Time Crapsule (Updated)
The always excellent Instaputz, scouting the usual glibertarian-transhumanist-gun nut wasteland down Knoxville way where the fascist nerds roam, notices a particularly fatuous (even by the august Perfesser Corncob’s standards, which is saying a lot) blurb and link to Pejman Yousefzadeh, and strikes.
A quick site search, some copypasta, and — voila! The result is one of those posts I absolutely love; it’s an internet archaeologist’s exploration into Ur-Wingnuttia, and we just don’t get enough of those. Instaputz shows the history of approving links from Reynolds to Yousefzadeh and in the process demonstrates that each wingnut’s not-so-unique brand of stupidity and/or insanity and/or moral degeneracy is, adjusted for events, almost perfectly static.
Each post is just as flamingly wingnutty as the one preceding it — all the way back to their Golden Era, the age in which they established their styles (Reynolds’s being pithy and passive-aggressive, Yousefzadeh’s pompous and priggish) and, along with a legion of other shut-ins, founded a cult dedicated to the worship of angelic neocon warriors whose For All Time battle against satanic islamofascists and demonic transnationalist progressives so neatly mirrored (surprise, surprise) their own warbloggers’ heroic struggle against the “idiotarian” menace. Like the old occultists used to say, “as above, so below.” Anyway, their Gods failed but the cult persists and their proselytizing goes on and on and on (for a transhumanist, the Perfesser sure isn’t much on personal evolution).
While Instaputz’s artifacts are impressive, I want MOAR! Despite a site migration to Roger El’s personal FAILproject, Reynolds’s archives are relatively orderly. Which means they’re too vast to scrounge through pleasurably; also, the Perfesser’s oeuvre is too well-known. I want to dig where others have not (lately, at least).
Yousefzadeh has been at it about as long as Reynolds but never became much more than a B-list blogger. He, like the Perfesser, wrote for Tech Central Station (remember that shithole? Last I heard, its longtime editor Nick Schulz bought it, whence it died, then moved on to edit AEI’s glossy new rag, and it too promptly died), but he was never as adept staying on the Wingnut Welfare gravytrain as the resourceful Perfesser. Yousefzadeh is currently the Token Brown Pundit for a site otherwise completely Red (state) and White (trash). Before that, he had his own site the url of which is now dead; before that, he had a blogspot account, which is where the real treasures are.
And what treasures! Digging more or less at random, look at the shit I found:
[Weapons] inspections [in Iraq] are not worth the paper the Ba’athist regime used to transmit their proposal. Needless to say, I am skeptical of the offer. So is Steven Den Beste. And for that matter, so is the White House.
posted by Pejman at 9/16/2002 10:56:00 PMCLAUSEWITZ HE AIN’T Bill Clinton thinks that we ought to get Osama bin Laden before going after Saddam Hussein. Never mind that the two are not mutually exclusive. Never mind that bin Laden may already be dead. Never mind that if he is alive, making his death a prerequisite for any attack against Iraq gives Saddam Hussein even more of an incentive to support al Qaeda, as James Taranto points out today. In short, never mind basic facts. Bill Clinton wants you to take his advice. Any takers?
posted by Pejman at 9/06/2002 01:50:00 PMOF TRANSNATIONALIST PROGRESSIVES Vegard Valberg has some thoughts on the “tranzies,” their ideology, their future, and their presence in the European Union.
posted by Pejman at 9/03/2002 09:39:00 AMLILEKS SPEAKS . . . Correction: Lileks Fisks. And what a Fisking it is. Incidentally, any guesses as to whether Stephen Green has recovered from the joy of yet another favorable Lileks mention? It must be sort of like having da Vinci compliment one of your inventions.
posted by Pejman at 9/06/2002 03:04:00 PMTHE MYSTERY OF SCOTT RITTER Tony Adragna and Jane Galt have both indicated that Scott Ritter’s recent statements on Iraq should not be trusted, because Ritter has so dramatically changed his views without a scintilla of evidence or justification for that radical change. The Blogosphere wonders what the cause is for Ritter’s reversal of position. Well, here’s your chance to offer theories and hypotheses for why Ritter has changed his mind. Leave your Musings below, and let me know your opinion as to why Ritter now so fervently believes that Iraq is not a threat, and why he believes that war with Iraq should not be an option. Personally, I think that he has been blackmailed. I know that a number of bloggers feel the same way. I can’t imagine another reason that would have caused him to change his mind in so dramatic a fashion.
posted by Pejman at 9/09/2002 11:12:00 AMAN EPIC MISMATCH IF I EVER SAW ONE Jane Galt counters the various arguments of antiwar protestors in her typically lucid and intelligent manner.
posted by Pejman at 9/23/2002 11:17:00 AMROLL CALL OF SHAME A reader has forwarded me Fareed Zakaria’s excellent column where he slices and dices European countries for the reluctance to support the United States in a war against Iraq. His last paragraph is a classic: If France and Russia seek a world in which nations act purely on the basis of interest and power, they will get it. In it, America will do just fine. As the president’s recent national security strategy document makes clear, it will remain the “hyperpower.” But as France and Russia might have noticed, they’re not very powerful anymore. They have seats on the U.N. Security Council only because they won the last great war 50 years ago. (I use the word “won” loosely when speaking of France.) Unless they act responsibly, they are now in danger of losing the next one. Truer words have not been said.
posted by Pejman at 9/24/2002 11:06:00 AMBIZARRO-WORLD Greg Buete takes on Scott Ritter and the apologists for Saddam Hussein.
posted by Pejman at 9/24/2002 12:06:00 PMBEHOLD THE UNWASHED MASSES And in this case, chances are that they really are unwashed. If this is all the antiwar Left has to offer by way of an argument, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see the Right succeeding as well as it does in the larger debate.
