Freedom’s just another word for toppling governments we helped install
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another wokka-wokka-wokka-hoo-hee-hoo column from Charles Krauthammer. There’s lots of good stuff here, but this is particularly juicy:
Maliki is not just weak but unreliable. Time is short. We should have long ago — say, when national security adviser Stephen Hadley wrote his leaked memo last November about Maliki’s failure — begun working to have this dysfunctional government replaced.
Even the French foreign minister, upon returning from a recent fence-mending trip to Iraq, called for Maliki’s replacement. (One can discount his later apology as pro forma.) Such suggestions are often denounced as hypocritical and contrary to democracy. Nonsense. In a parliamentary system, a government serves only if it continues to command confidence.
But, like, if, uh, we’re “working to have his dysfunctional government replaced,” and not the people who have been elected by the Iraqis, isn’t that a de facto coup? And how are we going to force the Iraqi parliament to have a no-confidence vote?
Does anyone imagine that Maliki enjoys the confidence of the majority of Iraqis? If he does not, parliament, representing the people, has the perfect right to vote no confidence and bring down the government.
And then? Rather than seek a new coalition as a shaky substitute, the better alternative is new elections. And this time we must not repeat the mistake of election by party list, a system almost designed to produce warlord leadership and unstable coalitions.
New elections. Lovely. Everyone loves those picture-perfect purple finger moments. Makes everyone feel warm’n’fuzzy about waging a pointless war that’s ruined millions of lives. Just as long as the Iraqis vote for someone we approve, is all. And to do that, we’ll likely have to ban every legitimate candidate save Allawi and Chalabi.
Democrats, can you please, please, please, please get us out of this? I’m tired of watching my country slowly commit suicide. Thanks.
People who have actually been to Iraq and spoken to Iraqis say another election wouldn’t work.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/21/1349252
But Mr Krauthammer is Serious! so I don’t know whom to believe.
In a parliamentary system, a government serves only if it continues to command confidence.
it’s too bad America doesn’t have one!
You know, I never get tired of this picture of Krauticakes.
It’s so perfect. The Platonic ideal of Krauthammer.
Who are these “Democrats” you speak of? Perhaps a hypothetical “second party” that could offer a meaningful, principle-based alternative to a government of fundamentalist whackjobs and corporate interests?
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to … oh fuck it.
About the only thing the Republicans are right about is that the Democrats are a bunch of spineless political opportunists.
OK, say they replace Maliki. And let’s say they don’t screw up and do it in such a way that it doesn’t stink of a coup d’etat. Let’s even spot them that they can get Chalabi or Allawi in there, without sparking a massive Shia uprising.
Then what?
If by some miracle the Shia are compliant and just accept being arbitrarily forced out of power, then it will take months to get a new “acceptable” government. At the end of the day that government (if the US was extremely lucky) will be at most a bit less weak than the current one.
Most likely though, Chalabi or Allawi will gain the Prime Minister’s Office through the help of US military power and will promptly find that they have no one who will follow their orders unless a US battalion is close by.
I hate to keep bringing this up, but now Dr. K is saying that SIX MONTHS after Jawad (I still call him Jawad) was sworn in we should have been starting the whole toppling-a-supposedly-friendly-government thingy?!? One FU and we should have coup-ed his weak and unreliable ass? Isn’t that setting the bar just a little high? Isn’t it just a little “funny” (you know, the opposite of “serious”) to expect ANYBODY to have made much progress in a single FU?
In the interests of full disclosure, Jawad is paying me a gazillion dollars for the next FU to answer mean attacks against him that I happen to run across while monitoring subversive websites…
anybody else getting weird Viet Nam Flashbacks on this – Late 1963 – we decided Diem wasn’t going to be able to cut it as leader of South Viet Nam so when the coup came the US sat on its hands (or helped the story is murky) and Diem ended up with a bullet in the back of the head and we ended up with a more paltable (to the US) dictator.
And didn’t that just work out kikky boo for everybody yes?
Of course Krauthammer has to bring up “even the French” doesn’t he?
Meanwhile … my message to that feller:
Chuckie boy — what do you mean “we”, kemosabe?
I’m so sick of this Allawi crap I can’t even come up with anything funny to say about it anymore. It’s a terrible idea. Putting someone nobody likes (and who seems to EMBRACE the role of American puppet) in charge of the country isn’t going to “unify” anyone except anti-government forces.
Prof. F8- surely that’s “tikkity boo” (sp?), no?
Trying to relive the Happy Days of Purple Fingers. It’s the only bright spot they still have in Their Glorious Empirical Reign.
Dear Sirs:
We have received the following request from your office:
“Democrats, can you please, please, please, please get us out of this? I’m tired of watching my country slowly commit suicide. Thanks.”
