The problem with the Kung Fu Monkey is that he does not post enough, so sometimes almost a week can pass before I catch something he has written that I really enjoy.
Like this, for example.
by John Cole| 7 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
The problem with the Kung Fu Monkey is that he does not post enough, so sometimes almost a week can pass before I catch something he has written that I really enjoy.
Like this, for example.
by John Cole| 24 Comments
This post is in: Humorous
Someone mentioned WKRP in one of our earlier threads, so I am forced to provide the greatest WKRP clip ever:
As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
by John Cole| 35 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
It is the editorial position of this weblog that civilian massacres are bad.
In the future, when Tim or I reference civilian massacres, assume we DISAPPROVE of them.
Idiots.
by Tim F| 9 Comments
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®
Shocking! It turns out that half-finishing the war in Afghanistan and then shunting our resources to invade an irrelevant country, and then losing that war, was not the genius strategy for beating terrorism that the White House seems to think it was. If you judge winning the terror war in terms of weakening the group who attacked us, we’re not.
Other strategies might also use some reevaluation. Start with, say, torturing random brown people until they confess to shooting JFK and jerking around the national terror level based on presidential elections and Michael Chertoff’s gut. At the very least it seemed like keeping Americans in a state of constant terror would prove a surefire weapon against people whose primary goal is to make us afraid.
Yeesh. 2009 cannot come soon enough.
by Tim F| 249 Comments
This post is in: War
One of the Marines charged with murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005 knew that only women and children were huddled in a back bedroom in a house there, but he opened the door and shot them anyway, a squadmate testified Tuesday.
“I told him, there’s women and kids in that room,” Lance Cpl. Humberto M. Mendoza said of Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Tatum’s response was, “Well, shoot them,” Mendoza said.
[…] Mendoza’s testimony could undermine Tatum’s defense and suggests that at least some of the shootings that day purposely targeted unarmed civilians.
As with any investigation uncovering the facts will exonerate some suspects and condemn others. Regardless, the contours of what happened at Haditha are by now well known. Hit by a fatal IED attack, a company of American troops spread out to catch the bombers. In the process the Marines shot a significant number of innocent Iraqi women and children, unarmed and hiding in their homes.
Nobody is arguing that American soldiers are monsters because they killed innocent people at Haditha, merely that American kids are human. This is just what happens in counterinsurgency wars, and it is not a mistake. A few marines reacted this way because some of us can only take so much harrassment from enemies who won’t stand and fight before we lash out at someone.
The insurgents know this. They provoke us because each Haditha makes life harder for us and easier for them. Now, as a result of Haditha and fatal misunderstandings that happen every day in every district, an overwhelming majority of Iraqis think it is just fine to attack Americans. The troops we train by day shoot us at night. For an occupying force the situation has become untenable.
Oddly enough Glenn Reynolds and I agree 100% on this particular point – America never had a chance in Iraq unless the gloves really, really came off. Yes, you can win an insurgency war. If a resistance band bothers you, slaughter the whole village and string up the corpses to warn the neighbors. Flatten towns, kill off fighting age males, terrorize the survivors and we probably could have owned Iraq. Indeed.
So why didn’t we do that? Oh right, it would have made us worse than f*cking Saddam. Since America won’t become ancient Persia (put down the lotion, Glenn, it ain’t happening) and neither the Sadrists nor the Sunnis had any intention of rolling over for a western occupier, the game had no win state. Haditha was not an illustration of American awfulness, but it wasn’t an aberration either. It just illustrates of why modern armies, constrained (for good reason) by modern rules of conduct, usually lose wars of occupation.
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance, Sports
The previous open thread has caused some debate about the greatest moment in sports history. Rather than have this lost in the comments, let me declare right here and right now that there is a tie for the greatest moments in sports history:
1.) The Red Sox sweeping the last four games of the ALCS vs. the Yankees after losing the first three. Die in a fire, Yankee fans.
