[lit-ideas] Re: Endurring rebuke
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 15:51:09 -0600
Endurring rebukeOh, Lawrence [soft slug to the shoulder] we all love you,
fella, and appreciate you. Without you we might as well fold up the revival
tent and go back to San Francisco. As for my post, I wasn't being mean, just
laconic. And as for John Wager, though I can't speak for him, I'm sure he
reviled Saddam as much as you did. I'll bet he felt the same repugnance
towards Saddam, as you did, in fact, I don't know any liberal who didn't
believe that Saddam was an asshole sonofabitch who should be lock away forever,
but few of us thought that we should go kill several hundred thousand Iraqis,
some 4000 Americans troops and throw away however many trillion dollars we've
spent/will spend just to give Al Queda another and better training ground
against us.
If we don't share your enthusiasm for warfare, that doesn't mean we loved
Saddam. Rather, I'd chalk it up to panty-feeling fetishes and liberal
softness and continue scream your message of toughness all the louder like some
inveterate Drill Instructor until the world hears you and hears you good.
Mike Geary
marching in Memphis to a spastic drummer
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 3:11 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Endurring rebuke
Thanks for the correction John. Time and time again you, Mike and a few
others have exhorted me to quit wasting my time reading experts and scholars
and to rely upon Leftist osmosis for my information, but I guess I got into
some bad habits early on and can't seem to break them.
I confess that once again I based my assumptions upon such experts ad Kenneth
Pollack (The Threatening Storm, The Case for Invading Iraq), Sandra Mackey (The
Reckoning, Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein), George Friedman (America's
Secret War, Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle between America and its
enemies), and David Selbourne (The Losing Battle with Islam). And, to get this
addiction of mine off my chest and out into the open, I have subscribed to such
publications as Foreign Affairs, Policy Review, Foreign Policy, and the
National Interest.
It is really quite shameful to confess such a heinous habit, and I can't at
all say I'm likely to give it up. I'm addicted it's true. I could join a
twelve step program and confess "I'm Lawrence Helm, and I'm an addict." I
guess after watching Mr. Brooks, I could generate enough willingness for that,
but then what? I have asked and asked and asked (reprehensibly I know) for
evidence for the Leftist arguments like yours only to be sneered at, as you
sneer in your note. Yes, I acknowledge that your position is higher than mine
inasmuch as you are able to tap into the truth through with some secret ability
you all possess, bypassing evidence, doing away with the nuisance of quotes,
while I blunder about with stacks of books and periodicals.
Well, I could tell I was going down the wrong road, barking up the wrong
tree, paddling with only one oar in the water, and one can shy of a six-pack;
so I resolved to give it up, leave it to those with the esoteric ability to
access truth directly and spend my time instead on the Classics.
I apologize for a momentary lapse into modern foreign affairs (by erroneously
assuming that everyone realized what a disruptive force Saddam Hussein was,
intimidating his neighbors, our allies, preventing Saudi Arabia from helping us
track down Al Quaeda members, shooting at our airplanes and British airplanes
on a weekly if not a daily basis, violating the 1991 truce, making deals for
anything he wanted with corrupt politicians in France, Russia and elsewhere,
supporting terrorist organizations and the like . . . shoot there I go again.
Sorry. It is really hard to quit.
Lawrence Helm
Trying real hard to be the shepherd
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John Wager
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 12:25 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: How the Spartans got their hoplites back
Lawrence Helm wrote:
>
> I can understand why neither the Spartans nor the Athenians considered
> themselves beaten at the time of the Peace of Niceas in 421. What I
> can't understand is why Saddam Hussein did not consider himself beaten
> in 1991. Did he really believe that American forces were afraid to
> come after him at Bagdad in 1991 as he claimed? I can understand why
> he might say that for purposes of political prestige, but I can't
> understand how he could really believe that.
>
Perhaps he was crazy enough to believe that any American president would
see that Hussein was actually a stabilizing element in the region, that
it would take an iron hand to keep the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunnis
from each others' throats, that the U.S.'s national interest was in
having an uninterrupted flow of oil, that any war to remove him would
cost the U.S. more than it would gain the U.S., and that no sane
American president would get into a situation where the U.S. put its
military between three opposing forces in a country that had a long
history of hostility to occupation?
Naa, he couldn't have been THAT crazy.
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