In this post, I mentioned that I hadn’t seen any commentary from pro-war bloggers on reports that the US will spend no more on Iraqi infrastructure once the current allocation of $18 billion, most of which was diverted to military projects, is exhausted. Although there was lengthy discussion both here and at Crooked Timber, no one pointed to any examples of comments on the topic.
I said at the time I didn’t want to get into a “Silence of the Hawks” pointscoring exercise on this. As a general rule, no particular blogger is obliged to post on any particular topic. But I would have thought, if you made it your business to report regularly on Iraqi reconstruction, that such a report was worth covering or correcting.
The Winds of Change website gives a weekly report on Iraq, with a focus on reconstruction news. It appears to be a successor to Chrenkoff’s Good News from Iraq, though less relentlessly upbeat. This week’s report contains no mention of the end of reconstruction funding. In case the WOC editors missed it, the WP report is here.
Update Armed Liberal at WoC responds (graciously) to this provocation, calling the Administration’s decision “bizarre” and pointing to an earlier critique of the wiretapping policy. That still leaves the policy undefended, so I thought I’d try again.
Instapundit is usually quick to disseminate pro-Administration talking points (for example on wiretapping) and has posted regularly on Iraqi reconstruction. Only a month ago, Instapundit linked to an Austin Bay post headed (rather ironically in retrospect) The White House Finally Gets Serious About Iraqi Reconstruction. So, now that the nature of “seriousness” in the White House has become clear, does Glenn Reynolds support the cessation of reconstruction funding? Does anybody? End update
Oddly enough WOC links to a WP piece from October 2004 on the diversion of funds to military purposes with the revealing quote
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in a written statement that the administration always knew that “reconstructing Iraq’s infrastructure would require enormous resources beyond what the Congress appropriated — after 30 years of neglect, decay and corruption.”
Whitman said the United States is working to ensure it is “not starting any project without finishing it.”
Presumably that statement does not apply to the big project of building a “peaceful and prosperous” Iraq.
Winds of Change has done a more reasonable job than many of presenting a case for war, but they’ve relied heavily on the assumption that the Administration is committed to the task of leaving Iraq, in its own words “peaceful and prosperous”. Now that the second of these goals has been abandoned, thereby undermining the first (which in any case looks further away than ever), I’d be interested to know if their views have changed.
A final note on all this is that Kim Beazley, has finally called for the withdrawal of Coalition troops from Iraq, arguing, correctly in my view, that their presence is doing more harm than good. Given Beazley’s extreme caution and love of all things military, he must really believe that the whole project is beyond any chance of redemption.
John Quiggin 
Yes, complete silence from the braying claque of bunker-hunkered geopoliticians, pink mist-addicted voyeurs, chicken-hawks and assorted true believers in the “Revolution in Military Affairs.”.
If any members of this dysfunctional community had any intellectual honesty they’d be reviewing how the came to get it all so wrong.
Here are some useful headings:
1. How did you come to believe that the Iraq adventure would end in anything but tears?
2. When did you start to doubt your own confidence?
3. Did you find yourself going into denial?
4. If so, provide examples of how denial was manifested.
5. How did you achieve acceptance?
6. Where is the “Central Front in the War Against Terror” now?
And finally, welcome to the Reality-Based Community.
In Defining Victory Down P1, JQ specifically asked: “I’m not interested in a “silence of the hawksâ€? pointscoring exercise, but I’d really be interested to know what supporters of the war have made of this”
As usual Katz, you insist on petty point scoring.
No W by W. They’re BIG points.
Because over at Winds of Change, big boosters of Bush’s Awfully Big Adventure
http://www.windsofchange.net/
they’re calling this “bizarre” decision “catstrophic”.
So you can see W by W, painfully Winds of change are getting over their denial. Because they know that Bush has pushed all his chips onto the table and he’s just thrown snake-eyes.
And as you can see from my previous posy W by W I’ve posed some challenging questions to help pro-war folks to work through their grief.
I pose these questions in the spirit enunciated by JQ. To wit:
“I’d really be interested to know what supporters of the war have made of this [news of abandoning Iraq reconstruction],”
W by W, they say confession’s good for the soul.
