I would give my kingdom for a [fill in the blank].
My answer: a slightly larger kingdom.
by Tim F| 100 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I would give my kingdom for a [fill in the blank].
My answer: a slightly larger kingdom.
Comments are closed.
demimondian
I would give my kingdom for a horseshoe nail. Of course, I don’t have a kingdom, so I’d be getting something for nothing…
Perry Como
Grover Norquist’s head on a pike.
Steve
A healthy baby. Three weeks to go!
jaime
better war on terror acronym than
G.S.A.V.E.W.A.D.T.P.F.P.F.E.T.R.A.F.P
Global “Struggle Against Violent Extremists Who Are Determined To Prevent Free People From Exercising Their Rights As Free People”
Thank’s Sec. Rumsfeld.
mrmobi
My Kingdom for a… Democracy!
Steve: the best of luck with the new baby, mazeltov!
Pb
Steve Martin said it best.
srv
a map to my misplaced kingdom.
Pb
Oh, and have I mentioned lately that we’re totally screwed in Iraq?
Read the whole thing.
Krista
My kingdom for $20,000,000.00 and Jessica Alba’s figure.
Unless giving up my kingdom for that involves giving up my boyfriend and dog. In which case, no sale.
Jim Allen
If you got Jessica Alba’s figure, I suspect keeping the boyfriend would not be a problem.
Just saying.
Peyton Manning
My Kingdom, plus all those impressive wins in October, for a Super Bowl.
Failing that, maybe a new, non-hayseed accent so I don’t sound like a complete cracker.
srv
Change that – I’ll give up my kingdom to be Krista’s bf.
Davebo
I would give my kingdom for John Cole to drop the Paterrico Pussiness and quit whining about people blogging anonymously.
Sure, there’s some humor value there, but seriously John, wouldn’t your time be better spent researching the name of Glenn Greenwald’s partner with the rest of your buddies?
Nutcutter
Ow.
My kingdom for a Skylane, a Shelby GT500, a Steinway upright, dinner with Elaine Pagels, tickets to Wynton Marsalis, one cat that doesn’t vomit on my furniture, steak and creamed potatoes, and the hair I had when I was 35.
Punchy
Anyone…help? I typed in “balloon-juice.com” and got Mad Libs instead. WTF?
Kris says:
Yeah, but that’s Canadian money, which is like $24.51 in American (read: real) money. As for Jess Alba….uh…I’ll be back in 5 minutes…
The Other Steve
Jessica Alba? Blah.
I’ll take Keira Knightley any day over that hussy.
Krista
Punchy –
So that’s how you got your name…
Pooh
Davebo, that’s just being an ass.
Davebo
Pooh,
I agree. And yet he persists.
And what kind of a name is Tim F. anyway?
Punchy
There’s out of the blue questions, there’s out-in-left-field questions, and then there’s this…
It appears to be Israeli-Eygptian, from the looks of the period after the “F”…cuneiform, bitches.
Pooh
Heh, I was talking about you actually…
demimondian
Bringing us back to reality, I’d trade my kingdom for a lot of people who think like
this:
‘Cuz I’m a-gonna have enough money to buy me a new, bigger, and much flashier kingdom real, real soon.
Look at the regs. They do not say anything about correlation between individual symbols, but rather that the probability in each column must be constant. Now, unsurprisingly, HTML tables aren’t allowed here, but look at the following probability table:
Now look at the marginals: they’re all 0.5. However, if I pay for two bells or two bars, I’m never going to pay anything, ever.
Tsulagi
You can just feel the luv. Stay the course.
Nutcutter
ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
Luckily, some dynamite testing at a nearby pit mine jarred me from the deep sleep …..
demimondian
Think of it this way. You don’t care about this, since you neither gamble nor, say, write database query optimizers. However, I would wager that you probably care about the performance of DB query optimizers…in which case you care that people like me understand this kind of stuff.
Davebo
Well Pooh, if you’re going to sling “feces” at me at least do so under your real name!
OK, kidding perhaps, but it’s a trend of late. And a really stupid one.
Perry Como
The internets are serious business.
Nutcutter
I especially care about the performance aspects of degrees of parallelism in SQL 2000 and 2005. The literature is ambiguous and leaves the administrator basically with trial and error to figure out what’s the best way to go.
