OT BUT THIS JUST IN: Rumsfeld steps down!
These are awesome letters, Becks. I've just started subscribing to my local paper, and the op-ed page is a real treat. Somebody should do something about all these problems.
1: Seriously? I can't find that story.
yup--
AP is saying that Rumsfeld is going to cut and run.
Those letters to the editor--they're depressing, Becks, but the thing to remember is this:
there have always been wing-nuts.
For most of my life, they were kept waaaay over there off to the right with the John Birchers, and people laughed at them.
Then they took over all three branches of government.
If we can just get them back into their cage, I won't mind the fact that they howl now and then. Not so much anyhow.
2: I'm sure they brought more than the requisite fifty crates of his native soil when he got set up in DC. They should be able to just dump him in the basement in a coffin and wait for a generation to pass while he regenerates. No biggie.
Thanks, forefathers, for adopting the tribal names for the territories in which we exterminated them. That's beautiful.
Ogged, you're so touchy. We marched through this country like the biblical creeping death, and we left some nice place names behind. Magnanimous, if you ask me, and that's why gas is $.29/gal.
On every envelope I send, I write out the full name, and what wonderful names they are!
Dude, not my problem you need a hobby, m'kay?
The third one posted here boggles my mind. 'I'm sorry officer, I had to shoot the seven year old in the head, but you should arrest the parents because I can't control myself.'
It is child endangerment to have your kid do anything rude or annoying around me, because I might kill him. What a bad person you are.
"World War II style" == "like the Nazis did it".
Best of all: reconciling the attitude displayed in the first letter with the belief that Hussein is a monster on the order of Hitler for doing exactly the same thing as the author suggests for exactly the same reason. (NB: Author and Hussein both monsters, and neither is the New Hitler.)
I thought WWII was where we showed that if you rebuild a country after kicking it, you don't have to kick it any more. I'd be happy with WWII-style, as it would mean that we had an exit plan that didn't derive from fairy-unicorn land.
The super-awesome thing is that the Blade is probably the best newspaper (for reporting, not sports) in the state.
13: "WWII-style" = Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki etc. and then years later Marshall Plan.
Is that what you are endorsing for Iraq?
15: That's a pretty uncharitable reading, especially as she actually defined what she thought WWII-style meant, and didn't reference Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc.
The Flint Journal letters page was normally taken up with debates over evolution, if I remember right.
I once wrote a letter to the editor advocating that The Boondocks be more prominently displayed on the comics page. They published it, and my grandma read it out loud to my grandpa without saying it was me, and asked what he thought. Grandpa said, "Oh, he's just saying that because he's black."
"We live in dangerous times," is so totally some kind of trope that appeals to certain conservative mid-westerners. Every time I have a political conversation with my father (who I love, but who is also a midwestern Republican), some line like this pops up. As if this year was any more dangerous than any other year -- and of course, the "spectre" of nuclear terrorism is implicit whenever this kind of thing is said. Gaaaaaah. [Banging head against family dinner table.]
This election means that this Christmas is going to suck... Isn't John Emerson from the midwest? I blame him.
Grandpa said, "Oh, he's just saying that because he's black."
That is beyond fantastic.
16: You're right it was uncharitable, and I'm sure that wasn't what Cala meant. But that is what happened in WWII -- there was some very serious kicking indeed before there was any rebuilding. And ...as for exit strategies...don't we still have military bases in Germany and Japan?
18: Because it sounds like the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring, and they all want their little Aragorns to be revealed as the gold that doesn't glister.
Yes, I'm wholly endorsing nuclear holocaust. Also, I wrote entirely in Swahili. Curses!
It would have been better if your grandpa followed that up by saying "And I'm not just saying that because I'm black."
I like the first paragraph of the first letter, not excerpted here: [Democrats] have done nothing but complain and point fingers, all the while praying for our defeat in Iraq because they believe that would somehow make them stronger as a party if the current administration were defeated in battle.
(1) At least some wingnuts will admit that some Democrats pray; this probably should have been removed in revision. (2) Apparently the Bush administration is doing battle in Iraq, which I didn't realize.
Well, actually, the bombing and extermination of civilians was pretty much everyone's tactic in WW2. But so was the occupation with very large armies, of the bits of Germany that were grateful for it, because we could have been Russians. And the Marshall Plan.
I think that modern democracies can do the bombing and extermination bit OK. But not even Israel could manage the occupation of Lebanon.
15: If you're gonna do it, then it pays to do it right.
"WW2 style", including Dresden, Hiroshima, the Marshall Plan, etc. worked quite nicely.
I would have done things World War II style.
He's so right. It's like how if the Germans had just taken the gloves off in Russia, they would've totally won.
13 ff.
Uniquely, Germany and Austria were relieved to be occupied at the time (at least those who were not Nazis were relieved). The trouble is that a precedent was set and now know one seem to be able to understand why the occupied states are not as grateful as they once were. In the end even the Austrians were relieved to have their state treaty and have the powers withrdraw.
Exit strategy in Germany? More likely one should talk about a hold-on-strategy!
Germany and Austria had had a certain experience of democracy and a wealth of very capable modern democratic politicians to call upon and a wide internal consensus to enable a rebuilding from within helped by external financing. The "Wirtschaftswunder" was the icing on a unique cake. Oh.. the existence of a commonly perceived external enemy helped muchly.
So where ARE the parallels?
I am probably a horrible human being and would most likely make an awful parent...but the "send the kid around back to give another car the finger with *both hands*" strikes me as an act of brilliance.
The Rumsfeld news has been spreading around the office today...
Ogged, Persians aren't allowed to wallow in guilt about America's historical crimes against the Native Americans, because y'all weren't here at the time. Your ancestors were probably persecuting Nestorians and Jacobites and maybe Yezedis. Besides, you're not really Persian.
As far as discursive charity goes, I make a lump sum donation to the Grice United Fund every year, rather than suffer the annoyance of having to show piecemeal charity to a large number of annoying motherfuckers one at a time.
Arthegall, I come from the part of the Midwest which elects Muslims and liberals. People are stodgy but not so rightwing. Even my own Congressman, Blue Dog Dem, voted against the Patriot Act.
Damn, John, that second paragraph's a keeper.
Can that please be our blog motto from now on? Emerson has replaced Professor Griff as our Minister of Information.
17: You're only telling that story because you're black.
I figured you'd all know that I wasn't black, if only because the joke doesn't work if I am.
The Grice United Fund is up and running, with a paypal button and everything.
And ...as for exit strategies...don't we still have military bases in Germany and Japan?
And I weep every time I read about some hausfrau getting gunned down by our troops at checkpoints in Hamburg, and the daily mortar attacks on our bases in Japan.