Tigerhawk answers 20 foreign policy questions proposed by Rebecca Frankel of Foreign Policy meant for Sarah Palin. Tigerhawk writes, “I have taken the liberty of supplying the answers that I would give. Note that my answers are not necessarily the best for somebody trying to win an election.” His answers, besides being lucid and sane, are reminders how commonsensical such answers can be when you are not being asked trick questions. The problem politicians often face when answering a question is not how to give the right answer — any reasonably intelligent person can do that — but how to give the acceptable answer. Success in Washington consists, not of knowing where the solutions are, but of understanding where all the sacred cows are hidden. And a politician will be accounted both wise and statesmanlike not if he actually does something but succeeds in completing four years as President without challenging a single shibboleth. Consider Tigerhawk’s answer to question number 1:
1. In a broad and long-term sense, would you have responded differently to the attacks of 9/11?
The attacks of September 11, 2001 were hardly the first attacks of al Qaeda’s war against the United States. That war began literally in 1996, when al Qaeda declared war upon us. Its geopolitical roots, however, date from our long failure to respond to radical Islamist aggression, whether Sunni or Shiite. That failure, which dates from the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 and Hezbollah’s attacks on us in Lebanon in 1983, established over a period of two decades and presidencies of both parties that the United States would flee from radical Islamist aggression. We needed to send a different signal, that attacking the United States is extremely perilous. If I had been in charge in 1979, I would have retaliated. If I had been President in 1983 when Hezbollah slaughtered our Marines in Lebanon, I would have retaliated (as the French did). If I had been President in 1993, I would have retaliated for Mogadishu and the first attacks on the World Trade Center; in 1996 I would have responded to Khobar Towers instead of waiting for even more proof that Iran was behind the mass murder there; in 1998 I would have responded comprehensively to the destruction of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, even at the risk of casualties to Americans; and in 2000 I would not have rejected retaliation for the attack on the USS Cole because I was afraid of offending Yassir Arafat. So we had to hit back hard and comprehensively at some point or radical Islamists would have continued to attack us. It is a great tragedy that no president chose to change the rules until then.
It is an answer that captures not only the stated reasons for many of the actions in the War on Terror, but also the unstated reasons. It is an answer the kind of which you might hear at a thousand water coolers, and therefore the more unutterable for that. But why can Tigerhawk say what a politician can’t? Bill Buckley hinted at the answer when he said, “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” That is because any of the first two thousand names in the Boston phone can give a commonsense answer to questions. What the “two thousand faculty members of Harvard University” know that the average Joe doesn’t is what not to say. And that is a far more valuable skill. The modern secret to success is illustrated by story told about Hell. It is said that when one of the newly damned arrived at the gate of the netherworld he heard a gale of whispering, but he could not make the words out. As he came closer he saw an endless vista of suffering souls immersed nearly to their nostrils in excrement. Then he understood what they were whispering and moreover, why. The damned were saying, “don’t make waves. Don’t make waves.”
Next question, please.
Tip Jar.
DISASTER!… Obama Gets Chewed Up & Spit Out On O’Reilly (Video)
Holy False Prophet!… This was awful!
Barack Obama went into the No Spin Zone and came out battered and bloody tonight.
Prompted by Wretchard’s excellent post a few days ago, “Both Sides Now”, I decided to make some word clouds of some of the left wing media front pages. This is the full text of the front of The Huffington Post, from just an hour ago.
Interesting to note what is still the center of their attention.
http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/175812/Huffington_Post_-_Sept_9
1. In a broad and long-term sense, would you have responded differently to the attacks of 9/11?
I rather like John Derbyshire’s Sept. 11th scenario which he posted a few years ago:
“Dispatches from a Real War on Terror”
http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200309290819.asp
Video – Qaddafi on Barack Obama
“There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama.
All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency. But we were taken by surprise when our African Kenyan brother, who is an American national, made statements that shocked all his supporters in the Arab world, in Africa, and in the Islamic world.
We hope that this is merely an elections “clearance sale,” as they say in Egypt – in other words, merely an elections lie.“
LiveLeak.com – Barack Obama – The Audacity of Hate
Commenter has numerous excerpts from Obama’s Books that he and Benj hope you never read.
Ok. Here is a question I would like to ask each of the candidates:
“Assuming that Iran’s quest to acquire nuclear weapons is a given and that all of you have stated that such an occurrence would be a grave threat to the US, and also assuming as a given that an invasion of Iran, by the US, to prevent its acquisition of such weapons would burden the US with enormous cost in blood and treasure that are impossible to quantify, would you invade Iran if, by some prescient power, one was able to quantify the cost? Namely, if 5 years post-invasion, Iran has cost the US the exact same amount(in blood and treasure) that the invasion of Iraq cost? And that post-invasion Iran has reached the exact same level of stability and political maturity as Iraq, 5 years post-invasion?
Thank you.
ot, but reminiscent of GlobalObaloney.
We are not the World
The Business of America is Business
sfrcook:
Ok. Here is a question I would like to ask each of the candidates:
“if, by some prescient power, one was able to quantify the cost? Namely, if 5 years post-invasion, Iran has cost the US the exact same amount(in blood and treasure) that the invasion of Iraq cost? And that post-invasion Iran has reached the exact same level of stability and political maturity as Iraq, 5 years post-invasion?
=====================================================
Let’s say that we go with the discount model. No stability or political maturity.
How much would that cost?
Easy answer: Trust no one. Keep a strong defense. Disparage the UN. And, oh yeah, don’t partition Iraq.
Palin has a wild card up her foreign policy sleeve, i.e., the oil/energy card.
What is the response to Iran? Force the price of oil down to below $70 per barrel and watch the deck of cards fall down.
What’s the way to create stability in the Mideast? Drive down the price of oil.
What’s the way to counterbalance Russian energy hegemony? Drill, baby, drill.
mark_b:
My question doesn’t ask “how much the cost.” It assumes that the cost are known. Knowing the costs, would they undertake the action? What is the cost they are willing to incur? Also please assume that we are starting from zero, ie the invasion of Iraq has not yet occurred and ITS costs have not been incurred. Merely inquiring what they would be willing to tolerate for the benefit of having an Iran that is nuclear weapon free and consensually governed and a nominal ally?
