Monday, July 06, 2009
Yglesias is at it again ...
The increasingly unhinged Matt Yglesias is at it again, this time leveling his sights on those evil Jew neocons, spreading their wicked ideologies like a cancer on the body politic.
It’s actually true that neocon bashing is a bit on the tiresome side. That said, I think it really has to be understood as a vital social necessity. Adherents of a deranged and sociopoathic “neocon” conception of America’s role in the world continue to be tremendously influential in our society. They have columns at The Washington Post and dominate the foreign policy coverage on Fox News. They have The Weekly Standard and Commentary and a healthy slice of The New Republic. And most important, as best as anyone can tell their ideas remain utterly dominant in the Republican Party.
The JOOOOOS! The JOOOOOOOOS are infesting our media!
Seriously, Matt. Sociopathic?? I'm not sure just how many layers of arrogance and idiocy to peel back, here. But let's start by saying that both the terms neoconservative and sociopathic have meanings. And Matt clearly has a twisted, lazy-man libtard idea of both of those definitions.
There is simply no way on earth that neoconservatism can be expressed or labeled sociopathological. None.
Look:
From Dictionary.com:
Neoconservative:
Ok, I guess there may be some pathology imported from libtards and socialists. But that's an unsatisfying definition. In order to be a meaningful geopolitical model, neoconservatism must have a definition beyond that of describing the former persuasions of its adherents. I submit this definition from Wikipedia:
Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States of America, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries.
Close enough to be useful. And clearly, as far as batshit-whacked libtards are concerned, there is nothing more clearly sociopathological, nothing that bespeaks the lack of a moral compass or sense of social responsibility, then the belief that the US should spread liberalism, democracy, and respect for human rights to the rest of the world. JFK was clearly, as far as Yglesias must be concerned, a sociopath.
Yglesias lets the mask slip: Sure, you can make a case that neoconservatism is misguided, that it doesn't work in practice, that those swarthy brown little sub-human ragheads overseas are not ready for democracy and they will only devolve into a howling mob of Israel-hating, genocidal whackjobs. I don't believe any of those things are necessarily true, but one could build and argue a respectful and rational case for them.
But the ONLY way anyone could seriously assert that neoconservatism is pathological is if they actually hated Western values.
Yglesias has already demonstrated himself so full of shit he can't draw a distinction between the Bush White House and the inhuman, brutal, murderous thugocracy in power in North Korea.
Splash, out
Jason
EDIT: I should note that I do think there have been true sociopaths in public life. William Ayers would be one example. Marion Barry.
Unlike Yglesias, I know what words mean, I don't throw words around lightly, and I don't use specific diagnoses as a political club without understanding the term.
Back in my reporting days, there would be no way I could get away with that garbage. Because I had real editors who cared about the truth. (That's you, Adam, Maggie, and John!). I don't know who the adult supervision is at The Atlantic, but I'd get pretty tired of lazy-assed hatchet men like Sullivan and Yglesias screwing up my brand pretty fast.
This guy needs an editor.
It’s actually true that neocon bashing is a bit on the tiresome side. That said, I think it really has to be understood as a vital social necessity. Adherents of a deranged and sociopoathic “neocon” conception of America’s role in the world continue to be tremendously influential in our society. They have columns at The Washington Post and dominate the foreign policy coverage on Fox News. They have The Weekly Standard and Commentary and a healthy slice of The New Republic. And most important, as best as anyone can tell their ideas remain utterly dominant in the Republican Party.
The JOOOOOS! The JOOOOOOOOS are infesting our media!
Seriously, Matt. Sociopathic?? I'm not sure just how many layers of arrogance and idiocy to peel back, here. But let's start by saying that both the terms neoconservative and sociopathic have meanings. And Matt clearly has a twisted, lazy-man libtard idea of both of those definitions.
There is simply no way on earth that neoconservatism can be expressed or labeled sociopathological. None.