posted by Pejman at 9/28/2002 01:50:00 PMMY TECH CENTRAL STATION COLUMN IS UP This week, I discuss the application of Clausewitzian principles to the current war on terrorism.
posted by Pejman at 8/02/2002 01:09:00 PMWARBLOGGERWATCH: ARE YOU LISTENING? Steven Den Beste explains the fallacy of strawman arguments–specifically in reference to the definition of “the Bush Doctrine.”
posted by Pejman at 8/05/2002 03:02:00 PMWARGAMING Steven Den Beste has an interesting essay relating strategy and war games to the conduct and prosecution of an actual war. It’s no surprise to see that his thinking is heavily influenced by Clausewitz (especially when he discusses the chaotic aspects of war).
posted by Pejman at 8/05/2002 09:22:00 PMPLAYING THE STOCK MARKET James Glassman offers some tips.
posted by Pejman at 8/06/2002 10:56:00 AMTAKE A CHILL PILL OpinionJournal argues that there should be some semblance of calm in discussing the issue of detainees in the war on terrorism. I agree–comparing the detainees to Argentina’s “disappeared,” as former Secretary of State Warren Christopher did, was classic rhetorical overkill and demagoguery.
posted by Pejman at 8/08/2002 01:10:00 PMJUST CALL HIM “CLAUSEWITZ” Stephen Green has some salient points regarding war with Iraq, and the use of weapons of mass destruction.
posted by Pejman at 8/20/2002 01:09:00 PMTHOUGHT FOR THE DAY Thanks to Libertarian Samizdata for this excellent quote about pacifists: They preach that if you see a man flogging a woman to death you must not hit him. –G.K. Chesterton
posted by Pejman at 8/29/2002 11:42:00 PMIDIOT-BASHING Rottweiler doesw a magnificent job slicing, dicing, and annihilating the Idiotarian mascot Philip Shropshire, who writes for Warbloggerwatch, and who has his own link in my “Circle of the Treacherous.” [……] You’ll see on Rottweiler’s blog that Phil calls us Nazis, despite the fact that he revels in the karmic deaths of what he believed to be 6000 people. I have a strong suspicion that Adolf Hitler would have found more to admire in Phil’s barbarity, than in anything that the “warbloggers” may have ever posted. Of course, I don’t expect Phil to understand any of this. It’s pretty obvious from his writings and the level of his arguments that he possesses the intellectual firepower of a decapitated cockroach. Which qualifies him eminently for writing and administration duties at Warbloggerwatch, I guess.
posted by Pejman at 8/16/2002 08:04:00 PMIRAQ WAR WATCH Bill Kristol’s slamming of critics of a war with Iraq is well worth a read.
posted by Pejman at 8/20/2002 02:43:00 PM
It all belongs in a museum’s basement; and the perps, had they any decency and were there any justice in the world, would be broken and scorned, on the alcoholic blackout route to an eventual demise via exposure or mattress fire. But nooooo: America is a great meritocracy after all, so these shameless dipshits are still active and taken seriously; indeed, many are taken even more seriously.
Updated beneath the fold:
Here are a few more. I especially like the one from Mrs. Conrad Black:
“IRAQ FOR DUMMIES” Barbara Amiel reveals the true intentions of those who claim that the Bush Administration and other proponents of preemptive military action against Iraq still need to “make their case”: . . . this craving for knowledge fails to convince. These voices never floundered before. They have never let information alone stand in the way of telling Prime Ministers and Presidents what to do about the Cold War, the Gulf war, the Panama invasion, the Falklands, Global Warming, Poverty, Hunger and Dirt. One suspects that they really want to put their collective heads in the sand or, less generously, side with a coalition of anti-Americans, muddled Marxists and confused admirers of Islamism all intent on seeing capitalism, Israel and America crippled. But as this agenda is not quite respectable, so it must be masked by a feigned thirst for knowledge. Of course, there is nothing that can be said to the vast majority of opponents of a war with Iraq that would cause them to change their minds. But assuming that they have an open mind on the issue, Amiel does an excellent job explaining the threat, and explaining why we need to act. Be sure to read the entire article.
posted by Pejman at 9/09/2002 11:47:00 AMTHE SENATOR FROM FRANCE John Miller takes on Senator Chuck Hagel.
posted by Pejman at 8/19/2002 08:30:00 PMALL “TAPPED” OUT Tapped is arguing that Josh Chafetz’s piece, mentioned earlier, is too “literalist.” It argues that Dowd meant to point out the irony of having the military brass “uniformly oppose” the war plans regarding Iraq. Tapped, of course, is being silly when it claims that there is “uniform opposition” to a military conflict with Iraq. Additionally, the fact of the matter is that Dowd got the constitutional relationship between civilians and the military wrong. The former command the latter. Thus, contrary to Dowd’s claims, there could be no “coup” against the military by civilians. Her analogy is stupid beyond compare. Tapped then makes the following idiotic comment: The only people hot to fight this war are a bunch of nerdy chickenhawks brandishing grandiose plans to remake the Middle East. Tapped is still of draft age, even if Richard Perle isn’t. Well, first of all, there is no draft. Secondly, Tapped‘s comment regarding “nerdy chickenhawks” is mere namecalling without any semblance of content behind it. […]
posted by Pejman at 8/22/2002 02:52:00 PMUNCOMFORTABLE DISCUSSIONS Cathy Young reveals how the Left continues to struggle with the legacy of Joseph Stalin.
posted by Pejman at 8/31/2002 05:24:00 PM
Shawter Aitch Tee Em Ell:
“Ah gat no lahf.”
JUST CALL HIM “CLAUSEWITZ.” Stephen Green has some salient points regarding war with Iraq, and the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Stephen Green? Vodkapundit Stephen Green? This Stephen Green?
