Wednesday, December 10, 2014

WRONG FROM THE START.

One of the guys stepping up to defend America's recently revealed torture is Max Boot.  Like his fellow pain freak Andrew C. McCarthy, he puts quotes around "torture," because apparently the reported horrors of our Black Sites are not a big deal to him. He implicates Dianne Feinstein and John F. Kennedy, which is okay by me, or would be if he were trying to drag them down with him -- but Boot thinks the real crime is complaining about the torture, not furthering it.  He actually says, "It’s easy to denounce such brutal measures from the safety of an armchair" as if that were worse than approving them from the same armchair. He concludes:
Whatever the case, of one thing I am positive: that the release of the Senate report will only aid our enemies who will have more fodder for their propaganda mills. It is hard to see how it will serve the interests of the United States, because even if you believe the interrogations in question were war crimes, the reality remains that they were long discontinued. Feinstein’s report merely rakes up history and for no good purpose beyond predictable congressional grandstanding.
If your conscience does not respond to this, let me remind you what Boot is.

In 2003 Boot cheered the coming Iraq clusterfuck. "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets," he said. He had no doubt of the mission's success: "With American seriousness and credibility thus restored, we will enjoy fruitful cooperation from the region's many opportunists, who will show a newfound eagerness to be helpful in our larger task of rolling up the international terror network that threatens us."

That same year he bade America take the fight to North Korea and Iran, quoting Kipling: "Taking on all of them is a big commitment, but as Kipling warned America, 'Ye dare not stoop to less.'" We'll beat those fuzzy-wuzzies in no time!

In 2005, apparently still excited by the bloodbaths, Boot reached back into history to approve the infamous Moro Massacre in the Philippines and its architect, Leonard Wood: "His scorched-earth policy sparked controversy but achieved results."

The course of action Boot endorsed has since been proven a disaster, but he has continued to yap and snarl. In 2011 he wept over America's withdrawal from Iraq -- "The issue of immunity could have been finessed," he insisted, "if administration lawyers from the Departments of State and Defense had not insisted that Iraq’s parliament would have to vote to grant our troops protections from Iraqi laws." It should be no surprise that Boot sees the wishes of elected representatives as a useless nuisance. Boot didn't want us to get out of Afghanistan either -- why, what would Kipling think?

Boot still bays for blood in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. In 2013 he condemned Edward Snowden, whom he said "needs to see a psychiatrist or a minister rather than to be granted access to the front pages of the world to blow some of the U.S. government’s most important intelligence-gathering activities."

In short, Boot is the last person we should be listening to -- but then, he always was. It's worth asking why this moral leper still has a place in our discourse.

171 comments:

  1. Ubu Imperator11:14 PM

    I would love to come up with a witty rejoinder worthy of the commentariat at this site, but the more prosaic standby of Fuck That Guy, No, Seriously, FUCK HIM has rarely seemed more appropriate.

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  2. 4chin Chutney11:23 PM

    I really do think this is a case of both sides being in the wrong. Hard to say which side's story is more at fault. Best to just move on and let bygones be bygones.

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  3. Ever since Lord Copper sent this Boot fellow off to the front lines I've been reading nothing but nonsense under his byline at The Beast. He reminds one of a questing vole, feather footing through the plashy fen. He strikes one as a most disagreeable chap, and I shan't be reading any more of his drivel as it appears to be penned under the influence of some sort of ammo-eroticum. Be a good lad and put a cap on it, Mr. Boot.

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  4. 4chin Chutney11:25 PM

    At this point, does @AmandaMarcotte have more followers, or people who she's blocked?

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  5. 4chin Chutney11:26 PM

    Damn, she just blocked me.

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  6. Instapundit Dotcom11:44 PM

    Lets give ISIS the Boot!

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  7. Whatever the case, of one thing I am positive: that the release of the
    Senate report will only aid our enemies who will have more fodder for
    their propaganda mills.What on earth would they be able to propagandize about, seeing as how none of what the US government did was a war crime, or even worthy of removing the quotation marks from "torture"?


    On the other hand, if the takeaway from this report is, "US government tortured people in its custody, learned only useless bullshit, and then lied about it," then yeah, I guess I can see how our enemies might take umbrage. Where "enemies" is defined as "anyone with the merest scrap of decency."

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  8. montag212:07 AM

    Boot is yet one more of those conservative intellectuals who never felt the need to actually put on a uniform, and yet, feels eminently qualified to send others out to fight for his warped ideas.

    And, since he's so fucking fond of Kipling, here's Kipling on what will never be Max Boot's fate:

    When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

    And the women come out to cut up what remains,

    Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

    An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

    Go, go, go like a soldier,

    Go, go, go like a soldier,

    Go, go, go like a soldier,


    Fuck, I despise these clowns.

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  9. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:12 AM

    It is hard to see how it will serve the interests of the United States

    Which is all that matters. "Right" and "wrong" (to the extent that they are valid concepts, about which Boot hasn't yet decided) don't even enter into it.

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  10. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:25 AM

    "His scorched-earth policy sparked controversy but achieved results."

    Bootsy is a man behind his time. "I'm not saying we won't get out hair mussed" (fiction) and "A nuclear war is winnable" (history) are pure Max. All he's doing is rewording Herman Kahn, Curtis LeMay, and Buck Turgidson. How he manages not to go off on a tangent about America's "essence", I dunno...

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  11. montag212:26 AM

    "Enemies" right now is a very high percentage of the rest of the world, precisely because influential people in this country like Boot view them as such.

    Without any consideration of why.

