderski at April 21, 2007 04:31 PM

...it's like he almost sucks the charm out of a room.

You'll get no argument from Jack Gordon.

Posted by D Anghelone at April 21, 2007 06:02 PM

Carl said: You'd think after admonishing his opponents for allowing hope to interfere with cold logic, he'd not allow fear or hope (for his domestic agenda) to interfere with his.

C'mon Carl where's the feeling? You know everything coming form here is knee-jerk reactionary emotion. He has to allow fear and hope in his conjecture to continue to feel victimized. He is a victim...

Posted by Mac at April 21, 2007 08:42 PM

Scared Shadow (Anon) said: You have to look at the facts on ground

And since you have been there, you have all the facts. I am impressed.

Posted by Mac at April 21, 2007 08:44 PM

Interesting article from that right wing scree, the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sheiks20apr20,1,7969226.story?track=rss&ctrack=2&cset=true

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at April 22, 2007 08:37 PM

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