With Rudy Giuliani, one is never quite sure.
It’s a real ad.
Cosmic Variance is a group blog by people who, coincidentally or not, all happen to be physicists and astrophysicists:
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
Site Meter
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:29 am
Oh my god, you weren’t kidding. It is a real ad. It’s even up on Rudy’s official campaign web site.
The whole concept of another pointless war with a Muslim nation in the Middle East makes me sick to my stomach. I lost two friends in Iraq and my brother came back with a broken back, and this SOB wants to declare war on an even larger more militant country.
Two Words,
FUCK YOU
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:16 am
The thing that scares me most is that people will actually buy in to this unbelievable crap. What is wrong with this country that a PRESIDENTIAL ad like that is acceptable? When will they be issuing our brown shirts? Or do we just keep our duct tape and plastic?
Why isn’t the abhorrent nature of this ad mainstream media news? Where is the outrage beyond this web page?
Damn.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:42 am
Wow.
Initially, I thought they were talking about the USA. The entire text fits perfectly.
It’s an ad for a (possibly) future USA-president. Thank heavens the collapse of that country is not far off…
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:25 am
Another nail in Rudy’s coffin. The fear-mongering doesn’t seem to be working this time.
The country is in a ton of trouble economically and voters are waking up to that fact.
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:59 am
Giulliani is certainty a scary character. But so are the Clintons. Trendy Liberals looked the other way when Bill imposed an imbargo on Iran the resulted in the death of one million Iraqi civilians. Hilarly egged Bill on to bomb the Serbian civilian population resulting in the death of several thousand Serbian Civilians.
The trendy liberal’s favorite presidential candidate will very likely be given a blank check by the trendy liberal crowd to comit war crimes on a scale that a clown like Giulliani would never be able to get away with.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Since when this is news?
C’mon we know this already… It is unfortunate the average US citizen has no idea what their country is up to since many decades time… this is an arrowstick up in our ass, one way…
G
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:46 am
I thought you meant this:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0382
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I’ve really come to appreciate the deep analysis and insightful comments found on leftist blogs. No need to waste time with argumentation, as it’s completely obvious that the threat from state-sponsored Islamic terror is utterly negligible in comparison to that from global warming. It’s almost as obvious as the fact that Islamic terror will vanish as soon as the U.S. becomes a polite isolationist country, rather like Luxembourg.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I think at the commercial succeeds at a sort of logical fallacy. It gets folks arguing about how severe is any threat from an Islamic or militant nation or group, but succeeds in planting the notion that *if* the threat is severe, Giuliani would be the best to handle it. This can encourage a sort of hedging attitude of ‘well, I don’t know if the threat is severe or not, but at least Giuliani can take care of business if it is.’
Of course, the commercial itself provides no evidence that Giuliani is better equipped to handle such a threat, even if it is very severe, than any other presidential candidate.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Belizean
An overwhelming majority of members of the Human Species-including the American variety-are opposed to continuation of the Iraq war. Do you think the Human species has got it wrong on this one? Yes, I would say the argument is over. The war criminals have been defeated in debate quite a few times.
We are now moving into the stage where there will very likely be mutines by ordinary America GIs(American teeenagers a lot of them)
Let us face it, you and your war criminal friends haven’t a leg to stand on. The human species has passed judgement on you folks.Go back to Gravitational Lensing research if thats what you do for a living.
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
as it’s completely obvious that the threat from state-sponsored Islamic terror is utterly negligible in comparison to that from global warming.
You know what Belizean even through your sarcasm you managed to hit the nail on the head. Yes, I am more afraid of global warming than Islamic Terrorists. Yes, global warming has the potential to kill many millions more than Islamic terrorists ever could.
Just because someone dies in a flood, drought, or famine triggered by global warming doesn’t mean the death is any more or less tragic than someone blown up by a car bomb. The car bomb just gets better press coverage.
The terrorists have become a boogyman and hopefully the American public is finally grown up enough that it no longer needs big brother (Rudy, Bush, etc) to check under the bed any more.
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Joshua, you are making Belizean’s point by using argumentum ad populum. Not that I agree with him, but his point still stands.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I doubt it, Belizean; the old problem of “you pay ‘em to fight a war, then you have to pay ‘em twice as much to stop”…
You do know who the biggest state sponsor of terrorism is, don’t you?
(Historically, definitely; currently – no there’s no evidence, but also no evidence of a change in tactics).
Also Luxembourg is a founding member of the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, Benelux, and the Western European Union, and is also the the location of the administrative body of the European Parliament. Some isolation.
Were you perhaps thinking of Switzerland?
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Re: Belizean
When monkeys fling their poo, do you respond with insightful commentary? “Yeah, I was down at the zoo, in the primate house, when the shit literally hit the fan. A few choice Chomsky quotes with a Sartre frosting and *phew*, order was restored.”
Sometimes the baser tripe needs to be dismissed — not discussed. Or maybe you’d like to discuss why you still beat your wife?
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Farhat
While the nerdy-not to be confused with high level of intelligence-debating society neocons distracted the Ameicasn people with their sophistries, Iraqi civilians and American teenagers(GIs) were blown to pieces of chuck ground for the stray dogs of Bagdad. The maggots had their stomachs filled also,compliments of sissy neocons on FOX.
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Let’s consider a very unlikely worst case scenario involving terrorism: A 25 kiloton nuclear device explodes in downtown New York. Despite the terrible damage and loss of life, the US will easily survive this attack, even New York will eventually be rebuild as was were Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Now consider a far more likely worst case scenario involving Global Warming: Temperatures rise by 6 degrees centigrade in the next century because we fail to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. This causes problems on a global scale. In the US, Florida disappears into the Sea. And when that happens the people will blame their great grandparents for being preoccupied with Islamic Terrorists.