Anyone who can figure out how to build a query optimizer can also figure out how to build a smart configurator that takes the guesswork out of
mythe work.You know where to send the details.
Dug Jay
Oh, piffle.
Punchy
Nut, is it bad that I heard on the TV that they caught the serial whatevers (killers? shooters? rapists?) in FO-nix and immediately wondered if you’d be posting here today?
Perry Como
I would give my kingdom for a meat cake.
Steve
It doesn’t just say the probability in each column must be constant. Common sense would tell you that’s not how it works.
Krista
One hour and five minutes until my vacation starts. Huzzah!
demimondian
Hmm. Steve, you’re the defense lawyer. What happens after the plaintiff’s attorney says this in court?
“Well, yes, your honor, there was an accepted technical term which meant what we wanted to say. We just thought it was clear that we meant it even though we didn’t say it.”
If the gaming commission meant a true memoryless Markov process, then they should have said that. It isn’t like there’s no mathematical literature to provide the relevant terms of art, or like there’s no relevant expertise to draw upon.
The Other Steve
Two hours and thirty minutes until my vacation ends. Phffffbttt!!
Been cleaning up the 2nd bedroom this week, after having been in the house for a year and a half, I decided the boxes I unpacked, I probably didn’t need.
Jill
I would give my kingdom for a real POTUS.
Steve
The language of the regulations is very clear. It says “All gaming devices submitted for approval must use a random selection process to determine the game outcome of each play of a game.” Not each separate wheel in a slot machine, but the “game outcome.” “Game outcome” is defined to mean “the final result of the wager.”
These regs go on for pages and pages. It’s like you’re reading one isolated sentence – “the mathematical probability of a symbol appearing in a position in any game outcome must be constant” – and pretending like, as long as you satisfy that sentence, you don’t have to pay attention to anything else in the regs!
demimondian
But, you see, that’s not true. Random has a very specific technical meaning, and what you’re talking about (an independent identically distributed sample from a fixed distribution) is by no means the only random process which satisfies the regulations. I’m perfectly willing to believe that the regs have been improved to bar machines like I’ve described, but what you’ve shown me does not support that claim.
Now, normally, I’d defer to the common-sensiscal reading of the text. The problem here is that the text quite explicitly mentions things like 95% confidence intervals on a chi-squared test, and so was clearly written with input from individuals with statistical expertise. It’s impossible to believe that a competent statistican would not know the kinds of things I’m discussing, and, therefore, I continue to conclude that the omission was intentional.
Pooh
Yerp, and I believe they need to submit the payout percentage for aproval as well. In Demi’s matrix, the % would be zero, and would almost certainly be rejected.
Nutcutter
I don’t know you well enough to answer that question.
Offhand, I’d say, yeah, probably.
I will never understand what motivates people to drive around at night randomly shooting people from their car.
It’s the whole DC Sniper syndrome again. I guess there are just a lot of deranged people out there.
Now there is still a serial rapist-murderer on our streets. This guy is even more of a monster than the other guys were AFAIC. And more devious, he will be harder to catch.
demimondian
No, it would be rejected. The regs say that all patterns must be capable of occurring. My example was meant to show a particular principle. I could have used .1/.9 // .9/.1 instead.
demimondian
Well, yes, and at my usual consulting rates, I’m happy to help. :-)
Nutcutter
The Serial Shooter is on the Internets
According to CNN and some local sources, this is one of the two guys driving around and shooting people at random the last year here.
Bizarre as it sounds, I cross checked the photo on CNN with this site and it appear to be the same guy with the addition of a huge beer belly.
Nutcutter
Heh. Spoken like a true Gatesian.
demimondian
Now, what evidence do you have that I’m a Microsoftie? None that’s admissible in this forum, d00d!
Seriously, you know where to reach me. There are so many interpretations of your question, that I wouldn’t know where to start.
Nutcutter
That Mozilla dig probably made me think it.
Clearly, you are anti-mozillic.
Pb
Have I mentioned lately that we’re totally screwed in Iraq?
Nutcutter
Have been for three years.
Only in the last year or so has it become clear how this is going to end. Iraq in one stage or another of civil war, and Americans there trying to stay out of the way, largely irrelevant. That’s where Nir Rosen says we are now.
