Who Lost Iraq?

Interesting article Bernie.

It had this-

Quote:

Mr. Welch, for example, has charged that the popularity of Arnold Toynbee's historical work is the consequence of a plot on the part of Fabians, "Labour party bosses in England," and various members of the Anglo-American "liberal establishment" to overshadow the much more truthful and illuminating work of Oswald Spengler.

I'm a mite surprised he didn't mention Suez. I think a lot of our present troubles stem from that.

Yes- you should all read Spengler as I have suggested on a good few occasions in another place.

I'm sorry Bernie if I shocked you. I assumed you were made of sterner stuff. I just think that we are all "emasculated sheepdom". I don't think it is possible to be acceptable to others without being. It is a price we pay for the benefits our society brings us and those are a very great number compared to all previous human history. There is no past position I would even consider changing places with. Life has long consisted of endless misery and fear. We are blessed and I am loyal to the systems we have got.

I think it disgusting that your President and our Prime Minister are referred to in the terms they often are on these threads and I question the motives of those who use such terms.

Whatever anybody might say about callousness it is a simple fact that leaders and theologians cannot possibly take into account the emotions of individuals. They would become paralysed.

I know I took an extreme example with the divine Marquis but there is a Russian in hospital here who has also paid the price of agitating against his Government and there are many,many more examples as you will know. I see this agitation against your Government undertaken not only without personal risk but with it actually having benefits as a form of dilettantism. The sacrifices that have been and are being endured and paid to allow such things to happen should be respected. I don't even like the dropping of the Mr from Mr Bush's name. Manners and conventions are very important.

I think it was a perfectly legitimate argument I presented. Not below the belt at all.

There are too many occasions when the debate is conducted outside the usual party political controvesy.

Gorer's little book is a must read as is Ellman's biography of Joyce.

Best wishes though.

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History does not repeat itself, but the idiots who seek to use government for their own, private and venal ends haven't changed in millenia.

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And that is a fact of human nature which it is bootless to rail against.

Which is why we have such a complex system of checks and balances and such a large body of law.

What adjustments to those are possible which will add further control to the natural human tendency mentioned above and which is fully supported by evolutionary theory.

Human nature is hardly going to change in any appreciable degree and to rail against it is totally pointless.

One supposes that the electorate which apponted the Government were also thinking in terms of their own "venal" ends at the time they cast their votes as it is perfectly natural for them to do.

If democracy is government "by the people" then surely the responsibility lies with them.

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spendi, you are a silly goose.

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I know. It's good innit?

Never been on to post inanities like that though.

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spendius wrote:

I know. It's good innit?

Never been on to post inanities like that though.

really?

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Yeah. Really!

The "silly goose" inanity is a classic case. It brings into tight focus the propensity people have, and it is all over the threads, to believe something to be true on the evidence of the asserter having asserted it.

No attempt to deal with the argument of the other. It is very common here but it seems ubiquitous in the US.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm not being critical. I am just stating a fact. I daresay it has been a major driving force of the American rise to power. It gives confidence and that is needed to pioneer a country.

Both Mr Churchill and Mr Eden had something to say about it.

But, as is normal, you don't get something for nothing. It hinders contact with others. It is alienating. I think that maybe there is a vicious circle.
As the alienation increases the propensity to assertion and the espousal of doubt increases.

An educated European shudders at the thought of a social gathering where it is a case of "I'll listen to you assert if you will listen to me assert" in the early polite stages and as the drink takes effect the whole room is filled with shouting asserters and none of them listening.

One wouldn't listen long to someone blurting that one is a silly goose.

In it's pure form it leads to handbags at five paces because the winner at pistols at five paces gets 99 years.

But never mind dys. It's good to know that you're a Dylan fan like me although there's plenty say he's rubbish. A majority I would guess in which case we should throw all our recordings away if assertions have value in a democracy.

I presume you don't think the responsibility lies with the people then?

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There is a wonderfully amusing irony in seeing someone who does nothing but make unfounded assertions whining about others doing that.

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Exactly what are the "unfounded assertions" I am charged with having made and in what what way did I whine?

I am a willing learner and always ready to listen to advice from my betters.

dys wrote-

Quote:

spendi, you are a silly goose.

Was that not an assertion which made no attempt to address the previous post or not and relied entirely on the asserter's veracity being the scientific evidence for its validity?

One might just as easily say that Einstein was a silly goose. And Darwin. Who was actually to some extent as his wife well knew.

It wasn't quite as scholarly an assertion as Setanta conjured which is why I said it was more tight focussed. In the crosswires so to speak.

