I did. I put terrorism into the sentence when I said it.
The simple assertions don’t cut it. You can call blue “black,” but it doesn’t make it so.
Just as I referred to terrorism despite your insistence to the contrary when the sentence I wrote is write in front of your face, and open shooting war does not equate with stability.
Not at all. Iraq and Al Qaeda are connected. It really can’t be denied. It doesn’t matter whether or not they were working together or in concert. That’s not the important connection.
The important connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq is us, The United States. They are both our enemies. They both operate in the Mideast. They are both threats. Our ability and how we deal with one, effects our ability and how we deal with the other.
I found hundreds and am confident I could find thousands if I needed to… I liked that one the best, because the quote was from your guy, from the leading left of center newspaper in the US.
Just for the sake of balance, here’s one more, from Bush:
How do I argue with this? Not our enemy? My bad, I just figured with all the shooting and killing and the policy of regime change, and the open hostility, that they were maybe our enemy. But you said they weren’t. So…
[quote[I’m just amazed at the rhetorical gymnastic it too to draw that “connection.”[/quote]
I’m not talking here about whether Scylla’s usage is grammatically proper, or proper within the conventions of standard usage. I fully aware that one can wallow in jingoist, nationalist sentiment and lay claim to shared responsibility for all sorts of things: we sent the first man to the moon, we fought the Germans, and so forth.
Rather, I’m saying that this standard use of the word ”we” doesn’t reflect anything of import in the real world. You might think that ”clearing the mountain” is a good thing, you might support those who are ”clearing the mountain,” etc. – but unless you’re actually doing the work, then you, personally, aren’t ”clearing the mountain,” and your use of the pronoun ”we” is nothing other than empty formalism.
Or, to put it more eloquently (at the risk of sounding maudlin):
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
Talking big about how much you support the war effort while sitting behind the wheel of your SUV and sending America’s less fortunate off to fight doesn’t give you the right to use the word ”we.” Period. Scylla:
Sure.
Let me know when you’ve personally put your ass on the line for these policies you seem to believe in and I might actually develop at least a little respect for your convictions. Me, I imagine a few days eating dust on patrol in Iraq and friend Scylla would probably be as vehemently against the invasion as anyone on these boards, but who knows?
Regarding ”containment” and ”deterrence”:
First off, I don’t think one should dismiss Scylla’s assertion that the situation in Iraq was ”unstable” so lightly. Depends a bit on what one intends with the word ”unstable,” but relations between the US and Iraq certainly weren’t happy.
Otherwise I can’t tell who is arguing for what in this round of the debate, so I’ll simply add my 2 cents.
It is argued that terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda are uncontainable and undeterrable. Unlike nation-states (such as Iraq), terrorist organizations have no territory to defend, no population to protect, and no infrastructure (such as roads, dams, and buildings) to lose in the event of war. In other words, these organizations have nothing that can be ”held hostage” in a balance of terror. An intractable, fanatic enemy, willing to die for his/her cause, with no home or hearth, is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to deter.
Clinton’s clumsy efforts at containing and deterring al-Qaeda during the 90s provides useful historical context. He retaliated against bin-Laden by first bombing an aspirin factory (launching a unilateral, unprovoked attack against a neutral country, the Sudan), and followed that up – if a remember correctly – with cruise missiles over Afghanistan, wherein very expensive military hardware was employed to destroy about 40 dollars worth canvas tents. Neither of those actions had the slightest deterrent effect on al-Qaeda, however, as 9/11 demonstrated with horrifying clarity.
This isn’t meant to imply that containment and deterrence are totally useless in TWAT, especially when dealing with other nation-states and state-supported terrorism. It simply means that since 9/11 most policy analysts agree that these tools are rather obsolete, and of limited use.
Random’s google page is a bit misleading. Some of the papers it turns up discuss TWAT in terms of containment, but some of them mention a policy of containment only to specifically reject it – like this one:
(The author goes on to argue convincingly that while we can’t rely on containment, the idea that we can simply beat our opponents into submission is equally hopeless in the long run.)
Anyway, Bush outlines his strategy of preventative war in NSS 2002, and makes it pretty clear that his administration no longer believes a policy of simple containment will work. So in that sense, Diogenes is correct: the Bush administration has striven to delink the concepts of terrorism and deterrence. After all, the argument that terrorism can’t be contained or deterred served as one of major pretexts for the invasion of Iraq.
