Saturday, November 19, 2005

Blue vs. Red: Heat Is On; Neocon Tries To Bail

MEANWHILE, MANDIGO CHOMPS ON NEOCONS' PORK RINDS

Our contestant this week on "Blue vs Red" attempted to capitulate to the side of knowledge by informing us that his voting record might surprise you. Are tie-dye shirts and McGovern posters hanging in his closet?

This tempering of their conservative ideology is similar to Conservatives Unite!, who bent over backwards to show she was tolerant to blacks and the poor in the wake of Hurricane Katrina by unveiling her resume of good deeds towards the indigent.

Calling Daniel-In-Brookline and Rich Casebolt conservative is insulting to the party of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. These are neocons, a sect of conservatism that is anathema to the party's already dubious thought.

Here's my return fire to one of his supporters:
Let me give you some perspective on "your war". Don't you see how foolish your exuberance for a far-flung, phony war looks to the rest of the country and world? Why are you so happy to be duped? Here's an apt analogy:

Wouldn't you feel foolish if you were telling everyone how great your wife was when the rest of the neighborhood knew she was having an affair with Mandingo, the three-legged paper boy, who also eats your favorite pork rinds and watches your 60-inch big screen while you're out saving the Middle East?

Mr. Daniel-In-Brookline had this preposterous statement in regards to the benefits to Israel with U.S. military involvement in the Middle East:
America had strong and compelling reasons, post-9/11, to force Iraq to disarm, by diplomacy or by force. Israel, on the other hand, has no greater interest now than she did in 2000.

Ridiculous.

Does he believe the administration's assertion that Saddam was devising a plan to fly a remote-controlled plane with weapons of mass destruction to the continental U.S. and detonated it? How could he possibly assert that the most-hated rival to all of the Arab and Muslim world would not have an interest in an ally patrolling Baghdad? It's absurd to say such a thing and points again to the fact that his arguments emanate from Israel and cloak their involvement in this war.

And here's my response to Mr. Daniel-In-Brookline's question of why his beliefs stem from his ties to Israel.

By the way, it's likely that the Mr. Daniel-In-Brookline is a pro-choice-Israeli national-neocon-Red Sox fan.

2 comments:

Rich Casebolt said...

Steve, you asked me over on Daniel's site:

Don't you see how foolish your exhuberance for a far-flung, phony war looks to the rest of the country and world?

Here's my one-line answer:

As for the opinions of others ... consensus that is not based in sound principle is the way of the lemming, and leads to the same end.

But wait ... there's more.

It is small consolation that you are admired by others ... when the only chance to receive such admiration is at your funeral.

Daniel in Brookline said...

Calling Daniel-In-Brookline and Rich Casebolt conservative is insulting to the party of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. These are neocons, a sect of conservatism that is anathema to the party's already dubious thought.

*laugh* Sticks and stones, Steve...

Does he believe the administration's assertion that Saddam was devising a plan to fly a remote-controlled plane with weapons of mass destruction to the continental U.S. and detonated it?

Hmm, that's one I've never heard before! Citation, please?

On the other hand, the administration did assert that: (a) Saddam was known to have had WMD in the past, and could not be proven in 2002 not to have them, which made it prudent to plan as though he did; (b) Saddam was known to attack his enemies brutally and without warning, as he did to Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990; (c) Saddam had shown no compunctions about using WMD on the battlefield, as he did with chemical weapons against Iran in the 1980s and against Kurdish Iraqis during the same period; and (d) Saddam was known to openly and actively support terrorism, extent unknown.

In other words, in 2002 we knew that Saddam could strike at us or our allies without warning, perhaps using WMD that we thought he had and couldn't prove he didn't have, and possibly acting via a terrorist organization to provide 'deniability'. To a country reeling from a 9/11 attack, and wanting to avoid another such, this was an intolerable threat. I supported Bush's decision to invade Iraq at the time, and I support it today. If that makes me a neocon, so be it.

(On the other hand, if you call me a neocon because I follow the same religion as Paul Wolfowitz, Ariel Sharon, and Daniel Pearl, then you should examine your terminology.)

How could he possibly assert that the most-hated rival to all of the Arab and Muslim world would not have an interest in an ally patrolling Baghdad?

I never did assert that... which, as I said on my blog, implies that you're not reading very carefully.

What I did say was that, while Israel may well have a strong interest in a Saddam-free Middle East, that does not mean that Israeli interests drive American policy -- far from it. Nor does it demonstrate that my support for Israel drives my support for the war in Iraq.

I also said, as you quoted above, that Israel's interests in the region did not change due to 9/11, which is true. (Iraq, alone among the countries that invaded Israel in 1948, never signed the 1949 armistice agreement, and as such has been legally at war against Israel ever since. Israel needed no new reasons to be wary of Iraq after 9/11. More to the point, Israel was not attacked in 9/11; Israel's interests post-9/11 would only have changed had the United States asked Israel to participate in the fighting, but this explicitly did not happen.)

If you want to talk about Israeli involvement in the Iraq war, and not be treated as a conspiracy theorist, then you'll need to come up with facts, not correlations. Try again, Steve.

By the way, it's likely that the Mr. Daniel-In-Brookline is a pro-choice-Israeli national-neocon-Red Sox fan.

You're wrong, Steve -- dead wrong. I've never attended a Red Sox game in my life.

best wishes,
Daniel in Brookline

(No "Mister" needed, by the way; my friends call me Daniel.)