The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

Please refer to my many posts to Slave about reading the DU site. They apply equally here.

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Misguided, like, the basic goal would be wrong, or like, it would be hard to execute properly? I agree with the latter. If you mean the former, why? Where is the error of philosophy in trying to save lives, improve lives, and foster happiness over slavery?

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Well, to start with, you're using the word "culture" in a way that is completely divorced from the way the rest of us educated, English-speaking people use it -- indeed, in a way that kinda sorta misses the point of my original post. I believe you understand this, on some level.

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To my memory, he's freed several more countries from totalitarian despot governments than did the last several presidents. Maybe Reagan might give him a run for his money, but . . . Carter? Clinton? Bush 1? (Okay, he's probably tied for second with Reagan.)

When did you guys become the party of "ignore that crying child, he's not mine"?

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They would be hard -- no, impossible -- to pull off. We need not discuss the principled grounds for objecting to an effort to change another country's government because we can't, in any event, pull it off in these cases.

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Penske was right. Derision has totally replaced debate. And, given my memory of college soc, and the expansive meaning of "culture" in the lexicon, it's not serving you well.

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There's Iraq. The jury is still out on whether the long-term solution will be much better than Hussein was at the time we invaded.

Is there another country that George Bush freed from a totalitarian despot government? I haven't been reading Powerline lately.

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If you seriously think that my reference to changing culture meant that I would oppose liberating Treblinka, you should go back for remedial kindergarten.

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This baffles me. If I see you, over the border, in chains, your family dead at your side, and a thug aiming his gun at you for the final shot, do I have to debate the principled grounds for interfering with his governance? According to you, I do. Well, I won't. You can sit here and moralize and temporize while more die, and I sincerely hope you feel nobler for it.

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Damn. Riposte! I yield. My argument clearly is weak.

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Where did I say that? I said that if the gun isn't loaded, why bother having an argument about principle.

You have a serious reading comprehension problem.

OK, never mind. You're on top of it already.

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You said "We need not discuss the principled grounds for objecting to an effort to change another country's government because we can't, in any event, pull it off in these cases. . . ." in the context of a discussion treating Iraq, through example of all the other countries we haven't invaded yet. We stopped that thug from taking more shots. Your "in any event" implies a connection between your principled discussion of the newly listed countries and the original discussion.

See? I did that with nary an insult. Try it. Then call Sidd.

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

Hoo!

Hooo Hoo! Heh.

No, actually I suspect that Ty was referring to those getting the shit beat out of them, and how those folks might not show up to the meeting in fear of getting flayed. Capt. Fishback, and 90 Senators, might show up to the meeting, though, to tell the Administration they can't simply torture and kill in the name of the War on Terror, which the Bushies clearly want the latitude to do.

But on second thought, I like your approach better. It allows us to chuckle in a jovial, self-contented way, and conclude over a nice cognac that those who deign to complain about torture at the hands of US personnel are simply liberal intellectuals whining about nonexistent problems, akin to library records.

Gattigap

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In case you haven't noticed our resources are stretched a little thin. Soon as we wrap up Iraq we will keep up the march. However, I am confused with your position. Have we spent too much money and resources on providing elections in Iraq and in Afghanistan, or do we need to spend more? Are there some other countrys that we haven't invaded yet to set up democracies that we should? Syria, Iran, North Korea - or do you think that some how we can get democracy to sprout there on there own with out using force, and we just haven't done we needs to be done to make that happen?

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There is another country sandwiched between Pakistan and Iran, it is called Afghanistan. Maybe you have heard of it?

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

Strangely, I can actually imagine you making all of those noises.

No, wait, that's Howard. Never mind.

You mean the ones caught bearing arms against our troops, picked up in war and interrogated, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or. . . wherever? The one's working for the noble cause of blowing apart little kids' bodies for the grace of allah? Or, at least, for some part of the personal profit they used to see under SH, and miss really really badly?

My turn to make noise. Boo effin hoo.

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I'm hoping for Syria. I'm thinking we do one or two more, and Iran goes in its own popular uprising.

(ETA) - The big plan should really be to wipe out all of the ME hiding spots for the terrorists and the Islamacists, leaving them with the one last true enclave in which to hide.

Berkeley, I mean.

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Followed, notably, by this.

There are several responses to your Solomonic declaration about people's irritation with Penske, but it would require a rather extensive review of Penske's ouevre over the last number of weeks, which I wouldn't really wish on anyone.

Instead, you've provided us with a simpler, and more direct, response. If our debates over foreign policy are invariably reduced to simple homilies about knocking down bee's nests or Iraq being akin to a thug murdering Ty's family, then I'd submit that this is "debate" in a loose form, at best.

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Good plan. Worked out well for the Shiites in '92.

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While the thug Hussein is no longer taking shots, it turns that Iraq is much more fucked up than might be suspected by those whose grasp on the situation there reduces to calling the head despot a thug.

Which is to say that if you think Iraq is a big success story, we have a lot to talk about before we get to matters of abiding principle. Which was, after all, my point.