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  12. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:27 AM

    a questing vole, feather footing through the plashy fen


    There's gotta be a slithy Tove somewhere about...

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  13. montag212:29 AM

    That'll do fine, son. Just fine.

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  14. For a supposed deep thinker Boot's a fucking train wreck. For instance, the "fodder for their propaganda mills" makes it plain that Boot doesn't know the definition of the word "propaganda," which you would suspect someone in his position should better understand.

    Or take this excerpt; Her report claims that the CIA concealed certain information from the president, a charge heatedly denied by current CIA director John Brennan, an Obama appointee, and all of his predecessors–as well as by George W. Bush and other officials of his administration. Perhaps there were in fact details that were not shared with the White House but it is clear that the president knew in broad brushstrokes what was happening, that it was judged to be legal by the White House and Justice Department, and that it was considered necessary to prevent another 9/11.

    What the fuck? You can follow that little circle of logic right up Boot's ass, if you care to, but mind his head. Here's the best bit;

    It is hard to see how it will serve the interests of the United States, because even if you believe the interrogations in question were war crimes, the reality remains that they were long discontinued. Feinstein’s report merely rakes up history and for no good purpose beyond predictable congressional grandstanding.


    Here's a clue, you fucking git. If you want to see yourself as "exceptional"; as America best absorbed in "nation building" and a world police agency since "there is nobody else out there," then you better have the balls to stand up and accept it when you fuck up. You better make those fuck-ups transparent, call them the fuck-ups they were and hold people accountable. Because without any of that sort of maturity, Mr. Boot, you're just a sniveling little turd on the fringes of the playground of the world and and your hawk snot gets on everybody else's clothes.

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  15. Jay B.12:33 AM

    You know what really aids our enemies' propaganda mills? Having bloodthirsty fascists with impossibly butch names write about all the people America should be killing and complain during a bit of a lull that we aren't killing enough of them. Jesus.

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  16. parsec12:38 AM

    If he keeps this up he can look forward to solicitous interviews with the likes of Wolf Blitzer and Chuck Todd. None of whom will point out his background of vicious failure.

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  17. Jay B.12:39 AM

    I was so pissed off reading about his torture take I completely missed this the first time: "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets,"


    Enlightened foreign administration is the FIRST thing I think of when I think of ol' John Bull. India, Ireland, South Africa. Shining examples of the light touch of the Union Jack. Christ, what an asshole.

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  18. Tom Parmenter12:43 AM

    It's as if he'd made up his name, Max Boot. Really?

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  19. davdoodles12:44 AM

    "...quoting Kipling: "Taking on all of them is a big commitment, but as Kipling warned America, 'Ye dare not stoop to less.'" "

    Selectively quoting from a poem called "The White Man's Burden", for fuckssake, eh?

    Even setting aside the distinct possibility that Kipling might have been being a little ironic there, I prefer to quote, in whole, HT Johnson's 1899 response, called "The Black man's Burden":

    "Pile on the Black Man’s Burden.
    'Tis nearest at your door;
    Why heed long bleeding Cuba,
    or dark Hawaii’s shore?

    Hail ye your fearless armies,
    Which menace feeble folks
    Who fight with clubs and arrows
    and brook your rifle’s smoke.

    Pile on the Black Man’s Burden
    His wail with laughter drown
    You’ve sealed the Red Man’s problem,
    And will take up the Brown,

    In vain ye seek to end it,
    With bullets, blood or death
    Better by far defend it
    With honor’s holy breath."


    Fuckity-fuck these people have minds like fly-blown porridge.
    .

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  20. montag212:46 AM

    Umm, South Africa was the Boers, I think, but, insert Egypt, Palestine or Iraq, and those will stand in nicely.

    And, as with so many provincials of an aristocratic bent, this fucking git has seemingly forgotten that he is living in a country that fought a fucking war of independence from the "enlightened foreign administration" of Englishmen.

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  21. davdoodles12:52 AM

    "Boot is yet one more of those conservative intellectuals who never felt the need to actually put on a uniform,"
    "And when they ask for more Boots on the ground,
    Das Boot's nowhere to be found..."
    With apologies for the Credence Clearwater Revival fanfic.
    .

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  22. montag212:52 AM

    Well, Max Boot Stamping on a Human Face Forever wouldn't fit on his driver's license.

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  23. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:55 AM

    In a pot, nine days old. PEE-YOO...

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  24. JennOfArk12:55 AM

    "It’s easy to denounce such brutal measures from the safety of an armchair" says the dude calling for perpetual war, with everyone, from the safety of an armchair.

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  25. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:58 AM

    I'm with Ubu. A sentence like that just leaves me staring at my monitor, feeling the derp radiation frying my cerebral cortex, powerless to respond beyond "Fuuuck!?"

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  26. davdoodles1:07 AM

    "It’s easy to denounce such brutal measures from the safety of an armchair"

    Indeed, it is easy. And yet… he utterly fails to hurdle even that low bar.

    Next, watch with admiration as he condescendingly assures us how easy it is to ride a bicycle, just as he pedals one into a fucking wall.
    .

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  27. DocAmazing1:20 AM

    Way back in the middle 1980s, Boot had a column in the UC Berkeley campus newspaper. I thought that it was satire: a guy named "Max Boot" writing unabashedly fascist material?

    Joke's on me.

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  28. coozledad1:21 AM

    Hooray for the invention of boncentration bamps, old thing!

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  29. Ellis_Weiner2:00 AM

    "It is hard to see how it will serve the interests of the United States..."


