It Still Needs to Be Said Apparently
1. My attitude is not the problem. YOUR POLICIES are the problem. The people who actually have the power to conduct policy are the problem.
2. Anyone who wants to prate about their sincerity and their positive outlook as if it somehow outweighed the foreseeable results of their own goddam hubris, while the Administration they’ve trusted and its suppporters to whom they’ve cleaved assert literally unlimited power over what we used to be able to call citizens, those people need to go fuck themselves.
In 2002 I was practically begging people, as sweetly as possible, to comprehend the likely outcome of this folly. I’m not going to spend 2006 trying to impress people who wouldn’t listen then with how chipper I can be, or sniffling my pious wishes that their harebrained schemes had worked out a little better. Nor am I going to sit back while the President doubles down on a bad bet and treat the onlookers egging him on as if they were worth taking seriously. (Two words: “New Prague.”)
My deal for all of these people hasn’t changed: Learn something and I’ll take you seriously. You don’t need to apologize. You don’t need to genuflect. God knows you don’t need to strike a particular attitude. (I would recommend losing one.) All you gotta do is catch on and start writing that way. Or, if you have actual power, as opposed to me and Judith Weiss and a million other net.kvetchers scrutinizing each others’ inflections, running the country that way.
Comment by Michigan J. Frog —
December 21, 2005 @ 11:06 am
Jim, you can’t expect to harsh the jingoists buzz without being called ”defeatist” or ”not anti-war, just on the other side.” By pointing out that things aren’t particularly rosy (or, heaven forfend, deride all of the fabulous school-painting news the MSM doesn’t want you to know about), you clearly want America to fail, western civilization to fall, and an ”islamofacist” world order to attain global hegemony.
I don’t want America to fail. I want to see a free, peaceful Iraq. Spinning every last event positively won’t bring that about any sooner than my posting this comment.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
December 21, 2005 @ 11:12 am
Oh, right, Kesher Talk. The proudly Jewish blog that makes common cause with Christian fundies, each metaphorically walking hand in hand with a T-shirt and an arrow pointing to the other saying ”I’m with the useful idiot.” Only one is about 100 times the size of the other.
Comment by Johnathan Pearce —
December 21, 2005 @ 11:31 am
Crikey Jim, did you get out of the wrong side of bed this morning?
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
December 21, 2005 @ 11:33 am
Oh yeah, and most of libertopia hasn’t been doing too well with this either. Atrios declared ”the death of the conservatarian”, but I haven’t seen many recantations. Seems like most libertarians are just fine with domestic wiretapping and torture as long as they get their tax cuts.
Comment by Jim Henley —
December 21, 2005 @ 11:36 am
Jonathan, I’ll cop to some dyspepsia, but I didn’t wake up with it. I recommend clicking through the first link in the item if you haven’t yet.
Rich: Hey, that was Topic A two comment threads ago! <G>
I do get a whipsaw feeling, though, not just when Repubs defend the domestic spying program as ”just like Echelon” AND THEN Dems say, ”Nah, Echelon was cool.” Echelon wasn’t cool.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
December 21, 2005 @ 11:48 am
I missed that thread 2 posts ago. Give me another decade or two and I’ll probably turn into a clone of John Emerson.
As I mentioned on Berube’s blog recently, you just can’t get anywhere with Dems by saying any variant of ”What about Clinton?” Due to overuse, the entire paragraph in which the word Clinton or any specifically Clintonite policy appears is mentally transmuted into the Charlie Brown blah-blah sound, except in the voice of Rush Limbaugh.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
December 21, 2005 @ 1:13 pm
Echelon wasn’t cool.
Well, this raving lefty, for one, is willing to cop to the fact that Clinton’s record on civil liberties was, all things considered, lousy.
Comment by Steve —
December 21, 2005 @ 2:31 pm
I’m with Uncle Kvetch on that one.
Jim, remember when you asked your liberal readers (which, sadly, is pretty much all you’ve got left, I suspect, although I’m sure no one awaits the day you can start pissing us off again more than you) if there was any level of taxation so high we viewed it as not just counterproductive but a moral failing? Did you ever think you’d see the day when you’d have to ask a bunch of self-proclaimed libertarians if any state action was morally indefensible even if it was done in the name of national security? Richard frigging Posner has flunked the test on this one.