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Thank you Count I’m glad someone else picked up on that.
I just found this on Rudy’s Wikipedia article,
In a December 2007 interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric, he suggested that part of the solution to global warming is an increased reliance on coal-burning power plants, and also on nuclear power:
Umm, how does increasing reliance on coal help global warming? Maybe if we spew enough soot into the atmosphere it will block enough sunlight to counteract the greenhouse effect. Then again maybe flying monkeys will swarm out of my butt and bring me all the gold in Namibia.
To all the Rudy fans out there, WAKE UP. The man couldn’t protect Manhattan from Islamic Terrorists or global warming. What makes you think he’ll do any better with the rest of teh country?
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Sorry, it was only the second paragraph that was supposed to be italicized. I must have mixed up my slashes.
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:25 pm
ha! that is a hilarious ad! “i approve this message” what a punch line. i can’t believe that it is not some anti-juliani spoof ad!
:^o
Evan
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:10 pm
People seem to have a strange obsession with global warming in this thread. Firstly, per capita Canada is a worse offender than the US. For some reason, people dont like to call out Canada on that. In terms of GHG release per unit economic activity, US is far more efficient than a lot of countries. Since most economic treaties aimed at tackling this do not want to put any kind of control on GHG release from countries like China or India, what you’ll end up having is a case where manufacturing activity shifts from US to less efficient countries worsening the problem, not improving it.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:55 pm
So who is Rudy going to nuke?
Iran – he will do it just to have some fun
Afghanistan – he like to decrease opium export a bit
Pakistan – he push the button out of frustration not finding the body of OBL
Chad – that’s his way to solve the hunger problem there
Russia – he is pissed that Putin becomes prime minister and give him the finger during inauguration
Cuba – recession in US calls for expansion of business opportunities and Castro is still around
Mexico – he has enough of not enough Mexican jumping over the border
Canada – the Canadian dollar = 1.2 US dollar and Blue Jays won World Series over NY Yankees. He is really really mad about loosing that game.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:32 am
Umm, Coal power and nuclear power are the obvious scientific short term solutions to the energy problems as well as being the most eco friendly major grid generators.
Better filtering technology can and will make coal plant emmissions extremely low in the next twenty years, and well theres maybe a dozen physicists alive who don’t endorse nuclear fission plants. So I’d say Rudy is right on the money in that regard.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Better filtering technology can and will make coal plant emmissions extremely low in the next twenty years, and well theres maybe a dozen physicists alive who don’t endorse nuclear fission plants. So I’d say Rudy is right on the money in that regard.
You have got to be kidding me. Clean coal a myth almost as ludicrous as abiogenic oil.
You haven’t read the numbers. The key isn’t more generating capacity but more conservation. For the cost of a single coal power plant we could install double pane windows on thousands of homes thus saving energy and preventing the need to build that nasty dirty power plant in the first place.
I used to work for PG&E and if theres one thing I learned it’s that it’s easier, cheaper and far more effective to save a kilowatt than it is to create a kilowatt of new capacity.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Conservation is fine. Its also irrelevant, b/c it doesn’t solve anything.. It just pushes the problem further into the future. Ultimately the issue is simply that population and demand for watts are on nonlinear curves that fit well with exponentials, ergo you eventually have to grow your energy supply with the same sort of analytic shape.
Fossil fuels, fission and fusion are more or less the only things we can conceive off that can possibly output that sort of growth. Wind and solar are nice, but they eventually have land issues.
Of those options, nuclear fission is the best bet (albeit expensive). Then clean coal, which is far less a pipedream than some of the other pie in the sky ideas floating out there. Already its pretty good.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Haelfix, do we really have to accommodate a growing demand for watts/capita? (We certainly don’t have to let population keep growing, and rational governments will suppress, not encourage, any such growth. I think it is capitulation to a destructive growthism to give in to that process. I think better quality machines, like faster computers and more fuel-efficient cars, is great. That does not have to translate into having more total stuff and using more power to run it (indeed, more advanced technology should in part definition mean using less power, so the per capita really should go down!)
January 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I lived under Giuliani for the time he was mayor in NYC and he did some good things. Mostly, he has VERY good at making it seem like he accomplished something grand when in fact it was inevitable or, more likely, a sham.
He never in a million years would’ve gotten re-elected as mayor if he said and did all the crazy things he continues to do on the campaign trail. I’m not sure if he really means it or is just pandering to the masses. Either way, its completely reprehensible.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/giuliani_to_run_for_president_of_9
Nuff said.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Is there something not true in the ad? Oh, yeah I forgot, you of brillant minds belive 911 was an inside job.
Let’s go back to talking about playing with interns, we didn’t have this problem then…
January 4th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Oh, yeah I forgot, you of brillant minds belive 911 was an inside job.
No, it wasn’t it Saddam Hussein?
/snark
January 4th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
no, no, no, we didn’t have any problems with that guy either…
January 4th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Your current one does seem to have been the pick of the litter since… oh, FDR at least? My American history before that is light on the non-entity Presidents: there’s so much history, a general grounding only hits the high spots. (”,)
January 4th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Neil I agree, the solution to the Energy crisis ultimately will come from a series of contributions on both the demand and supply side of the picture.
Of course you can take the drastic solution on either side. I mean if we execute or sterilize everyone in China and India, basically there would be no ‘energy’ problem, b/c thats where the population growth and demand growth is and will be in the future. Most western countries have negative population growth and very moderate or linear demand growth (basically, as GDP goes up it passes a critical point and flattens out to something more linear as one would expect).
