a patriot’s guide to debating TWAT

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TWAT and Benjamin Franklin

12 thoughts on “a patriot’s guide to debating TWAT”

  1. 1) He won’t use nukes
    2) Afghanistan is difficult, we need the ground secured to some extent in order to maintain air supremecy over Iran. No-one has ever conquered Afghanistan, but before the USSR demolished it in the eighties Kabul was a cosmopolitan city. What exactly has Russia done to help rebuild Afghanistan? Nothing, absolutely nothing, they have also flooded unstable parts of the world with machine guns, many of which are in the hands of children who should be at school. Russia are far more responsible for the mess in Afghanistan and the rest of the developing world than the West. Russia rejected free-market capitalism and got to the point where they couldn’t feed their own people. Stalin was responsible for millions of deaths with his communist policies. Now theysuddenly want everyone to openup their markets, developing countries included, they throw their toys out of the pram and treble the price of natural gas when a democratic election doesn’t go the way they wanted it to. Still they are flooding unstable parts of the world (the Middle East and Latin America) with machine guns (outdated inacurate ones at that) and are helping Iran develop weapons of mass destruction.

    3) It won’t, it will protect the free world from the threat of Russian or Chinese ICBM’s falling into the wrong hands.

    4) Notice the word ‘essential’ it is essential to protect the citiznes of the free world from terrorists. If you don’t do anything wrong you have nothing to fear.

  2. Steven, this one’s a little over the top for you.

    1) See #3 here.

    2) “The last invaders were bastards, so why should we behave any better?”
    As for flooding the world with weapons–the half of the world not using knock-off Ak-47s is using M-16s or ARs. Has the landmine ban gone into effect yet? Or is the US producing land mines again? Presumably only for use at home, eh?

    No-one disputes that Putin is a son-of-a-bitch. But Russia’s been out of Afghanistan for two decades. The current occupiers own the mess now, including Canada. How much altruistic help with rebuilding did the US feel obligated to give Vietnam?

    3) The “missile ‘fence” is a farce; just doesn’t work.
    In the tests, given a target that broadcast its location it hit the target twice out of four, possibly five–when it actually got off the ground. Note: not “disarmed the missile”, just hit it.

    But it’s worse than faulty tech. It’s the deliberate abrogation of non-proliferation treaties, and the implied threat that goes with it.

    By the way: Is the Senate still seriously going to blow a hole in the US civillian nuclear trade policy and the NPT just so India can “pursue peaceful research” and power generation? I recall another country that’s busy protesting to the world that that’s all they’re after.

    4) Steven, this may be the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen you post. Which liberties would you call non-essential? What would you repeal, Steven, to gain a little “safety” as the fiction is called by the current White House occupant?

    And it is a fiction. Only when everyone sits dociley at their kitchen table, tranquilized to the eyeballs watching White House TV (or Fox ‘News’) with their hands in the open on the table will there be “safety” as the Mayberry Monarch envisions it.

    The destroy-the-village-in-order-to-save-it approach of the current POTUS and co. to civil liberties is the mockery of everything the founders of the US stood for. The “safety” of democracies is institutional and lies in the enshrinement of and value we as a group give to our individual freedoms, not to some idealized version of a safe society.

    “The innocent have nothing to fear” is a phrase guanranteed to strike fear into the hearts of innocents everywhere.
    –Terry Pratchett

    Or do you prefer Heinlein?
    “So this was freedom, as defined by Orwell and Kafka: the freedom to pace around in your cage”

  3. 1) he has, actually, sought blanket permission to use nukes twice in the past two years.

    2) Why do we need air supremacy over Iran? We’re not at war with them, and they’re an independent country. Do we need air supremacy over Burundi, too?

    3) The Star Wars program actually intended to blow incoming Soviet missiles up over Canada, letting the fallout rain down on Edmonton, etc, so you can see how I’m not a huge fan of the whole idea. Besides, the Soviet Union is no longer in existence. It’s time to get over it. It was a way to funnel cash to lobbyists’ clients and nothing more.

    4) god help me, but I think you need to read Boris. Read him about ID cards…”The frail cockade of freedom has been squashed by the giant descending rump of matronly authority.” But I’m perfectly willing to say your statement and Benjamin Franklin’s jibe perfectly. Which is very mean of me.

  4. The war of words with Iran is getting to the point where it may become a war. We do need air supremecy to protect out troops in Iraq and Arghanistan from the Iranian air force..

