Bernard Goldberg is on Morning Joe, and after openly agreeing the war was a complete and total disaster, spent the next five minutes being pissed off that liberals are not happy enough that Saddam’s torture chambers are closed.
Also, apparently Lenny Dykstra, aka Nails, one of the dumbest people to ever play baseball and one of the dumbest people on the planet, is apparently some sort of stock market genius, which says a lot about our current financial mess. As a side note, the ’93 Filthies was my all time favorite baseball team- what is not to love about a baseball team that required its players have a mullet? Dykstra, Daulton, Kruk, Inky, Wild Thing, and on and on. It was just a very fun team.
Dykstra is also associated with my all-time favorite baseball player- Andy Van Slyke. While his defensive play in the outfield was a thing of beauty, the best thing about Van Slyke were his quotes, and about playing with Dykstra he quipped that he was afraid he was going to get cancer of the foot there was so much tobacco spit in center field.
/stream of consciousness
Consider this an open thread.
jenniebee
I thought competition was supposed to be healthy for the marketplace. My bad.
matt
John, have you ever posted about when/why you stopped supporting the war?
If I recall correctly, you were still a fairly staunch supporter even well into your “The GOP is batshit crazy” realization.
Keith
Pro-wrestler Bradshaw/JBL is as well. So much that it bleeds over into political punditry-genius that got him a radio show in addition to a regular gig on Fox News financial shows. Those shows can be quite surreal at times.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
Tbh, although I have no idea what Goldberg’s really saying, I somewhat agree with this notion. It’s always bothered me that liberals, who are supposed to be the only ones who “get” nuance, seemed to only rarely give more than lip service to the notion that Saddam really was a brutal murderer. It’s as though acquiescing to that notion will somehow mean that the war was worth it after all.
Of course the two are totally different questions, because it’s never been the policy of the US to knock off dictators all over the world in descending order of brutality. And it does bother me that few war opponents seem to give this point much emphasis, and a couple even seem to me to have argued that Saddam wasn’t so bad.
All that aside — I wouldn’t spend five minutes on it while discussing the war.
@jenniebee: Yeah, we’ve shown how torture can be so much more efficient when run by Freedom Loving free marketeers.
Kevin K.
John, I just saw Goldberg, too. What a sad, little lead balloon. I can’t believe he also brought up how Clinton and Obama didn’t condemn Move On’s “General Betray Us” ad, too.
And was I just not coffee-ed up yet or did he refer to him as “Betrayus” by accident right after that? Hopefully someone will upload it to YouTube so I can find out if I was hearing things or not.
John Cole
It has always bothered me that Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic does not denounce ass-raping 8 year olds enough. I mean, who among us does not recognize that ass-raping little girls and boys is a bad thing. Why can’t Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic just spend more time denouncing the evils of ass-raping kids? Must be something wrong with him.
Now do you understand, Philip?
4tehlulz
The happiness of Saddam’s torture chambers being closed was muted by the opening of our own.
jon
The 83 Phillies required a mullet. The 89 Twins required some of their players to not use vowels to save on uniform expenses. But what did the 86 Mets put in the contracts?
Probably a secret known to very few: them, their agents, and a very-envious Dallas Cowboys owner who exclaimed “I can do this better!”
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
I understand your point. I’m not saying that everyone with any opinion has to denounce all evil 24/7 to retain credibility.
I’m saying that in the run-up to the war, my perception was that some war opponents were proactively making arguments that Saddam wasn’t so bad. At the time, when I thought I was pro-war but somewhat open to hearing the other side, that part of the discussion really turned me off. Now, even though my position on the war has turned almost 180 degrees, it still bugs me a little.
But not much in comparison to how much being tricked into supporting a war of aggression by an imbecile prince and his henchmen bugs me.
matt
Philip, what the heck are you talking about? Every time someone who is against the war talks about it, they preface their comments by noting that Saddam was a murderous thug. I think it’s actually required.
Xenos
Try this for nuance:
–The number of Iraqis killed in the course of the invasion, pacifification, chaos due to failed attempt at pacification, insurgency, counter-insurgency, al Qaeda attacks, counter- al Qaeda attacks, civil war, and all the deaths due to indirect causes pursuant to disease and other public health crises that followed our invasion, whatever that number is, ought to offset the number of Iraqis that would have been killed by Hussein over the last five years;
–Hussein’s torture rooms are closed. Unfortunately, they were reopened by Americans. The number of prisoners killed due to American torture has been estimated at 108. We have no idea how many people were tortured to an extent short of death;
–Allowing Hussein to maintain a regime of terror may have had ethical and moral complications, but our constitution would still be intact. Given the millions of American patriots who have died to protect that constitution over the last 200 years, this is a damn wasteful and reckless tradeoff.
