The generally accepted view against an immediate withdrawal is that if the US were to pull out, iraq would break into all out civil war.
But in reality, iraq would greatly benefit from an immediate pull out:
First off, the marriage of interest with Al Qaeda would cease: the only justification for the presence of AQ is in iraq is the us presence. Certainly the invasion of iraq has given AQ breathing room that it lost when the Taleban were defeated. Beyond the common goal of defeating the invador, there is little common ideological ground and it's hard to imagine how AQ, which has little to no roots in iraq, would maintain its presence once the only reason for its presence has disappeared.
The generally accepted view implies that the US is preventing civil war from happening. But what we see on the ground is that the US first created the conditions for civil war to flourish, and is now proving largely unable to control it. The notion that the obviously incompetent american command, suffering from a plethora of chronic problems ranging from a short-sighted policy to understaffing is somehow a shield from civil war flies in the face of everything we've seen in the last three years. The iraq policy has proved a unique case of the doctor killing the patient with medecine.
The US is the problem, not the solution.
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The US leaving Iraq as it is now is a 'solution" only a Pepean could wish on the world. It is the sort of solution which did wonders for Lebanon, Somalia, Vietnam. To think that the Yanks might have made the mistake of standing by their word in those lands, and so robbed this Earth of three such coruscantly shining points of civilizational light. But three is too few, and so Le Pew modestly rises to instruct us 'ricans on the French path to glory.
aa - i am disputing the fact that the us presence would prevent civil war in iraq, and that it is the only element inviting AQ in.
The glamourous vision of a glorious america articulating policy solely around the necessity to stand by its word is certainly cute and I will not dispute that it is reminiscent of John Ford/John Wayne epics and kodak moments. But it entirely neglects the reality of the situation: that the US has managed to take Iraq from a really bad place to a complete disaster and that its presence does considerably more bad than good.
In the end, that's the bottom line and it is all that matters.
The second to last sentence contains the whole shebang. It has been the refusal to take seriously the need to fight hard the war with the enemy, the embrace of the asinine "vietnam" concept that one fights a war by sitting back and hoping that eventually the attackers get tired, the idiocy of the view that one could prevent Baath and Mullah from poisoning Iraq by gesture and diplomacy, that has made such a mess of the place.
After halfhearted and incompetent surgery to remove a cancer, you would have the docs quickly suture up and skedaddle for tequilas in Monterrey as the patient became corpse.
I would have the docs shitcanned, and a toughbastard surgeon brought in. We need the patient to live, for where he comes from the dead always return as monsters.
The bottom line is that if Iraq succeeds, we have hope against Islam Militant. If it fails, we are in for a world of pain. In the end, it is all that matters.
Well we half agree on something: if you're going to do it, do it right. Problem is the US is unwilling/unable to do it right. it's had 3 years to prove otherwise.
So, given that it is demonstrable that it can't get the job done, it needs to pull out.
It is NOT "demonstrable it cannot get the job done", it has demonstrated to have addlepated or fearful leadership unwilling to face what it takes to get the job done. You think the rise of Islam Militant is a cute little joke carried out in some perhaps bad taste by the rambunctious meccan lads. I think the last 30 years have been a steady drive to spread war and pressure on all fronts. So, to you, heck, what is there to fight for? Git on home, boys, and join the Mardi Gras. To me, "gittin on home" will be just the preliminary to gittin clobbered, home and away.
But, hey, what am I frettin' for? At least a postmodern ironic Deity will keep you hanging around long enough to hear that first call of the muezzin from the minarets of Notre Dame
It is NOT "demonstrable it cannot get the job done", it has demonstrated to have addlepated or fearful leadership unwilling to face what it takes to get the job done.
Unable, unwilling, for all practical purposes that is one and the same thing.
You think the rise of Islam Militant is a cute little joke carried out in some perhaps bad taste by the rambunctious meccan lads.
No. But I do think it doesn't amount to much. And I also think that the iraqi adventure is a toughtless way to address the problem, assuming there is one.
So, to you, heck, what is there to fight for?
There are real ennemies that make countless victims: aids, lack of education to name just two, and we are diverting disproportionate resources away from them for the purpose of fighting an enemy that is presently rather inocuous (on the scale of society's serious ills) and that may or may not amount to anything serious.
But, hey, what am I frettin' for?
