Asymmetrical Information

Steven Den Beste's "Nuking Berkeley" comment

"I'd rather be hated than to have one of our cities nuked (unless, of course, it's Berkeley)."

Hmmmm... Can't see the real source of outrage here, with this apparent joke. But my question is, does D-Squared live in Berkeley? Does he have friends in Berkeley that might be killed in this facetious nuking? Because if he doesn't, well then he has no right to be angry, and better "get over it."

If Oscar and Grammy winning Recording Artist Randy Newman can make a song about "Dropping the big one -just to see what happens", then SDB can crack-wise about nuking Berkeley.

Thanks for covering my screen with the never-ending porn-pop-ups of death! I've already got "Big Naturals", I have no need to look at them on a bunch of skanky-looking chicks WHO WON'T GO AWAY.

Nuking Berkeley would be bad, because the wind blows south from there most of the time. Transporting Berkeleyites to Iraq to do duty as human shields, on the other hand, would be really cool.

Frankly, it was the combination of the joke, two days ago, with the sudden leap on to the high horse, which annoyed me. Also, obviously, the insinuation that if you don't agree with Den Beste, you don't care about the WTC victims. I tried to make this clear in a post immediately above the one at issue (now both taken down; I simply don't need the hassle), that I have no problem at all with people referring to their personal involvement. Or indeed, to the fact that the 9/11 attacks are a very good reason indeed, in principle, for America both to take revenge and to try to protect itself in future.

What I do dislike is the attempt to appropriate dead people, who might have had all sorts of political beliefs themselves, in support of one particular agenda, particularly when I consider it likely that the person doing so is being opportunistic. The sadly defunct website adequacy.org ran quite a good piece on this subject a few days after 9/11.

http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:Xx2k2A40QlsC:www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

I hope your friend plays the genre UK Hard House, as that's all I heard during my one experience at a strip club.

I think rather that it is you, d-squared, who is appropriating tragedy. Den Beste and others are not arguing based on the assumption that they know what the victims of 9/11 would want they are arguing based on the assumption that the attack was aimed at America / "westerners" in general and arguing what needs to be done to prevent such a thing from happening again. Moreover, they have as much right as anyone to express their emotions on the attack, especially so with regard to 9/11 as it had such a huge impact on the nation and the world and as the target was quite clearly America and not merely some random people on a few airplanes or working in specific office buildings. It could have been anybody, it was, in fact, anybody (judging by the huge cross section of American life represented by the victims of 9/11) including me or you or Steven Den Beste. As for myself, not that it matters, I have several friends who live and work in New York, one of which works at the WFC just across the street from the WTC site.

Also, has it not escaped your attention that the Pentagon was also attacked on 9/11? Do you want to hazard a guess what the victims of that attack would advocate as to politics and global international policy? Hmmm?

Mr. Davies obviously has no conception of justice. A passion for justice does not concern itself with the political ideologies of criminals, or of the victims of a crime. It does not concern itself with the "root causes" of the criminal's violence or greed. It most especially does not concern itself with the pseudo-sensitivities of moral vacuums for whom no conceivable atrocity could justify retribution, to whom no indication of even more terrible things to come would prescribe going on the offensive.

It would be best if Mr. Davies kept at least one good sized ocean between him and America at all times. The giant is awake now. Woe to anyone who tries to stop him, whether by word or deed, from protecting his own or avenging those who have fallen.

Angua - I recommend Pop-Up Stopper. It makes a satisfying squelching noise everytime it kills an add. I hardly notice anymore.

I read that adequacy.org article that dsquared mentioned. The great flaw: the presumption that political views are irrelevant, or somehow sinister, when used in the context of discussing the violent attacks on America. Especially given that those attacks were the ultimate political statement.

>>Moreover, they have as much right as anyone to express their emotions on the attack

Absolutely _if_those_emotions_are_genuine_. When the same guy made the "Nuke Berkeley" comment two days earlier, I suspect calculated emotional blackmail.

What? Berkeley is in America? Who would have thunk it?

Seriously, D^2 is being a bit precious in objecting to the "nuke Berkeley"comment. He well knows that SdB would be devastated if such a thing actually happened, however much he hates the Berkeley liberal mindset or thinks that an attack there would provide a sorely-needed attitude adjustment. It was a JOKE - just like when Lex Luthor tried to nuke Hackensack, NJ.

In fact, given that those who disagree with him make such a mountain of this molehill, merely shows that SdB is an effective polemicist for his point of view.

I think SdB is correct in saying that America should not "get over" 9/11. It was not just a specific attack on the victims by the hijackers, but an attempt by a broad Islamist movement to kill as many Americans, or others who get in their way, as possible. Those Islamists are still out there, still trying to raise the body count, and you can't get over that until they are all dead or neutralised.

The first guy I dated in college died in the attack. I can all but guarantee that he would be in favor of all the military interventions since, because he was ranting about not finishing the job in '91. Can we just do it for him, then?

>>It was a JOKE

IT WASN'T FUNNY.

Brad DeLong
601 Evans Hall, Mining Circle, #3880
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880

I hadn't thought the joke was funny, either, but now that Brad DeLong has reminded us that he lives in Berkeley I'm not so sure.

I thought the "nuke Berkeley" joke was funny primarily because of idiotic laws passed by the city of Berkeley regarding nuclear arms (no nuclear weapons in the city, no nuclear weapons over the city's airspace, etc...).

But that doesn't mean I actually want to nuke Berkeley. Some people have no sense of humor.

Bolie IV

Oh, so all the hoopla is over a joke some thought was unfunny. Now it all makes sense.

Jesus, get over yourselves already.

And just what in the HELL is "calculated emotional blackmail"? Regardless, blackmail requires a minimum of two people, one of whom has a secret they don't want to be revealed.

>>The first guy I dated in college died in the attack. I can all but guarantee that he would be in favor of all the military interventions since, because he was ranting about not finishing the job in '91. Can we just do it for him, then?

I'd like to take this opportunity to remake a point I was trying to make in one of the deleted posts on my own site, that I have the utmost respect for people's genuine pain, and that this respect is not diminished when those people recognise a political dimension to that pain and attempt to take action to ensure that the tragic events which have entered their lives aren't repeated. I hope I have never made nasty remarks about someone's _genuine_ emotions; it was precisely because I thought Den Beste's comments weren't sincere that I got so angry.

Calling a Leftist on his dishonest use of language is risky, David. He might call you a "doodyhead."

Never expect honesty from anyone who's already demonstrated a hostility to facts and reason. Or who's insensible to matters of rights or justice. Or who shifts his bases for his positions as you shoot them out from under him. Or who tries to silence others, better informed and more rational than he, with stridency and ugly language. You'd be more likely to get milk out of a bull.

A phrase in common usage, with the meaning with which I used it.

Are you bored and missing the 2x4 people, Mindles? I mean, if they got their knickers in a huge wad over that, how can they overlook a nuke joke?

Please no one nuke Berkeley. I have friends there. Also, it has some terrific used book stores.

IIRC, dsquared was one of the whiners last year when Ann Coulter's "Slander" came out (wait til the usual suspects get a load of her new one; "Treason"). She was so mean, so unfair!

So, I guess if they can't take it from a 95 lb blonde, from whom can they?

>>IIRC, dsquared was one of the whiners last year when Ann Coulter's "Slander" came out (wait til the usual suspects get a load of her new one; "Treason"). She was so mean, so unfair!

YDRC. I wrote, I think, two posts about her, one of which was mainly about mocking the obsession of left-wing men with claiming that they didn't find her sexually attractive, and the other of which was a comment on the relative pop-culture status of Dale Earnheardt and Jam Master Jay. I specifically, in the deleted post, singled her out as somebody who should *not* be criticsed for saying otherwise unpardonable things about 9/11, because she was clearly extremely distressed when she said them.

