Under a Democratic president, conservative propagandists like Matt Drudge suddenly discover that wars have a human cost. Expect more b.s. like this from the right as they suddenly sprout tie-dye and dig up the peace sign.
Breaking News
Oprah Quitting TV Show In 2011
Democratic presidents, let alone black ones, aren’t allowed to use military force. Just ask Bill Clinton.
More seriously, it was obvious this was coming. Give it another week and we’ll have Republicans criticizing Obama’s “nation building” efforts to “police the world” in “far away and meaningless” places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
LOL,
In the race to play the race card…We have a winner!
Of course it’s just because he’s black. All criticism of Obama is race related, I’m glad you got the memo.
In the race to take the bait… We have a winner!
AO, you conveniently ignored my “more seriously” paragraph. But there are a lot of Republicans who are racist. The other ones are simply hypocrites.
As Oliver has astutely pointed out, there wasn’t a single teabagger when we had a white president blowing holes in the budget. And there wasn’t any concern over troop deaths (”More people die in traffic accidents!”) when we had a white president sending them off to die in useless, failed wars either.
Wait a minute…you guys have had a WHITE President? What the Hell? You mean Obama hasn’t been President for 114 years and been the root cause of every problem from the Civil War to Jon and Kate?
It WAS a big deal when it turned out Kennedy was Irish (shuuder).
The problem wasn’t that he was Irish, it was that he was CATHOLIC.
Drudge has always had multiple personality disorder. Constantly linking to the wrong wingers while sharing a bed with David Cohen.
Of course, if you think that all wars end with withdrawal of troops and surrender, it does appear that Drudge has done a turnabout.
But actually, what he is saying is, “Mr. President, I know you’re a Democrat, but we could we win at least ONE war, while a Democrat’s in charge?”
Why must the Democrats always be the bug out Party?
Like when Democratic presidents won World War II?
The fact is, Afghanistan may be un-winnable. As it has been for centuries. No reason throwing more money and lives into it.
Why must the Democrats always be the bug out Party?
1) Didn’t Nixon (R) “bug out” of Viet Nam? So conveniently forgotten (and still the right thing to do)
2) Because the Republicans start wars and don’t finish them?
3) Because the modern Republican Party believes in eternal armed conflict as both a foreign policy instrument and a domestic “vote enhancer” and can’t afford politically not to start wars, regardless of whether they should be fought, and then screw them up so badly that they leave the mess to a Democrat to deal with so they can call him an appeaser and a coward?
Then again there’s
World War I – Wilson (Democrat)
World War II- FDR/Truman (Democrats)
But those are BC (Before Clinton) so they don’t count. All relevant political history begins in 1992.
I guess Korea doesn’t count, because we’re still there and there’s no treaty.
KC
Yes, I almost forgot. The Democrats won World War II.
As if 14 million broadcasters, commentators, bloggers, and other Democrats could let me forget. And they did it without the cooperation of the Republicans and a national unity that we have never seen before, and, most likely, we will never see again – for which I hold the Democrats solely responsible.
We can’t even remember 9/11 without turning it into “Do a Good Deed Day”, because the Democrats think the United States is their social worker play toy .
As for Vietnam , it was the liberal Congress that cut off support to the Vietnamese Army, and then all the spending.
BTW, “finishing wars” doesn’t mean leaving the country.
and, Jaim, are you suggesting that Afghanistan can’t be beaten, because the Russkies and the Brits couldn’t do it?
Maybe the Russians can’t win a war where it isn’t 29 below zero
The whole thread is based on the false premise that conservatives were never concerned about Iraq and Afghanistan War casualties, or even that Drudge never reported them, which is pure silliness.
The transparency is that Democrats never really meant what they said about Afghanistan in the first place, as digby at Hullabaloo admitted. Regretfully so by now, I would imagine.
Everything is ‘political strategy’ with liberal bloggers these days.
Yeah. If it hadn’t been for all them danged libruls we could still be there fighting & continuing to win in Vietnam today.