Not much - that is my point.
long enough to hear that first call of the muezzin from the minarets of Notre Dame
And replace one silly superstition with another ? That'd be fine.
Or The Cube transformed into a western Kaabaa?
Which culture, I wondered, would better protect human rights? Which culture would more firmly secure the moral foundations of democracy? The culture that built this stunning, rational, angular, geometrically precise but essentially featureless cube? Or the culture that produced the vaulting and bosses, the gargoyles and flying buttresses, the nooks and crannies, the asymmetries and holy 'unsaneness' of Notre-Dame and the other great Gothic cathedrals of Europe?
If there ever was a mother of all non-sequiturs, that'd be it.
The European project is in trouble, Weigel asserts. The evidence is now unassailable. For some years, Europe has experienced a fall in births that now portends a net decrease in population.
The major flaw here is that, the (possible but certainly questionable) positive impact that religion has on society has no bearing on the reality of the existence of god. Inviting idolatry for the benefit of the greater good is incompatible with the workings of a civilized society IMO.
From Mohler's website:
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., serves as the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary-the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world.
Southern Baptists - aren't these the Baptists that split off to protest the admission of blacks in their church ? This is the "dancing is like having sex with your clothes on" crowd, correct ?
I have no idea who we are dealing with here, but it sure looks, sounds, and smells like jimmy swaggart/oral roverts redux. I expected the influence of these people to be limited to those unfortunates who didn't have the access to education, not this crowd...
Check out:
http://www.albertmohler.com/images/5205CR1.jpg
somehow i wasn't able to link to it directly. Scary shit.
A chacun son epouvantail. The canoical PLBCN (pinko-lefty, Bierkenstock-clad, euro-nihilist) views a bunch of people praying in Church as the ultimate daemon, and the most fundamental threat to their existence and way of life. Jeepers! You can tell something about a man by what his ultimate nightmare is. If that pic scares the shit out of PLP, but he can eerily dismiss head-hacking assassins like Zarky, or the ghosts of Katyn and Vorkhuta -- well, I guess I don't have to say more.
Horrifying you couldn't make the link.
It's not the people praying, it's the superstition presented as undeniable truth, the bible-thumping, the exhortations to terrify the masses into submission that is odiously abusive.
But you haven't retorted anything about the amalgamation of the social benefits of religion with the existence of god in the argument which is really the most interesting topic imo.
If that pic scares the shit out of PLP, but he can eerily dismiss head-hacking assassins like Zarky, or the ghosts of Katyn and Vorkhuta -- well, I guess I don't have to say more.
This is not an honest argument: I did not dismiss zarky. He is where he should be. What I did do is question the impact that his offing would have on killings in iraq and scoffed at the notion that another corner was being turned (I think I referred to so many turns as amounting to 360). So far, i haven't been proven wrong.
More generally caricature is fine, but that is all it is. The PLs don't like AQ any more than you do. It isn't like if they're not with you they're with the terrorists.
And it is not like there is no other way than the dubbyah way (hopefully, there is another way because this one sure ain't working).
If Pepe thinks that the fall of Europe to Islam is merely "one superstition replacing another", does he mean socialism is a superstition?
To the extent the left despises christianity and democracy is to the extent it may well continue to exist under Islam, but those marxist religionists, pondering that Sword of Damascus [yes] ever to be poised over there untrustworthy noggings, are going to have to modify somewhat what is deemed opium for the masses.
AA: "You think the rise of Islam Militant is a cute little joke carried out in perhaps some bad taste by rambunctious meccan lads"
PLP: "No. But I do think it doesn't amount to much"
So you think the meccan lads are rambunctious in a way that falls short of bad taste? That the joke is unprepossessing or even uncute? Or are you just reiterating the midsummer laughfest of yours wherein you advised us that the world be damned, that as long as Versailles yet stood all's right with the world? Remember, your attempts to first delimit Islam Militant to merely Al Qaeda, and then, when confronted with a long list of places and groups wherein Islam Milit[ant has been clobbering the kufr on all fronts] you expansively dismissed them all us unimportant because, lo and behold, the Franks good work had not yet been utterly undone?