Whittle’s First Law of Political Reality is
Every American personally knows five people in our immediate circle who would make a better president than the menagerie of candidates the major parties routinely offer.
I don’t know either TigerHawk or Wretchard, but they appear to be further evidence in support of the First Law.
On the other hand, Palin’s nomination may wreck it…
L3
So the assumption is that we must rebuild our enemies. We cannot just strike those who would threaten us. OK.
The we need a man like Mr. Obama or Mr. Biden to represent us.
After all, talk is cheap.
Mark_B:
Bill Clinton seemed perfectly fine doing just that.
The constraint on politicians is that every opinion they express can have consequences. To give them some sympathetic due any politician can say, “Yes you can say that because if the result is so many thousands of dead then you do not have to feel responsible.” The general public at the water cooler faces no sanction greater than hearing someone from IT or accounting in the elevator say that sure got that one wrong. The strength of the Internet, to spiral to an old thread as we said in education, is that it minimizes the public exposure to any cost for error and thereby maximizes the ability to engage in risky analysis. Given the fact that I was just subjected to an attack on a prior thread on just this issue I am feeling very aware of it. There are costs to this freedom, a very high noise to signal ratio being the chief of them. Sarah Pallin perfectly described the burden of government. Obama had the freedom of the community organizer to point out problems. He did not actually have to solve those problems.
Let’s just have the election–this has been going on forever.
sfrcook:
Also please assume that we are starting from zero, ie the invasion of Iraq has not yet occurred and ITS costs have not been incurred. Merely inquiring what they would be willing to tolerate for the benefit of having an Iran that is nuclear weapon free and consensually governed and a nominal ally?
————————————
I apologize for not being more civil. I am beating my head against a wall in another forum. Transference.
Considering that the root cause of our problems is Soviet style support of our enemies by Russia, wouldn’t the real cost be the cost of attaining a free and consensually governed Russia?
I think the Iraq effort was worth the cost. Putin was forced to make his Georgia move to protect the other pieces on the board. That was just a little push. Reminds me of Soviet Naval ships ramming US Navy ships during the cold war. “Man on man” coverage it would be called in basketball.
The answer has been posited above by Mark.
Palin: Drive down price of oil. (Using oil as an economic weapon).
McCain: Appropriate use of military force.
This combination seems to fit the lessons learned from the Surge and the Cold War.
Back to the original assumption. Do all wars need to be fought in the cookie cutter style described?
No. Consider Afghansistan I and the current operation in Georgia.
“man on man” in basketball. Or maybe “bump and run”, football season is upon us.
Go Browns!
Official Democrat website: Palin pick ‘lipstick on a pig’
ht – al-Bob
mark_b said…
“man on man” in basketball. Or maybe “bump and run”, football season is upon us.
Go Browns!
—
Go, Barracuda!
She shoots…she scores
@Doug,
So instead of trying to recover they fly directly into the light? How sad and frightening to see a necessary leg of the American system implode. They allowed the inmates to take over the asylum. The idea behind the Super Delegates was to prevent just this from happening. Republicans can be subjected to this type of infiltration and exploitation also.
We need truly small r republican structures that allow control over the membership criteria in both parties. Now it is possible for a small conspiratorial clique to pack caucuses and a few local organizations in order to seize control of the party label.
This year’s GOP Platform is a Dream.
How it came to be is a mystery to me.
(a good Dream, not a Nightmare)
I have to say give it a rest as far as the Lipstick on a Pig comment goes. That is a old saying with a well defined meaning. Obambi is many things but stupid isn’t one of them. Oh wait, he is clueless, so I take it back.
Oh wait, he is clueless, so I take it back.
As demonstrated in the video by how most of his audience laughed when he said lipstick, and he didn’t bat an eye.
In Tigerhawk’s answer he doesn’t explain why it was/is in America’s interests to be so heavily involved in places like Mogadishu, Lebanon, and the region in general. He seems to assume that the US presence in other parts of the world is so vital that the only question we have to discuss is how to retaliate rather than is it all worth it? It may well be but since the same Americans also talk about the need to ‘retaliate’ against Russia over unimportant South Ossetia or in the past Serbia over Kosovo it leaves the impression that the hawks believe that all conflicts in all places are vital to American security. War is necessary from time to time, of course, but is perpetual war in the remotest of places also necessary? If so, then a real explanation – as opposed to ‘spreading democracy’, ‘we need the oil’ – for why it is so necessary is long overdue.
The problem politicians often face when answering a question is not how to give the right answer — any reasonably intelligent person can do that — but how to give the acceptable answer. Success in Washington consists, not of knowing where the solutions are, but of understanding where all the sacred cows are hidden…
…What the “two thousand faculty members of Harvard University” know that the average Joe doesn’t is what not to say. And that is a far more valuable skill.
wretchard:
The shibboleths exist not only on the Left but also on the Right. Leftists do not have a monopoly on attempting to impose political correctness.
For example, just try to mention how the Bible gives better scriptural justification for suicide bombing than the Quran, and certain “conservative” commenters will start asserting that your sympathies are with the other side.
If Islamists were not receptive to outside ideas, they would never have come up with the idea of suicide bombing; our enemies are not particularly original thinkers. Please note that explosives were well known one century ago and the Ottoman Empire never deployed the suicide bomber. The phenomenon only existed after the American ideology of “revolutionary suicide” became publicized thirty years ago in Jonestown and after the Tamil Tigers (a secular organization dominated by Hindus) deployed suicide bombers first. And yet, conservative orthodoxy takes it for granted that Islamic culture is immutable. Wahhabism may be immutable, but Islam has historically exhibited more fluidity than is often perceived in the West.
Many flaws in Islam come from its founding but not all of them do; many of Islam’s flaws are modern innovations. And some of Islam’s worst foundational flaws are shared scripturally with Judaism and Christianity. One can acknowledge Islam’s similarities to Judaism and Christianity while also acknowledging Islam’s scriptural justification for terrorism. For that matter, one can acknowledge tangential similarities between Mormonism and Islam while understanding implicitly how Islam’s rigid monotheism and ancient Arab ritual stand in stark contrast to Mormon polytheism and its endowment ceremonies. One can acknowledge western contributions to the ideas of al-Qaeda while also acknowledging how a straight reading of the Quran shows a certain bullying quality quite at odds with the ideals of the Enlightenment.