So, in short, Bernard Goldberg can go fuck off. And anyone who agrees with his ‘notions’ is a damned fool. Present company not excepted.
Face
Can we get a link or some sort of explanation to exactly what the hell you’re talking about?
BP
Ahh, a Kent “Buy a Vowel” Hrbek joke. Brings me back.
Bizarrely, the one signed baseball card I owned, now stuck in box in a closet somewhere in my parents’ house, is an Andy Van Slyke rookie card. I have no idea where it came from. But he was always a favorite of mine, also for the quotes. Too bad that made him popular enough that the Pirates thought he’d be better to keep than Bonds… how’d that work out for them?
cleek
and it always bothered me how in the run up to this war, so-called conservatives cynically used liberals’ pro-human-rights leanings to try to guilt liberals into supporting a war that was a bad idea on so many levels. to many, myself included, any war in Iraq was clearly going to be a humanitarian disaster; yet according to the warmongers, liberals were supposed to ignore that and support the war because Saddam was a humanitarian disaster.
but, as it turns out, liberals were right to oppose the war on humanitarian reasons, since what BushCo has wrought is worse than what people had under Saddam. and all those warmongering douchebags were, once again, wrong.
so, um. no. liberals aren’t ignoring Saddam’s record; they’re simply aware that we aren’t much better. maybe we’ve caused chaos and suffering for good reasons, but the fact remains that our death toll, and our level of destruction far outpaces what Saddam did. and no, that’s not wishing Saddam was back in power, it’s merely pointing out that we replaced terrible A with terrible B.
Xenos
The Dykstra article was in last weeks’ New Yorker. This includes the remarkable fact that Nails has been very successful at day trading.
4tehlulz
To the Googlemobile!! Pay special note to the sponsored link at the top.
John Cole
Here.
Yeah, those Giants sure racked up a lot of World Series ring with Bonds.
matt
I think this is wrong. The war has probably brought more death to Iraq than Saddam did, but when a suicide bomber adds 50 victims to the death toll, that’s not “us”.
The murder and choas in Iraq is courtesy of bloodthirsty thugs, not the United States.
cleek
yes, thugs who are exploiting the fact that we destroyed Iraqi society. U!S!A! U!S!A! U!S!A!
but, we have killed, tortured, and imprisoned more than enough Iraqis ourselves that a direct comparison between Saddam and the US doesn’t make us look good.
cleek
??? WTF ???
that was supposed to be “USA! USA! USA!”
chopper
in the run up to the war conservatives were making saddam out to be ‘the new hitler’. i mean, come on, the guy was a murderous assbag but like hitler? for real?
problem is, there’s no non-nuanced way of countering that. it always comes off as ‘saddam isn’t really a bad guy’.
best i heard was bill maher, who said ‘oasis aint the beatles and hussein aint hitler’.
Mortimer
Liberals, as far as I can remember, weren’t the ones who shook Saddam’s hand during the Iran-Iraq war. In fact, as I remember it (but that memory can be such a tricky thing), liberals were the ones who yelled the loudest about the murders and tortures of Saddam before conservatives became all ‘oh that’s right, maybe we shouldn’t support brutal dictatorships as beacons of anti-communist goodness and light’…
BP
“Yeah, those Giants sure racked up a lot of World Series ring with Bonds.”
But hey, the Pirates haven’t been over .500 since he left. I’d take the Giants last 15 years in a heartbeat over the Pirates 15 years of suckitude, steroid controversy and blown World Series and all.
As for the Giants future… I’d give better odds to Bob Barr winning the Presidency than the Jints winning the World Series in the next 8 years.
matt
What we’re trying to do in Iraq and what Saddam did to Iraq is just sort of interchangeable in your eyes? Two sides of the same coin? Really?
cleek
i encourage you to re-read my original post.
Xenos
Nice switch, Matt- What we are ‘trying’ to do in Iraq vs what Hussein did?
How about compare/contrast what we did with what Hussein did?
I am sure that Hussein and his apologists can come up with pretty rationalizations for his brutality, too.