Comment by matthew hogan —
December 21, 2005 @ 2:57 pm
”In 2002 I was practically begging people, as sweetly as possible, to comprehend the likely outcome of this folly. ”
I know, and you were right except for the ”sweetly part” which was too nice.
Comment by Scott Lemieux —
December 21, 2005 @ 3:00 pm
Kvetch is right, of course. Clinton’s record on civil liberties was no prize. Still, Clinton’s policies–while often bad–at least followed legal formalities (despite his rhetoric.) So the tu quoque argument, in addition to being irrelevant, isn’t even right.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
December 21, 2005 @ 4:37 pm
I thought you were right in 2002, and I still think you were right. Throughout I always hoped you were wrong, because it would spare the country the cost (in blood, treasure, and good will) of this debacle. The question to answer now is, ’How do we get out of this?’ Any ideas?
Comment by Judith —
December 22, 2005 @ 12:49 am
With the votes barely counted and deals being made and the outcome still uncertain, to immediately pounce on the Iraqi election as a clear failure, in that triumphalist ”I told you so” tone - yeah, that’s an attitude problem all right. Nothing in your post about the Iraqi people. Like I said, for you it’s all about proving Bush wrong, not about the future of Iraq.
Okay, since you broght it up, New Prague: real estate boom in Baghdad and Kurdistan, foreign investment, expats returning home in droves to invest and build, regularized banking system, entrepreneurship, huge rise in average income, huge increase in purchase of autos and durable goods (indicates disposable income and optimism; you don’t purchase a refrigerator if you’re afraid you’ll have to flee imminently), huge proliferation of cellphones and internet access thorugh the whole country, ongoing restoration of the marshes and repair of the infrastructure, steady progress in training the Iraqi army and police.
I look at the whole situation and say this looks good, this looks bad, lets hope for this, let’s worry about that.
Not you. You immediately look for the worst and wave it around to prove yourself right. People’s lives and futures are at stake, but it’s all about you. That’s despicable that you can’t have at least as much hope for them as they have for themselves.
And you antiwar types wonder why you can’t get any traction. It can’t be your opportunism, can it? It must be the inexplicable stupidity of the electorate.
Comment by Gary Farber —
December 22, 2005 @ 1:42 am
The Kesher Talk link is broken, but helpfully includes a suggestion on how to fix it. That’s a new one on me, but a good idea.
However, it didn’t work. But investigation shows that you have an extraneous ”_1” before ”.php” which breaks the link you are urging us to click on.
I knew Judith back in the mid-Seventies, so I had reason to check; our politics, as you might imagine, are a bit different from each other these days. I still think kindly towards her, nonetheless. [I try hard not to let politics get in the way of friendship, which is why I have at least one loon on my blogroll, and I don’t mean Judith.] On the other hand, I did disappear from her blogroll a while ago; but it may have just been an oversight, of course.
So I’ll avoid this particular foodfight, even though I’ve yelled at Judith myself on bad-tempered occasion in the past (and probably again in the future).
Trackback by Kesher Talk —
December 22, 2005 @ 2:04 am
The vultures are still circling
This is an update from this post. I see it’s my job to be an optimist, and hopefully a credible one. But even an optimist can get angry, and it’s no secret that I’m a bit of a hothead. So…
Trackback by Winds of Change.NET —
December 22, 2005 @ 4:39 am
The vultures are circling
This is an update from this post. Somebody's got to be an optimist, and I guess that's me. But even an optimist can get angry, and it's no secret that I'm a bit of a…
Comment by Tequila —
December 22, 2005 @ 7:39 am
Kesher,
You forgot the real estate boom in Amman and Damascus due to the influx of Iraqis going in the opposite direction, driven by the exodus of both Christians to the paradise of Baathist Syria and educated Iraqis to Jordan and elsewhere. See, the invasion benefited even Syria and Jordan!