Rosen in the Washington Post
Rosen is the best reporter I’ve read on Iraq so far.
His work is widely available, but you can start here:
http://www.nirrosen.com/blog/
Steve
Look, of course you can manipulate the probabilities to have whatever payout percentage you want, subject to the requirement that any gaming machine needs to pay out at least 75%. That’s why some casinos advertise 90% payback, some have 95%, some have 98%.
But you still can’t have more wins come up at a particular time of day, or based on how much time has elapsed since the last pull. That’s an observable pattern, it violates the regs.
Perry Como
I’m reading some interesting stuff about the post-war “planning” in Iraq. Apparently the plan was to turn Iraq into a free market paradise. To the point that Norquist pretty much drafted the plan. The specifics can be found in Bremer’s directives that did things like:
-Implement a flat tax and eliminate taxes on business revenues
-Sell Iraq’s banks, bridges and water companies to foreign interests
-Application to the WTO
-Eliminate all tarrifs
-Implement intellectual property laws
All of this stuff was to be done *before* they stabilized the country. So when you get product dumping and privatization in an unstable country, 60% unemployment is not unexpected. And when you get high unemployment, you get civil unrest.
:sigh:
nyrev
The internets are not serious business. They’re a series of tubes.
Perry Como
Tim F., an article about two of your interests coming together:
Why don’t we hear all the good things about global warming?
Nutcutter
You need to watch more of the 700 Club.
jg
Your name and the irrational hatred of firefox. :)
Perry Como
Padilla case said to lack evidence
Hmmmm.
Punchy
Padilla is screwed no matter what. The Bush Amerijihadists have already declared their “right” to re-“arrest” and re-label as an enemy combatant this guy EVEN IF HE’S FOUND NOT GUILTY.
And if they DON’T retain him, you’d better believe he’ll be IRS audited, phone-tapped, bank-account checked, followed, shadowed, tracked, and harrassed everywhere he goes…
And he better have a decent car, b/c he’ll never see the inside of an airplane again….
Nutcutter
Are we fucked in Iraq, Pb? This is from a review of “The One Percent Doctrine,” which I think will become a standard reference to the collossal fuckups perpetrated by this government and by George Bush.
We’re just fucked, period. Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, New Orleans … wherever the action is, that’s where we’re fucked.
Pb
Nutcutter,
Totally. As I mentioned before:
Hearts and minds, motherfuckers.
Perry Como
Flat tax, bitches!
Nutcutter
Today I heard the Insane Condi Rice saying this:
Hard? Hard? Hard?
What reasonable person, asked four years ago whether it would be reasonable to think that “democracy” could be produced in this area for the first time in its thousands of years of history ….. and that our policy and goals should be predicated on an assumption that such a thing is not just possible, but likely, now …. would have answered anything other than “What the FUCK are you thinking?”
What the fuck were they thinking? What did they expect, besides this pile of shit? And why did they expect it?
Because the official line of bullshit wasn’t challenged.
Gee, do we see anything like that happening now?
Dug Jay
Nutcutter is fucked in Iraq? Nobody told me.
Nutcutter
Clearly.
Steve
Talk about a nation of separatists. Ooh-la-la.
Nutcutter
Like I said.
http://www.hrw.org
So that’s one view of the war.
Here’s two others:
1) “There’s no proof that the civilians (being killed) are innocent.” — Darrell
2) “People die in war.” — Several posters here
We report, you decide.
Slide
I just saw Condi on Hardball last night (thanks to TiVo). Question: Is she out of her fucking mind?
Dug Jay
No, but quite clearly Nutcutter is batty as shit.
Nutcutter
Well, there is so much cognitive dissonance when listening to her, it’s hard to think that she isn’t just crazy.
But we’ve had five and a half years now to learn how this works. When we see these huge disconnects between reality and their speech, we can simply conclude that they are lying, and lying for a reason, with a purpose.
The purpose here, in the lies of Rice and Bush, is simple and obvious: They are blowing smoke, covering for the fact that they are giving Israel all the time it wants to carry out its murderous and insane war plan, while pretending to speak of things like “peace” and “stopping the violence.” They have no intention of stopping the violence and have not had since day one. Their intent is to give the appearance of caring about it, and wanting and end to the hostilities, while deliberately doing absolutely nothing to stop it. It’s all calculated, a win-win in their sociopathic minds. They win approval at home by appearing to be for peace, and by appearing to be working. They win with Israel, who gets the cover it wants to continue its homicide and expansionist campaign.