Sour Kraut
I have a more serious question: What the hell is wrong with the Tigers?
matt
What the fuck is going on here? I can’t believe people are actually equating what we’ve done in Iraq with what Saddam did. This is madness.
ThymeZone
They never had the pitching to win a World Series, IMO.
They had some good pitching here and there, they had relief pitching, had Rod Beck in his prime. But they never had the starting rotation that was good enough to get it done.
Blackacre
The funny thing is that most conservatives act as if Saddam became a bad guy when he invaded Kuwait in the early 1990s. He was a bad guy well before then, when he was our buddy. I’m sure Goldberg wasn’t so concerned with Saddam’s torture chambers in the 70s and 80s.
cleek
usually, when something seems unlikely, it is.
matt
I see a difference between the power and security vacuum created by a piss poor (or nonexistent) war plan and the chaos that ensued, and what Saddam did while in power.
It probably doesn’t matter much to those who are dead, but it matters when you’re comparing the two.
John Cole
Saddam = bad man.
Saddam’s torture chambers = also bad.
Creating a civil war and wrecking a country = also bad.
Not equating things, simply acknowledging that all things are bad. the wingnut response to this equation is “But yes, even though there are shitloads of things going wrong, it is still better than it was!”
To which I respond, well, we can;t really be sure of that anymore. While Saddam’s regime was definitely a bad thing, if you want to look at sheer numbers of killed, displaced, wounded, etc., the invasion may be a net loss for the Iraqi people.
As a side note, let me give an example. While we both agree that if one of our former friends had a gymnasium full of kids he was slowly killing, it would be a good thing if we drove to the gymnasium and stopped him from killing kids. It would, however, be a bad thing if we ran over half the population of Iraq on our drive to the gym, and then jumped out of our car and sent it careening into a fuel pump that then blew up the entire gym with all the kids and our former murderous friend into it. Listening to our bellicose friends then point out “At least you stopped him from killing people” would lead us to the /facepalm this discussion currently feels like.
And yes, this is a silly example, but nothing else seems to be working with you.
Xenos
I listened to yesterday’s Fenway opener. It sounded like Detroit threw the game as a tribute to Bill Buckner. Inexplicable – the Sox are not playing that well when J. D. Drew is the standout.
TR
That’s how I heard it.
I couldn’t believe he was going back to the Betrayus ad and wagging his goddamn finger at Obama and Clinton for not condemning it. What a pathetic fucking loser.
He also said he never supported the war, from the very beginning. Really?
leinie
Matt, do you think Saddam being a bad guy was sufficient reason for invasion? Or do you consider the fact that he isn’t there any longer to just be an incidental good?
If it’s just incidental, is the good enough to offset the destabilization of the region, deaths of so many Iraquis we can’t know how many, thousands of dead and wounded Americans, Americans being the ones to torture instead of Saddam, and all the other not-good things that happened as a result of that invasion?
The Other Steve
I for one love torture. I encourage everybody to install a torture chamber in their home, to insure that this country is protected from terrorists.
Svensker
POtD
The Other Steve
Doesn’t the fact that you were wrong about everything bug you a little bit more?
The Other Steve
“Hell is full of good intentions or desires.”
– Saint Bernard
Tim F.
Yep, the problem is that Saddam’s torture chambers didn’t stay closed.
D0n Camillo
Boy this thread is sure bringing back some memories. I remember trying to balance the fact that I thought Saddam Hussein was a murderous thug with the fact that an invasion and occupation of an Arab country in the center of the Middle East might not be a great idea. I tried to point out that Saddam being in power was the least bad of the options we were being presented with at the time. Of course in the spring of 2003, nuance was a four letter word.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
I think I’ve made it adequately clear that my first post wasn’t an apologia for Goldberg. I really have no idea of the context of his remarks. Therefore your attempt to lump me in with Goldberg doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
If you can’t infer the answer to that question from the last sentence of the post you excerpted — “But not much in comparison to how much being tricked into supporting a war of aggression by an imbecile prince and his henchmen bugs me” — then I’m just incapable of writing clearly enough for you to understand.
matt
leinie, I don’t support the war and I don’t think Iraq is better off now than it was 5 years ago, so we’re probably talking past each other and agree more than we disagree.
My problem is with statements like this:
It just boggles my mind that anyone could look at what happened at Abu Ghraib under U.S. control and what happened there under Saddam for decades, and come away saying, “Eh, six of one, half a dozen of the other”.
b. hussein canuckistani
The best thing about the ’93 Phillies is that the weren’t as good as the ’93 Blue Jays. But they put on a good show.