> >>Moreover, they have as much right as anyone to express their emotions on the attack

> Absolutely _if_those_emotions_are_genuine_. When the same guy made the "Nuke Berkeley" comment two days earlier, I suspect calculated emotional blackmail.

That's a mighty thin reed for such a weighty conclusion.

I note, however, that the appropriateness of Den Beste's proposals/positions doesn't actually depend on whether his emotion is sincere.

And, I'm sure that all of the folks that have gotten excited about Den Beste's "nuke Berkeley" comment were on the job when other folks said that the US deserved 9/11.

Angie - Bored or Board? Oy.

>>And, I'm sure that all of the folks that have gotten excited about Den Beste's "nuke Berkeley" comment were on the job when other folks said that the US deserved 9/11.

That's a mighty thin reed for such a weighty conclusion.

No dsquared, we just think alot of the people who said the US deserved 9/11 live in Berkeley. Nuking anybody is really bad idea, but it does express our overall distaste for the Berkeley elite.

I've been searching Mr. Davies' site for his anguished polemics condemning those who carried "Bomb Texas" and even "Nuke Texas" signs in the recent anti-war rallies, and I'll be damned if I can find them. I suspect that that's because they don't exist, but I'd hate to think that an obviously erudite and logical person such as Mr. Davies was some sort of hyporcite, or was only able to recognize a joke when its political premises aligned with his own.

>>I've been searching Mr. Davies' site for his anguished polemics condemning those who carried "Bomb Texas" and even "Nuke Texas" signs in the recent anti-war rallies

Never seen a single such sign (I certainly didn't see any in Hyde Park, and I don't tend to read right-wing blogs, so I didn't see whatever photo you're going to link to). I must say I'd have regarded them as being in rather poor taste, but I daresay I'd only have become enraged if I also saw someone who was carrying one of them start simultaneously making arguments to the effect that anyone who didn't agree with their politics was an unfeeling bastard who didn't care about people being nuked.

Good luck in your continuing quest for a better argument.

Angua - I recommend Pop-Up Stopper. It makes a satisfying squelching noise everytime it kills an add. I hardly notice anymore.

Or get a browser which doesn't open unrequested windows. E.g. Mozilla. Netscape 7 too, I presume. I think Opera also can be set this way.

Ahhhh...that emotional blackmail.

Never heard that before. Maybe it's because no one I know is silly enough to use a phrase like that around me. Still, it takes two for blackmail to work. What is it that den Beste is threatening to take away from you? Is it something he actually CAN take away?

I think people are not parsing Steven Den Beste's comment correctly. When SDB first made the remark, I read it as "It is worth having the world hate us to protect our cities, with the exception of Berkeley". In other words, "I'm not willing to have the entire world hate us to save Berkeley".

What's wrong with that sentiment, especially given that a large majority of the people in Berkeley apparently feel the same way?

Mr. Porretto: No comment about Mr. Davies' sense of justice, but yours must be twisted. A sense of justice usually only includes retribution of only those responsible, not those who happen to live in the wrong country, nor happen to live in a country that might possibly in the future think about doing something.

. . . but I daresay I'd only have become enraged if I also saw someone who was carrying one of them start simultaneously making arguments to the effect that anyone who didn't agree with their politics was an unfeeling bastard who didn't care about people being nuked.

Hah! Given the endless supply of rhetoric from the antiwar left to the effect that the Bush Administration can't wait to start Bombing Little Brown Children(TM), I'd wager a crisp $10 bill that that's exactly what such signholders were arguing. (I'm not going to link to any photos for you. I'm sorry you prefer to live your life in an echo chamber, but you may feel free to search for them on your own.)

If you have a look through the prehistory of this contretemps, it goes back to den Beste's "fisking" of a letter someone wrote him detailing their concerns about the coming war. Basically, toward the end, in an attack on an admittedly weak point that his correspondent had made (an argument which I don't endorse for the twin reasons that it attempts to downplay the scale of the 9/11 attacks and it wrongly concedes any connection between them and the attack on Iraq), den Beste launched into a peroration about the attacks, full of visual imagery ("I do not understand how anyone can view the pictures of NYC taken during the attack, or look at the pictures of people jumping to their deaths from the tops of the buildings, or think about brave firemen who rushed into the buildings and died there ...").

In other words, he was attempting to stifle opposition to his views on the subject by making people feel guilty or uncomfortable that in arguing against Stephen den Beste on the subject of war in Iraq, they were implicitly trivialising or dishonouring the victims of the attacks. That's emotional blackmail, because SdB was trying to get something he wanted (acquiescence with his political arguments) through attempting to make people feel guilty. I personally find it quite hard to understand his post about "victimology", given the context.

My view is that I regard emotional blackmail as often a bad way to arrive at the truth about the world, but as an entirely acceptable rhetorical practice when done sincerely as a means of drawing attention to important issues (for example, look at the case of Megan's Law, pure and simple emotional blackmail, and none the worse for it).

When used *insincerely* as a rhetorical tactic, however, I don't like it. I think it's a nasty way to behave, I think it's deceitful, and I think it's disrespectful to the people whose tragedy is being appropriated. It also cheapens the currency and encourages us to be cynical about genuine grief. I don't like people who try to manipulate me.

And I think that den Beste was doing exactly that. I don't understand how anyone who genuinely harboured strong feelings about 9/11 could have made the "Nuke Berkeley" gag as flippantly as he appeared to (can you imagine either of the proprietors of this site doing anything similar?). I think he was doing something pretty shabby, so I called him on it.

Enough explanation?

Phil: Your argument appears to be that I am a hypocrite because I haven't condemned people whose existence I am unaware of (and who may not exist at all) for making an argument attributed to them by yourself. As I say, good luck in your quest for a better one.

>>It was a JOKE

>IT WASN'T FUNNY.

>Brad DeLong

I don't know think it was a joke ("why did the chicken cross the road?") so much as a wise-ass shot at people who one deems to act stupidly.

Sort of like saying "George Will doesn't have a mind". It's not really a joke, and not primarily meant to be funny ... it's an insult with a smile attached, as one amuses oneself with the thought.

>>as a wise-ass shot at people who one deems to act stupidly

I agree with this. But if you're making "wise-ass shots" about matters which are still very distressing to a lot of people, then two days later you're using the emotional power of those same matters for your own purposes, then isn't there something wrong about that?

D-Squared,

You're not, as far as I know, a psychiatrist, a priest, a prophet, a mind-reader, a saint, or an archangel. You are therefore as piss-poor at seeing into Steve Den Beste's soul as the average British leftist. Your claims to be able to do so effectively are not convincing, and your claims of 'emotional blackmail' are thus equally unconvincing. I'd stop making them, if I were you.

I read that line about Berkeley when it first came out, and I agree that it didn't mean "I think Berkeley should be nuked", but, "I think being hated by the world is preferable to having any American city nuked, with the exception of Berkeley." And, yes, that is fair, since it does seem to be the case that most Berkeley inhabitants would agree. I'll start caring about that joke being in bad taste when the inhabitants of Berkeley decide to take this war seriously, which will be a long wait by all indications.

Meanwhile, I'm sure you're a fine fellow individually, but reading your comments about how Americans like Den Beste lack emotional sincerity (and when *did* the British become touchy-feely Oprah types, anyway?) makes me feel awfully glad that we boorish Americans beat the British at Yorktown.

>>reading your comments about how Americans like Den Beste lack emotional sincerity

Never made any such comments. I have commented at length about Stephen den Beste, himself, on one particular occasion, and have made my reasons for believing him to have been misprepresenting himself very clear. I have never, so far as I know, written anything about the general emotional sincerity of Americans, or even that of den Beste himself at different times.

This strikes me as rather similar to the hullabaloo regarding 2 x 4s, which I largely ignored until people began to argue for the rights of vandals to pursue their hobby without pre-emptive interference. Unless somebody begins to actively advocate a fissionable response to the idiocy of of some extraordinarily affluent people, I think I'll sit this one out.

dsquared the issue of emotional sincerity is more applicable to those who march against Bush and Blair but not against Saddam.