And like all big lies, it’s … big. The bigger the lie, the easier it’s told, and the more readily it’s repeated.
The huge lie here is that a cease-fire can’t be had right away because it won’t lead to “lasting peace.”
As if sixty years of war, or for that matter, a thousand years of conflict, would be resolved in a cease-fire!
As if a cease-fire, whose only true and correct purpose is to STOP PEOPLE FROM KILLING EACH OTHER, now must take on the burden of providing “lasting peace.” As if the true nature of a cease-fire weren’t simply to stop the violence while the real peace process goes on and finds a way, if there is one, to a more durable peace.
And so this lie, this insane new “definition” of cease-fire, is not just floated, but preached as gospel to a world that isn’t paying close attention to these liars … liars whose whole schtick is based on lying to people who aren’t paying close attention. Beginning with the press, which repeats the lies and flaccidly accepts them without question.
Bob In Pacifica
For my kingdom? There was a beautiful young woman, way back in 1974, from Hong Kong via a year in Florida. She spoke with an English accent and a hint of a southern drawl. She was seventeen when I met her and I was twenty-four. She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. I’d gotten out of the army and had finished college and was out to conquer the world in San Francisco. I sent her away telling her she was too young, saw her again when she was eighteen, sent her away because she too immature. Her name was Josephine. She wanted to be a doctor. Don’t know what happened to her. I’ve regretted many things I’ve done, but nothing more than what I didn’t do.
Nutcutter
Apparently the Intelligent Designer has a warped sense of humor.
The Other Steve
Interesting, you’re about as one-sided as fox news as well.
Hezbollah Must End Attacks on Civilians
Good for HRW, their credibility has been under question in the past because they tend to take sides in conflicts rather than simply keeping all parties honest.
The Other Steve
Actually I agree with Rice/Bush on this.
The problem with the Israeli conflict is that the war has never ended. We turn a blind eye when Israel is attacked, and yell for cease fire when it appears Israel might be winning.
I say we let the two sides work this out themselves. When they tire of war, they’ll come to the table and forge a peace agreement. Until then, you’re just demanding a pause so the groups can rearm themselves and come back at each other in a few years.
Nutcutter
That is neither correct, nor relevant.
I named both sides in the dispute as crazy and sociopathic from the first post to the first thread.
As for your bitch, there aren’t two sides here. Israel has lied to build a PR cover for the murder of civilians, including children and their mothers in their sleep and in fleeing cars. Their description of their objectives, their tactics, and their “concern” has all been pure bullshit. All that’s necessary is to display their words next to the facts, to prove the case. The facts don’t support their crap. Not in any aspect whatever.
You go ahead and present the other side as much as you like. I’ll wallpaper you with my “one side” against yours all day or all night. Go for it. Do it.
Nutcutter
When WHO tires of war? The people being warred upon, or the lying turds in suits you see on tv?
I think the Lebanese people tired of the Israeli thuggery and bullshit about 20 years ago, in this current cycle. How’s that working out?
Nutcutter
Yeah, sure.
Who’s keeping Israel honest in this war on Lebanon, again?
Fox News? Darrell? Idiots in Congress who will walk out of the room if anyone critizes Israel’s policy or actions?
Where is the machinery and the implementation of that machinery which exposes Israel to critical examination and scrutiny? In our government? In our press? Where?
Why does Israel get a pass to paint its own history via a fire hose of government press releases, without challenge? Why do apologists cry “anti-semitism” at the slightest whiff of such criticism? What are they afraid of?
What were the announced objectives of this war at the outset? What are they now? How much time did Israel say it “needed” to achieve those objectives? How much time have they gotten? Why did they get it?
Why have they waged an air war against a civilian population, killing essentially no enemy combatants in the process, and then claim that they did this because those civilians were being used “as shields?” If they were, where are the dead persons who were being shielded? Who were they? How were they targeted?