One of the key problems with being honest about the nature of our common enemy is that a certain fifth column in our midst twists honest commentary to suit a defeatist agenda. One can say with all honesty that public opinion in Pakistan gets inflamed every time an American bombing run kills Pakistani children. And yet, defeatists proclaim that America’s bombs are “the reason why they hate us” (which is patently false), as if American sins could be the only reason why anybody would declare a war of genocide against all Americans.
Perhaps a prerequisite for honesty in a civilized society is the security of knowing that we are all on the same side. Without that security of knowing we are on the same side, our social fabric is kept together through white lies and noble lies. And lies being lies, they can blind our leaders (and perhaps even our electorate) to the realities of the world.
sfrcook:
Would I invade Iran knowing that 5 years after said invasion, I would get the same results that we have gotten 5 years after invading Iraq? And that total costs, both monetary and human would be the same.
YOU”RE DARNED TOOTING I WOULD!
And I would say that “pre-surge” as well.
Invading Iraq made a mideastern caliphate impossible for so long as we were there. The lack of a caliphate reduces enemy capabilities and renders them harmless. Therefore, invading Iraq was certainly worth it.
If invading Iran does the same thing to enemy capabilities at the same “price”, it too would be worth it.
The one that was the exception was the one I was in. The capabilities of the Evil Empire
were unaffected by anything we did or could have done in Vietnam. “There was no there, there”. Thus, success was measured by getting the dead down to 100 a week while making an orderly retreat. (It could have been a rout. It was not. Thank you Creighton Abrams.)
This does not mean that I regret my times in VN. I do not. They were times well spent.
Nonetheless, VN was a wrong place to commit blood and treasure. Iraq is not and Iran would not be, if invasion/occupation becomes necessary.
@Dave,
Disagreeing with you only around the edges.
The lack of a caliphate reduces enemy capabilities and renders them harmless. The second half of that sentence is to strong. You claim our effort “reduces enemy capabilities” and it clearly does but your following clause that it “renders them harmless” goes to far. This threat will remain for a long time. All we can do for the present is render them less apocalyptically lethal. To render them harmless would take three generations of supervised reeducation to cleanse the drive to enforce submission out of their culture.
Regarding Vietnam, it is hard to prove a negative. Would the Soviets have been more dangerous if the US had simply ignored the expansion of Communism in the late 1950s and early 1960s? Probably so. No President could have looked at a map and simply shrugged as the sea lanes between Japan and Singapore appeared threatened. What would have been the most efficient method of getting to a system no worse than the present is another question.
Alexis:
If Islamists were not receptive to outside ideas, they would never have come up with the idea of suicide bombing; our enemies are not particularly original thinkers
———————————————————
Anybody know of a Rastafarian Missionary organization I can donate to?
Alexis, How does the Bible give scriptural justification for suicide bombing? As someone who has read it through several times, I can’t even begin to fathom how one could read that into the letter and spirit of the Book.
McCain just beat the Messiah on the Intrade Prediction Market, refer to:
http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/trading/t_index.jsp?selConID=409933
I’m surprised that Soros and Oprah allowed that to happen (I assume they’re a bit distracted).
McCain is still behind in the Real Clear Politics Electoral College polls. That’s the big one.
The O’Reilly interview with the Annointed-One was a hoot. The debate with McCain should be amusing.
trangbang68:
Alexis, How does the Bible give scriptural justification for suicide bombing? As someone who has read it through several times, I can’t even begin to fathom how one could read that into the letter and spirit of the Book.
—————————————————–
Call me an Alexis Apologist.
A little John 15:13 taken out of context.
John 15:13
Greater Love Hath No Man Than To Lay Down His Life For His Brothers
John 15:13 in context:
12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
14You are my friends if you do what I command.
15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.
17This is my command: Love each other.
trangbang68 asked:
“How does the Bible give scriptural justification for suicide bombing?”
Samson
Islamic fascists and suicide bombing are evil. However one can twist the words of the Bible to justify almost anything.
“and he didn’t bat an eye.”
What a bunch of hypocrites! You bitch about Obama smearing Palin then go on to tie him to Jeremiah Wright all over again.
Also_OT:
I read recently that Liberation Theory is the attempted Christianization of Marxism.
Eggplant:
Samson
———————-
I don’t know about hitting people with the jawbone of an ass, but I can think of an ass I like to hit in the jawbone!
I always think of that when I read Judges.
Watchman – and your point is?
mark_b said:
“I read recently that Liberation Theory is the attempted Christianization of Marxism.”
I think you meant “Liberation Theology”. It is well known that “Liberation Theology” was an attempt at Christianizing Communism. I’ve long suspected that Liberation Theology was invented by a KGB AgitProp expert along with German style Green politics. Too bad for the Soviets that they came up with Liberation Theology too late in the Cold War to do them anygood (better luck next time).
I stand corrected.
These
lipstick campaign button are a hoot.
Anybody who says that the Bible justifies suicide bombing more than the Koran has read neither.
@Peter Boston,
Good idea, I will share it.
The interesting thing about sarah palin’s convention speech was that — while her convention speech totally eviscerated obama–there was not a word of it that was politically incorrect–even for democrats.
Not only that her words could have been delivered by either a man or a woman — and been inbounds. Granted her words were more politically effective since they were spoken by a woman.
Wondered a bit when I saw Wretch’s invocation of Buckley’s dis of Harvard. because I recall a few times when posters have been over-awed by Wretch’s own H-connection, though of course fear and loathing on this front is more common at the club. I’m reminded on this score that Wretch once invoked Bush’s status as a Harvard alum as evidence that the Pres was(obviously) not the dullard of certain leftists’ fantasies. He noted “there are precious few journalists” who could “claim” to be graduate of Harvard Business School or an ex- fighter pilot…
“and while neither being a Harvard alum, fighter pilot or US President is proof of any particular genius, people having those accomplishments should not normally be presumed illiterate or mentally retarded unless there is compelling proof to the contrary.”
