Where the Fuck did you find that photo series? Jeebus on a pogo stick, but you’d made your point already.

Sorry, this has bothered me for a long time. Overkill was in order. Catharsis achieved.

I share your botheredness. But dayum.

If this turns into another comment flamewar, then I’m going to go full-on tease on all of you.

I’m serious – don’t try me. I’ll start posting vague, enticing hints about my colorful, checkered past, like this time my boss took me out to a gay club to go dancing to celebrate some award she’d gotten at work, and the next thing you know a whole group of people are egging us on to play Truth or Dare.

Have I mentioned she could’ve been a stand-in for Heather Graham?

And if I have to be the tease, it means that I’ll never, ever tell the rest of the story.

Anyway, the series. I googled Mishima and.. eh now I dont remember if it was “suicide” or “seppuku” that snagged this. I was hoping for still shot from Schrader’s (? I think it was his) movie. Got this instead, which I think is from something Mishima staged in the 50s.

Guh! Jillian! No flame war intended, at least not with who you’re thinking of (if some TNR hack shows up, that’s different).

Hmmm but mmm the story sounds interesting, especially since a favorite ex greatly resembled Heather, too. But where’s the exclusive stuff for Retardo!?! I don’t want to share listening to a story with everyone else, and especially not some jerk I’m arguing with!

What can I say? I was a bad girl when I was younger.

All I can say is that the story ended happily ever after – for everyone except her boyfriend. The moral of the story is that it pays to not be overly jealous or possessive in a relationship.

And if there’s no Fists of Flame intended, I suppose I should really give some thought to filling in the details on this little vignette at some point…..

Yeah, c’mon Jilllian. I hang all sorts of my colorful, checkered past on this here blog. Lay it out there, young lady. You’ll feel better. If you do, I’ll tell you why I can NEVER go to Reno…

mikey

Jebus I’ve already deleted 6 spams from the Nazis.

“Rhetorical seppuku.” Damn, that’s good.

The sad part is that when Bush and his cabal of shitheads are behind us, the very same liberal hawks/ sensible liberals will begin piping up about how they opposed Bush from the very start.

Pick up a copy of _The Clown_ by Heinrich Boll. It will make it all so very clear…

I wonder if † knows Jesus was a Jew. And so was his mom.

Mormon Blood Vengeance.
I’ll say it before anyone else does–good band name.

Jesus christ’s tits in a mason jar but these cats have an elaborate mythology. And I had trouble getting the fine points of the Buffyverse. This is like a full-time job…

mikey

Mikey, here’s the shorter version:

Hitler was a pussy.

Jesus christ’s tits in a mason jar but these cats have an elaborate mythology.

Hey! Don’t bring down the good name of mythology because of these (occasionally entertaining) morons! Some of us put a lot of hard work into mythology!

Of all the references, the only ones I recognize is Macdonald an eric rudolf. Rudolf is spending his last sixty years being the bitch of a lot of black gentlemen, with NO concern about constipation, so justice has ultimately been served. As for Macdonald, he better hope we never end up in the same bar. And y’know, I LIKE Coeur d’Alene, so it could happen, asshole…

mikey

Start invoking Mishima and that’s what you’ll get. Glad to hear the photos were staged 😉

Rudolf is spending his last sixty years being the bitch of a lot of black gentlemen, with NO concern about constipation, so justice has ultimately been served.

Wow.

The Army of God Will Soon Start Assassinating America’s New Nobility

Can we quote you on that and send it to the Secret Service?

It’s the Rushdoony references that let you know this particular individual is a frightening, dangerous, completely messed up whackjob, Mikey.

R.J. Rushdoony thought that any government that wasn’t basically just an application of Levitical law to daily life was Satanic. He wanted to see the Constitution thrown down and replaced with Deuteronomy.

A quick Google on “Chalcedon Foundation” will tell you more than you ever wanted to know.

The really scary thing about these people is the way they are able to filter their ideas out for mainstream consumption without watering them down overmuch. There are pretty damn few degrees of separation between the Chalcedon Foundation and the White House. Too few for my comfort.

People absolutely do not take the threat these guys pose seriously enough. They hate democracy, hate all nonwhites, hate all nonchristians, and love authoritarian structures and violence. People like that need to be taken seriously, no matter how few of them there are.

I take ’em seriously enough that I think I’ll avoid saying much more about ’em on a public forum like this. I’ll just have to find another anecdote from my misspent youth to publicly muse on, instead.

He wanted to see the Constitution thrown down and replaced with Deuteronomy.

You’ll have to pry those shrimp from my cold, dead, polyester-gloved hands!

This one time, at band camp….

Jeez. Roger that. Although a part of me wants to invite ’em over for cookies. I most certainly did NOT leave pieces of my body, my mind and my soul in the dirt thirteen thousand miles from home to allow these evil fucks to have power. Unfortunately, we’re in the same boat they are. They are discovering you can’t kill your way out of every problem. No matter how good it feels. There is no final solution for these pieces of shit, either, although if there was I’d volunteer to run it. But it’s that tiny, scared, tribal person who offers hate and death as a fucking solution, fer christes sake, that would chose that course. But I’d heed Jillian’s warning…

mikey

Hey god boy. I’m SO glad to see you are montoring this thread. Because there’s a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing you’ll actually read this.