Wanna try to answer them yourself?
(Sigh)…….What does it say about the Left today when their eyes positively bulge at the prospect of a 3rd world nation imploding, if it means they can feel warm and fuzzy inside for the first time in years?
(sigh)…..What does it say about the Right today when they are proud that they are the cause of a 3rd world nation imploding, if it means they can feel warm and fuzzy inside for the first time in years?
Pablo, I guess it would be too much to ask for you to stay on topic and to explain your attitude to the Bush administration’s decision to abandon funding Iraq’s reconstruction.
I give up Pablo. What “does it say about the Left”?
Here are your thoughts extracted from another thread about the the fate of 3rd World nations in what appears to be your hoped for scenario of US domination:
“Only for the US government of the day to be slagged off, criticised, and hurt in US domestic politics?
No, a future US government won’t intervene on the ground.
A future US government will simply drop bombs from afar.
Cheap, no casualities, and quick enough for people to mentally digest and forget before the TV ‘news’ sports and weather segment.”
You seem to be achieving a degree of tumescence for yourself over the prospect of indiscriminate revenge bombing for the delight of US TV viewers.
In this scenario you have constructed a sad example of RWDB snuff porn.
And you’re so far into denial that you can’t acknowledge that the world you describe can never exist. You can’t acknowledge that the US and the rest of the world needs Iraq. That nation sits on top of almost the biggest lake of oil in the world. How could it be possible to exploit that resource were the US to follow your absurd policy?
Were you just an isolated fantasist I wouldn’t bother responding to your drivel. But the problem is Pablo your thinking is a crude reflection of policymaking briefly dominant in the Pentagon and the White House.
The current fiasco in Iraq and the dire position of the US in much of the world is a product of thinking scarily similar to yours.
Pable: What does it say about the Left today when their eyes positively bulge at the prospect of a 3rd world nation imploding, if it means they can feel warm and fuzzy inside for the first time in years?
Resposne: what does it say about the American Right that they precipitated the implosion of a 3rd world nation (and incidentally a loss of American life that will almost definitely end up exceeding that of September 11, 2001) to show how tough they were?
Jesus, when Ronnie Reagan wanted to reassert his manhood after Vietnam he picked Granada and Panama. Surely there was some tiny meso-American or Caribbean state you could have terrorised?
Or if you had to attack an arab state why not pick Sudan, Osama Bin Laden’s former hang-out? (BTW, don’t bothet trying to hihack the thread with the “Clinton let Bin Laden Go” nonsense – it’s been debunked too many times already.)
John, I remain unconvinced bythe arguments for immediate Allied withdrawal.
As things stand, the US military presence seems to be the only thing preventing the secession of Kurdistan and a full-scale assault on the Sunni minority by the Sunni fundamentalists who now dominated the Iraqi government and security forces.
As a matter of abstract principle, I support self-determination for Kurdistan. What I DON’T support is the current campaign of political repression inside Kurdistan (funny how that hardly ever makes it to the “liberal mainstream media”) and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of non-kurds from the Mosul area. Hundreds of Sunnis and Turkmen (mostly young men of military age) have been arrested in Mosul and “disappeared”.
If Kurdistan secedes I expect that figure to escalate dramatically (I also expect the Mosul oil-fields to be effectively shut down for months or years plunging the Iraqis, Kurds and non-kurds alike, further into poverty.)
Kats would love to answer the questions you pose, though I’m sure there are many people more articulate and have a greater sophisticated knowledge to answer and rebut your contention(s).
I for one, keep coming back to the position that Saddam was never going to live forever. And the Shia and the Kurds and possibly the Islamists, were never going to peacefully accept succession to the sons (who most likely would have been in immediate conflict themselves).
In the end, the US and the West inevitably would have been dragged into a civil war. At the moment, the civil war is an option, but there are political constraints in place to minimise this scenario.
As to the US reducing funding to Iraq. As with its reduction of military forces on the ground, could both proposals be seen that Iraq is basically on track for some sort of normality? The Government is in place, the Iraqi police and military structures are developing. Other systems of government, health and education are markedly improved.