That doesn’t mean that one can’t find random politicians talking about ”containing terrorism,” or newspaper articles that mention the idea. I’m not sure what such examples prove, really.
I find your analogy between renovating a kitchen, on the one hand, and invading Iraq, on the other, intriguing. I’m going to play with it a bit; hope you don’t mind. I’ll repost it for the sake of the readers’ convenience:
Lakoff argues that people tend to generalize from their idea of what a family should be to how they think society as whole should be constructed. This is the reason, he claims, that political convictions tend to be immune to factual argument. Your analogy provides an excellent example of Lakoff’s theory in action. For what could possibly be more domestic, or more related to one’s intimate family life, than renovating one’s kitchen?
In the analogy you present we see a counterpoint between two figures, Clinton and Bush. Clinton appears to represent something akin to the “Nurturing Father,” a figure who seeks to maintain a rather unsatisfactory status-quo. Bush, by contrast, represents the “Strict Father,” a man of action who finds the status quo unacceptable, and sets about immediately refurbishing his dilapidated kitchen. (He tolerates no holes in his linoleum!)
Lakoff would probably argue that while at one level you’re talking about Clinton and Bush, at another level you’re dealing with, and attempting to resolve, a personal conflict involving your own family, your relationship to your own father as a strong or weak man, and your own role as strong or weak father. This deeper level, however, is primarily unconscious, irrational, and emotional. In particular it is a level of private unconscious fantasy as opposed to shared reality. A good father, you seem to say, would never let his family live in a run-down kitchen – why, the place almost caught fire! Even if it costs a lot of money, and turns out to be considerably more trouble than anticipated, we must repair our home. This is the underlying phantasy. In a moment we’ll see how it stacks up to reality.
In the same way that a good father fixes his dangerous kitchen, you argue, Bush must fix the Middle East. We shouldn’t be surprised that it has turned out to be more work than expected: remodelling work always turns out to be more trouble than originally planned. And sure, sometimes things go astray, workers don’t show up when they’re supposed to, and so on. But the good, strict father knows that this work must be done, and with his focussed discipline he will eventually finish the job.
In short, it seems to me that your analogy provides strong evidence that you do tend to generalize from your ideas of how a family, and in this case a father, should act, to how a president should act. And it also seems to me that if you had a different unconscious model of (or relation to) the good father – say, a father who valued understanding complex situations rather than merely acting upon them – then your political opinions would also be different.
What’s also interesting to me are the ways in which your analogy fails to correspond to the actual situation in Iraq. For example, you write, ”Clinton inherits a kitchen,” in a completely unproblematic fashion. There is no nuance here whatsoever. Obviously, Clinton owns the kitchen, and it his to remodel (or not) as he see fit. No one else has a claim to the kitchen. No one else uses the kitchen or lives in the kitchen. It’s a part of his, and our, home. In your analogy Clinton, and later Bush, have an unquestioned right to renovate the kitchen at their whim.
Yet neither Clinton nor Bush own, or have ”inherited,” the Middle East. The Middle East is not a part of our home, that we can remodel at will. It belongs to someone else.
The remodelling is hard, necessary work, but in your analogy, no one suffers or dies. Human beings are reduced to faulty plumbing fixtures, in need of repair or replacement. That certainly makes the whole issue much, much tidier, don’t you think?
You then compare Chalabi to the unexpected discovery that there’s something wrong with the plaster or plumbing. “No no!” you seem to say. “The Bush administration didn’t know he was a crook when they hired him – it came as a complete surprise, one of those sorts of things that always pops up during a remodelling project!” Yet as has been pointed out to you several times now, and as you have yourself agreed, Chalabi came as no surprise. He was a known crook from the very beginning.
Finally, notice the absence in your analogy of anything that could be related to the major ongoing scandal regarding the invasion, namely, “WMDs:”
Bush claims there are giant, man-eating cockroaches living in the walls. His family stares at him in disbelief. He sends an army into the kitchen, they rip down walls and tear out the plumbing. No cockroaches. “Oh well,” says Bush, “we needed to renovate the kitchen anyway.”
