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Ann Coulter: Liberal Arguments: Still A Quagmire

 
 
Reply Tue 2 Sep, 2003 08:48 am
Ann Coulter: Liberal Arguments: Still A Quagmire
August 27, 2003

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War

LIBERALS ARE hopping mad about the war with Iraq. Showing the nuance and complexity of thought liberals pride themselves on, they are excitedly restating all the arguments they made before the war - arguments which were soundly rejected by the American people, the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration.

Before the war, they said Saddam Hussein - their favorite world leader behind Jacques Chirac - was not a threat to America's interests in the region, was not developing weapons of mass destruction, and did not harbor terrorists. Now that we've taken the country and are uncovering mass graves, canisters of poison gases, victims of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and colonies of terrorists, liberals are claiming the war created it all.

Thus, an op-ed piece in the New York Times recently proclaimed: "America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one." This was written by Jessica Stern of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (Motto: "Where mediocre students pay exorbitant sums to say they went to Harvard"). You can't win with these people. The termites are swarming out into the light of day, and liberals are blaming the exterminator.

Liberals simply refuse to consider thoughts that would interfere with their lemming-like groupthink. They hold their hands over their ears like little children who don't want to listen to mother.

Yes, perhaps there are important textural differences between secular Saddam loyalists and Islamic crazies - though it's a little odd to be lectured on nuance from people who can grasp no difference whatsoever between Bill O'Reilly and Jesse Helms. But as George Bush said: You are with the terrorists or you are with America. Now we're getting a pretty clear picture of who is with the terrorists. As George Patton said, I like when the enemy shoots at me; then I know where the bastards are and can kill them.

But liberals are indignant for every day that we haven't turned a barbaric land into Vermont. They were willing to give Stalin 36 years for the awkwardness of his revolution. We have essentially imposed a revolution on Iraq - and liberals give us a month to work out the bugs. U.S. forces in Baghdad say that Iraq is well on its way to establishing American-style representative democracy and might even be holding its first free elections in less than a year. Within three years, the Iraqi people could be recalling their first governor.

Indeed, the war is going so well that now liberals have to create absurd straw-man arguments no one ever uttered in order to accuse the Bush administration of horrible miscalculations. Amid her sneering, PMS-induced anger toward the Bush administration, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd claimed the Bush administration was "shaken" to discover "the terrible truth: Just because we got Odai and Qusai, Iraqi militants are not going to stop blowing up Westerners." I'd love to see the quote where anyone in the Bush administration - anyone in the universe - said that.

Admittedly, Republicans were not mourning the deaths of Odai and Qusai the way Democrats were, but only a moron would think that killing these two monsters would mark the end of the war on terrorism. Normandy didn't end World War II. That didn't make it a failure. MacArthur was still in Tokyo straightening out Japan in 1950 - five years after V-J Day. Not only was Japan an advanced and ethnically unified country, but U.S. forces also made things easier for MacArthur by killing several million of the most militant anti-American Japanese during World War II. Paul Bremer doesn't have this advantage in Iraq. In fact, he has the reverse situation: Saddam killed the most pro-American Iraqis before the war.

With all their pointless chitchat about Osama bin Laden, liberals of all people ought to have known the war would not be over with the deaths of Odai and Qusai. Speaking of which - where is Osama? We haven't heard much from him lately. Nor is Saddam Hussein out shaking his puny fist at the Great Satan anymore. Concerned that he might try to sneak out in disguise, U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been given pictures of Saddam Hussein in various outfits, hairstyles and even makeup schemes. (And I thought this was kind of interesting - it turns out he's a "winter.")

What is the point of liberal carping? What precisely are they proposing we do? Turn tail and abandon Iraq to the mullahs and the Syrians? Revert to the Democrats' tried-and-true method of abandoning the region to any local Pol Pot who might turn up?

Clinton's statesmanlike response to Islamic fanatics was to do nothing -- except when he needed to distract from his impeachment and would suddenly start bombing foreign countries at random. In eight years, the only domestic Muslim terrorist Clinton went after was a blind cleric sitting outside a mosque in New Jersey behind a card table with an "Ask Me About Terrorism" sign.