FUCK YOU, KITTY…

mikey

We have a more elaborate ambition, a neo-Byzantine or a Calvinistesque theocracy{if you will}.Street by street,city by city,nation by nation.

Good. I and my friends will be very happy to kill each and every one of who you comes near us. You people are nits. You failed in 1865, you failed in 1945, you failed in 1965, and you will continue to fail. Give it up. You lost. God is not on your side, our you’d have one by now.

our you’d have one by now.

Bah, typing while angry. Eh, I’m sure you can figure out the homophones.

Oh god, I broke the comments. I hope this fixes it.

Sorry god boy, I’ve been under fire. People died. Lots of them. None of them were me. How bout you? To borrow your errand boy’s phrase, bring it on…

mikey

*coughcough* trolls only stay where people entertain them.

Hey, if you’re willing to tell ribald stories that include sapphic elements, please, threadjack!

I know. You’re right. But sometimes it feels good to engage, y’know? If I punch Tony Snow, well, let’s just say the outcome would suck. But I’m gonna go start chopping. Tacos tonight….

mikey

Well, the denoument of the Truth or Dare game came when my boss was dared to find out which one of us in the group was the best kisser.

Her knees gave out before I was done with her.

Not to brag or anything – but I’m bragging.

Is it hot in here?

No – It’s just you!

As T-Rex said, †McVeighle†, have a nice big cup of Shut The Fuck Up.

Now go back to munching your Cheetosâ„¢ and whacking off.

I’m having a moment…

mikey

Wow. No, that’s it. I’m convinced. I wanna be just like that guy. Wow, he’s cool….

mikey

Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like an apology from the Sensible Liberals. I know a few, and I’ve been trying hard to figure them out. I think they care more about means than ends. For instance, they despise a liberal who shouts about justice and equality but accept a wingnut who calmly advocates war or torture. So, even though the conclusions they have reached these past few years were horribly wrong, that doesn’t matter to them as much as it would to us because they used the “proper” means to reach them.

Also, they hate for things to be “politicized”. Talking about who was wrong about the war in Iraq while we are still fighting that war is, to the SL, politicizing, and thus a no-no. We have to wait until the war is over and everyone who fought in it is dead, as well as everyone who was affected by it in any way, and all the bills for the war have been paid, and historians have had plenty of time to talk over and render verdict on it before we can decide who was to blame for which screw-up.

But I could be wrong. *shrug*

So † , let me get this straight:

1) everyone who is a sinner must atone for their sins

2) the only way to atone is for a sinner to die

How about leading by example, bro?

3 beautiful,pure, white,strong christian children

I assume ‘pure’ in this context means they haven’t said a word to you yet about any same-sex experimentation they’ve been doing?

P.A.T.:

He won’t, of course. Kind of like the “voluntary extinction” people… except not an elaborate, tasteless joke.

Shit.

That photo set is fake! Yokio Mishima’s suicide wasn’t photographed. Also, there’s a bit too much smoke coming out of his ebdomen.

Radical predestinarianism means never having to ask for forgiveness.

“But I had no idea it would be this bad.”

Q: Is the current badness the result of their successful attainment of what they (badly) essentially want? Or the incompetent lack-of-success at something they want but are inept at attaining?

My bias is, the latter. Bush is not an effective villain. He’s a deeply shallow, unself-knowing fool. “Oh, but he’s really intelligent,” everyone says (incl. Molly Ivins.) Let’s say. But he’s also obviously damaged, and either doesn’t know it, or does “know” it but won’t do what’s necessary to deal with it.

Which equals warped, impeded, hobbled, etc. The most galling aspect of this is, it’s so OBVIOUS. Not to the stupid people, the “people of faith,” the trusting naifs, etc. But talk about your Sensible Liberal: How insightful does one have to be, so see the truth about the lying Smirker in Chief? How much experience in Life do you have to have, in order to see that Bush is the most insuffereble prick on your freshman dorm floor, all privilege and no soul? That’s what’s worth killing yourself over: not what he did, but how plain it was to you AT THE TIME, and you ignored it. You “gave him a chance.” You “hoped he’d surround himself with good people.”

And don’t get me started about his religiosity. Please. Please don’t.

Joe Biden might commit seppuku, if he could be assured it would get him enough campaign contributions to be President.

Q: Is the current badness the result of their successful attainment of what they (badly) essentially want? Or the incompetent lack-of-success at something they want but are inept at attaining?

Excellent point.

But I had no idea it would be this bad.

I’ve said that to myself. I’ve said it out loud in conversations about these daily horrors.
But I know better than that.

From the start, I knew we were in for it.

I think I said it to excuse my indifference to the general life of my society, and my comfortable alienation from it.

But it was still just an excuse, and one I can’t use again to deny the knowledge that it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. If it does.

Hitchens argued on Maher’s show that only idiots make ‘Bush is an idiot’ jokes, because you don’t have to be smart to make them. What that says about the people who voted for him, I dunno. (Hitchens didn’t, to my knowledge, because his citizenship application was still stuck in a basement behind a door with a sign reading ‘Beware of the Neocon’.)