Look:
From Dictionary.com:
–noun Psychiatry.
a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
Neoconservative:
–nouns.
moderate political conservatism espoused or advocated by former liberals or socialist
Ok, I guess there may be some pathology imported from libtards and socialists. But that's an unsatisfying definition. In order to be a meaningful geopolitical model, neoconservatism must have a definition beyond that of describing the former persuasions of its adherents. I submit this definition from Wikipedia:
Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States of America, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries.
Close enough to be useful. And clearly, as far as batshit-whacked libtards are concerned, there is nothing more clearly sociopathological, nothing that bespeaks the lack of a moral compass or sense of social responsibility, then the belief that the US should spread liberalism, democracy, and respect for human rights to the rest of the world. JFK was clearly, as far as Yglesias must be concerned, a sociopath.
Yglesias lets the mask slip: Sure, you can make a case that neoconservatism is misguided, that it doesn't work in practice, that those swarthy brown little sub-human ragheads overseas are not ready for democracy and they will only devolve into a howling mob of Israel-hating, genocidal whackjobs. I don't believe any of those things are necessarily true, but one could build and argue a respectful and rational case for them.
But the ONLY way anyone could seriously assert that neoconservatism is pathological is if they actually hated Western values.
Yglesias has already demonstrated himself so full of shit he can't draw a distinction between the Bush White House and the inhuman, brutal, murderous thugocracy in power in North Korea.
Splash, out
Jason
EDIT: I should note that I do think there have been true sociopaths in public life. William Ayers would be one example. Marion Barry.
Unlike Yglesias, I know what words mean, I don't throw words around lightly, and I don't use specific diagnoses as a political club without understanding the term.
Back in my reporting days, there would be no way I could get away with that garbage. Because I had real editors who cared about the truth. (That's you, Adam, Maggie, and John!). I don't know who the adult supervision is at The Atlantic, but I'd get pretty tired of lazy-assed hatchet men like Sullivan and Yglesias screwing up my brand pretty fast.
This guy needs an editor.
Labels: bloggers, foreign policy, The media, Yglesias
Monday, June 08, 2009
How dare you, Mr. Yglesias?
How dare you, in your wildest wet dreams of moral equivocation, even remotely compare the Bush Administration with the monstrous crimes of the North Korean government and their brutal gulag system?
Everything's a point-scoring game to you, isn't it?
You honestly can't discern a significant difference in kind and degree between the two?
Have you no decency, sir?
At long last, have you no decency?
Splash, out
Jason
As in the Soviet Union during the high tide of the Gulag, it appears that the forced labor camps are important to the regime not just as a mechanism of repression, but as part of the economic model and the internal incentives of the bureaucracy. Spencer Ackerman also links to the State Department’s human rights report on the DPRK:[P]rolonged periods of exposure to the elements; humiliations such as public nakedness; confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down; being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods; being hung by the wrists; being forced to stand up and sit down to the point of collapse.
Needless to say, it’s easy to recognize this sort of barbarism as the torture that it is when you read about it being done by North Korea (it appears that the Bush administration and the DPRK were both modeling themselves on the Chinese Communist tactics from the Korean War). And it is being done, and on a massive scale.
Everything's a point-scoring game to you, isn't it?
You honestly can't discern a significant difference in kind and degree between the two?
Have you no decency, sir?
At long last, have you no decency?
Splash, out
Jason
Labels: bloggers, Korea, stupid, Yglesias
Friday, July 04, 2008
How does a libtard observe Independence Day?
Fireworks?
Barbecues?
Time with family?
Honoring our flag, the republic for which it stands, and honoring our nation's armed forces?
Hell no! By wishing that our country could have been even more awesome by appeasing its oppressors, ditching the founding documents, pissing on the Rights of Man, and not bothering with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Barbecues?
Time with family?
Honoring our flag, the republic for which it stands, and honoring our nation's armed forces?
