It's always important to know what the fascist branch if the Libertarian Party thinks.
We were on the cusp of winning, but the relentlessly negative coverage of the war sapped the morale of our troops to the point where they refused to get out of bed.
I forget where, but didn't the administration already admit that their definition of "winning the war" is based on perceived U.S. public opinion about whether it was won or not? That they have no goals other than to stay there until we, as Americans, feel like we've done a good job?
The administration needs the public to support the war over three election cycles to fine-tune its policy, which will finally eventually get it right, they think.
An Army War College publication, Parameters, published a good article evaluating media responsibility for turning the public against wars. (Link.) The author concluded that clarity and achievability of policy goals was more influential than media coverage. Surprise!
And FL, please, I'm squeamish. Could you in the future not mix flesh and needle metaphors, as in your last sentence? Squeamish and pedantic!
The press had better hope we win this war, because if we don't, a lot of people will blame the media.
Well, we all know this is true, since those same people have been blaming the media for everything ever since the 2000 election. Exactly why "the media" should give a flying fuck that a hypochondriac says he doesn't feel well is a more interesting discussion.
Reynolds' statement is not a prediction; it's a threat.
"You better hope we win this war or else. . ."
Or else what? You're going to come and kick our asses? Circulation/Viewership numbers are already going down in most traditional outlets. Throw us in jail? All of us? (Because everybody knows there is one media.) Well, you might do that anyway--especially if we improbably win the war.
Which, you know, requires a freakin loser, and I thought we already had him on trial. The absurdity is killing me.
I think you're all misreading Reynolds. He's not saying that he will blame the media; he's saying that some people will blame the media. As to the reasonableness of such assignment of blame, he is silent.
I recently posted about this in regard to a super-stupid Huffpo article that began by thanking God that there was no mass media during the Revolution, the Civil War or WWII, clearly not understanding that every war, going at least back to the English Civil War, is a product and generator of mass media, and to blame the current media for anything is to forget that history books have erased the many dissenting voices that surrounded retrospectively popular wars. It's a stupid argument made by stupid people who know nothing about the history of the press.
8: Heh. Remember those "nice free press you got there. Shame if something were to happen to it" updates?
We also now know why Labs reads Instapundit etc. When he goes back to grading his papers, they'll look really good.
Jackm, interesting link. I thought this has proved spectacularly wrong (the article is from 1992):
In truth militaries ought to "prepare for war" and leave the "peace waging" to those agencies of government whose mission is just that. Nevertheless, such pronouncements--seconded by military leaders[83]--became the fashionable philosophy. The result? People in the military no longer considered themselves warriors. Instead, they perceived themselves as policemen, relief workers, educators, builders, health care providers, politicians--everything but warfighters. When these philanthropists met the Iranian 10th Armored Corps near Daharan during the Second Gulf War, they were brutally slaughtered by a military which had not forgotten what militaries were supposed to do or what war is really all about.
In fact, the military did just fine at fighting regular army units in the real Second Gulf War, but we're dying on the peacekeeping. Part of this is because the peacekeeping mission discussed in the article (Somalia) went south, creating an atmosphere where the arrogant little prick in the Oval Office could dismiss 'nation-building'.
Also, I think you linked the wrong article. Don't you want this one?
i think you guys are underestimating how much damage john burns has done w/ his relentless campaign manufacturing and distributing IED's across iraq.
Second thought: The military's problems with peacekeeping probably go back to training decisions made long before ALP's accession. But his relegation of nation-building to that capacious category, "Things I don't like and so don't have to think about," is part of the reason we're in this mess instead of not in it.
Oh, crappity-crap. Weiner, you are clearly not the only one with linking issues. You're right about the article that I did want. The other is one that gets linked around every so often and that I'm still thinking about.
Did this (cf.) help get you thinking about it?
Is it ever permissible to hope that one's own country loses a war? Or is there some sense in which a nation-state's foreign policy "is" that nation-state, such that those who claim that people who oppose whatever America's foreign policy happens to be hate America have a point?
That last sentence is a little rough.
Hey will there be an Oscars thread here? If any of you culturally-literate types are watching it I'd love to hear your reactions.
I'd love it if someone would. I don't have a television, which always seems good until moments like these.
"I think you're all misreading Reynolds. He's not saying that he will blame the media; he's saying that some people will blame the media. As to the reasonableness of such assignment of blame, he is silent."
If one was reading Reynolds for the first time or he had never written about the subject before, this reading might be plauisble.
Pretty sure SCMT is being sarcastic, Scott.
#16:
Sure there is, if the consequences to your country of losing are not harmful, or are less harmful than the damages continuing to fight or winning would have, to your country or to others. Losing in Vietnam was not the same thing as losing to the Soviet Union would have been. And "losing" in the Vietnam sense is recognising that winning is not worth the cost, is perhaps impossible, and leaving with a fig leaf. It becomes a defeat in retrospect, because the will of the country's government did not prevail.