From my perspective, 2004 was much worse than 2000, because it was a giant fuck-you to a world that had given Americans the benefit of the doubt after the mess of 2000. It’s going to take a lot to convince people that the electorate isn’t brain-dead in 2008.

I’m with ahem on 2004. 11/2 hit me harder than 9/11.

Are there a bunch of troll posts I missed? And why hasn’t mikey updated us on tacos, and why is Jillian drunk? 🙂

Jillian,

Do you really think the Chalcedons are that powerful?

I wouldn’t be too afraid of a paper tiger. I’ve communicated with a couple of them by e-mail (and even on my blog) because sometimes I can’t help poking paper tigers to see what they have to say given a chance.

I really don’t hate anyone. I think some people do hateful things. I think some people are really confused and fucking dangerous. But heck, if I knew George Bush himself would read and possibly respond to something I had to say, I’d make the effort to say it, and let him keep paying attention to the rest of what I have to say too. If Bill Clinton reads blogs, why the heck not? Well, apart from basic literacy, I suppose.

I mean, really. We’re not hiding here. We’re writing in public. There’s reason to disagree but not to be paranoid. If you’re seriously afraid to even mention Chalcedon, you’ll lose the argument.

I think ultimately we’re going to have two or more governments, or at least I think it might even be an idea worth considering. I look at the unified state as being kind of like the old single church, before Martin Luther. Even for centuries after that countries typically had a single national church, though some were protestant and some catholic.

The idea of having a single national religion may not be a good one, even if that religion is democracy. I think I’ll have to elaborate on this at my own blog, but it ties in with the idea of political suicide, the removing of oneself from a particular political system whenever it is possible to do so, and join another that fits your own lifestyle or beliefs better.

I’ll be honest 2000 was the first election I could vote in and I sat it out ( I honestly didn’t see a major difference in the canidates postions, or more properly didn’t think the preisdency mattered all that much because congress would act as a check). The only thing I can say in my defnse is that our system is so fucked up my vote didn’t matter anyway: not in the sense that Diebold jacked it, but in the sense that I lived in Montana, and with the electoral college (which ironicallydoes the opposite of what it was intended to do: maiking canidates focus on small areas rather than running truely national campaigns) my vote didn’t even matter. I’ve since tried to make up for it but it’s something I regret.
Let’s be fucking honest though the reason the President hasn’t seppuku’d himself isn’t stupidity ( I don’t think so at least) it’s the fact that he lacks even a shred of empathy– after all how could a truly empathetic person live with themself after what he pulled in ‘Nam,I mean sending people to die in a war that you support but are to cowardly to fight yourself, wtf?!!? (I mean I’d have a hard time dodging a draft on Iran, just out of basic humanity; how can I have someone fight and possibly die in my place even if I don’t support the war and will do anything in my power to stop it).

Whig, I don’t really fear that they’re going to have a successful armed coup in this country – if for no other reason than that it’s no longer really possible to have a successful armed coup in this country.

But the Reconstructionist wingnuts are waaaaay too close to those who hold power in this country right now. And I don’t forsee that changing any time in the near future – in fact, I think it’s only going to get worse. So I’d just as soon avoid them alltogether.

There are a lot of things I just don’t say anymore. I don’t say ’em because I don’t think it can actually make a difference. Democracy and respect for abstract concepts like “rights” are both dead in America anymore, and I see no sign of them being revived any time soon. I suppose that a true patriot would be taking any risk necessary to defend those things if they saw the situtation like I do – but I’m no true patriot. When you spend as much of your childhood hungry and homeless as I did, ideas like “patriotism” lose their shiny appeal pretty fast.

Things are bad, they’re not going to get better any time soon, and I’m not risking myself for a large landmass and a system of government that couldn’t even shelter its citizens from a relatively minor economic disruption like the one we saw in the 70s. There are countries in the world where ideas like “democracy” look like they still carry some currency…I hope to go see eventually if the reality is anything like the appearance.

And for anybody who thinks that things *aren’t* that bad….we have a president who just admitted, on television, that he’s been wiping his ass with the Geneva conventions for years now, and the only reporter who’s willing to call him on this is Matt Lauer. Matt Lauer, whose regular beat is what? Which car seat is best for new moms? America’s Cutest Puppy contests?

I’m ranting; I’m sorry. I’ll stop now.

And come on, Pinko, can’t a girl live a little one in a while?

Is the current badness the result of their successful attainment of what they (badly) essentially want? Or the incompetent lack-of-success at something they want but are inept at attaining?

The first. The thing to remember is that the Bushies do not care about damage to America, but only about a) achieving and keeping political power and b) making money for them and their friends. Anything that looks like a failure to people who do care about America (Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, New Orleans et al) is a huge success from this point of view.

[…] This began as a comment on a thread at Sadly, No! For hundreds of years in Western Europe the Catholic Church was the single official religion. After the Protestant Reformation and a series of conflicts, the single church was divided into several distinct heirarchies under separate earthly leadership. […]

I love me my off topic jokes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ui4yH0YFYE&eurl=
I think I pulled together a strong campainge, overall. Of course, I will support Senator Clinton in her campainge, at least until we get the results of the Republican Primary. I’m doing pretty strong in most polls, so fingers crossed.

