The Final Ignominy
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duLds-TZMGw&eurl]
Throwing your shoe at someone in the Arab world.
In the Arab world, shoe flinging is a gesture of extreme disrespect. A notable occurrence of this gesture happened in Baghdad, Iraq in 2003. When U.S. forces pulled down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many Iraqi detractors of Hussein threw their shoes at the fallen statue.
I suppose it’s only fitting that the final gesture of the Iraqi people (as opposed to the bought and sold politicians like Malaki) towards George Bush, would be the flung shoe. In this stark and scary journey we are about to embark on to Rebuild our Country, we must be aware of the signposts of the Interregnum. The flung shoe is the taunt of all the “occupied ones” in Iraq and Afghanistan saying “get out of my house”. Our refusal to pay attention to this rude gesture of disdain will only mean more death and sorrow for young soldiers–and for what?
With demand falling worldwide, does anyone possibly think we couldn’t buy enough oil–even if we didn’t have a single battalion in the Mid East? The age of imperialism is over. We should bring all of our troops home and let the Arabs fix their own screwed up governments. They will still be happy to sell us their oil and one day, when they have their act together, we will be putting Intel plants and Google Data centers in their countries, just like we are doing in Vietnam.
And for those of you who still believe in the greatness of our Military Industrial Complex–why don’t you spend some time reinventing the military for the 21st Century on 1/2 the current budget. How about an extremely mobile rapid reaction force both sea and air mobile?
One more example of Bush being too clueless to understand the seriousness of what was going on.
You know, I’d love to see a million shoes thrown over the White House Fence as a farewell gesture…
One more example of Bush being too clueless to understand the seriousness of what was going on.
You know, I’d love to see a million shoes thrown over the White House Fence as a farewell gesture…
Rachel, that is a great idea.
Well, lessee, we spend roughly a half trillion dollars a year on our military. Last time I checked, neither al Qaeda nor the Taliban had [1] an air force, [2] a navy, [3] heavy artillery units, or [4] mechanized armor battalions. Yet, well, you know…
Rachel, that is a great idea.
Well, lessee, we spend roughly a half trillion dollars a year on our military. Last time I checked, neither al Qaeda nor the Taliban had [1] an air force, [2] a navy, [3] heavy artillery units, or [4] mechanized armor battalions. Yet, well, you know…
This made my morning, day and probably the week. I laughed so loud the neighbor’s dog shared my party.
Rachel, what a wonderful suggestion. Maybe as a Chrismas present?
Jon, Zbigniew Brzezinski (I could never spell his name without googling) also suggested that “The age of imperialism is over” few years ago.
This made my morning, day and probably the week. I laughed so loud the neighbor’s dog shared my party.
Rachel, what a wonderful suggestion. Maybe as a Chrismas present?
Jon, Zbigniew Brzezinski (I could never spell his name without googling) also suggested that “The age of imperialism is over” few years ago.
Guess I’m lucky to have seen this first, in its entirety, on CSPAN, and therefore without the snipish bullshit from e.g. MSNBC. The scoop — do scoops still count, in this Year of the Death of Journalism? — is, as best I can tell, that the President played it supremely cool.
Mr. Bush had flown secretly from Texas to Bagdad to honor the historic agreement reached by the Iraqi and American peoples to end the foreign occupation there and usher in a new era of self-government. That’s why President Bush was there. A person, evidently representing all of you in spirit con gusto, decided to hurl his shoes at the President of the United States.
In the CSPAN footage, as distinguished from the MSNBC scam, it was apparent (a) that the President, our incumbent one, didn’t really give a shit about the stupid display; (b) that he was preeminently embarassed for his hosts, that they not feel disgraced in their hospitality; (c) that he had come there in the first place to honor those Iraqis who’d risked a great deal to come to agreement as to the U.S. withdrawal; and (d) that the actual fact that some asshole could hurl his shoes in disagreement with President Bush nicely proved the point: the beauty, for everyone of good will, of having a former enemy of peace and freedom turned to a friend, in the heart of the Middle East, of passtimes such as throwing ones shoes at a head of state.
Guess I’m lucky to have seen this first, in its entirety, on CSPAN, and therefore without the snipish bullshit from e.g. MSNBC. The scoop — do scoops still count, in this Year of the Death of Journalism? — is, as best I can tell, that the President played it supremely cool.
Mr. Bush had flown secretly from Texas to Bagdad to honor the historic agreement reached by the Iraqi and American peoples to end the foreign occupation there and usher in a new era of self-government. That’s why President Bush was there. A person, evidently representing all of you in spirit con gusto, decided to hurl his shoes at the President of the United States.
In the CSPAN footage, as distinguished from the MSNBC scam, it was apparent (a) that the President, our incumbent one, didn’t really give a shit about the stupid display; (b) that he was preeminently embarassed for his hosts, that they not feel disgraced in their hospitality; (c) that he had come there in the first place to honor those Iraqis who’d risked a great deal to come to agreement as to the U.S. withdrawal; and (d) that the actual fact that some asshole could hurl his shoes in disagreement with President Bush nicely proved the point: the beauty, for everyone of good will, of having a former enemy of peace and freedom turned to a friend, in the heart of the Middle East, of passtimes such as throwing ones shoes at a head of state.
I predict a lot of this in Bush’s future.
I predict a lot of this in Bush’s future.
My God, pettiness begetting still greater pettiness.
How Democratic.
My God, pettiness begetting still greater pettiness.
How Democratic.
Can I ask why anyone is suggesting that the military, even a “new, improved” military, ought to be given the tasks that are now in its doctrinal playbook?
The military is made up of young males (mostly), the guys who sat around the fire in the cave, randomly scratching, until some older wise guy said, “Let’s go out there and kill that bear!” Whereupon the young guys stood up, started dancing around, whooping and working themselves up until they took their spears and atlatls and clubs and daggers and rushed out of that cave to confront the bear.
Untold wealth has been poured into sophisticating the basic model, and untold deaths and scenes of people weeping over the deaths of their loved ones and swearing vengeance to keep the cycle rolling. But how many episodes does it take to establish a trend, that “the military” is not a structure than can rebuild infrastructure (that it just destroyed), learn to get along with occupied peoples, encourage stable and healthy and, oh, Golden Rule-based political structures free from corruption and the seeds of the next cycle of violence.
There have been a lot of great sci-fi thought experiments over the years, plots based on the notion of an idealized soldier — the Dorsai stories are one example. These mercenaries are purely ethical, culturally organized and trained to end conflicts with minimal violence, and perversely, to preserve and better life. Whatever it takes — in one case, drawing most of the leadership of a state into a stadium and killing all of them, and then applying just the right nudges to the rest of the population to set it on a course to True Virtue and all that. Chaos theory and simple observation show how off the wall that model is.
I don’t care how many years they spend at the War College or the other in-service “tanks” (bad pun) the war leaders take part in. Military leaders with rare exception are career-driven, sometimes megalomaniac, hierarchical, manage-by-intimidation people. Turn nation-building or, in essence, our “foreign policy,” over to people who think mostly about “force structures” and and “threat perception” and lethality improvements and really sexy computer command and control war-game virtual reality battlefield management “tools?” Wouldn’t be prudent. IMHO.
As far as “reinventing” goes, let’s face it, the mantra is “projecting power,” and that means nuclear carrier groups at multi-billions a copy — to give more ambitious admirals a paneled wardroom and private quarters and various servants and sycophants to pump their egos while they “deploy to trouble spots,” bringing trouble with them, and give Top Guns a chance to try it out for real and maybe become the latest ace. “Shock and Awe” kind of stuff. That always impresses the wogs, right? Makes them see the superiority of “our way of life,” right? And there’s a host of other little tics that I am sure Mr. Tapliin is intimately familiar with that characterize the “military mind” (sic.) “Rapid reaction?” It doesn’t work for police departments at home – the best they can usually do is CSI the scene, maybe apprehend the bad guys or gals, and watch over the coroner or EMT and become increasingly cynical and detached and disgusted. A “rapid reaction force” to zip half way around the world into terrain they don’t know and into societies they don’t understand and where they don’t speak the language or understand the politics? To do what? Shoot and blow up and take down and do all that soft-target collateral damage stuff that “forces” are so good at? And let’s not forget the insatiable asymptotic demand for infinite money to develop ever more complicated computer-toy-game-high-G-smart-invincible “weapons systems,” the procuring of which is a major career path and link to post-”service” job security for such a large part of the officer corps.
There’s whole books that limn so clearly all that is so very wrong with the entire human conflict system, and of course the inevitability that nothing much is gonna change. Humans have been doing “civilized” battle for millennia, my tribe against yours, winner gets the women and children and valuables, whatever is left. Many have pointed out that the AK-47 (and the flood of other automatic individual weapons) is the TRUE weapon of mass destruction, warping entire cultures, crushing womens’ aspirations, boosting warlordism, facilitating piracy, you name the ill. The military, no matter how constituted, will include sadists, sociopaths, “patriots,” and every other dysfunctional personality type you care to name. We will slowly learn a fraction of the stuff that went and goes on in Iraq and Afghanistan, both the illicit violence against “international law” and “our” own interests, and the enormous transfer of wealth into private pockets – KBR, Zarqauwi, and don’t forget Yasser Arafat and various Israeli leaders and all those potentates in Africa who bleed their neighbors and their people just to satisfy their own pleasure.
Think the President or even high power guys like Proxmire and such have a prayer of standing in front of the tanks without getting crushed? Hey, it’s all about money and power and the FUN, yeah, my man, FUN that is war. Just remember the hide-and-go-seek, and capture-the-flag, and paintball battles of your own youth. Play a round of “Doom” or one of the latest combat games. Then add the ability to actually kill a “Hajji” with a sniper rifle from 2 miles away, or explode a house or car full of people with a so-aptly-named “Hellfire” missile launched from a Predator drone that eventually will be “taught” to do this stuff without even having some pimply 21-year-old working his joystick in a darkened trailer “back in the world,” linked by satellite to the reality of bloody shreds and gobbets of meat that used to be living humans.
C’mon, folks, no amount of niggling over “force structures” and whether the V-22 or F-22 or F-35 gets build in your Congressional district or mine is going to change what humans are going to do anyway. Barring a spiritual revulsion and revolution that really casts out these demons from our genome, morphs all the tropes in the troops, and brings the Divine down to earth.
In he meantime, I’m off to Walmart to buy some new pants and shirts. Made in Vietnam by dirty commies. What was THAT activity, run by the Best and the Brightest, all about then? Was was I along with all those other “boys” over there, then? Hmmm?
Good luck to us then
Can I ask why anyone is suggesting that the military, even a “new, improved” military, ought to be given the tasks that are now in its doctrinal playbook?
The military is made up of young males (mostly), the guys who sat around the fire in the cave, randomly scratching, until some older wise guy said, “Let’s go out there and kill that bear!” Whereupon the young guys stood up, started dancing around, whooping and working themselves up until they took their spears and atlatls and clubs and daggers and rushed out of that cave to confront the bear.
Untold wealth has been poured into sophisticating the basic model, and untold deaths and scenes of people weeping over the deaths of their loved ones and swearing vengeance to keep the cycle rolling. But how many episodes does it take to establish a trend, that “the military” is not a structure than can rebuild infrastructure (that it just destroyed), learn to get along with occupied peoples, encourage stable and healthy and, oh, Golden Rule-based political structures free from corruption and the seeds of the next cycle of violence.
There have been a lot of great sci-fi thought experiments over the years, plots based on the notion of an idealized soldier — the Dorsai stories are one example. These mercenaries are purely ethical, culturally organized and trained to end conflicts with minimal violence, and perversely, to preserve and better life. Whatever it takes — in one case, drawing most of the leadership of a state into a stadium and killing all of them, and then applying just the right nudges to the rest of the population to set it on a course to True Virtue and all that. Chaos theory and simple observation show how off the wall that model is.
