I’m just afraid that if I move this mundane and pointless thing to MPSIMS I’ll get some sort of whiny thread of teenage angst thrown back into GD, in return.
…what questions did you feel Galloway did not answer?
What names did he call them? Here’s a transcript for your reference.
Were they names like
, or
or many more easily scrollable.
But yet
“Isn’t it ironic, don’tcha think?”
Funny thing is, the same Republicans who you love so much for “liberating” Iraq were also busy making “offhand excuses” for Saddam back in the 1980s. Hell, they were even shaking hands and doing business with him.
And yet for you and your fellow right wingers, this is all in the past, and something we just need to get past so we can focus on the here-and-now.
Perhaps you could outline for us exactly when and how it was acceptable to make excuses for Saddam, and when and how it wasn’t. Is it merely a function of party politics, or is there some crystal ball you gaze into in order to assign retrospective levels of guilt and innocence?
It appears we have very different ideas of what constitutes an interesting debate. In my experience any debate where the audience leaves with strong feelings about the debaters versus the issues (i.e. “Galloway is despicable” instead of “The war is a net good”) is not an especially good debate. If a debate could be fairly characterized as a “character assassination contest” instead of a debate on the issues then I would rather skip out on the experience and stay at home with a sci-fi book in my hands.
Strangely I thought we were in accord on this point Sam. After some of the mudslinging that happens in this forum I thought I had read something from you where you said you were sick of the debates becoming about the individuals participating in it versus the ideas they were acting as proponents of.
Oh well, to each their own. I’d rather see/read/hear “debates” where the issues are more important than the individuals. Judging by the utter lack of quoting of debate points and “that’s an interesting take on the issue” type comments I’m guessing this “debate” was more of a character assassination contest than an honest presentation of ideas and counterpoints.
Enjoy,
Steven
Still not finished listening to it–they changed the excerpts again over at that radio station. One thing I did think was quite disingenuous of Galloway was, after him praising the insurgency as fighting for their country against an occupying force, Hitchens mentioned that these freedom fighters had bombed and driven out the UN. Galloway clutched his pearls and did a Joseph Welch “Are there no BOUNDARIES to your perfidy, sir?!” etc.
Uhm…mate…you can’t pick and choose which actions of the insurgents you like and don’t like. If you don’t support the Sergio Vieira de Mello-killers and the blowing up kids running for candy-killers, say so. Differentiate between them just as most Americans differentiated between “I need milk for my kids!” looters and “I’m going to besiege this hospital to steal drugs!” looters in New Orleans.
It was never “acceptable to make excuses for Saddam”. However, excuses were made “in the past”. Bush corrected those errors. In “the here-and-now” we need to bring Iraq back to normalcy.
Hitchens is doing invaluable work constantly reminding people who the insurgents are. They are Iraqi equivalent of KKK in post-abolition US.
Well, it is sort of strange that he “corrected those errors” with a Secretary of Defense who was actually instrumental in the past policy and, as far as I know, has never apologized for that policy.
People don’t win very many points in my book because they supported a thug when that thug was useful to them and then fight against that thug when that thug is doing things that they feel are against their interests. You might interpret that as nobility from your vantage point but I can pretty much guarantee you that you are setting yourself up for disappointment because you will find that most of the rest of the world (including many Iraqis), not sharing your self-congratulatory perspective, views things differently.
But of course. He was merely holding up Galloway as an example of those who oppose the war. The fact that his exemplar happens to be a detestable person is, depending on your point of view, either mere happenstance or a perfect example of argument ad hominem.
Yes, they were. By members of the current administration.
Hitchens, whether i like him or not, is a smart guy. I doubt he would make such a simplistic and naive historical comparison.
Funny, I just read this piece on the debate 15 minutes ago. Just popping in to share.
Hitchens seems to me to have made a decision to recast himself as a converted former lefty who has seen the light of why war is a good thing out of career consideratons. (If he were purely trying to change people’s minds I imagine he would have stuck with his Nation column; he quit that voluntarily.) Why he thinks this is the way to financial security superior to his tradtional publishing and readership base is beyond me. In any event it has focused a lot of attention on him and it looks like he is making some cash through the contraversy. This is all I’m left with as his other reasoning for switching sides on the Iraq issue has been illogocal and inconsistent, attributes I don’t normally ascribe to him.
I think KKK comparison is perfect, all the way to funny headgear and ever present guns.
Both KKK and III (Islamist Iraqi Insurgency) are best described as crashed oppressors, trying to restore the slave past, that suited them. (Yes, Iraqi people were enslaved by Saddam).
How about some actual historical analysis to support your theory, rather than pictures that tell us virtually nothing except perhaps that you have a propensity for making simplistic historical comparisons.
You want “funny headgear and ever present guns”?
First, a system of slavery and oppression, perfectly legal.
Second, this system of slavery is crashed by outside force.
Third, elements of old regime organize illegal terror movement, to continue oppression of their old subjects.
One slavery, one not.
You’re wrong already.
Hussein’s regime was bad enough that it can stand to be analysed and condemned all by itself, without making patently incorrect statements about it.
Guess that means you won’t argue about “oppression” part.
How’d you characterize the state of affairs in the country where ruling gang can do absolutely anything to anybody, anything they want? When anyone in your family can be tortured, raped and murdered, without any recourse to justice?
I don’t know…I am really skeptical about attributing Hitchen’s conversion to crass materialist causes. I am willing to believe that his views are sincerely-held, even if very wrong-headed. I also think there are just people in this world who are very politically-unstable and can oscillate wildly between extremes…Didn’t Robert Bork go from leftist (socialist?) to libertarian to religious-Right totalitarian nutcase? And, on a less-extreme scale, there is Senator “Zig-Zag” Zell Miller.
Why would i? In case you’ve forgotten, those of us on the left have been critics of Saddam and his regime for far longer than those in the current Administration. Leftists were criticizing Saddam back when Rumsfeld was shaking hands with him.
There are any number of ways to characterize it, but slavery—at least as it’s understood in relation to the antebellum American experience—is not one of them. I’m not arguing with you about the brutality of Saddam’s regime. I’m simply suggesting that, in your attempts to characterize it, you might be better avoiding inaccurate historical comparisons if you actually want to look like you know what you’re talking about.
I notice, by the way, that you have conveniently ignored the observation, made by me and others, that some of the very people you now praise for getting of Saddam were the same ones who were cozying up to him back in the 1980s. Do those guys get a pass?
Oh, dear, another belligerent persecuted unappreciated liberal. Relax, I remember.
So both were wrong, outrageous, horrible, terrible, despicable, even murderous regimes. Both didn’t go away quitely but produced secret terror societies, bent on terrorizing their old victims. By some remarkable coincidence those terror societies both adopted spooky hooded masks and gun brandishing postures.
I didn’t ignore “the observation”, I’m simply nauseated by it. What’s the point of this whining? Better late then never, as long as it’s done.
Analogy: if your spouse nags you to fix the house, fix it. If you fixed it and your spouse keeps nagging you took too long to fix it, file for divorce.