Consistency IS the hobgoblin of small minds, but Wretch’s readiness to diminish what once seemed to him to be an “accomplishment” by echoing Buckley’s fauz-populism (and adding on to it) feels a little cheap. Is is possible that Wretch’s stance here has something to do with a felt need to apologize for Ms. Palin’s no frills education? Or perhaps to diminish Obama’s own academic “accomplishment.” …Though – thankfully – O. beat him to the punch there, noting that he learned more from his three years as a community organizer than at Harvard (or Columbia). Still, O didn’t say he’d wasted his time there. And he certainly heard something other than what “not to say.” There’s a nice passage in “Dreams” where he desribes the graffiti at Columbia – Lots of “hate speech.” So he knew that bubbling under the polite surfaces there was a lot of ugliness. I think he recognized then that American meanness wasn’t a phenomenon that was beyond the gentility – it was all up in the intellectual elites that fire up both sides of our politics. He’s out to provide an example of Mind and Morality that will work on all Americans. Been doing a pretty good job…
BTW – There was a good piece by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker a few months back about how the absence of Ivies is a real gift to Canadians – mitigates against pointless status-anxiety, insecurity, self-importance – and ends up sapping the sort of “anti-intellectualism” that Wretch mocks or cultivates, depending on the hour and the needs of his argument…
I don’t recall these folks asking John Edwards any of this (or any foreign policy questions at all) during his Vice Presidential run in 2004 – am I missing something?
Obama’s purpose behind his lipstick comment is becoming obvious. Today he’s crying Poor Me those nasty Republicans are Swiftboating me and avoiding the issues.
sfrcook; the cost of permanently ending the threat of nuclear violence from Iran could be (if the USA was ruthless enough) extremely small. Strategists would have to confer about the details, but the cost could be very small indeed in terms of a country’s defense budget. Non-financial costs would be high, however.
What am I talking about? Well, what is the replacement cost of one Trident missile including warheads? A little difficult for a government to order, plan and execute any attack, when said government is a rapidly expanding cloud of highly ionised plasma.
My single questions is why would Ms. Frankel only want to ask Ms. Palin those questions? I would expect that someone truly interested in Foreign Policy would want to ask all of the candidates those questions. I am ready for this to be over, am quite happy though the Mr. Obama declared on the day that he accepted the nomination that that was the day when the earth began to heal and the seas recede. Damn good thing that we didnt have to wait for him to get elected before it started.
Benj:
I have been wondering for some time now: in this “pissing match” you imagine yourself to be having with wretchard, how do you think you’re doing? Do you suppose you are scoring any points, comparing your insight and analysis with Mr. Fernandez? Who is your audience anyway?
Malcolm Gladwell obviously doesn’t know too many Canadians because “pointless status-anxiety, insecurity, and self-importance” is practically on our coat of arms.
Fletcher Christian:
sfrcook; the cost of permanently ending the threat of nuclear violence from Iran could be (if the USA was ruthless enough) extremely small. Strategists would have to confer about the details, but the cost could be very small indeed in terms of a country’s defense budget. Non-financial costs would be high, however.
What am I talking about? Well, what is the replacement cost of one Trident missile including warheads? A little difficult for a government to order, plan and execute any attack, when said government is a rapidly expanding cloud of highly ionised plasma.
Sep 10, 2008 – 12:26 pm
————————————–
Cheaper yet is doing nothing.
Same result. (Iranian Threat)
Completely disarm and spend it all on healthcare?
Same result.(Iranian Threat)
Who says nuclear weapons must be used. A lot of damaged can be dealt with cheap oil and air strikes on infrastructure. Why do air strikes work now? Ground forces to back them up.
Putin is going to play cold war with or without us. If we don’t play we lose. We had better win.
The robber robs the rich defenseless types. Source: BC-Why They Fight thread
The criminals greatest fear: a homeowner with a gun. Source: American Rifleman.
Benj equates not being “illiterate or mentally retarded” to an “accomplishment”…
Mark B.- i actually thought about John 15:13 ,but John 15:17 contradicts it. Hard to fit suicide bombing into “love one another”. That is what I meant about letter and spirit. The essence of Biblical theology (particularly New Testament but not exclusively) is grace ,mercy and redemption. I admit I’ve not read the Koran, but if the jihadist’s theology is an accurate interpretation of it; then it is an ideology of death and is diabolical and evil in nature.
Somewhat off topic, this ought to put the Bridge to Nowhere anti-Palin spin stories to rest for good and all. At least around here.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Yzk1MWE2ZDg5OGE3ZGYyMTY3ZGEyZTIzMTk0MjVhZWQ=
The Score Card.
Killed the bridge: Palin
Voted to keep it rather than help fund rebuilding a Katrina-destroyed bridge in New Orleans because they didn’t want to mess with the earmarking system: Obama, Biden
We report, you decide.
trangbang68:
Mark B.- i actually thought about John 15:13 ,but John 15:17 contradicts it.
———————————
That’s why I posted them both. In order to use the Bible for evil you must take things out of context. Otherwise, you can make it support a wide variety of unsavory arguments.
However the most effective way around the actual teachings of the Bible is to add to it. Like Mo and some other guys did later.
There’s a nice passage in “Dreams” where he desribes the graffiti at Columbia – Lots of “hate speech.” So he knew that bubbling under the polite surfaces there was a lot of ugliness.
Oh lord, the old “hate is bubbling just below the surface” meme. That’s so 80s. Since nobody can find any above the surface, we have to imagine it’s below somewhere. Like the depravity the lies just under the Brady Bunch surface of American suburban life, as dreamt of in a thousand Hollywood fantasies.
I think he recognized then that American meanness wasn’t a phenomenon that was beyond the gentility – it was all up in the intellectual elites that fire up both sides of our politics.
I guess Michelle’s right then. It sure is a mean old country. At least it sure is around the faculty lounges of Columbia. Probably even meaner there than in the Kremlin. At least those guys just want cash and hookers.
