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The wisdom of deadzone:
‘The only thing I hate about America it is the stupidity of these types of people, who would dare question someones patriotism or love of country simply because they are critical of the government.’

‘You guys need to get out more often.’

‘Liberal Elite is just a label that uneducated people like to call smarter people in order to feel better about themselves.’

‘Sounds like some of you lack of self confidence if you have to resort to name calling of people who are more successful than you.’

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Josh, I caught All Things Considered yesterday mentioning Clinton’s involvement in the gas tax proposition campaign. A clip of him speaking at UCLA was introduced by an NPR reporter saying in an admiring tone, “How’s this for a celebrity endorsement?”

What are the odds either one of us lives long enough to hear an NPR reporter cooing over a Republican?

I hope deadzone can forgive the spelling and grammatical errors in this post. As a Republican, I never went in for book-learning beyond what I needed in graduate school.

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Sure, Perry, you would never blame others for the perceived ills of society. Never a harsh word from you about Christians, Republicans, etc. And your disdain for ‘single issue voters’ is comical. You’re so complex, it must be o so difficult to figure out how to appeal to you. You’re opposed to Bush, and dislike Christians – what are the odds of finding both traits in one person? Adding to your multifaceted character, you’re a supported of the UN! Stunning! After all that, imagine my suprise to learn you speak French. That’s not stereotypical at all. And what’s this idea that viewership is declining due to Clinton being out of office? Fox News (a station I don’t even get, much less watch) is still the number one rated cable news outlet. Its ratings have dropped in the past 6 months, but I believe Bubba’s been out of office quite a bit longer.

I’d also note that the New York Times’ long list of Pulitzers includes one for covering up Stalin’s famine of the Ukraine; among their more recent high proflie pieces was one on the SWIFT program, which their public editor just admitted was a mistake to publish, since the program was completely legal, posed no harm to civil liberties, and was itself harmed by exposure in the newspaper.

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Perry, I understand your reluctance to think we’re both on the same side of an issue, but I’m with you on this one. Sarcasm doesn’t always take online – my point was that actually people have managed to figure out how to sell books and vacation packages online, and despite sdrealtor’s efforts I don’t see how real estate is different, at least to the point that this absurd 6% figure should continue. sdrealtor, I would want a good caddie at St Andrew’s – but not for 6% of the cost of the whole trip. If you want to argue that putting information online is too expensive, you should take a look at wikipedia.

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Interesting Argument:
Does the Internet explain why a certain location or floorplan has held its value better than others? Does the Internet know the soil conditions a neighborhood is built on? Does the Internet know that the kids on the street have been redistricted to a different elementary school four times in the last 5 years?

I think arguing that the problem with the internet is insufficient information flies in the face of the entire history of the network. What keeps the school district or local parents from putting district info up for free? What keeps the local government or civil engineers from putting soil conditions up for free?

But personally, I would no more buy a home without a trusted realtor than I would buy a book without a trusted independent bookstore recommendation or plan a vacation without a trusted travel agent. So unless people figure out how to put those kinds of things online, I think Realtors are safe.

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Socal, I appreciate the tone of your 12:53 post. If I understand you correctly, you’re maintaining that WWII was such a high-stakes affair that it justified an alliance with USSR, while you would characterize the Iraq war as an expedient one, which does not justify alliances with unwholesome regimes.

But your original post – “I’m sure our noble allies would agree [that we’re good]” – suggested that we could not be good, in Iraq, if we allied with those nations. In the two posts together you seem to be arguing that if we ally with a country like Pakistan in anything but a fight for our survival we would lose all claim to the moral high ground.

I don’t think so. It’s almost impossible to overstate how awful our enemy in Iraq is. We are much better than them. Do you disagree?

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justme, you asked “Who are we to say we are better?” than our enemies, who murder, behead, and disembowl civilians. That suggests to me you do not think we are better than the people doing such things. Implicitly that means you don’t think I am better than such people; I think you have gotten personal already. You quote the word ‘evil’, a common device to indicate the writer does not believe the quoted concept applies. That suggests to me you do not think our enemies are evil. It’s amusing that you now invoke morality, a concept I honestly wonder whether you believe. I ridiculed your ‘selection criteria’ by observing that in two wars Bush has managed to violate two of the four you list, while suggesting a third (don’t attack countries with nuclear weapons) is hardly a recent American Republican innovation. I noted that you try to blame Bush for weapons programs begun over a decade ago. I consider all that responding to what you claim to be fact.