Wherever there are hippies, I will sneer; wherever there are turbans, I reach for my pith helmet; whenever I am scared, fellow liberals are my enemies.

This is the cold, dead heart of the Liberal Hawk (aka ‘Sensible Liberal’) Coalition. There are always well-meaning, highly educated people who would give their lives and their nations over to the control of psychopaths and serial killers rather than risk the even tenor of their days being “disturbed” by loud noises, novel smells, and sights not appropriate for a toile wallpaper pattern. At least the “Soccer Moms” and “NASCAR Dads” have the (faint) excuse of genuine ignorance; the Liberal Hawks, although they consider themselves to be made of a far finer material, actually choose to elevate their shallow comforts and coddled sensibilities over the messiness of democracy and the neediness of lesser peoples’ lives.

And speaking of the Gilded Age — does anybody have Mark Twain’s sulphurous comments about the dainty Presbyterian minister who barred “workingmen” from his church on the grounds that his wealthy congregants had the Christian “right” not to be offended by stinky poor people? Our current ‘Sensible Liberals’ don’t even have the advantage of novelty when it comes to their prejudices…

I’m sorry that my liberal principles and sensible wariness of the insanity and incompetence of wingnuts are so easily overcome by the patchouli stink of hippies…

Hey, have some sympathy. Maybe they got dragged along to a Grateful Dead show once as kids. That could make a Peter Beinart out of anyone.

And my god, if I had known that internecine blog warfare was all it took to release Jillian’s inner Girl Gone Wild, I’d have launched a preemptive strike against the Washington Monthly a long time ago.

I see dumb people.

Nitpick RETARDEAU: I do believe it was Rumsfeld who sneered that troops were “fungible.” I could be wrong though…

Retardo,
Is there anyway you can permanently block these assholes? Besides being filled with racist hate, they also “stutter” the flow of the comments by posters here. I don’t comment often, but I really enjoy many of the clever, insightful, and well written comments by others.
But don’t block Gary. The smackdown is precious to me.

Well, we have a thing against messing with comments in any way, but they’re basically just spamming at this point. I’ll go in and pull the fatal lever.

Dilettante Retardo is now posturing as an expert on seppuku? It is priceless to see the untermenschen autodidacts pretend to know stuff about things and stuff. It give all the lads at the club such a jolly good chuckle!

[…] And uhh-two.  “I’m sorry but when there are hippies and old Lefties on one side, and on the other an obvious bunch of kleptocratic wingnuts composed of the absolute worst of the living remainders of the Reagan, Nixon and Ford administrations, I’m just naturally more concerned about the former. I mean, what are a few dozen reactionary fucktards and veterans of all sorts of foriegn policy depravities between friends? I was so braindead there were xes in my eyes and flies buzzing about, I know, but that’s how I chose to view things. Wherever there are hippies, I will sneer; wherever there are turbans, I reach for my pith helmet; whenever I am scared, fellow liberals are my enemies. […]

I’d meant to credit Tulkinghorn for his remark that the Elliott Abrams rehabilitation should have been a wake-up call for Sensible Liberals.

Teh — ’tis true Rumsfeld said that, but ’tis also true that “oil is fungible” was the by rote answer to “No Blood for Oil”.

Rumsfeld said that troops are fungible?

Well, he’s certainly funged them.

Wow, a most excellent rant, RM. Worthy of Henry Rollins, if I may say so. Well done.

I’ve considered myself a “Liberal Hawk,” in that I do believe in Liberal principles but also believe that sometimes military action is necessary and military preparedness is good policy. We do have some responsibility, as the (probably former at this point) leader of the Free World, to engage in some amount of policing when tinpot dictators and bloodthirsty juntas start massacring people. That’s because the U.N. can’t do it, so who is going to? This isn’t Star Trek, there is no “prime directive” that says we have to let people slaughter each other because it’s not our fight. How many Rwandas and Ethiopias and Somalias and Sudans and East Timors and on and on are we going to allow to happen, yet we call ourselves civilized and compassionate and caring? We stand for the civil rights of all people? Or just ourselves?

This doesn’t mean that I approve of the neocon approach. And while it’s easy now with the hindsight of history and 5 years of investigative journalism (however sloppy) to talk about how Bush is a theocratic christofascist ignoramus, in 2000 when I voted for Gore (uselessly, in Texas) all I really knew about him was he was GHWB’s son and apparently a moderate Reagan Republican. I don’t think that in 2000 anyone could have anticipated the depths of incompetence, corruption, and arrogance this administration would sink to. Maybe you could, all-knowing omniscience that you are, but I couldn’t. By 2003 (really by late 2002) I finally realized the truth, but it was manifestly too late. And really, I don’t think I could have done any differently, based on what was known at the time. Liberal Hawks are human too, we don’t have perfect knowledge and we make mistakes.