We must respectfully request that you kindly go fuck yourselves. We’re not doing squat.
Truly yours,
Democrats
Trying to relive the Happy Days of Purple Fingers. It’s the only bright spot they still have in Their Glorious Empirical Reign.
Except apparently not, because David Ignatius told me that the Iranians rigged the elections, and that they only would have been fair if we counter-rigged them for Allawi.
” Nonsense. In a parliamentary system, a government serves only if it continues to command confidence”
Kinda makes ya wish we’d never kicked Great Britain to the curb, doesn’t it?
I was a teen when I realized George Will’s columns full of big words and haughty tone could be boiled down to such messages as “we must bomb them because we are stronger”. Krauthammer flies a lot lower so the might-makes-right message is clearer.
And this time we must not repeat the mistake of election by party list, a system almost designed to produce warlord leadership and unstable coalitions.
WE?? What, we’re not even going to pretend? Not coyly hiding behind “the will of the iraqi people” in their “fledgling democracy”? Nope, see, WE (that would be the Americans, after invading iraq, deposing their existing leadership, occupying their nation by force of arms and disbanding the government and the security forces) made a mistake by ALLOWING them (the iraqis) to have an election that at least in some ways was similar to the way THEY wanted to do it. Shit. Can’t make that mistake again.
This time we operate a sham election, get OUR guy installed in office, let him dissolve parliament and appoint the leadership. Then he could set up a new internal security apparatus, hmm, maybe call it Mukhabarat, yeah, that’ll work. Then we could give him some gunships and some VX gas and he could suppress the insurgency and the Shiite militias. Hell, in a year iraq could be a peaceful, secular paradise under a paranoid strongman, just like it used to be before….
Uh, never mind all that…
mikey
The picture of Krauthammer is great. The picture of Krauthammer is terrifying. I despise it, and yet I cannot look away. The dead eyes, the cruel beak of a mouth, they add to create an air that implies he could kill you without the slightest hesitation or regret. Even the beanie and lolly don’t soften it; he just looks like a death camp commandant at a zany birthday party. Please stop posting this picture. Never stop posting this picture.
Brad R.: Democrats, can you please, please, please, please get us out of this?
Some snarky intern: We must respectfully request that you kindly go fuck yourselves. We’re not doing squat.
The above response to this question was inadvertently sent out by the Low Level Staffer we all pass around when we need someone to blame for saying dumb shit and is no longer operative.
Our actual, on the record response:
Dude. We’ve got, like, elections coming up!
PS plz send moar munny. kthxbai.
What biff3000 said. That picture is a dependable day-brightener/darkener.
Professor Fate wrote:
anybody else getting weird Viet Nam Flashbacks on this
Oh yes, indeed – though it’s even more stupid this time around. These guys learned absolutely fucking nothing.
Psst. Hey kid! Wanna buy a pull-out of Iraq?
Sweet nonexistant Jesus on a stick, I’m glad I have neither the access to sharp pointy weapons nor the proximity to people this mind-numbingly stupid, because I would be sorely tempted to strike for justice and the American system of responsive government, a bold and truthful media, and merit-based economic ladder, all of which I was told actually existed at one point (not that I really believe those silly lies-for-children any more, mind you).
anybody else getting weird Viet Nam Flashbacks on this
Umm, what day is it?
Oh, and how do I tell the “weird” ones?
mikey
the man is driving me insane.
Nonsense. In a parliamentary system, a government serves only if it continues to command confidence.
BUT THEY HAVEN’T VOTED NO-CONFIDENCE
parliament, representing the people, has the perfect right to vote no confidence and bring down the government.
WHO IS SAYING THEY DON’T HAVE THE ‘RIGHT’????
Vietnam, hell. They haven’t even learned from South Korea.
The weird ones are where we’re all dressed in duck costumes.
I liked the Davros picture but I’m thinking it was over the line (but wholly appropriate).
Hell, I thought the Duck Costumes were pretty normal. I was thinking a weird one would be like the one where I’m on a company perimeter at night, under assault from an NVA regiment. Artillery and mortars are falling on both sides of the wire, Spooky’s dropping basketball flares, sixties and ma deuces are chattering and thundering, and the squad on my right is doing it hand to hand with screams of desperate terror mostly drowned out by the roar of the guns.
When all of a sudden the lights come up and a mirror ball drops and some girls in gowns appear and it’s not a desperate fight to the death at all, but rather a nice dance with chaperones and punch. Except the dead guys are getting all the girls, even without all their limbs.
I thought that was kind of weird….
mikey
Yes, I’m sure the Democrats will save us. Ignore Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin’s calls for Maliki’s ouster. The Democrats are definitely the answer. Hahahahahaha.