Thanks for reminding me how totally insane the “warbloggers” were back then.
You are a commie, aren’t you?
We really don’t. More, please.
No, he certainly isn’t; the nano-bots will do all the work for him, glibertarian style.
Couldn’t resist one link in particular – “Jane Galt counters the various arguments of antiwar protestors in her typically lucid and intelligent manner.”
Gilgamesh-level epic fail.
I’m starting to realize that the period around 2002 was really the wingnuts’ finest hour. It’s when they were most hopeful that the world would go up in a nukular flash (or at least, it would appear so on the TV).
It’s fascinating to see these messages-in-a-bottle from that period. The best part is that despite the 7 years since then, Reynolds would say that every single one of those posts is (and was) true.
May his name be erased from the Book of Life, and may he perish two weeks before the immortality drug is discovered.
Clausewitz this and Clausewitz that. What, no love for Sun Tzu?
Clausewitz this and Clausewitz that. What, no love for Sun Tzu?
His complection is a bit suspect for this crowd.
Yousefzadeh is currently the Token Brown Pundit for a site otherwise completely Red (state) and White (trash).
I happened to see that name at Politico today (I guess I should not click there, or even at the WaPoo anymore, for that matter…but I was enjoying wingnut tears on Ben Smith’s Mark Sanford threads).
Pejman Yousefzadeh, Attorney and blogger, is keeping himself busy defending the free market from goobermint health care.
And of course, defending John Yoo and Jay Bisbee from the mean liberals who want to punish them merely for providing legal advice. Also.
And if my aunt had a penis, she’d be circumcised.
Wow, all we’re missing is a bit of grovelling stroke heads up to Pammycakes and we have a vault of shame!
The Glassman article is now here. Dow on that day = 8,745. Dow today = 8,299. Buy and hold = FAIL.
“WARGAMING Steven Den Beste has an interesting essay relating strategy and war games to the conduct and prosecution of an actual war. It’s no surprise to see that his thinking is heavily influenced by Clausewitz (especially when he discusses the chaotic aspects of war).
posted by Pejman at 8/05/2002 09:22:00 PM”
Jesus Christ that’s embarrassing.
What’s with these assholes comparing themselves to Clausewitz all the time? How are the fucking Vodka Pundit and Steven Den Beste like Clausewitz!? I mean, what the hell? How delusional can you get?
Yousefzadeh owns several copies of On War. He has to keep buying new ones, as the pages get all crusty and stuck-together.
What’s with these assholes comparing themselves to Clausewitz all the time? How are the fucking Vodka Pundit and Steven Den Beste like Clausewitz!?
Maybe they’re thinking of Santa Clausewitz. Or titties.
Jane Galt, pre-2×4. Damn, this is old school.
Live from the WTC old school.
I don’t even want to look.
Yousefzadeh owns several copies of On War. He has to keep buying new ones, as the pages get all crusty and stuck-together
You should see the condition of his copies of War on War.
A Fan’s Defense Of Star Trek
OK, this might be something Pejman can handle.
I have to laugh at his complaint that Obama won’t hire Supreme Court justices based on merit.
HAH!
Dammit Hopey won’t give us more brilliant judges like Alito and Roberts. Damn.
Look, just cuz the DFHs were right doesn’t mean they were right in the right way or that you’ll ever be right again. Besides, you still smell like patchouli. Harummph.
What’s with these assholes comparing themselves to Clausewitz all the time?
You may as well ask why any of them, who never got closer to serving in the military than beating off with one of their mom’s old gardening gloves while watching “Red Dawn,” continue to proffer their sage advice to the people who are actually doing the fighting.
The man was a PROPHET. In reverse.
And I especially liked the stock market advice from James “Dow 35,000” Glassman.
Wow – McCardle used to be even more obnoxious and idiotic. Good hire, Atlantic!
Wow – McCardle used to be even more obnoxious and idiotic. Good hire, Atlantic!
Only recently eclipsed by the NYT’s hiring of Ross Douthat and WaPo’s firing of Dan Froomkin. Like the Republican party, they just can’t become irrelevant fast enough.
I’d compare McCardle to Ezra the K. Both are well-scrubbed, careerist, and socially savvy. Both have been educated the expensive way. Both know their audience and know how to pander to the crowd. Ezra comes off as more palatable because he is so often typing the words polite Liberals want to hear, but he and Meggy are similarly hardwired.
Ah, Pejman, one of the most hilariously idiotic of the 2002 “Warblogger” crowd, a squirrelly, know-it-all little dipshit who had an opinion on everything, but sadly he was laughably wrong with damn near every one he expressed on his blog. He’s kind of like Michelle Malkin’s ADHD-inflicted, bratty little brother, not only dumber than Michelle, but far, far crazier too.
And seriously: anyone who cited that dumpy, unemployed shut-in of a goof Stephen Den Beste as a source of wisdom and authority on any subject but jerking off to Anime could only come off as utterly stupid. After all, here was a guy who was probably too fat for the Boy Scouts writing 10,000-word essays on modern warfare as if he’d just graduated from the Army War College, when in fact he couldn’t even play paintball because it meant leaving the safe confines of his Mommy’s basement.
And James Lileks? That quasi-eloquent crackpot and psychotic fussbudget probably tortured his cat every time he watched a Michael Moore interview on Larry King Live. At least he almost had real talent as a writer. Sadly it was all wasted on his obsession with booger-eating cashiers at Target (the bane of his existence) and retro matchbooks, and of course in expressing his nutty, spittle-spewing rage over liberals and anti-war protesters who had the by-gawd audacity to oppose the idea of invading Iraq in 2002.
Such a cavalcade of ass clowns!