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Even the Muslim countries that loved us during the first Iraq War hate us now thanks to George Bush. Making Muslims hate us is an excellent way to make more terrorist who want to kill Americans. And there's a lot more of them than us.

Quote:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061121/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_defending_bush

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http://prisonplanet.com/articles/november2006/211106_b_Water.htm

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xingu, It seems many Bush supporters are unable to put two plus two together to show how much Bush has increased terrorism around the world - and greater insecurity to all Americans. You can take a horse to water, but...

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xingu wrote:

Even the Muslim countries that loved us during the first Iraq War hate us now thanks to George Bush. Making Muslims hate us is an excellent way to make more terrorist who want to kill Americans. And there's a lot more of them than us.

I so lament the loss of all of those loving Muslims. Eight years of Clinton/Gore and Bin Laden bombed the WTC in 1993, planned the second WTC attack, and bombed our barracks and the USS Cole. This must be the love that we can't feel anymore now that the concept of "fighting back" has been introduced.

Depend on the main stream media to make Moslem hatred of Western Civilization a noveau-Bush43 concept. Allow me please to reaquaint the board with this fact:

In the waning days of the Clinton presidency, Clinton attempted to broker a deal in the mid-east. Clinton sat with Arafat and Sharon. Israel ultimately agreed to a complete cease fire, including complete withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank. When, it became time for Arafat to pony up with their side of the negotiations. Arafat LAUGHED at Bill Clinton, got up, and walked out of the talks.

I guess all that love wasn't love at all.

Long past are the days I am willing to accept a review from the main-scream media about any republican or conservative without verification, then re-verification. Bush derangement syndrome has gone worldwide pandemic and the incoming media spin is just silly as it can be.

Here's the bottom line. Get it. Read it. Deal with it. As long as the United States refuses to share in the larger remaining Mideast philosophy that she does not deserve to exist and should be annhilated, the Moslem culture will hate our guts. They don't hate us because Bush is president, they hate us because we support Israel. They hate us because we are free and prosperous. They hate us because we are advanced instead of backwards.

Iraq is 20% legitimate discussion, and 80% backseat driving.

I have yet to see one liberal devise a plausible manner of dealing, over the long term, with the attacks of 9-11 and the prospect of further attacks.

Maybe instead of indulging in the Bush-Bash fest, someone can come up with a plan instead of constantly bashing the one we're presently involved in.

Suggestions, anyone?

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:

Thus I see this opposition to our voted for war policy as a force to prolong the nightmare with our men caught in the middle. If our war aims are not realised it will be a defeat for us and a victory for our enemies and it will be blazed as such from radio and TV stations right throughout the Islamic world and will politicise them like nothing you have ever seen before.

Boo f*cking hoo. Perhaps this should have been thought of in advance before we comitted ourselves to such a disastrous action.

You Right-wingers act like the football team who is supposedly invincible. Wars go this way - you win some, you lose some. We are currently losing. We aren't losing because of people's negativity, we are losing because those who planned the war, didn't. Those who are running the war, are screwing it up royally. Those who are supposedly doing reconstruction in Iraq are stealing vast amounts of monies, and the leadership doesn't give a whit.

But, Screw all that. Let's blame our failures on the people who were right all along.

Cycloptichorn

I have only one word for you, Cycloptichorn...Mogadishu.

The predictions you quoted from a poster are exactly what transpired in the anti-American Jihadists' rhetoric following our cutting and running from Operation Restore Hope.

American soliders' corpses were dragged and paraded through the streets by Al Queida. Bin Laden rose to address his followers and ridiculed the United States mercilessly.

It's only the truth as the truth is that the war being fought in Iraq is and has always proceeded splendidly from a tactical and strategic point of view, only to be undermined and savagely sabotaged by the traitorists and liberals in this country, which are two sides of the same coin.

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Monte Cargo wrote:

I have yet to see one liberal devise a plausible manner of dealing, over the long term, with the attacks of 9-11 and the prospect of further attacks.

I haven't heard any plausible ideas from the conservatives either. It's a tie on that score. So what.

Monte Cargo wrote:

Maybe instead of indulging in the Bush-Bash fest, someone can come up with a plan instead of constantly bashing the one we're presently involved in.

Suggestions, anyone?

How about this?

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spendi wrote:

Quote:

I see this agitation against your Government undertaken not only without personal risk but with it actually having benefits as a form of dilettantism. The sacrifices that have been and are being endured and paid to allow such things to happen should be respected. I don't even like the dropping of the Mr from Mr Bush's name. Manners and conventions are very important.

