Kevin Drum, one of the many bland accommodationist Donkles who girded his loins and hitched his britches and raised the flag and piled the barricades to "Save Social Security!" now writes:
Still, honesty compels me to say that I'm glad this [escalation] is going to happen. I know this makes me a bad person with no concern for human life etc. etc. (feel free to expand on this sentiment in comments), but at some point we have to come to a conclusion on this stuff. Conservatives long ago convinced themselves against all evidence that we could have won in Vietnam if we'd only added more troops or used more napalm or nuked Hanoi or whatever, and they're going to do the same thing in Iraq unless we allow them to play this out the way they want. If they don't get to play the game their way, they'll spend the next couple of decades trying to persuade the American public that there was nothing wrong with the idea of invading Iraq at all. We just never put the necessary resources into it.Usually it's your ahem-progressives loudly castigating the Naderite Bolshevik Left-Libertarian pseudo-caucus for bitching on the Donkle and trying to "heighten the contradictions" while Iraq bleeds, the poor suffer, the baby Jesus cries, and so on.
Well, screw that. There's nothing we can do to stop them anyway, so give 'em the resources they want. Let 'em fight the war the way they want. If it works -- and after all, stranger things have happened -- then I'll eat some crow. But if it doesn't, there's a chance that the country will actually learn something from this.
Now we have this veritable avatar of faux-rationalist Donkle centrism advocating that we heighten the contradictions a bit by throwing a few more eggs on the griddle. What can it hurt, after all, other than the eggs? "There's nothing we can do to stop them anyway . . . Let 'em fight the war the way they want." By which, to paraphrase Drum himself, he means: Give 'em permission to add more troops, nuke Baghdad, clear restive Anbar with a heapin' helpin' of napalm or white phosphorous. Drum says that if only it were so, when the eventual, inevitable loss comes, there'll be no room for today's young combat-dodgers to grow up nursing the nightmare that we were stabbed in the back by our own perfidious internal dissenters. As if that particular narrative requires that the stab-in-the-back actually, you know, happen.
From the early sixties onward, we only escalated and got more brutal in Vietnam, until there were half a million men in-country and non-stop sorties firebombing the country all to hell and everything else short of actually nuking the place, and it still didn't work, because it was their country, and whatever faction was going to control it, it wasn't going to be Uncle Sam's boys.
That is Drum's recipe for success. Exterminate the brutes until the exterminators realize that roaches outbreed their traps. Morally monstrous and hopelessly naive. Yes, Virginia, we have no Santa Claus.
32 comments:
I'm sure this is EXACTLY the idea that the Dem leadership has. The immorality is the worst part, but stupidity is only a couple lengths behind and closing fast. I've been moving leftward for a few years, and I cannot imagine under what circumstances I would vote for either a Democrat or Republican; (s)he would have to be extraordinarily far removed from the prevailing thinking in either party.
The pathetic part is that instead of just telling the stupid turd to fuck the hell off, dozens of pwoggie bloggers will actually waste valuable time and energy writing long, tedious, logical refutations to Drum's moronic faux Times op ed. Like most pwoggies would understand logic if it bit them in the ass. No, this is time that could be much better spent pickling one's liver, watching an Amway informercial, forging checks... anything, really. Frankly I feel dirty just having wasted this much time on Drum. Why the fuck isn't he in Iraq, the pious, self-important gasbag ? >:
I'm afraid loudly expressed sanctimony and superciliousness don't add much of value to the conversation.
Half the country wants to get out of Iraq within a year; 25% are prepared to stay as long as it takes -- whatever "it" is.
Sooo -- since we're staying, why not give the Decider and his enablers what they want?
Oh absolutely, ellen. Since the murderer is already in your house, why not just show him to the gun case?
True, how true. It's only a few thousand more troops for a couple more years. Now if it were a million here and a million there, pretty soon we'd be talking about real genocide.
Ellen, I don't have much confidence in the opinion sample you used for your poll-driven rationale and no confidence at all in the rationale itself. Public opinion, as you may know, is not as simple as you've made it out to be and your moral relativism is unhelpful as a guide to what can or should be done.
Oh come on Ioz, your too-glib post ignores all the successful genocides of the past, say what you want about escalating brutality, it IS occasionally succesful.
If you want to criticize the proposed escalation (and here i thought bush was already doing everything he thought necessary to win the war), do so on the grounds that it will be expensive and accomplish nothing. All this moral cauterwailing about the tragedy of civillain casualties is beside the point; most people would support unfathomable slaughter if they actually thought it would win the war.
