Furthermore, on re-reading Andie's comment, I see he states that failing to take a position against the Iranian regime will "let them build a bomb." That being the central position of the administration's argument for attacking Iran, I'm sure that was an inadvertence on Andie's part.
BobW --- Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
> I haven't really been following this thread.
> However, now
> I see Yoshie is being threatened with the supreme
> penalty.
> Since I am, I suppose, one of the "sad fellow
> travelers" of
> hers that Doug mentioned, I started prowling back
> through
> it to see what terrible thing she's done this time.
> As usual,
> I took away the impression that she's taking a lot
> more personal
> insults than she's handing out, and in general, her
> tone is
> much more temperate and on-topic that her
> detractors'.
>
> More specifically, I was struck by the following:
>
> > > On 10/23/07, andie nachgeborenen
> > > <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > So, I take, Yoshie, that your answer is that
> > > instead
> > > > of imposing bourgeois wealth and liberties on
> the
> > > > unwilling masses in typical imperialist
> fashion,
> > > we
> > > > can let the clerics impose Sharia law, stuff
> the
> > > women
> > > > into chadors, authorize honor killings of
> raped
> > > women
> > > > who disgrace their male relatives, beat
> > > clean-shaven
> > > > men, hang the queers and stone the adulterers,
> and
> > > > build a bomb.
>
> The striking thing, to me, is the syntactic frame:
> "instead of imposing... we can let...."
>
> This raises a lot of questions. Who are the "we"
> intended? The honorable members of lbo-talk? But
> of course that "we" can neither impose nor allow
> anything. We can only decide what we think is true
> or false about the Islamic Republic, and what we
> think is useful or useless, constructive or
> pernicious, interesting or tedious, to say about
> it.
>
> The language of allowing and imposing, however,
> suggests
> -- and please correct me if I'm wrong -- that the
> "we"
> Andie has in mind is that mighty granfalloon the
> United
> States. (This way of speaking about the nation
> always
> reminds me of the way Yankees fans, even the ones
> who
> are not George Steinbrenner, talk about the team.)
>
> If this is in fact what Andie has in mind, then it
> would in fact seem that a choice is being offered
> between, on the one hand, some kind of "imposition"
> by "us" -- and what can that mean, in the world of
> international politics, except an imposition by
> force?
> -- of a different political and social order on
> Iran;
> and on the other hand, a kind of complicity (because
>
> we have "let" it happen) in the things done by the
> existing government that we don't approve of.
>
> Surely these aren't the only two choices? But
> anyway,
> Yoshie's comment on this passage of Andie's:
>
> > > If you posted what you wrote to
> > > www.freerepublic.com or
> > > www.littlegreenfootballs.com, it wouldn't be out
> of
> > > place there -- far
> > > from it, it would no doubt receive many cheers
> from
> > > right-wingers who
> > > have too much time on their hands.
> > >
>
> Now Andie seems to have taken this as a comment on
> Andie's
> politics generally -- as if Yoshie were saying that
> his entire
> oeuvre would be at home on LGF or FR. But this seems
> to me a
> misreading of her observation. "What you wrote" in
> context
> is most reasonably taken as a reference to the
> passage she
> quoted -- the "impose" vs. "let" choice as Andie
> articulated
> it.
>
> And if so, unfortunately, I think she has a point.
> No doubt
> Andie is, as he says, a committed
> anti-interventionist. But
> whether fired by indignation and rhetorical zeal, or
> just
> because aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus, he has let
> slip
> an expression which certainly appears to put the
> question
> of intervention very much on the table -- and frame
> the
> question, moreover, in a way rather more favorable
> to it
> than not.
>
>
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