Hey – dude becomes a holy martyr, leaves behind an exotic little desert blossom lookin for a big strong shoulder to cry on…next thing you know that burqa’s comin off and you don’t have to wait for no 70 virgins to peel your grapes for ya…

Tasty.

Let me coo it dawn ya?

Stan believes, as I do, that Steele’s central argument can be extended by logic to cover the application about mosques. It’s not arguing that stan is right about mosques because steele talks about it, that would be the fallacy of appealing to authority to justify your beliefs.

Come on Stan, I dare ya to deny it. I doube dog dare ya!!

So I wonder: in what way does saying “Steele didn’t talk about mosques” translate into “Spanky loves terrorists?”

You loved terroists too Spank? I thought I was the only who ever loved a terroist.

I wonder if you could point out where I said this.

The person who brought up the whole mosque issue was Stan. Stan invented, from whole cloth, the notion that Steele was talking about attacking mosques. Steele certainly never mentioned it, and I never mentioned it except in the context of pointing out that Steele never said it.

So I wonder: in what way does saying “Steele didn’t talk about mosques” translate into “Spanky loves terrorists?”

Oh, right. Sorry. Forgot where I was writing. Pretty much anything that diverges from rigid party line = loving terrorists. My bad.

I’m not criticizing Britain’s war preparations. France were the ones who did not go into the Rhineland and had their foolish incomplete Maginot Line, that would have worked, had they stopped putting funding. Talk about war on the cheap.

Chamberlain is guilty of one thing, and that is that he deceived both himself and the people he was responsible for. He did not prepare them psychologically, regardless of the war assets he was able to acquire which prevented the occupation of Britain even when France surrendered and gave the Nazis their entire army and logistics base. (That always hurts)

It was Chamberlain after all, who appointed Winston Churchill as some senior guy to his cabinet, can’t remember which, after Cham woke up to the smell of the house burning down. Lord of the Admiralty or some such. But you have to recognize that Chamberlain never BELIEVED Churchill’s warnings, which meant Chamberlain was deluding himself. How can you be right when you’re that bad at judging things? One of the things necessary to prepare war is logistics, yes of course, but it is also psychology, land, and allies. Letting Poland fall (which had a pretty good army, disciplined, but not very modern) was not “preparing for war”. When you prepare for war, you don’t let your allies get cut apart piecemeal. France’s problems were France’s, but Britain did not come to the aid of Poland and that is entirely on Chamberlain’s shoulders.

The thing is, Germany would have been just as unprepared in 1938 as Britain was. Germany was rearming as well, you have to remember. These things aren’t cookie cutter graphs. Hitler himself said he would have backed down if the French moved to oppose him in the Rheinland. And Poland was his way of “testing” Western resolve. When you fail that test, Germany would have waited longer. The real question is, would the war have gone better had Germany started the war in 1941, 1942, 1945 than it would have been earlier on. German Nuclear Programs, which Heisenberg deliberately sabotaged, Russian non-aggression packs. All these things are variables, too many variables, to know. But whether a decision is the right one or not, is not based upon hindsight at all, real correct decisions were correct at the time regardless of what you learned afterwards or what resulted.

Please elaborate.

I’m too busy debating with my triumverate personalities, so you’re just going to have to google up ad hominem, yourself. Peace Ouss!

I do ponder this but, but does Spank realize that everytime he attacks commentator’s personality and credibility, that he is using an ad hominem attack to argue that a person is wrong because he is X kind of person?

That’s not elaboration, but it is a requote, to help people understand what ad hominem is of course. Spank serves as a good example, so there you go.

I am waiting for someone around here to prove it – with Cole’s own words.

I’d like to see someone prove that you can know an object’s specific space location and its specific velocity at the same time, using Heisenberg’s UnCertainty Principle and his wording.

Asserting that “As always, you misunderstand,” doesn’t really say much of anything, except what you feel about the power of your mad smackdown post.

Spank’s playing Pro Wrestling name on his game console?

“Coalition forces take significant measures to respect all religious sites,” said Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, a Marine spokesman. “But we always maintain the inherent right of self-defense.”

This is a quote that doesn’t mean what Unknown or Spank thinks it does. It really shows that Steele is right, deterence works, and not at the cost of Spank’s military book about excessive force. Unknown is also making a specious argument, talking about facts when the quote he used was talking about arguments. Steel argues that Marines should do as they are doing now, maintaining right of self-defense, and perhaps become a little more proactive in making the terroists stop using mosques at all. Unknown comes back and says because Steel is right and that the Marines agree, people talking about the argument are wrong factually.