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ybc, that’s a fair point about the long-term cost, both for veterans’ health and reinvesting in readiness. I am going to disagree with the ‘tens of thousands’ estimate. From what I understand in this chart, there have been just under 14,000 wounded who didn’t require medical air transport. I’m just guessing, but I would think those are likely to be more minor wounds. About 12,500 were wounded or ‘non-hostile injuries’ (which I’m reading as ‘car crash’) that did need medical air. Another 17,500 were diseases requiring medical air. I’m surprised to see it that high, but again I would expect most diseases to be acute not chronic, so once those guys get healed up they’re ok. Certainly tens of thousands injured, and I’m the last person to denigrate any one of the injuries; but from a pure actuarial look at medical expenses, I think ‘tens of thousands seriously maimed’ is probably overstating the case.

As for your closing “we’re definitely following different logic here” – I think that’s the nicest disagreement I’ve ever had on this board. I’m intrigued, though. Tomorrow you’ll have to tell me where you disagree with me. I rarely get the chance to debate with someone who doesn’t lead by telling me Bush sacrifices Iraqi orphans to Satan in pentagrams made of cocaine to raise Halliburton’s stock price.

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ybc, I really appreciate the good-faith debate you’re willing to have on this. When I say Bush should explain things better, I have in mind what FDR did in the fireside chats – but more frequent, probably more transparent. FDR laid out for people in rough terms where the fighting was and why. In doing so he didn’t stop any attack by the Germans or Japanese, but he let Americans know what they were fighting for. I’m not suggesting that terrorism would stop if Bush had a really nice PowerPoint. I’m saying people would support Bush more if they heard regularly from him what he was trying to do and why, including things like references to heroic acts by our soldiers. (You know who Audie Murphy was? How about Norman Schwartzkopf? Can you name a single decorated veteran of this conflict, who’s not running for office?)

As for the number of veterans, even generals speaking out – it gives me pause, I’ll admit. Proportions are important to keep in mind: there are ~6,000 serving and retired flag officers. Six of them are making a lot of noise. They were high up, but not the highest; and they may speak for lots of fellow officers, but they may not. Yeah, the criticism of the generals bothers me. But it’s not without precedent, either. In 1864 Lincoln’s ran against the man who’d been the Union commander at Gettysburg the year before.

ybc, your last paragraph says it all. If you want Iraq to have a better turn, there’s just no other way besides the present course. Maybe if the Democrats had some way to fight the war better – but they don’t, they want to leave. There are people over there willing to murder anyone. They won’t stop if we leave. We can stop them, we can help the fledgling Iraqi government stop them if we stay.

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OK, so justme doesn’t think the people disembowling aid workers are evil. No babysitting jobs for you. Justme also doesn’t think we are any better than the people who carbomb schools. I would hate to live in a country filled with violent felons like that, and that’s not just me.

I wasn’t claiming the alliance with Russia was an exact parallel to the situation with Pakistan, just showing the big gaping flaw in your attempt at logic in snarking that we must not be good because we’ve allied with Pakistan. Speaking of evidence you don’t argue well, the word you’re looking for is ‘disingenuous’. And the statement that I’m wrong ‘twice over’ suggests you have trouble counting. To two.

North Korea has been working on nukes for at least 10 years, Iran at least 15. It is understandable that justme blames those two programs on Bush, who’s been in office under 6 years, since justme can’t count to 2, let alone 6, and never mind the double digits. Justme also seems upset that we haven’t attacked a nuclear power. Or perhaps that we have only attacked countries with oil (besides Afghanistan). Or that we don’t attack countries with military dictatorships (besides Iraq). Maybe justme is just upset about not learning more math, geography, or logic in school, who can tell.

It’s a school night, and we can all hope maybe justme will learn something tomorrow.

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ybc, there are a whole bunch of problems with that article.
First, they try to pull a fast one and give the impression that only 3 members of Congress have children in the military by mentioning only enlisted personnel.

Second, the military is smaller than 10 or 20 years ago, while the population is larger, so the proportion of everyone in the military is shrinking. Third, one of the major ways to get a fresh college graduate into the service is to have an ROTC program, but all but 2 Ivy League schools have kicked that program off campus.

And the biggest problem – ‘leadership class’? Are you (ABC) f’n kidding me? Would anybody be impressed – would anybody care – if Donald Trump’s kid, or ‘Pinch’ Sulzberger’s, or Jenna Bush, Chelsea Clinton, or Paris Hilton signed up? Or some Hahvahd guy?

ybc, if the admin didn’t believe in the war, there’s no way they’d put themselves through this. They get villified the world over. If they had listened to the generals they ignored, they would’ve ignored the generals they listened to. No way to do what everybody wants. The draft isn’t a hot idea either – imagine the political fallout from that. Independent of which it wouldn’t improve the military. You say you’re familiar with business – ever been in a company and thought, “If only we were staffed with random people off the street, instead of people who applied, were accepted, and got trained”? That’s the difference between a conscript force and volunteers. Also, the war’s not costing that much relative to the federal government. The admin can be faulted for spending too much, and I do fault them for that, but the war’s not a big ticket item. Nor have the tax cuts hurt revenue, which is at record heights.