It is not a question of the PLs [sic] "liking AQ any more than you do". It is a question of the PLs claiming to see no important difference between, let's say, the local bible thumper before Cafe' du Monde and the happy chaps who plow their cars into kufr at Chapel Hill & San Francisco [. Never mind of couse of those far more openly happy campers who prefer phallicies of knife and gun.] No difference between Dominicans and Hebzollah, Franciscans and Hamas. None between Pope's Benedict & John Paul II and the Ayatollah Khameini and the House of Saud, between Liberty Baptist or Brigham Young or Catholic University or Yeshiva and the Al-Azhar University and its lesser Madrassah compatriots, between the YMCA and the Islamic Brotherhood, between quoting Manuel II Paleologus [one who said it as he saw it] and the slaughtering nuns, priests, and the vaguely catholic, because of that quotation [by those who saw it as they say it] No vital difference, presumably, between Jesus and Mohammed.... Although perhaps you would staunchly draw the line at saying no difference between Ahmedinejad and Castro [after all, the first is openly proud of campaigns to execute known homosexuals, whereas the second is......hmmmm, perhaps bad example]
If that is so, and if you truly believe what you say, then you have a very simple means of testing your hypothesis. Go to Catholic University, or any other Christian, or Jewish, or Buddhist affiliated institution of higher education. Go and lecture on the virtues of atheism, the idiocies of belief in God/Being/Jvh, remind them that any reasonable left thinking modern, in passing on the street Jesus [ in his son of god mode], or Abraham [about to off Isaac], or Siddhartha [stinkingly unwashed & with the stare of one too long a vegan] , would know a nutjob when he saw one. Tell them that there has been no more shameful waste of the human potential than that due to religion, and tell them particularly to that religion with which the university is affiliated. Then, as a final enlivening touch, quote the character of Riddick, from Pitch Black, "That is why I believe in God. And that is why I hate the Fucker".
Yes, PLP, you will deeply offend many who listen to you. You will disturb even more. In question and answer sessions the atmosphere is unlikely to be placid and polite. And you would be very unlikely to be high on the reinvite list. On the other hand, you would be listened to. People would try to understand arguments offered or how/why supporting examples you offered had the weight you thought they did. They would offer counterarguments, counterexamples. Whatever they would offer, it would not be to decapitate you and shout God is Great over your twitching corpse. Yes, PLP, even in the bowels of the Devil Incarnate, Jimmy Falwell's Liberty Baptist, you would be in relative civilization.
Go ahead, try it, take your anthropolical notes, carry out your field studies, marvel at all the fossils in the uprooted strata of the superstitious.....Then, bravely go forth to the universities in Qom, or Riyadh, or the famous Al-Azhar, "Harvard of Islam", or even the Islamic University in Virginia, and try the same lecture. Watch what happens, die and learn [although, in Virginia cooler heads might let you walk out on human feet]....... You would be killed, that simple. And your death would be as ugly as that of Nick Berg or Danny Pearl.
Now, I do not expect you to carry out this test. After all, who wants to die? Especially, who wants to die like a stinking Jew, son of apes and pigs? Not PLP, methinks. So it would take most unnatural bravery, or foolhardiness, to do such. And perhaps neither bravery nor foolhardiness are the Mark of Pepe. ......but, I dare ya, I double dare ya.
Besides, wasn't your stand that one superstition is just like another? Benedict, Bakri, two peas in a pod? Is not AA just another scurrilous bourgeois bigot, secret admirer of the late Fallaci, who shits his pants at seeing a shadow, who is so gauche as to be droite, and so terribly naive as to take what Islam Militant does and what Islam Militant says as a measure of what Islam Militant is. Clearly, AA is just another chump who so misundertands the Religion of Peace. So, Pepe, what's to fear?
Now, Monsieur Le Pew, I triple dare ya.
Remember, your attempts to first delimit Islam Militant to merely Al Qaeda
no, relax & breathe, i was just using aq as shorthand for islam militant.
it is unfortunate that habit that you and ai share to draw your own (distorted) caricature of my statements and proceed to attack it.
I have always stated that islam militant/aq/the muslim wackos were a pain in the ass that amount to very little in terms of firepower when compared to the West's XXth century's ennemies. It is also clear that the mechanisms that will allow them to amount to much only exist in the psyche of the fear-mongerers that got us here in the first place. Look at padilla and the dirty bomb boogeyman - all that was DOJ fabrication.
