Nobody to match Bush

[KymarFye]

Quote from OPTIONAL777:



Needless to say, you don't show that you even read the response of mine and considered it to possibly be an accurate perception. Instead, yet once again, you demonstrate an incapacity to deal with criticism, and instead turn to your own brand of holier than thou contrived personal attacks - it's how you deal with criticism, it's how you deal with me and others on this thread, it's how you deal with people in the ET chatroom. It seems to be who and what you are.

Even your fantasy policy for dealing with those of differing opinions comes down to the same thing: Because you personally like to think of yourself as being right or smarter than others, to you it's the same as supporting your conclusions because you see yourself as right, and in your imagination it clears you of the charge of subjectivity and bias, supporting your continual spin of the issues to your own brand of neocon rhetoric, freeing you to claim that those who don't support you are dangerous or perhaps not American as the only viable plan for defending your position on the basis of some temporal "moral majority" as seen in public opinion polls. All that seems to matter to you is your own personal bias, agenda, and self righteous perspectives. You probably think that if you put up a post with "this leftwing website and author are lunatics" in size=8 font, it would qualify as a realistic policy for convincing people that your opinions are the correct options to have.

So now you stoop to mimicry - and can't even sustain it coherently. Every day, you're becoming more like msfe, who also has resorted to this childish diversionary tactic. Such posts say nothing more than "Optional777 is upset" or "Optional777 disagrees" or "Optional777 dislikes KymarFye" or "Optional777 disapproves of KymarFye's political perspectives and writing style." Why should I or anyone care? Why should I or anyone feel obligated to respond in detail, if at all?

You remain incapable of defending your political position, in particular that it makes you an objective ally of Saddam Hussein. Your customary hypocrisy also makes its usual appearance, as when, imitating my phraseology, you write, "yet once again, you demonstrate an incapacity to deal with criticism, and instead turn to your own brand of holier than thou contrived personal attacks." I presented an argument - that your compulsive personalization of political discussion causes you to mistake your own merely imaginary, emotional opposition to Hussein and other US enemies for practical, political opposition. Your response consists of a clumsy, juvenile exercise that drives this tendency even further into abstraction and irrelevance.

You accuse me being "holier than thou," but I can't help it if your position is devoid of positive moral or political content. Anyone who managed even to acknowledge the mass graves, torture chambers, unending deprivation, and extreme dangers that are the inevitable by-product of your preferred policy would be unable to speak except from a position implicitly "holier" than yours.

 

[KymarFye]

Quote from Madison:


wild exaggeration. at the other end of the spectrum, nearly all of the current group avoided, during wartime, the services they now command. something in the middle might be preferable.

As you probably know, Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Rumsfeld is a Navy veteran, though there was no hot war going on at the time. I hear Colin Powell had a hitch in the service, but I may have to check on that one. I don't believe Condoleeza Rice was eligible for the draft, due to the small matter of her gender. Cheney was already in his mid-20s by the time the Vietnam war, and the draft, picked up. I suppose he could have enlisted, but by the late '60s he was already entering public service. After a stint as Defense Secretary during the Gulf War, I think he can at least be considered experienced.

You can choose to believe the worst about Bush and his service, or about any of these individuals or anyone else in the Administration. The "chickenhawks" slur remains as irrelevant as it is facile, and anyone who uses it is resorting to defamation of character as a substitute for policy debate. Either the policy makes sense and is justifiable on its own terms, or it doesn't and isn't, regardless of the backgrounds of those who advance or execute it. "Chickenhawk" is just a disrespectful and inflammatory stereotype, and employing it gives you no right to complain about anyone else's offensive speech.

bread and water is not necessary. but while men are dying in combat and being told their deployments have been extended indefinitely, it is not unreasonable to expect those that sent them there to limit entertainment and vacation activities.

Let's see - Bush attended fundraisers and tested a Segway... What other morale-devastating activities has he been indulging in?

