People are too stupid to pay attention to me unless I say something idiotically extreme.
<snip>
I didn’t have the time to craft an OP that didn’t say that I was hoping more people in the military in Iraq would die to get Bush out of office. And by the way, one big attack killing U.S. soldiers would be great better than these silly 2 or 3 a day.
<snip>
It’s not my fault that people are too stupid to see what I really meant.
<snip>
Anybody who disagrees with me must be a brainless, Pro-Bush lackey
<snip>
I’m a blithering idiot because Bush and his supporters are blithering idiots
<snip>
Fight idiocy with idiocy!!!
<snip>
It’s not my fault I said I hoped soldiers would die because I suffer every day under the gigantic pressure of not being able to speak my mind in a civil, intelligent way.
Your accusation of trollery is bizarre to me: he says his actual views are pretty close to what he posted, and said that he didn’t craft his OP as carefully as he might have. That’s not the least bit an admission of trollery; it’s an admission that he’s not as good with words as he would want to be.
And the administration hasn’t hoped for the deaths of innocents; they’ve knowingly caused them. They’ve not taken every possible effort to avoid them; “every possible effort” would’ve included not invading Iraq.
But more innocent folks would’ve died had we not invaded? Sure, that’s a valid point. That’s utilitarian thinking.
Daniel - I think you know the answer to your question. Sorry I didn’t respond to you before. I don’t recall intentionally avoiding your question.
I cannot imagine many - if any - scenarios that would have me wishing my children dead. Maybe if they turned into mass murderers and their deaths would stop them from killing again. Or if they were terminally ill and in tremendous pain and wanted to die. But certainly not because of their choice of career or to further political objectives.
I certainly have told my son that a career in the military is far more dangerous than my career sitting comfortably in my office. And whatever his interest in the military, if he joins there is the risk that he will be sent to kill and possibly die over a worthless cause. He understands that as well as I think a 14-year old is able to.
I have told him, tho, that his membership in the military will not keep me from openly expressing my opinions concerning military spending or actions on a case-by-case basis.
I agree wholeheartedly with just about all of Sailor’s post above. He expressed it far better than I.
I also observe that the Administration deliberated over what would be an “acceptable” body count. It is they who put the pawns into position to be unnecessarily and illegitimately disposed of. I’m am merely questioning their math.
I refuse to blindly parrot “My country right or wrong.” I hope the current situation is resolved in a manner that greatly lessens the probability of it’s repetition in the future. A glaring success reforming the region would be one possible such outcome. But I consider that unlikely.
It was a year ago, and you responded by saying that your family hadn’t chosen a military career, so my question didn’t apply (I reread the thread last night – believe me, I don’t remember things like that ).
These seem contradictory. Right now, it certainly reads as if you’re wishing other people’s children dead; is the only thing keeping you from wishing your own child dead that your kid isn’t yet in the military?
I hope you’ll recognize that many people, including myself, are not exactly parroting that position either, yet we find what you’re saying reprehensible.
It may be unlikely that there’s a third way out of the conflict, but that’s no excuse for you OR the administration working toward (or even pontificating toward) either of these two unacceptable choices.
Well. I’m glad you’ve qualified the number of your fellow Americans you’re willing to “lose” to just a “discreet” number. Otherwise, you’d appear to be a calloused, self-centered, unpatriotic asshole. What’s so ironic is that if you exchange the words “a second Bush term” for “a continued Hussein regime” above, you’d realize that you and G.W. are navigating with the same moral compass. Your end goal may be different, but buddy, your means are the same.
There are countless soldiers, mothers, fathers, wives, etc., who are also scared shitless that Bush will be re-elected. I personally know two such families. I can guarantee you that they would NEVER hope for the imminent death of a discreet number of your family members in order to achieve their end.
It would have been nice if you actually offered up a premise for a debate, rather than an inflamitory rant for an OP, if debate was your goal.
So, you were trolling unconsciously. And you have reasons. Oh, good!
So, you were trolling because your reasonable posts get ignored. Doesn’t sound very unconscious to me.
So, because you view the Bush administration as extreme, you can be a troll on the SDMB?
This is classic. After admitting you were trolling, and offering several points in defense of your trolling, you say that it’s all because of careless language.
