Why Tacitus is the best blogger on the right.

Nor would I expect you to Dean. You enjoy it too much. There's nothing quite as satisfying as call the opposition morally bankrupt traitors.

Tacitus is indeed brilliant. Thanks Max for the link. He probably won't like it, but he just made the Dispassionate Lib's Blogroll.

But after you digest tacitus, look at the Perspective on Sadr's Insurgency by Zeyad. God bless him, he's caught in the crossfire.

Didn't call anyone a traitor, Max, but I'm not surprised to see you put words in my mouth.

Noting that your positon is morally bankrupt is not emotionally satisfying. Unless you consider wanting to throw up a satisfying feeling. I don't.

Everything said against Iraq invasion opponents has already been uttered before against Vietnam War opponents. Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern -- all these adjectives have been applied to them. When people use terms such as "morally bankrupt" I just think of Michael Savage and Ann Coulter and laugh my head off.

Joel: You can prove anything you want if you make up your data.

But then, obviously I don't have to tell you that, do I?

I wonder if Dean thinks it's "morally bankrupt" not to invade and depose all the other despots and tyrants around the globe. (And if it is, I'd love to hear his schedule, by country and date. Bring it on!)

I wonder if he thinks it's "morally bankrupt" to object to pictures of the horrors of war in Iraq now, but not to pictures of corpses from Saddam's mass graves.

I wonder if it was "morally bankrupt" of the United States to support and arm Saddam when these atrocities were being committed. Makes all the corpse photos and carping about "humanitarianism" now that the WMD case has fallen apart seem pretty hollow.

I personally think many of the statements and actions of this administration leading up to the Iraq war were morally bankrupt. I won't list them here because we all know them anyway, and everyone's made up their minds. I guess there's a lot of moral bankruptcy to go around.

It would be nice to have the ability to depose every despot and tyrant around the globe. However, we lack the resources to do such a thing.

That said, we had a direct responsibility in Iraq, not to mention over a decade of "non-negotiable" demands that were not met. Continued refusal to act when we had a clear responsibility and a clear mandate for action, not to mention a clear strategic interest, was morally reprehensible.

I do not particularly consider it morally bankrupt to show the horrors of war. I consider it morally bankrupt to refuse to cover our victories, and to refuse to look at the cost of allowing defeat. I also consider it morally bankrupt to use pictures of carnage for partisan purposes.

As for notion that America "supported" or "armed" Saddam. This is, quite simply, inaccurate, and based either on willful dishonesty or willful ignorance--the data debunking it having been published countless places, including here, and the data supporting it always having been weak--it is of course morally bankrupt to continue to spout it.

Oh, I guess that photo with Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in 1983 is a fake, right? And a particularly ironic and juicy one, too, considering Rumsfeld's position today.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/husseinindex.htm

We have always been at war with Oceania.

The Gonzalez hearings in the House years ago proved that the U.S. helped to arm Saddam. It is making up facts to say that the U.S. didn't assist Saddam. The earlier Bush administration was so upset by what Gonzales was doing that they tried every way they could to stonewall the committee.

You're right Dean, I was referring to your open questioning the patriotism of critics who do not offer an alternative, and 'traitor' is an extension you did not make, although in the pejorative sense it is used in these days the terms seems interchangeable.

Dean,
Some of those who no longer support Bush really do think that a good moral argument existed to take down Saddam and, yes, part of that argument is that we helped to create and maintain his political power. Trouble is, Bush didn’t make that argument. At least, not in contrast to the politically expedient WMD rationale and probably only in the effort to cover as many bases as possibly (total, I think he earned about 30 runs).

In the process, he lost the support of allies who knew enough to know just how dishonest the administration’s case was and that their real motive was greater Middle East hegemony for the US. That was obvious in the terms for US participation laid before the UN. As it turned out, the French, Germans and even the Russians weren’t as politically naïve or as easy to roll as the administration assumed they’d be.

That’s why I don’t support Bush. Not because there was no moral case for removing Saddam and helping Iraqis build a better government but because Bush was never very interested in the moral reasons for invading Iraq and therefore destroyed our best chance for success.

Adam -

RE: USA arming Saddam

During the 1991 Gulf War the armed forces of Iraq had equipment such as AK 47 rifles, T-55, T-62, T-72 tanks, BTR 60, BTR 70, BMP-A armored personnel carriers, ZSU 23 anit-aircreft racks, MiG 21, MiG 25, Mirage fighters.

What is the characteristic these all have in common? With the exception of the Mirage, all of these weapons were Soviet designs and acquired from either the Soviet Union or nations that built them under license.

This list is not exhaustive, but Iraq had no arms in any militarily significant quantity from the United States. Sorry guys, but Iraq was a Soviet client, not a US client. Iran had been the US client. Of course, after the fall of the Shah, that ceased and during the Iran/Iraq war the US provided some non-material assistance on the old enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-ally-of-convenience theory. But it was never a close relationship (USS Stark, anyone?)

[After the Gulf War, Iraq had considerably less Soviet surplus.]

I'm sure we can find several photos of FDR and Truman shaking hands with Stalin in the good old days. They shook hands with Stalin for the same reason Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam. In the context of realpolitiks - The enemy of my enemy is my friend. So, that photo means, of course, to the loyal opposition, that our relationship with any country is frozen in time never to be altered when the situation has changed.

Jane:

With all due respect, it's Dean who wants to rewrite history, not me. I just want him to acknowledge just what you said, that our position on Saddam has been, shall we say, fluid. But he won't do that. Anyone like Dean who is hanging so much on the humanitarian case for the Iraq war should be willing to admit that we looked the other way for a long time, because it was politically expedient.

