Libercontrarian

Crushed between the wheels of capitalism and big government.

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User: underwhelmed

This is The Libercontrarian:

Gun owner. Married. Ex-Navy.

A Christian, but not too sinless. Foul-mouthed, sarcastic, a little self-righteous. Sometimes angry. Jocluar. A bit of a crusader. A great friend. A pretty decent American.


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« Everything I've ever want...  |  Home  |  My letter to Greta »
Tuesday, 26 October 2004
Part 3 of the Blog War

Earlier, I claimed that I wasn't excited to get into an intractable Blog War. I was wrong. It does excite me. I refuted a respondent's claims point-by-point, and really enjoyed it. Here's my response:

Frogsdong:
Nick, I don't need to go into why that catastrophic failure goes to the top. You seem like a smart guy. You can figure it out.Okay, okay, I'll sketch it. Insufficient troops to do the job, despite requests for more. They knew the weapons were there. The weapons had been put under seal by UN inspectors in 1991 and monitored ever since. when the troops got there in 2003, they checked and found the cache intact. Then they left because they didn't have the troops to secure it. They were busy elsewhere. So yes, the responsibility goes up the chain of command for fundamental errors. I won't even go into the bogus nature of the entire decision to start the war in the first place, but I will ask you this: are you feeling safer today with 380 tons of high-quality explosive missing?

Nick:
Uh, oh - we got us a THINKER! Well, at least you are making reasoned, intelligible arguments. Let's take things point by point, shall we?
1. Catastrophic failure occurred when the CIA and the other intelligence agencies COMPLETELY MISSED THE BOAT on the WMD issue. There's blame to spread all over the place on this one. Clinton's director, George Tenet, France's intelligence agency, the U.N., and everybody else on the planet said that Our Pal Saddam had WMDs. Everybody screwed up. George Bush DID COMPLETELY FORNICATE THE CANINE when he rushed up to war without any plan for creating a peaceful government (like an idiot, I supported him), and without enough troops to get the job done.
 
Compared to all that, losing 380 tons of explosives is a minor error.
 
Lincoln appointed I can't remember HOW MANY generals who lost hundreds of thousands of U.S. Troops in pointless engagements with the Confederates before he made progress with U.S. Grant. Roosevelt's administration was asleep at the switch in November of 1941 as the Japanese were preparing to rape and murder Pearl Harbor, and when it happened, they destroyed the career of Admiral Husband Kimmel and drove him to suicide, claiming that it was his fault. Again Roosevelt sent thousands of young men to death in rickety-ass Sherman tanks which were as useless as popguns against German Panzers. This kind of thing happens in war - you go with what you got, mistakes get made, and people die for them. It's not a tea party.
 
Blame goes to the top, alright, but tossing out a C-in-C during a shooting war is an unprecedented, foolish, myopic, and dangerous thing to do. It is tantamount to saying, "it's really OUR fault your country was supporting international terrorism, and we'll back down to you now. Come to our borders and kill our citizens again, please, we haven't had enough of it."
 
Frogsdong:
It is one thing to have people die in a war zone (that should never have been started, but was started because of bad judgment and ideology), and it is another bad judgment and incompetence to build upon itself until the supposedly "won" war is a complete fiasco.
 
Nick:
2. How much history have you studied, bro? War IS a complete fiasco! This is not some disorganized family Bar-B-Que we're talking about here; Iraq is a nation that was on the verge of collapse under a totalitarian's fist for about 30 years. These people don't know any other way of life - did you expect them to snap into "suburban housefrau mode" twelve seconds after we invaded their country, and tore away the apparatus of the state that both oppressed them and created what little order they've known?
 
Frogsdong:
80% of Afghanistan is currently under the control of the war lords and the Taliban. Lack of troops and US resolve lead to that defeat.
 
Nick:
3. Can you kindly quote the source on this phony-baloney 80% number? What happened in Afghanistan a week ago... hmmmm... elections? For the first time in, hmmm... FIVE THOUSAND YEARS? We've been defeated there? What the hell are you talking about?
 
Frogsdong:
...while the working folks and the poor made great economic strides under Clinton and it has all gone backwards under Bush. All of it. Poverty, wages, health care, job security, and foreign relations, all gone backwards under Bush. Go ahead, blame Iraq on Clinton. I can see you want to.
 
Nick:
4. Yeah, I was one of the over-employed working folks who made economic strides under Clinton - I was taking down $75 grand a year as a web designer, although I hadn't any talent out of the ordinary. It was called "the Tech Bubble." When it burst PRIOR TO CLINTON LEAVING OFFICE after the Democratic Party lawyered up in November 2000, I lost my job and have had to make a living in a different field. The signs of the crash were evident in winter and spring of 2000 to anyone paying attention. Clinton's ability to tell a shining lie rubbed off on false-hope speculators in the stock market. It was bound to collapse sooner or later.
 
Frogsdong:
Oh, and how many troops were lost in Serbia, just out of curiosity?
 
Nick:
5. The issue isn't how many troops were lost in Serbia, the issue is how many CIVILIANS Clinton's oddball application of air delivered munitions slaughtered. Remember those poor people that got killed in the subway car - it was like fifty there alone. Remember when we accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy? Why weren't you calling for Clinton's resignation then; he screwed up, didn't he, and responsibility goes straight to the top, right? After all, they're a nuclear power - piss them off and you might find 4 million PLA soldiers drinking green tea in Yuba Linda, CA. Are you aware that North Korea's ability to manufacture their nuclear weapons came about as a result of Clinton's idiotic appeasment of Communists in 1994?
 
Frogsdong:
...we need someone else in charge, someone who has a record of competence instead of a lifelong record of failure.
 
Nick:
6. And that guy is John Kerry? Record of competence? Where? What legislation has this "someone else" (which is the best description of Kerry I can think of) has this guy sponsored? Where is his record of leadership? Other than his traitorous meetings with North Vietnamese officials during the Vietnam War, what is his record of international statesmanship?
 
Look, I'm not a big lover of George Bush. I don't think that he's a bad guy either. He is limited in scope (like every man who walks the earth), and unfortunately, his limitations are holding this country back. So who do you guys pick to run against him? Is it the first Democrat I may have ever voted for, Joe Lieberman, an honorable and decent man with the skills to do the job? No, you bozos put forth John Forbes Kerry, a traitor and an admitted war criminal! Given that choice, who in Christ's name do you think that I'm going to support?
 
Stand by for further developments.












posted by: underwhelmed at October 26, 2004 11:29 | link | comments |

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