So Sadly, No, I’m not going to commit seppuku for you. Sorry. I was not and have never been terrified of finding Osama under my bed. I could care less about hippies, most of whom are harmless and believe in peace and love, and in 2000 it was less than obvious that the Bush administration was going to be the disaster it has turned into. Vietnam and the Spanish-American War were not “liberal internationalism,” the former was based on the Red Scare and the ridiculous “domino theory” while the latter occurred out of jingoistic exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny; all of these impulses are still with us today. Somalia failed not because it was “liberal internationalism” but precisely because it wasn’t; we tried to go it alone just like in Iraq, but when it started to go south we had sane leaders who realized that we didn’t have the strength to succeed there because it would have taken a military commitment we alone couldn’t make, among other things, and leaving was the best option. Gulf War I was very much in the spirit of liberal internationalism, as we did have a broad coalition of nations supporting us in rolling back an unquestionable invasion with intent to annex a sovereign nation. That we didn’t at that time continue on to Baghdad was also the wisest choice, made by pragmatic leaders, though the subsequent call for Shiite revolution was done badly and got tens of thousands slaughtered to no good purpose (and is one of the reasons we’re having so much trouble now). Beirut in 1982 was not liberal internationalism, it was cooperation with our Israeli ally in invading and occupying Lebanon to get at Arafat. WWI was not strictly liberal internationalism, it was joining an alliance in a war against another which had attacked our interests. So really, not one of your examples of failed “liberal internationalism” holds water. But I get your meaning. I actually like Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal, but I have no idea who “Cockburn” and Tariq Ali are. When exactly did the P and VP start parroting PNAC talking points verbatim; was it before 9/11? Because I don’t recall hearing such things before then. Poindexter is a convicted Iran/Contra slimeball and as soon as I heard of his involvement with the administration I was revolted; but wasn’t he quickly shuffled from the scene? I don’t even remember what Elliott Abrams did for Bush II, that’s how memorable it was. At the time of the Iraq drumbeat, the issue was whether Saddam had weapons programs or not, not his oil which everyone knew about. Remember, we didn’t know then what we know now, that it was all hooey. There were rumors and isolated stories, but not the clear evidence we now have. We had no indication then that the POTUS was as nutty about religion as the Taliban, and in any event it’s not much different from the Reagan era in that regard, so how can that be used as an indictment of liberal hawks? I’m not terrified (except of our own government, now), and I have always been a little cynical. And I never, ever, have considered myself an enabler and mouthpiece for these chuckleheads. I oppose virtually everything they stand for. So I’m glad that your rant obviously isn’t targeted at me.

But still, it was a good rant.

At the time of the Iraq drumbeat, the issue was whether Saddam had weapons programs or not, not his oil which everyone knew about. Remember, we didn’t know then what we know now

Turns out we did. Blix told us and was spot on correct. “We” didn’t all fall for Powell’s shameful puppet show to convince us otherwise. Which made “us” pansy appeaser leftists who wanted nothing more than to give every terrorist money, hugs and candy.

/not ready to make nice

While not a member of any political party, I actually looked forward to Bush Jr’s attempt to be a big boy…the sick part of me laughed and hoped it would be a complete disaster.

Because the American people kind of deserved an asshat like Da Shrub(tm)…karmic payback is a bitch.

Don’t make nice. Politics ain’t beanbag, these are serious issues. Make rational.

Blix didn’t tell us that anything was for sure until after the invasion. All the news stories were about how the inspectors were being given the runaround. Denied entry to certain sites for hours, delayed in transit, early warnings being leaked…some inspectors said they were satisfied with the cooperation, some did not. Meanwhile the administration was saying it’s a slam dunk, we have intelligence, we can’t share it all because it’s sensitive…in 2004 we knew it was hooey, in March 2003 we didn’t. Today I would never trust this administration to act in the best interests of the nation in any capacity, but in March 2003 they hadn’t betrayed my trust yet. I didn’t like them, but I trusted them to at least act competently in foreign affairs. That was then, this is now. Won’t get fooled again.

I am as outraged at the practice of labeling anyone who opposes the President’s policies “traitors” and “appeasers” as you are. The point of RM’s rant is that “liberal hawks” should just STFU because we initially supported the Iraq operation. My point is that that’s silly. Liberal hawks are not neocon nutjobs.

liberalrob said,
September 14, 2006 at 22:42

“Liberal hawks are not neocon nutjobs.�

No, but they are credulous.

And lend themselves to brutal policy because of their lack of visin, or moral compass, or indecisiveness, and/or cowardice.

Your insistence that these things were still “debatable� is misplaced to say the very least.

Witness Condi’s bullshit statement about “not waiting for a mushroom cloud.� Call THAT a fact? (And since when do we have a national advisor so shit-scared, who then helps craft policy based on hysterical supposition? Even the Dulles boys were more contained than THAT.)

Damn near every point made by this administration in the run-up was contested by real experts in the appropriate fields, debated, NOT established as irrefutable fact, or proven absolutely wrong. The reason you may have missed it is because all of the refutations of these lies were INSIDE the paper (witness the famous “rocket tubes,� disproved by February of that same year, found on about page 22 of the Wash Post front section). You actually had to turn the page, and look for it. If all you did was read headlines, or watch the collection of 30-second drivel that passes as nightly “news stories� on TV news, and accept all that as “fact,� then it’s not surprising that you were duped. But the info WAS out there. And it wasn’t that hard to find.

Maybe you were just willing to be lead. I know there are lots of folks that just love to salute. Gives em direction. They can “stand tall.” And look to something else to define reality for them.

Liberals like this are the reason Nigerian spammers are still in business.