And that was our last moment of glory.
cleek
of course there’s a difference. but my original point was not to equate the two but to point out that selling one humanitarian disaster as a way to stop another isn’t really much of a sales pitch. and that’s what the warmongers did, and are still doing: trying to guilt liberals into supporting the war based on the fact that Saddam was removed.
ostensibly, we mean well, no doubt. but we replaced Saddam’s internal terrorism with anarchy and war. our good intentions might make us feel better, but i bet the Iraqis wish we would’ve approached the problem a little differently.
Jen
Out of obtuseness or I don’t know what, you are turning it into that, but if I could just reiterate what cleek said several times, and others too, no one is saying that.
Our moral authority as a force for good is dramatically undercut by Abu Ghraib. For purposes of how we are perceived in the world, it doesn’t matter whether or not we are better than Saddam Hussein, because “better than Saddam Hussein” is not where the moral bar for the United States of America is supposed to be set. And thus yelling “but we’re still better than Saddam Hussein” is inane and /facedesking.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
In retrospect, now that I understand that the reasons cited for the war were pretty much all spurious, I agree with this. Wrapping a ridiculous and destructive war in the mantle of human rights is despicable for a number of reasons. One reason is that in the future, no one will ever believe any future claims that the US is acting in the interest of human rights.
Of course, no one would believe that anyway after seeing how docilely our public acquiesced to state-sponsored torture.
I haven’t really noticed that. Regardless, I’m talking about my perception of arguments being made in 2002-03.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
Jen: Exactly. We may not be “as bad as Saddam Hussein” yet, or for that matter as bad as the terrorists. But what a miserably low standard to set for our country!
chopper
if all you’re talking about is torture chambers, then yes, you are indeed correct. however, it seems pretty clear that things are quite different under a calculus of the entirety of iraq.
throw in the number of iraqis killed/maimed and displaced under the war and you’re looking at as one person noted above ‘trying to solve one humanitarian crisis with another’.
people use abu ghraib as a cornerstone representation of america’s fuck-up in iraq for the same reason that people used saddam’s torture chambers as a cornerstone representation of his regime. truth be told, there is and was far more to the destructiveness of both.
matt
Ok, cleek, I understand better now the argument you’re making and we more or less agree.
lutton
Jill wrote about Nails here:
http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/03/would-you-take-financial-advice-from.html
lutton
And speacking of the ’86 Mets, here some kind words on Bill Buckner, too:
http://firedoglake.com/2008/04/09/finding-foregiveness-at-fenway/
ThymeZone
The Good Riddance to Saddam meme fails on a number of points.
First, the world has always been replete with murderous thugs abusing their countries. Some of them have dined in the White House East Room, the Shah of Iran being a classic example. The Shah was Iran’s Saddam, murderous and dedicated to a machine that stole his country’s wealth and put it into the coffers of his family and friends.
Second, Saddam was rotten when the United States was kissing up to him and having people like Don Rumsfeld pose for pictures with him. He only became disposable when his usefulness to us declined below the point at which our corrupt relationships with other Arab countries would no longer tolerate him.
Third, the problem that the warmongers have now is that they have lied to us for too long and we caught on. Not starting in 2002, but starting in about 1952. They lied to us about the Arab world, hiding its uglinesses in order to sugar coat our addiction to their oil. Hiding the threats that existed there in order to puff up a self-serving and destructive foreign policy. Using a dysfunctional relationship with Israel for a number of self-serving reasons, including distraction from our corrupt relationships with regimes in places like Saudi Arabia.
Then they made friends with people like Hussein, and then tried to turn Hussein into Hitler when it became expedient to do so, and then lied us into the current war.
And now, they wonder why we don’t believe them any more.
The Other Steve
So you’re saying you do not like it when people mischaracterize your positions?
Interesting. And yet you are still bugged by this imaginary vision that liberals were not disgusted enough by Saddam’s torture chambers, just because they didn’t say they were.
Fascinating.
God you are a fucktard.
scarshapedstar
We didn’t close Abu Ghraib, we just hung an “Under New Management” sign out front.
John Cole
Lutton- I just watched the video of him on HBO. All the head injuries and alcohol have left him sounding like Ali. Really sad.
The Other Steve
We expect despots to be evil.
We don’t expect it from Americans.