    This must be his idea of realpolitik: what care we if we are besmirched, in the eyes of the world and in our own eyes, by these hideous tortures (bonus laff: *which don't even work*), as long as we Stand Tall in the world. This is moral corruption trying to pass--as it always does--as hard-headed realism.


    Somebody should tell Boot that part of what is corrupt about corruption is its glib recourse to rationalization and special pleading. When Jean Renoir has a character say, in The Grand Illusion, that "everyone has his reasons," I'm hoping his subtext was "...however self-serving and specious."


    All this might be forgiven if Boot got out of his own armchair and walked the walk. Then he'd at least be putting his own soul on the line. Color me shocked that this doesn't eventuate.

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  30. Tehanu2:28 AM

    I think Max is the boot that George Orwell was talking about -- the one stomping on the face of humanity forever. This may not be original with me, but it's my sincere belief.

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  31. Gromet3:55 AM

    It is hard to see how it will serve the interests of the United States... Feinstein’s report merely rakes up history and for no good purpose beyond predictable congressional grandstanding

    Boot, my man! Glad to have you on record in support of more than mere grandstanding. I'll put you down for "Severe consequences to all Inquisitors and their Authorizors," and tick the box next to "Serving US interests by showing the world we pursue justice at all costs." Fantastic. Hey, this better-angels-of-our-nature stuff really gets you amped, right?

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  32. Gromet4:27 AM

    Boot is an assjack. Read any writer who actually went to war and it's abundantly clear he's not in the club. He'd read that Kipling taunt and just hear a straight ode to duty.

    Hemingway's even better -- you can pretty much hear him biting his tongue in half with all the details he's omitting. But I bet Boot could read him and conclude war made him tough and cool.

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  33. EvanHurst5:03 AM

    What a horrible tool. While I might be inclined to agree with him on Snowden, everything else in his record is thuggish failure, and particularly pathetic at that.

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  34. smut clyde5:22 AM

    I easily imagine Max Boot stocking up on cleft sticks with which to send back his dispatches.

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  35. smut clyde5:23 AM

    "It is hard to see how it will serve the interests of the United States..."

    It's about a decade too late to be asking that question, Bootsie.

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  36. smut clyde6:01 AM

    Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up and down again!
    There’s no discharge in the war!

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  37. smut clyde6:05 AM

    "It’s easy to denounce such brutal measures from the safety of an armchair"

    It's also easy to denounce them from the non-safety of being strapped down to a gurney or chained to a wall.

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  38. smut clyde6:07 AM

    Enemies" right now is a very high percentage of the rest of the world

    The 'enemies receiving fodder' presumably refers to the American public. The rest of the world knew long ago.

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  39. 4chin Chutney6:16 AM

    Liberals still weirdly silent on Ibama's drone killing policy that takes the lives of innocents. Somehow claim moral high ground.

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  40. 4chin Chutney6:18 AM

    smut,

    Can you recall the last time you posted anything on your outrage for Obama's drone policy?

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  41. carolannie6:18 AM

    No no no he tells us without ever leaving his armchair to ride one, and claims it is our duty to ride one and condemns us if we don't want to ride into the wall

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  42. Kevin Berger7:08 AM

    You know, as a long-time-ish outside observer, my latest and most eyes-opening realization about the US cultural/political landscape was in 2013, for the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war - or, rather, the non-anniversary.
    The level of narrative-control shown by what amounted to willful and enforced lack of self-awareness, soul-searching, learning from past mistakes,... was IMHO a pretty clear indicator of a real degree of shaping by bigger forces, be they corporate and/or military&intelligence.
    Not too look overly paranoid, but if one believes that the perpetuation of wartime structures all through the Cold War, with the worst of pre-WWII power centers then joined by repatriated foreign outgrowth (european Nazis & fascists), possibly culminated in a successful coup in 1963... then there is a non-trivial possibility of the USA having their own version of the "Deep State", the mother of all, actually.
    In which case, a return to accountability and a level political playing field is but a pipe-dream, and the POS propagandists routinely mocked and skewered in this blog are symptoms of the new "normal".

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  43. smut clyde7:24 AM

    more fodder for their propaganda mills.
    'Fodder' is what you feed to animals (the name should give it away). The stuff for mills is 'grist'. Bootsie never metaphor he couldn't mix.

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  44. Kevin Berger7:25 AM

    Ok, this reads both pedantic and paranoid, my bad, but still, the first paragraph is a real issue - the systemic lack of accountability; this has been done earlier and elsewhere, though I can't recall shit, but AFAIK, no public figure has been "punished" for the OIF clusterfuck (which goes far beyond the relatively small US casualties, btw), while the ones who pushed against... were.
    But then again, and no offense to the readers & commenters here, but the USA as a polity is just crazy. Not crazy in the sense that it is acting madly, but crazy in the sense that there is an enforced disconnect with reality, a gap between "what is done" and "what is told". It's not about any inherent craziness in the "US national character", about "blame America first", etc, etc... but about perverse and cynical power elites, mostly. And the last 12-13 years have been unbelievable in that regard. With, again, the paid mouthpieces that are mocked here just being the fluff that floats to the surface, hired help retained to keep the rubes fired up.

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  45. tigrismus7:41 AM

    Oh no, he firmly believes in right and wrong: it's right if we do it, it's wrong if they do, and any argument with that stance is moral relativism. He's written that almost verbatim about Israel vs Hamas and Brits vs London bombers.

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  46. redoubtagain7:58 AM

    Generalfeldmarschall Max von Boot. Has a sort of "Nuremberg Trials" vibe.