>>dsquared the issue of emotional sincerity is more applicable to those who march against Bush and Blair but not against Saddam.

I don't see this. They may be wrong about the facts, but I don't think they're being hypocritical in the sense of representing their motives to be other than their actual motives. The worst you can accuse them of is self-deception (as regards the relative evils of war versus continued Saddam), but that's not a very great crime at all. I must say I didn't at all like the hangers-on of the SWP and Palestinian campaign who tried to co-opt the Iraqi sanctions to try and push their own cause, and if I hadn't made a conscious decision not to write anything at all about the march, I daresay I'd have said something about them.

If you want to call me a hypocrite, then I think that I am vulnerable on that charge because I've in the past noted that the sanctions on Iraq are horribly cruel, but I'm prepared to endorse their being continued for an unspecified number of years if I think the alternative is the USA turning into an Empire. But I've never referred to Iraqi children in print, and I've always tried to keep discussion of the sanctions as dispassionate as possible, precisely because I don't think it's productive to raise the emotional temperature.

Clarifying the above, I think there is a genuine issue as to the *intellectual* sincerity of some of the marchers when it comes to Saddam Hussein; it is hard to believe that some of the worse arguments being made on the antiwar side are being made sincerely. But I don't think that there's *emotional* insincerity; I don't think I've seen anyone intentionally misrepresenting their own emotional state.

"I'm prepared to endorse their" (the sanctions)"being continued for an unspecified number of years if I think the alternative is the USA turning into an Empire."

Well there's the rub. It has never been about Iraq or its people, its always been about the projection of western (American) power.

May one assert that you don't believe the Iraqies are worthy of liberty. Did you take a similar stand on the Eastern Europeans?

Does Western Europe feel like a territory of the US Empire? We certainly have been there long enough.

Does Europe worry that the US will turn its guns on its hosts? Why do you let us stay? You must worry about your freedom.

I think we've drifted off topic a bit here, but since the topic was pretty depressing, that's probably a good thing. Taking your points in order:

>>Well there's the rub. It has never been about Iraq or its people, its always been about the projection of western (American) power.

True on both sides, and the sooner both sides would admit it, the better and more honest a debate we could have.

>>May one assert that you don't believe the Iraqies are worthy of liberty. Did you take a similar stand on the Eastern Europeans?

I think they're worthy of liberty, of course. I simply doubt the will or ability of the current US administration to give them liberty. I also think that the example of Vietnam (where the USA was unquestionably a protector of liberty and democracy, and equally unquestionably unwelcome and morally unjustified) gives us reason to doubt that any "liberty" worthy of the name can be imposed from outside. The history of foreign-made democracies really isn't that encouraging; Germany and Japan are entirely unusual, and were dependent on resource transfers of a scale which I doubt that the US is willing to provide.

>>Does Western Europe feel like a territory of the US Empire? We certainly have been there long enough.

Not at the moment, but more so every day. I have to say that I don't like the way that the British Army appears to be at the disposal of the US government.

But Europe at least has economic power and long-standing traditions of its own. I worry that the Middle East gets turned into Central America, where years of foreign presence have been really very bad for the creation of local institutions.

>>Does Europe worry that the US will turn its guns on its hosts? Why do you let us stay? You must worry about your freedom.

Not yet, and we "let you stay" because, in all matters not relating to wars of aggression whose justification we can't understand, we are your friends.

"I don't think I've seen anyone intentionally misrepresenting their own emotional state."

dsquared, might one not say the same thing about the German people in the 1930s. They were just too stupid to understand what they were supporting. And now you ask us to defer to these people, to what end?

>>dsquared, might one not say the same thing about the German people in the 1930s. They were just too stupid to understand what they were supporting.

Entirely fair

>> And now you ask us to defer to these people, to what end?

I am not at all comfortable with the people who I find myself lined up with. Nor should you be, of course. The question is; I am more scared of the long term effects of what Bush and his administration have in store for the world, than I am of Saddam Hussein.

Specifically, I am scared of the Middle East being turned into a morass of underdeveloped puppet states like Central America; I believe that this is a risk because Latin America got that way by being a region that was too important for successive US governments to leave alone, but not important enough to spend money on, and the Middle East is pretty similar today.

This seems to me to be a question susceptible of rational argument; either the current US administration (which I sometimes refer to as "America" out of laziness rather than out of a belief that it is representative of Americans) is as bad as I think it is, or it isn't. That's the sort of issue I'd like to discuss, and I don't see how it helps matters to accuse me of dishonouring the people who were killed in September of 2001.

I suppose that Central America is significantly worse off than Africa.

dsquared, 11 Sept did change our view of the world. The upcoming Iraqie conflict is as much safeguarding the US as it is about freeing the Iraqies. Our invesment in Iraqie democracy is a safeguard against future terrorism. We've made similar investments throughout the world over the last sixty years.

D-Squared, may I simply ask, if you "don't want the hassle", as you posted earlier, why are you here, effectively defending yourself?

I understand this. Or at least, I understand the thinking behind it. I just don't believe that the investment is being managed by people I trust, and I worry that if mismanaged, it could go badly wrong for all concerned. The investments you've made over the last sixty years have had a decidedly mixed record of success, and they've tended to succeed in those cases where there has been a long term commitment which has been expensive. I don't see the current administration being willing to spend the money. I hope I'm wrong.

D-Squared, may I simply ask, if you "don't want the hassle", as you posted earlier, why are you here in effect defending yourself?

>>D-Squared, may I simply ask, if you "don't want the hassle", as you posted earlier, why are you here, effectively defending yourself?

Because there are fewer people here, and more of them appear to be in a mood to talk about the subject reasonably, than seemed to be the case on my own comments board. Also, I think that someone who's come to this issue by reading Mindles' very fair summary, is less likely to misunderstand me and call me names than someone who's come to it by reading den Beste's. I've put a comment on my own site to this effect; maybe that's a bad idea. Actually, I think I'll take it down now.

I do feel like am being an opportunist in this overall discussion. 11 Sept fidelity is not to be used as a sword to cut a broad swath against those who oppose the current US Administration.

I expect that the old and tired ad hominems from the left will be repeated until the US is successful in its war on terror with Iraq being just one of those battles.

> They may be wrong about the facts, but I don't think they're being hypocritical in the sense of representing their motives to be other than their actual motives. The worst you can accuse them of is self-deception (as regards the relative evils of war versus continued Saddam), but that's not a very great crime at all.

In the US, "he meant well" is often something of an insult.

At what point does they get some responsibility for the effect of their actions?

>.I expect that the old and tired ad hominems from the left will be repeated until the US is successful in its war on terror with Iraq being just one of those battles.

Maybe so. I'll try to cut down on them myself though :-)

Between us and them is a great gulf fixed, and let's keep it that way. There's really nothing to talk about.

>>At what point does they get some responsibility for the effect of their actions?

When they are proved wrong and not before, please. And that is assuming that their actions have any effect at all, which would be a hard case to argue. So far, as far as I've read, the main effect of protests has been to delay the attack, with considerable benefits to US military preparedness.

If Saddam Hussein has a nuclear weapon and uses it against Israel, then everyone in the anti-war movement ought to feel guilty. If he is currently passing his entire inventory of anthrax to Al Quaeda, then I think the blame for that one goes to the administration, because he wouldn't have done that if he hadn't feared annihilation. You can create all sorts of blame scenarios, but I don't think it's very productive to do so.

No I disagree, zizka. I've always found that it's possible to have a discussion with the other side if I can keep my temper (which isn't always easy). I don't know that anyone has their mind changed, but it is possible.

> Specifically, I am scared of the Middle East being turned into a morass of underdeveloped puppet states like Central America

Fair enough, but I note that that would be a huge step up for the Middle East. Also, that's pretty much their best alternative in the realm of the possible.