Sure there remain problems, but Iraq has a history of volatility, of which this period is but a chapter.
“In the end, the US and the West inevitably would have been dragged into a civil war. At the moment, the civil war is an option, but there are political constraints in place to minimise this scenario.”
So Weekly, you never bought the WMD argument, or the assertion that Saddam’s Iraq was an al Qaeda training ground.* If not, then why the big hurry? As you say, Saddam couldn’t live forever. What was wrong with the US waiting for a more propitious moment to intervene in Iraq?
“As to the US reducing funding to Iraq. As with its reduction of military forces on the ground, could both proposals be seen that Iraq is basically on track for some sort of normality? The Government is in place, the Iraqi police and military structures are developing. Other systems of government, health and education are markedly improved.”
Here’s the parallel bit from Nixon’s “Vietnamization Speech”, 23 Jan 1973.
“First, to the people and Government of South Vietnam: By your courage, by your sacrifice, you have won the precious right to determine your own future and you have developed the strength to defend that right. We look forward to working with you in the future, friends in peace as we have been allies in war.”
Government is in place? CHECK!
Police and military structures are developing? CHECK!
Other systems of government, health and education are markedly improved? CHECK!
Denial. Denial, Denial. Denial.
*[BTW, did they ever find Wee Johnnie Howard’s Dreaded Human Shredding Machine?]
Kats you asked some more questions:
“So Weekly, you never bought the WMD argument, or the assertion that Saddam’s Iraq was an al Qaeda training ground.”
I did given the considerable circumstantial evidence that existed! And so did Scott Ritter and so did Richard Butler when they were Chief UN weapons inspectors. If the issue of the WMDs was a con, then why didn’t the US just conveniently plant some in front of the Hilton in downtown Bagdad before the international media?
And there is evidence that Saddam had provided support to groups (Al Qaeda like). Will find the link and re-post.
“What was wrong with the US waiting for a more propitious moment to intervene in Iraq?”
Odd comment Katz; you support an invasion of Iraq given the right conditions?
Thank you for pointing out parallels with Nixon. Can’t claim to have been aware of the comparison when I made the earlier comments, but will take it nonetheless.
“BTW, did they ever find Wee Johnnie Howard’s Dreaded Human Shredding Machine?”
Yes: its called Abu Mussab al-Zakawi
“Odd comment Katz; you support an invasion of Iraq given the right conditions?’
Never say never, Weekly. For example, I favoured invasion of Afghanistan.
“BTW, did they ever find Wee Johnnie Howard’s Dreaded Human Shredding Machine?â€?
Yes: its called Abu Mussab al-Zakawi ”
That’s just silly. The Rodent stood up in Parliament and asserted that he had certain knowledge of Saddam Hussein’s “human shredding machine’. He said it be before anyone knew of the existence of Zaqawi.
John Howard, televised adressed to the nation, 20 March 2003.
“This week, the Times of London detailed the use of a human shredding machine as a vehicle for putting to death critics of Saddam Hussein. This is the man, this is the apparatus of terror we are dealing with.”
http://www.australianpolitics.com/news/2003/03/03-03-20c.shtml
Add the human shredder to the stolen humidicribs of GWI and the crucified canadian soldier of WWI.
Katz, Howard clearly references the Times re: the shredding Machine
“This week, the Times of London detailed the use of a human shredding machine as a vehicle for putting to death critics of Saddam Hussein.”
So it wasn’t Howard’s afterall.
Plus, have you read the transcript at http://www.australianpolitics.com/news/2003/03/03-03-20c.shtml
Reads more convincing now than when he delivered it!
As things stand, the US military presence seems to be the only thing preventing the secession of Kurdistan and a full-scale assault on the Sunni minority by the Sunni fundamentalists who now dominated the Iraqi government and security forces.
But that’s basically a matter of when not if. In the meantime, troops get shot up and nothing positive happens.
And there is evidence that Saddam had provided support to groups (Al Qaeda like). Will find the link and re-post.
This will be a good one, I’ll wait for this one with bated breath. In the meantime, have a read of this.