Uncle Ned said,
Damn! You use your tongue prettier than a twenty-dollar whore. Well said.
Continuing the Borges theme from earlier threads, can I suggest “In Praise of Blandness” as a title for the next Lileks post?
It all belongs in a museum’s basement; and the perps, had they any decency and were there any justice in the world, would be broken and scorned, on the alcoholic blackout route to an eventual demise via exposure or mattress fire. But nooooo: America is a great meritocracy after all, so these shameless dipshits are still active and taken seriously; indeed, many are taken even more seriously.
Mattress fire or exposure would be almost too good for their type. Maybe they can all has wet brain first to up the suffering. Oh, wait.
FYWP. Just in case.
Holy IPU(praise be to your obvious yet unknowable pinkness), he did that in just the one month?!?!
Still in his, and McArdle’s defense the statement:
is probably true. i.e. lucidity and intelligence typical of the LOOK-AT-ME what types.
Well, at least he’s playing to his strengths nowadays…
I downloaded episode 12 of Saki this morning, but you know what? I don’t care anymore. This episode will be Nodoka finding out that her penguin has been ripped and having an angst attack, and I just don’t want to see it. I wish I could find someone else’s writeup of the episode to read instead of watching it myself, but I don’t know of anyone else who has been posting episode summaries for the series.
Truly thrilling stuff from a master of war
blogging.It is impressive just how completely SdB has given up on life. Hilariously, his anime blog still features some of his long-winded brain-dead current event blogging. Nothing punches up the gravitas of a denunciation of Obama’s inaction in Iran like surrounding it with pictures of big-eyed cartoon 13 year olds flashing their panties.
Whoah. That’s some fucking high calibre stoopid from ME-gan. Damn, her recent output has been EXTRAORDINARILY DUMB. So fucking moronically stupid that a new word should be invented to describe how fucking idiotic she is. But. But. Wow.
Um no. Moral authority – I appreciate that the concept is foreign to your shrivelled empty fucking head, but I thought you had the sense to attempt faking an understanding of the concept (much like how you treat economics).
Well that’s true – but only because it hadn’t even risen to that level. Even the fucking Frozen Lemonade Stands were safe from THE MOST EVIL MAN EVER TO HAVE WALKED THE EARTH OMFG WE HAVE TO INVADE NOW DAMN THE TORPEDOES AFTERALL ITS ONLY BROWN FOLKS WHO’LL END UP BEING COLLATERAL DAMAGE!!!!!!!
I am absolutely positive that the anti-war crowd wasn’t complaining about the lack of dictators and fake puppet governments in the “coalition of the willing”. In fact I seem to recall jokes about the “coalition of the billing”. So, firstly – with respect to how you’ve phrased this – FUCK YOU.
But, since I’m being generous, let’s actually answer your STUPID FUCKING QUESTION YOU DUMB FUCKING LITTLE SMUG SHIT STAIN. Yes – if enough other sovereign nations agree with the invasion, it improves the moral standing of the endeavour. Look up “rogue nation”. Ponder why it’s wrong for Iran to pursue a nuclear program, while all sorts of other nations are actually SELLING FUCKING REACTORS AROUND THE WORLD.
I thought it was crushing sanctions and random bombing runs. Anyways, I guess you have a point. Bush was trying different diplomatic avenues, such as calling them part of the Axis of Evil and threatening to bomb the ever loving fuck out of them even more than was already being done. You have a fucked up understanding of the word “diplomacy”. It’s almost as bad as your understanding of basic economics.
Then there’s a whole frigging mess of bullshit strawmen and non-sequitur garbage that makes the previous points look like her strong ones. And the last bit of it before the “update” makes me so fucking mad it’s fucking crazy. FUCK I HATE MCARDLE.
FUCK I HATE MCARDLE.
Your passion has moved me deeply. If I could break her new iPhone for you, I would.
I can”t decide which is more inane, RobotProfessor’s link:
or the item linked, in which PezMan offered no such thing. It was a lame attempt at insult, not an offer of Jeffersonian democracy, nor anything else the slightest bit useful.
I’m also amused that there an entire three comments at the Pezzer’s post, One from Pez (in answer to the guy whose piece he was insulting, who was kind enough to note that Pez is full of pez) & a third from a garden-variety moron.
Those linkies from Prof. More-Than-Human are worth their weight in eyeballs, aren’t they?
Anxiously awaiting perusal of his “Defense of Star Trek.” Is that because Obama is persecuting the Trekkers or something? Or because a $$$Zillion corporate franchise needs defending from something?
To be brutally honest, we must tighten our immigration laws before more wing-nuts are admitted. And if this fucker’s an anchor baby, maybe we should repeal the Fourteenth Amendment.
On to the Stars!
It must be hard to be right all the time…
That puts the Obama eleven-dimensional chess wishful thinking to shame. To have at any point looked at George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Ari Fleischer and the rest and NOT seen a bunch of lying sacks of crap takes extraordinary faith.
“But if this is the case, why haven’t said opponents taken notice?”
It could be that said opponents, unlike her, recognized that Cheney and company were LYING.
The real pisser for me is that these are seven year old posts. Seven fucking years.
So it’s summer, and that means that the rate of civilians getting blowed up, shot or brutally tortured to death, is going to triple or worse. There have already been a couple of extremely serious bombings this week.
Seven. Fucking. Years.
But nooooo: America is a great meritocracy after all, so these shameless dipshits are still active and taken seriously
The Soviet Union was also a great meritocracy, at least by its own standards — with “merit” equaling the ability to slavishly babble whatever absurd lies happened to be the party line.
These guys would have fit right in.
Seven. Fucking. Years.