The Clinton approach was working great, if you don't count the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the bombing of our Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the USS Cole and, finally, the greatest terrorist attack in the history of the world right here on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001.

We have seen how well the Democrats' surrender approach works for 50 years. We saw it again last week. The United Nations stood shoulder to shoulder with American liberals, France, Germany and Saddam Hussein in opposing war with Iraq. And then last week in Iraq, the little darlings bombed the U.N. embassy in Baghdad. But that's Bush's fault, too. Perhaps Bush is also responsible for J-Lo and Ben Affleck's bomb of a movie. The only people whom liberals absolutely refuse to hold accountable for anything are their friends, the Islamofascists.
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Italgato
 
  1  
Reply Fri 5 Sep, 2003 05:04 am
I await a critique on this piece. To me, it is pratically unassailable.
0 Replies
 
PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Fri 5 Sep, 2003 05:11 am
It's neocon claptrap.

And welcome, massagattos.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Fri 5 Sep, 2003 09:13 am
Re: Ann Coulter: Liberal Arguments: Still A Quagmire
Italgato wrote:
I await a critique on this piece. To me, it is pratically unassailable.


I love a challenge.

Ann Coulter wrote:
Before the war, they said Saddam Hussein - their favorite world leader behind Jacques Chirac - was not a threat to America's interests in the region, was not developing weapons of mass destruction, and did not harbor terrorists.


Well, this is demonstrably false (Clinton, after all, ordered air strikes against Iraq). But one has to admire Coulter's ability to link liberals, Saddam, and the French in a single sentence. It's like a conservative unassisted triple-play.

Ann Coulter wrote:
Now that we've taken the country and are uncovering mass graves, canisters of poison gases, victims of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and colonies of terrorists, liberals are claiming the war created it all.


No, the bodies being unearthed are not victims of Saddams WMD: they were victims of his weapons of individual destruction.

Ann Coulter wrote:
You can't win with these people. The termites are swarming out into the light of day, and liberals are blaming the exterminator.


Is she referring to Tom DeLay, the exterminator?

Ann Coulter wrote:
Liberals simply refuse to consider thoughts that would interfere with their lemming-like groupthink. They hold their hands over their ears like little children who don't want to listen to mother.


A clearer example of a pot impugning the blackness of a kettle I have never seen.

Ann Coulter wrote:
Yes, perhaps there are important textural differences between secular Saddam loyalists and Islamic crazies - though it's a little odd to be lectured on nuance from people who can grasp no difference whatsoever between Bill O'Reilly and Jesse Helms.


Wait, is this an actual concession by Coulter? I think someone should alert the media.

Ann Coulter wrote:
But as George Bush said: You are with the terrorists or you are with America. Now we're getting a pretty clear picture of who is with the terrorists.


And with a simplistic, Manichean world-view like this, it's no wonder that Coulter & Co. can't grasp the nuances that face us every day. She probably thinks that water faucets are marked "hot" and "cold" because those are the only two choices we have.

Ann Coulter wrote:
But liberals are indignant for every day that we haven't turned a barbaric land into Vermont.


This is an odd statement for Coulter, who, in the wake of 9/11, said we "should invade [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." And now she's taking a gradualist approach? What changed?

Ann Coulter wrote:
Indeed, the war is going so well that now liberals have to create absurd straw-man arguments no one ever uttered in order to accuse the Bush administration of horrible miscalculations.


Someone should tell Coulter what a "strawman" argument really is.

Ann Coulter wrote:
Amid her sneering, PMS-induced anger toward the Bush administration...


Ow, PMS! That's gotta' hurt!

Ann Coulter wrote:
...New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd claimed the Bush administration was "shaken" to discover "the terrible truth: Just because we got Odai and Qusai, Iraqi militants are not going to stop blowing up Westerners." I'd love to see the quote where anyone in the Bush administration - anyone in the universe - said that.


Now that's a strawman argument! Well done, Ann!

Ann Coulter wrote:
Admittedly, Republicans were not mourning the deaths of Odai and Qusai the way Democrats were, but only a moron would think that killing these two monsters would mark the end of the war on terrorism.


I don't even know where to begin correcting the errors here.

