In case you missed it, Romney's, uh, inapt comparison of his sons' campaign work to military service in Iraq didn't go over so well with one soldier's dad:
Look, everyone who spends every waking minute with cameras pointed in his face is going to say something stupid. We know that. I hate gotcha politics; heck, I'm willing to give gaffe-prone Bill Richardson a seventh or eighth look if he shows some amazing insight, courage or candor going forward.
But this goes well beyond just a gaffe — indeed, it goes well beyond Romney. It cuts right to the bone of the issue: That the families of our professional military are being made to endure tremendous sacrifice, and that very professionalism isolates their sacrifice from the rest of us. It's just too damn easy to send someone else to go die for you in war; and therefore supporting war becomes a matter of cheerleading, not putting one's very body on the line — come blood, burns or bullets.
The commitment of a soldier, the willingness to lay down one's life for one's country, that absolute sacrifice, has no parallel in civic life. War is not sport; it is not, must not be simply “politics by other means”;
it is not a macho substitute for diplomacy: It is death and finality itself. Our current tragedy stems from our insulation from that.
Romney's statement was a gaffe, but not an isolated incident: It shows where we really are.
Yes Charlie but in the immortal words of RAJ . . . .
“Genuflect to them all you want. But recognize that, if it weren't for people who did productive work that paid taxes, you wouldn't have anyone to genuflect to.”
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/showDiary.do?diaryId=8511
I'm willing to pay taxes; they're willing to die. Where's the comparison again?
First, welcome to BMG. I notice you just recently joined.
I occasionally like to write short, little aphoristic comments that I think say a lot in a few words.
My unfortunate experience has been that some people (Raj is just one example) just do not get such comments. If you're going to be understood and appreciated by everyone you'll find you've got to do both, i.e., write everything out in elaborate detail and quip cutely. One style does not work universally.
that actually your comment was directed at raj. :4a7d3d609129a9296bf7ac0608c2097
…it is obiouse that this SchoolZombie’87 creature is little more than yet another sockpuppet of the Eabo/MCRD trolls.
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I became attentive to sockpuppetts and alternate handles when I was posting on the NYTimes gay rights board.
I think that's the key point.
While Operation Yellow Elephant, for example, is in mildly bad taste, it has a significant point. Those pushing the war are unwilling to commit themselves to something that is incompetently run, with undefined strategic goals, and that could take decades to produce stability. (Examples: Sri Lanka still has conflict with the Tamil Tigers after decades. Lebanon still has civil conflict. There are plenty of other examples.)
By their actions, we shall know them. Just as the treatment of Vitter vs Craig shows the deep anti-gay bigotry of the GOP so too do their actions on Iraq demonstrate that this is a political football for them and not as they would have us believe the central front in the Global War on Terror. This is demonstrated a number of ways:
In all of these instances, Republicans recognized that if they lost the argument about Iraq, they would be humiliated. Not committing any people to Iraq, they didn't recognized that screwing up the policy about Iraq would be profoundly immoral.
Make it into a post, and I'll front page. These are points that need to be echoed by our candidates.
Ray McGovern began a call to action recently (Do We Have The Courage To Stop War With Iran?) with the question: “Why do I feel like the proverbial skunk at a Labor Day picnic?”
Well, I feel like a skunk on this blog as 1) I say to you, Charley, that it is damn good to see someone else point out, for a change, that “War is not sport… It is death and finality itself” and 2) say to fellow commenters that I’ve been hoping to see more righteous revulsion and urgent, concerted pressure on our congressmen and senators, as I suggested [here http://www.bluemassg…
and [here http://www.bluemassg…]:
We need to get back to basics. What is the value of a life? A life. To the person who loses it. To the loved ones. As we debate this Iraq war, anguish about the dead, dying and wounded seems missing. We're able to shove these thoughts out of our mind and go on with daily lives in our calm, safe communities. I grew up learning that reverence for life was one of the deepest spiritual, moral values. Didn't most of you? If so, how can we tolerate these years of constant death due to a war that was launched on an elective basis, not because there was any direct known threat to us. This “preventive war,” is snuffing out real, individual human lives just as much as a defensive war to counter a real attack or a real imminent threat.
It seems to me that we have lost sight of, lost empathy for, the value of human life. We've allowed ourselves to go numb and accept the constant death. No war is a good war but I'd accept that WWII was The Good War. People knew why they were fighting and their families knew what many of them died for. This is The Bad War. It was a neocon fantasy, sold to the public with lies. Now that we know this, how can we live with ourselves if we don't scream for accountability – from Kerry and all who hold power – and for the war to stop as soon as reasonably possible?
My hand-wringing and ranting will be for naught unless I and we take actions to stop this bloodletting.
Will we be complacent (blogging and e-mailing but no marching, no heckling legislators, no occupying their offices and getting arrested) as long as it's still mostly rural and poor kids dying? Read McGovern's piece. If IdiotPrez attacks Iran, it may be our kids and our neighbors drafted.
Possible three-part solution:
1) cut off Iraq War funding except to protect troops and bring them home in an orderly way
2) forbid an attack on Iran unless specifically authorized by Congress
3) start impeachment investigations to slow IdiotPrez down.