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Perry, ok, I’ll try to not be partisan as well. I appreciate that you want what is best for the country, and I think I can understand some of your frustration. (You should realize, though, that George Will has been lukewarm at best about the Iraq mission from before it started. Contrary to popular belief, there’s been much more diversity of opinion about this war among conservatives than among any other political group. Don’t assume that a prominent conservative opponent of the war has had a change of heart; he may have felt that way all along.)

For me, I’m frustrated with the president for a couple of things, neither of which I think are deal-breakers in terms of supporting him going forward. First, they should have seen the insurgency coming. We knew Saddam was completely overmatched; so did he. He’s crazy, but he’s not stupid. Insurgency is the way to go against a superior force, and it’s the only way to make Americans go home.

I’m more frustrated that the president hasn’t done a better job explaining the facts on the ground the past 5 years. He’s in a great position to explain his position on a regular basis, and he should know if he doesn’t his opponents will, and they have.

If Bush explained the course of the war better, and how we’ve adapted to the insurgency, I think he would have a lot more support. The fact is we can’t be beaten on the battlefield. If you want to do housing analogies, I think the anti-war “we create 10 terrorists for every 1 we kill” sounds a lot like the flipper’s “I can afford 10 more houses for every one I buy.” Mathematically that can go on for 9 cycles before one guy owns every house on the planet, and everyone else is a terrorist. We can replenish our side much faster than the enemy can theirs. We’re training the Iraqi army, and as we train soldiers and they get some experience, they can train more themselves. Last week we won over almost everybody in Anbar (that’s the province Ramadi and Fallujah are in). More important than getting more riflemen – which is also nice – that’s going to get us a camelload more intel. The bad guys are in the bubble here. They’ve been getting lots of press, and hanging around longer than expected, but they’re unsustainable. Meanwhile, Cheney’s been saying the insurgents are in their last throes for almost exactly as long as everyone on this forum has been saying the same thing about real estate. We’re all right about the end state, but our timing has been off. If Bush explained the fundamentals behind the al Qaeda bubble – how they shoot themselves in the foot by shooting Muslim civilians in the face; how 99 of 100 Iraqi encounters with US troops are a pleasant surprise because our troops are mostly normal people, while 100% of Iraqi encounters with our enemy are a nightmare because our enemy are barbaric; how the enemy needs the populace to fear that we’re leaving, and how we diminish that fear every hour we stay; how we offer a rebuilt, representative government while the enemy offers nothing but death and destruction – if Bush explained all that as well as Rich explained the bubble here, I think fair-minded people would agree that while we may not be able to predict the day it ends, we’re looking at an enterprise in the insurgency that can’t go on indefinitely. There’s no fundamental support for it.

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Your first para is a pretty fair assessment. There wasn’t unanimous agreement in the intel community (I’ll leave it to admin opponents to hunt down quotes, though). Like NC Jim says, the (Clinton-appointed, Bush-retained) DCI did call the case for war a ‘slam dunk’, so it’s not like the admin just made the idea up. Likewise, while the intelligence agencies have a very difficult and perforce very secretive job, and many of their successes may be kept hidden, they’ve had several failures in this area: the Indian nuclear test in 1998; the extent of Saddam’s WMD program in 1991 was a surprise as well. So the intel community is not infallible here.

Also, you don’t know what’s in the full NIE, because it hasn’t been released. In fact, no quotes from it appear in either of the stories you link – just quotes from anonymous government sources who say they’ve read it. Better information is good, so long as it does not compromise security; and I would expect that quite a lot of stuff gets classified that doesn’t need to be. So by all means, let’s make more stuff public. But don’t pretend that what’s been printed in your two articles is anything but a thinly-sourced hit job.

Robert Kagan says a lot that I agree with.

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I first saw the names here. Note that that article is 2 years old and says one of the officers I mentioned is only slated to go to Iraq in the future; look him or his father up and you’ll see that he’s gone since.

I strongly oppose the notion that some kind of personal connection to the war grants legitimacy to discuss the war effort, though. The current President, the last one, FDR, and Lincoln were each named C-in-C, and of those four Lincoln had the most extensive service record with Bush a close second. None of them were ever in a firefight, and they all ran against and defeated people who were. Nonetheless, I think history will look favorably on the military campaigns overseen by three of them.

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That’s certainly the argument made against them at the time, while the wars they fought were going on. Lincoln in particular was savaged for being a hick elected with a weak mandate who stumbled into a war of choice that was far longer, bloodier, and more expensive than anticipated, damaged American relations with Europe, and led many Democrats during his reelection campaign to support an opposing candidate with a more distinguished military record who promised to bring the troops back home (out of Virginia). After declaring an end to major combat operations after Lee surrendered, an insurgent campaign continued to assassinate members of the newly formed Reconstruction governments and terrorize members of other ethnic groups for almost 100 years.

So, you tell me.

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