The war on terror and the sacrifices of the troops didn't start and won't end with Iraq. Over the time involved, Bush is going to relax. He's going to take vacations. He may even schmooze with celebrities, tell bad jokes, or play with his dog. I doubt the soldiers are going to care very much, unless he finds reason to lie about whatever spare-time pleasures under oath.

Do the nude protests, vomit-ins, Mardi Gras costumes, and scabrous cartoons in your view confirm the high seriousness of the war opponents?

On the subject of cartoons, specifically the one you posted, congratulations for showing a susceptibility to dialogue and alternative perspectives.

 

[OPTIONAL777]

Quote from KymarFye:


So now you stoop to mimicry - and can't even sustain it coherently. Every day, you're becoming more like msfe, who also has resorted to this childish diversionary tactic. Such posts say nothing more than "Optional777 is upset" or "Optional777 disagrees" or "Optional777 dislikes KymarFye" or "Optional777 disapproves of KymarFye's political perspectives and writing style." Why should I or anyone care? Why should I or anyone feel obligated to respond in detail, if at all?

Mimicry makes a point, apparently the neocon blinders prevented you from seeing it. That you have no sense of humor is a picture that tells a 1000 word story of rigidity and self righteousness.

You routinely call arguments from a different perspective loony, irrational, etc.

Apparently your arguments to counter their position are not strong enough of their own merit for an objective party to come to that conclusion on their own.

That it was easy so easy to mimic you, and yet have you fail to see the point is a riot.

You remain incapable of defending your political position, in particular that it makes you an objective ally of Saddam Hussein. Your customary hypocrisy also makes its usual appearance, as when, imitating my phraseology, you write, "yet once again, you demonstrate an incapacity to deal with criticism, and instead turn to your own brand of holier than thou contrived personal attacks." I presented an argument - that your compulsive personalization of political discussion causes you to mistake your own merely imaginary, emotional opposition to Hussein and other US enemies for practical, political opposition. Your response consists of a clumsy, juvenile exercise that drives this tendency even further into abstraction and irrelevance.

That you are incapable of seeing that counterpoints are made all the time to your position is again a riot.

I guess what they say is true, rose colored glasses produce only rose colored perceptions.....and necon perceptions, yield only neocon conclusions that must by necessity deny all other points of view.

You accuse me being "holier than thou," but I can't help it if your position is devoid of positive moral or political content.

Yada, yada, yada. Your techinque is the obvious technique of not even allowing a different point of view. Once the head of an ostrich is firmly in the sand, they make a true statement that all they see is darkness.



Anyone who managed even to acknowledge the mass graves, torture chambers, unending deprivation, and extreme dangers that are the inevitable by-product of your preferred policy would be unable to speak except from a position implicitly "holier" than yours.

Again, using these tactics is the justification process of the neocons. Make war first on shaky intelligence, make war on the basis of preemptive doctrine, make war on the emphasis of the claims of immediate and real threat of WMD only to poo poo the need to find WMD because we have "liberated" a country is the current spin job.

There is nothing in our constitution that says we should adopt a policy of the end justifying the means.

This is just rationalization after the fact.....and a means to get people to ignore the processes that lead us into war in the first place.

It is such a low and intellectually dishonest form of propaganda, although it often works to distract the attention of the weak minded away from the principles at hand that are at issue.

Ann Coulter's hatchet job, McCarthyesque in its nature, to label those who don't agree with her positions as "treasonous" is being blasted by many of the true conservatives who don't live out on the extreme end of the wing of true conservative thought.

I have not seen any of those who present reasonable doubt in front of the mind as to the true intentions of Bush and company about going to war minimize the evil of Saddam Hussein.

They are two separate issues.

Saddam Hussein is evil, along with many other dictators and regimes around the world.

However, we don't engage in preemptive military action against them.

It was the sales job of WMD that spun the country into war, not the atrocities against he Iraqi people.

 

[OPTIONAL777]

Quote from nitro:

Good thing we still have "one-man-one-vote" in this country.

nitro

I think if the neocons had their way, they would take away the vote from all who don't share their point of view and opinions.

