Monday, May 23, 2005
Oh the Humanity
Let's see here: There is no end to the horror. We've gone from the U.S. getting bogged down in a quagmire during the brutal Afghan winter to the U.S. causing 250,000 casualties among Iraqi civilians to the U.S. causing 1,000,000 civilian refugees to the U.S. causing a civil war to the U.S. torturing non-POWs by taking unflattering/embarrassing/humiliating photos of them to the U.S. flushing a Koran down the pipes to the U.S. taking photos of His Majesty Saddam in his undies. Pretty soon "torture" will be the lack of super-soft toilet tissue and the use of naughty words and cigarette smoking in full view of Iraqi kids under 21. The mass graves? That's old news. And the mainstream journalists---ignorant, stupid, lazy, dishonest, biased, and arrogant---just cannot fathom why anyone would pay attention to a bunch of lazy loudmouths writing commentary in their pajamas. Any photos of them? I hope not: That would be torture.
What? Are you on the sauce?
ReplyDeleteHey, JFE, welcome to the passion of Dr. Ben Zycher, one of our country's great economists.
ReplyDeleteOr would you prefer a green-eyeshade pocket-protector geek crunchin' your national numbers? The choice is yours.
I'm sure Mr. (or is it Dr?) Zycher is a fabulous economist. I am terrible at economics, and would not presume to question his ability in it. Writing, however, is one thing I do exceedingly well, and as such was the thrust of my comment. Putting aside its nonsensical nature, such a run-on sentence as comprised the meat of his post is hardly befitting a site that prides itself on correcting others on their grammar.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Jim
Well, perhaps you're right: consider the sauce.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking purely as a matter of technique, I rather liked the run-on sentence. I think Ben's writing overall is quite good.—STK
ReplyDeleteThose who rail against the mainstream media's coverage of the war sound to me like the "It's all about politics" Clinton apologists of a few years ago, during the impeachment proceedings. Just as the Clintonistas refused to address the real matter of a President lying under oath, today's neoconservatives just don't want to deal with our having kicked the proverbial hornet's nest in Iraq, when in retrospect there very apparently was no present danger to U. S. intersts that would justify our having done so, leaving us in a nation-building quagmire (sound familiar?) that simply does not warrant the spillage of American blood. THAT is the real issue here, and it's consequently hard to get traditional conservatives such as yours truly excited about the New York Times not playing nice, which we are quite used to in any event.
ReplyDeleteCut your links to anyone who is "me first" in their private life, it is only a matter of time until it is your turn to be sold out.
ReplyDeleteMay as well stay home on election day then.
"It doesn't matter," you say, tlaloc? The trouble with this simplistic masquerading as sophisticated judgment, of course, is that the "it" here is principle, and all that principle entails, which admittedly is perhaps very little in your apparently very utilitarian worldview.
ReplyDeleteYou rightfully decry Clinton's having sent rockets into the side of an aspirin factory in the Sudan. You wouldn't happen to remember the timing of that bit of mischief, would you? Well, it was just when the Lewinsky matter became ratcheted up to "High." If you don't think that there was a connection, then you constitute a group of approximately one amongst millions of self-proclaimed Clinton detractors. In any event, the portrait here is a fine illustration of why principle matters and character counts.
A last-year Midshipman at Annapolis (or any other U. S. military student, for that matter) is summarily dismissed from the Academy should he be caught looking at someone else's paper in an exam. Apparently you think that this is an overreaction, tlaloc; correct?
As far as the '80s guns for hostages Reagan administration scandal goes, you would do well to educate yourself on the matter before commenting on it. Firstly, the funds that Ollie North secured for the illegal selling of weaponry did not go to "...paramilitary groups that were renowned for raping and killing civilians." They went to Nicaragua's Contras, who were fighting the Soviet-supported communist Sandinistas (and who, by the way, with other, lawful U. S. support, won the conflict.)
Anyway, more to your point, the simple reason that impeachment proceedings were not commenced is not because the subject matter was judged not to be significant, but because there was scant if any evidence that higher-ups in the administration knew about the illegal activity that had been perpetrated. Do you not realize that Reagan himself, not Congress, initiated the investigation into the affair? He did so, of course, because he was a man of, yes indeed, principle.
On a final point, the next time you happen to speak with your "government drug running" information source, you might want to advise him that if he's willing to come forward not necessarily with proof, but with even so much as reasonable evidence, then he could undoubtedly cash in on the story big-time, because no one before him has ever done so.