He’s out to provide an example of Mind and Morality that will work on all Americans. Been doing a pretty good job…
Great little slip there Benj. You say that O wants “to provide an example of Mind and Morality that will work ON all Americans” (my emphasis). Did you mean an example that would work FOR all Americans? Or work ON them?
I think I know what you meant.
Close Reading 1: Peter – I meant to use “on” – I was trying to get at something about O’s presence that goes a little deeper that a role-modeling approach – As you know, O gets slammed – and not just here – for seeming “removed.” But for those people who often find his orations (and sometimes even his off the cuff remarks) inspiring – the thrills go up the leg to the tear ducts. We’re touched! In the heads!! Right? Gentlemen start your mocking…
Close Reading II: Andrew – “accomplishments” was Wretch’s word re being a “Harvard Alum” (the other terms in his triplet were ex-fighter pilot and U.S. Pres). He was not using the term ironically. And that’s why I was struck by his latest expression of anti-Ivy feeling…
Benj: Some close reading might do you good, tighter writing too. In that quote Wretchard is fairly clear in pointing them out them as accomplishments that prove, if nothing else, that Bush is neither mentally retarded not illiterate. Not much of an accomplishment when you think of it. How exactly does that contradict with anything he wrote vis a vis “anti-ivy” feeling?
NOR illiterate!!
For crying out loud! That’s an ages old metaphor for one who takes no notice or feels no pain.
First of all you can’t legitimately blame the rest of the Belmont Clubbers for what you imagined *I* intended. Certainly none of them cheered and hooted and applauded as did Barry’s friends. I’d say I’m safe in saying that you saw the speck in most clubbers eyes but not the beam in your own.
Secondly, were Barry is as smart and diplomatic as he wants you to believe, he’d have heard the crowd’s response, made an uneasy chuckle and said “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant” and finished then the line. He didn’t. So he was either clueless (as Tarnsman said) or bathed in the response from his feeding his crowd raw meat.
Thirdly. Obama clearly paused for the applause. The normal line has no pause in it.
Fourthly. Had I wanted to make the connection to Rev. Wright I would have written my comment a bit differently. Here is what you should look for:
And fifthly. Were Obama as clever as he was in the primaries, and not unwinding so badly now, his campaign would have replied to the McCain campaign’s complaints with “We took the lady at her word that she was tough as a pit bull. Sorry to have upset the vision of herself that she has been selling.”
And fifthly. Were Obama as clever as he was in the primaries, and not unwinding so badly now, his campaign would have replied to the McCain campaign’s complaints with “We took the lady at her word that she was tough as a pit bull. Sorry to have upset the vision of herself that she has been selling.”
…………………….
sounds like obama is getting a taste of what it felt like to be bill clinton in the primaries.
But for those people who often find his orations (and sometimes even his off the cuff remarks) inspiring – the thrills go up the leg to the tear ducts. We’re touched! In the heads!! Right? Gentlemen start your mocking…
Ahh heck, why bother? Benj, I think you’re a well meaning guy and no slouch, but to my mind you’ve been willingly bamboozled by a snake-oil salesman.
I dunno, maybe it’s me, but I never for a split second saw Obama’s vaunted speech giving talent as anything other than tedious bombast. I just don’t get it. I never got Clinton either. Everyone saying how great he was at the podium. My reaction within ten seconds of seeing him for the first time was “god, what an oily phony.” And that never changed. Ugh, the lip gnawing, the thumb-thing (which, by the way, Palin does).
I don’t find Palin a great orator either, but when she talks there’s nothing salesman-like — er, salesperson-like — in her. Nothing of the con artist, the flim flam man. Or, as my boy Melville had it, the Confidence Man. She’s just she. McCain is a bit like that as well, though he’s been in the mill for too long and become too much a player to be truly genuine.
Well let’s let Herman M have the last word. From “The Confidence Man,” good words for Obama supporters, or any followers of Leftist bunkum.
Not very unlike the experience of the man that built himself a palace of moon-beams, and when the moon set was surprised that his palace vanished with it.
But the novel ends with the prophetic and admonitory words….
Something further may follow of this Masquerade.
Peterike,
Agree vis a vis Clinton. I never understood how people were dazzled by Clinton I thought he was a very transparent phony. Now he is a sociopath and a pathological liar, but still his mesmerizing charm I think spoke more about the gullibility and lameness of his followers.
Beyond Samson’s story in Judges 16, one should also read Judges 11:30-40. Jephthah killed his daughter to fulfill a vow he made during a war against the Ammonites. Beyond the straight biblical text, medieval Jewish history is replete with examples of mass suicide. For example, in 1190, there was a mass suicide of Jews in the city of York.
Traditionally, the word shahid referred to a Muslim who fell in battle in a sacred war. The closest Muslim social institution to the suicide bomber was the assassin who expected to be executed after his deed, and yet there is no Quranic verse that I know of that endorses such behavior.
If anybody, and I repeat anybody, knows of any verse in the Quran that endorses suicide bombing, please let me know. The Quran does promise heaven to warriors who die in battle, a promise that has led to suicidal charges in battle by Muslim warriors over the centuries. Yet, I am unaware of any part of the Quran that specifically endorses suicide. If I am wrong, cite the chapter and verse from the Quran. You might even try citing the Hadith.
The Quran has its flaws, but an endorsement of suicide bombing isn’t one of them. I would also argue that the mental gymnastics necessary for promoting suicide bombing in Islam are more convoluted than the mental gymnastics necessary to promote suicide bombing in Judaism and Christianity. The main reason why such mental gymnastics have not been attempted in the West partly because our culture is not nearly so backward as the culture of Middle Eastern Islam and partly because Middle Eastern culture has a definite preference in favor of ideas created, rejected, and discarded by the West.
Watchman said…
“and he didn’t bat an eye.”
“What a bunch of hypocrites!
You bitch about Obama smearing Palin then go on to tie him to Jeremiah Wright all over again.”
How did he get untied?
oh, right:
The Lie
Andrew
Aren’t you asking the wrong question? The important issue isn’t the suicide part of bombing – it’s the bombing. Murder. The unjustified killing of another human being.