Its hard to solve that though, especially since we don’t have much say over third world economies. Ergo the need and desire to provide some sort of clean energy generation that would hopefully be cheap and affordable for them
January 5th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Wow, is Hilary so deep into trouble now you have to help her?
I always wondered if this is really science blog.
January 5th, 2008 at 8:20 am
You poor thing, having to wonder so much. Let me help a little and direct you to our carefully hidden and opaquely written “about” page, which may help put an end to those painful wonderings.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/about/
January 5th, 2008 at 11:24 am
slide2112 wrote:
Oh, yeah I forgot, you of brillant minds belive 911 was an inside job.
Do you really think this would be a popular view on this blog? The “9/11 was an inside job” people use the classic crackpot style of argument (especially when it comes to the scientific questions about what kinds of effects we’d expect to see from a jet crashing into a building), something that science-geek types usually have a lot of experience recognizing. Y’know, it’s quite possible to accept that Islamic terrorists pose a threat without thinking they are the Greatest Threat Facing Civilization Today (TM) — unless they get their hands on a nuclear weapon or assume control of a nuclear-armed state like Pakistan, there’s basically no way they can manage to kill even a small fraction of the people killed every year by common diseases, not to mention the types of natural disasters which are likely to increase drastically if global warming isn’t curtailed.
January 5th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Thank you Mark. I just had to say that i find this Sean’s post extremely politically limited or just “politically motivated”.
January 5th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Mister Cloud wrote:
Wow, is Hilary so deep into trouble now you have to help her?
Actually, I imagine Sean is pretty happy with how things are going right now…
January 5th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Jesse M. in #34 makes Rudy’s and Bush’s point exactly. It’s too late once they get it, you have to stop them before!
It’s not clean, it’s not pretty, it ain’t nice, it ain’t academic. Alot of our best will die in the process. It is really messed up. But we gotta do it.
January 5th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
#37: slide, please tell me your geopolitical sense is that weak. First off: whenever a foreign army comes stomping in in their size 12s to kill the bad guys, they’d better be damn sure they know who the bad guys are. it worked in World War 1 and 2 because the bad guys were other foreigners, the locals didn’t want them around, and the Allies tended to leave moderatley fast once they ran out of Germans. It doesn’t usually work when the bad guys are local boys, because they’ll always have support – and in fact, the invader can often increase their support more than decrease it.
Case study: Northern Ireland.
Do you know who the IRA’s best recruiter was? The British Army.
Before 1968, the IRA was an irrelevant leftover. Six months afterBloody Sunday, they were well-organised and well-supplied enough to bomb 22 targets in a single night. It wasn’t direct cause and effect, but it’s a decent illustration.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The IRA continued their ’struggle’ for 30 years. Are you be willing to have soldiers’ bodies coming home from Baghdad in 2038?
January 5th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
slide2112 wrote:
Jesse M. in #34 makes Rudy’s and Bush’s point exactly. It’s too late once they get it, you have to stop them before!
If your primary purpose is to stop terrorists from getting nuclear weapons, the best way to do this is by focusing on nuclear arms control and preventing nuclear proliferation, something which the Bush administration has never really made a central issue in the “war on terror” (some arms reductions treaties have actually been watered down because of Bush’s desire to build nifty new types of nukes), and which is generally better served by diplomacy than by saber-rattling.
January 6th, 2008 at 4:43 am
I suspect Almighty Bob doesn’t understand the meaning of geopolitical, clearly he does not know WW2. Forget about the first world war. I am dumbstruck, I don’t know where to begin.
Jesse M. How quaint. I’m sure we can agree that diplomacy does not always work. The subject of Rudy’s ad is a case in point.
Let us hold a high standard here. The subject at hand is ugly enough.
January 6th, 2008 at 7:33 am
slide2112, it seems to me that Almighty Bob understands geopolitics, WW2, and NI quite well. Once you have figured out “where to begin”, please let us know.
It is also very well-known that the current administration completely balls’d up the prevention of nuclear proliferation. Just look at the mess in North Korea: it is a direct consequence of the totally incompetent diplomatic efforts of the US a couple of years ago.
January 6th, 2008 at 8:44 am
I’ve studied geopolitics. In a university, even.
It wasn’t a precise use of the word, I will admit, but it was a long enough post without writing “is your understanding of sociology, psychology, group dynamics, and politics (as they apply to international relations and terrorism) so feeble as to not be able to grasp the concept of ‘if they don’t like what you’re doing, they may attempt to stop you’?”
Okay, okay, there’s still US bases in Germany, Italy, the UK… There was no long term occupation of any country: Germany became independant in 1949, Japan in 1952, Italy in 1946. You think you’ll be out of a stable Iraq by 2010? World War I, there were occupied territories: Alsace, Lorraine, and the Ruhr valley were occupied by the French. Alsace and Lorraine had been taken by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War: Alsace had been swapped backwards and forwards quite a bit previously, and Lorraine was a piecemeal mix of French and German ex-duchies. The Ruhr valley was taken in 1923 when Germany didn’t pay reparations. Of course, the first step in Hitler’s conquering movements was his re-occupation of the Ruhr valley. Germany also lost its colonies, but that was just a change of bosses.
Are there any other aspersions you wish to cast?
January 6th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Thanks, PK.
On the non-proliferation front, in 1995 Iran made a deal with Russia whereby Russia would provide nuclear fuel for two reactors and take back the spent fuel rods, thus ensuring no opportunity for the construction of atomic bombs from the plutonium (it would have been enorrmously easy to audit, too). Guess who sunk that deal?