Suppose that it's 1942, with a couple of differences. You know how Europe will look in 1975, that Allied victory will give Easter Europe to the Soviets and you know what that will mean. (You don't know that the USSR will crumble - in 1975 it looked like it would last.) And, you can stop the war and let the Germans keep the continent.

What do you do? Do you "doom" EE to a crappy life under the Warsaw Pact or do you leave them under Germany in hopes of, umm, what?

>>What do you do? Do you "doom" EE to a crappy life under the Warsaw Pact or do you leave them under Germany in hopes of, umm, what?

Do I have the option of waiting a year to see if a better set of choices come along? Strikes me that this is the massive difference between WWII analogies and the present day; Hitler in 1942 was not contained.

How about; it's 1942, the Luftwaffe is pinned to the ground, I have massive military superiority over Germany on the ground, Japan isn't even in the war, France (Kurdistan) is more or less liberated and although conditions in Germany and Poland are pretty bad, I have Hitler's agreement to send "Inspectors" (who may or may not be spies) anywhere I like?

Do I accept that Stalin's dominance of Eastern Europe is an inevitability and settle for it, do I wait and see if I can get a better deal in a year ... or do I start invading Germany, in the knowledge that doing so risks panicking Hitler into launching the Final Solution?

Full marks to Andy for the matter-of-fact way in which he presented (I think) an analogy in which the USA is analogous to Soviet Russia (for this purpose); that's exactly the kind of analytical honesty we need.

dd

I always speak well of the dead I never knew in order to spur the murder of the living I’ll never know - there’s so many of them, I hardly have time to jerk off the old-fashioned way anymore. Anyway, Dan B. - Omigodlookaflag I shall salute it - is stupid little man writing jingoist dispatches from the cube, a kittenish weakling too frightened to endure daily scathing rebuttals by American citizens who search in vain to find a comment box at the end of his incoherent screeds. On the Internet of all places.

Well I must say that wasn't *particularly* helpful

"Specifically, I am scared of the Middle East being turned into a morass of underdeveloped puppet states like Central America; I believe that this is a risk because Latin America got that way by being a region that was too important for successive US governments to leave alone, but not important enough to spend money on, and the Middle East is pretty similar today."

How odd, positing that the Middle Eastern states are more advanced than Central American states. I had always thought precisely the opposite. Quite a few of the Central American states are democratic. Other than Israel, none of the Middle Eastern states are.

BTW aren't you being a bit tough on Steven about a joke for someone who joked that it would be better for the world if large numbers of American soldiers were killed in Iraq? Oh wait, you weren't actually joking when you wrote that were you? http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2003_02_02_d-squareddigest_archive.html#88672023

> Do I have the option of waiting a year to see if a better set of choices come along?

No, like now, you don't have the option of waiting.

For better or worse, one way or the other, the US is going to move soon. Either it goes into Iraq or it comes home. If the latter happens, Iraq goes back to 2000 and there's very little chance that the US will return. The inspections will basically end then too.

If you want a later military option, the forces will have to come from someone other than the US or UK.

> How about; it's 1942, the Luftwaffe is pinned to the ground, I have massive military superiority over Germany on the ground, Japan isn't even in the war, France (Kurdistan) is more or less liberated and although conditions in Germany and Poland are pretty bad, I have Hitler's agreement to send "Inspectors" (who may or may not be spies) anywhere I like?

Kurdistan isn't liberated in any useful sense. The US, when it isn't bored, will bomb, but that's about it, at least on an ongoing basis, and said bombing is often tied to irrelevant US-domestic issues. The US hasn't interfered with small scale slaughter in Northern Iraq.

The US doesn't have ground superiority. It could, but only if it acts. Otherwise it goes home.

And, the inspectors can't seem to find things that you know Germany/Iraq has and you've been in roughly that position, without inspectors, for the last 12 years. In both situations, you also know that you can't maintain the inspectors - you either strike now or the US goes home, the inspectors are forced out again, and things will return to their "natural" state.

And, it's only due to some odd circumstances that the US was willing to force the issue to get the inspectors in - circumstances that may not repeat themselves any time soon.

> an analogy in which the USA is analogous to Soviet Russia

In the above, the 2002-US is analogous to 1942-US+USSR. I'm assuming DSquared's worst case, that the US turns Iraq into a client state, even though it has never done so in the past. (The South American mess, while ugly, isn't under US control the way the Warsaw pact contries were controlled by the USSR.)

Well, one mustn’t be too greedy in life. In the frequent cases you cannot help people to crawl out of their insular presumptions long enough to respond with something that isn’t foamy moral bombast, you lose yes you do, but there’s always a cheap laugh and a personal victory in the ad hominem, which is still a notch above the Dan’s us vs. them rhetoric.

>>How odd, positing that the Middle Eastern states are more advanced than Central American states. I had always thought precisely the opposite. Quite a few of the Central American states are democratic. Other than Israel, none of the Middle Eastern states are.

Up until the 1970s there were a number of democracies in the Middle East, while Central America was home to some of the nastiest dictatorships the world has ever seen. It was roughly around this time that the US stopped using Central America as a secondary theatre of the Cold War and started focusing its attention on the Middle East.

>>BTW aren't you being a bit tough on Steven about a joke for someone who joked that it would be better for the world if large numbers of American soldiers were killed in Iraq? Oh wait, you weren't actually joking when you wrote that were you?

The day that I try to claim the moral high ground with someone by claiming that they don't care about the welfare of American soldiers, you have my permission to throw that back in my face. In the mean time, you will at least have the decency to admit that it is a sensitively written piece which fully acknoweldges the horribleness of the line of thought taken, does not go so far as to endorse that line of thought and certainly does not make light of the possibility of other people dying. In other words, you'll either take back everything you're trying to insinuate here or lose a lot of credibility in my eyes and those of everyone who bothers to follow that link.

Andy:

In all honesty, I don't see why we don't have the option of waiting. My ideal outcome would be for the US to agree to leave its troops where they are in support of the inspectors, and for France and Germany, as quid pro quo, to agree to pick up the lion's share of the bill for keeping them there. I would imagine that the US taxpayer would quite like that solution too. But you're right; I prefer war now to war never, but refuse to accept that war later (by far my preferred alternative) isn't on the menu.

>>The South American mess, while ugly, isn't under US control the way the Warsaw pact contries were controlled by the USSR

But this is precisely what I'm worried about; the South American mess wasn't under *anybody's* control. I'm worried about a global hegemon that cares enough to maintain its hegemony, but not enough to do a thorough job. I also worry that, given the current diplomatic snafu (one which has been helped not at all by the US and UK media), the entire financial burden will fall on the US and UK, making it much more likely that the exercise of nation-building will suffer from under-investment.

Andy, unless of course you accept D^2's comment that insinuates that the UK IS a "client state." ("...the British army seems to be at the disposal of the US Government.")

Personally, I'm GLAD the discussion is taking place at this location: D^2 seems to like taking down things when he's displeased with the reaction (and, as SdB notes, he also likes using the things he's taken down as reference material in his own defense). Here, everything is likely to stick around.

I'm sure the attention is wonderful for his ego, but all-in-all, D^2'd little ramblings don't do much for me. Not enough thought, too much knee-jerk.

I've taken down the posts because I don't want that traffic on my site. I don't feel like I'm on trial here, so I'm not producing evidence in my "defence".

By the way, the posts are still available in my archives (I don't know why), and den Beste knows that this is the case, so I'm really not sure why he's trying to make out that they're not "available for inspection".

You can check them out at http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2003_02_23_d-squareddigest_archive.html#89894668 if you like. The fact that the comments aren't working is nothing to do with me, and I suspect that they will come back up some time soon too.