Why do reports from the ground describe civilians as essentially running away from anything that might get shot at, rather than letting themselves be used “as shields?” How is a car racing away from a combat area and filled with a family trying to escape the war, being used as a shield? How was the 8-year old in the CNN video with his face burned off, being used as a shield in his father’s car? Who was being “shielded” by his mother, who witnessed the injury to her son?
Nutcutter
Fucking madness
I can’t figure out which is crazier, this insane war against Lebanon, or the fact that people in here — besides Darrell — are supporting it. People who say that they’re opposed to the war in Iraq, which is no more cruel or dishonest an operation than this one is.
I guess murderous bullshit is okay, if you think that God is On Your Side. I mean, that’s the whole point of unrest in the Middle East, is it not?
Dug Jay
Nutcutter is a really, really HUGE anti-Semite. Nutcutter can’t hide behind the trope that he “has from the first post” found fault with both. Sure he’s tossed out the obligatory complaint about “both” sides, but go back and check his numerous posts and you will find that at least 90 percent are devoted to accusations of murder, war crimes and worse against only Jews.
demimondian
So, let me get this straight. Iraq had not attacked us, and posed no strategic threat to us or any of our allies. The _de facto_ government in Southern Lebanon was engaging in direct attacks on Israel.
You can’t tell the difference?
I know, you and Paul L. are the same person; he’s just your spoof, right?
Nutcutter
The difference is not as you have painted it.
Do you work for Olmert?
What bullshit.
Nutcutter
Israel occupied Lebanon for over 20 years and apparently withdrew leaving behind perpetual border disputes that it now uses as an excuse to do whatever it wants to do there.
Israel has managed to keep itself in war for sixty years. At what point do you say, enough is enough?
Are you now going to sit here and tell me that the endless history of Arab-Israeli conflict is all about one set of good guys versus one set of bad guys?
Please, go ahead. Tell that story.
Explain how a perpetual war exists because one side is good and the other is bad.
And explain to me why the one good side constant has to be raising money to defend itself in the press, running ads asking for unconditional and uncritical support, and hiding behind peretual victimhood and religion when the going gets rough? Why criticism of Israel is declared to be anti-Jewish when in fact it has nothing to do with Jewishness at all? Why defenders of Israel use exactly the same dishonest and abusive tactics as defenders of George Bush and his insane foreing policies?
Nutcutter
It should be clear to even the most hung-over beer bloggers that the current war in Lebanon is a scam, an imperative for wider war being ginned up by the unholy alliance between the lying thugs in Washington and the lying thugs in Israel.
It is not possible to buy into the insane bullshit with which Israel is wallpapering the news of the Middle East without also buying into the even more insane policy of George Bush and his neocon mental midgets, hook, line, and sinker.
Make no mistake. The government of this country fully intends to use the Israel-Lebanon conflict as kindling for starting a larger fire, and this fire is not only their key to power in this country in the near term, but key to their bringing to fruition the entire mad, bellicose “Axis of Evil / With Us or With the Terrorists” approach to ME policy objectives.
George Bush and the neocons have studied the art of perpetual war in the Middle East, and they like what they see. It’s full of good versus evil, divine authority, eternal victimhood, and liberalism-on-crack views about the use of force to achieve political aims.
Join the Darrell-Bush-PaulL BJ Triad and sign up for George Bush’s Army of God.
How soon can I get my Rapture Bookstore online?
Pb
I would argue that the war in Iraq has been in some ways more cruel and more dishonest–and certainly more bloody. However, it doesn’t stop me from being opposed to both conflicts.
demimondian
PPG/PL…you know what? I would have supported the war in Iraq if the threat posed to the United States had been real. In fact, until it was shown that the evidence presented was fake, I did support the war. I opposed its prosecution from the get-go, but I supported the war, even though I knew that the primary political beneficiary was the President’s party and his affiliated thugs.
That’s called “putting country ahead of party”. Being unable to do that is a clear sign of fanaticism.
Nutcutter
What’s that scenario for “Disarming Hizbollah” again?
Maybe Darrell can explain it.
Nutcutter
Right. There’s no sign of fanaticism anywhere in the Arab-Israeli conflicts. Not in the sixty years of Israel’s existence, not in the creation of Israel itself, not in the 2,000(?) year history of these hatreds and resentments.