Result: Iran is now looking to enrich its own fuel, which means they don’t need the reactor to make plutonium for bombs anymore: they now have the technology to make plain ol’ weapons-usable U-235. They also will no longer accept Russia’s providing all their fuel – they’ve seen they can’t trust continuity of supply.
Well played, whoever scuppered that plan.
January 6th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Almighty Bob, also now that Iran has almost build up their nuclear infrastructure, they won’t dismantle it just because some Western countries feel threatened.
If a country wants to mine their own uranium, enrich it in their own centrifuges for use in their own nuclear powerplants, then who are we to demand that they stop doing that just because they could in theory, at some future time, kick out the IAEA inspectors and make nuclear weapons.
If we have certain doubts about the Iranian nuclear program without firm evidence, we should talk to Iran in a very polite manner and certainly not demand that they suspend their program and impose sanctions.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
If you read back through the history, Iran has unfailingly met the NNPT requirements and, with some scuffles, allowed the IAEA do its job. They’re enormously distrustful of the procedures, which is understandable when you see how often they’ve been used to bludgeon them.
None of this is arguing that Iran should have nuclear weapons, and I’m shaky on nuclear power generally, but they clearly have the right to nuclear power under international law.
January 6th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
slide2112 wrote:
Jesse M. How quaint. I’m sure we can agree that diplomacy does not always work. The subject of Rudy’s ad is a case in point.
The subject of Rudy’s ad is for the most part shots of various crowds of what I imagine are random Islamic extremists, along with known terrorists like Bin Laden, not states that actually have the means to build nuclear weapons. Do you agree that the primary focus should be on preventing terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons, or do you think that non-nuclear terrorist attacks like Sept. 11 are themselves threats to civilization on the scale of climate change? Rudy’s ad does include a shot of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, calling him a “madman”, but he isn’t really crazy any more than the soviet leaders or Saddam were, and diplomatic solutions such as UN inspectors (who in retrospect we know were doing just fine at preventing Saddam from building nuclear weapons) and perhaps allowing Iran to have nuclear power plants with imported fuel, would likely work fine. And if there was strong evidence that Iran was unrepentantly developing nuclear weapons, I think there’d be a lot of other countries that would join a coalition to intervene with attacks on the facilities where they were being developed, the lone-gun approach is counterproductive in all sorts of way. Of course, on the subject of evidence, part of the problem with the Bush administration was that they didn’t evaluate the evidence fairly and instead saw what they wanted to see, few other countries went along with the US because they listened to their intelligence agencies. I don’t see Rudy being any less likely to jump the gun in this way.
January 6th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
If there was evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, what would be the justification to attack them? Why treat them differently from Pakistan, or even North Korea?
If Iran develops a bomb, it’s because they learned the lesson of the Iraq invasion; if you don’t have nuclear weapons, get them; it’s the only way to keep the Great Satan out.
There was the biggest hint that no WMDs existed in Iraq from day one of the pre-invasion PR; how would Saddam have reacted if he knew there was an invasion coming, and he had, say, a 10K device? He would have strapped the thing on a Scud, pointed it at Jerusalem, and sent it on its way once the first American boot hit Iraqi soil. Similar with any nerve gas left over, or any anthrax. No matter how evil you think Bush is, he was supported by Israel sympathisers, and Bush would never do anything to annoy his power base.
January 6th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
The Almighty Bob:
If there was evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, what would be the justification to attack them? Why treat them differently from Pakistan, or even North Korea?
Well, Iran was a signer of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, so I’d think that in the UN that would provide some kind of legal justification. Whether it would actually happen would depend on how different countries saw the danger from a nuclear-armed Iran, but it’s hard to imagine that Israel wouldn’t take some kind of action, and France has also suggested it’d be likely to attack in these circumstances. Not saying this would be the right thing to do, just that it’s plausible it’d happen. Even if Iran got nuclear weapons, I’m sure the chances of Iran actually using them or giving them to terrorists would be pretty low, since it would be suicide for the country…however much of a “madman” Ahmadinejad is, he isn’t an all-powerful dictator, his actions would have to be agreed on by others like the “Supreme Leader of Iran” Ali Khamenei.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
An attack against Iran would be suicidal. We bomb their nuclear facilities, then what? Of course, the Iranians will retalliate with their missiles. And of course, the Iranians won’t stop firing their missiles just because we are done bombing the targets we wanted to hit.
What targets will Iran hit? Many major oil installations in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwayt, Bahrein, Oman, Qatar and Dubai are within Iranian missile range. Iran can just demand that these countries stop selling oil to the West or have their oil installations destroyed.
Can we do anything to stop Iran firing their missiles? Israel was not very successful in stopping Hezbollah firing their missiles, so I think we’ll end up in situation with skyrocketing oil prices which will ultimately force us to having to negotiate a humiliating cease fire with Iran: We agree not to attack Iran anymore and Iran stops firing missiles at oil installations in return.
January 6th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
That would be the extreme; guys like Red Adair make a living getting oil wells back in production after disasters. Iran would run out of missiles eventually, and the oilfire specialists took only 9 months to get 117 wells back online after Gulf War Mk. I.
One of the first consequences of such an attack or threat (in the best power-politics fashion) is that the North Slope would be opened to oil exploration so fast the Sierra Club’s heads would spin.
Jesse? North Korea’s an NNPT signatory.
January 6th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
The Almighty Bob:
Jesse? North Korea’s an NNPT signatory.