Everything is ‘political strategy’ with liberal bloggers these days.
Right:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200910020025
Mm-hm:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson-and-james-boyce/pat-tillman-antiwar-lefti_b_58825.html
Who wants to revisit Iraq Invasion predictions and assertions circa 2002 and 2003 and the attendant ‘political strategy’ from that heady time? Freedom Fries anyone?
there wasn’t a single teabagger when we had a white president blowing holes in the budget
So so very wrong
Drudge reporting a story about casualties in Afhanistan is not transparency. digby admitting Democratic hypocrisy regarding their changing positions on War in Afghanistan is.
More liberal transparency. Which isn’t really a hard case to make.
Height of Hypocrisy: Code Pink Rethinking Their Opposition to Afghan War…..
The more things change, the more the stay the same.
Yeah. If it hadn’t been for all them danged libruls we could still be there fighting & continuing to win in Vietnam today.
Actually, no. Chances are excellent that if it weren’t for the liberals, Vietnam would have been a free country by 1975, instead of a Stalinist hell hole.
So obvious is the desire of the Vietnamese for freedom, that even now, Saigon is better off than Hanoi.
No. This is a bunch of nonsense bullshit. And I of course am grateful that the U.S. hawk slaughter of millions of innocent Vietnamese finally ended, rather than continue on for the raving fantasies of delusionalists.
This doesn’t mean, though, that you still can’t enjoy movies like Rambo though and say stuff to the mirror like “can we win this time?”
Frank, count me among those who are anxious to hear your account of how the United States and their minority allies in the unpopular southern regime were going to defeat North Vietnam and their majority allies in the rest of the country.
Saigon is better off than Hanoi at least in part because of American spending there during the war. Plus the fact that it wasn’t getting the shit bombed out of it.
And the idea that by 1975 Vietnam would have been “liberated” if only we had just tried a little bit harder is a complete and utter fantasy.
Anyway, this loopy tangent all started because Frank called Dems the “bug out” party. Then someone noted the Democrat presidents at the helm during WWII and the Republican President that was at the helm at the end of Vietnam. I like then how huffy Frank got about how Republicans helped win WWII, as if he had to respond to a spurious allegation. When the only reason anyone mentioned it was to respond to Frank’s slander in the first place.
Reedonkulous.
Count me out. I’ve heard their Dungeons & Dragons version of ‘How We Coulda Won If They Ain’t Tied Our Hands a’Hind Our Backs’ for decades now.
Count me out. I’ve heard their Dungeons & Dragons version of ‘How We Coulda Won If They Ain’t Tied Our Hands a’Hind Our Backs’ for decades now.
Indeed, dolchstosslegende is all the rage with the wingnuts. Has been for quite some time:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/12/mccain/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stab-in-the-back_postcard.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stab-in-the-back_cartoon_1924.jpg
Would you like Freedom Fries with that, or do you hate America?
I see your point, Indeed: If Salon and Harper’s, who are, of course, impertial and objective observers of history, say we couldn’t have won, then who am I to disagree?
And of course, the
World Book Encyclopedis of the internet, AKA “the place where lazy, and untrained Internet searchers go to browse”WikiPedia memorabilia provide even more compelling evidence.Try this: It is a fact that every time Hanoi wanted the Democratic administrations to stop bombing Haiphong and Hanoi, all they had to was say, “Let’s negotiate”. The stupid Democrats fell for that one, again and again, until LBJ was persuaded by the other great military mind, Walter Cronkite, that Tet was a defeat – despite the fact that when it was over , the NVA and the VC had not held one objective – not one. They won no major battles – while they were excellent at ambushes, in full force, they accomplished nothing until we pulled out and gave the south Vietnamese forces the back of our hand.
You want some reality? In 1970, my warehouse stopped shipping weapons and parts to the South Vietnamese, and started shipping them to Guam to be returned to the United States. And, in case you are thinking, “Well, that was only one warehouse” – WRONG! – there was only one, and we were it.
