Originally Posted by DenvilleSteve (Post 208429)

... Pakistan needs us as much as we need it. ...

Originally Posted by operative (Post 208456)

I'll be glad when we get to the real primary season and we can stick to talking about the real candidates (Pawlenty, Romney, Hunstman, hopefully Daniels) instead of the attention seekers (Gingrich, Santorum, Cain).

Originally Posted by ohreally (Post 208459)

Nice summary of the Republican predicament. Let's get the clowns out of the way (Gingrich, Santorum, Trump, Palin, Bachmann), so we can move to the human sleeping pills (Pawlenty and Romney). Can't wait to watch that Pawlenty-Romney debate. Ooh, the excitement! The "Bring Your Own Pillow" debates are the best!

Originally Posted by operative (Post 208461)

Don't forget Mitch Daniels (if his wife lets him run), a dynamic speaker if there ever was one ;)

I don't mind a lack of charisma though. We've had two plus years of terrible policies from an empty suit with a charisma; I will welcome a boring, bland candidate with a history of actually governing, making decisions, and understanding economics.

Originally Posted by DenvilleSteve (Post 208466)

what with all the spending cuts that have to be made in the years ahead, I don't think any of the republican candidates could govern the country. I could accept Obama if he was not so heck bent on allowing more immigrants to come in. Christie could govern, but you have to worry about his inexperience with FP.

Originally Posted by ohreally (Post 208455)

Corn is wrong. Obama's decision to kill OBL was a win-win. The worst case scenario? The helicopter crashed. Wait, the chopper did crash. OK, the worst case scenario is that a bunch of SEALS get killed while crashing an ISI-sponsored orgy for CIA agents, with no OBL in sight.

So what? Unlike in 1980, US soldiers are dying and choppers are crashing on a regular basis in AfPak. Just another ill-fated raid. Big deal. This has been going on for 10 years. Why would Americans hold it against Obama? So I don't think his decision required any political courage whatsoever. The comparison with Carter is entirely spurious.

Originally Posted by operative (Post 208469)

Why would you accept a candidate who derides negative liberty, believes in socialized medicine, an expanded welfare state, social justice, and corporatist policies?

Originally Posted by DenvilleSteve (Post 208476)

I figure the republican congress can keep Obama in check on a lot of the bad things he wants to do. Look how much the republicans were battered in Wisconsin when they started to try to reign in government. Multiply by a factor of 20 the resulting protests once food stamps, SSDI, unemployment, student loans and the EITC are reduced. The protests and public disruptions will not be as great if a democrat is president.

Originally Posted by bkjazfan (Post 208483)

Hold on now. Famed leftist Noam Chomsky said the assassination of OBL was cold blooded murder. He claims the alleged terrorist was as pure as the driven snow and had nothing to do with 9/11. Chomsky is also a Holocaust denier so his knowledge on the subject may be tainted.

Originally Posted by AemJeff (Post 208470)

Y This mission is an obvious, extreme attention magnet and was never going to be viewed as simply part of the context of a larger engagement.

Originally Posted by ohreally (Post 208485)

But if it had failed, it would NOT have become an attention magnet. Just another failed raid into a safe house. And if the SEALS had been captured, a deal would have been made with the ISI to let them go, just as they did with CIA operative Davis. We're at war, so people expect such screwups.

Originally Posted by ohreally (Post 208485)

But if it had failed, it would NOT have become an attention magnet. Just another failed raid into a safe house. And if the SEALS had been captured, a deal would have been made with the ISI to let them go, just as they did with CIA operative Davis. We're at war, so people expect such screwups. Very different from Carter's harebrained mission.

Originally Posted by Simon Willard (Post 208487)

Unaccustomed as I am to agreeing with ohreally, I think this is a good point. It's quite likely we would never have heard much of anything about this. The US would have said little or nothing, unless the failed operation was forced into the open by the Paks.

Originally Posted by AemJeff (Post 208489)

It seems pretty clear that the ISI isn't a wholly unified organization, and some of the factions are on opposite sides of a war. Holding Davis was a gambit, just as revealing CIA station chiefs' names occasionally has been. Nothing as explosive as attempt on OBL was involved with those events. How sure could a planner be sure that somebody there wouldn't see an advantage in leaking something as big as that?

Originally Posted by operative (Post 208480)

Interesting, and not a bad strategy, politically speaking. But remember that the longer Obama is in office, the greater the chance is that he gets to replace another SC Justice or two. If, on the other hand, Pawlenty or Daniels gets elected, there'd be a good chance that a sound, Originalist-leaning judge would be appointed, hopefully to fill Ginsberg's seat. That could have HUGE ramifications in the long term.

Originally Posted by badhatharry (Post 208493)

Note to Daniels: "Lose the combover."

Originally Posted by Simon Willard (Post 208492)

Right, but the US will just say "Yeah, we had some casualties in Pakistan, but we can't say any more about it". This is a case where the richly-deserved superiority of American credibility over Pakistani credibility would be exploited to dampen the concern and modulate public opinion in this country.

Originally Posted by AemJeff (Post 208488)

I didn't think Carter's mission was especially harebrained, they took a risk and it didn't work out. ... Carter rightfully bears the blame for the failure, but I think the scorn that's been heaped on him in hindsight is purely opportunistic.

Originally Posted by ohreally (Post 208499)

If you think Carter's mission was sound, then why should he be blamed? He took the right decision and it failed. If D-Day had failed, why should Roosevelt be blamed? He would have done the right thing under the circumstances.