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  47. Provider_UNE8:16 AM

    Ill admit to giving this tool very little attention over the year in part do to his neocon bloodlusting sympathies, but in part (possibly the greater part) because of his name.

    Max Boot?!?!? What the fuck kind of name is that providing it was chosen for him, beyond WTF if it is a nom de plume he chose himself. In any event there would likely arise phychological issues in either case.

    Jodphurs and pith helmets??? How exactly did that little adventure turn out for England?
    ...

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  48. montag28:20 AM

    No discharges? M'self, I wouldn't want to touch the Kommandos' keyboards.

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  49. montag28:21 AM

    Yeah, you're right. I guess I've internalized that aspect of it for long, I take it for granted.

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  50. montag28:44 AM

    Oh, trust me, there are some rather substantial pockets of bugfuck nuts in these United States....

    But, yes, beyond that, there is an institutional insanity. And, yes, contrary to your assessment, crazy in the sense of acting madly. Fuck me, the Boots of this country are at this precise moment trying to gin up a shooting war with Russia. And Iran. And China. And North Korea. And, let's face it, the last few military debacles haven't exactly been the acts of sane and sensible people.

    The institutional insanity is in the DC crowd, reading the ravings of these loonies, and nodding sagely, and pronouncing them wise men.

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  51. mortimer20008:44 AM

    Boot was one of the original Project for a New American Century signatories pimping the invasion of Iraq. He's been in love with bloodshed for the sake of it for decades, a gutless wonder who's more of a chicken flack than chicken hawk, since even the latter is too studly for the prick.

    Considering that the torture report made public is only about 8% of the actual complete Intelligence Committee report, all the righteous neocon stink about it is self-serving hippie-punching to say the least. Boot manages to mention Feinstein half a dozen times in his short piece, calling it "Feinstein's report" twice. I'm betting he has something akin to Emmanuel Feinstein in mind, only because Alinsky is still too dead at the moment.

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  52. Helmut Monotreme9:05 AM

    There's nominative determination for you. Too bad his parents didn't name him Happy Lovejoy.

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  53. Helmut Monotreme9:09 AM

    Interests of the United States? He needs to spit it out. Interests of his investment portfolio. My interests sure aren't served by killing people halfway round the world for no damn good reason, but it sure props up Boeing and Raytheon and Bechtel a treat.

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  54. Let's ignore Boot's lack of military service for a moment and take him at his word regarding torture. If everything he says about torture is true, if we spot him the entire argument about doing tough things in tough times, he's then faced with reconciling that stance with his "America's a beacon on a hill" stuff. Last time I looked, none of these exemplars from fiction were routinely torturing people to death.

    But in the end, what Boot and everyone like him seems to conveniently forget is that even their own vision of America is one where this country is the leading force for good in the world and conducts itself in superior ways in order to lead by example. Emulating the actions of some of the most murderous and barbaric regimes in recorded human history is probably not the example they want to set.

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  55. This is like so much of what is "classified" information in America. I'd venture a guess that upwards of 90% of what is classified received that designation in order to keep AMERICANS from finding out about it. Our notional enemies like Russia and China already know, in fine detail, damn near everything that's going on.

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  56. The derp radiation is only given off when the stupid exceeds the local speed of thought. Known protective measures include heavy drinking and repeated hitting your forehead with a ballpeen hammer.

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  57. The reason the sun never set on the English Empire was because even God didn't trust the English in the dark.

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  58. GeniusLemur9:20 AM

    I think if someone proclaims war to be a grand and glorious thing, they should be immediately sent to the front lines and kept there until they're dead, maimed, or mentally shattered. If they think it's so wonderful, let them get as much of it as they can.

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  59. Fats Durston9:21 AM

    No, no, the Cape Colony was governed by the British through the nineteenth century. Enlightened foreign administration during this period include these gems (both 1850s):


    "We are going on vigorously with the work of destruction [of Xhosa crops] ... The cultivation here has been most extensive but we have cut it all down -- many hundred acres .... Our men are very healthy, and do not seem to dislike this work at all."


    "[The military] Doctor ... had asked my men to procure him a few native skulls of both sexes. This was a task easily accomplished. One morning they brought back to camp about two dozen heads of various ages. ... the next night they turned my vat into a cauldron for the removal of superfluous flesh. And there these men sat, gravely smoking their pipes ... and stirring round and round the heads in that seething boiler, as though they were cooking black-apple dumplings."

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  60. montag29:22 AM

    Yeah, but that's an inconsistency--however blatant--that they choose to overlook (indeed, are required to overlook, otherwise their argument collapses in a heap on the floor). There's a sort of looking through the wrong end of the telescope hypocrisy to it that beggars the belief of sane people. Boot is effectively saying that everything we do--with no exclusions--is a force for good. Even torture has a happy ending, because it advances America's "interests" (and "American interests" just might be most loaded phrase of the last hundred years or so).


    It's all quite insane.

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  61. GeniusLemur9:24 AM

    He's a right-winger. They operate under the "get the gold medal just for showing up" arrangement. So America is the bestest ever just 'cause. WASP men are the bestest ever just 'cause. They HAVE to think that way, otherwise their childish arrogance would clash with the fact that they're cowardly, worthless shitstains.

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  62. Clearly you haven't been following along with modern American culture. Failure is now seen as the key to success. And the bigger the failure to which you can attach your name, the greater your success. In publishing, this is known as "The Tina Brown Effect." In politics, it's known as "Kristolizing." In any event, being wrong in such a fashion that the entire enterprise you lead comes crashing down, leading to long-term misery or (even better) large-scale death, causes "serious" people to want your advice and leadership on every other possible problem.