No, it’s all very rational and very sensible.
God, after all, is on our side. Or something. Isn’t He?
I mean it would be a shame after all this time to find out that God isn’t really on anybody’s side, I think.
The Other Steve
Frankly, it’s not worthwhile to respond to nutty’s anti-semitic nonsense. He’s like Darrell, he’ll just make more.
Nutcutter
CS Montitor, today.
As I said from the beginning, Israel has been slaughtering innocent civilians it views as disposable in its quest to achieve a political, not a military, objective. Israel’s blind followers cannot describe a military objective that has either been stated and consistently sought, or is considered viable by any observers or analysts that I know of anywhere in the world. The “human shield” defense was a lie on the first day and remains a lie today.
The objective is political, and strategic, and the civilians being disposed of are of no concern to the madmen pursuing these objectives. Israel lied about it from the first day and lies about it today.
Meanwhile your own corrupt government goes along with this charade for its own, probably even more, despicable reasons and political objectives.
Through it all, the grotesque marketing of the new idea that cease-fires are only desirable when they magically contain guarantors of permanent peace. Cease-fires aren’t for saving lives any more, they’re for miraculously erasing the sins of corrupt and inept governments.
Nutcutter
On what basis are you calling me anti-semitic, you lying sack of shit?
Dug Jay
Nutcutter says
Just a wild guess, but perhaps at some point, an anti-Israeli animus becomes sufficiently hardened, reflextive, and virulent that it does simply become run-of-the-mill anti-semitism.
VidaLoca
Demi,
I’d say that in early 2003 I was at about the same place — possibly more skeptical, probably less clearly thought-out, but a difference of degree not kind.
3-1/2 years later though it’s abundantly clear that the people who are running the country either:
1. have no policy whatsoever. They make their policies up as they go along, ignoring and accepting facts only insofar as the facts fit their ideology.
2. have a policy of maintaining themselves in power no matter the cost, both for the sake of power itself and to forestall investigation into the manner in which they have misused it.
Our policy in the mideast, which seems to be “proceed as slowly as possible toward cease-fire while green-lighting Israel to widen intervention in Lebanon” is no different from any previous Bushco policy.
I see no interest for the US in supporting this. I’m sure you’ve seen all the discussions of the downside consequences but here’s another one — suffice to say that it’s not an exreme position nor is it from an extreme source.
More broadly, I see no concept of “party before country” animating any part of government policy, foreign or domestic.
In this context, how is opposition fanaticism?
Slide
I find it amazing that excuses can be made for killing dozens of women and children in an apartment building, farmers loading their trucks, bombing ambulances transporting the wounded, blowing up UN observation posts after being warned repeatedly of their location, destroying bridges, airports and factories in Lebanon having nothing to do with Hezbollah, killing Lebanese soldiers, and now bombing the Christian section of Beirut with no Hezbollah in sight, all because two Israli SOLDIERS were captured near the border?
We are approaching 1,000 dead civilians in Lebanon. ONE THOUSAND dead innocents at the hands of Israel. And there are some here still making excuses for these war crimes. Shameful. But worse than shameful its just stupid. Not in the best interest of Israel what they are doing. Eventually the guns will stop and Israel is going to have a neighbor that will not soon forget what happened to them in 2006. I imagine they will make preparations from day one never to let that happen again.. Hezbollah will be bigger, stronger and more influencial than ever. Good job Israel.
VidaLoca
Slide,
Well, then we’re probably approaching on the order of 100 dead civilians in Israel. And it’s not about the body counts; rocketing civilians on either side of the border is a war crime. I don’t see anybody holding any moral high ground in that part of the world; all the moral high ground is sunk beneath a lake of blood.
Nutcutter
Steve, maybe if you scan my posts looking for “Israel” and replace it with “dirty joos” you’ll find the anti-semitic material you so desperately want to find.
“Israel” is not Judaism, it’s just a country, run by shithead politicians. Not unlike our own.
demimondian
Vida — I’m sorry; I really wrote badly. I don’t think it is fanaticism to be revolted by someone who’s lied to you. PPG/PL is asking how one can support the one and oppose the other. The answer is that they are different — one was an unprovoked war of aggression, and the other, however disproportionate, fall well within the bounds of a provoked response.
