Iran creates international panic

[Urbane Guerrilla]

So I didn't mention "departing?" So sue me, if you're that desperate. Enjoy all the straw you can grab at, if that's what blows your kilt up. But you're still being silly, and amassing a kiltful of straw won't help.

Frankly, I'd assumed it would go without mentioning. When we get done, how much call is there to remain forever and ever in saecula saeculorum? I'd have to say not much. Nor have I ever said this would be "all you need to do," as a more careful reading of my posts than you gave would show you. The process of conversion is never confined to merely killing off conversion's best-armed enemies; one still has to do the actual converting. The conversion is undeniably helped along by raising the stakes of unsuccessful conversion to a matter of life and death, though. In things of this kind, it's helpful to have unfortunate negative examples to exhibit. We won't get a lot of the desired conversion done if we lose the fight. So acting in opposition to actually winning the fight strikes me as either boneheaded or myopic, when it's not actively fascist.

No one with a level head around here has ever mistaken me for a fascist. I don't think any of my opposition have even run afoul of Godwin's Law arguing with me. The people mistaking me for a bonehead have uniformly come out looking pretty pachycephalosaurian themselves, and I'm only physically myopic.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

No one with a level head around here has ever mistaken me for a fascist.

Damn right they weren't mistaken.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Damn right they weren't mistaken.

*chuckles*

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

So I didn't mention "departing?" So sue me, if you're that desperate.

No, you didn't, and no you don't get to slip-slide out of this one so quickly. Because:

Nor have I ever said this would be "all you need to do," as a more careful reading of my posts than you gave would show you.

Well yeah, you did...

Originally Posted by UG in #55

All you need do is continue removing any foes of libertarianism that present themselves.

It's in the goddamn thread.

Again, it's right in the goddamn thread.

You wrote it in this goddamn thread. 12 days ago. Post #55.

It was you who wrote it, and I have now quoted you writing it, twice. So it has now appeared three times, attributed to you, because you wrote it, in this goddamn thread.

Do you want to talk about careful reading of your posts again? In THIS goddamn thread? Try carefully reading your own goddamn posts!

We won't get a lot of the desired conversion done if we lose the fight. So acting in opposition to actually winning the fight strikes me as either boneheaded or myopic, when it's not actively fascist.

But again, we have not lost the fight and we STILL don't know the outcome.

Don't you get this? Why don't you comprehend? Your plan HAS been implemented. We HAVE killed and we HAVE converted and we DID NOT walk away and we DID NOT implement a timetable and we DID NOT lose...

...and we STILL don't know the outcome; and most people in the know do not predict Democratic Republic. It could happen, and one wants to be optimistic, but we STILL don't know the outcome. Five and a half years in.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

So are you trying to tell me to be of little faith in democracy or republics? Don't try that one. So what if it's taking years? Insurgency fights always do. Right now, you've shown me you know the cost of everything -- but do you know the value of anything? That's the part I pay attention to. Makes it worthwhile.

Meanwhile, is there any worthwhile reason for keeping unreconstructed fascists alive, antiglobalists alive, anti-Americans alive? These people are mankind's enemies, are they not? Have they not both shown and explicitly declared themselves nothing less? We democrats have put up with far too much totalitarian abuse, and it is time we removed the power to abuse from every totalitarian. This is most efficiently done by killing them, for they conspicuously do not respond to the moral force of a good example. They respond much more positively to the force of a bullet transecting their skulls. It's all good. I don't complain. I rejoice, and I believe you should too.

[Undertoad]

Right now, you've shown me you know the cost of everything -- but do you know the value of anything?

Yes. Tip Mug-hitting dwellars pay for the COST of this discussion; your posts add absolutely no VALUE to it.

~
pause for hall of fame editing
~

Rhetorical fluff aside (although when we remove the rhetorical fluff from your posts, they're empty), let's review so we can think in a straight line:

UG: It is, after all, hardly unlibertarian to remove libertarianism's most determined foes, or democratic republicanism's as an intermediate step in the development of a more libertarian society in a country that not only could use it, but is probably incapable of being run any other way, between geography and psychology.

UT: That, UG, depends on whether what ends up there is a Democratic Republic. Most pundits say it won't. Does that change your usual?

