Sunday, January 30, 2005
[posted by jaed at 2:16 PM]The alchemy of elections...
...seems to have caused an outbreak of sanity and humanity in one of the places you'd least expect it. Yes, Democratic Underground, where several people are responding with disbelief to one poster who proclaimed his hope that "the resistance" would kill Iraqis who had "betrayed their country" by voting.
That poster is more or less what I've come to expect on DU. But check out these quotes from some of the responses:
As far as people "betraying their country" by wanting to vote... How the (&@(#& is that kind of nationalist thinking progressive?Elections can work miracles. Iraqis have voted, and by their display of courage and dedication to freedom have prompted even Moonbat Central to show signs of humanity and decency. Truly, this is a good day.
Me, I sorta like people voting. Call me a Democrat.
So does that mean you'd support pretty much any horrific action or organization so long as it damages Bush politically? Some kind of end justifying the means sort of thing?
We should never learn to hate bush so much that we will condone mass murder and smile at it's sight merely because it would make bush look bad.
Are you insane? You do realize that you can oppose what Bush has done, and still dislike an insurgency that kills thousands of innocent Iraqi's? You can still oppose Bush and also be happy that Iraqi people have an opportunity to vote.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
[posted by jaed at 9:32 PM]Problems staying on message
There's been some attention to an essay by professor Ward Churchill that argues that the 9/11 victims were "little Eichmans" who got what they had coming to them. This would make Churchill an idiot in good standing, but unaccountably, he seems to have poked a hole in the usual argument.
Quoth the Rocky Mountain News:
Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War.But wait... I thought Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11? No relationship at all, right? Recall that this argument is a linchpin for those who argue that the Iraq campaign is completely separate from the "War on Terror". Accept that Iraq might have had some relationship to the 9/11 attacks, and that argument crumbles.
A secret team will no doubt be dispatched immediately to "re-educate" the professor in proper thinking.
Friday, January 14, 2005
[posted by jaed at 7:45 AM]Required reading
Jason Van Steenwyk at Countercolumn (ne Iraq Now) provides an expert fisking of a Weekly Standard article. (He doesn't provide a link, but it appears to be this one).
But it's not just a fisking. It's the most specific, pithy, and fact-based response that I can recall reading to the "we should have had more troops in Iraq" argument, from someone who's been in Iraq and seen these issues firsthand. Let it be read by you.
Monday, January 10, 2005
[posted by jaed at 2:28 PM]Quote of the day
[ Considering how often you've posted lately, shouldn't that be "Quote of the fiscal quarter"? ed. Oh, shut up.] Something called "Ruth Conniff's Blog" (although it appears to be a regular column, not a blog) at the Progressive has, among other things, this:
At the Republican convention in 1996 I went on a yacht cruise with some socially moderate Republican women who were appalled at the takeover of their party by down-at-the-heel, prolife, evangelical types.A yacht cruise. "Down-at-the-heel types". And they're not even nice Presbyterians or Methodists!
As the finishing touch, the column winds up by urging Democrats to find issues that fire up "blue-collar" voters. Look, Lady Bountiful, I realize the peasants are revolting, but if they are voting peasants it might be wise to put the perfumed handkerchief to your nose with a little less of a flourish, don't you think?
Sheesh.
This is not the first time that I've contemplated the snobbishness and class superiority of the left, and how it's damaged the Democratic Party electorally, but it's one of the more blatant and concentrated examples I've seen lately.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
[posted by jaed at 4:26 PM]Freedom of the press
The NYT profiles the head of al-Arabiyya, a station that is trying to change emphasis from jihadist propaganda (from reading what Iraqis say, it used to be considered almost as bad as al-Jazeera) to a balanced "news" approach. It's long but fascinating.
[posted by jaed at 1:23 PM]
It's actually the quote of eight weeks or so ago, but we won't mind that. Norm Geras contemplates the reaction of right-thinking Britain to the presidential election:
In contemporary debate on the liberal-left, it is sometimes suggested that, only with a few crazies, only at the very outside margin of this political sector, is there any serious problem about the commitment to democratic values. I'd like to think that that is indeed true. But developments since September 11 2001, and in particular the Iraq war and the pent-up animosities towards the two leaders most closely associated with it, have now knocked so many people so far off balance that they no longer know, can no longer see, what they are saying much of the time - and they come from a far wider segment of the liberal-left than just the extreme margins.Read the whole thing. It's a sobering reflection, and by no means only for the British left. Even though things have calmed down a bit since, I'm not looking forward to the next four years either, particularly having seen the reactions to the tsunami (more precisely, to America/Republicans/the Bushitler that have been enabled by the tsunami).
Four more years? Four more years, not of George W. Bush, but of this, is not something one can contemplate with either relish or optimism. Liberals and leftists should stop wailing and ask themselves some tough questions: first and foremost, where they themselves might have gone wrong (so many of them), repeatedly wrong, in their alignment within international conflicts - and why. You lose a democratic battle, you fight on, that's all. You make the argument again or differently. You look to see whether there are mistakes, misconceptions, bad assumptions, bad practices, on your own side. You try to persuade people. You show some elementary civic respect to those on the other side.