If you want to put up some funds about citing passages of the Koran and the biographies that order Muslims to kill infidels, and recalcitrant Muslims, then we can all retire tomorrow.
To paraphrase what Josef Goebbels said about the the “big lie” ….if its repeated often enough, people will believe it. One of the “big lies” about Palin is that she has no foreign policy experience. The State of Alaska has ongoing commercial consultations with many foreign countries (Japan, Canada, Norway, Russia as an example)on issues relating to oil and gas, fisheries, State product marketing(crab/salmon),tourism, native rights etc. The “dirt diggers” that the Obama campaign just air dropped into Juneau and Anchorage are going to discover that Alaskan’s don’t like people with Gucci shoes asking questions. When they finally check Palin’s calendar for the last two years, they’ll be disappointed to learn that she was in the thick of getting the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline launched, and was involved with all State of Alaska foreign country relationships.
Limbaugh says they arrive bearing US Currency to lure any willing Dems.
—
The Messiah
– Gateway Pundit
Obama doesn’t have the slighest concern about truth or accuracy. He will throw up everything and anything than might be interpreted as harmful to Governor Palin and see if it sticks.
The MSM will continue to interview airheads like Matt Dsmon and report his opinion as if it were news, and repeat every rumor that sounds interesting without ever making an effort to verify it.
Perhaps the amzing part is that most Americans will ignore this stuff and probably backlash it back onto Obama.
Peterike’s Link:
—
A Tale of Two Bridges
Obama and Biden’s moaning about all of this would be far easier to stomach if they, too, opposed the Bridge to Nowhere. Not so.Obama and Biden had an excellent opportunity to do the right thing.
Just seven weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Senator Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) proposed to transfer $125 million from the notorious Bridge’s budget and instead devote it to rebuilding the Interstate 10 Twin Spans Bridge between New Orleans and St. Tammany’s Parish. The storm chopped up the bridge.
“We have the largest natural catastrophe we have ever seen in our history,” Coburn said on the Senate floor on October 20, 2005. “It is time we reassess the priorities we utilize in this body as we think about our obligations at home.”Coburn’s amendment failed 15-82.
Obama and Biden were among the “nays.” They and 80 other senators preferred to protect the earmarking tradition than to assist Katrina’s tempest-tossed citizens.
Obama and Biden put pork first and people second. While the residents of New Orleans and southern Louisiana endured perhaps their greatest challenge since the Civil War, Obama and Biden both turned their backs on these embattled Americans
Yale’s Enduring Shame
‘Performance artist” Pia Lindman is the Yale instructor who authorized and guided Aliza Shvarts’s proposed “abortion art” project for a senior art show in the 2007-2008 school year. Yale has once again engaged Lindman to teach during this academic year, to the university’s enduring shame.
Shvarts’s proposed project, as widely reported, consisted in repeatedly artificially inseminating herself, inducing possible miscarriages, and videotaping herself bleeding into a cup.
Her plan was then to display her bodily fluids and presumably aborted fetuses in a plastic-wrapped ceiling installation, upon which she would also have projected the videos of said miscarriages. As for the “scholarly” justification for this gruesome display, Shvarts explained in run-of-the-mill postmodern, victimological boilerplate that her intent was “to assert that often normative understandings of biological functions are a mythology … that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist, and homophobic perspective . . . .”
for what it’s worth, tigerhawk says he would be comfortable with an obama presidency. that’s when i stopped visting his site (which had been bookmarked).
not out of anger; it just represents an unbridgable chasm of opinion. he’s ok on some subjects, but mostly a squish.
So you want to call Sarah a Pig, eh Bunky?
Well, you can put pig grease on fat lips but it’s still fat lips!
Anybody offended? Be my guest. But if so, are you also offended by Sarah being referred to as a pig?
cjm,
He also posted a piece on Albright, quoting and praising her.
albright! must be something in the water there. can only stop visiting once
Bill in NC – You asked Why? …Started reading Wretch cos I appreciated his angle on what was happening in Iraq. Started posting here regularly when I thought he was traducing Obama. That bothered me bigtime because I believed Obama’s campaign promised to help all Americans overcome the legacy of white supremacy. The notion that a foreigner like Wretch would repeatedly trash a candidate who was calling out to Americans’ better angels seemed pretty outrageous. Figured I was only one (on my side) who was alive to this little bit of meanness in the world so I was duty-bound to push back on behalf of the imagined community in MLK’s Dream. Especially since I’ve seen it realized at Obama’s rallies.
Once I engaged Clubbers, the discourse seemed worthy – something like democracy. A lot of abuse but some light too. I learned stuff from some posters and (occasionally) seemed to connect with certain folks even though they didn’t share my politics. I’m not a natural-born flag-waver, but I feel patriotic when I post here. It’s hard for me to separate the national from the personal right now as I’ve got a five-year old African American son. I sense how much O’s presence has done for him already. And the future is unwritten…
“Dream big Dreams” O wrote on the pic of my boy that I brought to a book signing for the re-issue of his “Dreams.” When I write here, I’m often convinced I’m fighting for my little boy against an intelligent foreigner who’s “running down our country” (as Hag once had it).
Peterike said – “you’re a well meaning guy and no slouch” – Jesus man – that’s high praise compared to what I’m used to hearing from academic leftists pissed at my defense of OIF …- I’m going to go look at the “The Confidence Man” – have to admit I never got through it…A sign of my essential American beamishness?? Maybe, but – just so you know – I was NEVER a sucker for the Man from Hope. Takes a better actor to make me come!!!!
Andrew – if you’re going to RE-up, you gotta nail it. Check Wretch’s tone one more time – “there are precious few journalists” who can “claim” to be Harvard Grads etc… All caveats in place, Wretch spoke of Bush’s graduating from Harvard w/o contempt. Yet this time around, he’s all disdain for his old institution…
If you’re interested in a writer who has the intellectual chops, gravitas and wit to blow up conventional academic discourse in the post-9/11 era w/o giving into Buckleyism or indulging in mucker posing, try Charles O’Brien’s work. There’s a lot of his stuff available online at Firstofthemonth.org.
