Pangloss

Uh huh. I don't have a problem with your opinion at all, bud, and I think your points along those lines are perfectly valid. As I said above, I don't think anyone is really disagreeing with that.

Yup, it's an interesting subject. I thought Zell Miller had some interesting points along these lines in his fascinating book "A National Party No More". He talks about how the Democratic party used to be portrayed as a "big tent", but now it seems to be more and more controlled by the far-left, politically-correct agenda. I didn't entirely agree with that conclusion, but his perspective on the subject is very real, very personal, and well-substantiated. (I highly recommend that book for its unique personal view of politics, even if you're not a Zell Miller fan.) I grew up in Georgia in the 1970s, and I think the subject of how Georgia "switched" from voting mostly Democrat to voting mostly (but not as overwhelmingly) Republican is fascinating. Earle and Merle Black (two Harvard scholars) wrote two books on the subject ("The Vital South" and "The Rise of Southern Republicans") that are also fascinating (but not casual reading -- more of a statistical analysis), and make an excellent case study of this subject, because the state's conservative base hasn't changed at all. It's the parties and their content and message that changed. When I was growing up, people voted between Conservative Democrats and Liberal Democrats. The "real" race was in the primaries. Republican were an afterthought -- you always knew there were a few around, but they were like a dirty little secret that you didn't really talk about (and always recent immigrants from some other state, kinda like that quote from Gone With the Wind: "Yankees in Georgia?! Who let them IN?!" -- I know "Yankees" doesn't really go with "Republicans", but that's how we looked at it at the time). The first thing that smashed that tradition was, of course, desegregation. Conservative Democrats supported segregation. As the political wind changed direction, many Democrats who tried to ride out that storm lost not only their jobs, but their personal reputations, becoming branded with the "racist" brush, whether they were or not. Other politicians (Jimmy Carter being the prime example -- he was a conservative democrat in those early days) adapted and changed. Some VERY few managed to adapt while retaining their conservative roots (like Zell Miller). (A lot of these guys are still around, by the way. I believe I read something the other day about Senator Robert Byrd being a former Ku Klux Klan member.)

When you hit the submit button, your message is complete. There's no such thing as an interruption in an online discussion. Post something like that again and you're going to earn a warning for flaming. Please make an effort to learn how online discussion works before you lose your temper. We have a high level of discussion here and your opinions are welcome. A bad attitude is not.

Bud that's all well and good except for one thing: The subject of a thread is not its title, but how the first poster defines the subject. So in fact you're the one who's changing the subject.

Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.

I don't think anyone is really disputing that terrorism is literally valid, in the sense that it is effective and "fits within the definition of war". The question is whether it carries moral/ethical validity, as an option in wartime. I'm disappointed at the positive responses along those lines. Such is your opinions, of course, and I respect that. It's just disappointing to find such moral ambiguity, obvious straw-manning and two-wrongs-making-a-right amidst otherwise intelligent people.

More very well thought-out reasoning.

No, I am not. He made the assertion that since WW2 we haven't learned our lesson, and his example was nuclear weapons proliferation. I countered that proliferation is not the same thing as destruction. That's a logical refutation to his point, not a distortion or spin of any kind, and would be accepted as such in any formal debate setting. The fact that no attack was ever launched only bolsters my point even further. Were the example folded over the socio-political setting of WW2, they would have been launched in a heartbeat. Clearly a step forward was achieved. Further steps forward have taken place since then, to the point where today we consider civilian casualties deplorable and unacceptable if they can possibly be avoided. I don't understand what's so unclear about this. If you're really determined to demonize western civilization, I've no doubt you can manufacture all the straw men you need. But the fact remains that civilized society has grown as freedom and democracy have grown. Progress has been made. More progress will be made. Nobody says it's perfect, but we have the greatest society in the entire history of human existence. These arguments amount to little more than a child throwing its birthday cake on the floor because it's got chocolate icing instead of vanilla.