UG: All you need do is continue removing any foes of libertarianism that present themselves. Whether by conversion or by gunfire, the absence of antidemocrats is very much a good thing, is it not?

UT: But it looks like the biggest thing to quicken the rule of law in Iraq was announcing that we might stop doing that.

UG: I'm in favor of anything that works.

UT: OK, well what we've done so far hasn't created Democracy.

UG: We haven't been doing it long enough.

UT: So you're not in favor of leaving...

UG: No! You can't point to anywhere that I said that! I said that the only thing that will work is killing and conversion, with a heavy emphasis on the killing.

UT: So although threatening to leave worked a little, killing and converting people for five and a half years kinda hasn't worked, and you are in favor of anything that will work, you want to continue to kill and convert people and not leave, although you angrily point out that nobody can find you saying you didn't want to leave.

UG: Yes. Keep killing and converting. What little faith you have.

[DanaC]

Whoah....waitaminute...so now we're not just refusing to suffer fascists to live, but antiglobalists too?

And since when were antiAmericans enemies to mankind? They're enemies to America...at a push one might even say they are enemies to the friends and allies of America. But America does not equate to humanity, no more than does Zimbabwe, Britain, Canada or Bangladesh.

You are the most powerful nation on earth, but you are still a nation. You exist within your borders and within the range of your influence; you have specific needs and goals that are at times in competition or conflict with the needs and goals of other nations. Your cause is not humanity's cause, it is America's cause. Fortunately there are times when America's cause and humanity's cause coincide, but they are not synonymous.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Frankly, DanaC, in that the anti-Americans are reliably antidemocracy too, yes: anti-Americanism is a good sign that you're dealing with mankind's enemies. We are, after all, the single most rampantly successful, most fully workably capitalist, republican democracy on the face of the Earth.

Do not our present foes raven to destroy this prodigy? They do.

And our present foes -- what is their character? They carbomb a lot of their coreligionists, purportedly on the grounds that the people they hit aren't Muslim enough. They're all about the killings, all about nonconnectivity to the rest of the globe, that They, that awful redhanded They, may enjoy a position of privilege. It all looks fucking sociopathic from here.

It really seems quite synonymous enough for me. Where were you finding a present difference again? America is, overall, in the habit of aligning her cause with humanity's cause. This is too seldom overtly stated, probably because the world's pseudosophisticates would sneer. The pseudies frankly should get the hell back under their rocks if they cannot grow something recognizable as wisdom. We meanwhile should remain wholly insensitive to their concerns, which always add up to "Leave totalitarians be, or they might get mad."

We want them mad. Then they present a clear and present danger, and may be destroyed with unanimity rather than carping, separate peaces, and inefficiency.

You sound, DanaC, as if you believe we have no right to propagate the right. This is exactly what is so wrong with the Left. They despise morality and uphold tyranny, excessive rule. Is not an excess of rule an essential core belief of your own Party? Not that you're allowed to imagine it as an excess -- but the outside view is that an excess is all it is, and for that matter all it can be.

Absolutely everyone on the planet has the right to propagate the right. Nobody has the right to propagate the wrong.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Well, UT, I still don't see that you have a moral position. You're not willing to win a war against fascistic schmucks who would as readily behead you as they would me (and really, would they care about our little differences?) -- in that you seem to withhold approval of anything that is actually likely to win the fight these other people have started. Is this not so? Were it not so, I submit you would sound rather more like me than you do.

But all I see you doing is complaining eloquently about our trying to win -- why, the sheer effrontry of us! I do not see you outlining a better strategy that will get the war won. Really, UT, that is the kind of shit tw pulls, and I rip him a new asshole regularly for it. Surely you can do better?

It is but horse sense that if mankind is presented with an enemy, mankind should remove the enemy. Arguments against this are futile and immoral, and I do not make such. What invertebrate does not strike against tyranny, oppression, poverty -- the whole complex of symptoms of misgovernance and absence of capitalism? I am vertebrate; what, sir, are you?

This is not empty rhetoric: this is a lifestyle and a philosophy of life. I'd bet it's a real improvement over whatever you're using. It fulfils me more than that whatever-else that you'd prefer I did -- that you might be the more comfortable in the good things you're not doing.