Vietnam was 10 +/- 5 years in length. Unfortunately, I see no reason that the Iraq/Afghanistan mess won’t exceed it. The reward of oil+military spending exceeds the (just) military spending bonanza of Vietnam.
Unfortunately squared: I see no reason the USA will stay solvent that long.
Seven. Fucking. Years.
Of all of the unforgivable outcomes of the mental illness that goes by the name of conservatism, this one tops the list. They turned the most momentous act that a nation can undertake into a cheap piece of political theatrics. That they made certain that only poor people on both sides would suffer and die in the name of conservative hubris was just an added bonus. Nothing is too bad to happen to them.
May the very ground shrink away from the tread of their feet,
May their dearest hopes be dashed and come to ashes,
May they die alone and unloved.
If the Iraq War has taught us anything, it is that undergrads should not be allowed to read Von Clausewitz.
I miss you, HTML.
Brilliant as usual.
I had forgotten about tech wingnut station. I stumbled across it years ago looking for worthwhile technology newsletters, and immediately unsubscribed when every last article was much more wingnut than technobabble. I’ve managed to go several years without hearing about it, sorry to hear it is still around. Do wingnut publications never die?
Vietnam was 10 +/- 5 years in length.
I was just going to comment on this. Vietnam is difficult to quantify in many ways, but if one measures it by the commencement of bombing, which happens to be the date of my birth, March 2, 1965, to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973, that’s less than 8 years. This period also marked the beginning and end of a significant ground presence.
We’re already over 6 years into Iraq, and over 7 in Afghanistan, so we don’t have far to go to break the record.
Thanks for reminding me a reason for why I hold Fareed Zakaria in contempt. I’d forgotten exactly why. The comments above remind me that I had a good reason.
All the geniuses who joined in the orgy of anti-French sentiment back in 2002-3 should be held accountable for their collective idiocy.
Clausewitz this and Clausewitz that.
Teutonic trouser tingle.
From a link to Jane Galt, Ms. Galt says of the pre-invasion arguments:
Indeed. And we do. We also found out who’s wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong (and had a terrible time admitting it).
Fuckers. Still with blood on their hands.
Hmmm I wonder if all the liberals here predicted The Surge would fail?
Nom de Plume said,
Wish that Vietnam was so easily circumscribed. The US started committing Advisors, I believe that they numbered 120, in 1959.
The main reason that Vietnam went so badly wrong was the Truman administration’s decision to return Vietnam to French colonial status. Because the only recognized enforcers that were ready to hand were the Japanese those Japanese oppressors held in prison camps were freed to act as local police until the Gaullist forces were able to supplant them.
That’s awesome. Even the White House believes this thing I would not be writing about if the White House didn’t already believe it.
Wish that Vietnam was so easily circumscribed.
Yeah, I know I was using a fairly narrow definition. I was trying to compare it to the current conflicts, i.e., a significant ground presence. Most historians, as you note, would date it from ’59 through ’75.
So what about The Surge?
n/p. What Vietnam was and what Iraq is are both attempts to tell other people how to write their own history. They will write it their way. Nothing in our history gives us the right to impose our view of proper governance on anyone else.
So I guess in WWII we were wrong for “trying to write other peoples history”? So it was wrong to bring democracy to Japan and Germany? I guess we should have let them write it their own way with death camps and gas chambers, huh?
Nom, commencement of bombing? How about the first US casualty? First Google hit:
Air Force Tech Sgt. Richard B Fitzgibbon, Jr. murdered in Vietnam by a fellow airman on June 8, 1956, has been formally recognized by the Pentagon as the first American to die in that war.
With this decision, the Defense Department set Nov. 1, 1955 as the earliest qualifying date for inclusion on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It says this is the date the MAAG was officially established. Eight other pre- 1961 casualties are already listed on the memorial
How grimly appropriate that the first official casualty was at the hands of an American. That’s 20 fucking years of that insane clusterfuck, my beloved dad having gone nearly insane being in the Air Force during four of them. Oh well, at least we got the various versions of Apocalypse Now out of it.
I’d compare McCardle to Ezra the K. Both are well-scrubbed, careerist, and socially savvy. Both have been educated the expensive way. Both know their audience and know how to pander to the crowd. Ezra comes off as more palatable because he is so often typing the words polite Liberals want to hear, but he and Meggy are similarly hardwired
Ezra Klein can DIAF for all I care. When he was still at Pandagon, he came out in support of the Iraq clusterfuck. His carefully thought-out reasoning, arrived at after many hours of contemplations? Because the fucking smelly, pot-smoking, Dead-listening hippies at his alma mater, UC Santa Cruz (aka the University that time forgot), were against it. I’m not kidding–I wish I had saved my response but it was something like “I hope your mom and dad don’t cry too much when they see you off to boot camp. Oh wait, you’re going to become a pundit, never mind”. See also: Robert Farley at LG&M.
Fuck them both.
What about the fact that I’ve got nothing better to do right now than pretend to be a wingnut to get people to talk to me? Shit, the comment I made about Rahm Emmanuel a few threads back probably tipped most of you off that I wasn’t serious but come on. People are de-friending me left and right on Facebook so I’m running out of options. Please? I’m so lonely.
In the interests of getting the facts right, Ezra Klein transferred to UCLA from the home of the Banana Slugs, he got his degree from UCLA in 2005. He had his Come to Baghdad moment at UCSC, though.
I see that instead of admitting how stunningly wrong you were about the surge, the liberal children would rather “spoof” me in a pathetic attempt to distract from my point.
So, address my point about The Surge.
Oh Babs – you are a true delight. The whole “let’s take them at face value” thing, a rhetorical device of which I am particularly fond. Still, it works best if you’ve already demonstrated that the “face value”is zero – instead of just calling them a bunch of names. You see, following it up with
makes you look like the idiot you are. Oh wait, perhaps I just missed out on the dossier because I wasn’t looking to the north, south, east and west of that general area.