Well, it did withdraw from the treaty in 2003, although of course Iran could do the same. Again, I’m not personally advocating military intervention if Iran starts developing nuclear bombs, and I’m not even saying that other countries would definitely try to intervene, but my impression is that a number of countries would be more worried about Iran getting nuclear weapons then North Korea (doesn’t Iran have more ambitions for the region than insular North Korea? Do you disagree that Israel at least would probably try to do something to stop it? And what about Sarkozy?)
January 7th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Are you [slide2112] willing to have soldiers’ bodies coming home from Baghdad in 2038?
I think it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t care how many soldiers die in this war.
He probably doesn’t even care that THIS YEAR was the deadliest year in Iraq for American soldiers… so far.
All he cares about is that we keep on killing brown people, regardless of reason.
Not that he has anything against brown people, per se, but that he shares the same disturbing ideologies as those who are currently in power.
He cares not for others, but only for himself. Leave him be.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:28 am
North Korea played some downright devious games withdrawing from the NNPT.
Iran has dreams of regional dominance, yes; North Korea, on the other hand, actually launched a war of aggression on South Korea. It’s a matter of which dodgy b*stard you think is more likely to go mad and take on the US, really.
With Mossad’s rumoured efficiency and Israel’s complete ruthlessness, I would assume something would be done alright. I don’t know about Sarkozy, I hadn’t heard anything about him waving the hatchet at them.
I think by this stage you and I are just attempting to out-Devil’s Advocate each other, Jesse.
jeebus: Ah, let’s give slide the benefit of the doubt. It’s always better when there’s someone that if you are violently disagreeing with them, you know you’re in the right.
Slide appear to have run away since discovering we know facts, but hopefully they’ll be back.
(The mangling of the language produced when you don’t know someone’s gender is horrible; those last two sentences have taken two rewrites and are still barely readable. Oh, for French’s complete ignoring of it, or a decent neuter pronoun)
January 7th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
The prevailing logic here seems to be that the bad things are Bush’s fault. Russia and China are not to be held accountable and their aiding the likes of such innocents as North Korean and Iran are only in response to Bush. Islamic fascists are not really a threat coz they can only kill a few thousand at a time, at least for right now. All was peachy before 2000.
As for #37:
WWII ended in our favor because the Nazis, AND their local sympathizers (perhaps you did not know we had to fight through the French in North Africa to get to the Germans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch )
and the general population where brutally beaten into complete submission. The Nazis had sympathizers through out Europe. Examples can be found that active resistance began only after the locales experienced the brutality of the Nazis personally, as Iragi’s have turned against Al Qaeda types in Iraq.
As Almighty Bob has corrected himself, the U.S. maintained a military presence in Europe, Japan, Korea, but why? As a force to maintain stability against the foreign and domestic threat of another brutal state philosophy called communism. The U.S. only gained favor by proving to be the most benign conquerors the worlds has ever known. ( insert a string of all the bad and terrible things the U.S. has done, well documented and open, my statement still stands).
If the occupation of Germany is considered to have ended in 1946 then the occupation of Irag ended in Dec 2005 with the election of a national assembly.
Unfortunately a presence will be maintained for years to come, as a force against Islamic brutality and the general tendency of the region to degrade to despotism.
I don’t like any of this. I wish the world were different. The ad remindes us it is not.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:52 am
1949, slide.
Also, may I make a point? During World War 2, ‘Allies’ was not synonymous with ‘the USA,’ as you’ve been assuming I mean. Nine divisions were to land on D-Day; four US, four British, and one Canadian. Just a reminder.
What, the Vichy? Yup, happened to know about them, yes.
A far more apt comparison with the resistances would have been the original “Al Qaeda types” in Iraq: most resistances were active within months of the Nazi invasion of their country, and were supported from Britain by the Special Operations Executive with supplies and training. If you don’t believe me, look at Milorg in Norway (look up the Norwegians’ destruction of the Vemork heavy water plant: without that Resistance, the Nazis may have had a nuke by war’s end).
In Yugoslavia there were pro-Nazi sympathisers in nowadays-Croatia, but Royalist and Communist resistance in the rest of the country. This would be how Tito got his start (he founded the Communist Partisans the day the Soviet Union was invaded).
What about Lawrence of Arabia? The men he led didn’t feel the Nazis’ brutality; even if they did, they were perfectly capable of melting into the desert and never being seen again.
Many of the Resistances were help by the SOE, who got them to lie low until the Allies needed them – witness the Belgian Resistance, who were mobilised to help the liberation, but managed to do little through the sheer speed of the Allied advance.
If the US was invaded, would you fight from day one, or wait until a Canadian soldier didn’t help your mother cross the street, or otherwise brutalised you? Resistances tend to mobilise fast. They only last if they have external help or the occupiers let grudges fester and persist in mistreating the locals (thus, under both points, the longevity of Fatah and other Palestinian “resistances”).
“The general tendency of the region to degrade to despotism”, eh? Despots in th Middle East…
The House Of Saud? Yup. Saddam Hussein? Yup. The Shah of Iran? Yup.
Yemen? Republic.Oman? Universal suffrage in 2003, though I don’t know how much use it is – the Sultan still rules. UAE? The Sheiks seem to treat their own people well, if not the guest workers. Jordan? Constitutional monarchy. Iran? Democratic until something annoys Khomeini, so call it a despotism.
Difference? Previous list are or were either installed by the US or are supported by them. Some “general trend,” eh?
January 8th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
…the point being the Vichy French are an example of ‘local boys’, Iraqi resistance to Saddam and support for the Coalition (you like to pretend the 21 nations who contributed military forces in Iraq don’t count) were also active on day one, and the support has grown.