[Undertoad]

That's OK, we were talking about you, not me. My original complaint was in #50:

Originally Posted by UT

or if they did, you ignored it and went about your business, whistling past the graveyard.

The "it" referred to is "If there is any wrongness in removing undemocracy and replacing it with democracy", a sentence that bears a lot of ugly weight without clearly defining "wrongness", "removing", "replacing" and "democracy". Especially the latter since the US is not a Democracy, a point which I attempted to fix by replacing it with "Democratic Republic" in my posts. (You're welcome.)

My real goal was to point out that you have whiffed past my objections several times without comment. We've come a long way in this thread, so, nicely done.

It is but horse sense that if mankind is presented with an enemy, mankind should remove the enemy.

This foreign policy stuff, it does not work like you imagine it does. That's OK. It's hard, and it's so rarely considered by libertarians. That last point should be a point of great shame.

Let's go with the absolute master of the pithy war quote, Sun Tzu.

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the supreme of excellence. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.

There ya go. Nobody has been able to explain it? The original student of war did it... in two sentences.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the supreme of excellence. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.

Impressive quote and a spectaculor rebuttal.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The "it" referred to is "If there is any wrongness in removing undemocracy and replacing it with democracy", a sentence that bears a lot of ugly weight without clearly defining "wrongness", "removing", "replacing" and "democracy". Especially the latter since the US is not a Democracy, a point which I attempted to fix by replacing it with "Democratic Republic" in my posts. (You're welcome.)

Mankind's whole hope of a better political life, and you call it an "ugly weight?" This is how the Left disguises its totalitarian inclinations, and they have, it appears, wholly played you for an all-day sucker.

Funny thing to happen to a libertarian, I must say. Good thing it doesn't happen to me.

I keep seeing how leftism makes men foolish. You should turn from it to be wise. The darkness of their reasoning, their want of enlightenment, their lack of democratic enthusiasm... not for me. The real brains all seem to be center and right.

I am using the bare word "democracy" in a nontechnical sense, for the convenience of not having to trot out a pedantic paragraph. Kindly quit bandying words with me -- it is and shall be an utter waste of time, and I'm going to ignore any repetitions. You are at liberty to choke on them -- but I recommend some other activity as being more constructive and enlightening.

My idea of republican democracy is likely indistinguishable from yours, despite any tergiversation on your end.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

And one I agree with -- but where do you get the idea that we have the option to so subdue the enemy? They have been bloodily fighting with us since 1983. You should be awake to this, yet you aren't, or you wouldn't say what you did. The time for subdual without fighting has clearly long passed.

Why you both have such a problem with trying to win remains unexplained. You've got to have real, not specious, reasons to think as you do, if you want to think clearly. Seems to me you remain mired in the specious.

[Undertoad]

If we're gonna be killin' 'em kemosabe, it will be very critical to get the definition right.

No consideration of the Sun Tzu quote? Iraq was low on the list of undemocracies; the top of the list is China. Over 5 years into Iraq it's not a Democracy yet; China has 47 times the population of Iraq. In fact China has twice the population of the US and EU combined. So your permanent state of war against undemocracy isn't going to go like you think it will.

[ZenGum]

That sums up what I think is the (main) flaw in UG's position.

Ridding the world of tyranny, totalitarianism, injustice, etc is indeed an excellent aim. Military force is simply not a viable way to achieve this.

To invade, defeat, occupy, rebuild, democratize, and return to local control tyrannous nations by military force is an enormous and difficult task. Ten years per country is a bare minimum. Look how badly strained our resources are trying to do it just in Iraq (task underway, outcome uncertain) and Afghanistan (task underway, outcome very dubious).

And when we move on to the next one, the ones we have just left may well go wobbly and need help again.

To do this for the whole world? Russia? China? All the democratic nations together do not have the resources to achieve it.

It just can't be done with guns. Now, schools, THAT is in with a chance. Why do parents send their sons to extremist madrassas? Because that is the only education available. A few thousand reasonably funded secular schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan would do more to defeat AQ than the equivalent resources of military force.
Mind you, those schools will need guarding. AQ aren't stupid, and they would understand the threat it would pose.