A well deserved fisking
on 03/14/2008 at 12:24 AM
Hmmm… Okay, let’s see if I have this straight. If someone who believes that a market economy is a good thing supports his government’s goals, that’s ‘imperialism’. Whether they are there at the specific request of the host country is beside the point, as are any steps they take to minimize the damage. But if someone who believes that a collectivist economy trending towards totalitarianism is a good thing supports his government’s goals, that is NOT imperialism. And again, whether they are there at the request of the host country (as in all the foreign terrorists in Iraq) is beside the point, as are any steps they *fail to* take to minimize the damage (targeting noncombatants, hiding behind/among noncombatants, etc.)
As for “the killing machine” and Smedley Butler… wasn’t it Heinlein who said, “War is not simply killing. War is supporting your country’s political goals by force.” Or as Rush Limbaugh put it, “The PURPOSE of the military is to kill people and break things.” So yes, of course they are trained to kill, it’s part of their underlying function. Indeed, it is the CORE of their underlying function. Every soldier anywhere in the world at any time in history was/is “a gangster for” his country’s goals. That’s actually spelled out pretty clearly in the oath, for those who can read. When people write things like this it’s patently obvious that they have no experience whatever of the military, nor usually of the places in the world of which they speak. The most glaring omission is that they lack the understanding that a lot of military leadership training consists not of HOW to kill, but under what circumstances you should or should not. I’m sure we could all come up with a LONG list of when it is tactically superior to capture, wound or simply intimidate rather than kill the enemy.
As for “supporting U.S. hegemony in the world”, well let’s take that a piece at a time. Afghanistan was a response to an act of war on US soil. Apparently this guy doesn’t remember that. Iraq I’ll get to in a minute. Japan and Germany are leftovers from WWII and the Cold War, but I think it can be safely argued that both Japan and Germany have benefitted mightily by it, as has the US and the rest of the world in the long run. Places like Korea and Vietnam, where when we are/were there it was at the request of the host government, were for the purpose of resisting the Chinese hegemony in the world, but since China is collectivist apparently that makes us the bad guys for resisting them, even when the Saigon and Seoul governments *asked us to*. Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia… that’s mostly cleanup of military action begun by Bill Clinton, but since the Clintons are more socialist than Bush I guess that’s Bush’s fault too. I wonder if they were “gangsters” and “thugs” when Clinton was giving them orders. Probably not.
And finally, the centerpiece, the one everyone loves to throw up in people’s faces as an example of Bush’s “evil”. Iraq. The left is fond of saying Bush lied, but of course they conveniently forget that all of their leftist buddies in Congress had access to the exact same intel as Bush, and enough of them agreed with the assessment to vote FOR it. It can be proven that Saddam Hussein nerve gassed his own people by the hundreds of thousands, but putting a stop to that is somehow a “killing machine” and letting it continue would not have been. Someone will have to explain that one to me, I just don’t get it. And of course, “there were no WMDs.”
It wasn’t long ago that I saw in the news an article about a recently discovered cache of gold and/or artwork hidden by the Nazis in WWII. If I remember correctly, it amounted to several tons and quite a large volume, and yet it remained undiscovered in a place as modern and as thickly populated as Europe for over 60 years. By the standards of evidence the modern political left uses, that cache never existed, right?
I’m not a CBR warfare expert, I can’t claim to know how much space such things take up nor how much they weigh. I suspect you could wipe out a city the size of Houston TX with the amount of anthrax that would fill a large coffee can, but I don’t KNOW. But to be fair, let’s err on the side of being over volume and over weight. Iraq is approximately the size of California. Granted, it’s not as thickly populated, and California doesn’t have quite the immense tracts of desert where one night’s breeze can erase all traces that anyone was ever there, but okay. Let’s hide two 53 foot cargo trailers somewhere in California. Let’s even stipulate that they are to be hidden together. Let’s give the far left “Bush lied” crowd one calendar year to find them. Granted, it’s only one year instead of six, but it’s not a war zone either. They aren’t in any real danger of being blown to doll rags, kidnapped and beheaded or shot from ambush. At least, not anywhere except places like east L.A., and that’s just “normal” criminal activity for the area.
If at the end of one year they haven’t found them, those two trailers never existed, the people looking for them lied, and they should be stood against a wall and shot. Either that or spend life in prison. That’s pretty closely equivalent to the standard they think Bush should be held to, right? But do you think there’s even ONE of em stupid enough to accept that challenge on those terms? Even taking into account as stupid as they demonstrably ARE?Well done, GoF! Yes, it’s a rigged game in so many ways. That’s the circular and egocentric “logic” the left uses. They don’t hold the opposition to high standards. No, they hold the opposition to absolute perfection, and anything less is a crime. Their side can say or do anything, since the means justify the ends.
One of the big reasons that the Iraq campaign costs so much is that we are doing whatever possible to minimize collateral damage, regardless of expense. If you read that dispatch by Micahel Yon I linked to the other day, the troops he was writing about were using Hellfire missiles to take out tiny handfuls of jihadis. Though most of the missiles are leftovers from the Cold War, each precision guided Hellfire is worth about $100,000. Their warhead is a small 20lb shaped charge, but it’s still felt that this is too big a bang for the task. The rules in Iraq are rigged too: their side can do whatever it wants with whatever they can get their hands on, but our troops and our weapons systems are held to a level of precision and minimality the likes of which has never been seen in warfare.
Peiper - in the middle of New York City, in the heart of Times Square, is a small recruiting office for the armed services. It’s been there forever. A week or so ago someone threw a little bomb against the front window in the middle of the night. Minor damage, no injuries, but security cameras showed the guy rode past on a bicycle. Thus the local papers started calling him the Bicycle Bomber. It doesn’t look like he’ll ever be caught, and many far left anti-war websites are celebrating his action.
Well, this leftist stooge is correct about one matter. Once cannot support the troops and not support the war against terrorim. Therefore, all the Democrat politicos who claim they “support the troops” and yet do not support the war on terror are lying in their teeth.
As if that’s a factual breakthrough.
Disgusting parasite. Using the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution and maintained by the Armed Forces to accuse those Armed Forces of hideous crimes. Parasite.
He’s sick. I don’t care if any of his facts are right or wrong. His basic premise is so deeply flawed I have to question his sanity.
We have the privilege of being United States citizens. He seems to hate that he shares the privilege.
If it’s imperialism that we’re doing, we should lay it on thick and hold tight. When I look at the despots and other murderous wackos that rule where we aren’t, I feel pretty good about what we’re doing. We’re the world’s cop on the beat. We’re the economic engine that spins the planet. Say what you will about our failings, the world would be much worse off without our “imperialism”.
Well now that’s another point, Jeff. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that he’s correct in every detail, that our armed forces are nothing but mass murderers and it’s all “US imperialism”. Okay, I could see the validity of his points if that were the case, but that STILL leaves a question begging:
If you object SOOOOO much, why haven’t you moved to one of those countries “targeted by US imperialists” where you can fight against it? Why are you sitting there in your swank northern California home, enabled and protected by those very killers whose actions you cannot countenance, whining about it? Too dumbass to notice that talk is cheap? Or too cowardly or opportunistic to let that deter you from staying home, where you can be safe?
Can you say “living off the backs of the oppressed”? I knew that you could.
