Well, yes, but even a blind squirrel does find a nut on occasion.
RTF I do respect you, but even though you may have point here I would not defend it too much, even realizing that does not mean you are on the whole wrong regarding the Bush supporters.
How is it even possible for Iraq to a cost us a victory in the WoT when the administration has told us the fight against extremism or whatever will go on for decades?
RTF: I think you’re getting too hung up on teh term “Fact Sheet”. I think it just means “these are the facts about what Bush’s new plan are”, or here’s what we will do. Now, I don’t doubt that the WH does consider it a fact that The War on Terror Cannot be Won if We Fail in Iraq in the same way you consider it a fact that we have already lost in Iraq. But I think a strong case can be made that at least one possible outcome of failure will be a worsening situation in the so-called War on Terror-- ie, failed state that becomes an al Qaeda breeding ground similar to Afghanistan. That’s especially possible if the country were to be partitioned since the Sunnis would likely end up with little or no oil revenue.
Of course, if another Saddam-like secular dictator were to take over, that would be a “failure” in Bush’s eyes, but would probably not lead to an al Qaeda presence being tolerated.
And we all know that the “War on Terror” cannot be won and never will be won since terrorism is a tactic, not an organization or a movement. But it does make sense to consider which strategies and tactics that we use in Iraq (or anywhere) are going to allow groups like al Qaeda to operate more freely or to draw in more recruits. The fucked aspect is that we wouldn’t have to be worried about that in Iraq if Bush hadn’t led us into war there in the first place. Still, we can’t go back in time and we have to deal with what we have in front of us now. The invasion brought al-Qaeda into Iraq, so what’s the best way to get them out?
Actually, I have already noted that RTF’s argument is weak. I have also noted that the pundits you selected have, indeed, wandered outside the Green Zone.
I just do not find that particular bit of information to represent an actual rebuttal of RTF’s position. Your pundits are not actually in quite as much danger as the GI who actually has to do door-to-door sweeps or dig up IEDs. (Nor, does it seem, that any of them are actually staying in Iraq for the same length of time as a typical military tour.)
The grunts who have established blogs are men and women who had already volunteered for the duty and now, through the wonders of modern technology, can express themselves from the front.
It hardly changes any serious discussion of the war (which this thread is not), but I do find it of passing amusement that I cannot name a single raging pro-war pundit who has pulled a Pat Tillman and put their butt where their passion is. Getting into an APC wearing a flak vest and helmet and being taken to locations where there are “success” stories to be photographed, (which pretty much indicates that the military escorting them did not consider the location particularly dangerous), does little to remove the stigma of chickenhawk, for me.
I figured he supplied those links because (3) was the only one that needed any sort of citation. Surely, it is well known that the military is overwhelmingly conservative and Republican.
If that is the most important goal, simply leave. A Shia-dominated Iraq will make very short work of AlQ. You do know that AlQ is an offshoot of a virulently anti-Shia sect, right? At any rate, they know this even if you don’t.
The Bushivik insinuation that leaving Iraq will somehow make Iraqi oil revenue available to AlQ is utter rot. There is no chance…zero, zip, none, nada…of AlQ even surviving, much less dominating, in a Shia controlled Iraq.
But what does that have to do with RTF’s position? 
Is he demanding, in addition to enlistment, volunteering for the most dangerous possible jobs in order to prove one’s general agreement with Bush’s policy? And in the end, doesn’t his whole argument hang on the fallacy that Bush himself would need to conduct door to door ambushes over there to prove his support of his own policy, and in general, wouldn’t every president who ever presidented have had to do the same?
I’m going to have to dig up names for you, because I"ve seen a number of them do just that. Blogs that have announced they were shutting down because the blogger had enlisted. I already pointed to my best friend, who did just that.
Those 1963 Milbloggers include quite a large number who joined up after the WTC attacks. Probably the majority of them. Here’s one who was blogging in the U.S., then had to shut down his blog for a year while he did a tour of duty in Iraq.
But see, it doesn’t matter if I drag out a dozen more of these and link to them. I’ll just get “Oh, whoo-de-do. You found 12 guys out of all those bloggers. Doesn’t change my point whatsoever.” It’s an unfalsifiable argument. Furthermore, it’s an irrelevant argument. The U.S. has an all-volunteer army. It is fully acceptable to advocate whatever role you feel is appropriate for that army within the political process without having to sign up for it yourself. The whole ‘chickenhawk’ thing is pure ad-hominem. It’s just a cheap shot. A particularly obnoxious one at that.