I don’t care how many years they spend at the War College or the other in-service “tanks” (bad pun) the war leaders take part in. Military leaders with rare exception are career-driven, sometimes megalomaniac, hierarchical, manage-by-intimidation people. Turn nation-building or, in essence, our “foreign policy,” over to people who think mostly about “force structures” and and “threat perception” and lethality improvements and really sexy computer command and control war-game virtual reality battlefield management “tools?” Wouldn’t be prudent. IMHO.
As far as “reinventing” goes, let’s face it, the mantra is “projecting power,” and that means nuclear carrier groups at multi-billions a copy — to give more ambitious admirals a paneled wardroom and private quarters and various servants and sycophants to pump their egos while they “deploy to trouble spots,” bringing trouble with them, and give Top Guns a chance to try it out for real and maybe become the latest ace. “Shock and Awe” kind of stuff. That always impresses the wogs, right? Makes them see the superiority of “our way of life,” right? And there’s a host of other little tics that I am sure Mr. Tapliin is intimately familiar with that characterize the “military mind” (sic.) “Rapid reaction?” It doesn’t work for police departments at home – the best they can usually do is CSI the scene, maybe apprehend the bad guys or gals, and watch over the coroner or EMT and become increasingly cynical and detached and disgusted. A “rapid reaction force” to zip half way around the world into terrain they don’t know and into societies they don’t understand and where they don’t speak the language or understand the politics? To do what? Shoot and blow up and take down and do all that soft-target collateral damage stuff that “forces” are so good at? And let’s not forget the insatiable asymptotic demand for infinite money to develop ever more complicated computer-toy-game-high-G-smart-invincible “weapons systems,” the procuring of which is a major career path and link to post-”service” job security for such a large part of the officer corps.
There’s whole books that limn so clearly all that is so very wrong with the entire human conflict system, and of course the inevitability that nothing much is gonna change. Humans have been doing “civilized” battle for millennia, my tribe against yours, winner gets the women and children and valuables, whatever is left. Many have pointed out that the AK-47 (and the flood of other automatic individual weapons) is the TRUE weapon of mass destruction, warping entire cultures, crushing womens’ aspirations, boosting warlordism, facilitating piracy, you name the ill. The military, no matter how constituted, will include sadists, sociopaths, “patriots,” and every other dysfunctional personality type you care to name. We will slowly learn a fraction of the stuff that went and goes on in Iraq and Afghanistan, both the illicit violence against “international law” and “our” own interests, and the enormous transfer of wealth into private pockets – KBR, Zarqauwi, and don’t forget Yasser Arafat and various Israeli leaders and all those potentates in Africa who bleed their neighbors and their people just to satisfy their own pleasure.
Think the President or even high power guys like Proxmire and such have a prayer of standing in front of the tanks without getting crushed? Hey, it’s all about money and power and the FUN, yeah, my man, FUN that is war. Just remember the hide-and-go-seek, and capture-the-flag, and paintball battles of your own youth. Play a round of “Doom” or one of the latest combat games. Then add the ability to actually kill a “Hajji” with a sniper rifle from 2 miles away, or explode a house or car full of people with a so-aptly-named “Hellfire” missile launched from a Predator drone that eventually will be “taught” to do this stuff without even having some pimply 21-year-old working his joystick in a darkened trailer “back in the world,” linked by satellite to the reality of bloody shreds and gobbets of meat that used to be living humans.
C’mon, folks, no amount of niggling over “force structures” and whether the V-22 or F-22 or F-35 gets build in your Congressional district or mine is going to change what humans are going to do anyway. Barring a spiritual revulsion and revolution that really casts out these demons from our genome, morphs all the tropes in the troops, and brings the Divine down to earth.
In he meantime, I’m off to Walmart to buy some new pants and shirts. Made in Vietnam by dirty commies. What was THAT activity, run by the Best and the Brightest, all about then? Was was I along with all those other “boys” over there, then? Hmmm?
Good luck to us then
Oh what fun it is to ride in JTMcPhee’s open sleigh, Oh!
What are you on about, with your dirtbag rundown of life in the military, McPhee? What really are you up to?
Seriously, what’s your beef? Tell it, and let’s just see.
Meanwhile, it’s you who are chickenshit.
Oh what fun it is to ride in JTMcPhee’s open sleigh, Oh!
What are you on about, with your dirtbag rundown of life in the military, McPhee? What really are you up to?
Seriously, what’s your beef? Tell it, and let’s just see.
Meanwhile, it’s you who are chickenshit.
JTM-I’ve been lucky to run into a few professionals in the analytical parts of our National Security business. They are generally really smart, much more open than the politicians to the nuance of culture and all the other lessons you are worried about.
The problem is that the smart people are desperately ready for a new “mission”, but the MIC is like GM–very hard to downsize. That’s the revolution that will have to take place. To imagine something that looked the Marines in 1890. Ready to rescue American citizens caught in local uprisings abroad, but otherwise just a big power you were never going to attack.
JTM-I’ve been lucky to run into a few professionals in the analytical parts of our National Security business. They are generally really smart, much more open than the politicians to the nuance of culture and all the other lessons you are worried about.
The problem is that the smart people are desperately ready for a new “mission”, but the MIC is like GM–very hard to downsize. That’s the revolution that will have to take place. To imagine something that looked the Marines in 1890. Ready to rescue American citizens caught in local uprisings abroad, but otherwise just a big power you were never going to attack.
Hugo- Why don’t you address the point of my post instead of going off on JTM? You are no longer going to have the luxury of an $800 billion defense budget. More like $400 billion.What do you do now?
Hugo- Why don’t you address the point of my post instead of going off on JTM? You are no longer going to have the luxury of an $800 billion defense budget. More like $400 billion.What do you do now?
Jeez, Jon, I’d have thought you’d notice that it was not I was going off.
As to your specific challenge, I’d quote a sometime U.S. senator I truly admired, Al Gore: “leaner and meaner”. That’s how I’d halve the defense budget, and that’s how he’d proposed to do so and how e.g. Bill Perry did so and how, sorry to say, Donald Rumsfeld did so a bit too close to the bone for anyone’s comfort.
Did you want me to address your point more specifically, now?
Jeez, Jon, I’d have thought you’d notice that it was not I was going off.
As to your specific challenge, I’d quote a sometime U.S. senator I truly admired, Al Gore: “leaner and meaner”. That’s how I’d halve the defense budget, and that’s how he’d proposed to do so and how e.g. Bill Perry did so and how, sorry to say, Donald Rumsfeld did so a bit too close to the bone for anyone’s comfort.
Did you want me to address your point more specifically, now?
Lest we laugh last, Josh Marshall at talkingpointsmemo.com is concerned that the Secret Service was unable to get Bush out of harm’s way quickly. Marshall wonders if the Secret Service presumed that everything would be safe, since it is so insanely vetted, and was unable to respond in such close quarters.
I have worries for President-Elect Obama’s safety, and this is not reassuring. When I saw candidate Obama speak in Oakland, early in the campaign, I felt the crowd screening and control was quite haphazard.
What do you think?
Lest we laugh last, Josh Marshall at talkingpointsmemo.com is concerned that the Secret Service was unable to get Bush out of harm’s way quickly. Marshall wonders if the Secret Service presumed that everything would be safe, since it is so insanely vetted, and was unable to respond in such close quarters.
I have worries for President-Elect Obama’s safety, and this is not reassuring. When I saw candidate Obama speak in Oakland, early in the campaign, I felt the crowd screening and control was quite haphazard.
What do you think?
Also, I thought that my first comment, at 4:39 your time, answered the point of your post in far greater specificity than you had intended.
Also, I thought that my first comment, at 4:39 your time, answered the point of your post in far greater specificity than you had intended.
MS,
I think, from your instant manuscript, that you care not for the safety of the incumbent President, but rather for the incipient one you happen to prefer. And I find that disturbing as hell.
MS,
I think, from your instant manuscript, that you care not for the safety of the incumbent President, but rather for the incipient one you happen to prefer. And I find that disturbing as hell.
Hugo, Re. your comment @4:39;
“Mr. Bush had flown secretly from Texas to Bagdad to honor the historic agreement reached by the Iraqi and American peoples”
Utter white-wash. Neither represent the people they claim to.
Hugo, Re. your comment @4:39;
“Mr. Bush had flown secretly from Texas to Bagdad to honor the historic agreement reached by the Iraqi and American peoples”
Utter white-wash. Neither represent the people they claim to.
Well I reckon that’s true, Akira, as far as it goes, but how better — I mean, by what better means — should the respective peoples be represented? Seriously, that’s a huge question just now concerning the U.S. labor movement, which lives or dies on the directness of its representation. Are you saying, for example, that in our system or in Iraq’s new one that voters somehow are misrepresented?
I mean, that can happen. Al Franken is claiming, somewhat endlessly, that voters have been misrepresented, so, I mean, I guess it could happen.
Even here.
Well I reckon that’s true, Akira, as far as it goes, but how better — I mean, by what better means — should the respective peoples be represented? Seriously, that’s a huge question just now concerning the U.S. labor movement, which lives or dies on the directness of its representation. Are you saying, for example, that in our system or in Iraq’s new one that voters somehow are misrepresented?
I mean, that can happen. Al Franken is claiming, somewhat endlessly, that voters have been misrepresented, so, I mean, I guess it could happen.
Even here.
Hugo,
“by what better means — should the respective peoples be represented? ”
Definitely not by people installed through brute force.
“Are you saying, for example, that in our system or in Iraq’s new one that voters somehow are misrepresented?”
Maybe you do not know the ballot box fiascoes in the US. Not to mention the shameful exclusion of the colored through cynical means. Iraq case is trivial.
You are a smart person. You must know this. Yet still pushing s##t up the hill. My previous diagnosis of willful jamming still holds.
Hugo,
“by what better means — should the respective peoples be represented? ”
Definitely not by people installed through brute force.
“Are you saying, for example, that in our system or in Iraq’s new one that voters somehow are misrepresented?”
Maybe you do not know the ballot box fiascoes in the US. Not to mention the shameful exclusion of the colored through cynical means. Iraq case is trivial.
You are a smart person. You must know this. Yet still pushing s##t up the hill. My previous diagnosis of willful jamming still holds.
Hugo – sorry you came to the conclusion that I’m not sufficiently worried about the safety of the current occupant of the White House. To clarify: Like Josh Marshall, I am concerned that the Secret Service may not sufficiently be protecting any of the presidents. And, of course, I’m particularly concerned for the incoming president who holds such hope for the future, and who has so much invective (including some references to his death, I believe; which I have not heard from the left towards the current president) directed against him from Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.
In reply to your 4:39 comment, I think that shoes (perhaps not tossed directly at the president) are an appropriately insulting response to the current president’s attempt to paint the U.S. invasion of Iraq as something’statesmanlike’ that has been good for Iraq and the U.S
I think that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been the ultimate insult, and is appropriately marked by the insult of the thrown shoes, despite Bush’s presidential title.
Hugo – sorry you came to the conclusion that I’m not sufficiently worried about the safety of the current occupant of the White House. To clarify: Like Josh Marshall, I am concerned that the Secret Service may not sufficiently be protecting any of the presidents. And, of course, I’m particularly concerned for the incoming president who holds such hope for the future, and who has so much invective (including some references to his death, I believe; which I have not heard from the left towards the current president) directed against him from Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.
In reply to your 4:39 comment, I think that shoes (perhaps not tossed directly at the president) are an appropriately insulting response to the current president’s attempt to paint the U.S. invasion of Iraq as something’statesmanlike’ that has been good for Iraq and the U.S
I think that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been the ultimate insult, and is appropriately marked by the insult of the thrown shoes, despite Bush’s presidential title.
“Mr. Bush had flown secretly from Texas to Bagdad to honor the historic agreement reached by the Iraqi and American peoples to end the foreign occupation there and usher in a new era of self-government.”
