Will and vision: where is our Churchill?
Here’s a hard-hitting article to mull over before listening to tonight’s State of the Union address. The author, J. Peter Mulhern, may be unduly pessimistic, but he’s certainly profoundly skeptical about both sides of the fence in American politics today, and I believe his skepticism is mostly warranted, unfortunately.
About the Democrats, Mulhern writes:
Democrats are gearing up to make a lot of noise in support of ignominious withdrawal from Iraq before gracelessly accepting the inevitable reality that the Commander in Chief calls the shots in wartime. This way they hope to appease their defeatist constituency without having to take the fall for yet another surrender and the blood bath that would certainly ensue.
And Republicans fare hardly any better; Mulhern points out that they are ignoring the wider scope of the enemy we are fighting (Iran, Syria) and pretending that we can fight Iraq successfully without facing the huge role other countries play in the region. He writes:
The surreal debate about Iraq is a thin veil covering the real political preoccupation of our time – the competition to assign blame for the next terrorist attack to somebody else. Democrats are setting themselves up to argue that the Republican administration is at fault because it hasn’t been diligent enough about homeland security and because it has fanned the flames of Islamofascism by fighting in Iraq. Republicans are setting themselves up to argue that Democrats are at fault for refusing to take militant Islam seriously and working to frustrate our every effort to confront it….[O]ur entire political class has been indulging itself in meaningless partisan disputes when it should have been teaching our Arab and Persian enemies a bitter lesson about the consequences of messing with the eagle.
I disagree with him somewhat in that I think that if we had fought the post-Iraq War occupation(and been unashamed to call it that, by the way) with greater clarity and firmness–shooting looters, stopping Sadr, securing borders–we already would have sent the requisite message to “our Arab and Persian enemies” about the consequences of “messing” with the US
But that opportunity is gone. We can’t go back to those days, we can only go forward. That’s why I think the current stance of almost all Democrats in Congress (and, yes indeed, some Republicans) sends a terrible message to our enemies.
What is that message? That we lack the will to see anything difficult through. Just wait it out. After Bush, the deluge.
And “after Bush” will arrive in only two rather hamstrung and seemingly short years. The enemy is banking on his successor being less determined to fight them. The mullahs don’t lack determination, however; they’ve been waiting since 1979 for their opportunity to fatally undermine the US and the West, probably longer. Some have waited since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922–whether or not they were actually alive at that time.
Mulhern ends his essay with a question: Where is our Churchill?
He’s not just expressing the desire for a leader of more eloquence. He’s referring to the fact that Churchill spent the decade of the 30s (the era that seems to most resemble our present one) warning his country against the scope and nature of the peril they faced and ultimately could not avoid. He was ridiculed at the time, but when subsequent events proved him right, he was the obvious choice for Britain’s leader.
We don’t seem to have a similar political figure. I can’t think of anyone in government who’s been warning us to prepare on a big enough scale. Perhaps such a person will arise to fit the occasion, if the occasion does arise (and I sincerely hope it does not). Or perhaps that person is here already, and just hasn’t gotten the publicity and coverage enough for us to know who he/she might be.
Churchill was eloquent, yes, and he saw the nature of the enemy clearly and early. But to me perhaps his most important and consistent message to the British people was one of patience, fortitude, and will in the face of the terrible and lengthy struggle ahead. In speaking to them, he spoke to the world, and let it–enemies and allies alike–know that Britain’s will was indominable, its people unified, its patience almost infinite. And it was so in part because Churchill willed it to be so, and set the example in his own person.
Read, for example, this speech of Churchill’s after Dunkirk in 1940, one of the lowest times for the Allies in the war, a year and a half before the US even entered it. The situation was far, far more grim than any we face today (including the possibility of the capitulation of most of Europe, and an imminent Nazi invasion of Britain itself). Of course, in a way, the extreme direness of the situation made things clear; Churchill no longer had to try to persuade the people about the dreadfulness of the enemy, as he had for so many years. No one was mocking him now; Germany itself had made believers out of them.
In his post-Dunkirk speech, Churchill did not whitewash the picture. Perhaps if you read it today things don’t seem quite so dreadful because, after all, we have the supreme advantage of knowing how it all turned out. But at the time the future was unknown–as it always is–and Churchill led a nation that could easily have given up, considering what it faced.
This is the genius of Churchill [emphasis mine]:
[W]e shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
Note the end of the speech–the reliance on the help of the United States, and the sure knowledge that it would be forthcoming because we would inevitably be drawn into the battle.