I was there, I read the books before and after I went, I talked to lots of veterans , and sometimes I still do.
Two articles and Mickey Mouse’s favorite encyclopedia don’t mean much to me.
Let’s back the truck up, OK?
This thread started as a report of alleged hypocricy on the part of Drudge, et. al.
I initially said it was no such thing, to which there was no reply.
I had no intention of reminding you that the present day Democrat bears absolutely no resemblance to the Democrats of 1941.
I see your point, Indeed: If Salon and Harper’s, who are, of course, impertial and objective observers of history, say we couldn’t have won, then who am I to disagree?
Anything, specifically, which GlennZilla or Kevin Baker got wrong? Take your time. Make sure you get it right.
And of course, the World Book Encyclopedis of the internet, AKA “the place where lazy, and untrained Internet searchers go to browse” WikiPedia memorabilia provide even more compelling evidence.
Are you suggesting that the images on the linked Wikipedia pages never existed or something? Were you not disturbed by them? What are you saying here?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/myglesias/499334262/
Another awesome cartoon for Frank. Or did this cartoon never happen either?
Otto from A Fish Called Wanda called. He wants his side of the street back.
“I had no intention of reminding you that the present day Democrat bears absolutely no resemblance to the Democrats of 1941.”
Clearly, neither do Republicans.
Most of the Republicans in Congress support McChrystal’s call for more troops in Afghanistan (I don’t, especially). It’s turning into one of those public questions that doesn’t have a clear left-right divide. Complicating this is the fact that Obama hasn’t decided yet whether to adopt McChrystal’s recommendations, which makes trying to play political angles even dicier than usual.
Though, contrary to Frank’s unsupported assertion that Drudge has expressed concern about casualties in Bush’s wars, Drudge and Palin are utterly unprincipled (and indeed incoherent, big surprise there) on the subject. They are the exception that proves the rule: Drudge and Palin are both operating at such a sub-rational level that ideological coherence is quite beside the point. They both contain multitudes, I guess.
Digby is hardly ever wrong about anything, but I don’t think anyone actually advocated a re-focus on Afghanistan insincerely. Many of us had (and have) strong misgivings about a quagmire in Afghanistan, and regret that there is apparently a baseline of military aggression that a candidate must endorse to get elected President in a country as violent and deranged as ours is. That latter observation doesn’t for a moment imply that Obama himself is insincere about Afghanistan. Yet we for Obama because he is less enthusiastic about starting wars than McCain or Bush, in addition to being far preferable to them on nearly all the other issues. But you will read no end of skepticism about expanding the war in Afghanistan from blogs that supported Obama in the election (Code Pink cannot be counted as sizable or influential, certainly not remotely comparable to Drudge or Palin).
Person 1 makes claim X
There is something objectionable about Person 1
Therefore claim X is false
That is not only true in this case, but it is a tactic upon which Oliver relies, as do most of you leftie commenters, with astonishing regularity.
I refer you, most recently, to the post about Glen Beck, when a huge number of you defended the proposition that because Beck was inspired by a man’s views on the Founding Fathers, that that automatically tied Beck to that same man’s unhitorical views on slavery.
You do it all the time, most time inappropriately. At least I didn’t say I disagree with Salon and Harper’s because they published articles saying they didn’t like the Rolling Stones.
As for the cartoons, they refer to Nazi propaganda. If you choose to believe that the “stabbed in the back at Versailles” propaganda is on the same level as the Congressional betrayal of Vietnam (in which Nixon may have acquiesced — at least there are current revelations to the effect that Kissinger advised Nixon to get out of Vietnam pronto, even if it meant selling out the South Vietnamese. It is not yet definite that Nixon took that advice), you certainly may.
I do not agree.
Villian (to GANG): And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!
Frank, you do nothing but “back up the truck” when people point out your moronic talking points.
Jaim, and you do nothing but say bad things about me, because there hasn’t been an original thought in your head since you fugured out that using the toilet was better than waiting for your diaper to be changed.