When exactly did the P and VP start parroting PNAC talking points verbatim; was it before 9/11? Because I don’t recall hearing such things before then.

Cheney was a PNAC member. Just like Rummy. Failure to pay attention is no excuse for supporting what these cretins have done.

And don’t ever forget (like ABC) that it was Cheney’s puppet that threw the weapons inspectors out.

How many Rwandas and Ethiopias and Somalias and Sudans and East Timors

ding ding ding ding. Quick, who gave the greenlight to Suharto to instigate the killing in Timor? Who sold him the weapons? Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford. Who served with these goons and was perfectly ok with what was done in Timor? Cheney and fucking Rumsfeld — who were, according to liberal hawks, suddenly post 9/11 supposed to represent progressive internationalism. These idiots and butchers and butcher accomplices were suddenly, according to liberal hawks, prosecutors of a humanitarian crusade in Iraq.

Last I heard, Elliott Abrams is number two at the NSC; not a cabinet position, but certainly not a chickenfeed position, either. But then what do you expect when his fellow Central American butcher, Negroponte, was first ambassador to occupied Iraq and is now head Spook.

Humanitarians, obviously.

“in 2004 we knew it was hooey, in March 2003”

Holy shit I hope you don’t cash a paycheck before you go to a carnival.

Apparently f-bombs are OK at SN. Got it.

“Cheney and fucking Rumsfeld — who were, according to liberal hawks, suddenly post 9/11 supposed to represent progressive internationalism.”

Not according to this one. They were, however, supposedly in touch with intelligence sources that we the general public were not, and they were, supposedly, the “adults” when it came to foreign affairs and would not knowingly lie in order to further some nutball agenda. Now we know better, right?

“These idiots and butchers and butcher accomplices were suddenly, according to liberal hawks, prosecutors of a humanitarian crusade in Iraq.”

No, they were supposedly prosecutors of U.N. sanctions based on good intelligence sources. They lied to us. How the fuck were we supposed to know, they didn’t have a big sign saying “I am lying to you” hanging from their necks. There’s a difference between being “a little cynical” and being so fucking cynical that you automatically assume every single word coming from the mouth of a Republican is a lie. The CIA was being run by George Tenet, who was a CLINTON appointee, remember? He turned out to be fucking Benedict Arnold, but at the time I thought, well, he was Clinton’s guy so he has no reason to support Bush unless there really is some good intelligence. We got bent over real good by these people, and it’s right to be pissed off and highlight it at every opportunity. But I’m not going to accept blame for being an “enabler” and a “mouthpiece” when my support was based on what I felt at the time was credible evidence. I didn’t like it, I didn’t want to go to war right away, I felt there was no big hurry and all the “mushroom cloud” talk was BS; but at the same time I thought they had at least some evidence supporting action, and Saddam was indeed unfinished business, and I credited them with having some idea of how to do it right. They screwed it up, tremendously, and should have been kicked out by 2004 at the latest. So rather than rage at the liberal hawks and telling us what morons we were and we should STFU or just commit ritual suicide, let’s work on fixing the immediate problem: these bozos are STILL in office, and unless we’re very careful WE (their opponents, you and me both) are going to get blamed for the crap that is hurtling towards us in the years after we finally get them out of power.

“Humanitarians, obviously.”

Not at all.

I, Chrisitian said:
“[Liberal hawks] lend themselves to brutal policy because of their lack of visin, or moral compass, or indecisiveness, and/or cowardice.”

I hope you’re not insinuating that I’m a coward. Lack of vision, depends on what you define as “vision” I guess. “Moral compass” the same. Indecisive, sometimes I can make Hamlet look like a man of action. In the case of Iraq, it was more acquiescence than indecision.

“Your insistence that these things were still “debatableâ€? is misplaced to say the very least.”

There was no consensus in this country in March of 2003 that the administration was lying. Like I said, there were rumors and isolated stories. The information was starting to bubble up. That’s undoubtedly why the administration was in such a hurry to get Iraq invaded, to get it done before it all came out.

“Damn near every point made by this administration in the run-up was contested by real experts in the appropriate fields, debated, NOT established as irrefutable fact, or proven absolutely wrong.”

But the contest of experts was still going on! The administration’s points were NOT established as irrefutably WRONG by then either. That all happened later.

“Maybe you were just willing to be lead. I know there are lots of folks that just love to salute. Gives em direction. They can “stand tall.â€? And look to something else to define reality for them.”

We have to educate these people about the consequences of living that way. And now we have an object lesson. At the same time, I don’t think you’ll ever reach a point where everyone’s a political activist. The key is to enable people to choose their leaders with more consideration of their own self-interest. How many people who have subsequently gone bankrupt voted for Bush? That’s just one example. As far as me, personally, willing to be led? I was willing to be led by Al Gore and Howard Dean. What does that say about me?

“If all you did was read headlines, or watch the collection of 30-second drivel that passes as nightly “news storiesâ€? on TV news, and accept all that as “fact,â€? then it’s not surprising that you were duped.”

