HELL. YES.
Simple, direct, and a punch straight to the teeth.
It's fucking true, too, and no one seems to have been willing to say it. At least not that clearly.
Seriously. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?
holy shit, that's more like it.
Can I vote absentee, for '08, right now?
No, I don't mean for Clark--for whoever wrote and produced that commercial.
(Okay, for Clark, if he heads the ticket.)
And he's so dreamy to boot.
Clark tried to recruit me into the U.S. Army in an airport in 2003. Damn it all if I weren't ready to sign up and get a direct flight for Iraq, but an actual serviceman interrupted to talk to the General, at which point I came to my senses and remembered that I'm a coward.
Man oh man. That's exactly what we want to see. With the nitwitted GOP bin Laden commercial playing in the background to drive the knife home.
At the risk of making myself unpopular (s/b "even more unpopular"?), the accusations in that add aren't really 100% fair. No doubt they're far more fair than standard GOP ads, but there's some playing dirty nonetheless. I'd prefer the Dems not stoop to that level, although maybe it is unavoidable.
I realize politics is almost always about playing dirty and taking the cheap shot, but that's something I prefer to hold my nose and accept as necessary, rather than stand up and celebrate.
Clark tried to recruit me into the U.S. Army in an airport in 2003.
Was it because your name's Armsmasher?
So goddamned simple. How's this for a strategy: say things that are true and important while looking into the camera.
10: Seriously, because you're a reasonable guy and I'm not seeing it. What's untrue or unfair?
10: Its not a 100 page all-complexities/nuances-accounted-for whitepaper, but its about the most accurate representation of the facts you can have in a :30 space.
It's amazingly truthful for a television commercial.
Quite restores my faith in America.
There are 4 claims made. Because of Iraq...
1) Osama is still a threat
2) The army is spread too thin
3) There are more terrorists in the world
4) America is less secure
4 follows from any of 1, 2, or 3, so which of those three isn't fair?
Haha-- on preview I see SP & I had the same thought. Here are the claims.
Because of Iraq:
(a) Osama bin Laden is still a threat;
(b) the US military is spread too thin;
(c) there are more terrorists in the world;
(d) America is less secure;
(e) if you see commercials telling you to be afraid of terrorism, remember: it's because of Iraq.
I take (e) to have two meanings: repeating (c) and saying that the Administration is telling you to be afraid of terrorism because they don't want to talk about Iraq.
All of these claims appear true. I await the diagnosis of unfairness.
SP and FL are identical when you apply the correct cipher.
1 is not really true "because of Iraq", but "because the Republicans are incompetent, bloodthirsty, and possibly find Osama's continued existance useful". Since, however unlikely, you could imagine a situation in which there was both an invasion of Iraq and where the hunt for bin Laden was handled well, the Republicans could very easily turn around and use it to dismiss the whole thing as deeply disrespectful to the troops, evidence of political calculation and fear-mongering, blah blah blah, except they'd almost have a point.
At the end of the day, they are seperate missions. That they were both botched completely is because we of Republican incompetence, and that's a point worth making. There's certainly no guarantee they'd have gotten him even if they hadn't gotten off the deep end into Iraq, because they're just bad at this stuff.
SP and FL are identical when you apply the correct cipher.
cipher :: Char -> Char
cipher 'S' = 'F'
cipher 'P' = 'L'
cipher c = c
Sorry it's USA today. but I thought I'd make a point by taking the very first result of my google search (troops pulled afghanistan iraq)
Shifts from bin Laden hunt evoke questions:
In 2002, troops from the 5th Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures.
The CIA, meanwhile, was stretched badly in its capacity to collect, translate and analyze information coming from Afghanistan. When the White House raised a new priority, it took specialists away from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered.
At the end of the day, they are seperate missions.
The US military has limited manpower, and diverted the bulk of its resources to Iraq while bin Laden and al Qaeda were still on the run. Those missions may be technically separate, but they affect each other deeply. Shifting resources to Iraq means shifting resources from actual, productive anti-terror operations.
More on-topic: someone please tell me this ad is playing in twenty different states.
Preempted by SP. It's a matter of resources, not just competence.