Perhaps this is all an intractable matter of temperment. Lola and I suffer a difference clearly without solution. She'll look at our apartment and see it half dirty. I see it half clean. She wishes that my inner construction held more compulsion and less contentment and she can make progress in this direction, if only in a flowering compulsion to hit her with a brick.

I have a brother whose innate characteristics of personality and perception have always led him towards a sincere and justifiable respect for authority and tradition. And why wouldn't he see matters this way, being the eldest? Of course, my ordained-by-birth-order task is to remove his kneecaps.

Some day, god willing, I'll be a conservative too.

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Some great contributions there thanks

particularly like cyclo's

Quote:

boo f*cking hoo

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Quote:

I so lament the loss of all of those loving Muslims. Eight years of Clinton/Gore and Bin Laden bombed the WTC in 1993, planned the second WTC attack, and bombed our barracks and the USS Cole. This must be the love that we can't feel anymore now that the concept of "fighting back" has been introduced.

This was so stupid I was not going to respond to it but something this idiotic needs a response.

This stupid and bigoted response shows you have no concept of what is happening in this world except what your ignorance and hate tells you. The idea that all Muslims are robots and all Muslims think alike is as stupid as thinking all conservatives think like and act like Timothy McVeigh (he was a conservative, you know).

In the event you didn't know this, and its obvious you don't, the majority of Muslims in the world condemned the 9/11 attack and supported our invasion of Afghanistan. However there was no reason for us to attack Iraq. It had nothing to do with 9/11, was not supporting or harboring Al Qaeda (Bush protected Zarqawi in Iraq more than Saddam did) and there was a large body of evidence, ignored by Bush, supporting the view that there were no WMD's, as Hans Blik was showing us in his inspections prior to the invasion.

What we did and are doing in Iraq is a crime against humanity. Invading a country based on lies and misinformation, and through stupidity and incompetence, allowing the country to degrade into a civil war and anarchy resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is a black mark on our history that will last forever. What we are doing to the people and the country of Iraq is something we should be ashamed of.

This invasion was driven by ideology, the neo-con ideology. It's an evil ideology that says we must use our military to impose our values on that part of the world we deem to be important to our self interest.

People like you have no regard for human life. If millions have to die for us to maintain our greatness than so much the better. Ican says Israel should kill a thousand Palestinians for every Israeli killed. It doesn't matter if they're children or not. They are all guilty. Foxfyre says we are to lenient in Iraq and that's the reason we're losing. I suppose she is suggesting we should do as Saddam did and kill trench fulls of innocent people to demonstrate our determination to conqueror Iraq. Other conservative Bush supporters on A2K have suggested we start dropping nukes to show that we mean business. And they call Mahmoud Ahmadinejad crazy.

I think people who make comment like yours are just as ignorant, irresponsible and crazy as you and your bedfellows like to believe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is.

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Bernie-

That is a Joycean trick.

The prose is infected by the mind of the writer (the hero).

The "hit her with a brick" (flowering being odd in juxta) and "remove his kneecaps" colour the hero's attitude towards the cleaning of the apartment and respect for authority.

The prose is at work through the emotional images rather than the ideas for which a sort of sympathy is elicited or sought and allows the hero to describe himself. A lazy rebel maybe. Second-sonitis.

I'm an eldest myself of four. My respect for authority may well derive from my seniority and present position as head of the family. (Irony intended).

Joyce elaborated the trick to fantastical proportions in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

I think I have pointed out before Bernie your readiness, one almost might say eagerness, to reach for a violent image. The rival brothers thing which Hughes has plenty to say about in his Shakespeare book.

There's a scene in Amarcord where the young lad is prevented in the nick of time from taking a brick to a baby in a pram. It's in the famous picnic scene where they take the madman Theo for an afternoon out from the asylum and is film making at the apogee.

You can find a better explanation than I can give on the 3rd page of the 1904 chapter of Ellmann's biography of Joyce.

And both images are at odds with less compulsion and contentment.

Actually ladies do have a seemingly natural inclination towards cleanliness which men often resist. I will refrain from offering any justifications for either attitude although it might be worth adding that the military obsession with "spick and span" is due to the knowledge of what a barracks would look like without it. A pig stye not to put too fine a point on it.

It is, as you say, all an intractable matter of temperment. Understanding is the only answer.

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After reading this thread, i'm glad I dont live in Iraq, sounds like the arsehole of the world.

Next time the US admin trys to trick you guys into sacrificing your relatives to the meatgrinder of war, cut out the middle man, just sign them over to satan.
Then, sit down, shut up and watch TV.

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