I think it is funny how the US could photograph Habib at a training camp yet hasn’t got one photo of any camps in Iraq.
don’t you think if the US had photos they would have produced by now after all it isn’t hard to photograph there!
>As to the US reducing funding to Iraq. As with its reduction of military forces on the ground, could both proposals be seen that Iraq is basically on track for some sort of normality? The Government is in place, the Iraqi police and military structures are developing. Other systems of government, health and education are markedly improved.
The number of attacks targetting Iraqi civilians is increasing not decreasing, as are the fatalities in such attacks.
Petrol exports peaked over a year ago and have been declining in volume terms ever since (higher oil prices have offset some of that decline).
Electricity production peaked a year ago.
There is little if any evidence of any improvement in Iraq.
Wilful, so the CIA was wrong to start with – and that was bad. Now you say they are right now? How can you be so sure? Is the CIA only RIGHT when you say it is?
As for Katz earlier about Saddam and Al Qaeda:
What about this:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040624-112921-3401r.htm
this is an especially good one: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110006953
and this one (though from 2003) http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/033jgqyi.asp
>In the end, the US and the West inevitably would have been dragged into a civil war.
The overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in the 1950’s wasn;t follwoed by a civil war, neither was the Baathist overthrow of the military dictatorship in the 1970’s or Saddam’s coup against his fellow Ba’athists a few years later.
Neither did the abortive Shia uprising after the Gulf War.
The US government spent the 1990’s pursuing what was referred to as the “Sunni General” option i.e. trying to forment a military coup from with the Sunni/Baathist establishment.
Had Saddam died, such a coup would have been the most likely outcome – as nationalists many Baathists had to be unhappy withe the impact of sanctions on Iraq’s military power and woudl probably have supported the removal of Saddam’s inner circle if that were the cost of restoring normal relations with the US and ending sanctions.
Willful – I’d rather be shot next week than shot today.
Staving off civil war – with it’s likely consequences of hundreds of thousands of dead, extended disruption of oil exports and destabilisation of surrounding countries – may not sound as attractive “ending the tyranny” but it’s still a valid argument.
I think the world community needs to admit that a USwithdrawal from Iraq would be as catastrophic as the initial invasion and take steps to:
a. support the US presence and
b. develop a policy that will actually work to establish that “free and prosperous Iraq” we all want to see.
I think Australia, the UK and the other partners in the so-called Coalition of the Willing hve a particular obligation to step up their military contribution to Iraq.
I fear it is no longer realistic to hope for other countries to provide troops. But they can, for example, support the US by taking a larger role in Afghanistan and by providing more reconstruction aid.
I’m not sure that the death of Saddam would have led to a revolutionary coup. After 1991, the Ba’ath party still wielded enough power in the army to quash the Shia rebellions and retain power, and this was after a bit of a pasting from the coaltion forces. Anyway, its all academic now.
Iraq is a mess. The people still live in fear, except now they have less food, water and electricity. Regardless of whether you’re a RWDB or a left-‘whinger’ , something needs to be done instead of focussing on political pointscoring.
So, the next question is how do you rebuild an (almost) completely gutted nation in this new era of globalisation and Charles Darwinomics? After WWII, the rebuilding of Japan and Germany was accomplished by unprecedented investment and trade concessions by the Allies (primarily the US), but I don’t see any kind of meaningful investment being made in Iraq by the ‘Coalition’, nor is there any talk of future trading arrangements regarding oil or any other commodity. Anyone got any ideas?
IGould:
What does it say about the American Right that they precipitated the implosion of a 3rd world nation (and incidentally a loss of American life that will almost definitely end up exceeding that of September 11, 2001) to show how tough they were?
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I guess it demonstrates they actually are pretty tough! 🙂 Seriously.
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On Iraq, the difference between the political Right and the Left is that the Right is trying to stabilise Iraq right now. The Left wants to see the Iraq project fall apart to achieve a nihilistic, emotional satisfaction against the backdrop of the ‘New Right’ dismantling the dreams of the 60’s Left back home.
>Anyone got any ideas?