Do you take back the assertion that the world is likely to be better off with many thousands of American soldiers dead? At least Steven's Berkley comment was a throw-away joke. I don't need to insinuate, why do you think I linked to it if I didn't want people to read it and judge for themselves? I think that you are asking of me, something which you never give Steven. Namely the benefit of the doubt. You hem and haw about how awful your conclusions are, but you don't back away from them. Why do you want more benefit of the doubt than you are willing to give?

Steven was not trying to claim the moral high ground while invoking the Twin Towers. He was invoking the horror, to remind people that the Middle East cannot be ignored or 'contained'. You do worse than fail to give him the benefit of the doubt. You actively ascribe to him, that which he is not claiming. Why am I to avoid pointing to that which you still claim?

I'd also add that den Beste's summary of those posts is, in my opinion, quite dishonest (particularly, he ignores the fact that the "nuke Berkeley" remark was the cornerstone of my case that he was being hypocritical), so I very much prefer to discuss the matter in the context of Mindles' very much more neutral summary.

“If Saddam Hussein has a nuclear weapon and uses it against Israel, then everyone in the anti-war movement ought to feel guilty. If he is currently passing his entire inventory of anthrax to Al Quaeda, then I think the blame for that one goes to the administration, because he wouldn't have done that if he hadn't feared annihilation.”

Why limit one’s concerns to nuclear weapons? What about biological and chemical warheads? It is also absurd to blame the administration for Saddam Hussein’s misbehavior. The Iraqi dictator is analogous to the scorpion who bites the frog transporting him across the river. Why are you dooming us both to death, asked the perplexed victim? The scorpion simply replied: “I can’t help it. That’s just what I do.”

Is Saddam cooperating with Al Quaeda? The answer is almost certainly yes. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is a strongly held mindset in the Middle East. Odd couple relationships are not unusual. Even the Ayatollah Khomeini temporarily partnered with Marxists to further his political ambitions. Lastly, have we already forgotten that the United States felt the need to align itself with the evil Soviet Union during WWII? Hey, human excrement happens--and you don't always possess the luxury of picking between perfect alternatives.

>>Do you take back the assertion that the world is likely to be better off with many thousands of American soldiers dead?

I don't think I ever made that assertion. In fact, reading the article back, I specifically didn't.

>> At least Steven's Berkley comment was a throw-away joke.

About a matter he then pretended to be in a state of high moral and emotional outrage about. That's my point. I thought the joke was in poor taste and said so. I then thought that the joke plus the post two days later was something beyond in poor taste and said so.

>> You hem and haw about how awful your conclusions are, but you don't back away from them. Why do you want more benefit of the doubt than you are willing to give?

Actually I do back away from them, as the link shows.

I don't ask for or need the benefit of the doubt, because I don't accuse my political opponents of dishonoring the victims of terrorism. That's the difference, pure and simple. I don't try to make people feel that unless they agree with me, they are failing to honor the dead.

> but refuse to accept that war later (by far my preferred alternative) isn't on the menu.

Domestic politics. If Bush doesn't move, and soon, he's toast. If you disagree, point out who will support him moving back into Iraq. And, if the move is supposed to happen after 2004, explain how he got re-elected.

If Bush blinks and doesn't get re-elected, what are the odds that a subsequent president will move on Iraq? (The Dem president will be beholden to his anti-war constituency and Bush will lose because the pro-war folks will write-in Mickey Mouse down the ticket, costing the Repubs both houses.)

> My ideal outcome would be for the US to agree to leave its troops where they are in support of the inspectors, and for France and Germany, as quid pro quo, to agree to pick up the lion's share of the bill for keeping them there.

What color is the sky in your world?

The US got gas and oil for the last Iraq war, so it lost money (capital costs have to be paid too). France and Germany aren't in any position to pay even if they were so inclined, and they're not.

What kind of hornet's nest would Steve have stirred up if he had made a dick joke?

More importantly, why is the US government going into Iraq when Lex Luthor is still running around loose?

>>Steven was not trying to claim the moral high ground while invoking the Twin Towers. He was invoking the horror

Sebastian, you seem to be agreeing here that SdB was using the specific horror of the WTC attacks for rhetorical purpose. I've suggested before that the "nuke Berkeley" joke strongly suggests that the person making it didn't actually feel that horror, and nobody appears to have disagreed with that. All we appear to be disagreeing on, is whether or not that was a really nasty thing to do.

Unless you're claiming that "nuke Berkeley" was an inexplicable lapse of taste, or posted when drunk, or the displacement activity of someone still traumatised, or something?

I guess by "cornerstone" you mean that's where you loaded up on the vile language?

Well, you should have at least placed it on more solid ground. In addition to the turn-off of the cursing, you were just flat wrong about SDB's post.
1. His post invoking the images of WTC was not to justify an attack on Iraq per se, but to counter an argument that the US needs to get over 9/11 because it was "just one terrorist attack." Can you agree with me that 9/11 wasn't just another terrorist attack? That it was different in quality and scale than any other the world had seen?
2. I think your risk assessment for San Diego is wrong. It's an important port city with a huge naval presence.
3. You strongly implied that a person who does not live in NY or Washington and who didn't lose anyone close in the attack has no right to outrage. I think you really meant it, despite your protestations here, but if you did not, then your post was unclear, and SDB was justified in responding as such. I disagree with that sentiment for many reasons, one of which is I know that SDB's life, or mine, or anyone else's here, would have served al Qaeda as well as those that were taken. And don't forget that they wanted to take more lives than they did (e.g., not nearly enough people died from that 4th plane crash to suit them). Why didn't anyone I love die on that day? Because I was lucky. Nothing more.

Andy:

>>Domestic politics.

Well yes. But that's why I'm campaigning to try to influence British (and hopefully thereby American) politics in order to make it an acceptable course of action. The sky is currently grey in my world, but that's no reason not to try to do what you can.

Denise:

1. Yes, absolutely. Which is why I don't ever make jokes about a similar attack happening anywhere else. And I can't understand the thinking of someone who does.

2. I know San Diego quite well, and stand by my risk assessment.

3. I agree that the comment about personal risk was unclear and almost certainly unconstructive; remember I was angry at the time. However, I still retain the substance of my charge, that SdB *doesn't* care as much as he claimed to, and that he had no business talking about it in such graphic detail on that basis.

Just a question, denise: really, what did you think about the "nuke Berkeley" joke? Does it really strike you as not in the least inconsistent to make a joke like that on Wednesday and then to be (in Sebastian's phrase) "invoking the horror" of that day by the Friday?

"I've suggested before that the "nuke Berkeley" joke strongly suggests that the person making it didn't actually feel that horror, and nobody appears to have disagreed with that."

I'll take that on. It's called "gallows humor," "black humor," or sometimes "dark humor." I'd be surprised if you haven't heard the term before. (The movie MASH might serve as a good example for you if you are unacquainted with the genre.) It is quite common to joke in the face of a truly bleak situation, even to make bleak jokes in the face of a bleak situation. It does not mean the person making the joke is actually insensitive about the situation.

Your argument that it necessarily means SDB is dishonest about his outrage at 9/11 is a red herring. It also just seemed in your original post like an excuse to start using foul language. I didn't you meant it as a serious argument.

> But this is precisely what I'm worried about; the South American mess wasn't under *anybody's* control. I'm worried about a global hegemon that cares enough to maintain its hegemony, but not enough to do a thorough job.

In other words, the US isn't imperialistic enough.

Excuse my skepticism, but I don't believe that you'd be happier if the US was more controlling.

> Does it really strike you as not in the least inconsistent to make a joke like that on Wednesday and then to be (in Sebastian's phrase) "invoking the horror" of that day by the Friday?

There's no inconsistency; the remarks were made in completely different contexts.

The only way to ignore that is to insist that Den Beste is claiming to be completely consumed by "the horror".

There's a reasonable case that he's very frustrated, but that leads to "the two remarks are completely consistent." (I don't think very frustrated is accurate either, but it is far more plausible.)