Today we face no Dunkirk; no need to evacuate against a superior enemy bent on conquering us. And yet we are acting as though a Dunkirk-like evacuation is the only option left. The situation, as I said, is more analogous to the 30s, when Europe faced a threat that it could have more easily deflected if if had heeded Churchill’s Cassandra-like warnings.
Nor is the threat itself analogous; Iran and Syria don’t have the military or economic strengths of Nazi Germany. But they have certain things Nazi Germany lacked. One is the capacity to develop and use nuclear weapons, either against Israel, or to threaten their neighbors, or to give to surrogate terrorists to use against any nation they wish–including, of course, the Great Satan (that’s us). They also have more potential allies worldwide in the populous Muslim community than Germany ever did in the case of Nazism, or than the Japanese had for their war aims (both movements, after all, were phenomena more national than international in their appeal, although not in their power of conquest). It would require only a relatively small percentage of Muslims to be adherents of the cause of Islamist totalitarian supremacy to achieve a greater number of supporters than the population of Nazi Germany.
Patience and will were Churchill’s strong suits. Patience and will are the strong suit of this particular enemy, as well, although in different ways, and for different reasons. Patience and will are most definitely not our strong suits, and this enemy knows it–because we ourselves have made that fact crystal clear.
Churchill understood the overwhelming importance of these traits. Do we? I wonder.
If we don’t, another Churchill quote may help us remember (and, lest trolls accuse me of paranoid fearmongering–although I know they will anyway–let me just say that I believe we are more or less in Churchill’s first stage regarding Iran, the one in which we can win without bloodshed, although probably not “easily”):
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
It’s the same war, but we’re fighting it on two fronts.
One, is in Iraq (at the moment.) The other is here at home, with our own locally grown fifth columists.
Churchill, as you point out, was supported even less well in the ’30s than GW Bush is supported now. The audience is just not very receptive, and being given lots of “cover” by people we hope do know better. Perhaps our hopes, not high, are not low enough.
The idea that those who should be President don’t want the job and those who want the job shouldn’t have it seems to be in operation.
I too have been listening for a voice in the wilderness but, so far, I don’t hear one. Frankly, I don’t know that contemporary American culture can even produce that kind of a leader anymore. Terminal cynicism, if nothing else, makes the rise of such a leader very hard indeed.
I have despaired about the mediocrity of our leadership for a while now–and I include Bush in that sphere. Think back to the man who you might have voted for in 2000. To me, there was very little discernible difference between Bush and Gore that I nearly flipped a coin in the booth. I actually voted for Bush that year, believe it or not. It didn’t seem to make a bit of difference.
There are politicians, and there are true statesmen. Churchill was a statesman. FDR was a statesman. JFK was a statesman. Reagan was a statesman.
We have no statesmen left.
Boy, neoneo, that is one depressing post. Unfortunately your sentiment is one that I share. I wish we had a leader like Churchill or FDR, but I just don’t see one on the landscape.
Sometimes I wonder if we have the fortitude to see anything through anymore…. *sigh*
Forgotten in all the debate is the fact that our source of information is the anti-administration media.
This whole thing could have been protrayed as victory and rebuilding.
Sometimes I wonder if we have the fortitude to see anything through anymore….
Well, many of us can make it through an entire season of 24 on DVD. We can see it through to the end of an Oscar ceremony (though that is becoming increasingly rare). And when it comes to our race to the bottom in normalizing sexual depravity (The History Boys, Hounddog), nothing short of a nuke will stop us.
Other than that…
Stavr0s–I agree that had the MSM chosen to spin this the other way, we would now be talking about how many Iraqi provinces had been turned over to the Iraqis, all the people in the famous deck of cards killed or captured, progress in the resumption of municipal electricity, water supplies and food delivery in most places, improvements in health care, and the terrorists who were trying to disrupt the rebuilding effort with the help of Iran. It could be looked at either way and a lot of ways in between but, for ideological reasons, the MSM has chosen to spin it the extremely negative way they have as they chose similarly to spin the war in Vietnam.
“If you will not fight…“:
Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time of the coup that removed Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh from the premiership of Iran – Iran then being a misbehaving subject of the British Imperium. As a direct consequence we are now dealing with the government of Iran that we are.
hat’s pretty wild, Mr. Rice.
You mean that everything that happened in the entire British Empire under Churchill’s watch wasn’t perfect? Wow, that’s amazing.