Translation: trying to seem like he’s still in charge, President Bush made a PR appearance to whitewash the failures of the puppet government he installed and that’s using the US military instead of building and training its own. He then went on to promise that one day Iraq will govern itself but since that’s not his problem anymore, he wishes them luck and to have lots of fun with Obama come Janaury 20th.
“Mr. Bush had flown secretly from Texas to Bagdad to honor the historic agreement reached by the Iraqi and American peoples to end the foreign occupation there and usher in a new era of self-government.”
Translation: trying to seem like he’s still in charge, President Bush made a PR appearance to whitewash the failures of the puppet government he installed and that’s using the US military instead of building and training its own. He then went on to promise that one day Iraq will govern itself but since that’s not his problem anymore, he wishes them luck and to have lots of fun with Obama come Janaury 20th.
You gotta admit, Bush had some pretty nimble reflexes. Clearly his body is more alive than his brain.
You gotta admit, Bush had some pretty nimble reflexes. Clearly his body is more alive than his brain.
My guess is the Secret Service and/or Army had screened everyone in the room, so they had very high confidence that no one had a firearm or knife, etc. They just didn’t have a way of screening for ‘intent to hurl shoes’. They probably knew there was no crude explosive in that guy’s shoes either.
I see no reason to consider this episode a genuinely important security breach. It.s right up their with a pie-in-the-face stunt or a ‘citizen’s arrest’ attempt.
My guess is the Secret Service and/or Army had screened everyone in the room, so they had very high confidence that no one had a firearm or knife, etc. They just didn’t have a way of screening for ‘intent to hurl shoes’. They probably knew there was no crude explosive in that guy’s shoes either.
I see no reason to consider this episode a genuinely important security breach. It.s right up their with a pie-in-the-face stunt or a ‘citizen’s arrest’ attempt.
My guess is the Secret Service and/or Army had screened everyone in the room, so they had very high confidence that no one had a firearm or knife, etc. They just didn’t have a way of screening for ‘intent to hurl shoes’. They probably knew there was no crude explosive in that guy’s shoes either.
I see no reason to consider this episode a genuinely important security breach. It.s right up their with a pie-in-the-face stunt or a ‘citizen’s arrest’ attempt.
How many shoes could a lame duck duck if a lame duck could duck shoes?
[from http://twitter.com/apelad
How many shoes could a lame duck duck if a lame duck could duck shoes?
[from http://twitter.com/apelad
How many shoes could a lame duck duck if a lame duck could duck shoes?
[from http://twitter.com/apelad
Hey, Hugo, here’s some more chickenshit for you.
Want chickenshit for real? How about all our war wimps and chicken hawks, like Dickless Cheney who had “other priorities” and our own Current Occupant who was where? when he was supposed to be on duty, and Rush “I had piles” Limbaugh, and a whole division’s worth of others?
I was one of those young males full of testosterone and patriotic sentiment who actually volunteered, elisted, in the Army in 1966. So macho that I wasn’t going to let a football-injured knee with no cartilage and ruptured ligaments identify me as 1-Y or 4-F. And got to see Southeast Asia, and human behavior in the war zone. Including one enormous waste of lives and treasure. We had a supply sergeant, for one tiny example, who was selling trophy weapons (which had to be kept in the supply tent due to fear of fragging) back in the “ville” to the VC. I read once that if you divided the present (then) cost of “the war” by the number of “gooks” that even accepting the inflated body count “we” claimed “we” killed, it cost like $300,000 to knock off a commie “slope.”
How much is it costing to kill a “towel head” or “camel jockey” or whatever else the troops call the indigens in this conflict?
And if you know anything about doctrine, strategy and tactics in that time, you know what an exercise in futility that whole thing was. Like I say, my new shirts from Walmart were, God Bless America, “made in Vietnam. Where “we” walked away from equipment and infrastructure and military installations in an amount roughly equivalent to the “stuff” like airfields “we” are still building in Iraq even though it’s obvious “we” are on the way out. Maybe because the KBRs of the world are making a (pardon the expression) killing off the construction? Electrocuting our troops in their own showers?
And you will maybe counter that “we are much smarter now.” So smart that “we” allowed or connived in the disappearance of probably hundreds of billions (have you read about the PALLET_LOADS of $100 bills delivered by US military transport that “vanished” off loading docks?) in the process of simply exacerbating a world instability. So smart that “we” who were going to be met with flowers and joyful gratitude including all the oil we could drink by the (whoops, where did all those FACTIONS come from?). So smart that “we” sold or gave thousands of tons of munitions to Saddam when he was “our” friend against the Ayatollah, and then did not police up or destroy during operation Desert Stupidity so that IEDs and EFPs and car and truck bombs of today are often made from those “dumb bombs” and 105 and 155 mm artillery rounds the “insurgents” had free access to? There’s even a new “book” going the rounds inside the strategic leadership pointing out all the idiocies of the Rumsfeld invasion. There’s something similar, of course, for the McNamara oversight of the Vietnam thing.
And I understand that “earning” a Combat Infantry Badge is still a nice career boost, and I read that maybe the fragging that was starting in 1967 when I got to Tan Son Nhut via a grossly overpaid charter airline 707, is maybe happening in the new war zones and for the same reasons. Tell me again how Pat Tillman died a hero’s death?
If you believe along with all the squinty-eyed patriots, that the tit-for-tat principle, informed by the notions of hegemony and “do-unto-others-BEFORE-they-do-unto-you” that drive both civilian and military leaders, requires that “we” have a “strong military,” good-oh on you. I am just suggesting that “we” try to be a little honest about how us humans process reality and modulate our relations to one another. “Military life?” Let’s see, the function of the military is to “find, fix and kill the enemy.” “Life” only in the sense that “our” and “their” troops, who are functionally interchangeable if distinguishable mostly by the doctrines they espouse and their individual shoulder weapons and uniforms, live in a society supported by the society they live off of.
Tell me, please, or pile on the insults, why it makes any sense to entrust to the “military mind” any process that has mediation and pacification (other than by killing any “unpeaceful” people in sight) and creation of stability and reduction in the drivers that excuse humans in acting out the violence they so obviously enjoy, if you just look at the overall picture of human interactions over time.
It’s no answer that the parts of our “government” that ought to be seeking the greatest good of the greatest number are failing in their functions, or actually acting in ways inimical to “our” interests. One tiny example among hundreds: Does the name April Glaspie mean anything to you? The ambassador who told Saddam Hussein that a former Bush League admin “took no position on inter-Arab matters” and thus invited Saddam’s forces to invade Kuwait? And go read, if you haven’t, “First In,” by CIA guy Gary Schroen. Interesting insights into how things work on the ground in the terrain we shorthand as Afghanistan, where our incoming CinC tells us we are now going to be fighting the “war on terror.”
Maybe you buy the notion that those guys with square jaws and no lips who run the military “know what’s needed” and are all whiz kids at developing the doctrine-strategy-tactics matrices that lead on inexorably to that “victory” that at least in the case of Vietnam and now Iraq and Afghanistan, nobody can define (but everybody KNOWS is possible, and just around the corner if only we send in a few more troops and revise our battlefield array and force structure and bring more Predators on line.) I am a little skeptical on that.
Call me chickenshit, but I’m scarcely the only person to be “calling bullshit” on even modified business-as-usual by the Defense Establishment under our new CinC. And there’s enough self-congratulatory, disinformative horseshit flowing out of all the various orifices that speak kindnesses about “our military” to fertilize all the farm fields of the planet.
In simple terms: As I see it, humans or a significant fraction of them get off on dominating and killing other humans. Many tribal societies separated the “war leader” function from the “wise leader” function, for good reasons. Our militarization makes great opportunities for a few people to work out their antisocial fun and games on others while extracting huge amounts of money from the culture and making us all (often needlessly) fearful. Look up the facts around the “bomber gap,” and the “missile gap,” and the “window of vulnerability” sometime for just a few examples, not to mention the futility of trying to address the behaviors we call “terrorism” by using blunt or even semi-sharp military force to address what is basically a police matter.
As to protecting presidents, I recall that the standing joke not so long ago was that when GHW Bush and Dan “Deer in the Headlights” Quayle made up our civilian leadership of the military culture, the Secret Service details had standing orders that if Bush was shot, they were to wheel around and shoot Qualyle. For reasons that Palin by comparison to how things would have been if McCain were the incoming CinC.
So lock ‘n load, Hugo! Ready on the Right? Ready on the Left? Ready on the firing line, fire at will!
Hey, Hugo, here’s some more chickenshit for you.
Want chickenshit for real? How about all our war wimps and chicken hawks, like Dickless Cheney who had “other priorities” and our own Current Occupant who was where? when he was supposed to be on duty, and Rush “I had piles” Limbaugh, and a whole division’s worth of others?
I was one of those young males full of testosterone and patriotic sentiment who actually volunteered, elisted, in the Army in 1966. So macho that I wasn’t going to let a football-injured knee with no cartilage and ruptured ligaments identify me as 1-Y or 4-F. And got to see Southeast Asia, and human behavior in the war zone. Including one enormous waste of lives and treasure. We had a supply sergeant, for one tiny example, who was selling trophy weapons (which had to be kept in the supply tent due to fear of fragging) back in the “ville” to the VC. I read once that if you divided the present (then) cost of “the war” by the number of “gooks” that even accepting the inflated body count “we” claimed “we” killed, it cost like $300,000 to knock off a commie “slope.”
How much is it costing to kill a “towel head” or “camel jockey” or whatever else the troops call the indigens in this conflict?
And if you know anything about doctrine, strategy and tactics in that time, you know what an exercise in futility that whole thing was. Like I say, my new shirts from Walmart were, God Bless America, “made in Vietnam. Where “we” walked away from equipment and infrastructure and military installations in an amount roughly equivalent to the “stuff” like airfields “we” are still building in Iraq even though it’s obvious “we” are on the way out. Maybe because the KBRs of the world are making a (pardon the expression) killing off the construction? Electrocuting our troops in their own showers?
And you will maybe counter that “we are much smarter now.” So smart that “we” allowed or connived in the disappearance of probably hundreds of billions (have you read about the PALLET_LOADS of $100 bills delivered by US military transport that “vanished” off loading docks?) in the process of simply exacerbating a world instability. So smart that “we” who were going to be met with flowers and joyful gratitude including all the oil we could drink by the (whoops, where did all those FACTIONS come from?). So smart that “we” sold or gave thousands of tons of munitions to Saddam when he was “our” friend against the Ayatollah, and then did not police up or destroy during operation Desert Stupidity so that IEDs and EFPs and car and truck bombs of today are often made from those “dumb bombs” and 105 and 155 mm artillery rounds the “insurgents” had free access to? There’s even a new “book” going the rounds inside the strategic leadership pointing out all the idiocies of the Rumsfeld invasion. There’s something similar, of course, for the McNamara oversight of the Vietnam thing.
And I understand that “earning” a Combat Infantry Badge is still a nice career boost, and I read that maybe the fragging that was starting in 1967 when I got to Tan Son Nhut via a grossly overpaid charter airline 707, is maybe happening in the new war zones and for the same reasons. Tell me again how Pat Tillman died a hero’s death?
If you believe along with all the squinty-eyed patriots, that the tit-for-tat principle, informed by the notions of hegemony and “do-unto-others-BEFORE-they-do-unto-you” that drive both civilian and military leaders, requires that “we” have a “strong military,” good-oh on you. I am just suggesting that “we” try to be a little honest about how us humans process reality and modulate our relations to one another. “Military life?” Let’s see, the function of the military is to “find, fix and kill the enemy.” “Life” only in the sense that “our” and “their” troops, who are functionally interchangeable if distinguishable mostly by the doctrines they espouse and their individual shoulder weapons and uniforms, live in a society supported by the society they live off of.
Tell me, please, or pile on the insults, why it makes any sense to entrust to the “military mind” any process that has mediation and pacification (other than by killing any “unpeaceful” people in sight) and creation of stability and reduction in the drivers that excuse humans in acting out the violence they so obviously enjoy, if you just look at the overall picture of human interactions over time.