Lets just see about that…
Doesn’t seem to be very close to me. They are the exact opposite.
The next couple paragraphs are just the standard Bush bashing. Then we get this:
So, in your daily life you are silent, and you make up for it by trolling on the SDMB?
You did a good job anyway. Maybe you’re a natural.
Which one? The point of view from the OP, when you were trolling? Or, the point of view you are expressing now?
How come nobody finds THIS offensive? Remarks like this are far scarier than anything the OP said. That’s totalitarian thinking.
Anyone who pays taxes in this country is not a freeloader. I even think homeless people who fell through the cracks or opted out of society still deserve to be in this country. Our government exists for the people, not the other way around.
And Debaser, you should be banned for being a whiner.
It’s already been established that the OP had a deeper meaning, rather than just a wish for death to american soldiers. Get over it.
To people like you, it’s more about how it looks than what it means. Stop being so offended. Go play in cafe society if you can’t read anything controversial.
Dinsdale, Lefty is right. Like it or not you are a face of liberal politics on this board and when you say something that really sticks out you become THE voice of liberal politics for many people. Good lord, you live in one of the most Republican counties in the country. You know how many people around here (both physically and on this board) are sheltered from an alternative point of view. Do you want their impression of a liberal to be of an angry man yelling hate-filled vitriol? Do you know how much damage that does? Thirty-five years later when most people think of Vietnam-era anti-war protestors they do not think of good, reasonable people like Dr Spock, Dorothy Day, or the Berrigan brothers but of that moronic loudmouth, Jane Fonda. Therefore (dopeslapping Dinsdale), can you try to be a bit more circumspect before you post? I am not asking you to give up or hide your beliefs but we are trying to present a GOOD alternative to the Bushistas. Remember, we are RIGHT while they are WRONG*. We are GOOD while they are EVIL. We are CALM AND REASONED while they are SHRILL AND PAVLOVIANLY KNEE-JERKING. We’re the Good Guys but we have to STAY that way to win. You aren’t helping.
Please note that my unaccustomed use of binary terms does not indicate that I have suddenly started seeeing the world in black and white. When you read them mentally add a moderating qualifier like “sorta” or “usually.”
No it’s not, and if you had actually followed the argument being made instead of responding in knee-jerk fashion, you’d see the difference. I was specifically denouncing Dinsdale’s follow-up argument that he hoped more troups would die in Iraq so that the US healthcare system would be improved under a new adminstration. I don’t know of many people who justify war because of disagreements over healthcare policy.
Since your post (and since I’ve gotten both some sleep and some caffeine), others, including the OP, have further clarified that they don’t want to see anyone die at all, but that some deaths now might prevent more deaths later. You may think the OP’s eagerness is unseemly, and you’re certainly entitled to your opinion. I’ve discussed Iraq (and other related issues) off-board with the OP, and so I may have a better feel for his POV and for what kind of a person he is than you do. I see in his OP an immense frustration, and I feel that frustration as well; the frustration, at least on my part, is with the prospect that people will continue to die in vain. I don’t care whether they are Iraqis or Americans.
And how do you figure the speculation is groundless? It may or may not turn out to be wrong, but that doesn’t make it groundless. There are attacks against U.S. troops on a daily basis at this point, and I sure don’t see the number and severity of the attacks decreasing. People are going to die in war; it’s pretty unavoidable. My opinion is that the manner in which the occupation of Iraq is currently being conducted will lead to more animosity against American troops, not less, which in turn will lead to more attacks against them, which will logically lead to more Americans (and Iraqis) getting killed. As much as I may disagree with some people on this board, those who will come out and state a wish to see the maximum number of dead people overall are thankfully few and far between, and I haven’t seen anyone like that in this thread so far.
My fault for sloppy definition of terms. I was (and am) using “invasion” to mean the U.S. military’s act of entering Iraq and overthrowing the government. If I meant everything they’d done since the fall of Baghdad, I would have used “occupation.” Perhaps that makes my prior statement clearer; until now I’ve seen no evidence that the U.S. had a concrete postwar reconstruction strategy or exit plan in place before commencing the invasion.