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  63. M. Krebs9:25 AM

    Well, I see that Deadeye Dick has emerged to tell everyone "Fuck, yeah! We all knew everything from the start." It's almost enough to inspire a certain respect for the man's enormous brass balls.

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  64. GeniusLemur9:27 AM

    "His scorched-earth policy sparked controversy but achieved results."
    If Obama tortured Max Boot to death on live TV and said, "I'll do the same to anyone else in the media I don't like," that would "spark controversy but achieve results." I guess Max thinks it's a good idea?

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  65. Well it certainly inspires me to want to kick those balls repeatedly.

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  66. not torturing in the first place maybe would've been a good idea.

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  67. Can I get this on pay-per-view? Or would we just make it basic cable?

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  68. GeniusLemur9:31 AM

    Right-wingers don't do actual courage. They're just so arrogant and deluded they think they're untouchable, which can look like courage in certain circumstances.

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  69. montag29:34 AM

    I repeat this once in a while, but haven't lately, so here goes. It's Scott Armstrong, the founder of the National Security Archive, on classification at the 20th anniversary of that organization, slightly paraphrased:

    The White House expends the most energy keeping secrets from the American public. It expends the next largest amount of effort keeping secrets from Congress. It expends the next largest effort keeping secrets from other government agencies. It expends the least amount of energy keeping secrets from our foreign adversaries.

    The classification system as introduced and implemented after WWII was a product of considerable paranoia, Because its structure is essentially paranoid, and that paranoia has gone untreated for seven decades, it is now far worse than even the savviest of outside observers can imagine.

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  70. Helmut Monotreme9:35 AM

    He's no shirker. Whenever there's a war to be mongered you'll find Max Boot, at his desk, far from combat, warmongering with the best of them. He mongers more war before breakfast than most people do all day.

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  71. montag29:36 AM

    Sounds like a job for C-Span to me.

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  72. montag29:38 AM

    Cheney is the stupid person's idea of a brave person.

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  73. It's worth asking why this moral leper still has a place in our discourse.

    Our liberal media always has a soft spot for crapulous shitgoblins who will screech and throw poo in the direction of our enemies from the safety of an armchair.

    even if you believe the interrogations in question were war crimes, the reality remains that they were long discontinued


    That'll be the next level of their evil in defending this - "Sure, we tortured, and maybe it didn't do anything and in fact made things worse, but it's in the past and there's no point in stirring up trouble now"

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  74. With steel-toed boots, because, brass.

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  75. montag29:49 AM

    Boot isn't exactly WASPy, despite the fact that he's adopted some rather odd notions about British imperialism, the Eton/Sandhurst/stiff-upper-lip/white man's burden nonsense. He's actually an immigrant Russian Jew, born in Moscow. I suspect he's some weird amalgam of Avigdor Lieberman and Bernard Montgomery's ghost.

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  76. Booty Max evidently believes in world policing in Darrin Wilson mode.

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  77. montag29:57 AM

    I stand firmly corrected.

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  78. The "safety of an armchair" as opposed to the perils of an interrogation room, in which your victim is securely strapped to a table?

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  79. Halloween_Jack10:06 AM

    "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets,"

    Say, how did that work out for the British Empire in the long run? Yes, I know, it was the Jerries that did for them, twice, but it wasn't as if the Hun weren't part of the same imperial system that let Britannia rule, or as if it weren't already starting to crumble when Gavrilo Princip made his gambit for glory. I mean, FFS, if he's going to cite hoary old Victorian tropes and Kipling in his imprecations for Johnny Yank to give the sand spades what for, the very least he could do is fucking watch the adaptation of one of Kipling's best-known books to see how that sort of thing generally works out. (SPOILERS: not terribly great.)

    http://youtu.be/twF0Aa7GVJA

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  80. When is the last time the WaPo editorial board opposed a war, i wonder?
    ~

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  81. To compound Boot's idiocy, the divide-and-conquer policy employed by Britannia led to most of the conflict in the Mideast and Central/South Asia in the first place.

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  82. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps10:15 AM

    He's in the vein of Ayn Rand and Dinesh D'Souza: the over-eager new American who latches onto the conservative values of their adopted land a little too vociferously.

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  83. runsinbackground10:17 AM

    Per Gary Brecher our record of disgusting torture isn't even what's actually got our opposite numbers in The War on (some classes of people who use) Terror pissed off at us, so shut the fuck up Max Boot.

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  84. The Festrunk Brothers as warmongers instead of swingers.

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  85. Brother Yam10:21 AM

    In business it is known as the Fiorina Factor.

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  86. mgmonklewis10:21 AM

    Irony awoke briefly, saw that she had been buried alive with Madeleine Usher, heaved a great sigh, then banged her head against the sepulchre until she returned to unconsciousness.

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  87. Our liberal media always has a soft spot for crapulous shitgoblins who will screech and throw poo in the direction of our enemies from the safety of an armchair.In fairness, I think Dick "Deferments" Cheney has only appeared on Fox News so far.
    That'll be the next level of their evil in defending this - "Sure, we tortured, and maybe it didn't do anything and in fact made things worse, but it's in the past and there's no point in stirring up trouble now"In fairness, Dick Cheney is adamant in sticking to "Sure, we tortured, knowingly, and we'd do it again, not like Obama and those other Democratic traitors who want America vulnerable to its enemies." I'm not entirely clear on my levels of evil, but the evergreen labeling of Democrats as the ones giving aid and comfort to our enemies would seem to remain pretty highly ranked.