In the section which sets you off, Steven begins with, 'I don't understand how....' This is what I mean by not giving him the benefit of the doubt. He is clearly saying something along the lines of: 'this is what I see when I think of 9-11, why can't the Europeans understand that I'm seeing this, and that I need to act in ways which I think will prevent a reoccurrence?' You interpret it as: 'People who disagree with me dishonor the murdered victims of 9-11 by their unwillingness to repay blood with blood.'

I guess I will have to accept that the sensitive European mind is just not capable of understanding the severe wound which 9-11 has done to the American psyche. Asking us to 'get over it' is not acceptable, even though it has nothing to do with forcing people to agree with political ideas about what should be done.

Andy: you probably have a point; no matter how good things got from my point of view, I'd always be asking for a bit more. I don't think that's necessarily a weakness though.

Denise: It wasn't gallows humour. There was no element of self-deprecation or fellow-feeling. It was, as someone correctly suggests upthread a "wise-ass remark" at political opponents. That's my assessment and, frankly, I stand by it. If you disagree and think that I was simply too rude, that's your right; I'm just glad that nobody who's actually discussed the matter with me seems to be attributing the ludicrous beliefs to me that appear on the USS Clueless site.

I think I've presumed on JG and MHD's bandwidth far too much already by now. If anyone really wants to continue this with me, I'll reply to polite emails. Sebastian may have the last word if he wishes.

> >>Domestic politics.

> Well yes. But that's why I'm campaigning to try to influence British (and hopefully thereby American) politics in order to make it an acceptable course of action.

The two big blocks are war now, no war ever. The "war later, maybe" folks might be able to swing things between those war now, no war ever, but they won't be able trigger war later.

Saddam can, but if he does, it ill be a lot worse, and the WLM folks will be just as much to blame as the NWE folks.

To my mind, the WLM folks are basically just trying to get to a position where they're not responsible. They realize that NWE is going to lead to piles of skulls. However, they don't like the WN folks and/or they don't want to take the hit for any of the costs of war.

Frankly, I think that NWE is a more respectable position. (It's as irrational, in a different way, but that's a separate problem.)

The “sensitive European mind” is responsible for much horror. It is a silly myth to believe that ipso facto rejecting military action is a guaranteed prudent choice. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. These folks unwittingly encouraged Adolph Hitler to start WWII. They also shied away from confronting the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Appeasers always embolden the bully. Those who advocate peace at any price endanger the rest of us. If we do not invade Iraq---we will most assuredly signal our enemies that America and its allies are paper tigers.

I have a very simple question: Who in hell is dsquared to decide whose feelings are "genuine" and who has a right to voice their feelings about September 11th?

Seriously, who died and made this guy the Emotional Arbiter of the Western World?

> you probably have a point; no matter how good things got from my point of view, I'd always be asking for a bit more. I don't think that's necessarily a weakness though.

It is when you stick with a miserable status quo because perfection isn't happening or because you're not willing to take the blame for the costs of something better, even when those costs are exceeded by the benefits.

Like I wrote above, if it's not war now, there will be a pile of skulls later, and the war later, maybe folks will be just as responsible for that as the no war ever folks. Excuse me for not placing much value in your "but we wanted to avoid war" feeling.

War now isn't going to be all sweetness and light. However, it's the best alternative available.

Me - I'm willing to take the hit for the costs and the credit for the benefits. And, I know that you're not going to credit me for the benefits and that you're going to exaggerate the costs.

I've suggested before that the "nuke Berkeley" joke strongly suggests that the person making it didn't actually feel that horror, and nobody appears to have disagreed with that.

Okay, I'll bite, but my example is long-winded.

For amusement I sometimes play the online game "CounterStrike." For those unacquainted, the game divides the competing players into two teams, one team dressed in terrorist attire, the other as a counterterrorist squadron. Players earn virtual money for carrying out team objectives, eliminating an enemy player, etc.; with that money they may buy bigger and better weapons, armor, and supplies when the next round begins. The game usually cycles in rounds timered at 3-5 minutes, and when a team completes a map objective OR has the last man standing, that team wins the round. All players respawn and a new round begins.

The game does its best to be extremely realistic, using models of real-world weapons and well-balanced physics. When two enemy players encounter each other, the competition between them rarely lasts more than three or four seconds; and since the other opponents are all other real people, each round's gameplay is infinitely variable. The effect of playing such a game is almost an altered state of conciousness; you become immersed in the game's virtual world and casually acquainted with the other players (text chat operates during the game, and "dead" players can omnisicently observe the ongoing game, carry on conversations unseen by the living, while waiting for a new round to begin).

In the midst of the game, I have sometimes busted up laughing when another player does something really absurd, for example make a suicide charge into a large group of enemy players only to successfully drop two or three of them and come out with part of his/her life meter remaining.

Am I a heartless bastard for laughing at this rather realistic sight of death and carnage?

I don't think so, because I have no expectation of an actual person getting shot. The thought of a virtual player getting routed can be humorous because I know the real person on the other side is still sitting at his/her computer, and may even join the text chat conversation momentarily. I am not reacting to the portrayal of death because I know it doesn't exist; thus I respond to other elements of the interactions that, stripped of any grief element, can be ironically humorous.

I have never been so unfortunate as to see a real person being shot, but I have sufficient imagination to see it mentally in vivid detail -- and it sickens. I see the malice in the eyes of the attacker, I see the stunned look on the victim's face and blood running down a clean shirt, and then the facial contortions as a searing pain marks the wound. I see that person collapsing to the street, and a spouse falling asleep alone and in tears for many nights to come. I see a child staring numbly at a coffin. When is daddy coming home? Why does mommy look so pale lying there? How come we don't have as much food anymore?

Which finally brings me to this simple point:

If SdB makes an offhand comment about "nuking Berkley" that he clearly, from the context, does not expect to occur -- regardless of his political motivations for doing so -- why does THAT exempt him from being able understand the horror of 9/11 victims in a post with a clearly distinct context?

Although I do have to compliment d-squared for keeping his tone rational and discussion-oriented here, which is less than I have come to expect from some of the postings at his own site. Mileage may vary I guess.

You mean the nuke Berkeley suggestion was only a joke?

Go figure. Sounded spot-on to me, and a perfectly reasonable solution to that particularly ugly problem.

ACD

D^2, do you have an Amazon wish list?

Can I make a suggestion?

From your original post:
There is a whole lot wrong with the fact that a slang term referring to the female genitalia is also the nastiest epithet you can use against a man.

I always thought the nastiest epithet you can use against a man is 'coward'.

You set up your rickety little soapbox, screamed obscenities that automatically set approx. 50% of the world against you, then ran away, only to sneak back later, kick the remaining pieces of the soapbox into the bushes because it would be such a 'hassle' to clean up, then show up at the local pub as if nothing happened.

The fact that this entire thing resulted from an effort to accuse another blogger of joking in "poor taste" and lacking 'genuine' emotion makes you somewhat pathetic but no less a coward.

In other words, he was attempting to stifle opposition to his views on the subject by making people feel guilty or uncomfortable that in arguing against Stephen den Beste on the subject of war in Iraq, they were implicitly trivialising or dishonouring the victims of the attacks.

There are so many things wrong with the above statement. First, the attempted stifling of opposition. Just how was he stifling? Did he physically restrain someone? Or just voice a differing opinion that you yourself are attempting to stifle in a like manner? And how was he making anyone else feel anything at all? I didn't realize that actually worked. Great. I am now making you feel...chagrin. Did it work?

That's emotional blackmail, because SdB was trying to get something he wanted (acquiescence with his political arguments) through attempting to make people feel guilty.

Only if you buy into the idea that anyone can control anyone else through such means. I don't. If you do, please let me know. Because I could use a few extra bucks, and I'm looking for someone susceptible that I can guilt into forking said bucks over.

I personally find it quite hard to understand his post about "victimology", given the context.

It's obvious that you don't get it, because by your comments I can see you're a devotee to the idea that people can control other people without their permission, and at a distance.