It’s no answer that the parts of our “government” that ought to be seeking the greatest good of the greatest number are failing in their functions, or actually acting in ways inimical to “our” interests. One tiny example among hundreds: Does the name April Glaspie mean anything to you? The ambassador who told Saddam Hussein that a former Bush League admin “took no position on inter-Arab matters” and thus invited Saddam’s forces to invade Kuwait? And go read, if you haven’t, “First In,” by CIA guy Gary Schroen. Interesting insights into how things work on the ground in the terrain we shorthand as Afghanistan, where our incoming CinC tells us we are now going to be fighting the “war on terror.”
Maybe you buy the notion that those guys with square jaws and no lips who run the military “know what’s needed” and are all whiz kids at developing the doctrine-strategy-tactics matrices that lead on inexorably to that “victory” that at least in the case of Vietnam and now Iraq and Afghanistan, nobody can define (but everybody KNOWS is possible, and just around the corner if only we send in a few more troops and revise our battlefield array and force structure and bring more Predators on line.) I am a little skeptical on that.
Call me chickenshit, but I’m scarcely the only person to be “calling bullshit” on even modified business-as-usual by the Defense Establishment under our new CinC. And there’s enough self-congratulatory, disinformative horseshit flowing out of all the various orifices that speak kindnesses about “our military” to fertilize all the farm fields of the planet.
In simple terms: As I see it, humans or a significant fraction of them get off on dominating and killing other humans. Many tribal societies separated the “war leader” function from the “wise leader” function, for good reasons. Our militarization makes great opportunities for a few people to work out their antisocial fun and games on others while extracting huge amounts of money from the culture and making us all (often needlessly) fearful. Look up the facts around the “bomber gap,” and the “missile gap,” and the “window of vulnerability” sometime for just a few examples, not to mention the futility of trying to address the behaviors we call “terrorism” by using blunt or even semi-sharp military force to address what is basically a police matter.
As to protecting presidents, I recall that the standing joke not so long ago was that when GHW Bush and Dan “Deer in the Headlights” Quayle made up our civilian leadership of the military culture, the Secret Service details had standing orders that if Bush was shot, they were to wheel around and shoot Qualyle. For reasons that Palin by comparison to how things would have been if McCain were the incoming CinC.
So lock ‘n load, Hugo! Ready on the Right? Ready on the Left? Ready on the firing line, fire at will!
Hey, Hugo, here’s some more chickenshit for you.
Want chickenshit for real? How about all our war wimps and chicken hawks, like Dickless Cheney who had “other priorities” and our own Current Occupant who was where? when he was supposed to be on duty, and Rush “I had piles” Limbaugh, and a whole division’s worth of others?
I was one of those young males full of testosterone and patriotic sentiment who actually volunteered, elisted, in the Army in 1966. So macho that I wasn’t going to let a football-injured knee with no cartilage and ruptured ligaments identify me as 1-Y or 4-F. And got to see Southeast Asia, and human behavior in the war zone. Including one enormous waste of lives and treasure. We had a supply sergeant, for one tiny example, who was selling trophy weapons (which had to be kept in the supply tent due to fear of fragging) back in the “ville” to the VC. I read once that if you divided the present (then) cost of “the war” by the number of “gooks” that even accepting the inflated body count “we” claimed “we” killed, it cost like $300,000 to knock off a commie “slope.”
How much is it costing to kill a “towel head” or “camel jockey” or whatever else the troops call the indigens in this conflict?
And if you know anything about doctrine, strategy and tactics in that time, you know what an exercise in futility that whole thing was. Like I say, my new shirts from Walmart were, God Bless America, “made in Vietnam. Where “we” walked away from equipment and infrastructure and military installations in an amount roughly equivalent to the “stuff” like airfields “we” are still building in Iraq even though it’s obvious “we” are on the way out. Maybe because the KBRs of the world are making a (pardon the expression) killing off the construction? Electrocuting our troops in their own showers?
And you will maybe counter that “we are much smarter now.” So smart that “we” allowed or connived in the disappearance of probably hundreds of billions (have you read about the PALLET_LOADS of $100 bills delivered by US military transport that “vanished” off loading docks?) in the process of simply exacerbating a world instability. So smart that “we” who were going to be met with flowers and joyful gratitude including all the oil we could drink by the (whoops, where did all those FACTIONS come from?). So smart that “we” sold or gave thousands of tons of munitions to Saddam when he was “our” friend against the Ayatollah, and then did not police up or destroy during operation Desert Stupidity so that IEDs and EFPs and car and truck bombs of today are often made from those “dumb bombs” and 105 and 155 mm artillery rounds the “insurgents” had free access to? There’s even a new “book” going the rounds inside the strategic leadership pointing out all the idiocies of the Rumsfeld invasion. There’s something similar, of course, for the McNamara oversight of the Vietnam thing.
And I understand that “earning” a Combat Infantry Badge is still a nice career boost, and I read that maybe the fragging that was starting in 1967 when I got to Tan Son Nhut via a grossly overpaid charter airline 707, is maybe happening in the new war zones and for the same reasons. Tell me again how Pat Tillman died a hero’s death?
If you believe along with all the squinty-eyed patriots, that the tit-for-tat principle, informed by the notions of hegemony and “do-unto-others-BEFORE-they-do-unto-you” that drive both civilian and military leaders, requires that “we” have a “strong military,” good-oh on you. I am just suggesting that “we” try to be a little honest about how us humans process reality and modulate our relations to one another. “Military life?” Let’s see, the function of the military is to “find, fix and kill the enemy.” “Life” only in the sense that “our” and “their” troops, who are functionally interchangeable if distinguishable mostly by the doctrines they espouse and their individual shoulder weapons and uniforms, live in a society supported by the society they live off of.
Tell me, please, or pile on the insults, why it makes any sense to entrust to the “military mind” any process that has mediation and pacification (other than by killing any “unpeaceful” people in sight) and creation of stability and reduction in the drivers that excuse humans in acting out the violence they so obviously enjoy, if you just look at the overall picture of human interactions over time.
It’s no answer that the parts of our “government” that ought to be seeking the greatest good of the greatest number are failing in their functions, or actually acting in ways inimical to “our” interests. One tiny example among hundreds: Does the name April Glaspie mean anything to you? The ambassador who told Saddam Hussein that a former Bush League admin “took no position on inter-Arab matters” and thus invited Saddam’s forces to invade Kuwait? And go read, if you haven’t, “First In,” by CIA guy Gary Schroen. Interesting insights into how things work on the ground in the terrain we shorthand as Afghanistan, where our incoming CinC tells us we are now going to be fighting the “war on terror.”
Maybe you buy the notion that those guys with square jaws and no lips who run the military “know what’s needed” and are all whiz kids at developing the doctrine-strategy-tactics matrices that lead on inexorably to that “victory” that at least in the case of Vietnam and now Iraq and Afghanistan, nobody can define (but everybody KNOWS is possible, and just around the corner if only we send in a few more troops and revise our battlefield array and force structure and bring more Predators on line.) I am a little skeptical on that.
Call me chickenshit, but I’m scarcely the only person to be “calling bullshit” on even modified business-as-usual by the Defense Establishment under our new CinC. And there’s enough self-congratulatory, disinformative horseshit flowing out of all the various orifices that speak kindnesses about “our military” to fertilize all the farm fields of the planet.
In simple terms: As I see it, humans or a significant fraction of them get off on dominating and killing other humans. Many tribal societies separated the “war leader” function from the “wise leader” function, for good reasons. Our militarization makes great opportunities for a few people to work out their antisocial fun and games on others while extracting huge amounts of money from the culture and making us all (often needlessly) fearful. Look up the facts around the “bomber gap,” and the “missile gap,” and the “window of vulnerability” sometime for just a few examples, not to mention the futility of trying to address the behaviors we call “terrorism” by using blunt or even semi-sharp military force to address what is basically a police matter.
As to protecting presidents, I recall that the standing joke not so long ago was that when GHW Bush and Dan “Deer in the Headlights” Quayle made up our civilian leadership of the military culture, the Secret Service details had standing orders that if Bush was shot, they were to wheel around and shoot Qualyle. For reasons that Palin by comparison to how things would have been if McCain were the incoming CinC.
So lock ‘n load, Hugo! Ready on the Right? Ready on the Left? Ready on the firing line, fire at will!
Listen, would one of you — the brilliant JTM included — please just do this: link to the full CSPAN footage of the Bush/Malaki press availability in Bagdad? I’m not interested in vindication of some sort, but rather am interested in your thoughts concerning a possible disparity betwixt CSPAN’s coverage and MSNBC’s entertaining usage.
I’d link to the thing myself, if CSPAN would allow, but not only do I fail to work for a prestigious school of Communications but also I’ve been blogging for only a year and, in middle age, truly don’t know how to work such wonders. I’ve just never learned how.
Listen, would one of you — the brilliant JTM included — please just do this: link to the full CSPAN footage of the Bush/Malaki press availability in Bagdad? I’m not interested in vindication of some sort, but rather am interested in your thoughts concerning a possible disparity betwixt CSPAN’s coverage and MSNBC’s entertaining usage.
I’d link to the thing myself, if CSPAN would allow, but not only do I fail to work for a prestigious school of Communications but also I’ve been blogging for only a year and, in middle age, truly don’t know how to work such wonders. I’ve just never learned how.
“..shameful exclusion of the colored”
Ummm…. Akira…. 21st Century here… try blacks, African-Americans, Hispanics, and so on. I don’t think I’ve heard that ‘colored’ phrase since the 60s. Time for Melbourne to get with the new speak.
We’ll draw down our forces, cut our budgets, make cheaper goods, rebuild bridges, and so on. We’ll also pull back our foreign aid, withdraw anything that resembles the Peace Corps, go isolationist, seriously restrict immigration and visits from any Muslim-dominated nation and so on. When Iran decides to extend it’s protection to Kuwait and Syria determines the House of Saud is not protecting the Holy cities, call the Canadians. They love the desert. We’ll supply the knapsacks.
As for repaying China, we’ll become the French and say, ‘collect if you can’. Anyone building oil rigs within 200 miles of our coasts should abandon them because we are nationalizing those to offset the costs of new drilling and to make the environmentalists happy (no new wells; we take all the ones within reach) and protecting those gives our Navy a local job. We keep the subs at sea. Gotta have a backup for Armageddon should Putin object to our reduced dependence on his monolpoly.
And if anyone objects, well, our newly halved military will be relying on ultra-efficient delivery systems of small but very deadly payloads, the sort of things we don’t share, are secret, and really hurt like hell.
You know the deal, JT: if you have to fight with someone twice your weight and speed, fair is for losers. Charlie taught us that.
“..shameful exclusion of the colored”
Ummm…. Akira…. 21st Century here… try blacks, African-Americans, Hispanics, and so on. I don’t think I’ve heard that ‘colored’ phrase since the 60s. Time for Melbourne to get with the new speak.
We’ll draw down our forces, cut our budgets, make cheaper goods, rebuild bridges, and so on. We’ll also pull back our foreign aid, withdraw anything that resembles the Peace Corps, go isolationist, seriously restrict immigration and visits from any Muslim-dominated nation and so on. When Iran decides to extend it’s protection to Kuwait and Syria determines the House of Saud is not protecting the Holy cities, call the Canadians. They love the desert. We’ll supply the knapsacks.
As for repaying China, we’ll become the French and say, ‘collect if you can’. Anyone building oil rigs within 200 miles of our coasts should abandon them because we are nationalizing those to offset the costs of new drilling and to make the environmentalists happy (no new wells; we take all the ones within reach) and protecting those gives our Navy a local job. We keep the subs at sea. Gotta have a backup for Armageddon should Putin object to our reduced dependence on his monolpoly.
And if anyone objects, well, our newly halved military will be relying on ultra-efficient delivery systems of small but very deadly payloads, the sort of things we don’t share, are secret, and really hurt like hell.