There is no question that the world has much more to fear from HIV, malaria, criminality encouraged by the free distribution of handguns, poverty, lack of education, obesity resulting from the proliferation of fast-food "restaurants" than from OBL and his two-bit emule/disciples. Setting aside the fact that the war on iraq doesn't even clearly address the problem of terrorism, considerable resources that could be spend to fight society's actual evils are being diverted to fight windmills in the sand dunes.
Many/most on this board are doing no more than extrapolating unfortunate symbolic current events of small magnitude into premonitions of an upcoming muslim armaggedon. I really find this difficult to take seriously but, as stated elsewhere,
perfectly understandable in a context where every tv watcher is periodically encouraged to be fearful of everything under the sun: kidnapped children, razor blades in halloween cupcakes, killer bees blowing through the border and now stinky american-way-of-life-hating muslims bent on stealing your satellite dish, excising and infibulating your women and forcing your treasured offspring into madrassas.
If it weren't such a waste, this would actually be very comical
Aids and Lack of Education? But these are problems so very acute in certain thirdworldish parts of Africa and Asia. Surely "Europe", the Versailles that makes Pepe the very model of Le Pew, is only lightly troubled by these scourges of the far away places? Why the sudden care for folk who, when they are dying at the hands of Islam Militat, you have made it most clear you do not give a ff about? Or are you suggesting that AIDS and Lack of Education are now a serious problem for Europe?..........
Sacre Bleu! That is it! Now one perceives the method in Pepe's madness. Islam is not the problem, it is the Solution. If any religion knows what to do with the Corrupt of the Earth it is Islam, and with Aids one is so very corrupted. As for lack of education, what more says "the cure for what ails ya" than a Madrassah on every corner [boys only , natch. There is so much cleanin' and cookin' to be done, for you girls who may be reading this]
AA - if your point is simply that some muslim fundamentalists are less tolerant of atheist views than right-wing religious sects in Montana, I'll gladly give you that. If it matters to you that your favorite idiot be somewhat dumber than my favorite idiot, that's fine: there must be a place somewhere for hierarchy in stupidity.
If you don't mind, I have no interest in risking my head to prove my moron worse than yours - I'd rather conceed.
But that doesn't mean the lesser of the two dumbasses isn't a danger in itself.
Pepe, in your statements, the ones just before my comment on your "Aids and Education" riff, you construct a marvelous density of non-sequiturs, cant denuded of any saving context, and outright falsehoods that could find love and acceptance only in the calm precincts of Chomskiana. Robinson could not pack nearly so many infinitesimals between epsilon and nought.
I could, and perhaps should, and if I was younger and more unmired by the dung of this world I would, spend much time taking apart what you said, offering long essays to act as Wallis before your Hobbes [or, if you prefer things Francophilic, as Cauchy before your Lacroix], trying to plumb at what depths your supreme irony believes it is supported by more than the best wishes of brother squid and his fellow inky invertebrates. I could try to Reason with you, compile evidence, list premisses, outfreak Russel and Whitehead in loving detail of logical coherence. But, now that I am no longer young, I know it would be madness. It would be madness because it would be utterly futile. Nothing, no far experience, no testimony of the afflicted, no vistas of the dead and the triumphant dances of their killers, could penetrate your absolute knowledge that Aids, Lack of Education, Corporations, and 'Ricans with their utterly evil christians, hideous waistlines, and pronounced disrespect for nuance and sophistication, are the only Four Horsemen any Apocalypse needs. Get rid of them all, and Earth is blessed.
In other words, you are the sort of thoroughly unserious person who refuses to learn until experience has now made him his bitch, until it dawns on him that there is a sword at his neck, up close and personal, and just how the bloody heck did it get there?
Which is exactly why I now dare you before the world, dare you questioning not just your sincerity, your seriousness, your capacity to look at the world without the dogmas of an education and milieu saturated with the the opiates of socialism , your capacity to think through the shibboleths of what passes for "progressive thought" in the intellectual rubble of the contemporary West; as I said, dare you questioning not just these. I dare you questioning the calibre of your cojones.