Insisting that the two are the same, because they both benefit the current President, and therefore must both be opposed, is putting partisanship ahead of country. That is fanaticism, something of which PPG/PL is frequently guilty.
Slide
No, you are right, its not about body counts, its about human beings. Its about untold suffering inflicted on Lebanon, not only those that died but those that are displaced, those that can’t leave and live in terror every night as they hear the American made jets flying overhead. The amount of human suffering is hard to calculate.
Now, it seems that one always has to put in the disclaimer that yes, Hezbollah is bad. Very bad. They are committing war crimes as well. But, we expect bad behavior from terrorists don’t we? I had hoped that we, or our surrogates, would exercise a little more humanity that our enemy. It so reminds me of the argument on torture. If someone decries the use of torture by the United States inevitably the other side comes back with, “oh yeah, well they behead people”. .yeah yeah yeah…. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live by the same standards as our enemies.
Pooh
I was about to make this same point. And let’s remember that it’s simultaneously possible to be both wrong (which I think Nut is in his absolutist position re: Israel/Hezbollah) and not anti-semitic (which I also think is true). Frankly, the “anti-semite” card is a lazy excuse to not answer what are non-trivial points in opposition to the actions of Israel’s current actions.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume he’s not, and answer his points – if he refuses to budge in the face of overwhelming logic, that makes in an asshole, not Mel Gibson.
VidaLoca
Demi,
yup, agree with you so far…
No. I think you’d have a stronger case to make here if Israel were bombing only military targets in the Hezbollahland of South Lebanon (if it were bombing only military targets anywhere in Lebanon or if it were bombing only targets in Hezbollahland you’d still have an arguable case). But as of the first week, even first couple of days of the war, I don’t see any of these as being true. It’s gone way on beyond disproportionate. In my opinion we’re well into the realm of moral equivalency here; I can’t figure out how to attach a moral weight to what I see only as a difference in delivery systems — which is the reasoning behind the “lake of blood” metaphor in my comment to Slide.
However, whether one agrees with this line of reasoning or not (and I realize you probably don’t agree with much of it) is not the most important issue to me. What I see as new in the current picture is that the US has dropped the fig-leaf of honest-brokerdom or neutrality that it previously used to cover up a basically pro-Israel policy (e.g. under even such conservative previous Presidents as Reagan and GHW Bush) and come down fully and openly on the side of Israel. For Bush, this falls under his GWOT/GSAVE/”War’nTerra”/”Spread’nFreed’m(r)” farce of a policy. For Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Feith, Kristol and the neo-con gang of jackals, and possibly Rice it looks like a doubling-down to justify, rescue, or simply cover up the failure in Iraq and the failure of their geopolitical vision.
One slip-up and it really will be WWIII. It seems to me that whether you agree with the “moral equivalency” model or not, people in Israel, people in Lebanon, and people in the US have an interest in seeing some kind of a cease-fire imposed ASAP even though (contra Bush) it’s naive to confuse a cease-fire with a solution. The solution will have to wait for another day, and minimally another President. Bush’s policy (and I’ll assume the Israeli policy since I don’t see much daylight at the moment between the two) — i.e. no ceasefire, continue with bombing/rocketing, increase the casualties and spread the conflict) seems insanely risky in the current context and doesn’t seem to have much hope of being any solution either given the history or the region.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding you, but by following a moral equivalency argument, this is where I end up (I think it’s also approximately where Nutcutter ends up as well though by a different line of reasoning than the one I’m using). I’m not sure how “country” enters into it though, unless you’re conflating “foreign policy” with “national interest” (which frankly I don’t think you are, you don’t seem to reason that way).
VidaLoca
John Cole’s evil twin Juan Cole has an interesting post up on Lebanon, Iran, Peak Oil, and geopolitics. Some good comments at the end of the article. See “One Ring to Rule Them” Tinfoil hat is optional attire.
The Other Steve
It is lazy, granted.
I’m just fucking tired of nutcutter queering every thread with his anti-Israel, pro-Hezbollah screeds.
As I said, he’s not worth responding to in any detailed manner, for he just creates more poo to fling at you.
Slide
Now if this is true it should change how some people view this conflict. Or, then again, probably not.
wow.
Krista
Fixed.