Hell no! By wishing that our country could have been even more awesome by appeasing its oppressors, ditching the founding documents, pissing on the Rights of Man, and not bothering with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Friday, June 20, 2008
More on Yglesias and Iran
I meant to get to this this morning when I wrote the first post on the Cesspool at the Atlantic, below:
Another mistake Yglesias makes commenters make - actually, a huge gaping maw in his argument, but it's a very common mistake on the left - is assuming that US power would necessarily neutralize an Iranian bomb because of our nuclear deterrent. Iran would not commit national suicide by actually using it. Here's Matt:
This aside, the idea that any Iranian leader would commit national suicide in order to harm Israel is ridiculous. Lots of “crazy” leaders -- Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il -- have had nuclear weapons and they've never done anything like that. What's more, if Iran wanted to start a war with Israel, kill a bunch of Jews, and get wiped out in the process they could do that with conventional weapons. But in more than 20 years in power, the Islamic Republic's never done any such thing. Indeed, just over the weekend Iran announced it would offer up a paltry $50 million in aid to the new Hamas-ified Palestinian Authority compared with many hundreds of millions in funding the PA lost from Europe and the United States. Just as they taught me in Hebrew school, the Islamic world's governments like to talk a big game about Israel, but don't actually give a rat's ass about the issue and never have.
They'll do anything to help the Palestinian cause unless it involves spending money, risking the stability of their own regimes, or deploying their military assets. Now we're supposed to believe that, suddenly, the Mullahs are willing to guarantee their own destruction in order to turn the holy city of Jerusalem into a radioactive wasteland. That's absurd.
That's naive.
Modern warfare is different from warfare just a few years ago. Iran, via Quds Force and Hezbollah, maintains a vast network of shadowy proxies more than willing to commit murder and genocide on Iran's behalf. Iran needn't put an obvious fingerprint on a WMD attack on Israel, or anyone else they choose. All they need is plausible deniability.
Yglesias fails to consider the nature of war by proxy. But the existence of nonstate terror networks, led by religious fanatics with a martyr complex, or at least led by those who can and do successfully recruit same, combined with nuclear proliferation, turn the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction on its head.
We've already seen the idea at work. The Taliban were perfectly willing to commit national suicide, at least as far as their regime was concerned, because of Al Qaeda.
Further, a limited nuclear strike need not level the whole city of Jerusalem. Just a few key blocks of it. If they strike while Knesset is in session, or if they just get lucky with the timing, they can actually go a long way toward decapitating the Israeli government. It's not all about 25 Megaton Warheads, Matt. We have tactical nuclear weapons, too, with much smaller yields, and they can be loaded onto vehicles as small as an artillery shell.
It's time to update your strategic thinking.
Splash, out
Jason
Another mistake Yglesias makes commenters make - actually, a huge gaping maw in his argument, but it's a very common mistake on the left - is assuming that US power would necessarily neutralize an Iranian bomb because of our nuclear deterrent. Iran would not commit national suicide by actually using it. Here's Matt:
This aside, the idea that any Iranian leader would commit national suicide in order to harm Israel is ridiculous. Lots of “crazy” leaders -- Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il -- have had nuclear weapons and they've never done anything like that. What's more, if Iran wanted to start a war with Israel, kill a bunch of Jews, and get wiped out in the process they could do that with conventional weapons. But in more than 20 years in power, the Islamic Republic's never done any such thing. Indeed, just over the weekend Iran announced it would offer up a paltry $50 million in aid to the new Hamas-ified Palestinian Authority compared with many hundreds of millions in funding the PA lost from Europe and the United States. Just as they taught me in Hebrew school, the Islamic world's governments like to talk a big game about Israel, but don't actually give a rat's ass about the issue and never have.
They'll do anything to help the Palestinian cause unless it involves spending money, risking the stability of their own regimes, or deploying their military assets. Now we're supposed to believe that, suddenly, the Mullahs are willing to guarantee their own destruction in order to turn the holy city of Jerusalem into a radioactive wasteland. That's absurd.
That's naive.
Modern warfare is different from warfare just a few years ago. Iran, via Quds Force and Hezbollah, maintains a vast network of shadowy proxies more than willing to commit murder and genocide on Iran's behalf. Iran needn't put an obvious fingerprint on a WMD attack on Israel, or anyone else they choose. All they need is plausible deniability.
Yglesias fails to consider the nature of war by proxy. But the existence of nonstate terror networks, led by religious fanatics with a martyr complex, or at least led by those who can and do successfully recruit same, combined with nuclear proliferation, turn the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction on its head.