Since, however unlikely, you could imagine a situation in which there was both an invasion of Iraq and where the hunt for bin Laden was handled well,
Is that actually true in any sense other than 'well, anything's possible'? As I understand it, we didn't take reasonable measures toward capturing bin Laden in Afghanistan because we were readying for the invasion of Iraq. And given that it turned out we didn't have enough troops to do a reasonable job in Iraq, it seems odd to say that we could have done both well. I suppose we could have handled the search for bin Laden well, and Iraq even worse than we did, but that seems like an awfully weak claim to make.
21, 22:
All true, but I think that's summed up much more effectively with "because the Republicans are incompetent" than "because of Iraq". It seems like the "because of Iraq" line is more about an issue than the raging, dangerous ineptitude of the party in power.
I gotta disagree, LR. Iraq didn't turn into a disaster because of incompetent execution. Iraq turned into a disaster because that was the ONLY possible outcome of invading and occupying Iraq. And even though plenty of Democrats cravenly voted for the AUMF, the Bush administration has spent so much time and effort screaming that this is their war and that Democrats deserve no credit for it, that Iraq=GOP now.
It's a political ad, not a book. It's OK to lose some nuance in the service of impact.
(Does anyone else like to pronounce "AUMF" as if you were taking a big exaggerated Cookie Monster bite of something?)
Reminding voters of Iraq is a good idea politically.
Kerry also made these points in his 2004 campaign repeatedly. especially in the debate. The problem was that voters hadn't realized how bad Iraq was turning out to be.
10 ff.
Today I'm going to reverse course & defend somebody I agree with...
It's true that the division of American forces (claim 2, irrefutable) plays a role in the continuing threat from bin Laden. But there is a separate basis for saying that the continuing threat is "because of Iraq": the creation in Iraq of a rhetorical & logistical bonanza beyond anything bin Laden could otherwise have achieved.
On the rhetorical front: extremists can point to Iraq and say "See? America wants to occupy Arab nations and control oil supplies by force! Just like we said!" We made our terrorist enemies look like they're telling the simple truth, making bin Laden a greater threat because of Iraq.
On the logistical front: several times over the years, the U.S. has sought to destroy "terrorist training camps" in which radicalized people are trained in tactics. In Iraq we have created a terrorist training camp. There are now (by Pentagon estimates) at least tens of thousands of Iraqis who are actively engaging U.S. soldiers; and though they are hardly a unified force, they are (along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis under arms in the uniform of the tottering al-Maliki government) without any common enemy except the United States. Successful insurgent leaders like the late al-Zarqawi have publicly pledged loyalty to bin Laden, with no evidence that they have received any substantial support from him; as the most prominent and successful enemy of the U.S., bin Laden is a natural focus. Other than malcontents on the fringes of Muslim society and notoriously weak governments, bin Laden before 9/11 had no base of support; now he has influence over armed, experienced tacticians in the heart of the Arab world, because of Iraq.
Iraq turned into a disaster because that was the ONLY possible outcome of invading and occupying Iraq.
We'll never know if that "ONLY" is correct 'cause we've never occupied anything more than the Green Zone. Elsewhere we've just been rushing from place to place playing Cowboys and Noble Indigenes but with real explosives.
From 17, my problems are with (a) and (e). (a) is perhaps true, but far from certain. (e) could be given the interpretations FL gives it, but to me seems crafted to give the impression "it is only because of Iraq that we need to fear terrorism", which is quite a stretch, in my mind.
My point is that (b), (c), and (d) are completely true -- couldn't an equally effective ad have been written that focused on these three items? (Or even one that also included (a) and (e) reworded less strongly, so they didn't make overreaching claims?)
You're all right, the ad's not a white paper, it's a :30 second soundbite, but can't soundbites be crafted that are both true and effective?
And let me reiterate that I'd much rather run ads like this and get the current Republicans out of office than not run ads like this and lose, but it pains me to admit that, and saddens me that it's come to this. Fighting fire with fire, we all get burned.