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  88. Bob Kerrey has a sad.

    http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Somebody_Still_Remembers_Bob_Kerrey

    I thank Mr. D. Glass for pointing me to an editorial written by one of the most useless politicians ever, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, who waited in his pumpkin patch all night before the Senate torture report was released, only to be disappointed when the Great Bipartisan Pumpkin failed to rise at midnight.
    -------
    `

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  89. montag210:28 AM

    And still is. The Durand Line very neatly divided the Pashtun between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they've been fighting everyone around them ever since because of it.

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  90. My heart bleeds there, Mr. Kerry.

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  91. "Boot is the last person we should be listening to -- but then,
    he always was. It's worth asking why this moral leper still has a place
    in our discourse."

    If you want a vision of the future, imagine Max Boot stamping on a human face - forever.

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  92. Stop hatin' on the voles!

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  93. Teddy Roosevelt10:46 AM

    If the Moros hadn't flown the Wright Brothers' plane into the The Statue of Liberty, killing 3000 school children on a field trip, we wouldn't have had to massacre them.

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  94. montag210:48 AM

    Before it started, or after it turned to shit?

    I think we know the answer to the first part of that question with virtually no ambiguity.

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  95. I was just talking about the boer war with my father who had been up late reading about it for some reason. He reminded me that it was the first use of concentration camps as well as ecological war crimes like salting the earth. .i did not know there were two phases:before and after they discovered gold. Before it was relatively small as a conflict. After, it was enormous.

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  96. And his brother Junior boot, known as Boot Minor.

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  97. In fairness, I think Dick "Deferments" Cheney has only appeared on Fox News so far.


    Let's see what happens with the Sunday morning bobbleheadathon.

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  98. Oops, you got there first.

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  99. Id finally look forward to nancy pelosi's email updates if she were updating me on that.

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  100. montag210:55 AM

    Well, yeah, it's an easy lift.

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  101. Hey! Moral peril is still peril!

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  102. C'mon your honor, true my client may have anally raped that kid with a cattle prod but he has long discontinued that practice. Why must we rehash the past.

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  103. Tom Parmenter11:02 AM

    The coward's idea of a brave person . . .

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  104. susanoftexas11:03 AM

    We definitely had leaders imposing a message on the people but we also have an infinite capacity for self-deception.

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  105. susanoftexas11:04 AM

    So his mom got both the Boot and the heel.

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  106. John Wesley Hardin11:07 AM

    That sounds too grubby for Boot the philosophizer. Imagine him cheering the brutality on from a nearby armchair - forever.

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  107. It was a hanging curve ball, I had to swing for it.

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  108. Max Boot applauding other people for stomping on a human face - forever.

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  109. susanoftexas11:14 AM

    I call it McArdle's scam, as she says failure is systemic when she wants to excuse failure, and used to say success is systemic when she needed to explain how the vampire squids became so rich.

    You see, all decisions and actions are either right or wrong and there is no way of telling which is which. So you guess and if you guessed wrong you now know the right answer and are much smarter than people who were right, who just happened to call heads to your tails and therefore know even less than you.

    McArdle sold a book on this premise and people paid her to go on tv and the libertarian lecture circuit to talk about it in person.

    She does not talk about the semi-negative New York Times review, which is odd. Surely she is dying to tell us how that failure made her smarter and more successful. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/books/review/the-rise-and-the-up-side-of-down.html?_r=0

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  110. The derp radiation is only given off when the stupid exceeds the local speed of thought.How to get your renk off without really trying.

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  111. John Wesley Hardin11:16 AM

    "How exactly did that little adventure turn out for England?" Why, it turned out bloody great, old bean, until the simps and fems gave away the empire to mud people. I say, we could have put more boot on their necks; max boot as it were, until they learned their place.

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  112. mgmonklewis11:18 AM

    Bootsie never metaphor he couldn't mix.

    That ship has left the barn.

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  113. mgmonklewis11:21 AM

    Maybe Boot could channel Ezra Pound about the glories of torture. Pound may have been a fascist, but even he would think Boot was a supercilious little dick.

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  114. mgmonklewis11:22 AM

    Yes, it's no longer enough to learn from your failures. Now failure is an accomplishment in itself.

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  115. mgmonklewis11:25 AM

    Perhaps he should face the peril himself.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtcSYPjJbgg

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  116. montag211:30 AM

    The first one lasted maybe four months. The second major one lasted three years. Lots of people killed.

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  117. montag211:34 AM

    Going by his letters, Pound thought everyone was a supercilious little dick.

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  118. The horse has spilled the milk.

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  119. I can't imagine Cheney being out of that loop, because where's the fun in that?

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  120. DN Nation12:04 PM

    Hey, Boot: Why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here.


    No, really. Biff's onto something there. Get lost.

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  121. Christopher Hazell12:11 PM

    Golly, Boot makes such a compelling point, about how our monstrous torture regime aids enemy propaganda. Why are we even talking about this classified program in public, anyway?


    "[Senate Report Conclusion] #10: The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.
    ...
    These disclosures occurred when the program was a classified covert action program, and before the CIA had briefed the full Committee membership on the program"


    Oh. Well then.


    I really can't stress this enough: Scumbags like Boot act like torture was a carefully used intelligence gathering tool, which, while it may provoke some moral disquiet, needs to be balanced against its usefulness.


    The report demonstrates that this viewpoint is utter bullshit.


    Putting aside, for a moment, the moral calculus, surely the propaganda value torture has to our enemies should've been part of the CIA's cost/benefit analysis, yeah? Because the CIA itself made the decision that it would be impossible to hide the program.