2.) In 1971, Baltimore Colts linebacker Mike “Mad Dog” Curtis grabbed a fan who had run out into the field into the huddle during a Colts/Dolphin game, picked him up, and slammed the retard to the ground, knocking him out. Curtis, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Duke, later wrote about the event in his book “Keep Off My Turf.”
Those are the top two sporting events of all time, although I would put Secretariat up there. Anything else is either Steeler related, or merely interesting.
by Tim F| 108 Comments
This post is in: Politics
With nearly 25% of the vote, “None of the above” leads the latest GOP presidential poll from AP. Apparently the pro-choice crossdresser, the imploding torture maverick, the empty suit TV star and the plasticine Mormon generated less Joementum! than expected.
For what it’s worth I strongly doubt that random chance produced a GOP field this comically out of touch. If you haven’t done so already, take a minute to read Johann Hari’s story about communing with The Base on National Review’s annual cruise. Set aside some time, becuase once you start you can’t stop. It is like trying to drive past a 747 crashed into a train. A representative snippet:
I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, ” Of course, we need to execute some of these people,” I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. “A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country,” she says. “Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that’s what you’ll get.” She squints at the sun and smiles. ” Then things’ll change.”
No shit. Gas chambers. Or read this, about The Base’s grip on reality:
“Aren’t you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?” Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. “No,” Podhoretz replies. “As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf War I, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran.” He says he is “heartbroken” by this ” rise of defeatism on the right.” He adds, apropos of nothing, “There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we’re winning.” The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn’t he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley “a coward”. His wife nods and says, ” Buckley’s an old man,” tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.
Conservative lions like J-Pod (N-Pod? my bad.) represent a movement that has run so wholly off the rails that even objective, easy-to-prove truths become anathema. Relativism is the new word of the day. Things that they want to be true, need to be true, become true by virtue of how painful it would be to admit their falseness. The only way to maintain the fiction that Movement Conservatives represent pure, metaphysical good is to move further and further into an imaginary cartoon world inhabited by armed, pastel-colored conservative unicorns and an inchoate mix of pernicious Others.
They rush through the Rush-list of liberals who hate America, who want her to fail, and I ask them – why are liberals like this? What’s their motivation? They stutter to a halt and there is a long, puzzled silence. ” It’s a good question,” one of them, Martha, says finally. I have asked them to peer into the minds of cartoons and they are suddenly, reluctantly confronted with the hollowness of their creation. “There have always been intellectuals who want to tell people how to live,” Martha adds, to an almost visible sense of relief. That’s it – the intellectuals! They are not like us. Dave changes the subject, to wash away this moment of cognitive dissonance. “The liberals don’t believe in the constitution. They don’t believe in what the founders wanted – a strong executive,” he announces, to nods. A Filipino waiter offers him a top-up of his wine, and he mock-whispers to me, “They all look the same! Can you tell them apart?” I stare out to sea. How long would it take me to drown?
We get crazies because only crazies are acceptable today. Iraq did not sink John McCain; every frontrunner supports sending more kids and staying forever. McCain’s heterodoxy on immigration and torture did him in. The Base demands nominees who will satisfy their view of the world and themselves, but their worldview is a half baked, self-contradictory mishmash of cartoons and caricatures.
The Base got what it asked for. They feel entitled to leaders who reflect their worldview no matter what the real-world consequences. Like other parties that flirt with irrelevancy (e.g., Greens) they would rather be pure than win. Loath as I am to give Republicans useful advice, Bill Buckley needs to simmer down the loopy Base before his precious GOP becomes an irrelevant catchbasin for islamophobic Naderites.
***Update***
On a slightly different topic, the first time I read this snippet:
“The liberals don’t believe in the constitution. They don’t believe in what the founders wanted – a strong executive,”
…two words popped into my mind: President Hillary. I bet that the 2009 National Review cruise will be hopping with demands for unrestrained presidential power.