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I think my biggest problem with your side of this discussion is that you seem determined to treat it all as a theoretical Con Law debate, and totally and doggedly ignore the idea that the costs you seem so willing to leave incurred are being incurred by real people with kids and hopes and fears.

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

Derision and debate, bilmore. Physician, heal thyself.

Let's hope that some of them fall into this category, anyway. I'd hate to fling over the walls the flesh of some poor bastard whose whose crime was, say, standing around at a Baghdad market during a sweep. Then again, I suppose them's the breaks.

I also take it that you stand proudly with the 9 U.S. Senators. Far as I recall, none of them were from MN. I hope you write them and contribute actively to their defeat. Good news is, it'll fit well on a bumper sticker.

And kudos to you, my man. Get to work on that bumper sticker. It is political gold.

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So true. I had NO idea there was tribal and religious factionism before all this happened.

Think back to pre-invasion. We had a discussion about the likelihood of success. I think that my prediction was very close to where we are today, and I'm quite pleased. It could have been much worse, and it's actually quite good, in a relative sense. (Relative for the Iraqis, certainly.)

Think back to pre-vote. We had a similar discussion. Again, it turned out far closer to my optimistic prediction than to your pessimistic one.

And now you want to tell me about how it ain't gonna work - about how it's all fucked up?

Hardly.

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

I would make fun of this with some personal insult (in my insecure attempt to fit in here) but I have no idea what you mean. I can stand proudly with many people. Is Barbara Boxer gonna be one of them? Then, well, no.

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I think my biggest problem with your side of this discussion is your insistence that we're all just ivory tower idealists who clearly don't have a stake in the game, and that you, alone, possess the sense of how things really work in the world.

But I'll stand over here with McCain and his 89 colleagues who clearly have an impaired understanding of risk, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American in wartime. You're over there with the Noble Nine, plus Bush and Rumsfeld. Have fun.

Basic catchup question
 

Did youse guyz already have the Miers discussions?

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

I'm referring to the Senate's amendment to the Defense authorization bill last week, in which 90% of the Senate told the Bush Administration to go fuck themselves over their strident desire to have the flexibility to do pretty much whatever they want with detainees.

But if one of those 90 Senators happens to be Boxer, and you're uncomfortable standing with the group because she's there, I suppose that's cool, too.

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I only wish the Administration had been better informed than you were.

We've been there for how many months, and there is one battalion of 800 Iraqis (read: Kurds) capable of fighting on their own. At that rate, success it right around the corner.

On the basis of what's happened, I think my feeling back then that all sorts of things could go wrong is looking pretty prescient. Needless to say, I'd rather it was working out well. But it isn't.

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

Ah, that. Yeah, I stand proudly with the nine.

What you saw was a power play by McCain, pulling a PR move that effectively pulls power from the executive branch that needs to stay with the executive branch. Do they need investigation? Yeah. Did the military actually want some specific guidelines? Yep. Was this - pulling the authority away from the proper power division - the right way to do that? Nope. That was simply McCain starting his campaign.

Honestly, Panske's appreciation for this guy baffles me. All I can figure is, he thinks he's better than Hilary, and is the only one who can beat her. He might be right about that.

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Ty – you are claiming that the words you were using had a different definition than the definition you know and I know you were using. Here is what happened.

Originally posted by Spanky
A moral relativist might say that in Arab countrys these rights are not part of their culture so it is both arrogant and naive to think that we can impose a system to protect these rights. Hello Ty.

Then You said:
Ty might say that you shouldn't try to haphazardly change a culture, since government doesn't do that well. You might call this the "conservative" position.

Then Bilmore said:
The people at Treblinka were happy for a less- than-perfect result. So, apparently, were many Iraqis.

Bilmores comment made perfect sense considering the initial comment. The discussion was that since rights and such were not respected by a culture it would be naive to try and impose such concepts on a culture that did not respect them. You said that government should not try to haphazardly change a culture ( a culture that does not respect rights and democracy).

Bilmore pointed out that we changed the culture of Treblinka (we imposed our ideas of freedeom and individual rights on a culture where such rights were not respected – in Treblinka) and it seemed to work out OK. Logical retort.

Then you say: It's uncanny, the way that you intuited that when I was referring to "changing a culture," I really meant "stopping a Treblinka." Wow.

Actually, Bilmore’s conclusion made perfect sense.. If it not OK to try and change the Iraqi culture so it respects human rights, why would it be so crazy to change the culture of Trebllinka, where there were no respect for human rights. .

Then you said: If you seriously think that my reference to changing culture meant that I would oppose liberating Treblinka, you should go back for remedial kindergarten.

I guess I need to go there to, because if you don’t think government can do a good job of changing culture in other countrys, then the US should not have been able to do a good job of changing the culture at Treblinka. Or changing the culture of the country that created Treblinka.

The term culture in this whole exchange referred to a people in a certain geographic areas respect for individual liberties and human rights. The culture in Treblinka did not respect such rights. Don’t try and pretend that when you were discussing culture you were referring to style of dress and celebration rituals.

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A deliberately calculated mis-statement of the truth, and I suspect you know why. (That was as politely as I could say that. Sorry.)

