WWJK: Who would Jesus Kill - Military supplier adds bible references to rifle sights

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.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

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.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

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.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

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......

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Redux

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.

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?

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

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.

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?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

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.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

... 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?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

I'd much rather have robust womanly antitotalitarianism :P

Ah. I would suggest AnnCoulterOnline, then. She is reliably antitotalitarian in a great big way.

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.

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.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

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.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

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.

[skysidhe]

Originally Posted by DanaC

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

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

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 .

[DanaC]

@ 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?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

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??

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

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

Neocons' Leftist Origins

Neocons were former liberal war hawks, many of whom were intellectuals, who felt disenfranchised by the Democratic Party's embrace of the peace movement. The neocons decided to jump ship and join with the Republicans, in whom they felt they would have a more receptive audience for their internationalist agenda. They were welcomed with open arms by the Rockefeller Republicans and other members of the beltway right. Traditional conservatives were not enthused by these new arrivals, but they felt that a new group of intellectuals would add gravitas to the movement.

Neoconservative thought represents an ideology with more similarities to Trotskyite communism than traditional American conservatism. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Irving Kristol, who is widely considered to be the godfather of neocons, freely admitted that neoconservatism originated "from disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s." Kristol himself is an admitted former Trotskyite. Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism named after Leon Trotsky, who strongly supported an international socialist revolution and asserted that socialism could only come into being on a global scale. Kristol was the managing editor of Commentary Magazine from 1947 to 1952, which is referred to as the neocon bible. Kristol is also the father of William Kristol, founder of the Weekly Standard. William Kristol, part of the second generation of neocons, is considered to be one of the leading voices of the movement.

Neocon Michael Ledeen, contributing editor for National Review, explained his leftist roots in an interview and said, "I describe myself as a democratic revolutionary, I don't think of myself as 'conservative' at all."

In the book Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, Pat Buchanan explains:

"The first generation were ex-Trotskyites, socialists, leftists and liberals who backed FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ. When the Democratic Party was captured by McGovern in 1972 — on a platform of cutting defense and 'Come Home America!' — these Cold War liberals found themselves isolated and ignored in their own party. Adrift, they ran over to the Republican Party and were pulled aboard as conservatism's long voyage was culminating in the triumph of Reagan."