The dead eyes, the cruel beak of a mouth, they add to create an air that implies he could kill you without the slightest hesitation or regret
If he could just get out of that wheelchair, watch out traitors!
Even if he was ambulatory, I would’nt worry. He probably wields a sword as powerful as his pen.
Besides, it’s not lacking a pen, which makes him so bitter, probably lacking something with two more letters. Besides, what if the last words you heard on the way down :”Charlie, the goddam pool is empty, you fool.”
mikey, as I said before, I am worried that the these bastards may have developed immunity to the VX gas… “nucular” on the other hand…
Just to snark further on Nazihammer (besides the fact that he’s obviously on the payroll of Allawi’s Washington lobbying firm): his nostrils kill me, as does the crease on the bottom of his nose. He looks like some sort of porcine/humanoid cross-mutattion. And the “dead eyes” comment above made me take a good @ them. They have had work done on them!! Yes, Mr. MachoHammer has had his eyes tucked & rolled!!
he just looks like a death camp commandant at a zany birthday party
Ahahahahaha! Nice one, centurion, like it, like it. I can imagine him solemnly partaking of the fun, singing along dolefully, perhaps blowing his little party blower, waving his lolly on a stick, quite happy to show willing, but quite unable to crack a smile.
There was a Checkpoint Charlie
He didn’t crack a smile
But it’s no laughing party
When you’ve been on the murder mile
All it take’s one itchy trigger
One more wiggle, one less white nigger
Sorry, flashback. Not a Nam version, or indeed Mikey’s combat cum disco number. Just the immortal Elvis.
Oh Christ,is it a week already?Another column of incredible sophistry and blithe stratagem to determine how other people live or die.Why do these organs continue to print pundits who are CONSISTENTLY WRONG!No answer required Mr.Bouffant,it was a rhetorical question.Again I scroll through page after page of derisive comments from unhappy Post readers,and yet next week,another brilliant offering from trouser stain #1.These guys just don’t fucking care what folks think or say.I mean did oc Strangle’s catheter back up again or what ? Someone called me bad names on site a while ago and I even got all fucked up about it for about a second and responded.But,no,not these foreign policy geniuses.They just keep on keepin on gettin paid by the word.No goddamn shame!But since Friedman has the mustache of understanding,I thank Sadly-No for bestowing the beanie of iniquity on Der Krauten Shturmmer.My head hurts….
Qetesh the Abyssinian said, “Olivers Army” good taste in songs for a Cat!!
Nah. He’s a psychiatrist, and his look is part of his built persona. In reality he’s probably harmless, but I would agree he has the look of someone who would have not the slightest hesitation ordering someone else to kill you.
Sometimes I wonder if he idolizes a certain fictitious psychiatrist of extreme ill-repute.
Nice comments. Making fun of a wheelchair bound cripple just because you disagree with his politics. Kind of explains why the democrat party is in the shape it’s in these days. You’re all just maggots sucking off the juice of the dog turds you live under.
Nice comments. Making fun of a wheelchair bound cripple
Cripple is actually not a very nice word to use you awful person.
Yes, one person making two comments certainly constitutes a group of “you people”.
Hey stupid lady.It’s the DEMOCRATIC PARTY!!you fucking cow,and I’m not a member.That’s the limit of you reactionary’s political sophistication.Everything is binary.Don’t agree with you,must be a Democrat,Democrat=Liberal.Your an idiot.I personally don’t have much use for liberals,sell out to easily,I am a radical leftists.Don’t need to define myself too much cause there are various parts of differing political philosophies that I adhere to.But I do know without question that I hate fascists,reactionaries and those who would seek to destroy everything I once loved about the place I was born.And when it’s time for shit to get ugly,I’ll see you on the barricades.Now go read a book.
The Huffington Post
“God’s Warriors”: CNN’s biggest faux pasby Marie Jon’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topics/Christiane%20Amanpour
YouTube “The Real Islam Revealed”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzQFyhFNUtE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Ffoehammer%2Enet%2Fboycott%2Dislam%2F
Wise up….The Democrats will not take care of America. You “F” Joe Lieberman!
MJ
Democrat Senator Schumer blasts US troops
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/zieve/070906
“A Divided House Falls” http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=45195
No more” far left Democrats” who undermine our country, for what? They are corrupt and think only of power. Where is the America that pulled together when fighting a common enemy? They came to kill on 9/11. Stop…and let us united our country. We are the youth of America. We can do that.
Congress Returns, Iraq Withdrawal Timeline Talk Resumes
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295999,00.html
We are to “remain in Iraq until they take care” or else we will see this country become destroyed. Then there will be no political parties to contend with. UNDERSTAND?
God bless America,
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=Dearborn+Michigan+Islam&spell=1
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Muslim+Schools+in+New+York&btnG=Google+Search