Obviously, however much I was disgusted by the way the invasion went down, and by the incompetent diplomacy and screwed-up coalition-building that has gone along with the invasion both at its commencement and ever since, I’m not denying that reconstruction projects have been undertaken. I just think that the current administration’s failure to build wider support for the occupation, both among Iraqis and among the world at large, is completely needless and leads fairly directly both to more deaths and to the throwing away of money that could be spent on reconstruction efforts on more severe security measures for U.S. troops.
I understand the phrase just fine, thank you, and I never said I was misquoted. But the way in which you rephrased my previous statement skews its meaning. Is it OK with you if I word it that way? Thanks ever so much.
My point, once again, is that under Saddam Hussein, the things which led Iraqis to be targeted for retribution were fairly predictable. They aren’t anymore to the same extent; it’s now entirely possible to die just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. To me, random terror is even scarier than regular terror. Do you even remotely consider Iraq a stable place right now, a year after the invasion? How long do you think it will take for Iraq to be stable, let alone functional, without a really major shift in U.S. policy?
Where have I not acknowledged how evil the fallen regime was? It seems rather inconsistent for you to go on about my “emoting” about genocide and terror, and in the same post accuse me of not acknowledging it. I do expect significantly better behavior of my government than I did of Saddam Hussein’s, or are you telling me that’s wrong? I just think we can, and should, do a helluva lot better than we have so far.
Well, that’s their fault, not Dinsdale’s. As a leftist/liberal/whatever, i feel no need to assign Dinsdale as my spokesperson, and i’m sure that many people feel the same way. I have nothing in particular against Dinsdale (although i thought the OP in the thread being discussed here was ill-considered), and i find most of his contributions to this message board to be interesting and worth reading. But he does not speak for me; i can do that well enough for myself, thanks.
If other people want to make the assumption that Dinsdale speaks for all liberals, then all that demonstrates is how stupid those people are. It would be like me assuming that milroyj or Brutus or Scylla or Sam Stone speaks for all conservatives. I try to deal with people as i find them, rather than assumning that one person who calls him or herself a conservative necessarily speaks for all conservatives. I don’t recall anyone being designated official spokeperson for liberals or conservatives on this Board; let me know if i missed a memo.
It’s exactly this sort of wavering that indicates you have no real idea what’s going to happen. “I sure don’t see…the attacks decreasing” is rather different than predicting that lots more military casualties are in the offing.
Before it was your claim that there was no reconstruction (strategy), now you’ve switched to no concrete reconstruction strategy. Well, thanks for the clarification.
Apparently you still do not understand basic terms. I rephrased nothing you said in any manner which would indicate it came from you.
You now seem to be definite on this point. And you’re entitled to the opinion that civilian hazards in Iraq are currently “scarier” than under Saddam, where hundreds of thousands were killed for being of the wrong ethnic group, appearing to offer possible resistance to the regime or based on whim of the Hussein clan. Maybe you’re right. After all, you do possess a unique source of knowledge about conditions in Iraq, based on your self-proclaimed vague acquaintance with a journalist who used to be there, and who did not tell you about his experience there.
a) No. b) A long time. What’s that got to do with professing a wish for large numbers of U.S. troops to be killed?
The first part of this sentence is a strawman; we’ve already seen the truth of the second part.
Wonder what the reaction on this board would have been to a Bush supporter posting an OP along the following lines:
“Since there haven’t been any al-Queda terrorist attacks in this country since 9/11, people have started to get really complacent about the risks, and spend more time complaining about government over-reaction than they do thinking about the need to be vigilant. There are bound to be more attacks in the future. So why not now instead of later? Let’s see a huge urban bombing with lots of casualties. That way voters will recognize the need for drastic measures and unite behind Bush, who knows what direction the country should go.”*
*devil’s advocacy. This kind of crap would be just as offensive as Dinsdale’s OP.
Oh, come now. You know perfectly well that many reasonably intelligent people will take the person who stands out the most as representative of all similar people. It is the easiest path and most people don’t have the time or inclination to dig deeper. You may not like it; you may resent it; you aren’t going to change it.
So for me to say that it was totalitarian thinking is not incorrect. I didn’t say that the statement perfectly outlined totalitarianism in a nutshell but it fits within the dictum of totalitarianism.
Calling someone a freeloader if they don’t serve in the military or any other formal community service sounds obnoxious to me. It seems like a good way for someone to justify their own questionable actions.
).