Ann Coulter wrote:
With all their pointless chitchat about Osama bin Laden...


Oh, man, this is priceless! We've gone from "Osama must be hunted down and killed" to "it's pointless to talk about him." What has changed in two years? Simple: the Bush administration hasn't been able to catch bin Laden, so bin Laden is clearly not important. Oh, and everyone always knew that. Coulter must be channelling the ghost of George Orwell.

Ann Coulter wrote:
Speaking of which - where is Osama? We haven't heard much from him lately.


Wait a minute. I guess bin Laden is important. Y'see, it's all very simple: when the failure to capture bin Laden is regarded as a failure of the Bush administration to follow through with its stated plans, then bin Laden is unimportant. When bin Laden's disappearance is regarded as a victory of the Bush administration in driving him underground, then bin Laden is important. See?

Ann Coulter wrote:
What is the point of liberal carping? What precisely are they proposing we do? Turn tail and abandon Iraq to the mullahs and the Syrians? Revert to the Democrats' tried-and-true method of abandoning the region to any local Pol Pot who might turn up?


Oh, stop, Ann, yer killin' me! How soon we forget that it was a Republican administration (Ford) that orchestrated America's withdrawl from Southeast Asia.

Ann Coulter wrote:
Clinton's statesmanlike response to Islamic fanatics was to do nothing -- except when he needed to distract from his impeachment and would suddenly start bombing foreign countries at random. In eight years, the only domestic Muslim terrorist Clinton went after was a blind cleric sitting outside a mosque in New Jersey behind a card table with an "Ask Me About Terrorism" sign.


OK, that last sentence was actually kinda' clever.

Ann Coulter wrote:
The Clinton approach was working great, if you don't count the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the bombing of our Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the USS Cole and, finally, the greatest terrorist attack in the history of the world right here on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001.


This is remarkably slow for a conservative columnist. Usually, blaming the Clinton administration for everything (including things like 9/11 that happened after Clinton left office) is noted earlier in the column. Coulter almost missed the boat on this one.

Ann Coulter wrote:
We have seen how well the Democrats' surrender approach works for 50 years.


Granted, in those fifty years there were only 20 years of Democratic presidential administrations, as opposed to 30 years of Republican ones. But hey, the Democrats are somehow responsible for all the bad things that happen, even during Republican administrations.

Ann Coulter wrote:
And then last week in Iraq, the little darlings bombed the U.N. embassy in Baghdad.


Well, the UN isn't a sovereign state, so it doesn't have any embassies. It was the UN headquarters that was bombed. But I apologize for attempting to wedge a fact into an otherwise jam-packed column. Please continue.

Ann Coulter wrote:
But that's Bush's fault, too. Perhaps Bush is also responsible for J-Lo and Ben Affleck's bomb of a movie.


A fascinating theory that I, for one, would like to see explored in greater depth.
0 Replies
 
PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Fri 5 Sep, 2003 09:38 am
A surgical evisceration, joe.

Well done.
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sat 6 Sep, 2003 08:39 am
Re: Ann Coulter: Liberal Arguments: Still A Quagmire
Ann Coulter wrote:
Before the war, they said Saddam Hussein – their favorite world leader behind Jacques Chirac – was not a threat to America's interests in the region, was not developing weapons of mass destruction, and did not harbor terrorists. Now that we've taken the country and are uncovering mass graves, canisters of poison gases, victims of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and colonies of terrorists, liberals are claiming the war created it all. Thus, an op-ed piece in the New York Times recently proclaimed: "America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one."


Actually, the war opponents never denied that Saddam was "a threat to America's interests in the region"; we just didn't consider that a valid rationale for a full-blown war.

Chavez is a threat to America's interests in the region. The efforts of the Russian government to thwart the US-sponsored oil pipeline from the Caspian to the Black Sea are a threat to America's interests in the region. Hell, Chirac's reelection was a threat to America's interests in the region. No, thats not enough a rationale for starting a war.

What the war opponents denied was there was sufficient proof of Iraq currently owning or developing WMD to legally justify starting a war - the UN inspectors couldnt uncover them, and without evidence no sentence. What the war opponents denied was that Saddam's Iraq currently posed the acute and immediate threat to the US citizens that Bush Jr invoked when declaring that war was necessary, right now. What war opponents denied was that there was any evidence of a link between Saddam and 9/11. So yes, Coulter is close there, with points 2 and 3.