Anyways, to paraphrase a lovely and talented writer, let’s take your argument at face value. Let’s assume that Saddam wasn’t a precarious dictator, scrambling at keeping things in line with outrageous acts of force but instead some sort of super-powered ultra-villain, who after years of sanctions and air raids and under more scrutiny than any other nation on earth, developed the dreaded mythical WMDs.
Ah yes, there’s nothing that elevates a rogue nation to supreme dictator state of the world like ransomly picking fights against countries that could wipe you off the face of the earth. Even without explicit US support (i.e. actual American soldiers) Saudi fucking Arabia? Israel? WTF was Saddam going to do? Teleport the chemical weapons into a totalitarian regime? Courier a bottle of Sarin across the most checkpointed border since the Iron Curtain? What?
Because the two most powerful entities in the region are powerless against SADDAM THE SUPER VILLAIN?
With all due respect Babs (I think you can guess how much that is) You. Are. Fucking. Stupid.
Oh wait. What about the Cheney connection – that Al Qaeda was in cahoots with Saddam.
See, there you go again. The “I’ll give you the ridiculous crazy premise you’re making” only works when you’ve demonstrated that the premise is indeed crazy. Saddam had NOTHING TO DO WITH 9-11. The batshit crazy desire to connect the two is what brought about the WHOLE FUCKING TORTURE REGIME.
But, Lady Black of Crossharbour – let’s assume that Al Qaeda and Saddam actually had operational ties. Remember – this is so fucking wrong, it makes me sick to my stomach. I’m accepting the Fucking Cheney Assertion, that despite the fact that Al Qaeda hated Saddam as much if not more than the US, they were BFF.
And… and… Still Nothing. Because you are still trying to say that the paranoid egomaniac is going to develop a nuke (using magic), and then GIVE IT THE FUCK AWAY. WTF. I’d have thought spending all that time with your hoosband before he was incarcerated would have given you a clew about how power-mad dictators who see themselves as above the law, well how they treat their “ace-in-the-hole”.
But still, even accepting your ludicrous scenario that requires magical WMD development, operational ties between hated enemies, and a viciously brutal megalomaniac dictator that has infinte trust in others… Okay, we’re in the realm of slash fan-fic levels of suspension of disbelief now… How’s this looking for your argument…
FUCKING HORRIBLE. Given the above scenario, you still think that Saudi Fucking Arabia is a target!?!?! At the risk of repeating myself, Babs. You. Are. Fucking. Stupid.
But being stupid is just the hand you were dealt. Sure your argument is hateful and filled with death and destruction – but it’s because you’re an ignorant and moronic twit. It’s not like you’re actually evil or something…
What’s that? Bomb the fuckers, leave chaos and despair in your wake and then – who cares. Let the fuckers pick up after us, it’s their country after all. Fuck, I was wrong, you are evil.
I see that instead of admitting how stunningly wrong you were about the surge
Oh, I admit no such thing. The surge was designed to “win” the war, and I see that 18 months after the fact, the war still rages. Just as I predicted. What exactly am I wrong about? Please show your work. Thanks.
Fuck, sometimes you have the misfortune of following a particularly impressive post. Dragon King, well done.
Nope, wrong! We’ve won. We’ve won in Iraq, that’s why Hopey can withdraw forces without any political resistance in 2011. We have achieved victory in Iraq, and set up a fledgling democracy, something that wouldn’t have happened had we listened to Obama’s judgement in 2006.
Dr. Change,
So, address my point about The Surge.
Not funny.
So, address my point about The Surge
Address my point, liberals!!!
“Tech Central Station (remember that shithole? Last I heard, its longtime editor Nick Schulz bought it, whence it died, then moved on to edit AEI’s glossy new rag, and it too promptly died),”
Good News! Oh, not. It has died, but doesn’t know it’s dead.There is a TCS Daily and it’s about Technology Commerce Society and it has an Arnold Kling byline, so it’s the same TCS shithole. Excuse my lack of constructive criticism, but TCS will always stand for Tshit Cshit Shit.
DSGMM:
“The main reason that Vietnam went so badly wrong was the Truman administration’s decision to return Vietnam to French colonial status.”
Yeah, yeah. Blame it on the Democrat. You pronounce a good curse upon your enemies, though, so I forgive you.
Dr. Octopus:
I predicted the surge would work and I was right! Iraq is fucking paradise now. A model democracy.
Stewpid libtards.
What does struggling with the legacy of Stalin look like?
“What does struggling with the legacy of Stalin look like?”
I imagine it’s rather like greased pig wrestling, though with more sexy, lubricated Communism and less pork products.
The Great Bribery? Thought throwing money at “problems” (especially the ones you’ve caused yourself) is the liberal pussy pinko non-manly wimp way to do things.
We’ll see how much of that money gets shot at or exploded under the AmeriKKKan troops some people claim to be so concerned about.
UPDATE: Pezman Dispenser types, while complaining that Tapped complained about something being too “literalist”:
And:
This crap is so fucking lame it isn’t really worthy of mockery. You couldn’t convince me in a million yrs. that this keg of intellectual nails makes a living at this.
Nope, he doesn’t. “Pejman Yousefzadeh is a lawyer and compulsive blogger in the Chicagoland area.” His no doubt self-authored “profile,” at Politico.
A lawyer. Huhn.
Address to the hand, douchewad.
Archive.org has Pejman’s stupidity at his now-dead site archived. For example, here he is, not letting mere facts change his mind.
The real pisser for me is that these are seven year old posts. Seven fucking years.
