Tom Cotton on nuclear war and Iran; Goldberg on Iraq
This is a good interview with Tom Cotton on the Iran “deal.” In it, he suggests better alternatives, and speculates on the possible consequences of the deal as it’s currently being described by the administration. I suggest you read the whole thing.
The intervewer is Jeffrey Goldberg. I submit the following question of Goldberg’s as a demonstration of one (or several) of the many things wrong with the press today:
But we also talked about America’s role in the world and President Obama’s understanding of America’s role in the world, and we autopsied the Iraq War as well. Cotton did not take away from the Iraq War a lesson I learned, and that many Republicans also learned, which is that America is not expert at fighting long wars on complicated Middle East battlefields.
It’s not that Goldberg’s statement is incorrect on the face of it—of course we are “not expert at fighting long wars on complicated Middle East battlefields.” But what he ignores is that no one is, and that it’s not even possible to be. We’re merely the most expert people in the entire Western world—and maybe in the entire world—at “fighting long wars on complicated Middle East battlefields.”
What, pray tell, is Goldberg’s own expert opinion on what would constitute “expert” at something so admittedly complex? Would it be going seamlessly from strength to strength with no errors and almost no casualties? In other words, would it have to be a “cakewalk” to qualify (and please read my previous post on the complexity of war decision-making, as well as “cakewalks“)? How about World War II, whose very early years featured a series disasters for the Allies? Good thing Goldberg wasn’t around back then.
Goldberg also ignores the fact that by the time Barack Obama became president, the war in Iraq was under pretty good control, as even Obama admitted at the time. A small force left in that country would have most likely preserved those very hard-fought gains, but Obama (not the US military, whose opinion he ignored) nevertheless made the decision to leave Iraq entirely and throw the country to the wolves.
The article is well worth reading anyway.
I’ll narrow this down to Israel, though the same principle could be applied more generally in the Middle East.
The problem with people like Goldberg is that he believes it is not possible that one day Tel Aviv might glow in the dark. Until said glowing comes to pass he is hopeless; in his mind any dangerous policy change is worth trying because, after all, the worst-case scenarios as he defines them just aren’t intolerable to him.
I believe it is possible — very unlikely but possible — that Israel may, someday, somehow, be nuked. Unlikely as it may be, a chance of that outcome justifies very different policies. The distance between that position and Goldberg’s is vast.
The “good control” is the very thing that the ClownDeceptor has set his policy to correct and punish. This isn’t hard, he says. Just watch. Now somebody hold my beer while America gets her just deserts.
Goldberg’s uncritical assertion at the outset repudiating the Iraq intervention in order to color and frame anything Cotton says in the “lightly edited” interview illustrates why it remains critical to set the record straight on OIF.
Goldberg states it like it’s a settled fact, like gravity, suggesting Cotton is about claim people can fly like Peter Pan.
The Left narrative of OIF is patient zero with broader effect than the Iraq issue in and of itself. It continues to be effective as a thematic underlying premise in our politics and, on any issue like Iran related to global American leadership, a cornerstone premise in our policy-making.
Because the Right, especially the GOP, has a profound activism deficit, the political instinct is to shy away from the Left narrative on Iraq. Doing so simply allows the patient zero uncured to do compounding harm at the premise level of our politics and policy-making. The better activist strategy for the Right is to attack the Left narrative on Iraq head-on by hewing to the bedrock law, policy, and facts of the President’s decision to set the record straight on the basic grounds for OIF in the zeitgeist.
If the Right can set the record straight on the Iraq intervention and reframe the issue in the zeitgeist, it would be a critical step to flip the script in our politics and realign underlying premises, like Goldberg’s preliminary frame-setting assertion, to correct course for our policy-making.
we ARE experts at it… but not long wars..