34: If you look back on 21, 22, and 26, I think there's strong support for claim (a). While we don't know that bin Laden would have been captured if we'd focussed on searching for him, we do know that we didn't focus on searching for him because of Iraq. I'm not bothered at all by making claim (a) within the context of a political ad.
34: Your interpretation of (e) is spot on.
It seems like a bad idea to be running an ad where the final, hard-hitting line could be easily and correctly rebutted with, "no, it's because of the 3000 people who died on 9/11".
37 reminded me: why don't we have ads playing around the fucking clock hammering on the point that more Americans have now died in Iraq than died on 9/11? Now that's a data point I'd like to see pushed in Clark's ad. Combine that fact(repeat it several times!) with the fact that the war has made us less safe, has bred terrorism and stretched our military too thin, AND is costing us billions of dollars a day, and I think you've got an effective ad.
"27
21, 22:
All true, but I think that's summed up much more effectively with "because the Republicans are incompetent" than "because of Iraq". It seems like the "because of Iraq" line is more about an issue than the raging, dangerous ineptitude of the party in power.
Posted by: Lunar Rockette | Link to this comment | 11- 1-06 11:14 AM "
your point seems to be that the ad is unfair (to republicans) because it fails to mention other failures (by rebuplican)
Not "unfair to Republicans" but "will not necessarily have the effect of convincing anyone who is unsure of who to vote for, in two-thousand-fucking-six, that voting for Republicans is a miserably bad idea", or "will not necessarily convince the kind of psuedo-cynical 'independent' types who think that Democrats are clueless and condescending and clueless about national security that those perceptions are bullshit".
I was agreeing with Brock that there were logical and rhetorical holes in the ad and that this was a bad thing, but not necessarily why it was a bad thing. That is: I don't give a crap about the supposed ethics of "fighting fire with fire", as long as it's effective... I'm just not sure how effective this ad will be to the people it should be targetted towards.
Even if you cast the ending lines of Clark into "the Republicans botched Iraq, and that's why they're playing ads fear-mongering on terrorism", that's a reading that not only requires a viewer to be already sympathetic to the Democrats, but also capable of picking up a good bit of nuance - yet the average viewer is so incapable of comprehending nuance that we have to resort to ultra-simplified and somewhat weak arguments in our ads? Bah.
I agree with Brock on the idea of using the "more Americans have died in Iraq" angle: it's direct and uncomplicated, not because it's been simplified and spun into something "digestible", but because it's the plain and unvarnished truth.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I think the administration's focus on Iraq rather than bin Laden maes the ad both true and persuasive, but IANAhighly paid political consultant.
Who are you agreeing to disagree with? Me or Lunar?
Also, Lunar, it sends an entirely different (and less pointed) message to have the Iraq vets in the commercial say "Because of incompetent Republicans" rather than "Because of Iraq," something they sure as hell know from.
Lunar is who I was addressing. I also disagree with you, to the extent that you find the ad dishonest enough to be distasteful.
41: Comity? Actually, I think I agree with you in theory, I just don't think that the ad made the case that everyone else is making for it in re: bin Laden and Iraq all that well.
43: True, but does that necessarily mean it's the message we should be sending? That also reminds me, something about the contrast between Clark and the vets made me really, really uncomfortable, especially given the closing line. It came across as strangely manipulative, given the contrast. Actually, I think it would have been much better without Clark. He comes across as a sort of intermediary/spokesperson for the vets, which isn't really necessary at all.
(Granted, one of my friends just suggested 30 seconds of the soldier with one arm saying "Iraq Iraq Iraq" over and over again, so. Yeah.)
Good heavens. I guess I was looking at their faces -- I didn't even notice that one of the guys had lost an arm.
Well, the ad doesn't particularly play it up in any way, which I think is ultimately a good thing.
Agreed. I expected him to say "if it weren't for Iraq, I'd still have my arm," and since he didn't you get a twofer: what he said, and what he didn't say.
...more Americans have now died in Iraq than died on 9/11
Uh, at times like this I wish I knew how to use the Googles. Wasn't the 9/11 total about 3,500 while US Iraq dead are at about 2,800?