It makes you want to go back in time and tell them, “in 7 years, Bush will be one of America’s least popular politicians, Al Gore will win the Nobel Peace Prize, Nancy Pelosi will be speaker of the House, Al Franken will be the 60th Democratic Senator, and a little-known African American State Senator from Chicago named Barack Hussein Obama will be President of the United States.”
I tried something like that, and I was “disappeared.”
Pejman Yousefzadeh is an incarnate reminder of why although some regrettable side-effects flowed from it nonetheless the Khomeinist Revolution kicking out the shah people was one of the best things ever to happen to Iran.
I’d be happy if McAddled and her compadres sat out the next march to war. That’s all. Consider it a one-warmongering suspension after a major penalty. I’d be delighted if Me-Gan never got paid for her thoughts again, but the world is not just.
This is the single most fucked-up passage in the annals of internet tradition:
Bill Clinton thinks that we ought to get Osama bin Laden before going after Saddam Hussein. Never mind that the two are not mutually exclusive. Never mind that bin Laden may already be dead. Never mind that if he is alive, making his death a prerequisite for any attack against Iraq gives Saddam Hussein even more of an incentive to support al Qaeda, as James Taranto points out today. In short, never mind basic facts. Bill Clinton wants you to take his advice. Any takers?
FUCK.
YOU.
YOU FUCKING FUCK.
No, I’m sorry, it’s this one:
AN EPIC MISMATCH IF I EVER SAW ONE Jane Galt counters the various arguments of antiwar protestors in her typically lucid and intelligent manner.
No, that one’s just pathetic, in that it shows that Megan McArdle aka Jane Galt has always been stupid and wrong, and even stupidly wrong, since forever.
Ahh, memories. Thanks, Mencken. Remember the Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto by Eric ‘I Cashed In My Libertarian Principles The Second I Got A’Sceered Of The Terrorists’ Raymond? Or The Pussification of the American Male?
They just don’t make wingnuts the way the used to, circa 2002-2003 …
I’m heartbroken. The link to James “Dow 36000” Glassman’s stock market predictions is 404ed. I’ll never learn the investment errors that have left me a poor man.
You know my thing about irony – heck, it’s generally a harmless fetish as fetishes go … well, see, the beautiful thing here is, they’ll never admit they were full of shit, so they’ll pretty well never delete any of this sublimely retarded triumphalist horse-puckey – besides, it was their “Teh Bestest Of Times” so there’s that whole sentimental-value thing keeping it intact too. It’s our very own version of “DEWEY WINS” in cyberspace, large as life & twice as fugly.
Barbara Amiel as a pundit, ROTFLMAO!
So what about The Surge?
I know I shouldn’t even respond to this weak babyshit troll – let alone with actual FACTS – but what the smeg, it’s one of my days off & I’m feeling frisky.
BushCo waited & waited to install Teh Glorious McSurge until a) enough of one side had ethnically cleansed the other out of Baghdad to make it look like it was the McSurge itself that made the city cool down (of course more heavily armed Yanks coming to town during such an unstable time had exactly the opposite effect), & b) preceded it with a big “Neighbourhood Watch With AK-47’s” payola program predicated on a cessation of boom-boom from the “staff” on Uncle Sam’s payroll … not to mention c) the serendipitous godsend of al Sadr’s declaring a cease-fire due to humanitarian concerns about excessive civilain deaths (even though he was kicking serious ass) -a little detail which the “Coalition Of The Triumph Of The Willing(TM)” seems not to have given much of a shit about at the time.
You’d’ve seen much the same results even sooner with just the payola alone (not to mention a lot fewer American kids with missing body-parts or a bad case of terminal lead-poisoning), but that wouldn’t’ve helped Uncle Dickie’s Halliburton stock any, now would it?
The McSurge ended quite a while ago, yet the bad old days of 2006-2007 haven’t returned, even with local economic & living conditions still largely sucking ass, after seven hellish years – leading those of us suffering from Chronic Logic Syndrome to conclude that it was all a dog-&-pony show for the rubes back home … yeah, it worked, alright: it sucked a bunch of Ignint McNugget dickheads back into the old “We’re Number One / Might Makes Right” con, & put some serious green into the right pockets, just like it was supposed to.
Isn’t using words like “scintilla”, when addressing audiences like his, a little optimistic?
Or should it just get the same free pass as that portmanteau of “Idiot” and “Libertarian”?
Nom de Plume is correct:
“Vietnam is difficult to quantify in many ways, but if one measures it by the commencement of bombing, which happens to be the date of my birth, March 2, 1965, to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973, that’s less than 8 years. This period also marked the beginning and end of a significant ground presence.”
If we’re talking about The Vietnam War As We Know It, the proper date indeed is 03/02/65, when among other things the Marines hit the beach near Danang and were somewhat baffled to be handed flower leis by girls in ao-dais. Though they found the enemy soon enough after that.
By the way, I could’ve sworn BBC reported on a couple more really horrific bombings this week in Iraq. Fortunately, I was smart enough to disregard their liebrul propaganda, for I am firm in the knowledge that Teh Surge Worked.
Of course, you can make the case that the Iraq War has been running since 1990. The Clinton years were full of bombing runs, cruise missile strikes, airplane shootdowns, CIA subversion attempts, no-fly zones, blockades, embargoes, and so on.
I’d compare McCardle to Ezra the K. Both are well-scrubbed, careerist, and socially savvy. Both have been educated the expensive way. Both know their audience and know how to pander to the crowd. Ezra comes off as more palatable because he is so often typing the words polite Liberals want to hear, but he and Meggy are similarly hardwired.
Correct. Don’t forget Yglesias, tho. A pundit is a pundit is a pundit.