10 years is not a long war…
and the reason we are experts is that we win despite inane and highly restrictive ROE… (like fighting someone with your hands tied behind your back).
the longest, and without any bloodshed was Driehonderdvijfendertigjarige Oorlog, thought to be 335 years long… however, its not exactly a war since its just a war situatoin in which no one fights..
the hundred years war went from 1337 to 1453 (116 years) from richard the third (summer of discontent) to henry the V (anne of 1000 days anyone) and eventually turned to the french cause of that freaky girl Joan of Arc…
the longest i guess would be the punic wars… by some calculations nearly 2500 years… 🙂
Eric.. there is no such thing as the right..
but since you keep using the term and others do too, the left has established their anti-thesis where there is none.
rive gauch, rive droight has to do with the left and right banks of the river seine.. we are on the other side of a very large ocean… there is no left or right here…
as far as left and right in socialism, thats stalin describing himself as political point ZERO, and so everything is to the right of that…
if you let your oponent define the terms, you have lost before you ever get to debate.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”
(Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6)
by the way, capitalism is not the antithesis of socialism… marx invented socialism, and then set capitalism as the antithesis so that his ideas would have the same standing but in opposition… giving crap ligitimacy it would not or ever have!!!
the idea was that there was nothing worthy of being an adversary to a singular idea of which there were no real competitors but royality, despotism, etc… so by setting socialism in opposition to capitalism it became the worthy oponent… however, since there really is none, its just a reformation and cover for a formalized concept of royal despotism without the trappings so that the icon is seen as something else even though its the same old rule by one or few…
so many of the actual leaders and major players have discovered it to be a farcical ruse played on people who assume validity then discuss it, without first determining validity and deciding whether its worth discussing… (happens constantly here and everywhere)
“I began to study, intensively and critically … the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and other ‘classics’ of Marxism. These were the founders of a new religion — the religion of hatred, revenge and atheism.”
-Alexander N. Yakovlev, Soviet propaganda chief
“Once upon a time, I realized that Marxism-Leninism is not a science, but at the very best it is just bad journalism — cannibalistic and self-mutilating.”
-Alexander N. Yakovlev, Soviet propaganda chief
How did Yakovlev lose his faith in Communism?
we dont know. neo seems to only want to cover the little people who change, not the kings and queens that abandon things and change…
so we dont discuss yakovlev (head of propaganda), Sejna (Major General of the Czechoslovak Army), Golitsyn (KGB defector and Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire), Tomas David Schuman (aka Yuri Bezmenov), Stanislav Lunev (GRU intelligence officer), Freda Utley (English scholar, political activist and best-selling author), and a whole lot more interesting people who had a lot more to lose, and in some cases were assasinated… [Georgi Markov (novelist and playwright like mamet), Litvenenko (FSB officer), Kravchenko (family killed back home, suicide questionable), and others]
no one in the west is going to kill mamet, or others who have changed their minds of things!!!
there are even false defectors like Yuri Nosenko…
one of the most interesting is Kourdakov… like Kravachenko, was deemed a suicide… but that is too odd to be sure…
Sergei Kourdakov was found dead in his motel room in Running Springs, California, killed by a gunshot to the head. In his room was an unfinished typewritten paper (which he was preparing for Senator Strom Thurmond in regards to receiving permanent residency in the US), a champagne bottle, and the gun
Sergei himself had considered the possibility of an assassination attempt, hence the revolver, stating that he “was in the Soviet Intelligence. They do not warn twice.” and that if anything were ever to happen to him, “it would have all the appearances of an accident.”
why did he defect?
he found religion…
“At the first opportunity I had, lying in my bunk at the naval academy, I opened up those pieces of paper and began to read them again. Jesus was talking and teaching someone how to pray. I became more curious and read on. This certainly was no anti-state material. It was how to be a better person and how to forgive those who do you wrong. Suddenly the words leaped out of those pages and into my heart. I read on, engrossed in the kind words of Jesus. This was exactly the opposite of what I had expected. My lack of understanding, which had been like blinders on my eyes, left me right then, and the words bit deeply into my being. […] Through the days and weeks ahead, those words of Jesus stayed with me. I couldn’t shake them, hard as I tried. I wished I hadn’t read them. Everything had been so organized in my life, but those disturbing words had changed something. I had feelings I never had felt before. I couldn’t explain or understand them.”
–Sergei Kourdakov
a lot of this stuff when read, reads better than a whole lot of movies they make… it has it all.. intrigue, amazing characters, spies and special operations like bond but without the extreme wacky crazy stuff, and they are real life talking abuot their fears, and reasons, and what happened because of them, and so on.