For me a more interesting case is the Lucy Ring during WWII. A group of German officers decided that Nazism was a descent into barbarism, and Germany's redemption required that she lose the war. The information they gave the Soviets was crucial in winning the battle of Kursk. I think they were right.
The consequences to us of losing--that is, giving up and leaving--Iraq will not be dire; nothing to compare with losing a total war. For the time being, we have little to fear from any major power. I think that the officers who talk to Seymour Hersh are doing what they can for the honor of their country and their respective services.
Reynolds has updated the post.
God, what a twit.
that won't change the fact that a press that looks in many ways as if it's rooting for defeat won't make an appealing scapegoat for a lot of people
Leaving aside the fact that one "won't" should be a "will," I'll repeat: you guys already scapegoat the press for everything. It's like a Klansman stating that those coloreds better do thus and such or else he won't let his daughter marry one.
I really can't stand the way that the modern American right is using this "Chimpy McHitlerBurton" thing to try and push the idea that it in some way undercuts a substantive critique if one adds the observation that George W Bush looks like a monkey. The guy does look like a monkey - I mean face it, he looks like a monkey. If someone is fucking things up, and they have a face like a monkey, what are you meant to do, ignore it? Likewise with the fact that his administration is far too close to the Halliburton company. It's not like Bush being a moron and Halliburton having too much influence are little ad hominem details that have no relevance to the war; they're both quite important factors behind the mess we're in. "Hitler" and "Mc" are probably less defensible but I don't really recall them having been used all that much. Certainly "Chimpy Halliburton-boy" is a perfectly fair critique of what's wrong with the Bush administration and I think it's a shame that Reynolds sneers at it rather than trying to engage with the point made.
Similarly "Boring Hacky Pretend-Libertariany McReynolds McBoring McIndescribably Fucking Boring" would be a decent critique of Instapundit.com and I will not take him seriously until he responds to it.
Oh dear. One of the people he cites is named "Pierce Wetter." Even I, M.C. Weiner think, that's funny. Poor guy must have had a hard time growing up.
I put it to McReynolds and co. to prove the existence of this cheering-for-failure media. Much like the "liberal media" smear, this line of argument seems to be the received (but as yet unproven) wisdom of the Right.
From my seat, the media's been pretty softball when it comes to covering the run-up to war, the war itself, and the ensuing blowback in the peacekeeping (i.e., post-"mission accomplished") phase.
With regards to 25, perhaps these linking issues are catching.
"Given the press's concern for how it's perceived in various communities...."
I'd be idly curious as to what Glenn's explanation is for how their's an effectively unitary consciousness of "the press." Is that at all like what "the blogosphere" desires, is concerned about, etc.?
3 "I forget where, but didn't the administration already admit that their definition of 'winning the war' is based on perceived U.S. public opinion about whether it was won or not?"
This seems like rather a large thing to forget.
5: "Well, we all know this is true, since those same people have been blaming the media for everything ever since the 2000 election."
The 2000 election? How quickly we forget the whole "Richard Nixon" thing. 1962, when we didn't have him to kick around any more? Pat Buchanan's line for Spiro about the nattering nabob's of negativism?
I suppose we could at least go back to John Adams and the need for the Sedition Acts, though. But there's endless direct continuity with Nixon's people and Bush 43's people.
14: "I don't have a television, which always seems good until moments like these."
You're welcome to my spare 14", if you (or your agent) come pick it up. I doubt I could even get $5 for it on Craigslist. It's one of those newfangled ones, with color, though.
1962, when we didn't have him to kick around any more?
Well, having only been alive since 1968, I'll take your word for it. For the eight years preceding the 2000 election, though, the folks endlessly blaming the media were more than happy to blame the government, IIRC.
Answers.com says Safire wrote the "nattering nabobs of negativism" line for Agnew.
Some bright day anon, political speechwriters will lapse into benign ignorance of alliteration. From that very same day, those very same speechwriters will never again think to begin a State of the Union speech "The state of the union is", as though it were the nation's third-grade book-report.
Obligatory pony: pony.
"Webster's defines the state of the Union as"
The union had states in the past, and still does to this day.
Perhaps the state of the union will rotate each year, but I advise against an alphabetical scheme, because Alabama doesn't deserve to go first.
I think Alabama should definitely be the first to go.
Oh! Did you see what he did? He took apostropher's words, and, by exploiting an ambiguity in the meaning of the expression "first to go" (notice that he signaled this exploitation by changing the word order from "to go first"—genius!), he made it seem as if apostropher had meant something else, and that he was disagreeing with him! In the process, he managed to communicate his own feelings on the revised subject, while still being humorous!
Matt Weiner, I salute you.
Each of the fifty states is nifty in its own way; I salute them all.
