As the person who posted the off-board comment that sparked Collounsbury’s response, I just want to mention a couple of things, and then I hope everyone will let it rest finally.
I’m Jewish, which Collounsbury knows damn well (as does december). Having interacted with him on numerous occasions, I have yet to see him post anything, anywhere, which tarred all Jews with the same brush. The comment said nothing at all about any specific Jew being deserving of becoming a victim of genocide, or about the moral validity of anti-semitism. It was a comment on a single person and his specific personality characteristics; the fact that december is Jewish may color his opinions, but it sure as hell doesn’t give him the identical worldview as all other Jews, and hell, I should know. Ever hear the saying, “two Jews, three opinions”? There’s a lot of truth to that; just come to my mom’s house for Rosh Hashanah, and you’ll see a prime example over after-dinner coffee.
And I believe everyone here is intelligent and computer-savvy enough to figure out how to comment on the remark in the medium in which it originated.
I do have mixed feelings about my opposition to the war in Vietnam. On the one hand, the US didn’t seem to know what we were doing. I have no reason to believe we ever would have figured out how to prosecute the war effectively.
OTOH our withdrawal led directly to the slaughter of a huge number (hundreds of thousands IIRC) of South Vietnamese people by the Communists. Our withdrawal from the region also made it easier for Communist leader Pol Pot to kill millions of his Cambodian countrymen.
There’s no contradiction there, actually. It’s entirely possible to be an agnostic, or even an atheist, by belief, and still a) believe in the value and preservation of one’s Jewish cultural heritage, and b) be considered a Jew by observant Jews for purposes of observing Jewish law and for passing down one’s Jewish identity to one’s descendants.
(I’m in the same boat; I was raised Jewish, and meet all qualifications for being considered a Jew in terms of ancestry, etc. But when an Orthodox co-worker invited me to her son’s Bar Mitzvah, I wasn’t able to go, because I would have had to take motorized transportation of some sort to get there, and she cannot be the cause of another Jew violating the Sabbath, no matter how indirectly. And any children I may have would be considered Jewish under Jewish law.)
Is Nasrallah’s strategy reasonable? “Hezbollah” and “reasonable” are mutually exclusive terms. The logical fallacy is in assuming any connection between Hezbollah’s acts of terrorism and the Democrat’s opposition to Bush’s policies.
Are anti-war comments by these leading Democrats encouraging the murder of Americans in the middle east? Americans are being murdered in the Middle East because they are an occupying force. The presence or lack of opposition to the war in the US means nothing to the murderers. If dissent in the occupying nation’s home is a necessary condition for guerrilla warfare, then we need another explanation for binLaden’s successful campaign against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan.
In view of this impact, should Democratic leaders be more careful of what they say?
Although the alleged impact was refuted in the previous point, one could also argue that Mr. Bush be more careful with what he says. The “bring it on” comment was, in my opinion, irresponsible and dangerous.
If comments by Democratic leaders are serving to encourage America’s enemies, do these comments constitute treason? It would be if this was Nazi Germany rather than the United States.
Should Dean and others apologize to the families of slain servicemen, since their comments encouraged the attacks against them? Any Democratic apologies should come from those that supported Bush’s war.
Is it appropriate to note and debate whether anti-war Democratic statements serve to encourage some terrorists? In other words, should we consider abandoning civil liberties in order to help preserve the American way of life? No. To abandon the principles of political debate and loyal opposition to the party in power is an affront to those that have died to preserve these liberties for us.
Thanks for your response BobLibDem. Just one comment:
I reject your restatement of my POV on #6 (underlined). I agree with you that the right of free speech must be protected and valued, no matter that some of that speech may be stupid or even harmful. However, I think it’s appropriate to point out when speech is harmful. Along with Voltaire I will defend to the death the Democrats’ right to foment disunity in a time of war. However, when it comes time to vote, I won’t forget that they put their own political well-being ahead of the country’s well-being.
Apparently, december is not, since he thinks he can’t.
I guess he lacks the intelligence, the capability, or the balls to address this directly with Coll in his LJ. I can’t say that I know which one it is, though.
december, I reject your whole fucking OP as a mangling of the truth. You’ve reached a new low, and your willingness to march in lock-step with the Bush Administration has never been more clear. You don’t care who gets in the way or who gets hurt or killed as a result, as long as Bush and his cronies get a second term. The ones doing the most harm to our troops in the field are not the ones against the war – it’s people like you who can’t see past their own political agenda.
This OP was moved to the Pit for a reason, december. It’s because it’s a worthless, baseless screed against those you hate so deeply, and it’s patently obvious. THIS is what your defenders call “polite”? Fuck off, you rude, insulting twit.
december, Can you do us all a favor and just change your sig to this:
That really seems to be about all that you have to say. Think of all of the valuable time that you could save! All that you would need to do is open a thread, hit reply, checkmark “show signature” and submit! They you could go back to jerking off to Ann coulter or something.
Yeah, there’s no history of anti-Semitism in Europe. Nothing to see here. Go have another Inqisition or Pogrom and get back with me. Did I say all Europeans are anti-Semites? Fuck, no. But, just ignore that–and history while you’re at it.
