Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Sentimental fools?

Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias warns against "sentimentality" toward "a criminal enterprise launched by madmen cheered on by a chorus of fools and cowards."

I am opposed to losing wars, even wars I don't like. This is not "sentimentality," nor folly, nor cowardice. Our enemies view our acceptance of defeat as a sign of weakness, and weakness is not good policy.

4 comments:

  1. And, right they are. Accepting defeat IS weakness. Of course, try telling that to the crowd who will chant their stupidity all day long... so long as no one looks at them wrong. I'd love to see them "invade" North Korea, throw a shoe at the "Dear Leader", and try to put their posters up over there... just once. Show me some brass and I might half believe they believe half of what they are saying.

    Cowardice and folly are what comprise the group think of naysayers which is that group. It is their trademark and they know it. As for sentimentality, that has a place and a reason. If it is not perfect, it beats the jack they are selling. Added in with wisdom, reason, strength, and purpose, we trump their lump of coal any day.

    Light em' if you've got em.

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  2. I thought perhaps Yglesias was talking about the Paulson bailout and the Obama "stimulus" plan.

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  3. Didn't Frederick the Great say diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments? If you have nothing to back up your talk, why would a determined foe cease and desist? The answer is he would not.

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  4. The Iraqi people didn’t ask to be conquered and occupied by a foreign power that destroyed their country and then immediately set about meddling in Iraqi politics and until just a month or so ago was struggling mightily for the right to permanently station military forces on Iraqi soil contrary to the will of the Iraqi public. Not only did Iraqis not ask for such services, but nobody anywhere has ever asked for them.

    Yeah and Kuwait didn't ask to be invaded and we didn't ask for Saddam to repeatedly violate the terms of the ceasefire and the Kurds didn't ask to be gassed and the marsh arabs didn't ask to have their lands drained and we didn't ask Saddam to play games with the weapons inspectors and advance the notion he had WMD in order to deter other regional enemies and we didn't ask Al Queda, Baathists and Sadrist factions to wage simultaneous guerilla wars slowing down reconstruction and doing more to destroy Iraq than we ever did. I could go on but why bother. As they say you can't reason someone out of beliefs that they didn't reason themselves into.

    In any case pointing to the Arab World as arbiter of whether the Iraq war was a just war or a "criminal enterprise etc etc" smacks of desperation since the Arab World is well know to believe lots of things that aren't true (the orginal 9/11 truthers, jews run the world etc).

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