We've already seen the idea at work. The Taliban were perfectly willing to commit national suicide, at least as far as their regime was concerned, because of Al Qaeda.
Further, a limited nuclear strike need not level the whole city of Jerusalem. Just a few key blocks of it. If they strike while Knesset is in session, or if they just get lucky with the timing, they can actually go a long way toward decapitating the Israeli government. It's not all about 25 Megaton Warheads, Matt. We have tactical nuclear weapons, too, with much smaller yields, and they can be loaded onto vehicles as small as an artillery shell.
It's time to update your strategic thinking.
Splash, out
Jason
Labels: Iran, War on Terror, Warfighting, Yglesias
Cesspool at The Atlantic Monthly
In a breathtaking display of just how far brain-addled libtards will deceive themselves in order to assume the good faith of the most vile reptiles slithering across the surface of the planet, Yglesias is actually seriously floating the notion that Ahmadinejad can be negotiated with. Why? Because even though the man has repeatedly called for the destruction of the Zionist entity, he is not known, in public, to have called for the wholesale slaughter of the Jewish people.
In doing so, Yglesias amazingly cites the disappearance of Poland in the 18th Century under Catherine the Great of Russia and its partition between Russia, Prussia and Austria as an example in which a country was eliminated from the face of the planet without a slaughter of the inhabitants (the fact that Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in 1939-1945 and slaughtered millions of Poles, Jewish and otherwise, between them somehow escapes his analysis).
Yglesias is further hobbled by his naivete in calling for the absence of a coercive element in American diplomacy. In the absence of coercion, there is simply no reason for Ahmadinejad to acquiesce to a single Western objective. Instead, he will continue to develop his nuclear program until such a time as Ahmadinejad can turn the tables of coercion, except now armed with one or more nuclear weapons and a shadowy network of terrorists to deploy them - thus sharply limiting western options for response.
But let us assume that Yglesias, and his Jew-hating mentors Mearsheimer is correct. Let's assume that Ahmadinejad is simply calling for a transfer of state power over Israeli land, and harbors no ill will toward the Jewish people. Well, to whom would one transfer such power? The Palestinian Authority? in other words, Hamas? But Hamas's spokesman, Dr. Ismael Radwan, has publicly called for the slaughter of Jews. No, not their transfer to political minority status in a representative government. Not their enslavement. Their slaughter.
Yglesias uses the term "in good faith" as if he knows what he's talking about. But can any westerner, Israeli or otherwise, acting in good faith with his or her family, entrust the fate of Jewish children to Hamas?
Let's go further: Hamas is not a fringe movement in Palestine. It is mainstream. It is the democratically elected majority government of Palestine. Its genocidal rhetoric and terrorist actions are a direct mandate of the wishes of the Palestinian people. If Hamas authority should weaken, one has to reckon with the possibility that into the power vacuum would swarm a howling, genocidal mob. It happened throughout Eastern Europe throughout the middle ages and into the 20th century. It happened in Nazi-occupied Europe, leveraged by the advances of rail technology and industrialization. It happened in Rwanda in the 1990s and it can certainly happen again in post-2000 Israel and Palestine.
It is not a neccessity. It is not a foregone conclusion. But it is, however, a distinct and substantial probability that represents a gamble the Israelis cannot afford to lose.
By eliminating the coercive element of American diplomacy vis. Iran, Yglesias removes any urgency for an early settlement on the part of Iran, and would only render the neccessity of a direct war between Israel and Iran more likely, not less ... and moves the time frame of the conflict back to a time when Iran will be a much stronger and more potent threat than it is now.
This policy, espoused by Yglesias, would not prevent American involvement in a war. It would escalate it, and the only advantage to America would be that we could perhaps complete the current phase of the Iraq war so that we would not have to fight the Iranians astride our key supply lines into Iraq.
The greatest stupidity in Yglesias's essay, though, comes in these words:
you could draw a distinction between the idea of destroying Israel as a political entity and the idea of destroying its population.