I wouldn’t call it the main reason. But certainly this decision lies at the heart of that tragedy. From a realpolitik POV it was a missed opportunity. Ho Chi Minh could have been America’s bulwark against China in southeast asia.
so one day i convinced this couple they because they had a bad garbage disposal that they needed an entire kitchen remodel that would even pay for itself. so i was hired but i was gonna do it MY way – hire my “know nothing about remodeling” buddies to do it and damn the experts.
turns out though i was totally wrong and i was so incompetent that i maimed one kid and killed the other, the owners fled, and i eventually ended up burning the house down. (guess i shouldnt have gotten rid of the smoke alarms and fire extinguishers, but they were associated with the old kitchen regime.) there also was this unfortunate incident involving torturing a pet and I even made the entire neighborhood worse off than it was before. but you know, “stuff happens.”
after 6 or so years of fucking up good, i decided i should do what the experts said to do from the start to try and repair some of the damage. so now instead of a smoking crater, theres a somewhat livable, but still dangerous home on the site. the electricity still comes and goes and everyones life in the area has been irreparably damaged, but the homeowners now have a sweet new in-sink-erator and even some granite countertops in places! (dont tell them theyre resting on particle board and scrap.)
ok, so it took a lot longer than i said it would and im still not finished, it didnt go very smoothly to put it lightly, it cost waaaaaay more than the price i quoted, and i left a trail of death and destruction. but in the end there IS a house with a new kitchen standing there so for that i definitely deserve platitudes and a feature article in metropolitan home or elle decor and apologies from all the naysayers.
Actually, if you want to get a load of SdB at his “Best” you should read cooa (er, comp.os.os2.advocacy) in the 93-98 timeframe. I’ve known Steven in an online way for almost fifteen years now… he made some good arguments at the time, though he was still wrong, and couldn’t help larding them up with ad hominem attacks.
One of his arguments was “everyone uses winders, so you should too”; this has some merit as it’s about the applications, though there were actually a good number of good apps for OS/2 at the time. On the other hand, monocultures don’t tend to have a lot of resiliency in the face of habitat change. It’s too bad that he didn’t learn from that experience….
I like the fact that the water running directly into my house is both reliable and potable. I like the fact that when I flick a light switch, the power comes on. I also like that I can stroll leisurely through the streets and woods with my son and the dawg. These are nice things. In fact, they are luxuries. Gifts. I try to remember that every day.
And I also try to remember that a vast portion of the world suffers. They don’t enjoy these luxuries. They want for food, shelter, water, safety, education, health services. They desperately dodge famine, disease, violence. Many fail. And most tragically, many that fail are children. My son’s age. Or your kid(s) age. Or li’l Studly’s age.
We are not responsible for all the world’s suffering. Not all. But a great deal. And often in ways that only the most astute and watchful can identify. There are connections and threads to events that weave back to us and our actions that can in turn place responsibilty on our pointy little heads. We own, as the most consumerist society on the planet, a great deal of the planet’s suffering. Some of us try to remember that. I think a lot of people right here do remember.
Of course, some of the world’s suffering is much more easily traceable to the actions our nation takes (I suppose, in our names). Iraq would be a mighty fine example of that, of course.
I also like the fact that the windows in my house have not been blown out by the concussive shock from the detonation of a 105 mm artillery shell at the bus stop down the street. Or that I am not being woken in the middle of the night by armed, enraged gunmen who drag my relatives out into the street and execute them for their particular flavor of religious beliefs. I like the fact that I have not watched most of my neighbors cradling the lifeless body of a relative killed in the latest car bomb detonation. I am happy I do not have to scrub the sidewalk, playground or walls to remove the blood, entrails and brains. Lucky me.
Alas, people in Iraq (and many other places, to be sure) are not so fortunate. They live (if that is even the right word at this point) in a maelstrom of pain, loss, deprivation, violence and in-your-face-death that to me is incomprehensible.
So.
When I read the smarmy, clueless drivel of warbloggers and I think (just a bit, only that much I can really handle) what has been unleashed on the Iraqi people I get a bit upset. I think it would be really good for some of these people to actually feel the shock wave of a car bomb explosion. Or to see the aftermath. Or to actually be forced to pick up the remnants of what was once a child’s head and hand it back to that child’s mother. That would be good for them, I think (and definitely for me, oh yes).
When some smart ass little troll comes sauntering in, with the little stick he found down the street and starts whacking it on the fence and saying shit like “address my point about the surge” I want to take him to Baghdad. I want to force him to feel the warmth leaving a body as it cools post mortem. I want him to see the human splatter on the walls. I want him to see that much of the shouting in Baghdad is at funerals for non-combatants. I want his world to collapse in on him under the weight of what he is seeing, hearing and smelling. I want him to be crushed by the soulessness of his being. I want his lack of compassion and empathy and decency to fall back on him like the collapse of a neutron star. I want it all.
Who is this Pejman person? I followed the links and it lead to :
The New Ledger, Founded in January 2009
Benjamin Domenech, Editor-In-Chief
Does the wingnut welfare never cease?
the usual glibertarian-transhumanist-gun nut wasteland down Knoxville way where the fascist nerds roam
I sense a new country music genre called wingnut western.
Domino Theory explicitly relied on the idea that the purported acrimony between China and the USSR (they weren’t close even before the Soviets ignored Mao’s reasonable claim to Senior Commie on the grounds of unacceptable yellowness) was a clever ruse to lure the West into complacency.
Also clever ruses: detente, disarmament, glastnost, Chernobyl, perestroika, losing in Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, peaceable independence movements, “democracy”, Putin having one fewer egg for breakfast today than last week.
Even after Ho Chi Minh became disillusioned with the proto-third-worldist rhetoric of the Wilsonians, having an ally close to the USSR would have been of enormous use – and backing recolonization in the Japanese sphere was horribly stupid to begin with.
It’s JOSH St.Lawrence btw