You know the deal, JT: if you have to fight with someone twice your weight and speed, fair is for losers. Charlie taught us that.
MS,
I do sincerely apologize for accusing you of carelessness concerning the safety of the President. In addition to insulting you, I blew your point. I’m sorry.
MS,
I do sincerely apologize for accusing you of carelessness concerning the safety of the President. In addition to insulting you, I blew your point. I’m sorry.
Yep, we’ve seen those ultra-efficient delivery systems — smart weapons take really smart people to deploy accurately, and information theory being what it is, you end up with “soft-target collateral damage” that is a little like sowing Dragon’s Teeth. Suddenly there are a lot more “enemies” on the screen.
My tiny little voice offers the thought that maybe it is time for some new neural pathways, you know, new thinking. Maybe “survival” is kind of a SPECIES thing, not just “My tribe, right or wrong” over “Your less-than-human tribe.” But hey, I’ve thought for years that us humans are a plague species with a death wish, and the book I would like to see written is entitled “What’s Wrong With Practically Everything, And Why It’s Never Going To Get Any Better.”
In the meantime, I appreciate the delicious ironies of the Second Amendment as applied, and make my runs to the range to keep up the skill sets.
Yep, we’ve seen those ultra-efficient delivery systems — smart weapons take really smart people to deploy accurately, and information theory being what it is, you end up with “soft-target collateral damage” that is a little like sowing Dragon’s Teeth. Suddenly there are a lot more “enemies” on the screen.
My tiny little voice offers the thought that maybe it is time for some new neural pathways, you know, new thinking. Maybe “survival” is kind of a SPECIES thing, not just “My tribe, right or wrong” over “Your less-than-human tribe.” But hey, I’ve thought for years that us humans are a plague species with a death wish, and the book I would like to see written is entitled “What’s Wrong With Practically Everything, And Why It’s Never Going To Get Any Better.”
In the meantime, I appreciate the delicious ironies of the Second Amendment as applied, and make my runs to the range to keep up the skill sets.
Akira:
I’d asked: “…by what better means — should the respective peoples be represented? ”
And you answered: “Definitely not by people installed through brute force.”
In the Iraq of recent years whose force has been the more, or the less or the least, brutal? Also, when is force not brutish?
Also Akira, I really definitely was not pissing up your leg about electoral integrity. It’s key. (On that point I agree foursquare with the former President, Jimmy Carter.) Rather, I was asking, am asking, whether you see irregularities or corruptions that should concern us. That’s all.
Akira:
I’d asked: “…by what better means — should the respective peoples be represented? ”
And you answered: “Definitely not by people installed through brute force.”
In the Iraq of recent years whose force has been the more, or the less or the least, brutal? Also, when is force not brutish?
Also Akira, I really definitely was not pissing up your leg about electoral integrity. It’s key. (On that point I agree foursquare with the former President, Jimmy Carter.) Rather, I was asking, am asking, whether you see irregularities or corruptions that should concern us. That’s all.
Er, “who’s”? As in, “who’s force”? Yes, I think that’s how it was s’posed to be. Sorry, Akira.
Er, “who’s”? As in, “who’s force”? Yes, I think that’s how it was s’posed to be. Sorry, Akira.
But JT, at least we get smarter.
The facts are while we are reducing budgets, we have to be prepared to up the brutality of the response when and if we respond, and/or we have to reduce the kinds and types of events to which we will respond. Special teams require bench depth and equipment.
New thinking is good. I want to hear the new thought that changes the curriculum at the Madrassa teaching a new generation of superior species how to build cheaper nail bombs. Until then, as we withdraw our forces, expect a tighter surveillance grid at the borders and the banks.
I asked Hackworth some years ago how we could best fight the Taliban. He said we should quit selling them the best body armor.
But JT, at least we get smarter.
The facts are while we are reducing budgets, we have to be prepared to up the brutality of the response when and if we respond, and/or we have to reduce the kinds and types of events to which we will respond. Special teams require bench depth and equipment.
New thinking is good. I want to hear the new thought that changes the curriculum at the Madrassa teaching a new generation of superior species how to build cheaper nail bombs. Until then, as we withdraw our forces, expect a tighter surveillance grid at the borders and the banks.
I asked Hackworth some years ago how we could best fight the Taliban. He said we should quit selling them the best body armor.
len,
Jesus, man, you push more buttons in a subbordinate clause than anyone (probably for Ken, too, but I don’t know). Hackworth was half-crazy and you know it, if you met him. Colonels of our elite units are allowed to be eccentric, but, uh…
You punch a nail-gun through my forehead with your remarks on nail-bomb instruction in present-day madrassas. What, in Kabul, should we do over against that?
Really, len. This maybe is the question du jour.
len,
Jesus, man, you push more buttons in a subbordinate clause than anyone (probably for Ken, too, but I don’t know). Hackworth was half-crazy and you know it, if you met him. Colonels of our elite units are allowed to be eccentric, but, uh…
You punch a nail-gun through my forehead with your remarks on nail-bomb instruction in present-day madrassas. What, in Kabul, should we do over against that?
Really, len. This maybe is the question du jour.
The real issue is whether the Arab Muslim world can overlay “democracy” on tribal political structures without some form of Iron Fist hidden in the mix.
It may well prove that Iraq edges into some new format better than what was Hugo, but it is equally possible that we are riding a tiger we’ve freed. If so, sticking the dismount is always the issue.
Iraq is the new Yugoslavia looking for a Tito to make it superficially appear to work???
And just to continue my usual contrarian relationship with you Hugo, let me say that my concern for Still-President Bush’s safety is the same one he, Chaney, Wolfie and Rumi had for the Iraqi citizens when he got them into this mess. Given that I would sincerely like to see the man publicly hanged for war crimes, asking me to be politically correct about a shoe or two seems a tad incongruent.
Cheers.
The real issue is whether the Arab Muslim world can overlay “democracy” on tribal political structures without some form of Iron Fist hidden in the mix.
It may well prove that Iraq edges into some new format better than what was Hugo, but it is equally possible that we are riding a tiger we’ve freed. If so, sticking the dismount is always the issue.
Iraq is the new Yugoslavia looking for a Tito to make it superficially appear to work???
And just to continue my usual contrarian relationship with you Hugo, let me say that my concern for Still-President Bush’s safety is the same one he, Chaney, Wolfie and Rumi had for the Iraqi citizens when he got them into this mess. Given that I would sincerely like to see the man publicly hanged for war crimes, asking me to be politically correct about a shoe or two seems a tad incongruent.
Cheers.
Len, I always have to wonder about that first clause,”if you have to fight.” It’s one thing to be “ready,” it’s another to find provocation and manhood challenges everywhere, or just excuses to test weapons like Daisy Cutters and fuel-air explosives and such on “the enemy.” Kind of like how “our” warriors have tested chemical and biological and radiation effects on our own GIs and unsuspecting folks at home.
Seems to me that there often is a better way, that hurts fewer people and has half a chance of being a “positive sum game,” admittedly without a huge bump in satisfaction to one side or the other from “winning.”
Also seems to me that there are people who gain in many ways from turning a possible positive-sum into a zero- or negative-sum.
But that’s just me, and I’d be the first to admit that I don’t know what really goes on in all those rooms that the public never sees into. I’m sure the Joint Chiefs and Condi Rice and Henry Kissinger really have the best interests of the average person at heart, irrespective of whether power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Len, I always have to wonder about that first clause,”if you have to fight.” It’s one thing to be “ready,” it’s another to find provocation and manhood challenges everywhere, or just excuses to test weapons like Daisy Cutters and fuel-air explosives and such on “the enemy.” Kind of like how “our” warriors have tested chemical and biological and radiation effects on our own GIs and unsuspecting folks at home.
Seems to me that there often is a better way, that hurts fewer people and has half a chance of being a “positive sum game,” admittedly without a huge bump in satisfaction to one side or the other from “winning.”
Also seems to me that there are people who gain in many ways from turning a possible positive-sum into a zero- or negative-sum.
But that’s just me, and I’d be the first to admit that I don’t know what really goes on in all those rooms that the public never sees into. I’m sure the Joint Chiefs and Condi Rice and Henry Kissinger really have the best interests of the average person at heart, irrespective of whether power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
o goddammit ken let it rest, the man’s almost out of office.
Now, as to our mutual concerns (which are surprisingly numerous), it’s an extremely delicate point, that point to which you are pointing: the pointed point of whether we, in North America for chrissakes, can point a people we consider tribally dislocated toward a collective national picture. A mythic national picture.
And frankly, my friend, it’s anybody’s guess. I want to hear your guess, but I don’t know what mine is so much as I know that it’s a matter of the utmost, international importance.
o goddammit ken let it rest, the man’s almost out of office.
Now, as to our mutual concerns (which are surprisingly numerous), it’s an extremely delicate point, that point to which you are pointing: the pointed point of whether we, in North America for chrissakes, can point a people we consider tribally dislocated toward a collective national picture. A mythic national picture.
And frankly, my friend, it’s anybody’s guess. I want to hear your guess, but I don’t know what mine is so much as I know that it’s a matter of the utmost, international importance.
He was the coldest blooded killer I ever met, Hugo. Crazy was not the word I’d use though. He did have a sense of not using boys as fodder without a payoff. But damm, he was cold.
I don’t think we can do anything about the madrassas until the culture they spawn in does. Can we get the contract for their textbooks? Gandhi offered a way out of hell but when his speeches threatened the extremely lucrative fees of a competitive guru, the guru dispatched a disciple to send him there.
Religion As Business is one of the nasty memes we should be trying to change.
What I am pointing out though and the reason I bring up Hackworth is he wrote the manual on how to fight a war against an enemy both disciplined and completely cold to the idea of sending their young to die. When fought his way, superior force does prevail. When fought any other way, superior force is oak to a chain saw. As long as someone is willing to oil the chain, the oak loses, and it is oiled with the blood of the willing and their unwilling victims.
We have to think long about our goals, policies that have a chance of getting us to those goals, and how to reform our military and our business interests so they advance toward those goals instead of setting them.
He was the coldest blooded killer I ever met, Hugo. Crazy was not the word I’d use though. He did have a sense of not using boys as fodder without a payoff. But damm, he was cold.
I don’t think we can do anything about the madrassas until the culture they spawn in does. Can we get the contract for their textbooks? Gandhi offered a way out of hell but when his speeches threatened the extremely lucrative fees of a competitive guru, the guru dispatched a disciple to send him there.
Religion As Business is one of the nasty memes we should be trying to change.
What I am pointing out though and the reason I bring up Hackworth is he wrote the manual on how to fight a war against an enemy both disciplined and completely cold to the idea of sending their young to die. When fought his way, superior force does prevail. When fought any other way, superior force is oak to a chain saw. As long as someone is willing to oil the chain, the oak loses, and it is oiled with the blood of the willing and their unwilling victims.
We have to think long about our goals, policies that have a chance of getting us to those goals, and how to reform our military and our business interests so they advance toward those goals instead of setting them.
Sorry Hugo, my disdain for the man and his minions will not go away once he leaves office. War crimes don’t get erased by regime change.
As for the projection for the coming Muslo/Arabian Tribal Dance, I really think the looming depression changes the whole playing field and narrows possibilities. While we may have been able to purchase a softer withdrawal while we still had the big Visa Card in the Sky, now that its been taken away, it’s far more likely to be “So long, been good to know ya.”
Going to be hard to convince the American politicos to fund a quasi Marshall plan as a way to prop up our own little Tito in Iraq when the home front is the first concern and a black hole level of fund suck.
That is a game changer folks. Will our little experiment with @Iraq.gov/puppet work if they use their oil money for their own reconstruction, letting us off the hook? Two wild cards there; oil prices, and the incredible lightness of moral being when insanely large amounts of lightly monitored money are involved.
