freecounterpoint: Friedman not as easy to dismiss as I'd Hoped

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Friedman not as easy to dismiss as I'd Hoped

12 comments:

Tecumseh said...: Reading through about half the article, I see that Friedman makes the case for the loyal opposition keeping the feet of government to the fire. It's a good point -- used to be understood without saying, till about, oh, mid 60s. But nowadays, is that still possible? With the insane in charge of the asylum -- by which I mean, with one party being taken over by the Hate-America-Ueber-Alles crowd -- I'm afraid not.; 3/22/2007 3:31 PM
Mr roT said...: I see it about like you do. The religious left is not usually interested in dialogue, but face facts: It was the NYT that was Petraeus' main cheerleader 4 years ago, now and Rumsfeld's main detractor.
Sounds like they were right. Maybe not for the right reasons, but this is not science.
If the Dems hadn't won, it's pretty safe to say that Rumsfeld would still be in with his air-wad wackos thinking that you can win this war from 60000 feet and a faster computer.; 3/22/2007 3:44 PM
Tecumseh said...: Air-wad wackos? Hey, Hey, hey, are you talking to me?
--- Bucky; 3/22/2007 4:31 PM
Mr roT said...: I think you agree that holding a neighborhood is different than bombing it. --Curtis Le May; 3/22/2007 4:47 PM
Tecumseh said...: Can't disagree with that sentence -- obviously, holding and bombing are two different verbs (for one, one starts with h, the other with b). Question is, what do you do when you can't hold a piece of real estate -- or, to put it more realistically, what happens when the cost of holding that piece of land becomes simply too expensive in terms of boots lost? I say, you either boot out, or bomb out. My default value is you bomb out, preferably from on high. That's when the fly-boys come in.
--- Major Kong; 3/22/2007 4:58 PM
Mr roT said...: Tried that in Fallujah. Bad guys came back.; 3/22/2007 5:32 PM
Tecumseh said...: First of all, we didn't really try it the first time around, when I was pushing for it, and you were resisting, and (alas!) Rummy listened to you. And second, the trick is not to drop just a bunch of bombs and then leave -- the baddies simply come back. What else can be done? Just keep on bombing till the rubble bounces? There must be a better way -- I'm waiting for you to tell me which. In the meantime, I'll go with the tried and true method.; 3/22/2007 8:03 PM
Mr roT said...: You're being as ironic as Pepe. You'd kill all the civies too.; 3/22/2007 8:34 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: You'd kill all the civies too.

that's just collateral damage in neocon speak.; 3/22/2007 8:56 PM
Mr roT said...: No it isn't. That's exactly why there hasn't been any carpet bombing over there, Pepe. We've talked about that. Remember your saying that bombing school busses was the poor man's way to beating great Satans and my saying great Satans must not be too bad if they're so great that they can exterminate all the little guys and then don't?; 3/22/2007 9:20 PM
Tecumseh said...: >You'd kill all the civies too.
>>that's just collateral damage in neocon speak.

No, I was not saying that. Yes, there are times in war when collateral damage happens. But in this instance I was referring to strategic bombing (a la Tokyo or Dresden firebombing). That was done by the US & UK when fighting Hitler & Tojo in the 40s (were the pinko lefties yapping at the time, too? More likely, they were just busily spying for Stalin, giving him the A Bomb on a silver platter -- but I digress).

At any rate, yes, we need another Curtis LeMay, boys. Petraeus may be OK, but he's only the boots-on-the-ground type. We need a flyboy in there, too. Do they still make them, or they broke the mold?; 3/23/2007 1:31 AM
Mr roT said...: One hopes. Rumsfeld did his best to lose this one for us.; 3/23/2007 2:33 AM

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