----------------

"AT HIS PRESS CONFERENCE ON October 4, President Bush took a question about the number of Iraqi military units engaged in fighting insurgents and terrorists. Bush, the reporter noted, had once said there were 100 Iraqi battalions in combat "across the nation." But in an appearance on Capitol Hill, two U.S. Army generals had recently said "there's only one battle-ready battalion" of Iraqi soldiers, according to the reporter. "Something is not adding up here."

Bush offered only a little help in reconciling the numbers. "Right now there are over 80 [Iraqi] battalions fighting alongside coalition troops," he said. "There are over 30 Iraqi battalions in the lead. And that is substantial progress from the way the world was a year ago." But what about the single "battle-ready" unit of Iraqi troops? Bush didn't say.

The result was confusion, as with so much else about Iraq when viewed from Washington. This is not solely the fault of a press corps unsympathetic to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. The president and the generals had tried to say the same thing about Iraqi troops, but ended up sounding like they were contradicting each other. Reporters, most of them anyway, didn't go to the trouble of straightening out the numbers.

. . . . .

But what about that single "battle-ready" battalion of Iraqis? Bush didn't broach the subject, but the man in charge of training Iraqi soldiers, Gen. David Petraeus, did. Speaking at the Pentagon the day before Bush's speech, Petraeus cleared up the troop numbers, but only after weeks of confusion. He got minimal media coverage. "There are now over 197,000 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces," he said. And "there are over 115 police and army combat battalions in the fight."

The mixup came over the four categories that measure the level of independence of Iraqi forces. About 80 battalions "are assessed as fighting alongside our forces," Petraeus said. Bush got that right. They belong to category three. Only one battalion needs "no coalition assistance whatsoever--i.e., fully independent." That's category one. A "substantial number" of another 35 "have their own areas of operation," but fight with American soldiers embedded in their units. These "allow coalition units to focus elsewhere or eventually to go home." They comprise category two. So Iraqi battalions rated one, two, and three add up to roughly 115 "battle-ready" units--not one. Category four troops aren't ready for combat."

---------------

More

(ETA) - Sorry, forgot to make my point.

You made that statement with the intention of communicating how little progress we've made - how we've come up with ONE Iraqi battalion in all this time, when (as I'm sure you're aware) we have made up almost a complete army, most of which is getting close to that truly independant stage. You tried to communicate a false paradigm by using just-the-right misleading words.

Can I assume that the strength of your positions and logic is such that truth doesn't help you advance them?

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

The executive branch should be able to determine both what the law is, and how to enforce it.

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Who gets credit for all of the Iron Curtain? Because whomever that is (Bush I? Reagan?) totally kicks W's ass on the totalitarian despot government ending department. That was like, what, 20?

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

No, that's Justice Kennedy's job.

(In this instance, I think the Constitution has something to teach us. It even deals with things like war. Cool document, that.)

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Neither I nor Bilmore thought that was what he was saying. Nor could anyone think that in suggesting that it was hubris to think that we could change another country's culture, I was trying to suggest that any "less-than-perfect result" is, perforce, unacceptable.

But thanks for playing.

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Touche'.

(But, wait . . . Ty told me that wasn't Reagan, it was just an accident of history.)

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My point -- which is that there is just one Iraqi battalion capable of fighting independently -- was accurate. Your article confirms this, and I'm not sure what your beef is.

The joy of living under Saddam....
 

I don't think you grasp how bad things were in Iraq before we came in. No human rights, no economy and total opressoin. And, I almost forgot, incarceration and torture on a massive scale that makes the "torture" at Gitmo seem like a tea party. And lets not forget the liquidation of hundred of thousands of people. And there was no end in sight to this situation.

So instead of mass incarcertaions of innocent people, we have some insurgents going to jail. Instead of massive torture chambers where people are hung on meat hooks, have wire attached to their genitals, and are slowly beaten and starved to death, prisoners are having their photographs taken while naked next to - oh no - women. Yes the torture has gotten a lot worse.

Today there are daily car bombings where before we had massive killing fields and mass graves. Today civilians are getting caught in the cross fire, where before they were the targest on a massive scale.

Today some people lose their homnes, where under Saddam he drained the swamps of southern Iraq, not only depriving millions of people of their homes but also of their livelihood. Oh, and lets not forget the gassing of the Kurds.

But hey, women had as much rights as men (none) but of course any day they could be picked up by the national guard or one of Saddams sons and raped and beaten to death.

In addition, with all the great things happeneing under Saddam there was no hope that it was going to change. In the current situation things may just get better.

And, I know, the elections in Iraq today are not nearly as free as they were under Saddam, because under Saddam you had a 99% turnout and everyone voted for him. That way no one had to be killed for trying to vote the wrong way.

Hey - you know you are right - things were much better under Saddam.

The joy of living under Saddam....
 

Unless you find where I said that, stand in line behind Bilmore for those remedial reading comprehension classes.

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You said "Ty might say that you shouldn't try to haphazardly change a culture, since government doesn't do that well."

"Since" had some meaning, right? Like, as a causative factor? And, "haphazardly" also has some meaning, right? Like, without a perfect plan or expectation of a perfect result?

Sorry, but Spanky was dead-on.