I don’t understand why that is so hard for you to understand.
joe
Phil the EOC:
Have you considered the possibility that your memories about what anti-war people were saying six years ago are inaccurate?
There was a great deal of effort made in the right-wing press to spread the idea that liberals just didn’t care about Saddam crimes, regardless of the truth.
Is it possible that you took this idea, like so many pro-war ideas that have turned out to be false, to heart? Are you remembering what liberals were saying, or are you remembering what conservatives told you liberals were saying?
The Other Steve
I suspect he ignores this, and comes back all outraged because I called him a fucktard. Selective outrage, selective memory. It all goes together.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
joe: Yes, that’s possible. But even at the time I believe I was making a good-faith effort to evaluate the anti-war arguments. Actually I have a distinct recollection of hearing the argument made on some PBS show that never has invading a country to impose democracy actually worked. And I distinctly recall thinking, “That’s a damned good point, and I hope that the guy saying this doesn’t prove to be right.”
Point being, I was never really into the GOP’s stock-in-trade of demonizing its opponents. So yes, it’s possible that my recollection may be biased, but I also don’t think I was approaching the debate as a “typical” war-supporter.
The Other Steve: Plainly you’re done trying to move the conversation forward. Suit yourself.
John Cole
Cut him some slack. He is probably sick and tired of having to deal with the same damned arguments over and over again for 7 years. Hell, I have only been a Democrat for a few months and I am already sick of it and came out of the gate swinging at you, too.
Invading Iraq was a fucking disastrous mistake, even if we did rid the world of some evil. That is not a hard concept to grapple, and demanding that the people who were right prior to the invasion genuflect daily about the minor good of removing Saddam is irritating, particularly when the people who were wrong about everything are, to this day, unapologetic, still in charge, AND STILL FUCKING LYING AND WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING.
gypsy howell
It boggles my mind that you think there is a difference depending on who does the torturing.
And for me – yes, most emphatically I think what we have done is far far worse. Not only have we proven ourselves to be every bit as loathesome as the dictator we killed, we now have large swaths of our government and population defending what we are doing. America was supposed to be the shining beacon of human rights and freedom in the world. Now every two-bit dictator can point to us and say if torture’s good enough for America, it’s good enough for us.
So yes, what we have done is worse than what Saddam did.
D0n Camillo
Where were you even able to hear the views of anti-war people? For the most part we were shut off from being allowed to air our views except in street protests or blogs. I still remember the frustration of watching the country lurch into a war I knew was a bad idea without even having a fully informed debate about it beforehand.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
John:
Thanks for the explanation. That helps me understand the broader context and why something I intended as an innocuous point has inspired such passion.
I think I accidentally fell into making a point that sounds like the “same damned arguments”.
Just to clarify the subtle difference: My motive is emphatically NOT to see war-opponents, a group which now includes me, genuflect to war-supporters. My only motive for even making this point is because I think it would have strengthened the anti-war argument at that time.
Not that it would have mattered, given the one-sided views presented in the media then.
jcricket
I saw the Lenny Dystrka bit on the overly pompous Real Sports show on HBO (with Bryant Gumbel). Lenny Dykstra’s had some luck day trading with a “system” that I guarantee (with a high degree of certainty) will fail him as the markets tank over the next couple of years. The JBL (pro-wrestler) stock picking thing is crazy too – and to boot, it’s how he met his wife, as she was some talking head on finance that argued with him on TV at first.
But I digress. You can pick any reasonably short period of time and cherry-pick someone who will be doing better than the market. I did 1000% better than the market from 96-2001 (i.e. I had a lot of stock in a dot com that went public and shot to the moon). Am I 1000% better at stock picking? No, just lucked into a successful startup at the right time in history. Since then I’ve done “just as well” as the market.
Come back to me in 5 years and make sure to after evaluating all of Lenny’s picks (including the losers), add in the income tax costs, the transaction costs and compare it to holding a broad-based market ETF (or a couple). Then maybe I’ll think Lenny’s a market winner. For example – take Jim Cramer’s picks, and execute them as he recommends, you’d do far worse than just buying and holding a total market fund with low expenses.
There are exceptions. One of my friends is a serial entrepreneur with 4 (count em) successful startups under his belt. Each one has sold for a reasonably high multiple over the investment, to different companies, starting in 98 and continuing through today. He’s obviously got something “special” when it comes to identifying opportunities to build companies that are worth “more” than your average company.