Kravachenko is very interesting as is his book “i chose freedom”… (lots of them can write and some have quite a few books that span their ideal days to their disenchantment, and so on)
he met a women in the states, did not marry, but had kids… he had a wife back in russia, and a child – Valentin
he was sen to the Gulags for five years, nearly committed suicide, then petitioned to leave to be with his half brother in the states. the two half brothers were united in the 1990s…
valentin became a us citizen
on the day he died in 2001… 🙁
Things are seldom what they seem. Skim milk masquerades as
cream.
Gilbert and Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore
Artfldgr” “if you let your oponent define the terms, you have lost before you ever get to debate.”
That’s a formula for playing the foil.
JG and the left in general cling to the stupid Booosh Darth Cheney meme. They can’t let go. America as a force for good in this troubled planet is the antithesis of their ideology.
It’s the policy makers, not military, who underperformed in Iraq. The military successfully carried out the removal of Hussein’s failed regime, stabilized the state, and reestablished relationships with the native people. It was Obama’s opportunistic, premature evacuation that created an opportunity for terrorists to regain ground and destabilize Iraq and the region.
Two point here from News
– : In Washington for meetings with U.S officials, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Saudi Arabia is improperly interfering in Yemen, where it has launched an aerial campaign to restore that country’s ousted president to power and roll back the territorial gains of Houthi rebels.
“The dangerous thing is, we don’t know what the Saudis want to do after this,” Abadi told Foreign Policy and a small group of reporters Wednesday. “Is that to build a regional power where they will intervene in any place they want? Is Iraq within their radar? That is very, very dangerous.” Abadi added that the White House supports his view, a claim the administration quickly denied.
– – A new report accuses Iran of increasing the frequency and sophistication of its cyberattacks.
– – Five Mexican states are on alert following the theft of a container of Iridium-192, radioactive material used in industrial radiography.
Out of her charity, neo presumes Goldberg doesn’t know better. In fact, the likelihood is that Goldberg is reinforcing the “another Viet Nam” meme.
That was, anything the left doesn’t want us involved in was “another Viet Nam” because the CW was you can’t win “a Viet Nam” in any universe imaginable. So you shouldn’t start. Cause you might win and that would never do.
Goldberg is updating the concept. That we won both and the dems threw them away is both the way it’s supposed to be and what we’re not supposed to recall.
Goldberg demonstrates the typical cognitive dysfunction of a pacifistic liberal.
Goldberg’s assertion that the US does not ‘do long wars well’ is a perfect example of this dysfunction. The ONLY reason why the US need participate in a long war is because of an unwillingness to use its full force.
IMO Sen Cotton does not offer ‘alternatives’. He simply implies that a much stronger deal is possible and states that such a deal is unachievable without a credible threat of America’s willingness to use military force.
There’s a hard reality here; Iran will not stop its pursuit of nukes unless it is absolutely certain that if it does not immediately, fully and verifiably desist that the US will declare war upon Iran.
If America and its leadership had their heads on strait, we would have long ago told the Iranian Mullahs that they had 24 hours to agree to end their nuclear program and 48 hours to begin to do so. That American inspectors would verify their compliance.
And that a failure to agree or any subsequent violation would trigger a full scale campaign of attacks against Iran with three goals; 1) destruction of all nuclear installations 2) destruction of all military facilities and 3) the US military trial of every high-placed Iranian Mullah and government official for terrorist war crimes.
And that the execution of convicted terrorists would be by drowning in a vat of pig’s blood. By their own religious beliefs, there would be no paradise or virgins for executed terrorists.
If the Mullahs were certain of this, the issue would be resolved in 24 hours.
The choice that should be presented to the Mullahs is that they can survive or die but either way their support for terrorism and their pursuit of WMDs ends… now.
Richard Aubrey,
Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game, where narrative is elective truth and truth is merely a narrative that must be competed for like any other narrative.
Notice the recent, uniform, repetitively broadcast message across political media that current events in the Middle East are caused by OIF as though there was no Counterinsurgency “Surge” and Anbar Awakening that stabilized a progressing post-Saddam Iraq by the time that Bush left office, and no subsequent Obama disengagement from Iraq (from the outset, not just the 2011 withdrawal) and no disintegration of the Arab Spring (also post-Bush) related to Obama’s ‘lead from behind’ approach.