You see, I have only your best interests at heart. I truly care about you, just as you truly care about Indonesians, or Taiwanese, or Sudanese, or Somalians, or Nigerians, or Malis, or Algierians, or Morrocans, or Pilipinos, or Thais, [many many more in the etc..., here]. Care about them that is as soon as the Imams have finished offing or enslaving them and they can start suffering from the proper enemies [the four horsemen listed above]. It is such a caring world we live in, eh Pepe? So, because I do so care, and wish you to learn and not be deceived by mere words and most humorously wrongheaded non-pc badinage, not be deceived by AAsses and worldviews that every Karl and Leon would laugh at, that is why I so encourage you to try out that little test of your hypothesis as to the qualities of that particular superstition whose grip on Versailles you claim would leave you so untroubled. Do not think of it as a little exercise in bourgeois notions of putting your body where your mouth is, of walking the path you talk, or any such Bushfoolery. Think of it as a glorious chance to show that Praxis dare go where Theorie does not fear to tread.
Wow! That was some discourse! I don't think I can add much to what has been said, but I will note that the triple dare that AA launched to Pepe le Pew has not been taken upon -- how could it? Therefore (as an obvious corollary), it shows that much of that pinko-lefty badinage about the evils of Amerikkkan Kapitalism and the terryfying daemons of Christianity is just that: a shallow regurgitation of standard-issue liberal banalities, without much depth, internal coherence, or connection to reality.
This reminds me the oft-repeated mantra of the Kos groupies: the fatuous and pretentious claim that they represent the "reality-based community", as oposed, presumably, to the ignorant, deluded masses of Ricains yahoos. Puhleaase!
aa - i can't seem to be able read anything more in your tirade than a statement that all i am stating is a series of non-sequiturs that you could but won't debunk owing to your age. What a wonderful gift being able to decline a discussion in such a convoluted fashion.
Also the passion in the exhortation to go provoke armed wackos in their own mosques - that was so romantic. Now, I kow John Wayne wouldn't have flinched. That's why he has an airport named after him.
And the bit about the awful liberals not caring about the plight of those suffering under the mullahs - now spinning concern for mankind upside down is genius: I thought liberals were the caring types but no! Compassionate conservatism is the way of the day.
But pray tell, even assuming you are correct with your impending doom prediction, how does the presence of troops in iraq delay or prevent Attila to raid the city ?
Why the sudden care for folk who, when they are dying at the hands of Islam Militat, you have made it most clear you do not give a ff about?
Huh ??? I don't ?
Or are you suggesting that AIDS and Lack of Education are now a serious problem for Europe?
AIDS is a problem everywhere. Lack of education, mostly in red states.
Now one perceives the method in Pepe's madness. Islam is not the problem, it is the Solution.
You are completely delirious. Have you been sipping off of JJ's home-distilled ouzo ?
Wow! That was some discourse! I don't think I can add much to what has been said, but I will note that the triple dare that AA launched to Pepe le Pew has not been taken upon -- how could it?
aa - sounds like you have a cheerleader with ponpons and all waiting for you on the sidelines, you lucky dawg!
This reminds me the oft-repeated mantra of the Kos groupies: the fatuous and pretentious claim that they represent the "reality-based community", as oposed, presumably, to the ignorant, deluded masses of Ricains yahoos. Puhleaase!
wiki: To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent.
'nuff said.
Pepe, there is absolutely no need to caricature what you say. Might as well try to make a pencil sketch of a pencil sketch.
What I wrote, Pepe, was crystal clear. You pretend that Johnny Baptist is the danger to us all, and scoff at there being any substance to the openly aggressive intent of Islam. Yet you dare not confront Islam as you would the Biblers. You are muy macho against those who will not seek to hurt you, and you are gutless wonder with those who would not hesitate to slaughter you [the better to pave their path to paradise]. You are free to make a virtue out of hypocrisy, and I am free to deride it.
As for your claim that the description of the method in your madness indicates my drinking Ouzo, then I do not think Ouzo is what you think it is.
You pretend that Johnny Baptist is the danger to us all, and scoff at there being any substance to the openly aggressive intent of Islam
No - I scoff at the ignorant amalgamation of fundamentalist rhetoric and actions with Islam as a whole. It's as silly as stating that the intelligent design crowd are representative of christianity. (And no, this is not an implicit statement to the effect that the ID types are as dangerous to mankind as zarky and pals).
And yes, unbriddled superstition is a danger to us all, but this is a different topic.
On ouzo:
Ouzo (ούζο) is a Greek anise-flavored liqueur that is widely consumed in Greece. The name dates back to the late 19th century, but is of uncertain origin (however, see Ouzo name below). It is similar to absinthe, but without the wormwood.
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