YF
...I'm afraid loudly expressed sanctimony and superciliousness don't add much of value to the conversation...
Oh, dear. I would feel put in my place for days on end were there not already zero value to the concept of escalation in the first place.
Drum is just one more armchair warrior ready to play dice with human lives because he knows he won't be in the line of fire. It costs him nothing to call for escalation. What do you expect, Ellen, that we should all throw down flowers at his feet for deigning to favor us with such bass-ackward wisdom ? Of course, he has continued to rally for years 'round a party that already prides itself on giving the GOP everything it wants. I suppose in his own tiny mind this stupid idea makes him a better adherent to his own masters' principles [sic]. Swell. He and the DP deserve each other, but the country deserves better than either of them.
I've discovered the philosophical basis of Drum's and Ellen1910's arguments.
Bunnies do not beat themselves up for eating the wrong berries. They don’t feel the need to be mad at themselves for eating the berries that made them poopy. They just have a poopy day and learn which berries make them feel poopy, so they can make better berry choices in the future. And, yes, sometimes it takes a bunny a couple rounds of eating the wrong berries to figure it out, but they usually do.
All a bunny can do when they see another bunny eating the wrong berries is know that the poopy feeling it gets will teach it not to eat poopy berries.
They're taking that a small step further and trying to make sure the war bunnies to have as many poopy days as needed to learn their lesson. I think this makes it very difficult to argue about the cost and efficacy. There's a real risk of getting lost in the kind of confabulation from which there is no return. With patience and a kind but firm reiteration of basic realities, they may eventually acquire some moral sense. Or at least learn not base their realpolitick on poopy bunny logic.
I'm afraid loudly expressed sanctimony and superciliousness don't add much of value to the conversation
Do the Starbucks Democrats really have to spray this particular pheromone everywhere they go? I like coffee too and I'm tired of having my clothes smell like arch yuppie moral nihilism all day just for stopping in to order a cup.
I think it makes for a good campaign slogan:
DEMOCRATS: We Respectfully Disagree!
can't i just kill you all in peace?
I guess I'm willing to give Kevin a bit more slack than the typical IOZ board member is.
And maybe that's because I believe -- and I suspect Kevin does, too -- that we're in Iraq, today, because the 1968-1975 Repug warmongers and the 1968-1990 military brass -- "We didn't lose Vietnam; the press did!" -- weren't given enough rope back then to hang themselves with.
Since, as I think we can all agree, we're staying in Iraq for at least another year, what benefit do Democrats gain by giving themselves over to impotent howling.
Well, as Democrats, I have no idea what they would gain. As human beings, I suppose the humanity, dignity, self-worth, honesty, compassion, etc. that comes from opposing evil might be worth something. Not being a Democrat, I really can't answer this one.
Impotent howling is the Democrats' stock in trade. Why should you change now? This latest "proposal" is silly spin on old accommodationist tactics. As a party, you're all going to knuckle under to the bullying tactics of the liberal hawks and crusading conservatives. The next phase is blaming the people who wouldn't go along with the crackpot plan du jour -- another iteration of the liberals' dolchstosslegende. You might find, at some point, that sticking by whatever principles you have is actually a serious plan. Poopy bunny logic and puerile attempts at condescending aren't working for you.
...I guess I'm willing to give Kevin a bit more slack than the typical IOZ board member is...
Actually I was just passing through. I stayed on for the hot turkey sandwiches. Gotta' love those Xmas leftovers.
So the DP has its own fucked-up variation of Vietnam Syndrome, and it's just sooooo much work to debunk the moronic Right-wing mythos in any way that really counts. Ill-mannered, too. After all, that requires the class represented by Drum to put its own rep, such as it is, on the line in calling the Reids and Pelosis and such on their mealy-mouthed, crassly manipulative bullshit. It would require a walk-out from the piece of shit DP and all it represents. Can't have that.
No no no, much better to send in millions more lower-class proxies to get maimed or die so he can luxuriate in not having to break a sweat over anything that actually matters.
Pwog bloggers love to make merry over the "Fighting Keyboardists"-- the Right-wingers and Fr**p*rs who get all het up about the war secure in the knowledge that nobody can make them or anyone they love so much as stick their big toe within 1,000 miles of the Mid-East. So now Drum wants the DP to have its own legion of Fighting Keyboardists, I guess. Doesn't matter how many more lives and dollars get thrown on the pyre so long as We Can Feel Bad About It. There you go. The defining difference between the Big Two is that one Feels Good about advocating total war, and the other Feels Bad about advocating total war.