In one of my first posts here I suggested paying US$500 or $1,000 directly to every Iraq family (at an approximate cost of US$2.5-5 billion) to kick-start domestic demand.
Mind you, it is nice when I see people who are a mixture between Right and Left, it’s refreshing. Nice to know that there are many people who aren’t so ideological (as people like myself, be they Right or Left). 🙂
“The Left wants to see the Iraq project fall apart to achieve a nihilistic, emotional satisfaction against the backdrop of the ‘New Right’ dismantling the dreams of the 60’s Left back home.”
Man knows me better than I know myself! How did he find out?
DTiley:
‘Man knows me better than I know myself! How did he find out?’
====
Yeeeeaaaars of research, and direct exposure to the Left. 🙂
Katz and there is this one also re: Saddam and Al Qaeda:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/550kmbzd.asp
and this one too:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/566igaww.asp
Weekly, only a very naive person would assume that governments remain simon pure in their relations with terrorists.
Here’s one for you. It’s a story about US contacts with Iraqi “insurgents”. (Yesterday they were “terrorists”). Remember, these folks are killing US soldiers as we speak. (Kissinger was talking to the North Vietnamese in secret too back in the early 1970s. No one told the South Vietnamese or the Australians.)
http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=N07351070
So I guess the US should invade itself for declining to hunt down terrorists and killing them on the spot. (They might win that one.)
Which brings me to the nub of the issue. The point about fighting wars is to win them. Smart administrations construct war aims that are achievable. And even then they construct exit strategies in case things go wrong.
Now let’s look at Bush:
Achievable war aims? NUP.
Credible exit strategy? NUP.
Tens of thousands of RWDBs worldwide in various stages of denial and despair? YOU BET.
Katz, it seems that you are set in concrete boots on this issue. You’ll find it hard to swim with those.
Despite putting up some counter views, which bona fide oppose yours, you don’t at least acknowledge that views contrary to yours hold some validity. Isn’t that called bias, or at least intellectual immaturity?
Ian said:
It’s nice in principle, but IMHO it may be difficult to implement. I know that a new currency was introduced in Iraq after the invasion, but I haven’t heard anything about the banking system (in either the Saddam or post-invasion days). Has anyone heard anything about it?
If a banking system does exist, then Ian’s suggestion looks like a good one to me.
Alpaca, most of the Iraqi population would either be enrolled in the government ration program or on the electoral roll.
Realistically you have to figure in a significant element of fraud but even so I think you could reach the majority of Iraqi families.
Weekly, if you want to construct a straw man to argue your arid points feel free to do so. Just don’t give your feeble creation my name.
Just for the record I never denied that Saddam had dealings with terrorists. Many nations do.
The issue is, as JQ first set it: what do supporters of the Iraq War think about the Bush administration’s cessation of reconstruction aid for Iraq?
Katz,
If you insist on wallowing in triumphalism, I am happy to provide my answer to your six questions, however leading they are. As you may remember, I supported the original invasion and, as a side note, I still believe that, based on what we knew, or believed we knew, then it was right. With the benfit of hind sight, it was probably wrong.
1. All wars will naturally end in tears for many, so the question you are really putting is – How did you come to believe that the Iraq adventure would end in anything but tears for the US and other coalition governments? My answer is clear – the ‘adventure’ is not over and any judgement yet is grossly premature. The only way we will know will be in 20 to 30 years or so.
2. I started to doubt at the beginning – I always have doubts about government action; that is why I believe I sit on the liberal right.
3. Never.
4. N/A.
5. N/A
6. The central front in the war on terror is where it always was – Islamic terrorism, like all others, is rooted in poverty (normally relative poverty, rather than absolute) and repression. It is the reduction of these (mainly the second) that will, in the long term, reduce terrorism. The agenda of the liberal right is to reduce both of these.
Thanks for the welcome – perhaps I will see you there sometime; but, given the triumphalism, somehow I doubt it.
Andrew Reynolds has set a fine example.
He’s admitted his mistake, which was to conflate “morally right” with “intelligent”. He still thinks that the invasion was morally right. He now doubts its intelligence.
