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Old 02-02-2010, 03:17 PM   #226
classicman
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Happy Monkey View Post
. . .attribute all of the halfassedness of the invasion on the administration.
Well you know who 80% of all problems are directly traceable to, right?
That or
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Originally Posted by TheMercenary
It's Bush's fault
:p
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Old 02-02-2010, 04:38 PM   #227
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Project for the New American Century....remember these guys?

Neo-cons like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowicz, Feith, Pearl, et al, all former PNAC "scholars" or affiliated with PNAC in some manner and all ended up in the Bush administration setting foreign policy.

At the core of PNAC foreign policy was the notion of US being the policemen of the world, promoting freedom and replacing tyrannical regimes with American-style democracy, with force if necessary.

The PNAC started calling for regime change in Iraq during the the Clinton years.

Then 9/11...and within days, the PNAC ratcheted up the call to invade Iraq and the former-PNACers now entrenched in the Bush WH (Feith and Pearl reporting to Cheney and Rumsfeld ) started dusting off the plans...they now had a justification that could be sold to the American people.

And of course, the invasion of Iraq was geo-political and not based on intel or harboring terrorists, or being the policemen of the world and promoting democracy.

If so, North Korea would have been a better target.. more oppressive of its people and a greater threat to the US and its own regional stability (but more formidable than Iraq) .....or even Mynmar, less democratic than Iraq.

These guys had a plan for Saddam the day they took office.

added:
What's left of the PNAC are now the ones leading the charge to bomb Iran.

Last edited by Redux; 02-02-2010 at 05:14 PM.
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Old 02-02-2010, 05:34 PM   #228
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And this is somehow bad? All five people in the PNAC were and are freedom fighters, so of course that upsets some cryptofascists who don't want robust, manly antitotalitarianism to take hold and spread the blessings of liberty throughout the Earth. No no no; as one of the freedom people, I don't diss PNAC. I ponder them carefully.
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Old 02-02-2010, 05:42 PM   #229
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And this is somehow bad? All five people in the PNAC were and are freedom fighters, so of course that upsets some cryptofascists who don't want robust, manly antitotalitarianism to take hold and spread the blessings of liberty throughout the Earth. No no no; as one of the freedom people, I don't diss PNAC. I ponder them carefully.
Good policeman or "freedom fighters" value diplomacy as the first tool to resolve conflict. They also understand that one size (American-style conservative) democracy does not fit all.

And ponder the unintended consequences of their actions before invading and occupying a sovereign nation......2-4 million displaced persons and/or refugees, a government with long-standing ties to Iran, strengthening Iran's position in the region......
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Old 02-02-2010, 05:48 PM   #230
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If so, North Korea would have been a better target.. more oppressive of its people and a greater threat to the US and its own regional stability (but more formidable than Iraq) .....or even Mynmar, less democratic than Iraq.

These guys had a plan for Saddam the day they took office.
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Old 02-02-2010, 06:41 PM   #231
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And this is somehow bad? All five people in the PNAC were and are freedom fighters, so of course that upsets some cryptofascists who don't want robust, manly antitotalitarianism to take hold and spread the blessings of liberty throughout the Earth. No no no; as one of the freedom people, I don't diss PNAC. I ponder them carefully.
It was an internal DoD Inspector General report that found that Feith and his Office of Strategic Plans relied on "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" and "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaida" to justify the invasion.

Quote:
Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...020802387.html
Much like after the invasion, a DoJ IG report found that DoJ attorneys acted politically rather than judiciously, to justify torture.

Is that really the way "freedom fighters" should act?
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Old 02-02-2010, 07:02 PM   #232
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When you are smashing totalitarianism, should you refrain in the slightest? As a person of freedom, I say no. I have the belief that liberty should not be denied any people through caviling on the part of any other people.

When you fight, somebody gets an owie. Fact of life, and one I am very comfortable with.
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Old 02-02-2010, 07:46 PM   #233
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... who don't want robust, manly antitotalitarianism to take hold and spread the blessings of liberty throughout the Earth. .
I'd much rather have robust womanly antitotalitarianism :P

i mean seriously...manly?

We've had T'dub channeling Spock; now we have Urbane channeling Rousseau. Where willl the madness end?
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Old 02-02-2010, 07:55 PM   #234
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I'd much rather have robust womanly antitotalitarianism :P

i mean seriously...manly?

We've had T'dub channeling Spock; now we have Urbane channeling Rousseau. Where willl the madness end?
ha ha I'm really lol'ing


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Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla View Post
When you are smashing totalitarianism, should you refrain in the slightest? As a person of freedom, I say no. I have the belief that liberty should not be denied any people through caviling on the part of any other people.