Geoffrey Britain,
Cotton is constrained by the current state of the zeitgeist as cultivated by Left activists with the Left narrative of the Iraq intervention.
For your suggestion to be politically viable, resetting the zeitgeist at the premise level is the necessary preliminary step. A sitting Senator can help with that, but it’s mainly activist work, not elected official work.
That means setting the record straight on OIF and establishing that Bush was correct to strictly enforce the “governing standard of Iraqi compliance” (UNSCR 1441) for disarmament mandated by UNSCR 687 and Hillary Clinton was right to vote for Public Law 107-243 to “bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations” (Public Law 105-235).
Eric,
I am aware of, as no doubt are many others that “Cotton is constrained by the current state of the zeitgeist as cultivated by Left activists with the Left narrative of the Iraq intervention.” Cotton does an admirable job of disputing Goldberg’s asserted premises while working within those constraints.
As for ‘resetting the zeitgeist at the premise level’ “as cultivated by Left activists with the Left narrative of the Iraq intervention.” that is a battle that has been fought and lost. The time to fight that battle was when Bush invaded Iraq and the Leftist media first started to attack him. You cannot fight a battle that has already been lost.
It’s has long been ‘settled wisdom’. In a future free society, historians might well challenge that leftist zeitgeist but as things stand now, ‘resetting the zeitgeist’ on Iraq has as much chance of success as did attempts at telling the truth regarding the Vietnam conflict. How many LIVs know of, much less remember Cronkite’s deceit in reports on the Tet Offensive?
We cannot ‘establish’ that Bush was correct, most on the right know it, so speaking of it to them is just preaching to the choir. Leftists know it and regard the truth as only to be propagandized against and very few LIVs will ever learn of it.
We are as ‘voices crying in the wilderness’, while the left has the amplified bullhorns, yammering lies with shameless ‘sincerity’.
All of this is why Ludwig von Mises had the right of it; “Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe…”
Tom Cotton strikes me as a man who can articulate whatever he has on his mind well enough that a Jeffrey Goldberg is unlikely to derail him as a formidable political force.
A journalist with no military experience or any other notable credentials, commenting on Mr Cotton’s understanding of a war he was personally engaged in for several years, is a bit of a stretch.
Tom Cotton has faced a lot tougher battles than this. I’m confident if he’s got a story to tell and intends to tell it, the media will have their hands full discrediting him. He’s a very smart guy, he’s mentally tough, and he’s well spoken. I like his chances in the long run.
The book, “Making War To Keep the Peace,” by Jean Kirkpatrick was published posthumously in 2007. In that book she made all the legal points about the Iraq War that you have covered exhaustively, Eric. The case she makes both morally and legally is irrefutable by anyone with an open mind. Google the title and read some of the reviews by progs. They will not acknowledge the facts on the ground that Ms. Kirkpatrick established. Thus, the case for OIF is in print and was written by an erudite woman of national standing. But the progs will not accept it. Thereby making Geoffrey B’s point that the battle has been fought by a gifted stateswoman and has been passed off as neo-conservatism at its worst by those who will not, cannot accept the facts on the ground.
The utter failure of Obama’s policies, which we are now witnessing, will be the only thing that can establish a new zeitgeist.
I just finished reading American Sniper (Yea, I know a little bit behind on my reading) and it was so sad to read about the hard-fought gains Kyle mentions in his book and hearing in the news the same place names now falling under ISIS control or all the refugees fleeing those places.
Yep, Obama has most certainly pressed the “reset” button on the world’s view of the US.
No “Bush’s War” in Iraq = no Arab Spring.
Without the Arab Spring, Gaddafi still rules Libya and Hosni Mubarak, Egypt; without Bush’s War and the Arab Spring arriving much earlier than his vision initially suggested, there would be no constitutional popular rule in Tunisa or Morocco, and some rough version of it in parts of Iraq.
And without all this, there would be no Arab coalition of Sunni dominated nations to challenge Iran backed Shia terrorist’s in Yemen.
In short, without Bush’s terrible and “misguided” War, the Muslim dominated Middle East would still lack reform and be stuck in a time warp of backwardness; Instead we have an air and the beginnings of the reality of progress towards modernity and new optimism, despite ancient problems like a raging civil war in Syria.