I don’t subscribe to the Dallas Morning Republican News, no. I got tired of having a 6-foot pile of ads to throw away every week and dropped my subscription in the late 90’s. For the most part in 2003 my news came from MacNeil/Lehrer, McLaughlin Group and the Internet. There may have been a few blogs to look at back then too. I don’t read Time or NewsWeek and US News, except at the barber shop or dentist’s office. I am not a tremendous activist. I depend on others to do the researching for me, because it takes all my free time from work posting these insanely long discussion posts. And yet here I am…

Jillian said:
“Liberals like this are the reason Nigerian spammers are still in business.”

How so? I’ve never sent those guys a cent. I think there are a lot of “liberals like me,” too. And at the same time, there’s no liberal like me. How about that?

But the contest of experts was still going on! The administration’s points were NOT established as irrefutably WRONG by then either. That all happened later.

Um, yes, if you want to be technical about it. However, most people don’t require that level of absolute proof and certainty before making their decision. As someone who had paid a higher-than-average amount of attention to politics before discovering blogs around that time, I knew more than enough to call reasonable doubt by then.

Even if I hadn’t known what these very same criminals had done before during the Ford, Reagan and Bush the Elder administrations (tip of the hat to every sensible liberal’s favorite man to hate, Noam Chomsky), learning about the PNAC was enough to make clear that their intentions were hardly as pure as the driven snow. Not to mention that no one seemed to be able to explain to me why Saddam was inexorably driven to use any weapons he might possess against us without resorting to some version of “crazy A-rabs don’t think rationally like we do”.

But enough about that. Would you like to buy a bridge?

Churchill once said something about being right, in time.

And I think ultimately that THAT is the point.

Didn’t all that unclarity, and all that argument, give you pause? Didn’t it make you question, not the technical garbage, but their very integrity and motives? It should have. A normal person might start to think, “now, wait just a gosh-darn minute…� but, obviously, by your own admission (“…it was more acquiescence than indecision…�) not you.

You seem to accept a number of premises and assumptions without particularly acute analysis. Go back over your own missives here and question all the things you thought were true. Not the information they fed you: the beliefs you have about things (“…Saddam was unfinished business…�)

You don’t have to be a “tremendous activist.� Do you have no center of your own? Or as someone once said, Have you, at long last, no shame?

I said earlier:

“…lots of folks that just love to salute. Gives em direction. They can “stand tall.� And look to something else to define reality for them.�

And you replied:

“…We have to educate these people about the consequences of living that way…�

Actually, I wasn’t talking about “these people.� I was talking about you.

I speak for no one on this site. But if you’re looking for absolution or redemption, I don’t think you’ll find it here. Too argumentative, too snarky, and not a place to suffer fools.

To liberalrob,

It’s ok. You got duped. Most of us here didn’t, and said so from the get go. Tend to your open wound; in time it will heal and yes, you “won’t get fooled again”.

“…You got duped…�

Don’t mean to belabor this endlessly, but

it’s a one trillion dollar mistake (and still counting).
It’s a 2400 American service people dead (and still counting)
It’s over 100, 000 Iraqis dead (and still counting)
It’s 15,000 American service people injured or maimed for life (irreparable head trauma, loss of limb, etc.) (and still counting)
It’s tens of thousands of American families (and all their dependents), totaling millions of people in our own country, emotionally destroyed daily by the absence, threat of loss, or loss of loved ones (and still counting)

That’s some “dupe�.

For which millions of others are paying.

“But if you’re looking for absolution or redemption, I don’t think you’ll find it here. Too argumentative, too snarky, and not a place to suffer fools.”

You’re probably right, and I’m not looking for absolution or redemption because I don’t think I need it. But just like it’s important to keep reminding people just how bad this has turned out, I think it’s important to point out that snark may be fun (and I enjoyed the rant) but sometimes it’s unfairly applied.

“Do you have no center of your own? Or as someone once said, Have you, at long last, no shame?”

Am I Joe McCarthy now? I think I do have a center of my own.

“Didn’t it make you question, not the technical garbage, but their very integrity and motives? It should have.”

It does now. Then, it didn’t. I simply couldn’t believe, in fact couldn’t conceive, that any group of people who had graduated from the best schools and had been at the highest levels of power and influence in this country could be so arrogant, so bone-headed, so incompetent. I mean, maybe Bush himself was a trust fund baby who only got in because of daddy’s connections, but Cheney has been in government forever. So has Rumsfeld, so had Wolfowitz, Powell had been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they had tons of brains in their outfit. I hated their domestic agenda but in foreign policy they were supposed to be competent. And then they went and fucked that up, and lied to us into the bargain. And it’s gone downhill from there. Way downhill. Talking Grand Canyon.

I have absolutely no use for this administration. I’m as mad at them as anybody here. I’m simply saying, I don’t think it’s fair to lump liberal hawks like me in with “enablers” and “mouthpieces” like Tony Blankley and Tom Friedman and the rest because we happened to initially support (however lukewarmly) the Iraq debacle they have created.

So I’ve said that, and I’m done. Back to your regularly scheduled snarkfest. Which, by the way, I greatly enjoy.

“Then, it didn’t. I simply couldn’t believe, in fact couldn’t conceive, that any group of people who had graduated from the best schools and had been at the highest levels of power and influence in this country could be so arrogant, so bone-headed, so incompetent.