If there were a Jon Bon w-lfs-n, I'd vote for that guy. Darnlin' you give comments—a bad name!
Each of the fifty states is nifty in its own way; I salute them all.
If only someone were to come along and chronicle each of the Nifty Fifty, as I call them—in song! Ideally, the songs would not only incorporate some aspects of the state under discussion's history's defining (mythic, if possible) moments, but also, on occasion, reflect the personality of the songwriter. At the same time, however, there should be some songs that focused on individual lives, or events in those lives, that incorporate some aspects of life in the particular state (for instance, if it were a midwestern state, one might mention 4-H clubs) while not concealing the universality of the themes under a mess of local color.
If this project—one could imagine a different "album" of songs for each state, say—incorporated in its music a wild amalgam of American styles, sometimes exuberant and sometimes maudlin, so much the better!
All states are nifty, but some are more nifty than others.
(Hey, speaking of the Oscars, does anyone remember when Tom Hanks, speaking of EZ Company, said, apparently without irony, something like "All people are human, but some are more human than others"? I was pretty blown away by it.)
The state of the union is a western, but some states are more western than others.
42 -- You're in luck, I understand a Mr. S. Stephens is working on a project along those very lines. Be sure to listen to his "Illinoise".
I believe he spells his surname "Stevens".
I want to lay you on a bed of shaggy dogs
For tonight I am sore wounded
I want to be just as close as the holy ghost is—to your pelvis
And lay you down on bed of not so shaggy dogs
You know what each individual state deserves?
A sentimental rock anthem?
A bullet through the last temple?
These lovely parting gifts?
to do well enough, but not better than any other state?
Mankind will not be free until the last haruspex is strangled with the entrails of each individual state.
or even to be well enough, but not better than other state, so that variety of experience is banished and all life collapses into a homogeneity that could only be described as death with a beating heart?
before w-lfs-n gets it, "well" s/b "good" in 54.
This state wept for a sky once bound only by horizons now cut by rooflines and the tops of telephone poles, and wrapped in encircling wire.
On account of the album cover's reading "Come on feel the Illinoise" I leave it to you and your memories of Quiet Riot.
You know what would make a good title?
Le Hussard sur Detroit
#60: I hate you now because that goddamn song is going through my head and has been for half an hour.
After 61 I have Olivier Martinez going through mine.
I was going to respond to 60, "You silly! That's a Slade song!" but no one will believe that I didn't hear the Quiet Riot version firstest and mostest.
Le Detroit d'antan a subi une changement de voyelles, et maintentant il est presque détruit.
no one will believe
Dern tootin'. And you know what? the Quiet Riot version is catchier. Just ask eb.
I don't know about you guys, but I thought the Mineshaft was pretty darn strong today.
65: Y a-t-il encore des truites a l'endroit détruit de Detroit?
Bien sûr, ça c'est l'un des deux traites de Detroit.
Not as cognatious as I thought.
Ain't nothin' gonna stop me now, but my innate inability to progress cognatious thunk.
Or the need to sleep.
A little froggie colored pink;
What does that pinky froggie think?
I'll tell you what that froggie thunk:
He thunk "ka-chunk-ka-chunk-ka-chunk."
"Answers.com says Safire wrote the 'nattering nabobs of negativism' line for Agnew."
Always was more interested in turns of phrase than Buchanan. More libertarian than proto-fascist, too, which is a slight improvement (although how a libertarian of any sort could justify working for Tricky Dick, I don't know). Thanks for the corrective reminder.
I'm amused that this is the relevant 'graph from answers.com, though:
Although this phrase is often credited to Agnew himself, it was actually written by William Safire, the legendary columnist for The New York Times, who was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Some of Agnew's other pearls were actually written by Patrick Buchanan, another White House speechwriter at the time.I still think of Safire more as the former Nixon speechwriter than as a "legendary columnist," which again shows how very very old I am, I guess. I also think of Buchanan more as "that proto-fascist anti-Semitic Nixonite" than "that guy on Crossfire/McLaughlin/columnist," whatever, too.
I do think of Cheney as "the current Veep," though, not as "Gerald Ford's former chief of staff," or "that former Congressman from Wyoming." Although "old shoot-'em-in-the-face" works, too.
I have officially changed my mind on the Koufax vote. LizardBreath, I understand the appeal of not voting for yourself -- like in Election, although that just gets you George W. Bush (I maintain that that is not really a spoiler) -- but not even keeping the love within the blog? That's just not right.
One of the disadvantages of the Koufax voting system is that they ain't no secret ballot.
CharleyCarp is pretty cool, though -- representing prisoners at Guantanamo, makes nicely reasoned legal points in ObWi comments... I could vote for w-lfs-n under another name, I guess.
Listen to little Ms. Diebold. (No, seriously, representing prisoners is pretty cool. I didn't do a vote count.)
There is a world in which the last sentence of that comment makes sense, but it is not this one.