But I think you might want to check out Mossadegh’s history, as well. Let’s see: appointed by Parliament as Prime Minister (not premier, although that’s a bit of a quibble, I must admit); allying himself with both the precursors of today’s wonderful mullahs (fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Kashani became House Speaker under Mossadegh, and radical Muslims were among Mossadegh’s key supporters) and the equivalent of the Communist Party of Iran (the Soviet-allied Tuveh Party); and instituting that progressive, invariably successful, forward-looking tradition we all know and love, collective farms. That, of course, was after he nationalized the British-controlled oil industry, provoking the crisis that led to Britain’s anger at him. A CIA-planned coup ousted him, and he ended his days in prison.
Mossadegh’s story is a classic one typical of those Cold War days I described here, in a post about Saddam Hussein’s rise. There’s little question that Britain, and the US’s CIA, intervened and helped engineer his ouster. It’s a messy, dirty business, and I don’t like it, personally. But I’m not at all sure that the alternative–letting the Soviet Union gain another satellite–would have been better, either for the Iranian people or the world.
But whatever makes you state that, but for Mossadegh’s removal, we wouldn’t be dealing with the Iraqi government we’re dealing with now? In fact, an excellent argument could be made for the fact that, if not for that removal, we’d have been dealing with such a government even earlier than 1979. The mullahs came to power with the support of the same two groups that constituted the bulk of Mossadegh’s supporters: fundamentalist Muslim clerics, and the Left. It was only after the revolution of 1979 was successful that the mullahs purged the Leftists, and became the only ones standing. Mossadegh was well on his way to a government of the very same coalition, and it might have led to the same end–only sooner.
The above comment was by me. For some reason, Haloscan was being ornery and didn’t leave my name. Oh, and it cut off the first word, which should have been “That’s,” not “hat’s.”
I think it comes down to something simple, Neo. Even simpler than will.
Are you or are you not a true believer in the United States of America?
Two requirements for true believers. The willingness to die and to kill for your beliefs, not the requirement but the simple consideration that it might benefit your beliefs should you either die or kill for them.
What beliefs are the Left willing to kill and die for? Environmentalism? Socialism? KELO Act?
A lot of our problems in the diplomatic corps is that they don’t believe that anybody really will kill and die for their beliefs, since they obviously won’t. I mean, really, when was the last time a diplomat was willing to die for his country if needed, to kill for his country? Teddy Roosevelt?
So it is like density. The density of your true believers matters, because if you have a bunch of pappish papal weak kneed hedonists up against the cream of the crop of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their leaders, who do you think will crash and break first in such a confrontation?
The Left believes that they can simply throw enough Marine Corps bodies at a threat and that it will disappear, giving them time to play domesitc power plays.
If Bush said this in speech, first off.
“I am a true believer in America, and I promise to all Americans that I will kill as many people on this planet as it takes to secure this nation, regardless of the personal costs in blood or power.”
Do you perhaps think his polls might go up a bit? Some energization? People can ignore Bush because Bush is “conciliatory” as Pat says, or as I call it “compassionate”.
The answer to the question of will varies in amounts but usually it comes down to “No we don’t have enough will” or “yes we do have enough will”.
The answer to my question is a simple “yes” or “no”. That is why I think it is simpler, less messy interlocutions required.
Even for people who believe in pacifism, one component must still be required as we all know. Difference between true pacifists and just fake pacifists, like true liberals and fake liberals. Do you believe, or do you simply fake it.
“You mean that everything that happened in the entire British Empire under Churchill’s watch wasn’t perfect?“:
It is my position that, wrt justice and democracy, the British Empire was fundamentally flawed. This, of course, was the traditional position of the United States and was addressed explicitly in the Atlantic Charter and was strongly pushed by President Roosevelt. It was when we abandoned this policy that we became involved in Vietnam.
And, further, it is my position that we should not adopt the former policies of the British Empire.
At the time under consideration Iran was meant to be a constitutional monarchy. That means that the prime minister is elected by parliament and appointed by the monarch. (He was not “appointed by parliament”). (Btw, “premier and prime minister” are synonyms in this context.)
Wrt to the “collective farms” and the nationalization of Anglo-Iranian, or any other policy measures he may have taken, you must remember that Mossadegh had obtained a mandate under the democratic system of the time. You may not support these policies, and even I may not support them, but they were supported by the majority of Iranian voters. The question is whether the internal policies of Iran should be determined by the people of Iran or the US and British administrations. That is it is a question of whether you support democratic or imperial rule.