My problem is that I cannot see for the life of me how that mission could have succeeded. Someone must have watched too many Rambo movies. There you have the US embassy, protected by the full might of the Iranian regime in the middle of Tehran, and you barge in with a few choppers and SEALS and expect smooth sailing. This is beyond insane. It's a good thing it failed so early else it would have been a bloodbath. Carter deserves the blame for a mission that was destined to fail.

Originally Posted by AemJeff (Post 208501)

It was mechanical failure that stopped them, not Iranian resistance - so I think speculation about what might have been, had they arrived in one piece, is awfully hypothetical.

Originally Posted by ohreally (Post 208499)

Someone must have watched too many Rambo movies.

Originally Posted by Simon Willard (Post 208487)

Unaccustomed as I am to agreeing with ohreally, I think this is a good point. It's quite likely we would never have heard much of anything about this. The US would have said little or nothing, unless the failed operation was forced into the open by the Paks.

Originally Posted by bkjazfan (Post 208483)

Hold on now. Famed leftist Noam Chomsky said the assassination of OBL was cold blooded murder.

Originally Posted by bkjazfan (Post 208483)

He claims the alleged terrorist was as pure as the driven snow and had nothing to do with 9/11.

Originally Posted by bkjazfan (Post 208483)

Chomsky is also a Holocaust denier so his knowledge on the subject may be tainted.

Originally Posted by ohreally (Post 208486)

When 18 months before an election, most people answer the question "Do you like Mr X" by saying "X who?" you can safely scratch that name. Daniels is DOA.

Something tells me that Republican leaders are reconciled with another Obama term. Obama has been carrying out Republican policies, both foreign and domestic, and has allowed Congress to move back to the R camp. They'll take a pass on '12, try to regain control of the Senate, and get Huntsman, Christie, Rubio, etc, ready for '16.

Originally Posted by TwinSwords (Post 208517)

Though it is not one I agree with, this is not exactly an unusual position. Indeed, on this point, Chomsky is in strong agreement with operative: No one in the forum has attacked the mission as an "extrajudicial execution" as frequently as he has. There are many others, on the left and right, in the forum and elsewhere, who share this view.



There are two claims here, and both are wildly inaccurate. You don't strike me as the malicious or mendacious type, so I'll assume you're just being sloppy and lazy. And I would suggest you read what Chomsky actually wrote in the controversial op-ed to which you allude; you will discover that Chomsky never said bin Laden "had nothing to do with 9/11." Indeed, even ten years ago, when smoke was still rising from the site of the attacks in New York, Chomsky said that belief that the attacks originated with bin Laden was "plausible, at least."

So, what did Chomsky say in the op-ed to which you refer? He expressed another conventional viewpoint shared by many others, that the evidence presented by the government to prove bin Laden's involvement in 9/11 fails to reach the standards of evidence required to obtain a conviction in a court of law. Andrew Sullivan describes this as Chomsky's belief that suspects are innocent until proven guilty -- a radical idea, to be sure, but not an uncommon one, and hopefully one still familiar to Americans.

Freddie deBoer, in responding to Christopher Hitchens' recent attack on Chomsky, says:



Your other claim, that Chomsky thinks bin Laden is "pure as the driven snow," is just as inaccurate and cannot be supported by anything Chomsky has ever said.



This is another lie. Chomsky has acknowledged the holocaust countless times. He's described it as "quite certainly real, there's no question about that." He has said the holocaust was "the most fantastic outburst of insanity in human history." He said "The Holocaust was the most extreme atrocity in human history, and we lose our humanity if we are even willing to enter the arena of debate with those who seek to deny or underplay Nazi crimes."

From these quotes, we can see that operative is lying, too, in his response to you.

Originally Posted by TwinSwords (Post 208517)

Though it is not one I agree with, this is not exactly an unusual position. Indeed, on this point, Chomsky is in strong agreement with operative: No one in the forum has attacked the mission as an "extrajudicial execution" as frequently as he has. There are many others, on the left and right, in the forum and elsewhere, who share this view.

Originally Posted by chiwhisoxx (Post 208526)

The Chomsky Holocaust kerfuffle comes from his signing a petition to allow a French historian to print some research in a magazine or something that allegedly shows the Holocaust didn't happen. Chomsky said he signed the petition because he wanted to protect the dudes free speech. Fine. If you believe in free speech, you have to believe some speech you don't like is tolerated. Problem is, Chomsky went to praise the guy (I think his name was Faurisson or something) as having done quite serious historical work, and that his research was worth taking seriously, and that the guy wasn't an anti-semite (when he was associated with neo-nazis). If you're going to defend him on free speech grounds, great. But don't pretend like Holocaust denying nonsense is something we have to take seriously.

Originally Posted by Ocean (Post 208535)

Ah, the problem of the one dimensional principle followers!

There's this common problem of someone holding one principle well above all else, and following that principle to its most extreme end, relatively disregarding other principles or considerations that would be in tension with it.

Originally Posted by chiwhisoxx (Post 208526)

The Chomsky Holocaust kerfuffle comes from his signing a petition to allow a French historian to print some research in a magazine or something that allegedly shows the Holocaust didn't happen. Chomsky said he signed the petition because he wanted to protect the dudes free speech. Fine. If you believe in free speech, you have to believe some speech you don't like is tolerated. Problem is, Chomsky went to praise the guy (I think his name was Faurisson or something) as having done quite serious historical work, and that his research was worth taking seriously, and that the guy wasn't an anti-semite (when he was associated with neo-nazis). If you're going to defend him on free speech grounds, great. But don't pretend like Holocaust denying nonsense is something we have to take seriously.