Is that what they say betray is? It would be odd for them to number it “1.” then, which would actually imply a list. So, let’s just go see if this is you doing some more selective text cutting and pasting, shall we.
Ah, yes, here we go. American Heritage Dictionary, definitions of betray, continued:
So, rather than splitting hairs, asking you to make your case based on the actual word that they used seems appropriate, since your own source makes clear that the word has multiple meanings. Considering that the text of the ad talks all about how he has continually been misleading in his depiction of progress, it would make sense that that is what they meant.
Do you think that when they say that today, before congress, he is likely to betray us, does it make more sense that they are saying that right in front of congress he is going to “give aid and comfort to the enemy,” or that he is going to “lead us astray” or “deceive”?
Be specific with the words used and make your argument, if you can. Otherwise you are engaging in the standard Republican tactic of misstating, shading, fudging or otherwise lying in order to manipulate others’ emotions.
It’s more a matter of not firing them when they happen to point out that your plans are shit. Surely you’ve heard of the Generals that have been let go, either because they disagreed with the low estimates needed early on, or the surge, more recently. Obviously, it is disingenuous on your part to suggest that there have been generals who have thrown their hands up in the air in surrender, but you simply cannot be so ignorant of the issue that you’ve not heard of the ones Bush has thrown over the side.
It’s a generous interpretation on your part to suggest that there is “something in there for everyone.” Instead it paints a pretty bleak picture of the situation, suggesting that there is merely a chance for “modest” but limited gains if we keep things up just as we have, but that violence will “remain high” and that political progress won’t happen without a “fundamental” change. Where’s the stuff that you say is in there for you? That there’s been a drop in violence during most, but not all, of the last two months?
Here’s a clue - there’s always a drop in the violence during these times of year.
It isn’t that Petraeus has believed in the mission, and tried to execute his part of it to the best of his abilities. I’m all for that.
But Petraeus has also been a pro-war cheerleader in the domestic press for the past several years.
At one level, that troubles me in that I don’t know how an active-duty general or admiral would have been able to write op-eds giving a correspondingly pessimistic view of the likely success of the war without its having adverse consequences for his career. And if they can’t freely opine in either direction, they shouldn’t be free to opine in the approved direction.
Maybe I’m wrong, and equally pessimistic pieces from the military brass wouldn’t have kept them from getting that next star. But ever since Shinseki, it’s been kinda hard to believe.
On another level, Petraeus’ earlier optimistic assessmentshave all been wrong, and he surely knows this as well as anyone. So his cooking the books now, to come up with another positive assessment based on thin justification, is doubly disturbing.
Why does it have to be all one question, when in fact it was two questions? Read the transcript with the 2nd question omitted and it makes perfect sense. It’s entirely possible that Boehner had formulated that answer in his head before he even heard the 2nd question. When you’re being peppered with questions on live TV with a microphone in your face, you often don’t respond in the clearest way possible.
OK, maybe you didn’t participate in that thread. It was about a year ago and went on for quite a few pages.
Here’s the story:
Many on the right took that as a slam at the troops-- that Kerry was saying they were a bunch of drop-outs. But Kerry later explained that it was a botched joke and he was talking about Bush.
Hell, you can question the character of whoever you like - I’ve done so myself. Did so in the Beauchamp thread (I thought I had cause to do so), have done so for numberless politicians, will do so again.
Ultimately, though, this boils down to a policy question. And if you avoid policy arguments and concentrate instead on attacking the character of a man who has broken his hip jumping from a plane and has been shot in the service of his country, you run the risk of opening yourself up to counterattacks that not only neutralize that character question but carry the day in the policy debate as well.
Like I said, a lot of Democrats instinctively know this, which is why they regarded the MoveOn ad as not helpful in the slightest. This viewpoint was echoed by many posters here.
Petraeus is being attacked for his behavior in providing incorrect, misleading and party-line evaluations of the war. That’s it, plain and simple.
You keep trying to appeal to emotions by his injuries. These are completely irrelevant to his veracity and his inability to predict the course of the war. Furthermore, I’m sorry, but a couple of training injuries don’t really seem to me to be all that compelling. I’m sure they were traumatic for him, and I thank him for his service in that regard.