TAKE THAT, JG.
It continually amazes me that people do not state the obvious, such as my contribution above.
This ought to be stated and discussed over and over and over again, until even the low-info voters even understand that the War in Iraq was good, right, and epoch-chainging for the most troubled region of the world.
To buttress Art’s point about the ‘American right’…
Humanity is self-organizing — birds of a feather and all that…
In the totally unstructured daze of the French Revolution the players self-organized from right to left across the arc of the French legislative chamber.
The droit — the right side of the (French ) national assembly is where the 1st and 2nd estates congregated.
Though large numbers of the Clergy and Nobility had (politically) split from the Crown well before the storming of the Bastille they were joined by yet others during the crazy transition to become the original ‘anti-extremist’ bloc still standing after the Crown had fallen.
Having gotten rid of the King, the revolutionaries moved against the Nobility, next. It was a sloppy affair, also known as the Terror, with an astonishing number of (noble’s) house servants and hangers on executed.
The core political position of every variant of the French Droit/ Right was that the Catholic Church and the French State be wedded — politically; and that a Noble Class existed which deserved special privileges/ rights.
Everything else was negotiable, in practical terms.
In contrast, the US Constitution explicitly prohibits EVERY single cardinal plank of the French Droit/ Right.
So, from the very first, America flatly prohibited ANY Right Wing government as the term was known in the Eighteenth Century.
America skipped past the Terror phase of its revolution. Instead the Tories were shipped off to the rest of the British Empire — MOSTLY to Ontario, Canada. This actually took YEARS to unfold. This last detail is almost always omitted from high school history primers.
Even the typical college graduate in Canada is totally unaware that Ontario started life (politically) as anti-America — the land of the defeated Tories.
This influx of English speaking colonists was so offensive that the (French colonial ‘Arcadians’ fled down to Louisiana — now referred to as Cajuns. They didn’t want to live in a constituency that was sure to be dominated by the very crowd that had kicked their tails during the Seven Years War!)
In SUM: From its inception, America has flatly prohibited the existence of ANY Right Wing government in the terms of European understanding of that term.
&&&&
Famously: Ronald Reagan, the conservative president, started life as an FDR Democrat stalwart. Reagan’s political axis never shifted. The Democrat party’s axis moved to the (Bolshevik) Left.
[See Bezmenov, Active Measures]
On a strictly policy basis, there was not much daylight between Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy, as both spent large on social programs, defense programs, etc. Both were — ideologically ‘sons of FDR.’
&&&&&
In the European sense, America has no Right Wing.
She started out as a revolutionary government — centered on the rights of man — and has only started down the road to a caste based society in the last niney-years.
With irony. For it was Wilson and FDR that did the most to establish — de facto — a caste based Federal government.
Wilson brought Jim Crow to Washington DC. His PhD thesis looks like it was the foundational plank for Nazism — and Aryan genetic supremacy. His wartime Executive Orders were out-of-the box despotic — and in a crude, spy on they neighbor way.
FDR ejected the immigrant Mexican farm laborers — en masse — on economic-political-racist grounds — during the Great Depression. He also stiffed fleeing European Jewry from legal entry — on the rubric that they were broke and sure to be dependants (of the government) — [This was the (fig leaf) legal basis for refusing most Jewish refugees. His administration could point to Federal statutes that prohibited the immigration of souls that could not support themselves. Those Jews that did make the passage invariably had sponsorship inside the US that got past this ‘hang-up.’]
The alien internment camps are another story. Modern discourse has forgotten that Italians and Germans were rounded up along with the Japanese.
[ For political reasons, the FDR administration put a lid on/ censored entirely various Japanese-American treasons that occurred at that time. Most Americans to this very day are totally unaware of the massive treasonous threats that Japanese Americans were uttering — right into eavesdropping (illegally) US government ears.
Stuff like how they, personally, were going to sabotage this or that USN/ USA facility or war plant.] The nature of the interceptions (un-Constitutional, and the wide spread nature of the seditions are what triggered the Japanese internment policy.]
And FDR was a Liberal!
&&&
America is the original revolutionary/ liberal society.
All others are poor knock-offs.