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  122. Whatever the case, of one thing I am positive: that the release of the
    Senate report will only aid our enemies who will have more fodder for
    their propaganda mills.

    This seems to be a favorite refrain of the fuckwitted chickenshit gringos who dismiss the report and/or are just fine with torture. For some reason they never think trumpeting that attitude from the rooftops could be used as propaganda.

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  123. *Crash*


    What was that? Quick, the cattle prod!

    ReplyDelete
  124. susanoftexas12:16 PM

    Or realize that our enemies, some of whom we are torturing, might already know that we torture.

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  125. tigrismus12:20 PM

    Offer not applicable to Chappaquiddick, Jane Fonda, et cerera ad infinitum.

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  126. Yes, that's the other weird thing. I don't see this report as a huge revelation (GASP! I HAD NO IDEA THE CIA TORTURES PEOPLE!) I see it as confirmation and I know I'm not the only one.

    But we're talking about a group of people who are repeatedly shocked that when they're called out for the shitty things they say. Because they didn't want whoever they were talking about to hear it.

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  127. Provider_UNE12:30 PM

    Oh and I remember now. It seems like every five years the guy says something that catches my attention and I go "No way is that a real name" and then I find, that Sadly, yes it is. But his parents were both Russian Jews and he was born in Moscow, so there is that. Also, too, he grew up in the eighties "When conservatism was cool" or something...
    ...

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  128. Christopher Hazell12:32 PM

    As I said below, one of the conclusions of the Senate Report is that CIA leadership leaked details of the program when it was still classified, and before briefing the full Committee.

    ReplyDelete
  129. Make like a tree, and bark?

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  130. JennOfArk12:34 PM

    I twitter trolled her the other day. She said something about being thankful about people re-reading her old work. I said she should be thankful anyone would read it the first time round. She tried to duck that by saying how thankful she was to her readers. I responded that her gratitude was misplaced, and should instead be focused on a failed educational system.

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  131. tigrismus12:37 PM

    Ve haff vays of finding ze leakers...

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  132. It will be interesting to see who is to blame for that. I suspect not a few Deep Thunkers will decide the CIA is too sloppy, so we ought to outsource our torture to private companies, while others will decide that it is all liberal lies and the CIA never did pre-release the information.

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  133. He was prematurely pro fascist.

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  134. You go to your rape rooms with the torturers you have, not the ones you wish you had.

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  135. Gromet1:21 PM

    It also suggests even they know their pro-torture stance is BS, because if it's not, wouldn't touting it to our enemies be about the best thing we could do? "Cross us and we promise: we will torture you, extract all the info you have, and leave you maimed or dead." Yeah, that oughta keep the lesser races in line, if Boot is right.

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  136. smut clyde1:23 PM

    he paints the Boers as the much greater evil
    A bunch of religious extremists leaving their home country to set up a new state in another continent by ethically-cleansing the natives? I have no idea where they could have got that idea from.

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  137. montag21:26 PM

    True enough. (The rather horrifying poll results immediately after the invasion that showed about two-thirds of the people believing the bullshit about WMDs and Iraq's ties to 9/11 are a case in point.)

    But, still, I think Göring's prescription for starting wars applies, so that self-deception might be more universal, and less unique to Americans. What does seem to be characteristic of both us and our British cousins is the press and the intelligensia in those countries never met a war they didn't like--at first. And when it comes to public opinion, the combination of media, public intellectuals and the government is a triple whammy.

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  138. Gromet1:38 PM

    Self-deception is baked into the cake. Between the Constitution, the Old West, Normandy, and now probably the fall of the USSR, we've not developed a need to admit things might be out of our control. In the individual voter you end up with a person who can't admit that where he was born, how much money his parents had, what color he is might all be helping him advance or limiting advancement. Nope -- we're all self-made; we make our own bed and lie in it, and if that guy over there has less, it's because he's lazy, and if that one over there has more, then buy his (ghostwritten) book. And when it comes time to admit that the CIA and corporations don't act in our best interests -- that can't be. Because that would be admitting important parts of our national life are out of our control. We have to trust them. So these institutions become maybe flawed -- but ultimately still noble, still about our own personal freedom.

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  139. montag22:01 PM

    "I suspect Max Boot and his ilk are the kind of toxic people who feel
    like admitting a mistake is always the worst thing you can do."

    While it's a commonality of human nature to resist acknowledging mistakes, this country has pretty much turned it into an art form. And, not surprisingly, it's even worse in the business community. I could always recognize the people who would be courting disaster, because they simply oozed self-confidence and self-assurance. And when disaster came to them, and it often did, on steroids, and couldn't be spun, they were quick to blame something or someone else. It's as if they would suffer almost anything except being wrong and having to admit it.

    There are certain ideas that take hold in societies, like the sun and stars revolving around the earth, that seem convincing, but are completely dead wrong. And in this country, that idea is that admitting error is a sign of weakness. It's one of the primary reasons why we have such a poor track record of learning from our mistakes.

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  140. susanoftexas2:07 PM

    Heh. If she's so grateful to have people read her work, why did she get rid of some of her archives?

    ReplyDelete
  141. susanoftexas2:11 PM

    If nobody admits reality is real, then everybody can go on pretending.

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  142. Bizarro Mike2:15 PM

    There really aren't enough upvotes in the universe for this thread.

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  143. J Neo Marvin2:23 PM

    Can't catapult the propaganda without sufficient fodder.

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  144. mgmonklewis3:05 PM

    I also like "we'll burn that bridge behind us when we come to it."

