I have nothing to add to the horror of the round numbers 5 and 4,000.* Nor do I have anything to say about the rogues’ gallery of losers and thugs that lied us into this terrible war. Or at least nothing that Tom Tomorrow hasn’t already said.
* Not to mention the who-knows-how-many Iraqis who have been killed.
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54 comments
March 25, 2008 at 11:20 am
Megan
“I regret that Muslims don’t have the intellectual traditions or capacity to understand democracy.”
March 25, 2008 at 11:24 am
Vance Maverick
I have nothing to add to horror of of the round numbers 5 and 4,000.
Unfortunately our leaders, elected and unelected, do, and no doubt they’ll go on adding to them for a good while yet. I’ll make an Atrios-style projection that casualties will continue at more or less the current rate, and troop levels will be more or less maintained, for at least another year. That will bring us to 6 and roughly 4800….
March 25, 2008 at 11:25 am
ari
“I regret that Vance does not understand that freedom is on the march.”
March 25, 2008 at 11:31 am
Vance Maverick
Inexplicably soured, that’s me. Perhaps it should be my pseudonym.
March 25, 2008 at 11:35 am
ari
Can we share it?
March 25, 2008 at 11:41 am
Inexplicably Soured
Too late, DFH.
March 25, 2008 at 11:48 am
ari
Okay.
March 25, 2008 at 11:51 am
Vance Maverick
Nah, I can’t bring myself to do it, although as Atrios (again) reminds us, now more than ever it’s the season for people with my real handle to try to hide it.
March 25, 2008 at 12:02 pm
ari
I really do wonder if McCain will be unmasked during the fall. I’m sure the answer is no. But I can’t believe that people remain as credulous as they were four and eight years ago. I mean, at some pont the electorate will learn to ignore the MSM, right? Seriously, when it becomes clear that McCain is running on an all-war-all-the-time platform, that’s not going to be appealing, right? And will blogs make any difference? Inquring minds want to know.
March 25, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Ben Alpers
As Ari knows, I’ve been unable to comment from my other computer on this or any other WordPress blogs (any thoughts about what causes this, blogorati?). So this is something of a test post from my old iBook…
Anyhoo, back on Eric’s post on liberalism, I tried unsuccessfully to post a rambling comment that, among other things, mentioned that Cold War liberalism seems to be on the rise as a potentially usable liberal past (I’m thinking of the work of Kevin Mattson, for example). While I like Mattson’s stuff a lot as history, I am wary of calls for a return to Cold War liberalism, not least because the other fans of this move seem to be the liberal hawk / “decent left” crowd who were among the most prominent people acting as cheerleaders for this war (I’m thinking of Peter Beinart, in particular). There’s an interesting conversation on Barack Obama and Reinhold Niebuhr over over on the U.S. Intellectual History blog that touches on some of these issues (fwiw, I’m the “Ben” commenting over there).
At any rate, though the neocons deserve Tom Tomorrow’s opprobrium, they couldn’t have done this alone.
March 25, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Ben Alpers
Hmmm…that seems to have worked. Wonder why I suddenly wasn’t able to post from my MacBook Pro?
March 25, 2008 at 12:16 pm
ari
Ben, I just found your comments in the blog’s spam folder. And I think I’ve now trained the filter not to mistreat you in the future. Plus, I found a bunch of other comments in the same place. So, I’ll be checking it from now on. Finally, your old comments should have posted. I hope.
March 25, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Ben Alpers
I’m back at the MBP now, so let’s give this a try.
Should I hold my palm open so the spam filter can sniff it?
March 25, 2008 at 12:53 pm
bitchphd
at some pont the electorate will learn to ignore the MSM, right?
Be careful what you wish for; one of the things my tax preparer said yesterday in defense of her politics is that you can’t trust anything the media says, you know.
March 25, 2008 at 12:56 pm
ari
Honestly, I’m all for people forsaking the MSM. My brief return, post Iowa caucuses, to the cable news fold taught me that I was right to run screaming from the television during the summer of 2004.
March 25, 2008 at 1:59 pm
eyeingtenure
… and I thought that magical ponies were nonpartisan.
http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/
March 25, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Gene O'Grady
For me nothing beats the horror of Cheney saying that Bush was the one who had suffered the most. I simply cannot comprehend the remark. If it had been offered as a parody by a liberal humorist I would have rejected it as being in poor taste.
March 25, 2008 at 5:19 pm
silbey
at some pont the electorate will learn to ignore the MSM, right
It’s been over 200 years, now, so I’m not optimistic.