We have engaged in this work because the United States has clear interests at stake: an interest in helping to prevent the spread of a wider War in Europe; an interest in showing that NATO remains a credible force for peace; an interest in helping to stem the terrible, destabilizing flows of refugees this struggle is generating; and, perhaps most clearly, a humanitarian interest we all share in stopping the continuing slaughter of innocents in Bosnia.— President Bill Clinton speech, US Department of State Dispatch, April 4, 1994
(emphasis added to assist your occipital lobe)
Wow, there sure are a lot of dumbass conservatives trying to side-step the issue. Fucking Michelle Malkin?
Here’s the issue: If this is a battle for our lives, why the fuck are we increasing the size of our forces by about 15%? As Jon Stewart said, that’s a tip, and kind of a bad tip to boot.
If this is the central battle for our lives, why are we cutting taxes? Shouldn’t we be pouring resources into weapons war materiel?
If this is a battle for our lives, why aren’t we either seeing massive turnout for enlistment, or a draft?
At the very least, those who believe this is the battle for our lives should act like it. And in my mind that wouldn’t mean hiding behind Michelle Malkin’s skirt or suggesting that the Iraqis should fight the battle for our lives.
Dumbass motherfuckers.
Yes, my assumption of which I made a note of in my post. Still, I believe there’s an important distinction to be made, at least if you’re arguing (or supporting) RTF’s original assertion: is the military any more conservative and Republican now than it was prior to the war in Iraq? Or, to put it differently, just because the miltary was already full of conservatives/Republicans/conservative Republicans, it doesn’t necessarily follow that conservative Republicans have been rushing to sign up because they believe that this war is vital to The Global War on Terror/Islam/Rising Oil Prices/Sovereignty/Evidenciary Support.
As a liberal veteran, that wasn’t my experience. When I was in, there was a much more even distribution of left & right (& centrist) members than is commonly assumed by civilians. I don’t have any figures, but a list of left/Democratic politicians who served in the military would be one illustration.
The last part of that post didn’t quite come out right.
What I meant to say is that just because it’s well-known that military is overwhelmingly conservative and Republican, that isn’t evidence for the existence of group (2). Group (1), yes.
Which has, exactly, what to do with joining up to fight this supposedly deciding event in Western civilization?
MM is there to write more paeans to glorious leader and brag about being in Iraq with all the troops that are doing great and love everything she says. That you would cite her as someone putting her money where her mouth is on actually accomplishing something in Iraq is flat out laughable and pathetic and beneath you.
Seriously Sam, your case with actual enlisted bloggers was already strong. Dragging a bunch of preening peahens into it was your choice, not anyone elses.
Well known, but denied by many. Such as in this recent Great Debates thread on whether or not the US military is partisan.
If I thought it were that simple I’d agree with you. And if I thought this was the right place to debate that topic I would.
Now, that’s a Pit thread! Except the part about Michelle Malkin-- I think **Sam **only brougth her up because she’s one of those “wing-nuts” the OP talked about who is, at least in her capacity as a jounralist, over in Iraq.
But yeah, as Thomas Friedman said in his Op Ed piece today*, Bush is fighting the Iraq war with his pinkie. Whatever one might think of Friedman’s views in the past, he’s right about this particular issue. We’re not, as a country, acting as if this is “the decisive ideological struggle of our time”.
*It was in today’s San Jose Merc, probably earlier in the week in the NYT.
Yeah, let me reiterate that my mention of Malkin was in no way meant to be an endorsement of her. I rarely read her blog, and when I do it usually annoys me. I lump her in with Hugh Hewitt, James Taranto of the WSJ, and a few others I’ve read that routinely use disingenuous arguments or make arguments that are so intellectually weak I can’t believe they are serious.
The larger point RTFirefly and his ilk keep trying to make is that the bloggers who support the war are cowards and hypocrities who do their fighting safely behind a keyboard. To refute that, it isn’t necessary to show ones that are in the military, but ones who have actually stuck their necks out and risked their lives for what they believe in. Running around Iraq outside the green zone as a journalist is at least as dangerous, and maybe far more dangerous than actually being a U.S. soldier in that conflict.
But this argument is in the same vein as Rangel’s arguments for a draft, or Michael Moore pigeonholing congressmen and senators about whether their own children are in Iraq, the vapid claim that Cindy Sheehan somehow had more ‘moral authority’ to speak out against the war because her son died in it, or that military veterans who oppose the war have more right to speak than civilians who support it. None of these arguments are serious on their own merits - they are gimmicks meant to bludgeon the opposition. Democrats don’t REALLY believe that the military should be in control of military policy. They wouldn’t believe that a mother’s opinion on the war had more ‘moral authority’ if she happened to be strongly for it. They wouldn’t assume that Democratic politicians should have to put their children into combat if the Democrats actually supported the war.
As I said before, there are plenty of good arguments for and against the war. These arguments are not some of them. I have nothing but contempt for the people who use them.
Really? Got any?
Seconded.