So in '08, I guess the theme song at the DP convention will be "Feelings." Maybe they can dust off Eminem to do a command performance, complete with baggy pants fashioned from Old Glory.
ms_xeno,
I'm afraid you're perilously close to committing BLOG INCIVILITY. Jes' sayin'
This blog does, has, and always will be a free zone for incivility. Your mothers are all so fat they got baptized at Sea World.
Anyway, the pantload identifies the flaw in ellen et al's thinking: who on earth cares what benefits the Donkle? Since when has their been a moral or practical imperative to save a political party when a war is in progress. Say what you will about the flaws of the peace movement during Vietnam, at least the kids were willing to demonstrate against LBJ and get their heads knocked in Chicago. Today's DP is content to drive the getaway car and then claim that the Goppers were gonna rob the bank anyway, so what else where they supposed to do?
For years, cops told us women that it wasn't a good idea to fight back attacked by a rapist, cuz it'd only anger the rapist!
oh yeah, "you might as well lie back and enjoy it...."
I don't think ms xeno was being incivil -- just reporting in from the other side of Comet Hale-Bopp.
It is the case that Iraq has an elected government which has not asked the US to withdraw its troops; indeed, it seems to have asked us to remain -- at least for the time being.*
Inasmuch as no one can know what the near or mid-term effect upon life in Iraq of our withdrawal would be and insofar as the Democratic Party, one of the only two effective political organizations in the US and the party for whom Kevin seeks to speak, has little influence over the war policies of the Executive Branch, his argument that liberals (that means Democrats) should not stand in front of the car as it's going over the cliff seems sound advice. And, in the long run, our polity will benefit if this Iraq mistake is played out to the end.
* President Thieu was induced (pressured?) to sign the Paris Peace Accords with the promise that we would help defend South Vietnam if the North invaded. The North invaded in 1975; we, the Democratic Party, decided against honoring the commitment even to the extent of refusing to fly air support missions in the south. And so -- we'll never know what the outcome would have been had we.
«President Thieu was induced (pressured?) to sign the Paris Peace Accords with the promise that we would help defend South Vietnam if the North invaded. The North invaded in 1975; we, the Democratic Party, decided against honoring the commitment even to the extent of refusing to fly air support missions in the south. And so -- we'll never know what the outcome would have been had we.»
The United States was run by a Republican at that time, and even in the post-Nixon orgy of temporary restrictions on the presidency the treaty could have been used to kill off another 20,000 american troops (and the political future of the Republican Party; South Vietnam did not have what could be called a functional army at that time and the nationalist forces were having no trouble bleeding the US the last time we had half a million troops in theatre) before Saigon fell. It's to Gerald Ford's credit that he kept the US out as that hideously corrupt puppet state fell to the so-called communist peril.
I don't recall any Democrats leaping up to say "oh, you should honor the treaty!", but it's been 30 years. In any case, a Democrat saying "send troops to be killed, because it will destroy your party" is a pretty slimy bit of opportunism. And, even though the Evil Party has completely lived up to its name, it's still disgusting to see a Democrat say "kill more troops because it will embarrass the Evil Party". The Democrats might not be able to actually _do_ anything about B*sh's warmongering other than refuse to pass budgets (They don't have the 55 votes needed to convict, even if the self-proclaimed moderate middle didn't turn and vote with the Evil Party, so you can predict what's going to happen with the impeachment proceedings), but blessing a Republican campaign of mass murder for political purposes is still pretty damn evil.
Ellen, I wonder why you keep citing Vietnam when everything about it indicates a national failure to learn the lesson you want to teach. Moreover, your constructions are seriously flawed.
"Inasmuch as no one can know what the near or mid-term effect upon life in Iraq of our withdrawal would be"
Everyone but the wingnuts and the Bush administration understands that the presence of foreign troops in Iraq is achieving no good. Most of the time, they're making things worse. Therefore withdrawing them will at least get rid of one major problem. That is a knowable thing. As for effect, why yes. All we know is that it will get rid of one major problem. The civil war may get worse, which is happening anyway, or it may draw to a close more quickly. As there was never a reason to invade in the first place, and no good is coming of staying there, it makes sense to leave. That's not so very difficult to understand.
"insofar as the Democratic Party, one of the only two effective political organizations"
That founders right away. A political party exists to get politicians elected. Policy is driven by many more organizations.