I really should .txt file this so carpal tunnel doesn’t result from typing it at least once a week as I have been these days:

Every school in every university produces a dumbest student to receive the degree. Every year.

It does now. Then, it didn’t. I simply couldn’t believe, in fact couldn’t conceive, that any group of people who had graduated from the best schools and had been at the highest levels of power and influence in this country could be so arrogant, so bone-headed, so incompetent.

I’m simply saying, I don’t think it’s fair to lump liberal hawks like me in with “enablers� and “mouthpieces� like Tony Blankley and Tom Friedman and the rest because we happened to initially support (however lukewarmly) the Iraq debacle they have created.

I’m sorry, but now *I* have to rant.

Jesus H. Fucking Christ, man, have you EVER taken a history class? EVER??!?! There hasn’t been a genuinely intelligent man at the helm of this country since Thomas Jefferson.

And the fact that anyone would seriously consider making a “Best and Brightest” argument at this point in time is almost enough to make me consider bringing back poll tests.

You’re too ignorant to vote. Seriously. Do democracy a favor and stay home. Stop paying attention to politics and start watching “Survivor”. Just stop. Idiots like you fuck up democracy for the rest of us.

Personally, I *don’t* “lump you in” with Tony Blankley.

You’re worse than they are.

You have no excuse. They are obviously whores for their ideology. You’re the doofus who believes the guy who says “I promise I won’t come in your mouth”.

And of course you don’t think you did anything wrong. Because that would require the ability to think.

Gah. I don’t know why I waste the effort to type shit like this out. You’ll never get it. But much of what’s wrong with the country at this point is directly the fault of people exactly like you.

Thank you, Jillian, for making the point about the best and brightest and saving me the effort. My jaw hurts from where it just bounced off the desk after seeing that.

There hasn’t been a genuinely intelligent man at the helm of this country since Thomas Jefferson.

Tell me about it. I live in his hometown, so his…aura, for lack of a better term, is everywhere. I drive right past Monticello to visit relatives every so often. Despite his obvious shortcomings, it never fails to amaze me how much he accomplished, how active and engaged he was with the world.

And then, of course, I get several daily reminders of just what a drooling idiot man-child sits in the White House now. The contrast is almost unbearable. Feel my pain!!

Mr. Mordant, I don’t even know why I bother most days anymore. I sometimes suspect a plot whereby the American government has been putting pure Liquid Stupid® into our water supply, thereby contaminating the purity of our precious bodily fluids. Or something like that.

The entire case for the Iraq War was nothing more than a giant, implied fallacy of the undistributed middle. To wit:

All terrorists are Arabs.
Iraqis are Arabs.
Therefore, Iraqis are terrorists.

That, in a nutshell, was it. There was a whole bunch of rhetorical smoke and mirrors about putative WMDs and so forth, but the whole argument boiled down to the above. It’s bad enough that it isn’t a true argument, but it isn’t even fucking valid! It’s a fallacy through and through, and the fact that 70% of Americans fell for it is all that needs to be said.

It’s not about their historical ignorance (which, as the above shows is plentiful), it’s not about their jingoistic naivete in believing *anything* that comes out of the mouth of a politician *ever* without indpendent confirmation – it’s that they are plain mentally incompetent. They utterly lack critical thinking skills. They’d fail a phliosophy 102 course. They are stupid.

The fact that so few of the idiots in question are even willing to apologize or show the slightest sign of serious self-reflection after displaying such egregious studpitiy is the reason why I can’t actually bring myself to get very personally involved in American politics anymore. It’s pointless. As long as this country is filled with people who can’t think, nothing we do will make any difference.

I admire the tenacity of those who have come to other conclusions. I just can’t do it anymore.

You’re not alone, Jillian.

Vietnam and the Spanish-American War were not “liberal internationalism,� the former was based on the Red Scare and the ridiculous “domino theory� while the latter occurred out of jingoistic exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny; all of these impulses are still with us today.

Vietnam was also based on a domino theory and a containment theory. Both are implied in the Liberal Hawk argument wrt Iraq.

The Spanish-American War was indeed marketed as a humanitarian intervention, specifically with regard to Spanish atrocities in Cuba which were real. Adjusting for time period, the addition of the Philippines to the mix also fits with the Iraq scheme. The Filipinos were allegedly victims of their own paganism/Catholicism, and therefore had to be “freed” from such sectarian and colonial depravity. It was for their own good. From such haughty presumption, water torture was bound to follow. And it did, just like in Iraq.

[…] And so they did. Now that that war has gone the way not only hippies and Chomskyites but people like Daniel Davies and Atrios thought it would, Liberal Hawks don’t much like it when such people point to the blood on their hands: We certainly didn’t achieve what we should have, and those “far-left types” who worried that we were going to kill a bunch of people then screw the pooch certainly had a point. […]

[…] sneers toward the anti-war Left). But I am damning it with faint praise. Over and over I’ve said that liberal internationalism — the ideology that fuels the essay tristero takes issue with […]

[…] began as a comment on a thread at Sadly, […]

[…] I particularly relish Las Casas’s third and fourth rebuttals — his era too had its Sensible Liberals, its Drums, Yglesiases, Kleins, its Beinarts, Chaits, and Hitchenes; while he was the DFH. […]