This is where I'm coming from. There is no manipulation without someone willing to be manipulated. I'm not saying denBeste attempted any such manipulation, either. I just don't subscribe to the idea that such diabolical means can be exercised in writing.

Perhaps denBeste manipulated you into this outpouring of indignation. Maybe it does work, after all.

Dang...I didn't see that he's taken his toys and gone home.

I'd like to add that SdB seems very sincere to me when he talks about terrorism and war.

Just for dsquared's info, there are many people who can make light-hearted jokes in the middle of extremely serious situations. It does not mean they don't take the situation seriously. I have a friend who is an anesthesiologist. His patients are usually children with heart problems. He takes his work very seriously. And yet, you would be horribly offended (most people probably would) if you listened to some of the jokes he makes. He and the other doctors make comments far more offensive than anything I've ever read on SdB's site. And yet, they save lives and really care about their patients.

SdB seems to take his writing very seriously. He seems to take the war very seriously. And he still can make jokes about it. Seems perfectly normal to me.

Bolie IV

I am amused at the Berkeley student who said "IT WASN'T FUNNY". I would think any past or present UCB student would most appreciate the humor of the comment (disclosure: I am an alumnus UC Berkeley). If Berkeley really was nuked, I would be more angry than I was when 11 Sept. happened for reasons besides having lived there, and I am sure SdB would be angry as well.

brad - the Berkeley "student" is actually the infamous Professor Brad DeLong! Adjust your bookmarks accordingly.

I live in Berkeley. The joke was damn funny.

So there.

Russell Wardlow
Ridge Road
Berkeley, CA

Davies, you might want to pay attention:

I feel EXACTLY as Steven does. If you ever call me a "Grave-robbing c-nt" to my face, the response will not be flame wars and visits to the comments section. The result will be you visiting the hospital with a broken nose, followed by me paying a $10 fine.

If you have the NERVE to tell me in my presence how I should feel about 9/11, then you can expect the same treatment. There are still people, and nations, that will fight and face the consequences rather than endure the kind of slander that you sling daily.

Shorter SdB for today? "D^2: smack. Pow. Whappitawhappitawhappita."

Every word of it deserved. Couldn't happen to a better target.

Bill Whittle you sad, sad, man. Just because you can punch people in the face, doesn't make you clever.

James - yeah, but his writing does. Follow the link (his name).

>>yeah, but his writing does

Really? I followed the link, and found a site that contains writing so long-winded and empty that it makes a Den Beste post look like a Hemingway short story. Mr Whittle is obviously at his best when he's rude, insulting and aggressive. Let's hope there's a place for him in the front lines when the war begins.

As for this particular spat, d-squared made his points far too well for the usual suspects, who are far too happy to wave the shroud while wishing: the ladies doth protest too much, methinks.

So, for the benefit of Pejman, who really needs to release some of that puffed-up outrage:

>> Who in hell is dsquared to decide whose feelings are "genuine" and who has a right to voice their feelings about September 11th?

Who in hell is Den Beste to decide that the 3,000 killed in New York make it necessary to kill lots of Iraqis? This isn't a question of someone's 'right to voice their feelings', but their right to use those feelings not only to justify war, but to declare the arguments of others beyond considerations. I'm reminded of Bill Hicks' routine about pro-lifers who brandish a foetus to stifle all argument: it's as if the crater in lower Manhattan can be invoked as a kind of perverse corollary of Godwin's Law to justify all kind of inanity. Now that strikes me as somewhat disrespectful.

>>Seriously, who died and made this guy the Emotional Arbiter of the Western World?

Take it up with Den Beste, mate: he's the one who demeaned the memory of those who died by using it as a cheap, fraudulent emotional figleaf for his own rather conflicted desire to see other people (especially the French) blown to smithereens.

One thing about this discussion seems odd to me.
I read and enjoy both blogs. SDB hardly ever
jokes. D^2 jokes all the time. So why is it that
all the conversation is about a lame joke SDB
made? ;-)
Not really funny I know.

Given how much D^2 posts to his own blog I don't
think its surprising he's not prepared to handle
a lot of traffic, or spend a lot of time defending
himself here. Calling him a coward is exactly the
kind of ad hominem attack SDB decries as "fighting
dirty." While it is unnquestionably true that D^2
started it, he hasn't done any of that here.

I enjoy D^2 because of his sense of humor and
his thoughts on economics. I sort of liked his
shorter SDB, even though it was clearly unfair.
He was still sometimes funny. I was interested
in his thoughts about it, because I read SDB, and
because he knows what he is talking about somewhat
on economics. That said even though I sympathise
with him politicaly he's clearly not in SDB's
class as a debator.
I have been irritated with SDB recently
because although he is quick to accuse others of
commiting the straw man falacy, he constantly does
so himself. Since he has no comment board I
thought I might mention it here.
I know I had better come up with an example
here, I am a bit lazy so although I know I've thought straw man a dozen or more time while
reading him, I'll just mention "transnational
progressivism" here.

Ah, even further pointless slinging of feces. How...what's the opposite of novel?

D^2 writes:

Up until the 1970s there were a number of democracies in the Middle East, while Central America was home to some of the nastiest dictatorships the world has ever seen.

"IT WASN'T FUNNY"

Perhaps not. But sometimes we need novel ways to express our disgust for people that claim to believe Bush is worse than Saddam Hussein or Hitler.

nick -- What you are doing (and what D-squared did in his post at issue) is responding to an argument SDB did not make (at least not following the thread at issue). He released his righteous fury about 9/11 in direct response to a correspondent who said (I'm paraphrasing here) that 9/11 was just one terrorist attack, so what's the big deal? Why was SDB (and other Americans) so upset about it? If you cannot understand why such a comment is ridiculous and offensive, I'd be glad to explain it.

SDB did not say we have a right to attack Iraq in retribution for the lives lost on 9/11.

Being real generous with geography, Afghanistan was moving in that direction under the King until the Soviets fucked it up. Once again, not our fault.

There were democracies in the Mid-East, in much the same way Cuba is a democracy. Hell, Saddam was just recently re-elected with a very impressive mandate to continue his policies. Not even George Washington had the support that Saddam received.

So you see, if you just massage the time frame you look at and the definition of words you use, you will always be right in your own mind. That in the end is really the most important thing.

I think that it's absolutely terrible to make jokes about people dying from the use of weapons of mass destruction when we are currently preparing to invade a soverign country just for its oil under the pretext of it having weapons of mass destruction. Also, how can we offer Saddam exile when Mumia Abdul Jabbar is rotting in prison on death row? Also, we used biological warfare against the peaceful indiginous natives of the US when we gave them blankets filled with smallpox.

And Bush stole the 2000 election which should make the 2002 elections a do-over.

Free Palestine.

D^2, in separate posts above:
"They [pro-Saddam protesters] may be wrong about the facts, but I don't think they're being hypocritical in the sense of representing their motives to be other than their actual motives. The worst you can accuse them of is self-deception (as regards the relative evils of war versus continued Saddam), but that's not a very great crime at all. "

"However, I still retain the substance of my charge, that SdB *doesn't* care as much as he claimed to"

And here is the true divide between Europe and America, Left and Right, Postmodernist and "Engineerist".

DenBeste thinks the most important thing is the quality of your facts and reasoning. D^2 thinks the most important thing is how much you care.

d^2
"Sebastian may have the last word if he wishes."
Translation: "I'm getting spanked! Run away!"

anony-mouse:
"Although I do have to compliment d-squared for keeping his tone rational and discussion-oriented here, which is less than I have come to expect from some of the postings at his own site. Mileage may vary I guess."
That's what makes him such an effective troll!

nick writes:
"A whole bunch of stuff written in a style suspiciously reminiscent of D^2's."
Don't even try it, puppy. Some of us here were fighting flamewars back when Usenet ran on vacuum tubes.