When you fight, somebody gets an owie. Fact of life, and one I am very comfortable with.
You are right Dana it's very eloquent except the owie part. It should be a tagline .
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Old 02-02-2010, 08:16 PM   #235
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Much like after the invasion, a DoJ IG report found that DoJ attorneys acted politically rather than judiciously, to justify torture.
Ok, hang the lawyers.
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Old 02-03-2010, 01:22 AM   #236
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I'd much rather have robust womanly antitotalitarianism :P
Ah. I would suggest AnnCoulterOnline, then. She is reliably antitotalitarian in a great big way.

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I mean seriously...manly?
I shall be interested indeed to see if you can frame a ... question... about that. The breaking of bad governance calls upon that body of traits the Noble Old Romans grouped under "virtu." Not a bad set of traits to have, IMO.

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We've had T'dub channeling Spock; now we have Urbane channeling Rousseau. Where willl the madness end?
About the time and place the last dictator is hanged on the tripes of the last national chief of secret police, to borrow an image from the leftist revolutionaries in the service of a much better ideal than anything that lot of damned thieving schmucks ever came up with.
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Old 02-03-2010, 01:36 AM   #237
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Good policeman or "freedom fighters" value diplomacy as the first tool to resolve conflict. They also understand that one size (American-style conservative) democracy does not fit all.
But democracy and republicanism more generally conceived, that does fit well for the entire human race. Incremental steps toward the way that does indeed work are fine with me, so long as they come at a steady pace. There are no grounds whatsoever to not have confidence in an open society, a general franchise, economic liberty to the greatest degree, freedom of movement, of information, of finances, of security. Read your Barnett; I am way out ahead of all your argument here.

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And ponder the unintended consequences of their actions before invading and occupying a sovereign nation......2-4 million displaced persons and/or refugees, a government with long-standing ties to Iran, strengthening Iran's position in the region......
Always with you, it's you know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Shame on you, Redux. You should try being a visionary. Ground it in realism and wise strategy as well and carefully as you may, but be a visionary. It would be refreshing. It would also make you recognizably a person of freedom instead of the lesser sort of creature you are presently satisfied with being. (Too small for my spirit.)

Nor would I believe for a minute that our actions there "strengthen Iran's position in the region......" Certainly Iran is bidding for such strength, but it is not us that are making Iran strong, but Iran. They are going to try this, will we or nill we on Capitol Hill, having free will after all! Our actions are there to undermine their strength because absolutely no one outside of Iran trusts the mullahcracy to keep the peace or to bring prosperity.

Warfare is what it always was: the bluntest of instruments, working only by smashing. Do you think your complaints about it are original? Something new? Not so. Where did your desire to destroy the Saddams of the world go? I have it. I cannot see yours. I have virtue thereby. Where is yours?
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Old 02-03-2010, 05:31 AM   #238
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No no no; as one of the freedom people, I don't diss PNAC. I ponder them carefully.
Ponder their totalitarian leftist roots and consider how they corrupted conservatism with their activist agenda.
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Old 02-03-2010, 06:39 AM   #239
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@ Sky: It was less a comment on his eloquence than on his use of the word 'manly' in that context :P Rousseau and indeed pretty much all 18th century thinkers and political philosphers had a tendency to use that word to describe anything and everything worth having or being. From radical politics, to 'true feeling': women were considered more or less incapable of sharing in these, beyond their duty to raise radical sons.

'True feeling' or 'sentiment' was 'manly'. Women, though emotional creatures (entirely emotional) were not capable of 'true feeling' and 'manly sentiment'. We were capable of beauty but denied the 'sublime'. From the radicals to the conservatives; it was all 'manly'. The heights of feeling; the depths of logic, none of this was 'feminine'; it was always 'manly'.

Hearing someone use that term in that particular context was slightly startling. If 'antitotalitarianism' is a manly creed, does that mean antitotalitarian women must adopt a form of manliness in order to share in it?
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Old 02-03-2010, 05:30 PM   #240
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Hmm. No, I don't think so. Now in Ann Coulter's case, it doesn't seem to hurt. It is clear she considers that the harder edges of governance require a macho mindset and are vitiated to ineffectuality in its absence -- misconceiving the possible as the impossible. That, in effect, boils down to smoothing the way for totalitarian governments to keep right on with their misdeeds and unfreedoms.

Pah. And I've been saying that long before I heard of her.

Returning to my point, Ann Coulter reckons that womanly things, domestic things, are not properly the sphere of central government -- so the Nanny State is right out. She pounds away at this relentlessly, under the surface layer of the crises du jour that keep all columnists and pundits eating regularly, and the rest of us amused or stimulated by their perorations.

Griff, that stretches credulity -- and doesn't exactly pop up in The Neocon Reader either. Leftist totalitarian roots?? Irving Kristol??
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