The ‘good war’ was not clean and clear, the outcome of the war was in doubt, the human cost for all was terrible, the aftermath lead to the Cold War, wasn’t that great…still it was the right thing to do…
Just as an example to your list in the context of history, given the choice between a Soviet Puppet state or the current Islamic regime, the rest of the world would be better off with the Shah, the people of Iran are still screwed.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
You do realise Madeleine Albright apologised for the USA’s intervention on the Shah’s behalf back in 2000, right?
And why would Iran have automatically become a Soviet puppet state? Who in the CIA had the crystal ball that predicted so many fledgling democracies during the Cold War would become Communist states if not overthrown immediately and a dictator installed? (If you don’t believe me, I can provide a list).
Of course the good war wasn’t good, it was a war! Read up on the firebombing of Dresden sometime. We get outraged about the Blitz, when the Allies committed the worst civilian bombing of the war (and then went on to compound the offence by dropping two nukes on civilians).
There were collaborationists and sympathisers in many countries, even Britain and (dare I say it) the US:
- GM apparently signed an agreement with the Nazi Consul General to defeat Roosevelt in the next election the agreement was discovered and printed in the Congressional Record by Rep. John Coffee, it seems (I can’t find anything other than secondary sources, so you’ll have to accept the weasel words, I’m afraid).
- Henry Ford donated money to the Nazi Party.
- According to Charles Higham in Trading With The Enemy, “on May 5, 1941, the U.S. Legation at Managua, Nicaragua, reproted that Standard Oil subsidaries were distributing Epoca, a publication filled with pro-Nazi propaganda. John J. Muccio, of the U.S. Consulate, made an investigation and found that Standard was distributing this inflammatory publication all over the world.” Standard also sold aircraft fuel to the Nazis, and actively discouraged American researchers from producing synthetic rubber (which only Germany could produce at the time, it seems).
The Coalition… yes. Thanks, slide. Here’s the Coalition in 2003, according to the White House. I’ll use extracts here, as the whole list is unwieldy.
Afghanistan – how many Afghani troops were part of the invasion force, slide? I can’t seem to find any numbers. Maybe they contributed from their vast wealth, instead?
Angola – in 2003 “80% of Angolans lacked access to basic medical care,” according to the UN.
Azerbaijan – Azerbaijin is between Iran and Russia. They need all the American favours they can get.
Colombia – can they really spare troops from the War On Drugs you’re paying them to wage?
Costa Rica – Costa Rica’s military was abolished in 1948, then declared unconstitutional. A valuable partner.
Dominican Republic – the Dominican Republic that has been invaded by the US in the last 50 years, and looks to Washington before taking a particularly deep breath?
El Salvador – an economy so dependant on the US, the US dollar is its official currency.
Eritrea – Eritrea. Number 156 out of 177 on the UN Human Development Index.
Ethiopia – aren’t they busy peacekeeping in Somalia these days?
Georgia – another country that needs favours from the US, in case Russia decides they’ve had enough and roll south.
Honduras – Honduras. The 2nd poorest country in Central America.
Kuwait – they owed you from last time?
Macedonia – Macedonia.
Marshall Islands -you’re kidding.
Micronesia – you’ve GOT to be kidding.
Mongolia – didn’t Bush stop off to say thanks for their 130 troops at some point?
Nicaragua – the 2nd poorest country in Latin America.
Palau – administered by the US until 1994. Another ex-client state.
Panama – another ex-client state.
Philippines – yet another ex-client state.
Rwanda – I know I heard about some trouble in Rwanda at some stage in recent history…
Solomon Islands – you’ve really got to be kidding.
South Korea – there have been US troops sitting between them and the fourth largest army in the world, which recently tested a nuclear bomb. Perhaps they thought they owed you.
Tonga – please tell me you’re kidding.
Uganda – may have been distracted, as they were fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency at the time.
Uzbekistan – another candidate for Russian re-annexation.
Would you like to know how people joined the Coalition? They got a phone call asking would they like to join. Those who said “okay” went on the list.
More telling is who isn’t on it. Germany, France? NATO countries, and ones who took part in Kosovo, so it’s not the lack of a UN resolution that stopped them. Canada?
And at the moment the UK is preparing to withdraw after handing Basra back to the Iraqis. It’s moderately stable; but then, the UK has had long experience of this kind of manouevre, and knew just how bogged down it’s possible to get.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Oh, and here’s a link to a contemporary compilation of the approval for war in the populations of Coalition countries. It states only Romania had a majority of the population in favour of invasion – and this is in 2003, when approval was at its highest.
January 8th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
“You do realise Madeleine Albright apologised for the USA’s intervention on the Shah’s behalf back in 2000, right?”
Yeah and she did a great job with North Korea too. But all credit goes to Jimmy Carter.
…and for your listing pleasure , you left off the 2003 list
Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Span, Denmark, Japan and Australia.
But they don’t count either coz they are just lap dogs like the British. If only we all had the high moral standards of the French and Germans.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I know I left them off. I provided a link to the full list, and said I was leaving them off. It’s condensation, or even being polite; the bloody post was long enough as it was.
Norway? Not on the list I used, and that was the March 2003 list produced by the White House, who ought to know. They joined afterwards, but yes, they weren’t on my list. If you want to dispute my framing rather than my points, do so, but please be clear.
Withdrew their troops in 2005.
Spain elected an anti-war government at its next election and withdrew their troops in 2004.
The Netherlands?