It’s gotten to the point [Active Measures] that Americans don’t even have a handle on exactly what Right Wing ever really meant.
And, most Americans still think of the fascists of history as right wing — when they were all leftists to the max.
With a twist: they wanted state and religion fused — like the original Right Wingers — but with God replaced by the Dictator.
In that sense, at least, they really were all the way back and around to the Right Wing.
pretty well put blert… 🙂
thx
Russia Rolls Out a New Infantry Fighting Vehicle – Its First Since the Cold War
Two videos uploaded to the Internet purportedly reveal Russia’s first truly new infantry fighting vehicles in decades and a new self-propelled howitzer.
One of the videos even shows intriguing closeups of what’s probably Russia’s new Armata tank.
the Armata Tank:
an advanced next generation heavy military tracked vehicle platform. The “Armata” platform is intended to be the basis for a main battle tank, a heavy infantry fighting vehicle, a combat engineering vehicle, an armoured recovery vehicle, a heavy armoured personnel carrier, a tank support combat vehicle and several types of self-propelled artillery under the same codename based on the same chassis. It is also intended to serve as the basis for artillery, air defense, and NBC defense systems
The Armata combat platform has been under design and development since 2009
once they saw obama and biden, they had to ramp up design and production to take advantage of it
meanwhie, china has built air strips on islands it does not own, and so is seizing them..
what ya gonna do about that president?
(meanwhile, they may get my son killed)
Orsoin: “TAKE THAT, JG.
It continually amazes me that people do not state the obvious, such as my contribution above.”
Methinks you have totally misread my comment. Jean Kirkpatrick’s book makes the case, both morally and legally for OIF. Every person, whether liberal or conservative should be able to follow her well presented facts. But the progressives ignore the facts and have set up the mantra that OIF was a huge mistake. To change that mantra, which is uniformly presented by the progs and the MSM, is now nearly impossible – as pointed out by Geoffrey B. Only the new facts of the failure of Obama’s policies in the ME have a chance of getting the progs to recognize the truth.
Or maybe I misread you. Are you arguing that Obama’s policies are a raging success? If so, explain why a nuclear arms race in the ME is a good thing. Explain why a nuclear armed Iran is a good thing. Tell me why more and more failed Muslim states (Libya, Yemen, Syria) in the ME is a good thing. Tell me how standing aside and allowing conditions for al Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah, Jamas, and others to improve is a good thing.
Starlord,
No matter how dedicated, talented, and intelligent Senator Cotton is – no matter how right he is – he can’t turn the tide by himself anymore than he or even the US Army by itself could turn the tide in Iraq. Cotton is doing his part, but correcting course takes a full-spectrum activist social movement not limited to electoral politics.
Geoffrey Britain, JJ,
That’s why we have an appeals process.
Laying the foundation, like Kirkpatrick did or Neo does, is necessary preliminary step, but by itself, it’s not yet actually competing in the Narrative contest of the activist game.
Which is to say, defeat in the Narrative contest has been conceded without actually competing. It’s not an honest defeat.
The Left has proven that prevailing Narrative is elastic and not chained to the record, even recent record.
They severed Clinton’s Iraq enforcement in the Narrative despite that Bush clearly carried forward Clinton’s Iraq enforcement. Do Democratic leaders know that truth? Of course they do. They lived it. During the Clinton administration, among senior Democrats, former Senator Lieberman’s position on Iraq was the rule, not the exception.
The Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game is not about teaching opposing activists the truth of the matter anymore than a trial is about teaching the truth of the matter to opposing counsel. It’s about convincing the jury and/or judge(s).
They’re currently using the same activist Narrative method to orchestrate a severing of Obama’s liability for current events in the Middle East and blame Bush for them despite Obama’s openly touted record of course changes from Bush.
The Left is audacious with the lack of meaningful activist competition to counter them.
There’s nothing natural or inevitable about what they’ve won in the Narrative contest. By the rationale of “You cannot fight a battle that has already been lost,” the Left should not have been able to rewrite the Narrative then or do it now. But they did and they’re doing it again, now, through sufficient application of activist method – unchecked by any meaningful counter-activism.
For activists, there’s no passive acceptance of the zeitgeist. No concession of status quo. They understand cultural/political zeitgeist is an elastic social condition that’s manufactured and competed for, and the activist game is a competition that never ends.
