they sit by accepting malignant first principles. Somebody has to blow up the
first principles. A few, along the lines of the post, are:
1. Iran must never get nukes.
2. The U.S. must militarily dominate the world.
3. The U.S. must have a "forward" basing strategy
4. The U.S. is the intervenor of last resort in re: humanitarian crises around the world
5. Leaving Iraq would leave somebody bad (insert Sunni, Shi'a) in charge
6. We should only invade places with the support of the U.N./the West/the nation
BHO's invocation of the "last best hope" cliché of course plays right into all this stuff.
I haven't listened to the debate yet, but dissecting it is a very useful exercise,
since some well-meaning anti-war liberals look to these people as "the change we have
been waiting for."
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Dwayne Monroe
> Sent: 06/12/08 12:28 pm
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Samantha Power gets her ass kicked
>
> At first, like the reportedly bewildered Power, I wondered how this
> could've happened.
>
>
>
> After all, regardless of how clever and cleverly spoken Ferguson and
> Krauthammer may be, they're almost completely full of shit. It should
> be the work of a moment to mortar their addled, neo-imperalist
> arguments into smoking rubble.
>
> But after listening to the debate (and thanks to Seth for the link -
> <http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/>) it hit me: liberals -- and
> 'cruise missile liberals' in particular -- are at a serious
> disadvantage when arguing with conservatives on "defense" issues. The
> problem is that they agree with their quasi-opponents on the basics:
> the 'need' for US supremacy , the 'it's a dangerous world therefore we
> need lots of carriers' trope, the perfection or near perfection of
> "American Values", Iran as five-minutes-away-from-nuclear-weapons
> threat to world safety, etc.
>
> Given the premises, which support ideas more honestly stated by
> conservatives but which liberals try to sweeten by clumsily pressing
> the word 'humanitarian' into service, it's inevitable that the more
> direct and logically coherent (if not morally or tactically sound)
> presentation would sway opinions.
>
> Ferguson and Krauthammer used to their advantage the idea that the
> "surge" is working and that al Q is "on the run". The Iraq war is
> being won one "fragile" metric at a time, they said, and we're
> prevailing in the War on Terror (or Long War, or War Against Extremism
> or,). Considering the way US media outlets (and maybe Canadian too)
> have repeated this White House talking point -- demolished on the
> info-margins by non-bubble journos such as Nir Rosen, Patrick Cockburn
> and Pepe Escobar -- they were cruising down a well paved road.
>
> Power and Holbrooke never seriously challenged these assertions. And
> how could they? Questioning the success of the surge requires
> examining the occupation's daily workings. Once you do that, you're
> forced to consider the innumerable abuses that go on week after week,
> abuses which fuel ongoing political and armed resistance within Iraq
> and no doubt Afghanistan as well.
>
> There was also a lazy, unfocused quality to several of Power and
> Holbrooke's statements complicated by the goofy moderator's many
> subject lane changes.
>
> The entire 'debate' occurred within a constraining box of supremacist
> ideology. It was barely a debate at all but an exchange of competing
> imperialist fantasies about how best to manage 'American leadership'.
>
>
> A better debate would've been between the eXile's Gary Brecher -- aka
> the "War Nerd" -- and the cons. While no liberal (thank Ares), he
> could've shown how inept and destructive these clowns are. In other
> words, he could've dealt with them on their own terms and shown that
> even by their own standards, they're bullshitters.
>
>
>
>
> .d.
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>