Mossadegh is still popular today in Iran (although not with the religious establishment) as is the nationalization of Anglo-Iranian. Any position that you and I may have on these actions should not be used to justify the imposition of our views upon the Iranians.
The point I was trying to make was not about whether the British empire was a bad thing or a good thing–but, rather, that Mossadegh’s overthrow is not the reason the current Iranian government is at it is. His supporters were the same people who engineered the revolution of 1979.
Mossadegh is still popular today in Iran
Like Wild would know. By comparing the Iranian coup with Churchill’s WW2 record defending Britain, he merely reveals his juvenile lack of judgment concerning anything that matters much. Similarly for his “position” regarding “the internal policies of Iran” — to the extent that those policies threaten the US or US allies, those policies are very much our business, and had better be “determined” by us.
Thats just paranoid fearmongering! Kidding , sort of.I know it’s sacriligeous but imagine if Iranians were praying for their own, slightly darker skinned Churchill to save them from us.Never mind. Thats just crazy.The US would never preemptively strike another country.Unless it was convinced God was on it’s side and it was a Good country inhabited by Good people like the entreprenuer lady and the hero soldier and the tall black guy.
“inhabited by Good people like the entreprenuer lady and the hero soldier and the tall black guy.”
I’d take any of them over you, fish.
And trout, I imagine a number of Iranians are right now praying for the “dark-skinned” Churchill that will save them from the government they actually HAVE.
I’ve actually spoken to a number who moved out in ’79 and relocated—not to the U.S., but Europe. They were plenty interested in somebody “saving” them from the mullahs.
“And, further, it is my position that we should not adopt the former policies of the British Empire.”
It seems to me, you have a very simple choice now. To win against Islam onslaught, you simply have to adopt the former policies of the British Empire, or, else, adopt Sharia rule. What do you prefer?
I must add, that if you fear to lose civil liberties at home as result of adopting cruel imperialist policy abroad, look again what Britts achieved. They could be very democratic on their cherished home island and similtaneously very heavy-handed elswhere. As Kipling wrote, “Gentlemen to the west of Suez have no a clue how gentlemen east of Suez behave”.
“To win against Islam onslaught…”
In what ways is radical Islam achieving its nefarious goals? What actual progress has it made? What has it achieved and held? Be specific!
I have to discount Iraq, as the current Iraq is just as much a product of current administrations screw-ups, as it would still be Sunni minority rule/dictatorship and an adversary of Shia dominated Iran.
I should probably add, “what has it achieved and held in westernized democratized governments” to be more specific.
They acheived intimidation of writers, cartoonists and journalists, establishing infrastructure of terror in Britain, suppresion of free speech in every democratic country, establishing “no go” zones for police in France, rise of anti-semitism in Europe: for short, many of the goals Nazi achived in mid-thirties.
It’s usually at some point in high school were many people have this dawning revelation that other people — particularly other “darker-skinned” people — are just like us! Why, they pray too! And I bet they even admire exactly the same hero-figures we do!! And here, for our high-schooler, is the real moral twist — what if THEY are praying for a Churchill (darker-skinned, of course) to save them from US!!!?
For some people, that sort of “revelation” — often accompanied by an equally naive anti-capitalism and anti-Westernism — is the high point of their moral and intellectual development, and a perpetual source of a soothing rectitude. Most people’s development, however, is not stunted at that point, but continues on, sooner or later coming face to face with the problem of moral relativism, and the realization that by itself that kind of empty “understanding” leads only to manifest absurdities. If you ignored what they stood for, and what they did, for example, you could easily say that Hitler was the “Churchill” of Germany (or vice versa). Just ask trout.
As far as I know the governments of France and England are intact. The Danes are free to print another offensive cartoon.
The no-go zones (to no surprise) are associated with high-unemployment, crime — is that a factor? Why are the middle-class Muslims of France not involved to a great degree, if it’s strictly a Islamic problem?
Stupid question: “when was the last time a diplomat was willing to die for his country if needed”
Simple Answer: “With today’s additions, this AFSA Memorial on this wall and on the opposite wall now honors 218 fallen colleagues. Since the end of World War II we have, unfortunately, added to these walls the names of 141 colleagues, most of whom died as the result of terrorism or other hostile action.