BTW – Bernie Goldberg is a useless one-note ass-mucnching whiner. Like most conservatives outside of John Cole, he has realized (in his heart) that he was wrong about everything, and have been for almost 30 years. But instead of admitting it (a la John Cole) and taking a pragmatic look at the political landscape, he’s been reduced to finding jackalopes, quotes from obscure professors or red herrings to harangue “liberals” about in an effort to keep the American public from realizing that his Republican party is morally, ethically and strategically bankrupt. Following the Republican party will worsen everything from the healthcare cost crisis, economic inequality and climate change to geopolitical stability and America’s trade partnerships. It’s just a fact.
If the Democrats wise up, they will stop listening to everything elected Republicans, GOP operatives and Republican-tied media figures have to say. I mean it. Everything. Don’t stop listening to polls that include actual people who call themselves “Republicans”, “Conservatives” or “Independents”, but the actual GOP + party machine has nothing of value or truth to say.
The sooner the Dems realize that, the faster they will start padding their majorities and winning the contests that count.
jcricket
I think this is the key point in your last post. I, for one, was a waffly war supporter (Don’t trust Bush, but Saddam bad, Colin Powell wouldn’t lie, so sign me up) at the time, turned war opponent (although I did and still do support the war in Afghanistan).
But war opponents and their arguments – reasonable or not – were virtually shut out of the media. You could have been eminently “reasonable” – articulating a case that while war can be justified, this particular war is bound to be a clusterf*ck, is not in any way justified, and will cost trillions more – all based on your years as a war reporter, historian, political attache to the middle east, etc. Didn’t matter.
You were portrayed as a weak-kneed, terror-enabling pansy or worse.
So I think it’s fair enough of the war opponents to basically say, “Uh-uh. I’m not giving an inch on admitting anything about whether you were right about a tiny point. You were wrong about everything that matters, dismissed me at every turn, so you can suck your apology through a straw right now Mr.”
The Other Steve
I would say that is an understatement.
I find it particularly gauling that someone so stupid as to believe the administration thinks they are in any position to question any statements made by anti-Iraq war opponents.
It wasn’t a question of condemning Saddam’s torture chambers. The problem many on the left had was listening to asshats on the right claim they cared about human rights after having spent decades with them supporting human rights abuses all over the globe.
It’s just like the Soviet Union. It wasn’t the torture, the lack of freedom, the death camps that made conservatives mad. It was the fact that they weren’t allowed to go in there and plunder their oil wealth. You see this still playing out today with their rhetoric on Putin. It’s not the lack of free and fair elections, it’s that he nationalized Gazprom.
The human rights argument for Iraq was a fucking farce. We knew it then, and it has most certainly been proven since.
Rick Taylor
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic said:
It’s impossible to respond to your argument when I have no idea who you’re talking about or what they said. My own recollection is very different; most of the war opponents I read argued that Saddam was brutal dictator but invading his country and overthrowing his government was likely to make things much worse. The argument made over and over again was yes he’s awful, but he’s contained. Which David Kay finally established had actually been true.
In fact commentators like Molly Ivins argued along the lines of, look, it’s really great you guys are finally condemning Saddam for all those abuses that I was pointing out years ago when he was our buddy for being a stop gap to Iran. But an invasion likely to be a disaster. Of course we’ll win, but then what happens afterwards; it’s likely to be the peace from hell.
She wrote:
Quite frankly, it was people like Molly Ivins who criticized Saddam and our cozy relationship with him back before he invaded Kuwait and became public enemy number one. And with very few exceptions, conservatives never gave a shit about Saddam’s human right’s abuses until they needed a reason first to invade the country, then a cudgel to bludgeon liberals when the invasion turned into the clusterfuck liberals warned it would be: “Well, would you be happier if Saddam were still in power?” So it’s really difficult to take this argument seriously.
The Other Steve
I’m trying to remember if I know much about goldberg, and I believe I bought one of his books about Islam and read it back in 2002. As I recall, he has his facts basically right on a lot of topics. His problem is his interpretation is colored by preconceived biases.
He is no Lawrence, that’s for certain.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
No doubt that’s true of the war advocates as a whole. But how could anyone who doesn’t know me pretty well possibly know whether I dismissed war opponents at every turn?
Part of the problem is, I tend to treat political discussion as a quest for truth, characterized by presumptions of good faith. Most other conservatives (and not a few liberals) treat it as a football game where the goal is to score points for one’s side.