March 25, 2008 at 5:26 pm
ari
Dude, you’re such a downer. (And you’re so right.)
March 25, 2008 at 6:18 pm
silbey
And apparently a devotee of extraneous commas, if my last post is any indication.
March 25, 2008 at 8:59 pm
urbino
The 4,000 tally does not, I believe, include the roughly 700 civilian contractors killed in Iraq, doing jobs that soldiers used to do but don’t do anymore so they won’t show up in numbers like the 4,000 tally.
March 25, 2008 at 9:00 pm
ari
Urbino’s back! I just saw a post that made me think of you. It might have been at TPM. Yup, that’s it. Did you see Josh’d connect-the-dots about Clinton’s playing the Wright card?
March 25, 2008 at 9:07 pm
urbino
Hola, muchacho. (Firefox’s spellchecker would like me to correct that to “stomachache.”)
The one about Hillary hammering it being a sign that the Wright controversy really is dying?
March 25, 2008 at 9:22 pm
ari
No, the one after that. Where it turns out that she was feeding the story to Scaife. Oh, the levels of irony!
March 25, 2008 at 9:35 pm
urbino
Yeah, that’s really something. I read a while back that Bill and Scaife had made nice, in the wake of Scaife’s marital difficulties. Still, though. That photo is like someone catching a photo of a matter-antimatter collision. It’s a wonder the whole room didn’t disappear over the event horizon.
March 25, 2008 at 9:36 pm
urbino
I also saw on Sullivan that somebody at the DNC is now referring to Hillary’s strategy as “the Tonya Harding option.”
March 25, 2008 at 9:38 pm
bitchphd
Okay, I can’t find this TPM piece you’re talking about. Linnk?
March 25, 2008 at 9:41 pm
urbino
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/185608.php
March 25, 2008 at 9:54 pm
ari
It’s a pretty weird situation, I have to say. For the most part, I’ve kept telling myself that she’s just trying to win, that this is what campaigns are like. But then something like this happens, and I can help thinking: Scaife? How low are we going to go here. In the end, the whole thing just makes me sad.
March 25, 2008 at 9:58 pm
ari
I also saw on Sullivan that somebody at the DNC is now referring to Hillary’s strategy as “the Tonya Harding option.”
Unless the good people at the DNC know lots of things the rest of us mere mortals don’t — let’s hope that this is the case — I’m finding myself wondering what they’re doing. Really, don’t we need a bit of party leadership right about now? Having said that, I know that we’re witnessing not just a fight for the nomination but also a battle for control of the party, one more skirmish over who the leaders really are.
March 25, 2008 at 10:05 pm
urbino
I suspect the main thing they know is that the Clintons have been party rainmakers for years, and are very tight with an awful lot of the biggest donors.
OTOH, Obama (and Dean) has opened up a whole knew fundraising base, which they risk alienating if the supers throw the nomination to Hillary.
March 25, 2008 at 10:06 pm
urbino
“new”
March 25, 2008 at 10:06 pm
bitchphd
Ah, thank you, Urbino.
I too keep telling myself that she’s just trying to win. And I’m hoping that once the nominations are over, that a lot of the crap in the primaries is going to be water under the bridge. But things like this (which I found while looking for the link you gave me, Urbino) do make me kind of angry.
March 25, 2008 at 10:13 pm
urbino
You’re quite welcome.
I haven’t quite been able to make my mind up about that one.
March 25, 2008 at 10:19 pm
ari
Why choose? Maybe she’s trying to win. And she’s a monster.
March 25, 2008 at 10:25 pm
urbino
Samantha Power was right all along. BTW, her appearance on Colbert’s show is worth watching, if you haven’t seen it. Colbert was pretty dang funny, and Power was funny by trying not to laugh.
Hillary really does seem to have decided to go all in, scorched earth, balls to the wall, no holds barred on this thing. “Either I win, or nobody wins,” seems to be the operative principle. Or, as Bill Bradley I think said it, and hasn’t been improved upon, “If I’m not the nominee, the Democratic Party deserves to lose.”
It’s disappointing.
March 25, 2008 at 10:29 pm
ari
Yep, it’s making me a bit crazy. But I keep telling myself that McCain can’t add, which isn’t a good thing in a bad economy, he’s as old as the hills, which isn’t a good thing in electoral politics, and he favors war with all comers, which is, um, well hell, I hope it’s not popular.
March 25, 2008 at 10:41 pm
bitchphd
Credit to Power, she deals with being on Colbert about as well as anyone I’ve seen.
Also, am I a bad feminist if I say she has gorgeous hair, and I envy it?