That's a start. As I said above, I think there's plenty of evidence out there that Iran is deeply involved in trying to shape which way Iraq goes at this junction. But that doesn't support quantumcrack's assertion that Iran is at the core of the insurgency. That position denies the involvement of the Sunni half of the equation, which would appear to be the more violent side of the picture at the moment.

Yah, I've had SFN threads come up in Google searches before. I dimly recall that that may be the way I first heard about SFN.

Good post, ku. I thought that was a very comprehensive and thoughtful analysis.

And when did we actually use them? If one were to compare the nuclear weapons of the cold war with the firebombings of WW2, then one would have to see some actual nuclear destruction somewhere. "Targeting" and "using" are two different things, are they not? So wouldn't that be a step forward versus WW2? And remember, the rule of thumb there, crass and objectionable though it may have been, was "mutually assured destruction", meaning you don't do that unless the other guy does it to you first. This point was clearly not present in WW2. So that's another step forward. This fits perfectly into my suggestion that a free society learns from its mistakes by making gradual improvements. Thanks for illustrating my point. Vichy collaborators were hardly "civilians", in the sense of an innocent bystander. The comparison is not valid. Al Qaeda, and AQ in Iraq, deliberately targets women and children, not just police recruits and military checkpoints. You mean the schoolhouse in Iowa that now has armed guards in front of it too? The same schoolhouse where children learn about western imperialism and capitalism and evolution and science and all those other lovely things that islamic fundamentalism want to crush from the world? You really don't believe that AQ would consider that to be a valid target? Really?

quantumcrack, I'm sure we all appreciate your input, but as a general rule we don't take things on faith around here. If you want to make an assertion then you need to support it with evidence. In this particular case, a URL to a news story from a reliable, mainstream news source will do.

Oh I have no problem with the concept of victors writing history. I've read my Caesar. If he were alive today he might say "All Iraq is divided into three parts." And you won't get any argument from me about whether the war was a good idea -- I was opposed to it. My reasons may be slightly different, but I'm extremely sympathetic to your position that war is a bad thing. My point is that moral equivalence instead of recognizing good versus evil is a dangerous, slippery slope. You carry the anti-war sentiment too far when you say that you think Al Qaeda is justified. Mind, it's your opinion, and I respect your right to have it. But I disagree. In my view, when you lose an argument you don't pick up a stick and pound the other guy into submission. You fall back, regroup, and live to fight another day. Some you win, some you lose. That's the one thing these terrorists don't seem to understand -- the idea that you can't always get what you want. In their world, you get EVERYTHING you want or you KILL until you get it. So they're going to take what they want, and enforce what they believe. No middle ground. No compromise. No quarter. No surrender. No retreat. Weakness in the enemy is reason to kill more, not relax and sign a treaty. Keep on talking like you're talking, and they'll make it clear to you eventually. In our society, in the western democracy you believe is as corrupt and evil as Al Qaeda, in that society we get a choice. In Al Qaeda's, there is none. You don't see a difference? I'm real sorry. But I do. For fifteen thousand years we've been trying to figure this one out. We finally take a few steps forward, and people like you want to act like it's nothing new, nothing special, nothing unique, not an improvement. Hey, all I can say is, good luck with that. You want to wail and gnash your teeth and beat yourself up over the small stuff, go right ahead. The rest of us will fix the problems and move society forward. Don't worry, there will be plenty more stuff for you to complain about later on.

Lol, you mean some sort of scientology detector? That's actually kind of a compelling idea.

Apparently the Nobel Peace Prize this year was an award given to "the most anti-Bush politician available". http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/

Actually, thinking on it some more, a Bayesian approach might be the most straightforward way to tackle the idea I mentioned above (determining the political bias of a document). But I guess I have to get my keywords from somewhere, so the ontology aspect may still be relevent.