It is getting intense in the political polarity battle, did you read this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13376-2003Jul18.html

 

[tatertrader]

Quote from Doubter:

_______________________________________

I truly hope that all of the carping and naysaying won't stop the progress or defeat the accomplishments or embolden the old regime or weaken our resolve. I don't know whether the carpers really want us to pull out and allow a repeat of the 1991 massacres or just get rid of Bush so his replacement can continue the job and then claim the whole job was theirs. Either way is dishonest, so what is new with the libs.

It is the "libs" who are vociferously advocating FURTHER commitment to the rebuilding of Iraq through international cooperation and a massive INCREASE in military, humanitarian, and political involvement - to build a TRUE international coalition.

Sadly it is the Bush administration, through its hubris and arrogance that is squandering success and sacrifice - just as the previous Bush administration did in 1991.

 

[Doubter]

Saddam Hussein is evil, along with many other dictators and regimes around the world.

However, we don't engage in preemptive military action against them.
_______________________________

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought Bosnia had a preemptive military action. Also the Lewinski strike on Iraq could have been considered preemptive. The first missile strikes on Afghanistan back in the late 90's could have been termed preemptive. Even back to the Libyia strikes could have been preemptive.

Operating with a 9/12 mentality might mean the last two conflicts were either retalliatory, eliminating the support of terror, soft words big stick warning, or the breaking up of the strangle grip the totalitarian regimes had on the region. To me 9/11 took the preemptive phraseology out of the eqaution.

 

[Doubter]

It is the "libs" who are vociferously advocating FURTHER commitment to the rebuilding of Iraq through international cooperation and a massive INCREASE in military, humanitarian, and political involvement - to build a TRUE international coalition.
________________________________________

Please list examples of the "libs" calling for more commitment.

Also I don't understand if India turned down the idea to send troops does that mean the administraion did or did not ask them.
I read where Kofi Annon is calling for us to just pull out and forget democracy. Is that what you mean by a true international coalition. Even the countries that haven't helped such as Canada are deeply divided over the issue of whether to get in or not. I get a lot of calls from friends in western Canada who are very ashamed of their national and eastern dominated policies. They tell me polls in the west were even stronger than US polls in support of the war but of course you never hear that side.

 

[KymarFye]

Quote from OPTIONAL777:

Again, using these tactics is the justification process of the neocons. Make war first on shaky intelligence, make war on the basis of preemptive doctrine, make war on the emphasis of the claims of immediate and real threat of WMD only to poo poo the need to find WMD because we have "liberated" a country is the current spin job.

Why the sneer quotes around the word "liberated"? Looks obviously like your way of sneakily re-introducing doubt about whether or not getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime was a good thing.

For the umpteenth, if not the ump-hundred-and-teenth time, you repeat a manipulative and artificially narrow rendition of the case for war that you have never been able to support with evidence or even argue coherently.

I have not seen any of those who present reasonable doubt in front of the mind as to the true intentions of Bush and company about going to war minimize the evil of Saddam Hussein.

And here we go again: Because, in your mind and presumably their minds, Saddam's evil wasn't minimized (we'll forget the sneer quotes), you see no difference between supporting the only available policy for getting rid of him and opposing it.

They are two separate issues.

The multiple justifications for the war in Iraq and the nature of Saddam's regime are intimately linked, both in the particular context of the danger and strategic challenge that Iraq represented on its own terms, and in the larger context of the war with Islamist fascism and terror.

Saddam Hussein is evil, along with many other dictators and regimes around the world.

However, we don't engage in preemptive military action against them.

Nor do we have flagrantly broken ceasefire agreements and ongoing military confrontation with many other dictators and regimes around the world, as has been the case with Saddam from 1991 even to the present. Nor do many dictators in the world have access to huge oil revenues and geographical proximity to much of the world's oil reserves. Nor have many other dictators in the world engaged in plots to assassinate a US President, hosted leaders and trained operatives from multiple terrorist organizations, repeatedly explored alliances with Al Qaeda, continuously engaged in fervent anti-US propaganda in the region of the world where major terrorist threats originate, repeatedly threatened to sponsor terrorism against the US, or used WMDs repeatedly and systematically applied themselves to developing WMDs and maintaining advanced WMD capacities even when subjected to sanctions, inspections, and serious military threats.