You won’t see me mocking wounded service people by wearing purple heart band-aids, like the Republicans did at the Republican National Convention, but your repeated efforts to drag those incidents into this seem pathetically desperate.
John Mace, I agree with you about Boehner. He probably had formulated a response upon hearing the first part of the question. He ought to have perked up his interest upon hearing reference to the loss of life, but he didn’t. He also should be roundly criticized for calling even only the amount of money we’ve poured into the war to achieve such poor results a small price. He also could have made his clarification a lot better by clearly saying what you did.
Interesting that you find them not so compelling. I recall a non-combat related accident was the source of a considerable argument between you and Scylla.
That incident, BTW, ought to illustrate the perils of attacking a soldier or veteran in this fashion. Tread carefully, buddy.
From Boehner’s perspective, though, if he really does buy into the bullshit that the Iraq War is part of the fight against al Qaeda, the money we’re spending there would be a small price to pay to get rid of them. The problem is, of course, the Iraq war is not part of the fight against al Qaeda and is probably helping them more than hurting them. So, we’re doing worse than pouring money down a hole.
Now, does he really buy into that bullshit? Maybe he does. But it’s lose-lose since he’s an idiot if he does buy into it and a complete slimeball if he doesn’t. Take your pick.
I missed that, but my basic reaction here is, “what does one thing have to do with the other?” It’s like the whole bit where people had to call the 9/11 hijackers ‘cowards.’ They were evil people, but they certainly weren’t cowardly. Physical bravery doesn’t necessarily imply good character, whether we’re talking about David Petraeus or Mohammed Atta.
I ain’t Hentor, but can I go “Woooooo!!! I’m scared!!!” anyway?
I certainly read it as “if you don’t study hard, you may not have any choice but to enlist in the Army and find yourself stuck in Iraq.”
OK, so what’s the problem?
Not “what was the problem with the stupid people out in the real world, including those in the news biz, and the right-wing flacks who tell them what to think, who think a statement and its converse are the same thing,” but "what was the debate here on the Dope, where even people like Shodan can tell the difference between a statement (don’t study ==> get stuck serving in Iraq) and its converse (serving in Iraq ==> didn’t study)?
I mean, you don’t need to argue that it sounded like he meant the first statement; I fully agree with that. But apparently the problem was, people equated it to the second, its converse. Am I right?
I suppose MoveOn could have used “Astray Us,” but apart from that sounds nonsensical, MoveOn proudly admits that they wanted to smear (my term) Petraeus with a term that was “sticky.” I don’t think they were intending to equate him to the Sirens. And if MoveOn uses a term for the sole purpose of inflaming the public, and they pick one that is a perfectly good synonym for traitor, I see no reason to cut MoveOn any slack. This idea that MoveOn was carefully choosing definition 1 and 4 of the word betray but they REALLY REALLY didn’t mean definition 2, is just baseless. They chose a word they knew would get people riled up, and that’s not because betrayer can also mean seducer. Again, MoveOn is upfront about wanting to use a term that was “hard-hitting” and “catchy.”
And whether the label is true or not, you have to admit: it was an ad hominem attack that would never be allowed for use in Great Debates. You know for sure that you couldn’t call me “Betrayerman” or whatever, nor could I make up a name for you along the same context, without being given a stern warning by a mod. Personally, I think the fact that this particular forum enforces a rather healthy level of decorum is something that people in my town ought to learn from.
MoveOn says it in their own words in explaining the intent of the ad. They say, “…the General has in fact cooked the books, and in doing so, he betrayed the public trust.” I think that’s stronger than saying Petraeus is a misleader or someone who’s leading us down the primrose path, which seems to be what you’re saying. Betraying a public trust, in my interpretation, isn’t someone who’s simply a deceiver, it is someone who has turned their back on the country and its people. “Betrayer” and “traitor” are both excellent words to describe that concept. And whaddya know, they appear in the dictionary next to each other a bunch of times! Honestly, this is like MoveOn calling Bush an idiot, me saying that MoveOn called him a moron, and then fighting over the different between an idiot and a moron.