Peter Boston:
Andrew
Aren’t you asking the wrong question? The important issue isn’t the suicide part of bombing – it’s the bombing. Murder. The unjustified killing of another human being.
If you want to put up some funds about citing passages of the Koran and the biographies that order Muslims to kill infidels, and recalcitrant Muslims, then we can all retire tomorrow.
Sep 10, 2008 – 3:56 pm
——————————————–
That whole commandment thing only applies to killing in anger.
This is a trap (of course). I don’t think it is necessary for a presidential candidate to be able to answer all of these questions, many of which don’t have single, factual answers. On the contrary, you could ask many of these questions to academics who have studied this stuff for a lifetime, and get different answers.
No matter what she says, there will be some foreign policy ‘expert’ disputing her answer.
In a totally fair world, asking these questions might be a good thing – detailed answers would be more indicative of a persons thought processes (like many good interview questions). But that is not what is going on here.
@Benj
I hesitate to hit the keys since I can no longer make a presumption of reason in addressing you, but…
You seem to be living in an overheated fervor in a mental projection that has no basis in the real world.
That means unhinged, basically. And especially emotionally unhinged.
You quote from your Messiah’s self aggrandizing monologues like a religious fundamentalist spouts the Koran or the Bible.
You also trot out your brand of patriotism to bolster your gratuitously insulting comments about Wretchard. As if citizenship per se has any impact on a person’s ability to think and reason.
It seems to me that people are here at BC to discuss events of general interest and generally do so at a high level that tends to spin off emotive second rate personalities which makes this site somewhat self policing.
With your notable exception.
You are an Obama supplicant to an embarrassing degree, and I cannot figure out whether that is the basis of your exceptional emotionalism or the emotionalism a precursor to your Obama fetish.
But then I see other very odd bits you have written that make me think even more that your life is an emotional rollercoaster that has overpowered any reason you might have once had.
And your presumptiousness and silliness is breathtaking.
How dare you wank on about a political candidate who “promised to help all Americans overcome the legacy of white supremacy”.
There is no legacy to overcome. Just how many people do you think died in the Civil War?
And that was at a time when my family on both sides was still in Ireland. So I’m supposed to sign on for retrospective guilt and reparations??? Silly little man.
Why the state of moral panic, Benj? Why the cultural self loathing compared with nationalism/jingoism when it suits your mindless pursuit of Obama’s cause? Incoherent and schizoid.
Obama “calling out to Americans’ better angels”??? That is most breathtakingly foolish, intellectually vain bit of psycophantism I have seen off Daily Kos in years.
You’re out of your league, boy.
And you’re racist, too. You’re painting your boy colors he might not want to be when he grows up. He might not want your schtick at all but it sounds like you have it all bundled up for him, poor little sod.
If he gets the unconditional love he needs above all else from you and his mother at this crucial stage all else is secondary.
If you set an example of reason and open mindedness and love of life for him instead of trying to inculcate your dreary and erratic emotional baggage on him he will be far better off for it.
If someone else has a problem with him being black, let it be their problem, not his. The Constitution and the law are on his side in any significant contretemps and a well adjusted individual will handle minor stuff like graffiti without buying in to it.
“how much O’s presence has done for him”???
Get a life, Benj. O’s is a political hustler with ideas that have no resonance with anyone that understands the basis of American exceptionalism and concomitant freedom.
Most of his support comes from would-be revolutionaries, leftist hustlers, the corrupt Chicago political machine and black Americans who are caught up in identity politics on racial grounds.
That’s as boring (but perhaps predictable)as feminists backing Hillary who got where she was by being married to another vain political huckster and pants man.
Get a grip, Benj.
Look at the content not the color of his skin.
I couldn’t care less that Hillary is a woman and I couldn’t care less that Obama is part black.
I’m interested in the content of their characters, their accomplishments, their beliefs, their respect for the values that formed the basis for this wonderful experiment most of us grew up in (the US) and you’re getting emotive about the color of his skin.
And those two manifestly do not respect traditional American values.
You’re a racist yourself and the unnatural thing about it is that you are against your own race and paying your dues in the most tedious of ways.
For Chrissakes, Benj, say one Our Father and ten Hail Marys and fuck off.
Poor kid.
Sounds like he’s gonna grow up with an attitude like Michelle Obama’s.
Perpetual grievance.
Let him be happy, Benj.
He’s not here to be your ego extension.
Your legitimate function is to help launch him in this life not saddle him with your anger and list of personal grievances.
Poor little kid. With a goofball father waging idiot jihad in his behalf.
Arrrggghhhh.
I got on a roll and I do about 85wpm on the keys.
Sorry ’bout that.
“You quote from your Messiah’s self aggrandizing monologues like a religious fundamentalist spouts the Koran or the Bible.”
—
And he is just as zealous in conveniently ignoring the many passages in Barry’s books that are easily parsed to paint a picture of a narrowly and poorly educated fellow with a less than charitable view of this country that has given him, his wife, Bill Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn, Tony Rezko and Mr Wright so much.
Bob Murphy:
Sounds like he’s gonna grow up with an attitude like Michelle Obama’s.
Perpetual grievance.
———————————-
Our Lady of Perpetual Grievance.
I heard the playback of his pig talk. He put on a Southside accent. If you are hip to it what he was saying in code was: Palin is a white pig and McCain is a dead white fish. Nasty stuff for a possible POTUS.
“All caveats in place, Wretch spoke of Bush’s graduating from Harvard w/o contempt. Yet this time around, he’s all disdain for his old institution…”
I don’t know if you are being deliberately obtuse or what. Try this, from your posts I’d say you are neither illiterate nor mentally retarded. But I still think you are a douche. Any inconsistency there?
Not trying to dogpile.
Murph: “There is no legacy [of white supremacy] to overcome.” Know you were typing fast but the next sentence gives up the ghost. “Just how many people do you think died in the Civil War?” One thing that makes America a truly exceptional country is our history of having fought an immense civil war to end slavery. (Didn’t happen anywhere else.) But race survived the war and Reconstruction. What followed was the strange career of Jim Crow and then decades of struggle against entrenched white power structures. Did you see those black elders – I’m thinking of John Lewis in particular – as they got teary when Obama was nominated (by acclamation) at the Democratic convention? Is it possible they know something about American history that went right past you?