Stupid fucking Euro wankers. Dish it out, but can’t take it.
Fair enough, the restatement of your position is obviously not what you intended and I gladly retract it. However, one could argue that to oppose what had been a very popular war is hardly putting your political well-being ahead of the country’s. If putting your political well being first was the objective, then you merely read the polls and do what is most popular, and in this case it would be support the war.
Since being warned about your most recent accusations in GD did not make a sufficient impression on you, LC, it is necessary to point out the following:
december’s latest post to draw outrage, while classically foolish and inflammatory, does not involve racism or bigotry.
When in the past december has flirted with bigotry, I have seen him back off it when challenged.
You, on the other hand, have never apologized for spewing bigotry aided by plagiarizing material from racist/white supremacist websites,as detailed here.
You have no right whatsoever to blast december for being a bigot, unless you feel justified by the mantra “Takes one to know one.” And december is not in your league by any measure.
In other words, can the crap.
This isn’t an apology for supporting the murder of Americans, december, this is just more of your typical dodge and weave. If you truly believe that Democrats are encouraging the murder of Americans in Iraq for daring to criticize Bush, you are far more guilty of exactly the same for opposing Vietnam, where the entirety of the NLF’s strategy was to wear down US public support for the war. If one wants to play polemics for its own sake, US involvement in Vietnam led directly to the deaths of millions of Vietnamese in a war that the US knew it couldn’t win. The only thing holding up the Republic of Vietnam from collapsing under its own corrupt weight was US troops who spilled their blood while by your own logic you encouraged their murder. The US also found it convenient to recognize Pol Pot as the legitimate government of Cambodia after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979.
I refuse to believe that you don’t understand what was offensive about your post, why it did not deserve to be placed in GD, and why people are calling you out on it. I can only hope that you learn from this, but I am under no illusions that you will. It’s a political screed that even your supporters here won’t defend.
We’ve been over this same territory again and again with december. I get the impression that he doesn’t want to change his posting style in order to facilitate reasonable debates. Instead he seems determined to start GD threads that includes subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) offensive material. Personally, I’ve concluded that he’s not overly interested in actual debate in his Great Debates threads. YMMV
I’m not going to bother pitting december. Blowing on the same horn as everyone else is going to get me lip rot.
But I’m going to address the “Democrats shouldn’t oppose the war” comments.
When the resort full of Australian tourists got bombed, a lot of Australian politicians and columnists and such said “This is because we spoke in support of the war. We should withdraw our support from the US so that we don’t get bombed again. Then the terrorists won’t pay any more attention.”
Religious extremists of this sort are not going to be satisfied with anything other than a global theocracy. Electing a rabbit to office isn’t going to help anything.
I guess anything but rigid belief in the Bush Apoligista lifestyle is pretraying the country. I guess asking where:
the tons of WMDs ready to go in 45 minutes are?
the tons of WMDs are?
any WMD’s are?
where even any WMD “programs” are?
where their nuclear program went?
where did all those ties to terrorists they promised us go?
where all those new jobs from massive pay cuts for the rich went?
where the economic recovery due to massive tax cuts went?
where our balanced budget and fiscally responsible government went?
what happened to the constitutional seperation of church and state?
what happened to all of the support the US had after 9/11?
why did the Bush Amdinistration withold information form and then classify key portions of the 9/11 committee report?
what happened to all those promises regarding Afganistatan? Did we follow through on any of them?
Why quote Voltaire when your precious administration actively tried to stifle soldiers opinions in Iraq? First Amendment means what now? But I guess the soldiers in Iraq are less patriotic then you, as many of them are actively questioning their role and mission in Iraq in the media. Thank God there is patriots like you defending us from your keyboard.
Are you actually stupid enough to believe the only reason American soldiers are dying in Iraq is that people are starting to call Curious George out on his many lies and exagerations for invovling us unilaterally in a the war against Iraq? That if the the large number of American would stop answering polls saying they feel Bush spun the facts reagrding Iraq that the attacks would stop?
Have you forgotten that all the Republicans and conservative commentators who denounced President Clinton when he bombed Iraq for non-compliance and accused him of “wagging the dog” and that Iraq was no threat ect. . . I assume these people are all traitors and should be denounced as well.
Will you either duck the answer, or ignore 90% of the post while responding with a vague unresponsive post? Actually I feel pretty good about the answer to this one.
Given the number of veterans in Congress and in the American populace (and shockingly, even in the Republican party) asking hard questions about what the Bush Administration knew and when they knew it about Iraq, your OP comes off as an illconcieved attempt to tie to the deaths of American soldiers to any opposition of the Bush Administration policies. Such an attempt by you is repugnant and beneath contempt. You should be ashamed, if you had even a tiny clue, you would understand how offensive your OP was.
I disagree. The reason the thread was moved to the pit, was the overwhelming ad hominem attacks against december. Calling him a traitor or a terrorist is clearly against the rules of GD, (attack the post not the poster), and since so many valued posters chose cyber disobedience in their retaliatory rage, the elegant solution was to wipe clean the sins of their numerous condemnations by one act. Halleluja ! Praise Gaudere !
