That’s a funny sort of ‘realism’ you’ve got there, friend.
They signed the PNAC statement of principles. Can one not be a neocon if one is a businessman? I don’t exactly see that.
That, right there, kicks them out of the ‘realist’ camp, doesn’t it?
Well, yeah. But they didn’t, because they weren’t realists; they were apparently believers that once liberated, democracy would happen as if by magic. That’s neoconservatism all the way: we can invade a country and bring it democracy, as if we were delivering a pizza. (Faster, please.)
Do you actually believe a word of this garbage you have thrown out? If so, I most fervently hope that you are not and never will be in a position to influence the thinking of anyone, ever, at any place or time.
It means nothing of the sort. It’s simply an unsupported assertion.
Further, you know as well as I (and anyone else who’s been around here for more than a day) that even 200 cites of lefties exhibiting the behavior Jim’s Son attributes to them will accomplish nothing more than endless denials and/or equivocation. He is clearly stating his opinion–an opinion which is based on what he has seen coming from the left in this country and an opinion with which I agree.
If the conservatives around here were as quick to demand cites everytime someone cast generalized aspersions on tighty-righties, neocons, Bushbots, etc., we’d have time for little else.
I have seen no lack of calls for citations from those on the Right and wonder where you got the idea that the behaviors of the Left and Right on this board differ much, at all.
I would tend to agree that GIGObuster’s demand for citations for what is obviously uninformed personal bias on the part of Jim’s Son is a bit heavy-handed, (my personal approach would be to either ignore or laugh at that which is obviously content free), but turning this into one more “Righties are doodyheads/Lefties are sillikins” exchange is not going to produce an intelligent discussion, either.
Actually, I think its main problem is a flawed understanding of the political and cultural climates of the foreign countries where the neocons aspire to install democratic government and (more importantly) free-market capitalism.
You say bias; I say observation based on life experience.
But be that as it may, my main objection was the claim that an assertion without a cite was a lie. The rest was admittedly editorializing on my part, and, now that I think about it, is largely based on what I’ve seen in the Pit where I spend most of my time. I will acknowledge that here in GD it may well be that conservative posters call for cites on a par with their liberal adversaries.
Maybe a program to get rid of Saddam and establish democracy was a reasonable goal. I doubt that it was reasonable but pretend that is was. It doesn’t automatically follow from that, that an invasion of Iraq in the face of widespread world opposition was the best way to get to the goal.
The experience with you so far has demonstrated that I am glad that you do appear with no cites to support even if your life experience can be applied to the issues at hand.
Indeed, as I even cited what I said on my post, in GD I expect conservatives to ask for cites.
Perhaps the neocons think the Iraq occupation-reconstruction would have gone exactly as intended, if only the neocons at the Pentagon been allowed to run the whole thing their own way, and had not had to share power with the “realists” at the State Department.
Let me help you out here, SA, its a matter of calibration. Being more liberal than Calvin Coolidge is not “left-wing”. I am “left-wing”, Der Trihs is most definitely “left wing”, and you are…well, wrong.
They signed the PNAC statement of principles, but I don’t know that it means anything. I mean, Gary Bauer signed it, for God’s sake. I, at least, always got the impression that Cheney, especially, was more concerned about securing oil supplies than helping Iraq. And I can’t think of many businessmen who are neocons. Most neocons are academics or opinion columnists.
That doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not they were realists. It just means that they were poor planners.
Maybe there was some of that, but it seems like it was more, firstly, a cost saving measure by Rumsfeld…remember Rumsfeld’s “military reform”…the idea that the army was too big and unweildy, and that what we needed for the future were small, quick, mobile deployments. Secondly, I think it was the very realist hesitation toward nation building. There was the idea of “Oh, Sadaam’s a threat, lets take him out and then turn it over to the Iraqis.” Thirdly, there was an overreliance on the UN…there was the idea that all the countries that didn’t back the war would, once the removal of the Ba’athist government had happened, come in and do the reconstruction. Fourthly, for political reasons, the administration wanted to minimize our role in Iraq. They didn’t want to have to try to sell a multi-year expensive occupation.
Actually, that is generally attributed to John F. Kennedy who quoted it as an “old saying” following the Bay of Pigs. The closest actual phrase appears to be that of Count Galeazzo Ciano, “La Victoria trova cento padri, e nessuno vuole riconoscere l’insuccesso.”, (rendered by Bartlett’s as “As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.”), from Ciano’s diary, dated September 9, 1942.
[This has been a Straight Dope[sup]®[/sup] factoid.]