    Americans need less freedom, period

    In the UK our conservatives attack the government on their abuse of civil liberties, but they also talk of a ‘modern compasionate conservatism’ like Bush did. Hmmmm are they neo-con too?

  5. The Iranian air force hasn’t attacked your troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Americans need less freedom? So why don’t you invade them instead of Iraq, where people needed more?

    Bantering labels does nothing but reinforce prejudice. Are there neocons in the UK? Hell yes. Are there all kinds of other right-wingers? Hell yes. Are some of them parrotting Bush to ride his coattails? Fuck yes. Duh. Call them what you like; they are politicians, at bottom.

  6. They have too much freedom in Iraq now Saddam has gone and there is nothing resembling civic authority in huge swaiths of the country.

    This middle east thing is just the endgame of the cold war. The region was flooded with weapons during the end of the USSR and then you have the Iranian revolution.
    These guys really should not have nukes.

    They want to wipe out the Ba’athist sunnis in Iraq and exert their influence over Iraqi politics. There are already bands of vigilanti Sh’ias threatening women who do not cover up completely and trying to enforce Sharia law medieval style. Saddam left a power vacuum.

    NATO needs to stay until that vacuum is filled, if we go civil war will break out completely, there will be enthnic cleansing. Is that what you want?

    As for Afghanistan, if anywhere becomes another US mass graveyard Afghanistan will be that place. Afghanistan has never been taken, due to the terrain and the harsh winter it possibly never will. But in case of war with Iran we need bases there in case China decide to let the Iranian planes land so we can shoot them down on the way I guess.

  7. I geddit! It’s like a reverse Domino Theory!

    We need to cover China and Iran, so we need Afghani bases, we need to cover our Afghani bases, so we need bases in Iraq and Pakistan. Covering those means we need to take territory in India, Turkey and Spain, we want France because a 45-hour work-week is just un-American (or un Wal-martian), but to cover any troop movements there we need to extend our forces in a pincer movement through Eurasia and Australia, and possibly the moon. The kneebone’s connected to the thigh bone and through the elbow to the rest of the Empire.

    Brilliant in its simplicity. Now if the Domino Theory wasn’t a load of crap, then it would have some value.

    Just remember–if you give up your finely-tuned sense of the absurd then the Department of Fatherland Insanity (oh–and the terrorists too) have already won!

  9. Steven, the fact that you feel something is inevitable does NOT oblige you to support it. Don’t be a “good German.” You have a mind, and the freedom to approve or disapprove of things. As someone wise said, if two partners always agree, one of them is not neccessary.

  10. I agree with the War on Terror, its a good policy, it will bring freedom and democracy to parts of the world that have only known tyranny and oppression. It will protect our way of life from the threat of those who want to destroy our way of life.

  12. Well you have to admit, it’s working in Afghanistan, where it all started.
    Oh, no, wait. It’s just that the warlords have changed names. It’s still an unstable, dangerous place to be where the likelihood is that fifty more years of “Coaliton” force presence will be required ere anything truly free and democratic emerges.

    Well TWAT’s sure working in Iraq, that shining beacon of democracy and freedom!
    Oh–wait. Over a hundred die each week in Bahgdad as the country sinks into the mire of civil war. But they’re dying free from Saddam. I’m sure they’d appreciate the difference.

    Well TWAT’s certainly disrupted terrorist plots … Um. Well apart from those plots they keep conveniently busting every so often, which are all oddly on the verge of being put into action, rather than, say, in the early planning stages, or so we get told.

    Oh–and apart from the Mumbai bombings, the Madrid attacks, and the London bombings. Say what you will, those were all responses to TWAT. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have happened, but the Iraq war was certainly a leading factor in the event.

    Oh yeah–and a bunch of other attacks across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia that hardly anyone bothered to report–funny how the major busts rarely go down in Indonesia, for e.g.

    Well at least our way of life is protected, and our freedoms secured! Well–aside from those ones we apparently have too much of.

    And what “way of life” do you think we’re defending here? I support gay marriage and legal pot, which are anaethma to the Gomer Pyle president. Does that mean I’m trying to destroy his way of life (see: “Mayberry”)?

    If some “way of life” needs protecting at the cost of “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred homour”* and along comes someone who wants to change it, does that mean they should be treated as a terrorist, Steven?

    Of course not. You’re not stupid–you can see logical fallacy when it smacks you upside the head.

    So why do you buy into those other arguments?

    *(Of course with Bush it’s at the cost of “your lives, your grand-kids’ fortunes, and the sacred honour of America”)

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