by Sebastian--
Housekeeping moment. I haven't been able to resume my daily posting schedule, and for some reason I allowed that to convince me not to post. My New Year's resolution is commit to at least one post per week. Funny how just changing my expectations makes things easier.
My thoughts on the proposal to 'surge' the troops: I have thought since the beginning that we needed more troops. However I have identified a regularly discussed conservative understanding which perfectly explains why I'm not thrilled about a 'surge' at this point:
Throwing more money into education isn't helpful when the teachers' unions make accountability for performance nearly impossible. The US has a very high per pupil spending rate now. The idea that we spend less than most in the developed world is a holdover impression from the 1970s. I won't sign on to increased education funding unless it can be explained how this funding is going to be used differently from all the other woefully ineffective funding.
If you can't explain how this surge of troops will do things differently and how that will help, I'm not for it.
Further throwaway thought--Education is an area where we spend more than most developing countries for an apparently lower return. Health care is another. Are the useful similarities between the two that could be examined?
Otherwise this is a "Hope you are doing better Gary Farber" open thread.
Your so-called realism is simply selfishness and you have the moral code of a mass murderer.
Of course it is selfishness, on a national scale. Nations act to protect their interests. Nations sometimes kill millions of people to protect those interests. This is unlikely to change. That is called realism.
Do you think the net result of the loss of US dominance in the Middle East would be fewer casualties than the current population of Iraq? It wouldn't. There would be a world war to see which powers would succeed the US in the region. Would you then consider yourself to have the morals of a mass murderer for failing to act to prevent those consequences?
If Iraq were not in a resource-rich region of the world, American troops would not be occupying it right now. Does anyone disagree with that statement? But when the truth is stated bluntly about US foreign policy, people act outraged. Then, when their leaders spin the reasons to emphasize the more politically correct ones, people act outraged that their leaders were not more ingenuous. It's ironic.
Posted by: thetruth | December 22, 2006 at 02:07 PM
Eh, what's a moby?
Posted by: Model 62 | December 22, 2006 at 02:17 PM
Oh, it's one of these: Moby (via LGF's [!] informative FAQ).
Posted by: Model 62 | December 22, 2006 at 02:27 PM
Sebastian is insinuating that 1) this web site is primarily visited by President Bush's natural constituencies, and that 2) saying that Bush is not losing in Iraq, and claiming that instances of him putting a spin on the reasons we are in Iraq are justifiable, and suspecting that some liberals don't want the US to win Iraq are examples of being anti-Bush.
Needless to say, that doesn't correspond to my interpretation of reality. Perhaps the word moby does not mean what he thinks it means.
Posted by: thetruth | December 22, 2006 at 02:38 PM
I'm open to various explanations of thetruth's motivations, but he doesn't seem to fit the definition of "moby" at all. He's not pretending to be someone on "our side", whatever that would be. He's not attacking any political figures by bringing up things (true or not) that their supporters on the site might disapprove of. Moby tactics would be something like the fake progressive group some Republicans set up to oppose Casey in Pennsylvania.
Are you using "moby" to mean "someone pretending to be a right-winger to cause trouble", Sebastian? In that case, I might believe he is, but I disapprove of the usage.
Posted by: KCinDC | December 22, 2006 at 02:44 PM
Of course it is selfishness, on a national scale. Nations act to protect their interests. Nations sometimes kill millions of people to protect those interests. This is unlikely to change. That is called realism.
Or nasty, short, and brutish.
Posted by: Keir | December 22, 2006 at 07:10 PM
Less truth(iness), more Moby.
(Bonus: another interpretation of reality).
Posted by: matttbastard | December 22, 2006 at 07:35 PM