March 25, 2008 at 10:42 pm
ari
I don’t know, are you?
March 25, 2008 at 10:43 pm
urbino
In a sense, this situation is a microcosm of the Dem Party in recent history. Everybody’s too busy looking out for their own hide to step up and lead. (Obama is, as far as I can tell, the one exception.) Everybody seems to think that if they just stall long enough, the problem — that is, the problem as it affects them personally — will go away. If Hillary can just drag the process out long enough, maybe she won’t lose. If they let the process drag out long enough, maybe the DNC won’t have to risk alienating one set of donors or the other, and the supers won’t have to take responsibility for having made a decision that actually had consequences.
It’s the problem the Dems have had for a long time: no real leaders.
March 25, 2008 at 10:44 pm
urbino
Am I a bad man for saying she’s got a fierce intelligence, and I envy it?
March 25, 2008 at 10:46 pm
urbino
It’s the problem the Dems have had for a long time: no real leaders.
I should qualify that. Nancy Pelosi is showing promise as a really good SotH.
March 25, 2008 at 10:47 pm
ari
She’s pretty smart, yeah. I’m not that keen on her hair, though.
March 25, 2008 at 10:48 pm
ari
As for the party, I agree that this looks like business as usual. But I also think there’s something deeper going on here. This who-gets-to-be-first stuff strikes me as a big deal. It’s about race, it’s about gender, it’s about generation. And I don’t think anyone can handle it.
March 25, 2008 at 10:53 pm
ari
Okay, I’m going to sleep. It’s good to have you back. Were you gone? It seems like you were gone. Or maybe I was just never here when you were here. Dratted internet.
March 25, 2008 at 10:55 pm
urbino
Thanks. I was gone for a few days, yes. Things got busier elsewhere, and IRL.
Something to sleep on: it hadn’t occurred to me before now, but wouldn’t Pelosi make an interesting choice for Obama’s VP?
March 25, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Ben Alpers
Nancy Pelosi is showing promise as a really good SotH.
Yeah…taking impeachment off the table and refusing to defund the war are really paying dividends for the party and the nation!
Seriously, urbino, on what basis do you say this? She deserves some credit for finally doing the right thing on FISA (after almost a year of effectively rolling over on this and other key elements of the Bush agenda), but she only did it after months of organized pressure against her first instincts to fold.
March 26, 2008 at 5:01 am
ac
She’s pretty smart, yeah. I’m not that keen on her hair, though.
I found it a little weird that the in-depth discussion of her gaffe in the Times appeared in the Style section, and talked about her relationship with Cass Sunstein. But I guess she’s more compelling on a personal level than, say, Niall O’Dowd.
March 26, 2008 at 8:09 am
ari
That is totally bizarre, ac. And yet, such antics are exactly what I’ve come to expect from the Times. That paper has gone totally downhill since they started using Eric as a source for quotes. Also, please note that my comment about Power’s hair was a jokey reply to B’s comment above that (if you follow). In other words, my sexism in this comment thread was directed only at Senator Clinton and did not extend to Power.
March 26, 2008 at 10:26 am
urbino
Come on, Ari. Speak truth to Power.
March 26, 2008 at 10:39 am
urbino
Yeah…taking impeachment off the table and refusing to defund the war are really paying dividends for the party and the nation!
Seriously, urbino, on what basis do you say this?
I’ve found her impeachment position frustrating, from time to time, too. I mean, both Bush and Cheney have willfully flouted the law on multiple occasions. But, in my more dispassionate moments, I think it was probably the best thing to do. Any attempt at impeaching Bush would have both failed miserably, and been political poison, pure and undefiled.
As for refusing to defund the war, I didn’t follow in great detail all the machinations of that decision, but my sense is that the same would apply. I’ve argued elsewhere that sometimes you just have to go down fighting. And maybe that’s what I would’ve done in her position. But at least she’s making decisions and accepting the consequences.
OTOH, maybe her leadership looks promising to me only because Harry Reid remains so utterly useless and contemptible.
March 26, 2008 at 1:21 pm
ac
That paper has gone totally downhill since they started using Eric as a source for quotes.
I wonder, do people often make eminence grise/Gray Lady jokes? I could just see Eric twirling the ends of his mustache, if he had one.
March 26, 2008 at 3:14 pm
eric
I could just see Eric twirling the ends of his mustache, if he had one.
That’s a big if.
March 26, 2008 at 3:56 pm
urbino
I suspect the main thing they know is that the Clintons have been party rainmakers for years, and are very tight with an awful lot of the biggest donors.
And, as if on cue…