No? Nothing like that? Nothing at all?
All in all, an excellent example of framing the issues in a way that makes your point of view seem imminently reasonable, as long as one accepts your presuppositions. Unfortunately the underlying phantasy that seems to inform your view has only a tenuous contact with the real situation in the Middle East.
Perhaps just a nitpick, but it happens often enough that it is annoying. The quote was not from Kerry. The quote was from a newspaper reporter writing a story about Kerry.
You’re swinging in the right direction, Svin, but the bat ain’t connecting with the target.
You make the point that the deaths of the Iraqis don’t seem to matter much in Scylla’s calculus. I’d dispute that, and say that they do. The difference is that you view the deaths negatively, and Scylla views them positively.
You’re also sort of on the right track with Scylla’s father figure problems. But it goes back a generation further:
(Scylla’s emphasis in the original)
To Scylla, the Iraqis are scary monsters. Just as if they were, like, black or something.
In the post directly after that OP, Scylla writes:
Don’t you think using Scylla’s open and heartfelt account of his early confusion regarding matters of race against him – and purposefully misrepresenting them as well – is hitting a little bit below the belt?
Anyway, for the sake of clarity, I’m not just pointing the finger at Scylla. My childhood experiences also undoubtedly affect my sense of how a family should be, and probably carry over into my political convictions as well. I merely thought that Scylla’s analogy was a particularly explicit example of the principle in action.
After reading the linked OP, I could probably analyze his attitude even more deeply, but to do so publicly, on a message board, would be unethical in the extreme. I’m simply not going there.
Finally, note to self: never, never publish private information on a public message board.
In the thread you quoted, Scylla made clear what his actual attitudes are. In the particular post you quoted, he was walking the reader through his discoveries as he grew up, and for you to quote that bit as thogh it represents something about the here and now that is racist is absolutely contemptible.
Which, coming from you, Desmostylus, is par for the course.
If military action is necessary and prudent, it makes no real difference if the advocate of such action is grabbing a rifle and roaring to the front, or is the mildest and meekest of Milquetoast. It is what it is. In this particular instance, of course, it isn’t.
A similar caveat applies to the insinuation of racism. Its not that Scylla holds the lives of brown-skinned people less dear than he should, but that he holds human lives in general less dear than I would prefer.
And finally, the kitchen remodeling metaphor only works if the initial exposure of pipes, etc. is obtained by the injudicious application of dynamite, the necessity of destroying the kitchen in order to save it, or at least to prevent its availability to giant mutant cockroaches.
To sum up: Scylla’s approval of aggressive war on the presumption of evil intent on the part of target is not cowardly nor racist. What it is is batshit crazy. I point this out only in an effort to be scrupulously fair.
No, nothing in “your world” can match anything said here. Since I don’t own an SUV your argument is debunked. Flat out. I’m also laid off, a Bush voter and a GOP contributor. <Wow, is that what Satan looks like?>
Mr. Svinlesha, you asked for someone to put his ass on the line? OK, but give me a line first.
In the US we have a volunteer military. Some join to serve the US, some join for job training, some join for tuition to college.
Whatever the reason for joining, they joined. There is first and foremost, no matter how much you hate it, the obligation that you do what is asked of you in time of peace or in time of war.
The US military branches are NOT an easy way to get a free college education. The tuition is a benefit you get for signing your name to a contract that says you will follow whatever orders are given.
Also, the military isn’t a free tech school. You may get the training and degree (and I hope you do)
I would love to get my pharmacist degree for free, but I’m too old to join the services. So I will add to my $20 grand debt getting the training needed.
Free from being shot at barring a terrorist attack.
This is what I plan to do. Now maybe a soldier can tell you what he feels about all this.
I put more stock in this letter first one than anything seen earlier.
I challenge anyone to refute the letter cited. (Again, it’s the first of three)
I can no longer ever be upset with you. No matter what I say or do from here on out, there will always be one Doper that is an even a bigger douchebag, donkey-punching, goat-feltching. fucktard, ass-bag I will always have to look up to.
Congrats** Desmo**, you’re my new hero. :rolleyes:
All I’m saying is, as annoying as desmo can be, I kind of see it as an intense rivalry betewen the two of you. I doubt either of you will ever achieve a definitive victory.