Today, we must, unfortunately, add three more names to this Memorial. To their families and friends gathered here, I extend my sincere thanks for the contributions that your loved ones made to advance our nation’s values and ideals.
I would also like to acknowledge the sacrifices that you have made and the pain and loss that you have endured. Be assured we will never forget what they have done. ”
http://www.state.gov/p/us/rm/2005/45753.htm
‘They acheived [sic]…establishing [sic] “no go” zones for police in France’
From http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RDQRPVN
When the riots started, they were treated in some quarters as a “suburban intifada”. “Jihad comes home”, ran one newspaper headline. Some American observers regarded the uprising as further proof of Europe’s inability to control the spread of radical Islam. France has Europe’s biggest Muslim population—an estimated 5m, or 8% of France’s inhabitants—so it comes under special scrutiny.
A report into the riots by the French Renseignements Généraux, the domestic intelligence-gathering service, however, found the opposite. Islamists had “no role in setting off the violence or in fanning it,” it concluded. Clichy’s mayor agrees. “I completely reject the idea that the riots were an Islamist plot,” he says. “During the rioting I never heard of a young man burning a car in the name of Allah; but I heard of plenty of Muslims saying, ‘go home in the name of Allah’.”
Instead, the intelligence officers reckoned, the rioting was a “popular revolt” provoked by a toxic concentration of social problems: joblessness, poverty, illegal immigration, organised crime, family breakdown and a lack of parental authority. France had been so preoccupied with watching Islamic radicals, said the report, that it had neglected the wider problems in its banlieues. On certain housing estates, adds Alain Bauer, a criminologist, organised criminal gangs, shaken by recent police raids, took advantage of the uprising. By first encouraging and then calming the rioters, he says, the gangs tried to remind the police of their power.
“The problem is not Islam”, says Olivier Roy, an Islamic scholar, “but integration.” France clearly has no monopoly on a ghettoised, isolated underclass, but the lack of work makes integration in its banlieues particularly difficult. “The only integration that means anything is a job,” says Samir Mihi, a youth worker at Clichy’s town hall whose parents are from Algeria.
Clichy has no government-run job centre, so the jobless have to catch a bus to a neighbouring suburb to peruse job vacancies and talk to a job-placement adviser. Many of those who make the effort say that their applications get nowhere; they suspect that a foreign-sounding name, or the local postcode, puts employers off. An experiment by the University of Paris I, using identical CVs, showed that a white-sounding French name produced five times as many invitations to an interview as a North African name. There is racial discrimination on an “undreamed-of scale”, said the Institut Montaigne in a landmark 2004 report.
“It’s the same war, but we’re fighting it on two fronts.”
Isn’t it lucky that the front on which we’ve been assigned to fight requires us to sit at keyboards and type at our enemies, rather than risking our lives with actual bullets and shrapnel? High five!
“His supporters were the same people who engineered the revolution of 1979.“:
And my point is that Mossadegh’s supporters were the people of Iran.
The truth is that by 1975 (if not before) the Iranian government’s only constituency was the US administration and a few rich Iranian merchant families. Just about all Iranians supported the revolution. So it is quite natural that members of the previous democratic government may have been involved in that revolution. The Iranian people expected that a government similar to that of Mossadegh’s would be formed after the revolution. That was not to be. As a consequence the people whom you are talking about are no longer around.
The “reason the current Iranian government is at it is” is because there was a revolution which deposed the previous government, put in place by us, and largely under our control, and which ran a vicious police state. It should be no surprise that the resultant government was, and is, opposed to American influence in Iran – they had just experienced 25 years of that – in just the same manner that the Mossadegh government was opposed to British influence in Iran. Further, you can expect that, in the event that Iran becomes a full democracy, the government of Iran will be opposed to American influence in Iran.
It is interesting to me that you seem to believe that the solution to our problem with Iran is a return to the previous situation of a police state run by a puppet government.
“rather than risking our lives with actual bullets and shrapnel? High five!”
So I’m assuming, BP, that you’ll be among the first to volunteer for the proposed Civilian Reserve Corps?
And to those who refuse to see the danger, “the problem is not Islam”, indeed. The problem is the REFUSAL to see that the problem IS Islam.
“So I’m assuming, BP, that you’ll be among the first to volunteer for the proposed Civilian Reserve Corps?”