“Then missiles started raining down on Baghdad, and the mood suddenly changed. Instead of the expected shock and horror in Dutch public opinion, there seemed to be a short period of uncertainty, only to then sweep into a mood of compliance with US policies. The most heard argument for this case, was that “We were not for this war, but now that it has started, we cannot afford to refrain from supporting the American strategy.” ”
Not lapdogs at all.
Troops withdrawn in 2005.
Portugal?
José Manuel Durão Barroso and his cohort were true conservatives, who looked to Portugal’s Renaissance glory, and criticised the ‘premature’ granting of indepeandence to Portugal’s colonies. He is quoted as saying that the experience gained during the GNR mission would be “useful in similar future operations.” Which is a rather onimous statement, despite the aforementioned GNR mission being just 128 soldiers.
The troops were withdrawn in 2005.
Japan sent 600 soldiers (in their first overseas deployment since they decided to take a stroll through China) on a non-combat and humanitarian mission, Japanese troops being banned from doing anything but defend themselves by the constitution. They were withdrawn in 2006.
Denmark appears to have fallen for the WMD FUD, but there were also statements like “the Danish Government believes that it was right to show solidarity with the United States in its fight against a repressive tyrant.” (Frank Laybourn, a Foreign and Security Policy Adviser to the then-Government)
There is faint hint of doggy-breath about that statement, isn’t there?
Troops withdrawn August 2007.
Italy: “But the minister, speaking at a ceremony in Grosseto to mark the F2000 Typhoon jet fighter’s 1000th hour in flight, went on to stress that his country were on America’s side and not Saddam Hussein’s when given the chance to take sides.” (From here)
They also din’t take part in the invasion, merely allowed the US to use Italian airspace and transport infrastructure.
Sounds like they took Bush’s “you’re either with us or you’re against us” at face value.
Troops withdrawn in 2006.
Australia: “There seems to be a compliant acceptance that if America goes to war we will go to war, but should we?” from a 2002 article in The Age.
Australia has fought alongside the US in World War 1 and 2, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. That’s even better than the British you call lapdogs.
Troops to be withdrawn by mid-2008.
To make myself clear, I am not calling these countries American lapdogs, if for no other reason than I hope I’d never use such a hackneyed old cliche when there’s plenty of more informative (and less pejorative) ways of saying they were more influenced by who asked than by what the question was.
Slide introduced the term; if he thinks of the UK as a lapdog, maybe he’s willing to accept other pets…
January 8th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
..and then there is this little gem about the government of France at the time
“Reports out of France indicate the Chirac government is behind the anti-American demonstrations there, and that references to the coalition troops as “Anglo-American” forces and “Anglo-American liberalism” are terms borrowed from Vichy propaganda during the Hitler occupation.”
I had nearly forgotten Chirac was part of the Vichy govenrment.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:32 am
That would have been an accomplishment indeed, considering he was 13 when the war ended. And even if he was a truly precocious politician, it’s irrelevant anyway.
Come on slide, you can do better than this. You’re not even trying! Obfuscating the argument is bad arguing, but an okay tactic if it works. You’ve tried it subtly a few times, and I’ve tended to follow a bit; both to correct what I saw as mistakes, and for my own amusement. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you get away with heaping manure into the discussion.
And for future reference, the key in making up facts in arguments is their believability. When the person you’re discussing with has Google at their fingertips, believability goes way down; it’s generally better not to try.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I stand corrected, it was Mitterrand I was thinking of.
The point remains, holding up the likes of the governments of France and Germany at the time, while ignoring the other NATO contries that did go to Iraq, is disshonest. And yes you were being dishonest in your ommission. It is also disshonest for Demoracts to try to retrace there steps and claim Bush tricked them into voting for the war.
Any human indevor is flawed from the start. WWII is no exception and your point of saying ‘local boys’ cannot be defeated does not stand up. There is no obuscation in my argument. Your cutting and pasting has no point, that is obfuscation.
The Bush Administrations has made Iraq a battelfield for the war on terror. Now that it is, it should be supported as one. Rudy’s ad reminds us why
January 9th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Ah. Apologies for the ad hominem, so.
The point I ws trying to make is that many of the smaller NATO countries went because it was the US asking, and the US had produced intelligence saying Iraq had WMD, and (I’m assuming; intelligence services tend not to advertise their existence, operations, or anything else) these smaller countries wouldn’t have the intelligence assets to independently check the intelligence. Germany, on the other hand, had BND agents in Baghdad before and during the invasion (as evidenced by the fact that a German agent in Qatar was assigned to pass information to the invasion force, which included troop disposition – and in some cases positions – in what was apparently a quid pro quo arrangement with US intelligence), so perhaps they knew that the dossier that was the stated reason for the war was, to quote Ford, bunk.
The French had the best intelligence on the ground according to a British agent (in fact, they extracted the German agents); remember how vociferous France was in attempting to prevent the war?
Okay, if my point about local guerilla resistance being enormously difficult to defeat doesn’t stand up, knock it down. Explicitly, please, as I can think of three examples (that lasted 30 years, at least) without trying.
Oh boy, haven’t they.
I linked to the full list at the time of the invasion, said I was using that list, and said I hadn’t included all the members. In fact, here’s precisely what I said:
Now, if you think I should have cut and pasted the whole list for no good reason, I’m sorry. I find encountering a post in a blog’s comments that is as long as the blog itself a very bad sign, and try not to write such.
And if you have to use statements like “any human endeavour is flawed from the start” to excuse the idiocy, graft, and mayhem that has been the Iraq “war”…
Anyway: I’ve let you set the pace, and drag us backwards and forwards across the actual argument, and I have yet to see you make one substantive point.
Here are mine, the main thrust of what I’ve been trying to say.