Just three more questions Andrew:
1. Do you believe that the Iraq invasion has lengthened the time before success might have been achieved in the GWOT?
2. What do you think about your erstwhile fellow-travelling proponents of the war? Many of them disagree profoundly with you. You claim that terrorism is “rooted in poverty (normally relative poverty, rather than absolute) and repression.’ (I happen to agree with you.) Many on the Right claim that terrorism inheres in Islam and that these folks are impervious to the benefits of freedom and prosperity.
3. Given the course of the GWOT, do you see libertarians and ethnocentrists dividing seriously over means and ends? (How did libertarians like yourself end up on their side in the first place?)
Katz,
I do not doubt the intelligence of the decision to go to war, but clearly at least part of the decision was based on faulty intelligence, as in information.
Answers, then.
1. No – the jury is still out on this and, like all social science experiments, it will be debated ad nauseum until long after we are both dead. Personally, I believe it has increased its immediate intensity while reducing its long term life – provided it acts to reduce the repression in the Middle East. While in the main in the ME it appears to be working – many of the regimes are being forced to open up, even if only a little – the real worry is now Iran – but I do not think that this process has been accelerated much by the Iraq situation.
2. I have stated my belief. What others believe is up to them. I believe in the freedom to disagree.
3. Two questions here, really – so:
3a. I am not sure what you mean by ‘ethnocentrist’ in this case, but the right, like the left, has always been divided between the socially conservative and the socially liberal. We disagree frequently, as do the ‘old’ left and the ‘new’ left.
3b. Some libertarians (in as much as I can speak for them) are sufficiently suspicious of government action to oppose almost all of it. Call me naive, but I believe that there is still a role (if a small one) for government in correcting its mistakes. We in the West at the very least partially supported the Baathist dictatorship for a long time. Correcting that mistake I saw as one of the aims of the invasion – or at least it should have been.
Perhaps I was wrong, though and should have been more suspicious of government action.
Perhaps you on the left could be, too.
The US Government’s own Energy Information Agency is predicting:
“Most analysts believe that there will be no major additions to Iraqi production capacity for at least two-three years, with Shell’s vice-president recently stating that any auction of Iraqi’s oilfields was unlikely before 2007.”
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__business&articleid=260957
That’s from current level of circa 1.9 million barrels per day – approximately 15% below 1990’s levels.
At this point virtually the entire Iraqi economy seems to consist of the oil industry, reconstruction projects funded by international aid and “security” operations which seem to merge with a thriving criminal sector focusing on kidnapping and extortion.
Thanks Andrew.
In your response to my first question, do you disagree with many proponents of the US war on Iraq when they say that withdrawal wil be “disastrous” and “catastrophic”. If the US does not withdraw, and if the US chooses not to fund reconstruction, what might the US do in Iraq that could be said to prosecute effectively the GWOT?
My second question, in relation to the decision to invade Iraq, was more concerned with who took whom for a ride? Mostly were the non-libertarians the dupes of the libertarians, or vice versa, in your opinion? I take it that you endorse many of the neocon positions. Yet the neocons have been pushed out of policymaking by so-called “realists”. Is this a good thing?
As a left libertarian I bow to no one in my suspicion of government. The very idea that a government led by Cheney and Bush could be mistaken for an agent of liberty is utterly bizarre.
Katz, firstly, your Jihadi Allies in Iraq have not ‘won’, so don’t jump the gun like you guys did 2 hours after polls closed in the 2004 US election…..
.
Second, what is the practical point of the Left jittering on about ’causes for the war’ at this stage? The Left didn’t stop the war in the streets, at the UN, in opposition politics, at the Hague, at subsequent elections, didn’t defeat the people who made it happen, so what is the point now? It’s as if yabbering on about the 1066 Norman invasion of England on the internet will reverse the 1066 invasion from having happened.
.
On the other hand…..Lefties might be THAT GOOD at arguing, so who knows?
Katz,
I am perplexed on this phrase ‘left libertarian’. Does that mean you do not trust the government with your social life, but you do with economics? If that is the case then I find that a touch on the bizarre side. As an aside, I also find the opposite view, traditionally called ‘conservative’ a bit odd.