“War is not sport… It is death and finality itself”
–Charley on the MTA
Three things need to be done:
There's been a lot of talk about the Democrats lack of “leadership” or “spine”. That's no more than an example of the fundamental attribution error. Humans have a well-recognized tendency to attribute problems to dispositional origins rather than situational one. Here's a fuller explanation:
The problem that Pelosi and Reid have is that the Democratic caucus is powerful to the extent that it is united. There are too many Democrats who have falsely concluded that opposing this war is politically risky — or that it it will increase their political risks. (Republicans are going to run on the war anyway. It matters not at all what Democrats do.)
So the problem isn't some misty lack of Leadership. We don't need to send Democrats to personality alteration school. Instead, we need to apply plain old political pressure to get the caucus united and the Republicans afraid.
Then the war will lose in Congress.
It might look safe in that it is non competitive and filled with Democrats but its filled with pro-life, pro-Iraq War, conservative Reagan Democrats who would rather vote for a Republican than a liberal Democrat. So I would say going after Dems in districts we need and where a progressive cannot possible win yet is a suicidal strategy that will lose us Congress.
THAT SAID what we should be doing is forcing Reid and Pelosi to come up with a solid unified Democratic de-escalation plan for Iraq and use their whips (Clyburn and Durbin respectfully) to make these votes akin to voting for the leadership i.e committee seats, committe chairmanships, in essence power and influence WITHIN the caucus will be cut off if they dont vote on the partys Iraq plan. This way folks like Lipinski can vote with the leadership and sell it to their constituents by arguing it increases their influence and is a positive for their districts even if its ideologically counter intuitive to their interests.
The way to do that is not to fund primary challengers to DINOs but to keep pestering Pelosi and Reid, threatening not to fund them and their candidates, hell maybe even fund Pelosis primary challenger (Cindy Sheehan) to show them we're serious. It also makes sense that the Democrats DO SOMETHING productive so they can be re-elected since watch the GOP call them a DO NOTHING Congress.
Also Charleys simple observation about war is incredibly succinct, I cannot add to it, only agree with it and forgive me for distracting from it with petty politics.
Recent polling shows that there aren't any Reagan Democrats anymore. On the issues on which Democrats run (healthcare, fair trade, Iraq, privacy, etc.), there are lopsided majorities favoring Democratic positions. It is not 1988 anymore. There has been an enormous shift on issues and on partisan identification. I don't understand where you get this political assessment. It sounds more like conventional wisdom than conwaytional wisdom.
Essentially you are saying that we should be satisfied with “January Democrats”. They vote Democratic for Speaker or Majority leader in January, but, hey no problem! if they vote Republican in February, March, April, May, June, July, August, Septemeber, October, November, and December.
Lipinski is not safe but a Democrat would be.
To your last point: like it or not, stopping this war is a polical fight.
even if they vote wrong in Septemeber.
War is not sport; it is not, must not be simply “politics by other means”
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…what Clausewitz wrote was the war is a continuation of politics by other means and what he meant by that was that the end goal of war is political, and one must keep the end goal in view in
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(a) determining whether to go to war,
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(b) determining how the war is to be fought, and
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(c) determining whether the political ends cannot be achieved through war, and
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(d) determining that circumstances have changed so that the war need no longer be fought (i.e., sue for peace).
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On the general theme of the post, Romney’s comment was more than a bit silly. Romney’s children are all adults (I presume) and they can do what they like. But has anyone asked Romney what he did to encourage any of them to enlist in a war on Tara that Romney himself so obviously approves of?
Youd dont know Chicago like I do, Ive campaigned in these districts, their mostly Catholic and therefore pro-life, anti-gay marriage, they also are very patriotic and tend to be hawkish on defense. These are a class of voters that turned blue states red for Reagan IL, RI, NY, and hell even MA. Granted their a dying breed, most of the Regan Democrats came back when Clintoln was President since he ran as a populist in 1992, and they voted for Gore more than Bush, but they switched back to Bush in 2004 disproportionately and they still elect Lipinski. Lipinski is not a DINO because he likes being conservative, its because he reflects the makeup of his district, they are full of working class conservative Democrats who yes do agree with the party on healthcare, jobs, etc. like you suggested and if you look at his voting record so does Lipinski. Its on social issues and national security that they are conservative and hence so is Lipinskis voting record.
You either ignored or misread my post what I was suggesting was not that he keep voting for Pelosi for Speaker and expect our support, instead of lobbying from the outside through a primary that diverts money from close races and alienates these guys even further a la Lamont, we should pressure from the inside, i.e tell Pelosi and Reid to force these guys by threatening them with losing influence or rewarding them with more influence to vote with the leadership on Iraq. If you can do that you can see much better and pragmatic political action on a war Id say universally all of us here want to end. It might make more emotional sense to go after people you find as spineless but in the end your candidate will lose, they will get re-elected, and you would have not only changed nothing but you would have wasted money that could have caused change. Id say thats a dumb emotional strategy, and we need to play smart politics not angry politics to end the war.