What would I propose that they do? How about shooting at soldiers instead of bombing civilians? Is that too much to ask? Sure they might fail, but shouldn't that TELL them something? Such as, oh I don't know, "Maybe this was a bad idea", or "Gosh, I guess we should have tried that bargaining table after all!" I don't understand this notion that if you don't get what you want then you have the moral authority to escalate the conflict to any degree. That's the kind of nonsense that leads ex-husbands to kill their wives, saying "well if I can't have her then nobody else can". How do people not get this one? Are the people Al Qaeda claims to represent really so bad off? They don't seem to think so -- most Arabs and most Muslims seem to think that Al Qaeda's actions are wrong. So what exactly are you saying here? That intolerance is a good thing? That compromise is always a bad thing? That getting along is less important than getting what you want? Seriously? I've met four-year-olds more mature than that. If "western democracy" was some sort of dictatorship that ruled with an iron fist, enforcing military might upon its enemies and allowing no freedoms at all, then I could at least understand their zeal (if not their self-destructive methods). But in fact western democracy gives you a high degree of control over your fate, as well as the direction of society -- the highest level of freedom in human history. You get to stand up with other people and say "this is how we want things to be done". Other people get to do the same. That means that sometimes you don't get what you want, but it also means that sometimes you do. How is that worse than living under Saddam Hussein, who never gave his people ANY choice? How is it better to let Al Qaeda get what it wants, and build a Middle East where freedom is almost as distant a memory as the sight of a woman's face?

I suggest you rephrase that, PDQ. Surely you didn't mean to state that every US act in the Revolutionary War was a terrorist act, but that is what you just said. What is it with you and crass overgeneralizations lately, Bascule? I think you need to be more cognicent and careful about that. That's almost as inciteful a thing to say that Americans are "Nazis" just because they don't share your definition of "torture", or declaring 9 US Senators to be "assholes" because of their position on one single vote. If you keep this up, I'm going to start demanding that you defend these assertions on a literal basis. You can start right now by explaining to everyone here how George Washington's tactics at the Battle of Trenton constitute "terrorism".

Yah, you would think that, but it turns out that tax revenue waxes and wanes in a fairly (but not entirely) predictable manner.

Ah, ok.

That's interesting. I've yet to hear anyone, on either side, call Harriet Miers incompetent. Most seem to feel that she's unqualified, which is a different thing altogether. But it's possible I just missed it, of course. In what way has she done a poor job?

I don't think that British guerillas under Nazi tyranny would have resorted to killing civilians. I view at the firebombing issue in WW2 as a one-time (albeit massive) moral error based on misunderstandings and misconceptions, as well as technology limitations of the day. I don't believe a comparison between that and the War in Iraq is valid, because in Iraq we specifically and explicitly attempt to avoid such casualties. In short, we learned our lesson. Repetitions over the year since then have been rare, and they are the exception, not the norm. But Al Qaeda kills civilians on purpose. Intentionally. They're not casualties of war, or accidental victims of any kind. They do it deliberately. To their own people, no less. As if to say "I hate you so bad I'm going to cut my arm off". An infantile display of pre-civilized behavior that is unworthy of attention except in terms of how to defeat it. Not something you study and attempt to gain wisdom and enlightenment from, except in the sense that it reminds us that democracy isn't automatic or easy, and if we don't pay attention we'll slip back to the stone age before you can shake a stick. I wasn't in favor of the War in Iraq either, and I voted against Bush in 2004. But I don't find it necessary to stretch the facts into wild-eyed demonizations. Democracy means sometimes not getting your way. Just have to deal with it.

Interesting column by Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal suggesting that the lopsided vote on the interrogation attachment to the defense spending bill was in part a payback for Harriet Miers. I disagree with his conclusion -- I think he's saying that because the WSJ is opposed to the Miers nomination (which is why I put this here instead of in the other thread). But *either way* it's another interesting example of how upset conservatives are about Miers. More to the point, I don't think the Bush administration will see this column the way I do. Conservatives look to the WSJ as a bellweather, and this column is going to ruffle more White House feathers than a dozen Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh rantings. http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110007375&mod=RSS_Opinion_Journal&ojrss=frontpage

I haven't seen that one.