There criticisms of the end of this ad have some sort of disconnect from its emotional impact-- it has to be parsed in a particularly odd way to come up with the conclusion it's unfair.
I'm sitting here listening to a John Kerry story on NPR. *This comment was frigging Monday!!* I am so tired of this. I do wish Kerry would keep his mouth shut!
Apparently, that's what Don Imus told him this morning (NPR played that too).
49: You can find different numbers for the WTC death toll, depending on where you look, but there're all less than the US military death toll in Iraq.
Actually, it looks like I was unfair: we're about 100 deaths in Iraq away from the total 9/11 death toll. I was earlier just counting the WTC death toll. Which still makes a damn good line, that ought to be in campaign ads everywhere.
50: The thing is, though, that it isn't about Kerry keeping his mouth shut. It's about Rove and Fox news, or whoever, looking for opportunities. The Michael J. Fox thing didn't work for them, so they're trying Kerry. If that didn't work, it would be something else.
Thanks for the clarification. I don't know why my memory was 500 people high on the 9/11 figure.
Also: do you really not know how to use google? What's the problem, exactly?
I think initial estimates were in the 3500 range.
Initial meaning the few weeks following. Initial estimates were up to 40,000, I think, then something like 5,000 was tossed around for a while.
56. Well, I think that this undermines your argument somewhat. If the 9/11 death toll was 40,00, and it could have been, does that make the occupation of Iraq OK? Not hardly. Like the Lancet study, the actual # means little in comparison.
57-What? I honestly don't get your point. My argument is Dems ought to be rubbing every American nose in the fact that hundreds more Americans have died in Iraq than died in the WTC on 9/11. That's powerful stuff.
Body counts are the wrong metric.
The wrong metric?? Body counts may in fact be the perfect metric to use in anti-war political advertisements, the goal of which is to persuade.
Perhaps, but they're the wrong metric for deciding policy questions. I think you two are talking about different things.
Well first, I'm not sure body counts are an irrelevent factor for deciding policy. But also, I understand that TLL is talking about policy, but I think we both agree on the policy--the discussion is about political ads, or was until 57.
If you count only American deaths, it's above WTC (planes + buildings) but still below total 9/11 deaths. However, if you count total coalition deaths (mostly US, Brit, some Italian and others) it's above total 9/11 deaths. The latter is a more fair comparison, since not all the people killed on 9/11 were US citizens either.
And in any case, wait a month and it will be.
62/63: Yes but I actually think "hundreds more Americans have died in Iraq than died in the WTC on 9/11" sounds more powerful. And what are the Republicans going to do, quibble that you're not counting non-WTC 9/11 deaths?
52: ..it isn't about Kerry keeping his mouth shut.
Sure it is. Kerry can't control what Rove & Company do. He can (or rather, should be able to) control what comes out of his mouth.
It's the Don't-drop-meat-when-the-jackals-are-looking rule of politics.
But what he said was a very small miscommunication of obvious intent. The kind of thing, by the by, that comes out of Bush's mouth every time he opens it. It's clear what he meant--for god's sake, the man served his own damn self. No meat was dropped; the Rove jackal leaped up and grabbed a piece off the damn fork. Which if Kerry weren't there, he'd have done with someone else.
OTOH, the fact that after calling bullshit on it for however many days it's been now, he came out and offered one of those I'm-sorry-if-I-offended-anyone apologies *does* make me want to tell him to just stfu and go away now.
Fighting fire with fire, we all get burned.
Oh, but the light's so pretty while it lasts.
Clark is totally hott. I haven't even seen the ad and I know he's totally t3h h0ttz0rz in it because he would be the hott in any circumstance. In much the same way that Audrey Hepburn looks dignified even when the TiVo is paused - an action which unveils the worst, clumsiest and least admirable expressions on every other face known to film - Wes Clark could be knee-deep in pig shit and be so hott we'd all want to know the brand of skin cream he's selling.
68: The problem is that he starts with a reputation for vacillation and equivocation. McCain could have said the same thing and he would have got away with it. Kerry has the reputation he has. Minor mistakes are inevitable, as is the ensuing hubub; Kerry doesn't have the chops to handle it, and so he should stay quiet.