And look at it now. No proof of Iraq currently owning or developing WMD was ever unearthed by even the most ardent American military investigators. And even a tome of a Congress report recently published on 9/11 could not find any link to Saddam, whatsoever.

The only "colony of terrorists" uncovered in Iraq at the time of the invasion, meanwhile, were the Ansar-al-Islam camps in the Kurdish-controlled part of the country, where the fundamentalists had settled out of reach of their arch-enemy Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, however, regional media report that some 3,000 Al-Qaeda fighters have entered Iraq since the US occupied the country.

Oh, and as for the rhetorical flourish -

Ann Coulter wrote:
Saddam Hussein – their favorite world leader behind Jacques Chirac –


The war opponents included some of the most fiery critics of Saddam's past human rights violations and his "mass graves". They included governments and organisations (Scandinavian countries, Canada, the European Parliament, the Socialist International) that had protested Saddam's gassing of the Kurds already in 1988 - back when Bush Sr vetoed a Congress resolution to impose sanctions on Iraq, instead extending a follow-up billion-dollar US loan to Saddam. (He could do so thanks to the restoration of diplomatic ties so niftily arranged by US special envoy Donald Rumsfeld, in 1983, see here and here. When current war opponents in the UN Security Council decided to condemn Saddam's regime for its use of WMD (chemical weapons) in 1986, the US voted against.)

The war opponents also did not have much truck with Chirac, the Conservative French president who escaped a sentence for corruption through a hastily adopted immunity law, and whom many of the French war protestors had just months before fought in the presidential election campaign. He was a strange but powerful bedfellow, rallying to their side out of tactical or populist reasons or perhaps a true change of heart, in what was perhaps the biggest political surprise of the season.

And that's just the first paragraph ... Italgato.
0 Replies
 
Italgato
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Sep, 2003 02:59 am
Joe from Chicago.

I have never read a more brilliant evisceration of Coulter than yours.

Astonishingly good.

May I ask, Are you an attorney?

Did you graduate from Harvard or Yale.

Stunning insights; unassailable counter arguments.

I certainly hope that Coulter doesn't read this.

She will be crushed to see how easily you have obliterated her arguments.

If I may, I would respectfully ask you, in the future, so we may all learn, that you give sources.

How can we read the sources from which you have learned all of the information with which you have so pitilessly destroyed Coulter?

Cranks and those who are just unthinking partisans may descend to the level of stating that your arguments against Coulter are meaningless since they are unsourced.

I do not do so since I recognize brilliance when I read it.

I hope to read more of your posts, Joe from Chicago.

Then you can toss more pearls to us.
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Sep, 2003 03:30 am
Italgo,

Do you have an argument? Something to posit? Because sarcasm in and of itself only makes a case for your ability to employ sarcasm and does nothing to address the arguments raised.
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Sep, 2003 03:48 am
I feel neglected ...

Italgato goes all out to attack Joe, and doesnt say anything about me ...

and I even used all kinds of facts and sources as he demanded and all!

(Oh - do you think thats why he didnt say anything about me? ... Shocked )
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Sep, 2003 04:36 am
Cant say you can ever catch Ann Coulter much at "giving sources, so we may all learn", when it comes to claiming stuff like Saddam was the liberals' "favorite world leader behind Jacques Chirac" or the US forces discovered "colonies of terrorists" that Saddam harbored in his territory ...
0 Replies
 
Joe Nation
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Sep, 2003 05:01 am
You betcha, nimh. And thanks for making clearer the relationship between Chirac and the war opponents. His stance was a surprise and perhaps that is why he has been so vilified by the Bush Administration, they thought he would just follow along.


Please massagottos post Ms. Coulter's sources so that we may examine them. Especially the part about liberals being lemmings, I need to write a limerick about that and I'll need more data.