I think that we will slink out of Iraq, much like we did in Vietnam because, in this instance, we cannot afford to do anything else. I think that there will be major civil insurrections as the primary alignments (Sunni, Shia, Kurd) all jockey for consolidating power, or for simple survival. Blood bath? Probably. When the culture has grudges that run back an inconceivable number of generations, there will be blood. The earlier “ethnic cleansing” and creation of Ghettos was but a prolog.
The Balkan solution will be the world’s impulse to try to make the chaos stop, but no one is going to have the power or funds to impose it, and the area will have to sort itself out on it’s own.
At it’s worst we will see the African solution, as warlords create carve outs they can control. At best we will see someone with enough clout and conviction rise to a level where he/she can pull enough of the clans together to control what oil income there is, and force the others to go along for their own good. My personal bet, given the depression and historical part corruption plays in Iraqi politics is on the warlord scenario at least in the short run.
As I say, the world’s economic picture is a game changer. It makes politics as usual impossible, and all the old models of response, good and bad, that involve large amounts of capital are going to have to be shelved. We will still try to steer things by paying for covert ops, and bribing leaders we need in covert and overt ways, but when the purse is small, other sources of income (e.g. exploiting what there is of the oil revenues) will hold sway.
The very definition of a Super Power is one with deep enough pockets to run the table by sheer persistence no matter how stupid the occasional bet. The fact that the US can no longer play for high stakes, for that matter the fact that really none of the large nation states will be able to for awhile, creates a vacuum and the historical patterns is that opportunistic dictators love to exploit vacuums.
Sorry Hugo, my disdain for the man and his minions will not go away once he leaves office. War crimes don’t get erased by regime change.
As for the projection for the coming Muslo/Arabian Tribal Dance, I really think the looming depression changes the whole playing field and narrows possibilities. While we may have been able to purchase a softer withdrawal while we still had the big Visa Card in the Sky, now that its been taken away, it’s far more likely to be “So long, been good to know ya.”
Going to be hard to convince the American politicos to fund a quasi Marshall plan as a way to prop up our own little Tito in Iraq when the home front is the first concern and a black hole level of fund suck.
That is a game changer folks. Will our little experiment with @Iraq.gov/puppet work if they use their oil money for their own reconstruction, letting us off the hook? Two wild cards there; oil prices, and the incredible lightness of moral being when insanely large amounts of lightly monitored money are involved.
I think that we will slink out of Iraq, much like we did in Vietnam because, in this instance, we cannot afford to do anything else. I think that there will be major civil insurrections as the primary alignments (Sunni, Shia, Kurd) all jockey for consolidating power, or for simple survival. Blood bath? Probably. When the culture has grudges that run back an inconceivable number of generations, there will be blood. The earlier “ethnic cleansing” and creation of Ghettos was but a prolog.
The Balkan solution will be the world’s impulse to try to make the chaos stop, but no one is going to have the power or funds to impose it, and the area will have to sort itself out on it’s own.
At it’s worst we will see the African solution, as warlords create carve outs they can control. At best we will see someone with enough clout and conviction rise to a level where he/she can pull enough of the clans together to control what oil income there is, and force the others to go along for their own good. My personal bet, given the depression and historical part corruption plays in Iraqi politics is on the warlord scenario at least in the short run.
As I say, the world’s economic picture is a game changer. It makes politics as usual impossible, and all the old models of response, good and bad, that involve large amounts of capital are going to have to be shelved. We will still try to steer things by paying for covert ops, and bribing leaders we need in covert and overt ways, but when the purse is small, other sources of income (e.g. exploiting what there is of the oil revenues) will hold sway.
The very definition of a Super Power is one with deep enough pockets to run the table by sheer persistence no matter how stupid the occasional bet. The fact that the US can no longer play for high stakes, for that matter the fact that really none of the large nation states will be able to for awhile, creates a vacuum and the historical patterns is that opportunistic dictators love to exploit vacuums.
Sorry Hugo, my disdain for the man and his minions will not go away once he leaves office. War crimes don’t get erased by regime change.
As for the projection for the coming Muslo/Arabian Tribal Dance, I really think the looming depression changes the whole playing field and narrows possibilities. While we may have been able to purchase a softer withdrawal while we still had the big Visa Card in the Sky, now that its been taken away, it’s far more likely to be “So long, been good to know ya.”
Going to be hard to convince the American politicos to fund a quasi Marshall plan as a way to prop up our own little Tito in Iraq when the home front is the first concern and a black hole level of fund suck.
That is a game changer folks. Will our little experiment with @Iraq.gov/puppet work if they use their oil money for their own reconstruction, letting us off the hook? Two wild cards there; oil prices, and the incredible lightness of moral being when insanely large amounts of lightly monitored money are involved.
I think that we will slink out of Iraq, much like we did in Vietnam because, in this instance, we cannot afford to do anything else. I think that there will be major civil insurrections as the primary alignments (Sunni, Shia, Kurd) all jockey for consolidating power, or for simple survival. Blood bath? Probably. When the culture has grudges that run back an inconceivable number of generations, there will be blood. The earlier “ethnic cleansing” and creation of Ghettos was but a prolog.
The Balkan solution will be the world’s impulse to try to make the chaos stop, but no one is going to have the power or funds to impose it, and the area will have to sort itself out on it’s own.
At it’s worst we will see the African solution, as warlords create carve outs they can control. At best we will see someone with enough clout and conviction rise to a level where he/she can pull enough of the clans together to control what oil income there is, and force the others to go along for their own good. My personal bet, given the depression and historical part corruption plays in Iraqi politics is on the warlord scenario at least in the short run.
As I say, the world’s economic picture is a game changer. It makes politics as usual impossible, and all the old models of response, good and bad, that involve large amounts of capital are going to have to be shelved. We will still try to steer things by paying for covert ops, and bribing leaders we need in covert and overt ways, but when the purse is small, other sources of income (e.g. exploiting what there is of the oil revenues) will hold sway.
The very definition of a Super Power is one with deep enough pockets to run the table by sheer persistence no matter how stupid the occasional bet. The fact that the US can no longer play for high stakes, for that matter the fact that really none of the large nation states will be able to for awhile, creates a vacuum and the historical patterns is that opportunistic dictators love to exploit vacuums.
I’m with you, JT. How do we trust our leaders as long as their finances are tied to our security? We can’t even get the US government to give up the UFO files and when you consider that they tell us that there is nothing there, that’s just weird.
Wanta have a fine afternoon of paranoia? Look up The Disclosure Project and watch that two-hour film. It’s a fun distraction from Abdul the NailMaker.
One thing is sure: the Bush Doctrine has to be burned on the front lawn. That gave up even the pretext of provocation for the pretext of provoking a provocation. Not being a first strike nation was our one claim to some morality over the forces we possess.
I’m with you, JT. How do we trust our leaders as long as their finances are tied to our security? We can’t even get the US government to give up the UFO files and when you consider that they tell us that there is nothing there, that’s just weird.
Wanta have a fine afternoon of paranoia? Look up The Disclosure Project and watch that two-hour film. It’s a fun distraction from Abdul the NailMaker.
One thing is sure: the Bush Doctrine has to be burned on the front lawn. That gave up even the pretext of provocation for the pretext of provoking a provocation. Not being a first strike nation was our one claim to some morality over the forces we possess.
I’m with you, JT. How do we trust our leaders as long as their finances are tied to our security? We can’t even get the US government to give up the UFO files and when you consider that they tell us that there is nothing there, that’s just weird.
Wanta have a fine afternoon of paranoia? Look up The Disclosure Project and watch that two-hour film. It’s a fun distraction from Abdul the NailMaker.
One thing is sure: the Bush Doctrine has to be burned on the front lawn. That gave up even the pretext of provocation for the pretext of provoking a provocation. Not being a first strike nation was our one claim to some morality over the forces we possess.
I’m with you, JT. How do we trust our leaders as long as their finances are tied to our security? We can’t even get the US government to give up the UFO files and when you consider that they tell us that there is nothing there, that’s just weird.
Wanta have a fine afternoon of paranoia? Look up The Disclosure Project and watch that two-hour film. It’s a fun distraction from Abdul the NailMaker.
One thing is sure: the Bush Doctrine has to be burned on the front lawn. That gave up even the pretext of provocation for the pretext of provoking a provocation. Not being a first strike nation was our one claim to some morality over the forces we possess.
Ken, I know that you come by your Bush sentiments honestly, and that you are dead serious about them. Maybe some years from now, when he’s safely out of office by a longshot, I’ll have the pleasure of knowing you still and then can ask you, what war crimes. That guy, a war criminal? In the context of war, as we know it and as it ever has been known in the West, which was the crime? How was he the criminal, or one of the criminals?
I trust you with these incendiary questions, but not now, and not here. Sometime, though, I hope.
In the meantime my sense of your umbrage is that war itself was and is an outrage, and that George Bush, as the author of a war in Iraq, is purely outrageous. If that is indeed your view, then it certainly is not a view I would disparage.
Ken, I know that you come by your Bush sentiments honestly, and that you are dead serious about them. Maybe some years from now, when he’s safely out of office by a longshot, I’ll have the pleasure of knowing you still and then can ask you, what war crimes. That guy, a war criminal? In the context of war, as we know it and as it ever has been known in the West, which was the crime? How was he the criminal, or one of the criminals?
I trust you with these incendiary questions, but not now, and not here. Sometime, though, I hope.
In the meantime my sense of your umbrage is that war itself was and is an outrage, and that George Bush, as the author of a war in Iraq, is purely outrageous. If that is indeed your view, then it certainly is not a view I would disparage.
Ken, I know that you come by your Bush sentiments honestly, and that you are dead serious about them. Maybe some years from now, when he’s safely out of office by a longshot, I’ll have the pleasure of knowing you still and then can ask you, what war crimes. That guy, a war criminal? In the context of war, as we know it and as it ever has been known in the West, which was the crime? How was he the criminal, or one of the criminals?
I trust you with these incendiary questions, but not now, and not here. Sometime, though, I hope.
In the meantime my sense of your umbrage is that war itself was and is an outrage, and that George Bush, as the author of a war in Iraq, is purely outrageous. If that is indeed your view, then it certainly is not a view I would disparage.
Ken, I know that you come by your Bush sentiments honestly, and that you are dead serious about them. Maybe some years from now, when he’s safely out of office by a longshot, I’ll have the pleasure of knowing you still and then can ask you, what war crimes. That guy, a war criminal? In the context of war, as we know it and as it ever has been known in the West, which was the crime? How was he the criminal, or one of the criminals?
I trust you with these incendiary questions, but not now, and not here. Sometime, though, I hope.
In the meantime my sense of your umbrage is that war itself was and is an outrage, and that George Bush, as the author of a war in Iraq, is purely outrageous. If that is indeed your view, then it certainly is not a view I would disparage.
Won’t it be ironic that when all is said and done in “Iraq,” that made-up nation, if somebody just like Saddam comes along and ends up ruling the roost again?
I used to work with a former member of the Iraqi national cyclilng team who had nothing but admiration and respect for the long series of “strong men” who have ruled there. Well, maybe his ambitions will only extend to “natural Iraq,” as in the old empire once centered in Baghdad, that ambition that I once heard Tariq Aziz tell some really smart Council on Foreign Relations people back in the mid-70s, was “all that the Iraqi people want,” to applause from the crowd. (That includes Kuwait, of course.)
Ah, this is all way too complicated. Let’s get back to a basic simple rule: “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.”
And just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
Won’t it be ironic that when all is said and done in “Iraq,” that made-up nation, if somebody just like Saddam comes along and ends up ruling the roost again?
I used to work with a former member of the Iraqi national cyclilng team who had nothing but admiration and respect for the long series of “strong men” who have ruled there. Well, maybe his ambitions will only extend to “natural Iraq,” as in the old empire once centered in Baghdad, that ambition that I once heard Tariq Aziz tell some really smart Council on Foreign Relations people back in the mid-70s, was “all that the Iraqi people want,” to applause from the crowd. (That includes Kuwait, of course.)