Eventually, victory in Iraq may help us knock Iran, Syria, and many other dangerous and repellent regimes off the list, though more likely through means other than direct application of military force. Fighting those battles that we need to fight, when we can fight them and have a chance of managing the aftermath, isn't immmoral or inconsistent. It's the only sane policy there is.

The inability to tell the difference between, say, Zimbabwe and Burma on the one hand, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq on the other, suggests extreme ignorance. No one incapable of making the distinctions is fit even to argue foreign policy.

 

[msfe]

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/

 

[KymarFye]

Quote from OPTIONAL777:



Oh yea, you fully understand now, we are out to support SH...sure, right.

What a spin job.

Quote from tatertrader:


Once again Doubter proves to be the useful idiot.

Liberals are pleading with the administration to bring in allied forces, (what the f%*k happened to the vast "coalition of the willing" we were told over and over about - more f-ing lies) to increase security, to bring law, order, and life back to Iraq - to relieve our boys and bring them home ALIVE.

We were against this folly from the outset yes, but we are now the only voice of sanity in securing the peace.

Quote from tatertrader:
Quote from Doubter:

Tater - You want to get rid of Bush. SH wants to get rid of Bush. Looks like allies to me. Maybe just political bedfellows?


OMG. There are chimps in cages that exhibit higher levels of reasoning and logic.

Sadly though I'm not really all that that surprised. The right has embraced the devolution of political discourse and has relentlessly employed the most despicable and base tactics to destroy opposition and silence dissent. Your thoughtless parroting of their memes only illustrates the point.

Quote from OPTIONAL777:


SH is going to do whatever he damn well pleases. What those people who speak out against the adminstration have nothing to do with his behavior.

Since when has he ever reacted to public opinion pro or con?

There's every reason to believe that Saddam, like some of the tyrants before him whose methods he has studied, has long seen peace activists and related groups as components of his political strategy, going back at least to Gulf War I. It's obvious to anyone who has watched his behavior over the years, or observed the propaganda use made of anti-war protests and the numerous visits to Iraq by activists and anti-war politicians and celebrities.

It's ironic, as well as typically hypocritical, that, when tatertrader was accusing the right of contributing to the "devolution of political discourse," he chose to refer to Doubter as a "useful idiot." (At least it wasn't as excessive, foul, and base as some of his other remarks.) The term, as most of us probably know (probably even tatertrader), was Lenin's designation for liberals, pacifists, and others whose naive enterprises could be counted on to impede his true enemies.

War opponents don't like to acknowledge that, regardless of their proclaimed personal feelings against Saddam, their preferred policies would have meant leaving him and his regime in power. Some of the openly anti-American or anti-capitalist militants are at least clear that they consider Bush policy so dangerous that they’d be willing to sacrifice Iraq’s future to oppose it. The most you get from the others on their side of the Iraq issue usually consists of faint hopes that sanctions or some other form of peaceful resistance might eventually bring the Baathists down. Otherwise, we're left to imagine that Saddam's victims would rise up out of their mass graves and descend on the regime like zombies in some Iraqi Night of the Living Dead.

If you want to insist that the Bush policy was "immoral" or "folly," then you should first be required to hop over the mass graves and find your own way out of the torture chambers and rape rooms - even aside from confronting the repeatedly demonstrated dangers posed by Saddam's Iraq to the interests of the US and to the rest of the world outside Iraq.

Those who are satisfied with pretending that they opposed both Saddam as well as the only available plan for getting rid of him, and who would prefer to focus on supposed defects in Bush's character rather than coping with the contradiction, simply can't be taken seriously. They may be hiding their true calculations. They may be indulging in political fantasies. Or they may not really have given the issue much thought. They're not all “idiots,” though many of them act and post like it. I don't think they'll be quite as "useful" as Saddam would really need them to be, so long as they're systematically fought and exposed.