Joe Nation
0 Replies
 
gustavratzenhofer
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Sep, 2003 05:12 am
I just wasted thirty seconds reading something by Ann Coulter. An unforgivable sin. I am going outside to punish myself for such foolish behavior.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Sep, 2003 03:41 pm
Italgato wrote:
Joe from Chicago. I have never read a more brilliant evisceration of Coulter than yours. Astonishingly good.


Mille grazie, gato.

Italgato wrote:
May I ask, Are you an attorney?


Yes. That information is in my profile.

Italgato wrote:
Did you graduate from Harvard or Yale.


No. I graduated from the Univ. of Michigan Law School, the same law school from which Ms. Coulter graduated.

Italgato wrote:
Stunning insights; unassailable counter arguments. I certainly hope that Coulter doesn't read this. She will be crushed to see how easily you have obliterated her arguments.


One could only hope.

Italgato wrote:
If I may, I would respectfully ask you, in the future, so we may all learn, that you give sources. How can we read the sources from which you have learned all of the information with which you have so pitilessly destroyed Coulter?


For what statements, in particular, did you wish to see the sources?

Italgato wrote:
Cranks and those who are just unthinking partisans may descend to the level of stating that your arguments against Coulter are meaningless since they are unsourced.


I'm familiar with such cranks. I have met a few on these boards. But I appreciate the heads-up.

Italgato wrote:
I do not do so since I recognize brilliance when I read it.


You are indeed a wise and discerning person.

Italgato wrote:
I hope to read more of your posts, Joe from Chicago. Then you can toss more pearls to us.


I'll be sure to toss some your way.
0 Replies
 
hobitbob
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Sep, 2003 04:09 pm
And I mistakenly thought the "Male or Shemale" thread was about Anne Coulter. Wink
0 Replies
 
PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Sep, 2003 04:38 pm
Aside from the outrageousness of the description of what's happening to our soldiers in Iraq as 'having their hair mussed', Ann Coulter's comment reveals her to be a Dr. Strangelove fan (imagine that!)

Here's the proof.

Ann Coulter on MSNBC's 'Saturday Final with Lawrence O'Donnell' (8/30/03):

Quote:
These are the same arguments, the precise same arguments that were being made before the war. It's going to be a quagmire. What is the plan? When do we get out? How much is it going to cost? Someone in the military might get his hair mussed. We heard all these arguments.


General Turgidson in the Peter Sellers classic "Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb" (minimizing Soviet retaliatory counter-attack casualty statistics, Turgidson says):

Quote:
"Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks."
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Sep, 2003 04:49 pm
Pdiddie
PDiddie, great recall; are you going to sue Annie for plagiarism?

---BumbleBeeBoogie
0 Replies
 
PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Sep, 2003 04:59 pm
No, but if I can ever get close enough I'm going to thump her in that oversized-even-for-a-man Adam's apple of hers. Cool
0 Replies
 
Lightwizard
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Sep, 2003 05:02 pm
That Veronica Lake haircut would look much better if it were a little mussed. Since Bill Maher seems to have affection for the forked tongue blond, I have a feeling her hair has been mussed more than once.

Be careful of dogs that roll over and play dead.
0 Replies
 
Italgato
 
  1  
Reply Tue 9 Sep, 2003 02:31 am
Craven asks me, Do you have an argument?

Something to posit?

Yes, Mr. Craven, I do indeed.

quote

"Verify your claims. Differentiate facts and opinions. If your claim is not something you are able to verify, note that it is your opinion only"

I believe that is the the MOST WELCOME AND VERY COGENT AND BENEFICIAL ADVICE given in the Politics form , Debate guidelines.

I think it is a wonderful set of guidelines. I believe it would be profitiable if all of us followed those guidelines.

Verify.

Differentiate facts and opinions.

If you cannot verify, note that it is your opinion only.

After reading the post by Joe from Chicago, I am unable to find any proof of his statements.

Am I misinterpreting the Guidelines?

If so, please let me know.

Thank you.
0 Replies
 
Italgato
 
  1  
Reply Tue 9 Sep, 2003 02:33 am
Joe from Chicago:

Thank you for telling me that you graduated from the Michigan School of Law.

After reading your analysis of Coulter, I thought that you had graduated from Yale, Harvard, Stanford, N Y U, Columbia or Chicago law schools.
0 Replies
 
 

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