Ah, this is all way too complicated. Let’s get back to a basic simple rule: “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.”
And just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
Won’t it be ironic that when all is said and done in “Iraq,” that made-up nation, if somebody just like Saddam comes along and ends up ruling the roost again?
I used to work with a former member of the Iraqi national cyclilng team who had nothing but admiration and respect for the long series of “strong men” who have ruled there. Well, maybe his ambitions will only extend to “natural Iraq,” as in the old empire once centered in Baghdad, that ambition that I once heard Tariq Aziz tell some really smart Council on Foreign Relations people back in the mid-70s, was “all that the Iraqi people want,” to applause from the crowd. (That includes Kuwait, of course.)
Ah, this is all way too complicated. Let’s get back to a basic simple rule: “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.”
And just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
Won’t it be ironic that when all is said and done in “Iraq,” that made-up nation, if somebody just like Saddam comes along and ends up ruling the roost again?
I used to work with a former member of the Iraqi national cyclilng team who had nothing but admiration and respect for the long series of “strong men” who have ruled there. Well, maybe his ambitions will only extend to “natural Iraq,” as in the old empire once centered in Baghdad, that ambition that I once heard Tariq Aziz tell some really smart Council on Foreign Relations people back in the mid-70s, was “all that the Iraqi people want,” to applause from the crowd. (That includes Kuwait, of course.)
Ah, this is all way too complicated. Let’s get back to a basic simple rule: “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.”
And just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
“Won’t it be ironic that when all is said and done in “Iraq,” that made-up nation, if somebody just like Saddam comes along and ends up ruling the roost again?”
It is the likely outcome in my opinion, but they might surprise us. The difference will be if ‘we’ pick the guy or if ‘Iran’ picks the guy or if the ‘made up Iraqis’ pick the guy. How will we know? That’s the paranoid response.
But the better question is, why should we care?
For the most part, I see progress in this situation only in terms of ‘we’ (meaning the US) ridding itself by innovation and discipline of any reasons to care who comes to roost in Bagdhad. The best way to get rid of the bad effects of desire is to get rid of the desire.
Energy policy is the first goal of long range security. We like lower gas prices but I’d rather we make it so they are impossible to raise because we make it too cheap to compete. Either those current prices at the pump are a sham to keep us addicted, or conservation as energy policy works.
So safer world by reducing dependency on those who wish us ill or simply just are ill themselves, and a cleaner world at the same time. It’s an irresistable combo and all we give up is leg room and MPH.
“Won’t it be ironic that when all is said and done in “Iraq,” that made-up nation, if somebody just like Saddam comes along and ends up ruling the roost again?”
It is the likely outcome in my opinion, but they might surprise us. The difference will be if ‘we’ pick the guy or if ‘Iran’ picks the guy or if the ‘made up Iraqis’ pick the guy. How will we know? That’s the paranoid response.
But the better question is, why should we care?
For the most part, I see progress in this situation only in terms of ‘we’ (meaning the US) ridding itself by innovation and discipline of any reasons to care who comes to roost in Bagdhad. The best way to get rid of the bad effects of desire is to get rid of the desire.
Energy policy is the first goal of long range security. We like lower gas prices but I’d rather we make it so they are impossible to raise because we make it too cheap to compete. Either those current prices at the pump are a sham to keep us addicted, or conservation as energy policy works.
So safer world by reducing dependency on those who wish us ill or simply just are ill themselves, and a cleaner world at the same time. It’s an irresistable combo and all we give up is leg room and MPH.
“Won’t it be ironic that when all is said and done in “Iraq,” that made-up nation, if somebody just like Saddam comes along and ends up ruling the roost again?”
It is the likely outcome in my opinion, but they might surprise us. The difference will be if ‘we’ pick the guy or if ‘Iran’ picks the guy or if the ‘made up Iraqis’ pick the guy. How will we know? That’s the paranoid response.
But the better question is, why should we care?
For the most part, I see progress in this situation only in terms of ‘we’ (meaning the US) ridding itself by innovation and discipline of any reasons to care who comes to roost in Bagdhad. The best way to get rid of the bad effects of desire is to get rid of the desire.
Energy policy is the first goal of long range security. We like lower gas prices but I’d rather we make it so they are impossible to raise because we make it too cheap to compete. Either those current prices at the pump are a sham to keep us addicted, or conservation as energy policy works.
So safer world by reducing dependency on those who wish us ill or simply just are ill themselves, and a cleaner world at the same time. It’s an irresistable combo and all we give up is leg room and MPH.
A made-up nation? Really. President Wilson made up Czechoslovakia. Hitler invaded it, and then so did the Soviets do. Later, it split. At which point was it “made-up”? And what does that make it now?
Or how about India? Mr. Gandhi’s violent orchestrations split that country into a state of mitosis that continues to threaten the security of the globe. Is India “made-up”, then? Is Pakistan?
The people on the ground in those countries — those countries being Iraq, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, India, Pakistan — those people enjoy lives undreamt of by their parents and grandparents. How unreal is that?
A made-up nation? Really. President Wilson made up Czechoslovakia. Hitler invaded it, and then so did the Soviets do. Later, it split. At which point was it “made-up”? And what does that make it now?
Or how about India? Mr. Gandhi’s violent orchestrations split that country into a state of mitosis that continues to threaten the security of the globe. Is India “made-up”, then? Is Pakistan?
The people on the ground in those countries — those countries being Iraq, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, India, Pakistan — those people enjoy lives undreamt of by their parents and grandparents. How unreal is that?
A made-up nation? Really. President Wilson made up Czechoslovakia. Hitler invaded it, and then so did the Soviets do. Later, it split. At which point was it “made-up”? And what does that make it now?
Or how about India? Mr. Gandhi’s violent orchestrations split that country into a state of mitosis that continues to threaten the security of the globe. Is India “made-up”, then? Is Pakistan?
The people on the ground in those countries — those countries being Iraq, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, India, Pakistan — those people enjoy lives undreamt of by their parents and grandparents. How unreal is that?
Yah, I am just sure that the slum dwellers and garbage eaters of India and Pakistan, and the folks who get a couple of hours of electicity a day in Iraq, and the folks who felt the benefits of “ethnic cleansing” in those “made-up” states you cite, are definitely experiencing (maybe not enjoying, exactly) lives very definitely undreamed of by their parents and grandparents.
And isn’t it a grand thing that a US President like Woodrow Wilson had the power, all by his little ole self, without no help from no one, to “make” Checho and Slovakia into one-made up state. Of perpetual hatred and warfare.
And I really like the idea of blaming Gandhi for the “mitosis” of India and Pakistan — like the daughter cells share anything of the genetic heritage of the parent except (like maybe cancer cells) the ability to threaten the entire human body politic. And which “American” companies came through with the gizmos and technologies that helped a number of other “nations” (or at least their military elites) develop nuclear weapons?
But we can go back and forth ad infinitum on this stuff. And hey, what do I know? And why should I care? Like the blind philosophers arguing about the nature of the elephant, when each can only touch a tusk, the trunk, the tail, a leg… It’s not like anybody posting here is going to actually influence the fate of the species in any significant way. Unlike the Kossaks.
You say “po-tay-to,” I say “po-tah-to,” blah blah blah. Let’s all kill each other and let our Gods sort everything out.
Yah, I am just sure that the slum dwellers and garbage eaters of India and Pakistan, and the folks who get a couple of hours of electicity a day in Iraq, and the folks who felt the benefits of “ethnic cleansing” in those “made-up” states you cite, are definitely experiencing (maybe not enjoying, exactly) lives very definitely undreamed of by their parents and grandparents.
And isn’t it a grand thing that a US President like Woodrow Wilson had the power, all by his little ole self, without no help from no one, to “make” Checho and Slovakia into one-made up state. Of perpetual hatred and warfare.
And I really like the idea of blaming Gandhi for the “mitosis” of India and Pakistan — like the daughter cells share anything of the genetic heritage of the parent except (like maybe cancer cells) the ability to threaten the entire human body politic. And which “American” companies came through with the gizmos and technologies that helped a number of other “nations” (or at least their military elites) develop nuclear weapons?
But we can go back and forth ad infinitum on this stuff. And hey, what do I know? And why should I care? Like the blind philosophers arguing about the nature of the elephant, when each can only touch a tusk, the trunk, the tail, a leg… It’s not like anybody posting here is going to actually influence the fate of the species in any significant way. Unlike the Kossaks.
You say “po-tay-to,” I say “po-tah-to,” blah blah blah. Let’s all kill each other and let our Gods sort everything out.
Yah, I am just sure that the slum dwellers and garbage eaters of India and Pakistan, and the folks who get a couple of hours of electicity a day in Iraq, and the folks who felt the benefits of “ethnic cleansing” in those “made-up” states you cite, are definitely experiencing (maybe not enjoying, exactly) lives very definitely undreamed of by their parents and grandparents.
And isn’t it a grand thing that a US President like Woodrow Wilson had the power, all by his little ole self, without no help from no one, to “make” Checho and Slovakia into one-made up state. Of perpetual hatred and warfare.
And I really like the idea of blaming Gandhi for the “mitosis” of India and Pakistan — like the daughter cells share anything of the genetic heritage of the parent except (like maybe cancer cells) the ability to threaten the entire human body politic. And which “American” companies came through with the gizmos and technologies that helped a number of other “nations” (or at least their military elites) develop nuclear weapons?
But we can go back and forth ad infinitum on this stuff. And hey, what do I know? And why should I care? Like the blind philosophers arguing about the nature of the elephant, when each can only touch a tusk, the trunk, the tail, a leg… It’s not like anybody posting here is going to actually influence the fate of the species in any significant way. Unlike the Kossaks.
You say “po-tay-to,” I say “po-tah-to,” blah blah blah. Let’s all kill each other and let our Gods sort everything out.
And I would have gotten an even bigger kick out of the Bush-Maliki scene if Nouri had offered his LEFT hand to The Only President We’ve Got Right Now.
And I would have gotten an even bigger kick out of the Bush-Maliki scene if Nouri had offered his LEFT hand to The Only President We’ve Got Right Now.
It is a fitting bookend to W’s run. From sitting clueless in a Florida classroom while the WTC goes down to standing clueless in a Green Zone press room. History being made right before our eyes. Next . . .
It is a fitting bookend to W’s run. From sitting clueless in a Florida classroom while the WTC goes down to standing clueless in a Green Zone press room. History being made right before our eyes. Next . . .
Hugo,
I am with you on one thing, being new to this can make blogging unfun to those of us who love fluency.
Hugo,
I am with you on one thing, being new to this can make blogging unfun to those of us who love fluency.
Hugo,
I am with you on one thing, being new to this can make blogging unfun to those of us who love fluency.
I’d like to blow the dog a couple of goodbye kisses myself.
Of course that act would probably end me up in Gitmo as a terrorist.
I’d like to blow the dog a couple of goodbye kisses myself.
Of course that act would probably end me up in Gitmo as a terrorist.
I’d like to blow the dog a couple of goodbye kisses myself.
Of course that act would probably end me up in Gitmo as a terrorist.
When I read Mr. Taplin’s post, I was sure this would be about a change of imperium, an approaching interregnum or how that might affect current and future citizens of the world. Wow, was I wrong.
When I read Mr. Taplin’s post, I was sure this would be about a change of imperium, an approaching interregnum or how that might affect current and future citizens of the world. Wow, was I wrong.
@rhbee: At least you *can* link to that page by typing in some text. I come from the days when you had to know some esoteric network voodoo to make that work. That limited the topics in the same way CB radio operators once only discussed the radios and their signal strength.
Most free blog systems have editors that put the basic structure inline. They aren’t very good ones but they work and they are free.
Me? I can type HTML in my sleep and even write the type definitions. We have come a good distance from the days when one actually needed to know what a <!DOCTYPE gml — …. > was for but not far enough not to have to know what follows href=”". We blew that with the coronation of HTML and the mantras “It must be easy; It Must Be Free”.