I’m not being disingenuous, I think you’re simply misreading what I’m saying. Let’s take a deep breath and calm down for a second, I’ll try to explain this one more time. My view that Petraeus would shade his testimony toward a rosy scenario has zero, zilch, nothing to do with Bush. I am saying it was predictable because Petraeus is a top general, and generals – whether they work for Bush or Clinton or Truman or whomever – are going to tell the public that they can win the war. If you know of some counterexample in history, where general so-and-so said to the public the battle was lost, I’d like to know about it. Again, I don’t think that’s what generals ever do, so I’m not surprised Petraeus did it, and it has nothing to do with Bush whatsoever.
Let me put it this way: what do you think Petraeus should have said? And whatever it may be, do you think it is realistic for any general during any administration to have said that? I’d really like to know.
As far as your comment on the NIE, let me briefly say that. as I understand it – and please correct me if I’m wrong – you think the surge has done nothing at all. Here’s my thoughts: the situation in Iraq today is somewhat different than it was last year. I think there may have been some modest reduction in the violence, but I’m not convinced it will last. The news stories about Sunnis turning on AQI certainly are something quite different. It seems that Iraq’s army is doing modestly better, but the police are still a disaster. I think the division of Iraq along sectarian lines – as in, Sunnis driven out of Shiia areas, and vice versa – has gone so far that I’m not clear how much more fighting there is to be done within neighborhoods, but the struggle for national power will continue to be a source of violence. Fundamentally I see no shift that makes me think that this is in any way a winnable war for the US. The one “bright” spot I see is that if we were to pull out today compared to a year ago, I think the civil war probably would have been worse a year ago. However, I don’t believe that is something that can be attributed to the surge, in fact, I think it is an effect of the ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods.
So I don’t see it as a black or white situation. It’s still a disaster, but what I’m saying is that the effort to attempt to cite the CIA to back up MoveOn’s position is dumb, because the CIA clearly doesn’t agree with MoveOn. For example, the CIA basically says that if we were to change the mission of our troops in Iraq, things would get worse. Isn’t MoveOn arguing for a change in the mission?
AFAICT, the only way for DFHs to get any play at all is to say something in a* tone *that people can’t ignore. Because the media damned sure doesn’t care about substance. So yeah, maybe if MoveOn says something in an inflammatory manner, people may actually read a fraction of their message, rather than none of it at all.
Hold it right there. You say that MoveOn meant it in the sense of “betray[al of] the public trust.” That’s a considerable way short of betraying one’s country, i.e. treason.
So yeah,
and
but AFAICT, they used the word legitimately, even while trying to grab the maximum attention with it. And I can’t see what’s wrong with trying to grab attention.
One can be a traitor without committing treason. During all this referencing of dictionaries, I believe the roots of the word traitor have something to do with Judas.
Because it’s the same kind of attention sought of Rush Limbaugh and Joseph McCarthy. I absolutely detest that these guys (meaning MoveOn) are actually on “my” side. It is embarrassing. And I think this kind of childish namecalling does absolutely nothing to convince people who aren’t already MoveOn sympathizers to join the anti-war cause. In fact, I think it does considerable damage to making anti-war the mainstream.
And as should be eminently clear, one can betray without being treasonous or a traitor.
And I hate that there are so many on my “side” who want nothing more than to turn their guns around on us. Folks who seem to prefer to spend their time tsk tsking or fragging silliness like this ad.
Folks who fall for all the concern trolling and make the Democratic party so fearful of saying something wrong or doing something that will bring out the tsk tskers that they can’t even do what they were given a mandate to do by the voters. It does a disservice to the country to hamstring ourselves as the opposition party. The last six years are ample enough evidence of that. We can’t be brought to do what’s right because folks on our “side” are more concerned about doing what is proper.
That is far more embarrassing to me and damaging to efforts to do what needs to be done.
Wow – I laughed out loud at that comment, because news I saw on Friday about MoveOn trying to recruit primary challengers against Democrats who MoveOn doesn’t believe are anti-war enough.
(I believe the story was in National Journal, which is a subscription service I only have at work. If you want to see the story I’ll be happy to look it up on Monday. Needless to say the DSCC is furious at MoveOn.)
And as far as MoveOn being electoral KoolAid, I’ll simply point out one more time that MoveOn was virtually silent in 2006, and I think it is no cooncidence that they shut up and Dems eeked out a win in the Senate by the thinnest of margins.
If you want to look at how well MoveOn has done in elections, just look at all their victories: there’s defeating Lieberman in the primary in 2006, and… and… hm. I’m only coming up with one.