Volunteer? But I’ve already volunteered! Not for some lame CRC, but rather for the Battle against Liberal Traitors at Home! Like many reading this, I’m making my contribution by commenting on someone else’s blog so that liberals won’t be able to brainwash everyone into surrendering to Islamofascism. It’s a vital component in the GWOT. Otherwise, why would all the young men and women who write and comment on blogs, work for the Heritage Foundation, and watch Fox News not have already signed up to take the fight to our enemies? The only logical explanation is that we’re already too deep in The Shit, fighting a fight that’s every bit as important as shooting real guns at real enemies.
‘And to those who refuse to see the danger, “the problem is not Islam”, indeed. The problem is the REFUSAL to see that the problem IS Islam.’
So you have access to better or different information than does the Renseignements Généraux? Please, share!
“They could be very democratic on their cherished home island…“:
Great Britain became a democracy in 1920. Further, there were no elections held during WWII. Therefore, to the extent that the British elect their executive branch, Winston Churchill was not “elected” as Prime Minister until the 1950s.
So you have access to better or different information than does the Renseignements Généraux?
The bureaucrats who write and edit such reports understand what they must, and must NOT, say well before they collect any information.
“The bureaucrats who write and edit such reports understand what they must, and must NOT, say well before they collect any information.”
American college students riot when their team wins, and they riot when their team loses. Americans don’t really need an excuse to riot, in other words. So when French youths riot in neighborhoods of 50% unemployment, maybe they’re just pissed off that their lives are shitty and they have no hope for improvement, and when an intelligence service says “Islam wasn’t an issue, shitty lives were,” maybe that’s actually true.
Um, so what do you suggest, Wild Rice? That we hop into our time machine, go back and re-install Mossadegh because, after all, he was the candidate favored by the Left—ahem! I mean the people of Iran. Of course, of course.
The regime created by Ayatollah Khomeini was far more brutal and repressive than anything the Shah ever dreamed of. Puppet or not, the Iranians would have been better off under the Shah (but I’ve gone into all this before.)
And, of course, now we’re being told that the Iranians are tired of their fundamentalist regime, and that there is widespread dissent against the theocracy they supposedly avidly desired back in the 70’s. If America backs them in this, they will be WRONG (because the Left, of course, is going to hate whatever government takes the place of the theocracy, since it will probably be less anti-American.)
On the other hand, if America doesn’t back the dissidents, it will be WRONG because they aren’t helping these brave freedom fighters get rid of the very theocratic government the Left was rooting for back in the 70’s. If America intercedes, it’s WRONG, and it if it doesn’t, it’s also WRONG!
Isn’t it great having things both ways?
Here comes the chickenhawks, marching on. They act hawkish like Braggarto Patrio here, but they are really chickens under the skin.
“Isn’t it great having things both ways?“:
That’s a very impressive straw man you’ve built there.
The bureaucrats who write and edit such reports understand what they must, and must NOT, say well before they collect any information.
This is a perfect summary of the prevailing view here, and why any appeal to experts or official reports is futile. Essentially the argument goes, “Anything that tells us something we don’t want to hear is politically-motivated partisan rubbish cooked up by tired old bureaucrats merely looking out for their careers. We know better, just from using good old common sense and from reading blogs.”
We know better, just from using good old common sense and from reading blogs.
Well, we know enough to bring a little critical judgment to bear upon reports that both say things we like and don’t like (which is a good deal more than you can say for trolls like UB). In this case, for example, it’s no secret that France has a specifically muslim problem, not just a generic “unemployed youths who have nothing to do but burn cars” problem. Given that, and given that that plays so well into the hands of islamists threatening to attack all Western states, you’ve got to do a little more than just cite a bureaucratic denial as proof that there’s really “nothing to see here, move along”, etc.
Mohammed Mossadegh was a Stalin’s stooge,recruited in Paris by Komintern.
Tehran in early fifties swarmed with Soviet agents.
“Well, we know enough to bring a little critical judgment to bear upon reports that both say things we like and don’t like (which is a good deal more than you can say for trolls like UB).
It’s true, I really do try to refrain from criticizing the findings of reports I haven’t read.
It’s true, I really do try to refrain from criticizing the findings of reports I haven’t read.
Wouldn’t be so bad, UB, if you could also exert yourself to display any sort of critical effort regarding reports you may have read, but that you like.
How is it a straw man? And, as far as I see, America always being WRONG is one of the fundamental beliefs of the Left.
It is a strawman because he doesn’t believe it is true.
Ah, thanks, Ymar.
Now I understand.
(At least as much as someone like him can be understood.)