One often discovers that the cry for the common man is not always the same as the cry for the common good, but it is always a cry to battle for a minority not in power to get the power. And so it goes.
@rhbee: At least you *can* link to that page by typing in some text. I come from the days when you had to know some esoteric network voodoo to make that work. That limited the topics in the same way CB radio operators once only discussed the radios and their signal strength.
Most free blog systems have editors that put the basic structure inline. They aren’t very good ones but they work and they are free.
Me? I can type HTML in my sleep and even write the type definitions. We have come a good distance from the days when one actually needed to know what a <!DOCTYPE gml — …. > was for but not far enough not to have to know what follows href=”". We blew that with the coronation of HTML and the mantras “It must be easy; It Must Be Free”.
One often discovers that the cry for the common man is not always the same as the cry for the common good, but it is always a cry to battle for a minority not in power to get the power. And so it goes.
@rhbee: At least you *can* link to that page by typing in some text. I come from the days when you had to know some esoteric network voodoo to make that work. That limited the topics in the same way CB radio operators once only discussed the radios and their signal strength.
Most free blog systems have editors that put the basic structure inline. They aren’t very good ones but they work and they are free.
Me? I can type HTML in my sleep and even write the type definitions. We have come a good distance from the days when one actually needed to know what a <!DOCTYPE gml — …. > was for but not far enough not to have to know what follows href=”". We blew that with the coronation of HTML and the mantras “It must be easy; It Must Be Free”.
One often discovers that the cry for the common man is not always the same as the cry for the common good, but it is always a cry to battle for a minority not in power to get the power. And so it goes.
I suspect Hugo, it’s going to be the other way around. Once Bush/Chaney are out of office and the artificial act of stamping “Top Top Top Secretist Secret” on every discarded gum wrapper in the Oval Office is done away with, even you will have to hold your nose at the coming revelations.
As for “What war crimes?”, I agree he is no Pol Pot, but dismissing action because they don’t rise to the worst level is ridiculous, and frankly I expect better of the US than to participate in any level of war crime.
Definitions of war crimes are a bit of moving target, getting to be decided by the winners, but here is the top list from Wiki…
“War crimes are defined in the statute that established the International Criminal Court, which includes:
1. Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as:
1. Willful killing, or causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health
2. Torture or inhumane treatment
3. Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property
4. Forcing a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of a hostile power
5. Depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial
6. Unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer
7. Taking hostages”
Of those the Bush administration (with Dems assenting) is openly guilty of 2, 5 and 6. The dodge that they are dealing with terrorists rather than enemy combatants is a white wash to justify bad behavior. There is a strong argument that starting a war without adequate provocation is in itself a war crime, or a crime against peace. Iraq fits that, period, end of story.
So no, that future conversation, Hugo, will not see me relent that the man is anything other than a war criminal as well as a felon (separate issue) for his refusal to follow constitutional law at home.
But then I am one stubborn assh*l* who stayed seated during the pledge of allegiance (until the offset of the election of Obama) because of atrocities in Vietanm (e.g. Agent Orange and the bombing of Cambodia just to START the list).
I suspect Hugo, it’s going to be the other way around. Once Bush/Chaney are out of office and the artificial act of stamping “Top Top Top Secretist Secret” on every discarded gum wrapper in the Oval Office is done away with, even you will have to hold your nose at the coming revelations.
As for “What war crimes?”, I agree he is no Pol Pot, but dismissing action because they don’t rise to the worst level is ridiculous, and frankly I expect better of the US than to participate in any level of war crime.
Definitions of war crimes are a bit of moving target, getting to be decided by the winners, but here is the top list from Wiki…
“War crimes are defined in the statute that established the International Criminal Court, which includes:
1. Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as:
1. Willful killing, or causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health
2. Torture or inhumane treatment
3. Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property
4. Forcing a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of a hostile power
5. Depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial
6. Unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer
7. Taking hostages”
Of those the Bush administration (with Dems assenting) is openly guilty of 2, 5 and 6. The dodge that they are dealing with terrorists rather than enemy combatants is a white wash to justify bad behavior. There is a strong argument that starting a war without adequate provocation is in itself a war crime, or a crime against peace. Iraq fits that, period, end of story.
So no, that future conversation, Hugo, will not see me relent that the man is anything other than a war criminal as well as a felon (separate issue) for his refusal to follow constitutional law at home.
But then I am one stubborn assh*l* who stayed seated during the pledge of allegiance (until the offset of the election of Obama) because of atrocities in Vietanm (e.g. Agent Orange and the bombing of Cambodia just to START the list).
Oh I forgot to answer “How him specifically?”
Well he sat in the room where the decisions were made to do those things and had the ultimate power to stop them.
If a man sitting in a get away car when a murder is committed is also guilty of murder, then Bush is even more guilty of the war crimes his administration instructed people to do.
It’s a lie Hugo that the President is above the law. It was a lie when Nixon said it. It was a bigger lie when Bush acted on the assumption and took the nation down a fatal path reducing us to a “second world” nation. I would argue that your respect for the office colors your assessment of the man. He is a war criminal and a felon. Period.
As far as redesigning the military-industrial matrix in light of possibly changed budget priorities this election cycle with more unfortunate and misplaced emphasis on taking care of us “soft targets,” maybe a read through this longish article on how one corner of it works might inform the discussion:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/28/magazines/fortune/predator_gimbel.fortune/index.htm
I think it’s especially cool that the act of pulling the trigger (on up to 14 Hellfire missiles on a “Predator” drone, for example) has been so thoroughly divorced from any sensation by the shooter of the terror and pain felt by those on the receiving end of “smart” weaponry. Just another green-screen shoot-em-up war game any more!
And of course we can console ourselves anyway that anyone blown to bits by one of these items is guilty of SOMETHING BAD — they live in the same neighborhood as people that somebody on OUR SIDE has determined are OUR ENEMY.
Can’t hardly wait for the “Terminator” series to start coming on line! There will be some REAL cans of kick-butt opened then! No feeb “hearts” in those Tin Woodsmen!
Ken, as an anthopologist you understand, as so many of these casual correspondents do not do, that nation-states, and the idea of national pictures, did not exist until quite recently. So presumably you get that “nation-builiding” is not at all a new conceit, but rahter that the conceit is as ancient as the FACT of nations themselves — most historically, importantly and honorably our nation. Get real? Yeah, let’s do. Let’s get really real.
The bloggers here conflate unwittingly ethnic sentiments, tribal gestures and commitments, national, linguistic and hemispheric ones. It’s a ludicrous display that makes mincemeat of our immediately current trade arrangements. The homogeneity, the consistency even, lies only in that this chamber prefers people who consider their preference for peace superior to proven preparations for peace, or prosecutions for returns to peace.
Piffle.
Yes, JT, and just as they did with the ballistic missiles we thought when combined with tactical nukes would erase the need for fighters, everyone will be developing radio-controlled killers. And by then the laser pistols in a cereal box will be available to kids.
Sunday afternoons in the park will be delightful. Instead of poisoning pigeons, we’ll be dodging hellfire and zapping carbon-fiber flying monkeys… or we’ll just go to Lockheed Martin and blast the engineers going to work in the morning.
The 50s thinkers talked about the Weapons So Terrible No One Will Risk Them as the way out of the insanity of global warfare but do nothing about violence right to the edge of it. At what point do we insert a grenade at birth that lets Central Control wipe out deviant aggressors? How about a Scarlet Letter? Gort? A blemish on our really permanent record?
The problem is to teach the crazies that there are things worth living for but they immediate translate that into the things worth dieing for so they can live for them?
I was soooo hoping the Starships would be ready for hijacking by now. You guys in the Haight promised they would be. So like, where are they and who gets to bunk with Gracie?
Alfred E. Neumann is our friend. Worrying just messes up our face.
Yes, JT, and just as they did with the ballistic missiles we thought when combined with tactical nukes would erase the need for fighters, everyone will be developing radio-controlled killers. And by then the laser pistols in a cereal box will be available to kids.
Sunday afternoons in the park will be delightful. Instead of poisoning pigeons, we’ll be dodging hellfire and zapping carbon-fiber flying monkeys… or we’ll just go to Lockheed Martin and blast the engineers going to work in the morning.
The 50s thinkers talked about the Weapons So Terrible No One Will Risk Them as the way out of the insanity of global warfare but do nothing about violence right to the edge of it. At what point do we insert a grenade at birth that lets Central Control wipe out deviant aggressors? How about a Scarlet Letter? Gort? A blemish on our really permanent record?
The problem is to teach the crazies that there are things worth living for but they immediate translate that into the things worth dieing for so they can live for them?
I was soooo hoping the Starships would be ready for hijacking by now. You guys in the Haight promised they would be. So like, where are they and who gets to bunk with Gracie?
Alfred E. Neumann is our friend. Worrying just messes up our face.
“Nation-building” is what the West does. It is the West. Who better to do it than we? Why now do we doubt the courage of these Athenian concoctions? The stuff about tribalism is stuff strained through our jaundiced eyes. The benefits of self-rule, built around an authentic mythic picture of a nation-state defined, bounded, by a particular people, is pure and real, and it does happen. It happens. Is happening. Ugly? No. On the whole, how beautiful.
President Bush has not endeared himself to the world during his Presidency…90% of his Presidency was post 9/11 and protecting America was his first goal and removing threats to America was his second goal. In time we will know the success or failure of his administration.
9/11 was the first foreign attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941…looking through this lens gives you some perspective on George Bush’s priorities.
From the perspective of India, after the disastrous Clinton years, George Bush has been a good friend…no emotions, no nonsense. He recognized the reality of India, the incorrectness of Clinton’s behaviour and policies and set about correcting the relationship. India’s needs and wants were given their rightful place; the historical significance of India’s achievements in democracy and economic growth was recognized and responsibile behaviour with respect to nuclear proliferation was rewarded. Today, the great democracies share a special and growing relationship…while it is a little like being in a cage with an elephant…George Bush has single handedly transformed this relationship.
While it is possible the USA is safer today what about the World? I can only point again to the resources in manpower and finance that the USA is expending around the world to fight the war on terrorists. India, the Middle-East and Asia have prioritized and executed short term tactics. USA on the other hand usually has a very long term objective and uses short-term tactics and strategies in pursuance of the longer term goal. I can only tell you that India and the Middle-East have not been successful in keeping our nations or neighborhood safe. While I lament the loss of life in the Iraq war and perhaps even the loss of “International Law” no one will argue the case for restoring Saddam Hussein. We are all glad to be rid of the dictator…as long as we did not have to do the dirty work.
Is Iraq better off today? I do not know, however, amongst the rubble and terrorist attacks I see Iraqis arguing and fighting about their future. Surely that is a good sign…if the people get representation there is hope for the future.
A couple of days ago a newsman threw shoes at President Bush during a news conference in Baghdad…the agile President ducked but the newsman was pinned and jailed…there are demonstrations in Baghdad for the newsman’s release and he is being hailed as a hero. Would they prefer Saddam Hussein? These people do not even appreciate the fact that they are now able to demonstrate, freely….amazing denial of reality. If the shoe had been thrown at Saddam what would have happened to the newsman?
I have included the BBC link for the “shoe attack” but watch the ending short interview clip with President Bush; he says “I don’t know what his beef is” referring to the newsman who threw the shoe. This naivete is infuriating…if the shoe had hit his head I wonder if it would have jarred enough neurons to understand the source of all the anger.
Thank you, Lee, for linking to a somewhat more complete document of the event. Perhaps it’s to do with the partiality of your source document, but I don’t draw from the event the smugness you seem to derive from it. I see a head of state — our State, as it happens — utterly unperturbed by the infantile behavior of a pipsqueak. Moreover, I see our President calling the pipsqueak a pipsqueak, and in so doing letting his host know that pipsqueaks are nothing about which to be discomfitted.
That’s all I see. Now, what again do you see?