In fact, we got into this war largely because the latter view of political discourse has almost totally displaced the former. “The public wants what the public gets,” indeed.
John Cole
Are you confusing Bernard Lewis and Bernard Goldberg?
montysano
People tend to focus on Abu Ghraib and “Saddam’s rape rooms”, thereby glossing over the worst of it. Before 2003, Iraq was a highly functional country with an advanced infrastructure. It may have been the most secular country in the Middle East. Yes, they lived under a dictator, as do many people in the world. But they got up in the morning, drove to work in cars, on highways, and drove home to their families at the end of the day. They had electricity and clean water. They had universities; indeed, Iraqis were a highly educated people. If they kept their mouths shut, and had a bit of luck, then life may not have been so bad.
Now: try to imagine your life if 20% of your friends were dead by violent means. If the infrastructure of your town was destroyed. If you lacked electricity or clean water. If your job disappeared. If a trip to the grocery store was fraught with danger.
Which is why, when I hear an asshat like Cokie Roberts blathering about how Americans want to “win” in Iraq, it makes me want to punch holes in the walls. After what we’ve wrought, WTF is “winning”? And: would things really be worse if we just left? Really?
Of course, we’re not leaving. Ever. We went there to stay.
HyperIon
i have a Kirby Puckett rookie card. too bad he became a jerk before he died.
TE or DH?
and wrt to the comparison of saddam’s evilness to the USA’s peccadillos (as some seem to characterise them): let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Rick Taylor
By the way, Molly Ivins was a simply fantastic political commentator with huge amounts of common sense and as big a heart as I’ve ever seen. She was also utterly prescient about most things that mattered, including the war and the Bush presidency. Her columns are worth rereading, if you can bear it.
ThymeZone
Sarah.
Rick Taylor
This is the thing that Americans don’t get, and probably never will. People are turning against the war because it’s a failure, and we don’t like to fail, but there’s no recognition of what we’ve done, no shame. You can get some sense of it from Riverbend’s old blog posts, though she hasn’t written for a long while. In terms of the main stream debate you cannot question our honorable intentions. You have to argue, as Hillary does, that it’s the Iraqi’s fault for not being ready for democracy.
The Other Steve
Ahh, I must be. You are right. Ok, who the hell is Bernard Goldberg?
The Other Steve
This is called distancing yourself from an argument when you got your ass handed to you. We’re used to that one too, it always seems to come from supposed “moderates”, which is really just a code word for “fucking clueless about the issues”.
I used to be clueless once too. I thought I was oh so smart, but the reality was I didn’t know jack or shit.
In what way was this a search for truth?
jcricket
Guy who wrote some books called “100 People Who are Screwing up America” and “Bias”. The first about how 97 horrible, evil, dirty, rotten, no-good, unamerican, traitorous liberals (and 3 mildly bad conservatives) are the root of everything that’s wrong with America. The latter about how conservatives can’t get a fair shake in the media, because if they could, ponies would rain from the sky and everyone would kiss Grover Norquist’s feet.
Oh, and he does some excreble (sp). sports reporting on Real Sports with Bryant Gumble (another asshat with an ego the size of Texas).
He also wrote a book called “Everyone to the left of me is correct but I will stick my fingers in my ears and go nanananananananana so i can’t hear them, and everyone to the right of me isn’t sufficiently nutty enough.” (at least that’s how I interpret the title).
jcricket
Joe Gandelman, bless his heart, still suffers from this. I think they call it “Broderism” (or Broder-itis), where being aggreeable and “in the middle” on all issues is the end goal – not being correct or standing up to bullies who attempt to dissaude you from the correct course of action.
The Other Steve
Oh, that fuckhead. Oh yeah, he’s way worse than Bernard Lewis.
4jkb4ia
When Andy Van Slyke was with the Cardinals, my mom originated the announcer in Bull Durham saying “maybe the real Nuke LaLoosh will show up”. He was that erratic.
4jkb4ia
Jack Clark was “Even a blind pig digs up an acorn once in a while” IIRC.
4jkb4ia
My favorite team was the 2004 Red Sox *g*
4jkb4ia
Joe Castiglione: “The Tigers don’t seem to be mentally ready to start the season”. This may have been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
Richard Bottoms
You said a mouthful.
Birdzilla
Ive read THE 100 PEOPLE WHO ARE SCREWING UP AMERICA incuding AL GORE,MICHEAL MOORE and LUARIE DAVID