Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Don't Drive Angry

Or at least don't blog when caffeinated and annoyed. XWL, are we still friends, post rant?

Update: XWL has graciously updated and clarified. I thank him for that, though I think he is mistaken as to the Afghanistan issue. I don't know where this idea comes from that the Democratic base does not like to blow things up real good. We too are children of Castle Wolfenstein, GoldenEye and Halo, (though Missile Command was always my favorite, back in the day. Well, that and Super DodgeBall. When you get down to it, largely the same game with different animations. But I digress...) I'd like to think that we would have managed to catch OBL in Tora Bora and put his head on the proverbial pike. Giving credit where it is due, aside from the above snafu, Afghanistan is the one Bush policy that can be viewed as largely succesful to my mind - the people seem to be for us about 7-1 (sorry, no link, read a poll to that effect somewhere yesterday.)

3 comments:

XWL said...

Of course, I'm surprised, and pleased, that you consider me a friend. Nothing you've written will change that for me, I hope my forceful voicing of my (disagreeable from your point of view) opinions won't change that for you.

I've had damn near commie girl friends (It's what happens when you hang out with Art School Grads) and a friend even wanted to fix me up with Janeane Garofalo for chrissakes, so politics and the personal are separable in my book.

Icepick said...

I don't know where this idea comes from that the Democratic base does not like to blow things up real good.

Well, when was the last time the Democratic base was in favor of blowing up anything real good? World War II?

When was the last time a Democratic administration actually did blow up anything real good? (Other than the odd pharmaceutical plant that is. I know Big Pharm is evil, but that was ridiculous.) The LBJ Administration, I think it was. And you Dems liked that so much you threw them out of office.

I'd like to think that we would have managed to catch OBL in Tora Bora and put his head on the proverbial pike.

And exactly how were your guys going to get several divisions of US troops in there in a big enough hurry to do it? This is utter bullshit, Pooh. Glad to see you give some begrudging credit to Bush about Afghanistan. God how that must pain you!

The reason we haven't caught bin Laden, and won't catch him, is because he is in Pakistan. Pakistan has The Bomb. Pakistan is unstable. Pakistan's present (roughly pro-American) regime could be overthrown as I write. Pakistan was the chief backer of the Taliban regime. There are strong elements of Muslim extremists in the Pakistani govrening class looking for a chance to sieze control of those nuclear weapons. We are risking disaster by having the CIA attempt any operations there. And yet, it's what we're reduced to. No fdoubt these operations are also extra-legal, and there will be demands soon enough to have Bush thrown in jail for that, too.

Now if Pakistan DIDN'T have The Bomb, we could go in there and kill every last goddamned one of them until we got who we came for. But we can't. They do have The Bomb, and that changes everything.

You are so right about Democrats handling these things in both a bad-assed and competent way. Why, I bet if we had had a Democratic Administration back in the 1990s Pakistan wouldn't have set off a fission bomb back in 1998. Oh, wait a minute....

But surely Clinton was able to put the kabosh on the A. Q. Khan network? Well, that didn't happen either.

I would also point out that Clinton made a hash out of the North Korea situation, in part by sending notable hawk Jimmy Carter to put the squeeze on Kim Jong-il. Has Carter ever met a dictator he didn't like?

And need I remind you that when Clinton had a good chance to nab bin Laden he refused, due to legal concerns?

So spare me the argument that your guys are a bunch of super-competent bad-asses. The record is quite clear, and quite contrary to that point of view.

Pooh said...

Pick,

Apparently, I struck a nerve...and upon reflection, I probably deserve a fair bit of that. By way of history, I come by my dislike of W. honestly - I voted for Gore, but was not especially caring about 2000. Thought Florida was a neat little side show.

Basically it turned for a few months after 9/11 when Bush started using terrorism as a bludgeon, see this post for a take more eloquent than I can be.)

So yes, perhaps my rose-colored, BDS-infected look back at what 'we' would have done differently is off. But that still doesn't give Repub's the right to say I hate America or our troops, and attempts to force me to prove otherwise really chap my ass.