I do think that withdrawal now would be a step back – and a politically motivated one, drawn by the isolationist tendency in the US which the US President may feel he now has to pander to. I also think it would be a step back in the GWOT – and be taken by the militants in the same way as the withdrawal from Lebanon in 1982 was – as a sign of weakness, which, in essence, it would be.
On the question of who was a dupe – I do not believe that anyone was ‘duped’ by the other political side. I feel there was a genuine belief that WMD would be found because politically, and has it has turned out, it would be difficult if they were not found. There was also certainty that Saddam was a destabilising force and, due to his contribution to the repression in the Middle East, his removal would contribute to the overall GWOT, even if he was not guilty of directly helping the Jihadi.
I try to avoid using labels for others than myself. What do you see as the positions of the ‘neo-cons’ and the ‘realists’ so that I can answer your further question?
Excellent point AReynolds on the ‘Left libertarian’ call.
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Also, on the use of the word ‘conservatives’, does it not occur to Leftists that they are now the ‘conservatives’, trying to defend an existing economic and social order? They fight to keep the status quo. A cultural and economic status quo that they themselves created in the 1960’s and 1970’s when the Left was ascendent.
.
It’s the young today who are the most Rightwing generation, since, well, their grandparents. 62% of 25-30 year old Australian males voted Coalition at the last Federal election. ‘No you can’t fool the children of the Revolution’ 🙂
On the issue of duping. Read this. Believe me, it’s a fascinating read.
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=51202
Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski was the person responsible for constructing the lies Cheney and Rumsfeld used to justify invasion of Iraq.
Kwiatkowski was a right winger and a true believer until she perceived her role. she is still a right winger but is now contemptuous of the Bush administration.
Of course punters like us couldn’t know what was going on behind the scenes. Nevertheless there were sufficient straws in the wind to indicate that an elaborate ruse was beng concocted. For example the botched effort to foist Niger yellowcake on to the world as evidence of a smoking gun.
Left libertarianism is well enough known. Google it.
Andrew
Were you really unaware that there is such a thing as left libertarianism? Perhaps you were aware of it, but were trying to make out that it’s some kind of self-evident contradiction in terms. But it’s not, unless you take it for granted that market interactions are by definition the opposite of centralised power and hierarchy. In that case, you need to know that there is a venerable tradition of libertarian thought that distrusts the market as much as the state, in terms of its ability to protect liberties and meet human needs. You may choose not to embrace this school of thought – I don’t particularly – but at least you can recognise it as a respectable intellectual position. In any case, I suspect you’re being playfully disingenuous.
Andrew:’ I am perplexed on this phrase ‘left libertarian’ ”
How about the phrase anarcho-syndicalism? I suspect that’s close enough to Katz’s meaning.
To expand slightly: left libertarians are equally distrustful of big business and government and generally want to expropriate and redistribute the assets of big business and convert companies into worker-owned co-operatives.
‘Left libertarianism is well enough known. Google it’.
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Katz, I googled and all I found was “How to enforce the practical application of political correctness upon a Western population, while taxing them up to their eyeballs for our enlightened leadership’.
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To expand slightly: left libertarians are equally distrustful of big business and government and generally want to expropriate and redistribute the assets of big business and convert companies into worker-owned co-operatives.
====
So, um, it’s just the rebranding of Marxists. 😦
“Marxism Max, maximum taste, zero sugar!”
Pablo, search this site for “conservative” and you’ll find that, however original your insights may seem to you, they’ve been discussed here for years.
Katz you reference (again) Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski via http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=51202
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence dismissed her allegations as baseless in its report on pre-war intelligence (pp. 282-283).
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kwiatkowski
Whose with the strawpersons this time 🙂
That would be the Republican-controlled Senate, W by W? You must learn how to do better than that.
“Pablo, search this site for “conservativeâ€? and you’ll find that, however original your insights may seem to you, they’ve been discussed here for years”.
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Well, that makes you JQuiggin, as a Leftwing social theorist raging against the dying of the light, quite a “conservative” in John Howard’s Australia. 🙂