It’s a specious argument, because it isn’t based upon logical analysis, but rather logical axioms that Unknown is right and conservatives are wrong.

I like Jen’s manner of argumentation and the piece Jen did us the favor of posting here. It reminds me of when I was so reasonable and rational, before Spank came and my personality branched into tri of course (wink wink)

If Jen seeks to continue the discussion with Spank, I hope Jen has a high tolerance for pain and emotional distress. Hey, that’s what discipline and pain tolerance training is for, eh?

Bookworm’s blog is probably a site Jen might like to read. That and vari frank.

http://bookwormroom.wordpress.com/

Though I believe that ‘white guilt’ is now one of the defining characteristics of Western culture today and affects our political discourse and policy decisions, it is not the main reason for our restraint in using military force.

First, you have to define “restraint.” That just means refraining from bringing your total available force to bear on the enemy. (Although after reading Greenwald’s comments, I think he defines it as never bringing any available force to bear on anyone, ever. How do you define it, Spanky? Just curious…)

There are plenty of reasons for electing not to use all your available force. We did so in Korea and Vietnam and various other “little” conflicts because we were afraid of starting World War III with the Chinese and/or Soviets. And Greenwald is correct about Iraq – we’ve used restraint (my definition, not Greenwald’s) there because massive force would do absolutely nothing to defeat the insurgency or build a working democracy in Iraq. Decisions about military policy are based on many factors – including the country’s “image” in the rest of the world – but to blame ‘white guilt’ seems to me to be a lame attempt to explain the lack of a clear-cut victory (so far) by blaming the old leftist straw man.

I’d have to ask Steele what other options he would use in Iraq if we were suddenly freed of our ‘white guilt,’ and what he thinks it would accomplish. I would also point out that, when large numbers of insurgents tried or were compelled to engage our forces in more-or-less open battle – as in Fallujah and other parts of the Sunni Triangle – the military has not hesitated to employ the heaviest weapons appropriate in the situation. That those didn’t include tactical nukes was a logical military choice, not a symptom of ‘white guilt.’

The situation is frustrating, but unfortunately that is the nature of counterinsurgency operations. As we all know from Vietnam, frustration is one of the insurgent’s primary psychological weapons. I’m not familiar with all the guerilla wars of the 20th century. Can anyone tell me if a Western-style mechanized army has ever won one, and if so, how?

Apart from that, I found Greenwald’s tone completely offensive. Guaranteed to bring discussion to a halt. He’s preaching to the choir – his audience of fellow Bush-haters – and not trying to convince the unconvinced that he’s right. If you can filter out his hatred and locate the facts in this screed, however, you may find a few points to agree with.

“You think so little of the president that you believe he would choose a losing strategy in order to win votes when he’s not even up for re-election?”

“World opinion” and the “Arab street” have nothing to do with winning elections, but everything to do with the alliances and diplomacy that the left is constantly harping that this President doesn’t care about. If those of you who continually criticize policy could craft something better, I would certainly listen, but as it is, I find the incessant litany of quagmire and incompetence a little tiresome in the face of no viable alternatives.

Let us in on a little, secret, Spanks: In the GWOT, WWSD?

No, this particular argument doesn’t interest me because it’s a fact that Ahmadinejad is an anti-semite and a lunatic and it’s a fact that other Arab/Muslim leaders are too.

Like most of the leaders in that part of the world, Ahmadinejad should be living in a halfway house and taking his meds. The fact that he has any power at all is proof that our foreign policy has failed.

None of that matters. Western powers will continue to give these zealots and kleptocrats legitimacy and responsibility because, well, we’ve been doing it for years, and even though we know now that they really want to kill us, we can’t come up with any alternate policy. So we’ll give these losers legitimacy and responsiblity – especially if they scare us by talking about nukes!

Cole and his friends in Gulf2000 support this non-plan. Cole criticizes Bush all the time, but if you ignore his Bush/Republican bashing, you might note that his opinions are sometimes similar to Bush’s. He supports our alliances with Islamist nations, he supports Islamists in general. That’s why it’s no surprise that some of his best friends are oilmen.

It’s not clear how much influence the Gulf 2000 people have over national policy. I do know that the opinions of Saudi-sponsored academics are used to back up foreign policy decisions.