No, you usefully cannot, because both ideas are wholly, completely unacceptable - at least to freedom-loving people. I guess libtards no longer qualify. What Yglesias is doing is laying the intellectual groundwork for selling out a free people into slavery and fear. To free men, and New Hampshire residents, such a tradeoff is unthinkable. To a libtard, it's just one more card on the table. But actually leveraging military power in defense of freedom, of course, is off the table.
Natch, in floating this repulsive construction, he's germinated the seeds of libtardism, allowing the latent anti-semitic, Jew-baiting tendencies therein to become florid. Read the comments.
Splash, out
Jason
In doing so, Yglesias amazingly cites the disappearance of Poland in the 18th Century under Catherine the Great of Russia and its partition between Russia, Prussia and Austria as an example in which a country was eliminated from the face of the planet without a slaughter of the inhabitants (the fact that Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in 1939-1945 and slaughtered millions of Poles, Jewish and otherwise, between them somehow escapes his analysis).
Yglesias is further hobbled by his naivete in calling for the absence of a coercive element in American diplomacy. In the absence of coercion, there is simply no reason for Ahmadinejad to acquiesce to a single Western objective. Instead, he will continue to develop his nuclear program until such a time as Ahmadinejad can turn the tables of coercion, except now armed with one or more nuclear weapons and a shadowy network of terrorists to deploy them - thus sharply limiting western options for response.
But let us assume that Yglesias, and his Jew-hating mentors Mearsheimer is correct. Let's assume that Ahmadinejad is simply calling for a transfer of state power over Israeli land, and harbors no ill will toward the Jewish people. Well, to whom would one transfer such power? The Palestinian Authority? in other words, Hamas? But Hamas's spokesman, Dr. Ismael Radwan, has publicly called for the slaughter of Jews. No, not their transfer to political minority status in a representative government. Not their enslavement. Their slaughter.
Yglesias uses the term "in good faith" as if he knows what he's talking about. But can any westerner, Israeli or otherwise, acting in good faith with his or her family, entrust the fate of Jewish children to Hamas?
Let's go further: Hamas is not a fringe movement in Palestine. It is mainstream. It is the democratically elected majority government of Palestine. Its genocidal rhetoric and terrorist actions are a direct mandate of the wishes of the Palestinian people. If Hamas authority should weaken, one has to reckon with the possibility that into the power vacuum would swarm a howling, genocidal mob. It happened throughout Eastern Europe throughout the middle ages and into the 20th century. It happened in Nazi-occupied Europe, leveraged by the advances of rail technology and industrialization. It happened in Rwanda in the 1990s and it can certainly happen again in post-2000 Israel and Palestine.
It is not a neccessity. It is not a foregone conclusion. But it is, however, a distinct and substantial probability that represents a gamble the Israelis cannot afford to lose.
By eliminating the coercive element of American diplomacy vis. Iran, Yglesias removes any urgency for an early settlement on the part of Iran, and would only render the neccessity of a direct war between Israel and Iran more likely, not less ... and moves the time frame of the conflict back to a time when Iran will be a much stronger and more potent threat than it is now.
This policy, espoused by Yglesias, would not prevent American involvement in a war. It would escalate it, and the only advantage to America would be that we could perhaps complete the current phase of the Iraq war so that we would not have to fight the Iranians astride our key supply lines into Iraq.
The greatest stupidity in Yglesias's essay, though, comes in these words:
you could draw a distinction between the idea of destroying Israel as a political entity and the idea of destroying its population.
No, you usefully cannot, because both ideas are wholly, completely unacceptable - at least to freedom-loving people. I guess libtards no longer qualify. What Yglesias is doing is laying the intellectual groundwork for selling out a free people into slavery and fear. To free men, and New Hampshire residents, such a tradeoff is unthinkable. To a libtard, it's just one more card on the table. But actually leveraging military power in defense of freedom, of course, is off the table.
Natch, in floating this repulsive construction, he's germinated the seeds of libtardism, allowing the latent anti-semitic, Jew-baiting tendencies therein to become florid. Read the comments.
Splash, out
Jason
Labels: Iran, The Left, Yglesias