However, its power is also its vulnerability. Narrative must be constantly re-manufactured and competed for to preserve it when challenged by competitive alternative, because the social condition where Narrative is elastic is the same social condition that allows for competitors to invent and manufacture alternative Narrative with which to compete for and alter the zeitgeist.
The truth does confer an advantage in the Narrative contest but not a dispositive summary judgement level of advantage. A true narrative must be competed for in the arena like any other narrative. Cotton, Kirkpatrick, Neo and others laying the foundation of a truthful alternative Narrative is necessary but not sufficient. Activists organized as a relentless, effective social movement are needed to fight for it in full-throated competition head-on against the reigning champion Left in the social cultural/political arena.
JJ: “Only the new facts of the failure of Obama’s policies in the ME have a chance of getting the progs to recognize the truth.”
Only if the facts are presented and framed correctly and sufficiently in the form of prevailing narrative.
Of course, it’s not just about Obama v Bush. It’s about the larger policy course, principles, and premises represented by President Obama v the larger policy course, principles, and premises represented by President Bush.
They’re incompetent wannabes. And so are the people who fund them and worship at their feet. These Goldbergs, no matter what their moniker or title, is merely the chaff on the winds. They matter not in a serious war, except as fodder for the cannons.
Tell me how standing aside and allowing conditions for al Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah, Jamas, and others to improve is a good thing.
You think the US stood aside in Libya and allowed things to happen?
Unfortunately for many American fantasies, America didn’t stand aside. America was de facto arming the terrorists and killing US allies, like Libya’s dictator. That’s what Benghazi was about.
But people don’t want to know what they don’t know, so they’ll get the Left’s boot up their head eventually, one way or another. Cause if people think the Left is just going to stomp on some brown foreigners for kicks and giggles, wait until they see what they got coming next.
It’s a really interesting interview. Goldberg obviously has a position on the issues, and asked questions strictly from his own perspective. But weirdly enough, that wasn’t a problem. It was so out in the open that it seemed like both participants accepted it and went from there.
Ideally, I’d want to see interviews and coverage from an objective perspective. But that doesn’t happen too often. In this case, the reporter…no, I can’t call him a reporter. This wasn’t journalism. It was more a debate than an interview. But it came off like an episode of Firing Line, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Two people of at-least-reasonable intelligence talking through an issue on which they disagree. Whatever I may think of Goldberg’s positions, his work resulted in a clear presentation of Cotton’s thinking, particularly his thinking in response to common objections.
Leftists know it and regard the truth as only to be propagandized against and very few LIVs will ever learn of it.
Since you have failed to convince your fellow neighborly and approximate Leftists of such, that is indeed proof that they will never listen.
Which means Death is the only solution, one you complained vociferously over some odd years ago. You have nothing else to offer? Death is the ultimate solution, as usual, to replace that lack of solution, the solution you failed to find so far.
Insurgencies take 10 to 20 years to defeat. They cost lots and lots in blood and treasure. Bush admin never thought there would be an insurgency.
Since World War II the left has undermined every war we have been in and Republicans have been unwilling to vigorously defend the wars they fought.
Additionally the military has become so politically correct that wars can’t really be won. Our rules of engagement need to be returned to those of World War II…kill and destroy the enemy, don’t care about collateral damage.
Harold wrote:
Since World War II the left has undermined every war we have been in …
In a remarkably short time after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a majority of Democrats and the MSM had turned against the war (“a hopeless Vietnam quagmire”) in a revoltingly shameless way. The whining Dems undermined the effort as if they had nothing to do with initiating it, when in fact most had voted for the invasion.
As usual, the MSM did their part by a) not pointing out the above, b) exaggerating bad news (eg umpteen days straight of Abu Graib stories) and c) ignoring or minimizing all good news (eg dearth of stories on benefits to ordinary Iraqis or of the heroism of US forces).
At the time I noticed that the left’s beloved “hopeless Vietnam quagmire” narrative was a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, the very fact that the enemy could look out and see a splintered American resolve, with many politicians of one of the two major parties actively undermining the war, would itself help create a “hopeless quagmire.”