Mike,
We've repeated that information over and over. I've come to the conclusion that what the leftists really lack, above all else, is the ability to learn.
And I see shep once more makes the tired, false case that those conries tha opposed the war did so for moral reasons, rather than the bottom line of companies such as Total Fina Elf.
There was blood for oil, shep, and its on you and your fellow travellers hands. We stopped the bloodshed.

And that's a very good thing, John.

With the exception of a few dyspeptic libertarians, whose websites I decline to visit, when I taste bile, it's a lefty spewing it.

John Irving:

Please don't take this the wrong way, but you aren't doing your side any good with posts like that.

Classing everyone on the "left" (whatver the fuck that means these days) in a single way is not clear thinking. Reverse it: do you think everyone on the "right" can be defined so monolithically?

And yes, sometimes I get irriated with shep myself, when I think that he's not being intellectually fair in a particular argument, but I don't for a second think that he's stupid, craven, nor an "Amerkka hater."

As for opposing the war, believe it or not, there are people out there who have legitimate moral or political grounds for opposing it, at least origonally.

Again, saying that no one had moral grounds for opposing the war is not only inaccurate, but insulting to those groups.

I have said this before, and I'll say it again: what is the ultimate goal of your comments? Do you want to engage in discourse and (perhaps) change minds, or do you just want to comingle with your fellow believers, and insult the other side?

If the latter, then I doubt anything I say will have an effect on your. But if the former, then (perhaps) you might reconsider your approach.

Do you really think that shep, and people like him, will be willing to listen to someone who says, flat out, that they have no moral basis for their position, and that the blood of innocents is on their hands?

Now if it was me, and someone tried to pull that on my position, I'd probably tell them to FOAD. In fact, I probably have by now, considering my track record here! {wry grin} So why shouldn't people like shep react the same way?

Oh, yes, there are those on the lunatic fringe with the "Bush==Hitler" signs who probably do fit your description. But why shoot yourself in the foot and alientate the opposition (i.e. the sane opposition) by insulting them that way? All you'll accomplish will be closing a lot of others' minds.

Oh, Bill? If you want conservative bile, run on over to the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. You'll get your fill, real quick! Heh.

With that said:
shep, your comments about allies reminds me of something that has been bothering me lately. The question is this: what allies?

The great majority of NATO (for example) are with us on this, not to mention the now-famous "coalition of the willing," despite Dowd's insulting remarks about "lapdogs."

So which allies, specifically have we "alienated?" Before you answer, recall that France left NATO in the early 60s and since then has regularly acted against US interests during the following forty years.

Russia, as the USSR, was our primary enemy for two generations, up until the collapse of the Soviet Union. While our relations have improved, I see no reason to call them an "ally," unless you want to use that term to mean "any country that isn't actively working against US interests," which seems somewhat negative.

Which leaves Germany. Germany is a part of NATO, and their Navy, at least, holds the proper sentiments about 9/11. But do the people of Germany, in general, agree? Note that the government in power, along with many other major European countries, are strongly oriented towards socialist, centrally-directed and highly organized economies, as well as a level of government control of private life that the vast majority of Americans find repugnant.

To be truthful, Germany is an ally only to the extent that the US can protect her from Russia, and no further.

Allies are those who hold a strategic objective, or traditions and beliefs in common.

What has America had in common with France the past forty years? Also Germany? Aside from the fear of the Soviet Union? No, really?

Victor Hanson has written about this several times. It is past time that we admit that France has not been our ally for over twenty years, and Germany for at least the past ten or fifteen. We have little in common anymore.

Calling countries like that allies is an exercise in misty nostalgia, not an act of strategic analysis.

Don't know if you'll check this thread again, Casey, but have you read shep's repeated statements? I don't believe he's an anti-American, just as a parent who keeps a loaded gun on his coffee table at all times is anti-children. It's just as dangerous. But I already know there's no hope of convincing him, when his positions get backed into a corner he makes up whatever facts he needs to get out. He did so again with his claim that France, Germany, and Russia had moral reasons to continue to allow Saddam to be a growing threat and a mass-murderer. I usually resist, but its difficult to let those statements go unchallenged.
As for "leftist," thats become the consensus term in many places I've seen for those of the far-left, it isn't meant to paint everyone who leans liberal, as even I do on many topics.

No Americans were put in those mass graves, nor were any Americans subject to Saddam's various other debaucheries. In no way was Saddam a serious threat to the US, and any sort of theoretical long-range threat could have been dealt with by a steady 'enveloping' via the UN/sanctions approach. Those mass graves, and those other debaucheries, reflect what a miserable and failed culture and people Arabs and Muslims embody(as does the existance of Saddam and others of his ilk as the 'leadership' of such societies), and are a powerful argument for keeping our interactions with such people and countries to an absolute minimum-as well as prohibiting such creatures from moving to this country.Those who feel they must embark on some grand mission to save the ignorant and failed of the world from their mostly self-inflicted depradations should do so on their own time and own dime, and not drag the rest of the country, it's tax dollars or it's military's lives along on the road to nowhere.

Casey,
I get your point. But we have NATO support for Afghanistan and, in my opinion, we needed at least that amount of international impramatur for this effort. Right now, we're facing the consequences of a widepread uprising against - from the Iraqi perspective - American imperialism. Hopefully that won't happen but that's what us leftists have been bitching about since Bush decided to go with the "coalition" of the willing. This is just too dangerous and expensive a policy to fail for having the wrong face on it.

John,
FYI, I keep my loaded gun in my locked safe. And I made no claim about the morality of the French, Germans or Russians. We're talking enlightened self-interest here, across-the-board. That was my point.

Not very enlightened, shep, if those three countries would rather support a mass-murderer than their largest trading partner. Seems their 'self-interest' is in being opposition to the U.S.
In which case, as an American, I say to hell with them. They need us a lot more than we need them.