May 30, 2007

1938 Redux

Norman Podhoretz has an excellent, if chilling, essay on the growing threat from Iran over at OpinionJournal today.

I've been saying to anybody who will listen lately that whoever the next president turns out to be, he or she is going to have to deal seriously with the Iranians and probably fight them. Podhoretz's more dire scenarios suggest that we don't have the luxury of waiting until then to take action.

Go read all of it.

Posted by Robert at May 30, 2007 02:56 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Podhoretz's genocidal bloodlust is only paralleled by his complete insanity...

Posted by: LB Buddy at May 31, 2007 09:36 AM

Well LB, you only reinforce my belief that Iran will get nuclear weapons, that the rest of the Middle East will arm up with nuclear weapons, that Iran will be able to strap nuclear weapons to long range missles and, that there will be a nuclear exchange in the middle east. Nothing I have seen or heard prevents me from thinking it...
Bloodlust and insanity, eh? So sad, too bad when the bombs go off.
The only redeeming feature of this whole sick scenario is that you can work oil production facilities in air conditioned radiation suits...

Posted by: babs at May 31, 2007 10:17 AM

Well, LB Buddy, that's a compelling rebuttal, if by compelling rebuttal, you mean "ad hominem diatribe that doesn't even TRY to address the argument at hand".

Posted by: Boy Named Sous at May 31, 2007 06:20 PM

Normally when someone slaps on sandwich boards and screams about the end of Earth, I put my head down, whistle quietly to myself and walk quickly by. Since I have been accused of an ad hominem attack as opposed to using, you know, descriptors, I will flesh out my earlier comment to explain why his “arguments” should be discarded instead of addressed.

Norman Podhoretz has never seen a war he didn’t like. Every major situation the US has been in over the last 40 years, NP has come down on aggressive military intervention.

-He attacked Nixon and Kissenger from the right saying their policies were not bloodthirsty (!) enough in Vietnam and Cambodia.

-He supported the US position on East Timor, again claiming it didn’t go far enough.

-In the 70’s he blamed the lack of US resolve in warfare on teh gayz, particularly Alan Ginsberg and Gore Vidale.

-He was repeatedly frustrated by the fact that the US would not attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. I am assuming that even conservatives would agree that this falls under the VERY BAD IDEA category.

-He has accused Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II of being appeasers. The fact that every one of them has declared war on somebody was simply not enough for him. In addition he would systematically label anti-war protestors as traitors and blame them for any military losses (I know this is a sympathetic crowd for this particular position, but I find it disgusting).

-In 2002 in Commentary, he claimed we had to smash “willy-nilly” 5 or 6 Muslim governments before final victory (whatever that is) is achieved. Death tolls for such an approach would literally be in the millions, and BTW is the definition of genocide.

The fact that Podhoretz has a platform any larger than a street corner and a cardboard box, displays just how broken our current dialog is.

Posted by: LB Buddy at June 2, 2007 09:34 AM

Hey, thanks for the much more "fleshed-out" ad hominem. But explaining that his arguments should be ignored because of your "descriptors" of Podhoretz is STILL an ad hominem.

Posted by: Boy Named Sous at June 2, 2007 12:36 PM

You are correct, and I would argue that such an ad hominem is completely justified (which is what I was saying above). When someone has discredited themselves from serious discussions by being wrong over and over again, saying an attack is ad hominem cannot be used as a shield to force us to engage his newest madness, any more than I would have to take the newest writings of Il Jon Kim seriously.

Posted by: LB Buddy at June 3, 2007 06:53 PM