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0722/p06s01-wome.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/10/wirq10.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/10/ixworld.html
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2004/s1257792.htm
Much of the massive increase in GDP/capita is the result of the massive inflows of U.S. taxpayer money, as pointed by Anthony Cordesman in his brief on the elections.
Likewise the splurge in consumer spending and white goods — pent up demand that exploded after the sanctions came down and the border disappeared, but has since slowed. As for reconstruction, the majority of Iraqis rate it as poor or nonexistent, and we all know how much of the money has had to be diverted to security and how much was stolen or squandered. How’s that oil sector doing, by the way? Yeah, still below Saddam levels.
http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,2597/
Oh, and did Prague have 40% unemployment 3 years after the end of Communism?
Steady progress training police and army? You’re aware that the entire training cycle for the Iraqi army is 24 days, recently raised from 2 whole weeks? I think even the ARVN got more than that.
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=8210
Comment by Diana —
December 22, 2005 @ 11:41 am
I’m not sure what Kesher Talk’s point is.
If the people of Iraq voted for Islamic theocratic rule, how can she be against it?
Comment by Diana —
December 22, 2005 @ 11:54 am
Meanwhile, Sunnis and seculars reject the elections, crying fraud:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4552846.stm
because things didn’t go their way. Whatever…this parliament WILL be seated, and the Shiites WILL assume power, as their numbers justify, and nature WILL take its course.
I’m not into the sackcloth and ashes thing, but anyone who reads triumphalism into my words has an overactive imagination.
Comment by Diana —
December 23, 2005 @ 11:54 am
For a clear-eyed view of the situation, read the Talisman Gate blog:
http://talismangate.blogspot.com
The blogger writes for the NY Sun, which is a neoconservative outlet, so no one can accuse him of being an ”MSM” traitor.
”the leaders of the elected Sunni lists have gone crazy…”
and so on.
Comment by Tequila —
December 23, 2005 @ 12:36 pm
Don’t know how clear-eyed the guy is — he’s an official Friend of Chalabi who still cannot believe that his boy got little love on election day.
Comment by Diana —
December 23, 2005 @ 5:38 pm
True, but he’s reporting honestly. The fact that he is a Friend of Chalabi makes his dispatches all the more believable, and the neocrazies can’t just dismiss him as a leftie stooge.
Comment by Jon H —
December 24, 2005 @ 1:46 am
Judith writes: ” real estate boom in Baghdad and Kurdistan, foreign investment, expats returning home in droves to invest and build, regularized banking system, entrepreneurship, huge rise in average income, huge increase in purchase of autos and durable goods (indicates disposable income and optimism; you don’t purchase a refrigerator if you’re afraid you’ll have to flee imminently), huge proliferation of cellphones and internet access thorugh the whole country…”
Er, so? China has all these things, in spades, but their people are far from free, and they certainly aren’t our friends.
Comment by Diana —
December 24, 2005 @ 11:03 am
I gave the wrong URL. See:
http://talisman-gate.blogspot.com/
”Iraq did not hold an election…it held a census.”
And I probably spoke too quickly when I said that this parliament would be seated.
The civil unrest appears to be real, and serious:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13476434.htm
The problem with some of the Sunni ”secularists” is that they were also Baathists.
”The ruling is likely to dampen Bush administration hopes that the election would bring more of the disaffected Sunni minority into Iraq’s political process and undermine Sunni support for the insurgency. Instead, the decision is likely to stoke fears of widening sectarian divisions in a nation already in danger of descending into civil war.”
But this is just the evil MSM reporting all that bad news….
Comment by Anton —
December 26, 2005 @ 2:51 am
The question to answer now is, ’How do we get out of this?’ Any ideas?
I gather that the Pentagon has access to lots of airplanes.
(And to the XML parser, may I say: what I want here is not ”emphasis”; what I want here is italics.)
Comment by Eric the .5b —
December 26, 2005 @ 10:11 pm
Funny, when I suggested awhile back that sounding like Afghanistan doves, complete with throwing around ”chickenhawk” remarks, hurt the case of Iraq doves, people laughed. But this gets by without a snigger? Heh.
I wonder if they’ll use the ”they kept throwing Clinton in our faces” line in 2006 and 2008.