Also, we used biological warfare against the peaceful indiginous natives of the US when we gave them blankets filled with smallpox.

You're older than you seem to be, I guess.

Ageism is terrorism too.

I'm not sure what "Ageism" is, or what you think it has to do with your historical crimes against "indigenous natives".

The first casualty of emotional blackmail is irony.

I would like to apologize for wasting everyone's time with my nonsense posts. I was enjoying the absurdist theater and wanted to play along. I'm sorry.

I have to confess that I, too, was enjoying myself at the expense of others. Or at least, at the expense of their ideas.

Jay, I was pretty sure you weren't serious. I'm hoping that was an accurate appraisal.

this got too long - and too boring -

my 2 cents:

"Specifically, I am scared of the Middle East being turned into a morass of underdeveloped puppet states like Central America; I believe that this is a risk because Latin America got that way by being a region that was too important for successive US governments to leave alone, but not important enough to spend money on, and the Middle East is pretty similar today."

- dsquared

um - isnt it too late for the underdeveloped part? and arnt these states mainly totalitarian regimes - islamist/facist/communist type totalitarian regimes?

isnt that worse?

Don't you get it, Bender?

America is the bottomless pit of all evil. Therefore American-aligned states or American client states are worse than anything besides the USA itself.

All non-American totalitiarianism is either justifiable (USSR) or unworthy of notice (North Korea).

Sheesh, you must have missed the meeting.

This tempest in a teapot is lame primarily because it was so avoidable. SDB's comment was crass. Saying "SDB's comment was crass" should *NOT* be translated as saying "he shouldn't have said what he did."

However, saying "such and such a statement is crass" as a simple acknowledgement of crassness in a statement is one thing.

Saying "such and such a statement is crass" as a criticism of the statement, however, implies that the maker of the statement has some sort of moral high ground to stand on.

D^2 seems to have ceeded said moral ground multiple times (at least with regards to crassness) in his acts on his own blog. This is not a criticism of D^2. Being crass is the right of every person on the internet. However, bitching about the crassness of another in the days following months of one's own personal crassness is tacky.

My final judgment: D^2 is being tacky. SDB is merely being crass. And this is a tempest in a teapot.

But at least it's a fun topic.

Regarding 'Nick', Ralph writes:
Don't even try it, puppy. Some of us here were fighting flamewars back when Usenet ran on vacuum tubes.

What makes your comment especially funny is the fact that he posted a preliminary version over on Pej's site that screwed up the Shakespeare quote and got brutally corrected. At least he had sense to try to correct it here.

I guess he figured the over-emotional American cowboys would never discover his clever scheme.

Actually, he can probably easily find himself a professorship as a 2nd Amendment scholar . . .

Eh? Your link doesn't have anything to do with Ralph. And where was the Shakespeare quote? I saw nothing like that in Ralph's post.

"Anybody know which democracies D was talking about? I can count Israel, and maybe Lebannon, but I don't think you can blame the US for the Syrian occupation of Lebannon. Were there others?"

Turkey, but it context that doesn't count because it still is. Iran flirted with democracy - there was a parliament under the Shah (http://www.iranchamber.com/history/mmosaddeq/mohammad_mosaddeq.php). Afghanistan had some in the '60s. http://afghanland.com/history/democracy.html

Of course, I don't think D was talking about any of these. He was looking for a fight, picked SDB almost at random (according to his comments on his site early this year) and is doing this all for his own entertainment.

One of the usenet newsgroups I frequent has an elegant way of dealing with such trolls. We have uber-hackers that pull every piece of digital data there is on the troll - social security number, birthday, current and past addresses and phone numbers, credit report, credit card and bank account numbers, boss's phone number, co-worker's home phones, that kind of thing - and they start posting it a piece at a time. Eventually the troll goes away, sometimes before the Nigerians empty their bank accounts.

(Qualification to comment - Dong "D.C." Lee was on his way to a meeting with me on Sept 12, he was on AA 77. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/people/1437.html)

Ah. You meant Nick Sweeney, not Ralph. Well, that quotation is mangled commonly enough. Nick's been around a bit. This doesn't mean he's NOT Davies, but certainly mangling the same (hackneyed) quotation isn't what I consider strong evidence that he is.

Of course, I don't think D was talking about any of these. He was looking for a fight, picked SDB almost at random (according to his comments on his site early this year) and is doing this all for his own entertainment.

Hey, here's another politically incorrect joke...

Q. How many Berkeley professors does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. That's NOT funny!

(Also works if you substitute any other politically correct organization for "Berkeley professors." Or, for that matter, any kind of joke about such organizations.)

"feminists" is the variant I'm accustomed to.

My brother told that joke to my mother, and she immediately said "That's not funny!" QED, as far as I'm concerned.

Q. How many Berkeley professors does it take to change a lightbulb?

I was going to guess 'one'...s/he just lectures nonsense until the bulb has completely embraced the left :^)

I was watching a discussion with Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and William Styron on cable some time ago. They were having a serious discussion about the horror of nuclear weapons, and how horrible it would be if an American city was ever hit, of course with the exception of the Atlanta Airport. The audience rolled with laughter.

Many discussions of the horrors of a nuclear terrorist attack include a humorous exception, whether a particular airport, Cleveland, Berkeley, or some particular suburb or borough. It helps keep the discussion from devolving into a "Whoa is me. The horror. The horror." kind of mindset. Humor is often thrown in when discussing an unthinkable disaster, and does not necessarily detract from an author's case.

Actually, the joke goes like this:

Q: How many Berkeley professors does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. They keep trying to turn the bulb to the left and it won't stay in the socket. (Light bulbs are turned to the right to screw them into the socket. You may commence groaning now.)

Some hopeless ninny writes:

"I'd like to take this opportunity to remake a point I was trying to make in one of the deleted posts on my own site, that I have the utmost respect for people's genuine pain, and that this respect is not diminished when those people recognise a political dimension to that pain and attempt to take action to ensure that the tragic events which have entered their lives aren't repeated. I hope I have never made nasty remarks about someone's _genuine_ emotions; it was precisely because I thought Den Beste's comments weren't sincere that I got so angry."

Idiot. Here's a question. If a child in my city is ruthlessly murdered, am I not allowed to advocate a punishment for the murderer, and a broader solution to the problem of crime, simply because I felt no personal pain at the tragedy?

That would be silly. But what this moron proposes would be sillier, still. The Islamofascists are trying to kill as many of us as they can. I have no doubt that if they had the chance to blow up a nuclear device here in the Port of Miami, they would do it without hesitation. Ergo, they present a threat to me and mine, and I choose to wipe them out before they wipe us out.

M'kay?

"Q. How many Berkeley professors does it take to change a lightbulb?"

Only one.

He holds the light bulb and waits for the world to revolve around him. :)

"Q. How many Berkeley professors does it take to change a lightbulb?"

Only one.

He holds the light bulb and waits for the world to revolve around him. :)

"Q. How many Berkeley professors does it take to change a lightbulb?"

Only one.

He holds the light bulb and waits for the world to revolve around him. :)

How many Berkeley professors does it take to change the proletarian light bulb? None, the proletarian light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.

But more to the point, by changing the light bulb the professor is giving his/her/its tacit approval and continued support of the near monopolistic, exploitive electricity industry. He/she/it is supporting the likes of criminal capitalistic thugs at Enron, oligarchs at General Electric, and the uber-Nazi petroleum industry. By even having copper wires run to the light bulb he/she/it is benefiting from the environmentally damaging copper mines and metal extraction industries, which benefit from the 1872 mining law, thus raping both the land and the people.

In addition, he/she/it will be stymied by the overly-complex mechanical/electrical technocratic systems used to keep the masses in line. He/she/it will then be forced to rely upon the capitalistic heirarchical exploitive labor system in the U.S., and call a maintenance man/person/thingy. The exploited wage slave from Berkeley Physical Plant will then have to explain to the Berkeley professor that it's "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey".

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