RE Reason and emotion – who feels it knows it? Not always but try this on – it’s by an Afro-American writer recalling his experience on the island of Goree off the coast of Senegal which was used as a way-station for slavers for hundreds of years..
“My son and I went up there in Goree… … and when we went to the slave castle and we sat up there in this dungeon with the door closed and everything, tears started coming out of our eyes. The two of us sitting there, father and son, not saying a word, just sitting there crying. Why? I don’t know. It’s just that feeling is too strong, it’s too strong…. You just sit there and suddenly, psychologically you begin to feel it on you. It’s something. You don’t want that but you start feeling it. I remember we came out of there crying and when we came out in the open, it was a group of French tourists walking towards us, and Ras says to me, what they want? What do these White people want? That thing grips you. When you come into that, when you actually come close to slavery itself – —I don’t mean stories of it, but when you actually get close to it, it will do something to you. No doubt about it. They got a hole in the wall, the door of no return and if you couldn’t make it they would just kick you aside into the ocean. A lot of the people had never seen the ocean, you know, because they were from inland. They had seen lakes. They might jump out there and think they could swim it, might think it was a lake, but that was the Atlantic Ocean and the sharks be circling down in there. Now when you conceive that and conceive that there were people upstairs over the prison, who lived there, who had a little hatch, a trap door in their floor where they could look through there and check on the slaves, you understand what I’m saying? You’ve got to be a cold mamajamma to do that. People down there [makes screaming sounds] screaming and what not, and you can pick up the door, you have your dinner and sh– upstairs and you could pick up the door and look down and see what was happening with that, well, you can’t have no feeling with that. Feeling has to be abolished. That’s why I’m saying they make that separation between the intellectual process and emotion. But I say, if you can’t feel you can’t think. That’s my feeling about that. That’s why we ask philosophers every morning, how you feel?”
Re my parenting – Hoped to slip the issue of race (as much as possible). Have a visceral distaste for, say, kids’ books/media that aim to “teach” tolerance – Always figured the best thing about living for the City was that children played their way past received notions to the truths of equality (and individuality). But race matters turn out to be a little harder to sail past than I thought. That’s (American) life, though things Change…
You’re father and son in the story, like you, live in a dream world, a mental projection, Benj.
What mental defilement makes you want to go looking for stuff like that?
Poor bastard.
And then you must try to rope other people in for validation of your madness.
Life is short, Benj, and illusion is a waste of precious time.
The struggle of what one likes
and what one dislikes
is the disease of the mind.
Sosan
Obama’s lipstick on a pig comment, just like his coy middle finger salute during a response to a Hillary jab during an earlier speech, displays this knowing snarkiness about Obama. In Obama’s deranged, amoral and insulated world of the academic left, it’s cool to dis the ways of middle America and particularly the right, in foul and shocking terms. He purposely and coyly made the pig remark to connect with his deranged supporters. And they got it right away. His supporters thought the remark was cool and wildly cheered it, particularly since it had a certain plausible deniability about it.
But the Messiah forgot and will forget in the future again and again, that he needs the vote and support of middle America to win the Presidency and govern as President.
Murph – “What makes you want to go looking for stuff like that?” Didn’t exactly search it out – but if you’re aware of history (and history in the making) sometimes you can’t avoid ugly facts of un-feeling. I’m reminded – given the date – of that line from the Jihadists’ manual for the 9/11 hijackers:
“If God grants [manna] any of you a slaughter [dhabaha], you should perform it as an offering on behalf of your father and mother, for they are owed by you. Do not disagree amongst yourselves, but listen and obey. If you slaughter, you should plunder those you slaughter, for that is one of the sanctioned customs of the Prophet…”
You’re not all wrong – by the way – re that father and son living in a “mental projection.” As it happens, I’ve tried to fast-forward the pop into a brighter American day. OBama, of course, packs a lot more push that I ever will on that front. One of the reasons why I’m so juiced about him is that his presence promises to make it easier for Afro-Am elders (and young’uns) to sublate the past. Don’t much care what you think of me, but, for the record, I don’t lay the weight of the past on my kid. Doubt he’ll be able to avoid it entirely though. Just hope I’m there to help when the time comes for him to fully comprehend the painful truths of how race survived American history. I’m going to prepare him early by talking up this country’s heroes all through his childhood…
PS One reason why I respect the writer quotd above is that he directed me (and others) to Ousmane Sembene’s “Tribal Scars” – a great 60s’ short story that zeroed in on black Africans’ complicity in the slave trade…
Well, America heard what Charlie Gibson thought some of the questions should be tonight.
Pretty unbelievable. Almost all of his questions were of the condescending gotcha type , repeated several times over and over in a slightly different badgering sort of way to trip her up. He tried to exude the air of the knowing Professor lecturing the dumb freshman. The Messiah would never be treated this way!
Gibson clearly misquoted Palin in her so-called “God’s Plan” speech and used an edited clip to reinforce his misrepresentation of the facts.
He clearly reinforced the impression that the media is out to get her.
But Sarah came out swinging, particularly in response to his lying insistence of her “exact words”. She did fine. I did’nt mind her answer on the “Bush Doctrine” or Pakistan, and didn’t think she looked bad at any point.
He looked like a jerk. This interview won’t hurt her, but it may rally even more women to her side. I can’t see too many clear thinking women being happy with the way see was treated.
Did anyone notice that Gibson’s Bush Doctrine question shows his ignorance of international law and that Sarah answered correctly twice.
http://kenanthony.bustablog.com/2008/09/sorry-charlie-you-got-it-wrong/
well, I came away with all Palinophilia in place if not augmented, and wondering more, a whole lot more, about what in the world makes a Charlie Gibson “qualified”.
Anyhoo, some personalities just won’t mesh. In these two, there’s a sunny energetic very brainy meta-truther being interrogated by someone much slower, much less (cough) ‘agile’, and yet keen to maintain his own pride of place. Very clunky chemistry –very much like two different languages in play.