Imagine, on the other hand, if the enemy had looked to the US and seen near unanimity of purpose from the American people, politicians and MSM, a hardened stainless-steel wall of resolve–instead of a cracking edifice of plaster that would crumble by itself in time. I submit the whole operation would have been much smoother and dramatically more successful, with most “insurgents” and various other “fighters” too intimidated to face off against a seamless steel-wall of American resolve.
It is an amazing credit to the US military that they managed to attain victory and pacification of Iraq–which King Barack threw away by not maintaining a small military force there–despite constant undermining and having to fight with one arm tied behind its back and ankles shackled together.
Eric, you have done an outstanding job of delineating the legal justification for OIF. You know the facts cold. You’ve blogged about it and written about it here and, I’m sure, elsewhere. Yet, nothing has changed.
I have sent oodles of information to all my e-ail correspondents (who pass the info along to others), written letters to editors, and tried to talk to neighbors about the issues. Yet, nothing changes. It’s a bit like the AGW argument. The facts are not on the Warmers side and there is a sizable group of qualified scientists who keep making the argument against the Warmist claims, but nothing changes because the pro-AGW narrative is carried by the MSM just as the anti-OIF narrative is carried by the MSM.
The real activist game is to get into the mass media field. Lord knows there are many trying to get the conservative word out. Here’s a list of the top 50 as warned against by the Ortando Sentinel Examiner:
http://www.examiner.com/article/50-politically-biased-sources-not-to-get-your-news-from
Unfortunately, not enough voters tune in to those sources on a frequent basis. They watch the TV programs/news by NBC/ABC/CBS unless they are already conservative. The LIVs also read the NYT, LAT, and other liberal newspapers. You can get conservative views in this country, but you have to seek them out and most LIVs won’t do that.
Most of my neighbors are LIVs. They are well-intentioned people who are more interested in pop culture than politics. They only pay attention to politics during the 30 days before an election. Their opinions are shaped by the political attack ads run at that time. Their opinions are formed based on limited background knowledge. In fact most of them will complain vociferously if you try to fill them in on the facts about any issue. Their usual rejoinder is, “I don’t want to think about that. It’s a all just politics.” Or something of that nature. The only thing that gets their attention is something that affects their pocketbook. Yet they are unable to understand the connection between the plans of the Warmers and how they affect our economy and their pocketbooks.
Short of reality smacking them upside the head, they are not going to get involved. Unless you have a nifty plan that can get their attention, being an activist is not changing the narrative much. I’m trying to do what I can, but not making a lot of headway. That’s why I agree with Geoffrey.
Back when Geoffrey was haranguing me constantly about writing down the Leftist and Democrat guilt, including the blood on their hands, his moral high horse position should have produced some results by now, as I would normally expect. Why else would that be the first thing of interest he felt he needed to relay to me here.
After some odd years of dealing with that self righteous arrogance, what do I see? Do I see them being vindicated by their vain and false promises and protection of the Leftist Democrats? How so naive, how so innocent, how they shouldn’t be attacked or talked down about… those “moderate Democrats” of yore.
If such vindication had happened happened, at least there would be some competent results. What has happened is something worse. The pale shadow of their false promises and their emotional protection of family and friends, has brought us to this. But what is this exactly?
They have damned themselves over Bay of Pigs in Cuba. They have damned themselves over the assassination of Diem. They have damned themselves because they helped Shia jihadists take over Iran against the Shah. They have damned themselves in Vietnam, breaking the psychological strength of returning soldiers and providing intel and assets to the Communist Vietnamese and Russian armies.
Even if people successfully silenced me for their own reasons, do people really think the blood guilt and the ultimate vengeance of so many dead, won’t come back to haunt the Home of the Brave here?
The Left were doing everything they could to save Saddam Hussein’s hide, and favor Iran and other Jihadist cliques. The Left sabotaged the body armor programs. The Left sabotaged the officer, sexual assault protection, and discipline training programs. The Left sabotaged so many things in Iraq, that “WMDeception” doesn’t even cover half of it so far.
Remember Shinseki? He was the tough Democrat general Bush was supposed to listen to over Petraeus. The Shinseki which intentionally got returning veterans killed, just as he expected to get a lot more killed and maimed in Iraq with his force calculations.