"one of the only two effective political organizations in the US and the party for whom Kevin seeks to speak, has little influence over the war policies of the Executive Branch"
They vote the Executive the powers and money it requests on a regular basis. They do everything they can to marginalize their anti-war constituents. Rahm Emanuel, the DCCC uberdude, did his best to push forward pro-war candidates. The Democrats regularly reject "cutting and running". Their criticism of the war is based on its conduct. A tiny minority of the elected officials reject the war because it's wrong. The party as a whole has deliberately limited its influence on this because -- now pay attention -- they object to the results, not the premises. John Kerry voted Bush extraordinary powers because, in his own words, "I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did". What makes you think Democrats will learn a lesson, never mind the wingnuts?
"liberals (that means Democrats) should not stand in front of the car as it's going over the cliff seems sound advice"
It certainly is sound advice. However liberals have consistently done nothing of the sort. From the very start, liberals have argued that the invasion could be good for Iraq.
Your arguments amount to nothing more than a magical trickle down theory of politics. Some mythical benefit, from an immoral and ineffective action, will redound to the Democrats, which will in turn benefit everyone else. T.V. called it vapid yuppie nihilism, and he was right.
is everyone really going to let that "bunny logic" thing go without referencing watership down? you guys have gone tharn, man. effing tharn.
I said:
From the early sixties onward, we only escalated and got more brutal in Vietnam, until there were half a million men in-country and non-stop sorties firebombing the country all to hell and everything else short of actually nuking the place, and it still didn't work, because it was their country, and whatever faction was going to control it, it wasn't going to be Uncle Sam's boys.
To which I might add: In neither major failed US action post-WWII--Korea or Vietnam--did the fruitless escalation of the conflict lead anyone of consequence in the governing class to conclude that such imperial adventures are impracticable. I'm deliberately leaving aside the moral issue. Democrats hope that if they stop tying the President's hands, as they saying goes, and "give him what he wants," or "let him fight the war he wants," then its still-inevitable failure will result in the Washington consensus turning away from interventionism, invasion, preemption, or whichever other euphemism for aggressive war we're using today.
But whose hands were tied in Vietnam? There were 500,000 American troops there; the military firebombed half the country; the rules of engagement were far looser than now; soldiers razed infrastructure, burned villages, established free-fire zones. Still they lost, and still there persists an idea that the conflict was fought by half-measure. What, short of a nuclear attack, would "untied hands" have looked like?
The idea that escalation will either work or discredit itself is stupid, incredibly stupid, preternaturally stupid. It's so monstrously, astonishingly, inconceivably dumb that I can't imagine how someone who managed to become literate and learn to operate a QWERTY keyboard and turn on the lights and feed and change himself could possess it. In the sea of contemporary political stupidity, it is the singularly stupidest current. I can only say that it appropriately belongs to the Donkle.
Not to diss the host here, but I think the only way to get American troops out of Iraq - and hopefully to prevent future adventurism - is to emphasize the moral aspect. The practicality issue is meaningless. Sure, Korea and Vietnam were fuckups - but that's because we were stabbed in the back!!!! (TM Adolf Hitler). As long as our freely-elected mice continue to cower before the prospect of being labelled "quitters," we will continue to find ourselves in Iraq and every other place the ruling class wants us. Only when the public fully accepts that imperialism is immoral do we have a chance of keeping out of this shit.
Then again, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. It's only a quarter after eleven, and I have most of a fifth of 100-proof vodka under my belt.
It shouldn't be too surprising to hear that kind of oh-so-coldly-rational empthay-bereft non-reasoning coming from the donkey party. After all, it's not like they're substantially different from their supposed political rival. They just tend to have better hair.
I love how the only options are being in front of the car or backseat driving. A perfectly encapsulated view of DP mindset. And NOTA forbid you have a problem with that, lest you be informed that it's you-- as opposed to the average fuckwit who governs with this approach-- who is out of touch with reality.
And I'm the fat one in the family, IOZ, not my Mother. I'm going to have to ask you to step outside now...
is everyone really going to let that "bunny logic" thing go without referencing watership down?
The Dem Party as Cowslip's Warren. Discuss.
Strawberry would never have escaped the warren. Silverweed and the rest of the warren's Nation poets would have berated him viciously until he willingly walked into the nearest snare himself, just so he wouldn't have to listen to them anymore. Of course, maybe that's who Nildro-Hain represented: The lone escapee of the duopoly. Certainly most hardcore DP defenders carry on as if they'd rather die than actually go anywhere.
maximo: please do.
30 fucking comments? THIRTY FUCKING COMMENTS? Say, why not kiss my ass? I mean, seriously. If you're going to get thirty comments in a thread, there's no sane reason why shouldn't plant your lips on my ass. At least, none I can think of.
I think the word you're looking for, handsome, is "rimming." And I may or may not be into it . . .
And that makes 32.
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