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  145. smut clyde3:08 PM

    You could ask the Tasmanians what they thought of English "enlightened foreign administration".
    You won't get any answer, of course.

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  146. BG, professional humbug3:33 PM

    In 2003 Boot cheered the coming Iraq clusterfuck.
    "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of
    enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident
    Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets," he said.


    I'd bet my last dollar that writing those words gave him a little stiffie.

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  147. smut clyde3:35 PM

    if you believe the interrogations in question were war crimes, the reality remains that they were long discontinued

    This is the first time I have heard a rightwinger argue that war crimes should not be prosecuted because the criminal has stopped committing them. I don't think they tried that argument at Nuremberg.

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  148. jodhpurs and pith helmets

    See, that's why our Mid-East adventures haven't worked out! We're not wearing the right gear!

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  149. Pope Zebbidie XIII3:59 PM

    Unhappily for Rudyard, that happened to his only son in World War 1. He was never the same after that.

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  150. I know how she feels.

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  151. I'm sure the Guys on trial, the right-wingers, tried.

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  152. Frank DiChutney4:08 PM

    As a lifelong liberal, it concerns me deeply that we can't admit that we've been strangely silent about our Nobel Peace Prize-winning President dropping bombs from drones on innocent civilians. We're just as guilty if we don't express just as much outrage as we are now with the ETF report. I don't like how well like opportunistic phonies once again. Both sides do it. We need to admit that. We'd be better persons for doing it. Please join me in my better late than never outrage at children being incinerated by these drones.

    Thanks for your consideration. And concern.

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  153. DocAmazing4:16 PM

    "We were no longer following those particular orders!"

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  154. DocAmazing4:32 PM

    That is her sole comfort.

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  155. I heard the argument that it was white people who ended slavery, why are black people so ungrateful? Sort of the same argument.

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  156. http://simpsonswiki.com/w/images/thumb/6/6b/Bart_Gets_Booted_-_Bart_vs._Australia.png/250px-Bart_Gets_Booted_-_Bart_vs._Australia.png

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  157. I realize it's only Feinstein, but that quote from her in 2002 that the Noise Machine is spreading around is pure Breitbart decontextualizing bullshit. It comes from an argument where the extreme new things they want to do after 9/11 are like following suspicious financial trails and tightening up the border patrol, not "enhanced interrogation". Further in my little bit on John Yoo.

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  158. Not to mention the perpetual war they and the French and Germans and Italians left when they were chopping up Africa.

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  159. Maybe Boot didn't join up because he already had a discharge http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwi/communicablediseases/chapter7.html

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  160. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:19 PM

    I'll give you a fin to put with that...

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  161. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:28 PM

    Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are
    found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for
    prosecution.”
    - Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, 1984
    Address to the Nation upon signing the UN Convention On Torture


    From a post at stonekettle, and a righteous rant it is...

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  162. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:52 PM

    Being exceptional means never having to say you fucked up...

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  163. AGoodQuestion11:29 PM

    It's been said that American Jews live like WASPs and vote like Puerto Ricans. At the very least Boot distances himself from that second part.

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  164. AGoodQuestion11:29 PM

    That's not really the kind of Wild and Crazy we were looking for.

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  165. AGoodQuestion11:39 PM

    Predictable congressional grandstanding should be saved for mouthy economists who consulted on the ACA.

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  166. AGoodQuestion11:44 PM

    Some would say easier, if you can imagine.

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  167. Hunky,

    I'm not sure this is right. D'Souza is from the land of the fine distinctions, from wheaten-skinned down to untouchables. Bile flows down and wealth flows up. That's what he's bringing to America; he didn't adopt anything here.
    Rand, similarly, brought her load of shit with her. I'm not absolutely sure of its identity, but to a first approximation I think it's envy of not quite arrived Wealthy Russian Jews of the briefly successful Russian capitalist industrialization. She wanted to be an arriviste, but failed, first because her parents failed at it, but also because that dream destroyed itself and collapsed into a very ugly war and then revolution.

    In both cases they feel superior to their adopted land. They hold America in contempt, and show it in every word they write.

    They understand American values very well, and they oppose them.

    -dlj.

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  168. The Italians and the French at least had the grace to lose, though at huge sacrifice by the Nilotics and Arabs who beat them.

    The Germans lost the Battle of Versailles, but then they were out of their league there, putting up decent German Social Democrats to fight the monstrous Foch, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George, the trio who created Hitler.
    The English, however, with more experience and less compunction in war than the others, carried out larger crimes, killed more, destroyed more good and decent cultures, and left more lasting damage than any of the above.
    Only the unpublicised Belgians, who nurture a public image as bland and pseudo-democratic as the English, approach the Brits in viciousness and in the degree of damage they left behind. Cutting off hands in war, a crime for which Charles Taylor is being punished, is a Belgian innovation of the 1880's, only recently copied by African monsters like Taylor.

    In both East and West Africa the English came up against civilizations, the Ashanti and the Baganda, every bit as civil as their own. Both were decent monarchies like Victoria's, agriculturally competent, and, well, civil. Unlike England they were not in the habit of gunning down any bunch of furriners they ran into. The Maxim gun? They hadn't got.
    Which is why East and West Africa are what they are today -- recovering, but, like China, only now recovering from a century of Western intrusion.

    -dlj.

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  169. Yes, yes, and yes. And when D'Souza and Gingrich call Obama "anti-colonial" and think they've said something bad about him--just wish they were telling the truth.

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  170. Chutney Taco Bell12:46 PM


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    See it for yourself, here C­a­re­e­r-re­p­o­r­t­­.c­o­­­m

    ReplyDelete