The Iraq invasion has made the USA – and the world – a less secure, more dangerous place. Fact.
The War On Terror is a war on an amorphous, chameleonic Hydra that will never be defeated by sending in the Marines. You fight terrorism like you fight a forest fire; you deprive it of fuel, and try to put out sparks. Deprive Islamic terrorism of fuel? Remove the reasons young Islamic men feel they have nothing to live for, are full of hate, and are vulnerable to being indoctinated that dying will bring them to Paradise? It’d probably involve such things as education and jobs. Other than that, it’s beyond me; but that’s okay, I’m just an idiot at a computer.
Put out sparks? Abu Ghraib was a spark. Blackwater and its ilk are sparks. Guantanamo is a spark. The rape and murder of that 14-year-old Iraqi girl is a spark. The internment of large numbers of Iraqis for no stated reason is a spark.
You get the picture?
January 9th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Whew! That’s at least six inches of text on my screen. I don’t have the time to spare to keep this up much longer. Slide, you may win this in a walkover.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
oh blaa blaa blaa. You make a statement that NATO countires were not part of the war effort then publish a list that puropsly excludes them, for lack of space you say, and then you write the above? There is no logic here, it is just intellectually dishonest.
I think we probably are done here. If the Coalitions attempts to create a democracy in Iraq fails, then the world is worse off. If the democracy succeeds, the world is better for it. Should it have been attempted in the first place? Well lets not start that again.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
It seems to me that if you only consider terrorism, the world would be “better of” with a Saddam Hussein like Stalinist dictator in charge of iraq. In a democracy you don’t have a secret police so it is easier to plan terror attacks. Note that the 9/11 attacks were prepared for a significant part in the US and Germany.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
The main problem with post-invasion Iraq (never mind the presence or absence of secret police) is its radicalising effect. Think the Alamo.
The Iraq invasion was also a godsend for Bin Laden. It gave him a respite from being chased all over Afghanistan by SEALs, distracted political and military attention from the patch he was operating in, provided reams of propaganda and mujahideen hand over fist. Before the Iraqi invasion, one “Al Qaeda” existed, which tended to be more terrorism finance than bombmakers. Now there’s “Al Qaeda In Iraq”, Al Qaeda sympathisers in Palestine, UNIFIL have been attacked several times by Al Qaeda sympathisers in Lebanon…
It also allowed the Taleban to rest and resupply while materiel and personnel needed in Afghanistan was drawn off to Iraq. There’s been a resurgence, and the last two years have been the deadliest for Coalition troops since the invasion.
Slide, I left some NATO countries off – I put up the ones I had something to write about. Though after checking the NATO membership, I find I did actually leave them all off… hmm. I suppose I must have thought they were semi-credible allies at the time of posting.
No, I didn’t. I said “Germany and, France, which are NATO countries“. I was trying to establish why their absence would be considered strange.
Please try to attack what I write, not what you thought I wrote.
I can’t spend the time to thoroughly refute you anymore, slide. It’s a pity, I was enjoying myself. If you promise to play nice and restrict the arguments to things I can respond to in 20 lines or less, I might be able to continue. Ad hominen attacks should do fine, if you can’t come up with anything else.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
If you want a good sense of how many combat troops have actually been contributed by other members of the “coalition of the willing”, you might take a look at this pie chart showing the number of deaths in Iraq by country. For the actual troop numbers (not just deaths) go here. Basically, although there are plenty of countries in the “coalition”, very few have made more than a token contribution in terms of actual troops.
January 10th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Let me help ya’ll out with this whole support thing.
The major reason for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam’s willingness and perceived ability to use WMD in terror attacks posed an immediate threat to the rest of us. Because it was a perceived threat, support for the war was not as strong as in the first Gulf War.
This ‘ability’ to use, and therefore the immediacy of the threat, has been shown to be wrong. Support for the war as fallen faster then it otherwise would have because of this.
This is the problem with preemptive strikes.
January 11th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Count Iblis, there is truth in the statement you make in #67! But, careful with that axe Eugene, there is a sharp edge here.
I am guessing you meant this as a dig to the Bush administration, but it does actually support such things as the Patriot Act in preventing the subject of Rudy’s ad from killing a few thousand more people.
It also points out what Bush/Cheney et.al are not. Installing a Dictator would be easier, and more effective at quelling dissent of the Iraqi population. It would also make possible the conspiracies the Left has dreamed up about Halliburton and Cheney’s net worth, and the Leftist harangue about American Imperialism.
But that is not what is being done. Instead they are actually trying to bring about a free Iraq, with all the risks of what people might actually do with their freedom.
January 11th, 2008 at 10:26 am
If they were trying to bring about a free Iraq, why have the US built the biggest embassy in the world in Baghdad, and a base meant to stay there for 50 years at least? Why is passing legislation allowing American oil companies… generous… access to Iraqi oil one of the “benchmarks” imposed on the Iraqi Parliament to get reconstruction funds?
No, slide: the reason Iraq was invaded is because your government (and the British, yes) lied and stated that Saddam Hussein had or was attempting to acquire or build nuclear (Niger yellowcake), chemical (sold to him by US companies, with approval from State Department in the 80s, and any stocks left (unlikely) were almost certainly denatured by 2000), and biological (US pharmaceuticals sold him anthrax and botulism) weapons. All this forgot or ignored the fact that U.N. weapons inspectors had been poking their noses into every awkward corner they could find, making it quite difficult to make new produiction facilities, and had completely decommissioned the aforementioned pre-Gulf War WMD capability.
There was no “perceived ability,” your government just lied through its teeth!