Some political ramblings

[gfish]

Troop withdrawal would be a 'victory for the terrorists': Cheney

The thing is, I agree with him. Abandoning Iraq now will just leave an ugly mess of a failed state, kill tens of thousands of people in a nasty civil war, and generally provide a far better base of operations to the bad guys than Somalia or Afghanistan ever was, all while further eroding our moral authority.

That said, Cheney's statement is disingenuous in that implies the alternative is better in some way. Unfortunately, us staying in Iraq is also a victory for the terrorists. Man, there is nothing more dumb than maneuvering yourself into a lose-lose situation. I understand having a strategy fail. It happens. But to get yourself into a situation with no winning solution out of willful ignorance, that's just dumb.

It's nice to see the Dems start to regain a backbone, but I sure wish they would actively define the discourse better. Talking in terms of false opposites just plays into Karl Rove's hands. I'm glad the recent GOP attempt at memetic engineering (the 'rewriting history' charge) doesn't seem to have stuck, but I suspect that is more because of their current political troubles than due to any sudden lack of rhetorical genius on their part. Until we develop our ability to quickly and powerfully label concepts in our favor, this technique is going to continue to be a power tool for the right. The Dems need to forget about sound-bites (which only target the mass media, very last century) and focus on this level of lexical manipulation (which can define the very nature of how everyone thinks about the issue, and only get stronger every time someone uses them).

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

George Bush, pere, said in his autobiography that they decided to not invade Iraq because they could not figure out what to do then -- they knew this was going to happen. Maybe Dubya was expecting a miracle, that God would show up and smite the evildoers. That's the only thing I can figure. So, no, it wasn't willful ignorance. There was no ignorance involved: this was calculated. (I'm betting that it's part of the overall Dubya plan to bankrupt the US goverment, at which point disposing of social security and welfare and education aid will be vastly easier: they can set up a similar false dichotomy to justify it.)

I don't think we should leave, now that we have converted Iraq from a nasty but small pestilence into the biggest and most sophisticated training grounds for terrorists in the world. But that doesn't mean that we can continue on our current path, because it'll continue directly on to a full-scale Vietnam.

[craigp.livejournal.com]

i think, on dubya's part, it was willful ignorance. he's surrounded himself with neocon cronies who told him what to think, and didn't bother him with conflicting details. so i'm quite prepared to believe he was shown stilted intelligence (it's not like he'd bother to read all those reports, right)?

as murtha said, bush sr talked to folks (like murtha), listened to what they had to say. he didn't always agree or follow their advice, but he was informed (and cared).

many folks who had worked with bush sr and company (snowcroft, etc) are expressing great disappointment in cheney/rumsfeld/etc for how they've "advised" dubya, and how different things were back in the day.

[craigp.livejournal.com]

my god, the fact that i'm expounding bush sr's virtues, and how good he was for the country (compared to his god-awful son)...

i never thought i'd see the day. papa bush was a saint in comparison.

[tmfkan64.livejournal.com]

The best thing Bush Sr. ever did for his legacy was help his son get elected president. Bush Sr. now seems like the model of wisdom and eloquence...

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

He's still a traitor, though.