“Better Here Than In Yankton”

8 Comments

1. 

   Rudi

   October 18, 2006 | 7:02 pm

   Sanctorm is a mental lightweight, I hope the voters of Penn give him and Weldon the boot. It’s ironic that Rick uses LOTR to talk about Iraq, don’t the Religious Right want to ban Harry Potter for similar acceptance of pagan religions and practices. I guess CS Lewis is to complex for the JR Senator from Penn. I’m waiting for the FRC to denounce Rick’s approval of the Dark Force of Mordor.

2. 

   Tommy

   October 18, 2006 | 7:39 pm

   Lame argument. He would be better off making the case that Iraq isn’t a central front on the war on terror. Instead he opts to argue that it is morally reprehensible to fight terrorists on their home territory provided there are non-American civilians in that country who could be at risk. You’ve got to be a fool not to realize the full implications of that argument.

   Yet, Schraub seems to enjoy this intellectually lightweight site.

3. 

   David Schraub

   October 18, 2006 | 10:05 pm

   Tough talk, weak response. Yet it assumes that Iraq is a terror home base, which runs counter to how the entire argument is being presented. The whole premise is that “if we were in Malyasia, they’d fight us in Malyasia. If we were in the US, they’d fight us in the US. They don’t fight us because of where we are, they fight us because they hate us.” It isn’t premised on Iraq being some pre-invasion terrorist hotspot (which is empirically untrue). It also runs counter to the notion that these are “foreign elements.” And if they ARE domestic elements, then there needs to be some proof that the local insurgents had any interest in leaving Iraq to fight us, which doesn’t seem to match the dynamics of the conflict.

   I love intellectually strawweight commenters.

4. 

   two_shoes

   October 18, 2006 | 10:07 pm

   How is it that all analogies by republicans are more accurate in reverse?

5. 

   Rudi

   October 18, 2006 | 10:41 pm

   Tommy doesn’t address the fact that innocent Iraqis die in a fight against terrorism; the enemy isn’t fighting because of a “Global Jihad”, they are fighting other militias and an occupying force. But then the Sailer/Tommy argument is that they are non-white and of lower intelligence so it’s OK to kill ……

6. 

   C Stanley

   October 19, 2006 | 8:50 am

   The problem with this line of reasoning, from a moral perspective, is it basically justifies plunging any random country into chaos and destruction so they have to bear the brunt of al-Qaeda’s assualt instead of us.

   And the problem with this line of reasoning is that Iraq wasn’t “any random country”. It was a country that had been under the thumb of a dictator who killed his own people, who had been defying the international community for more than a decade, who was believed by that international community to have a WMD program. It was also a country with which we had been at war in ’91 a war that ended with a cease fire, not a treaty, and the terms of the cease fire were being regularly violated.

   If the aftermath of the Iraq invasion had been well planned (hell, if it had been planned at all) then the outcome and our opinion of it would have been very different. I believe the view in that scenario would have been that we had accomplished a great deal, in liberating Iraq from Saddam, creating a democratic govt in a region that desperately needs one, and also taking out a lot of terrorist leaders and demoralizing their cause.

   I won’t argue the point that the Bush administration oversold the links to GWOT to get public opinion and Congress to back him on the Iraq invasion, but don’t pretend that this was just a random targeted attempt to use Iraqis as shields in order to protect American civilians.

7. 

   Tommy

   October 19, 2006 | 9:39 pm

   Yet it assumes that Iraq is a terror home base, which runs counter to how the entire argument is being presented.

   No. Quite the opposite, the article presumes that it doesn’t matter where we fight the terrorists if we are endangering civilians caught in the crossfire in the process. The premise of the argument is that it is morally repugnant to endanger civilians by fighting terrorist in their backyard. The same argument could be applied to Afghanistan or any other country on the planet. The entire argument is one apart from the particular situation in Iraq. Like I said, he would have been better off making the case that Iraq was not a critical part of the war on terror, instead he jumps right on over to it being wrong to endanger civilians by fighting terrorism abroad period.

   I hate to steal the heart of a post but here it goes:

   The problem with this line of reasoning, from a moral perspective, is it basically justifies plunging any random country into chaos and destruction so they have to bear the brunt of al-Qaeda’s assualt instead of us. It effectively uses Iraqi civilians as human shields in our conflict with terrorism. If the terrorists who would have been attacking America are now attacking Iraq, then the counterfactual is that if we weren’t in Iraq, the terrorists wouldn’t be attacking Iraqi civilians either (because they’d be fighting us here).

   Now change that around to:

   The problem with this line of reasoning, from a moral perspective, is it basically justifies plunging any random country into chaos and destruction so they have to bear the brunt of al-Qaeda’s assualt instead of us. It effectively uses Afghan civilians as human shields in our conflict with terrorism. If the terrorists who would have been attacking America are now attacking Afghanistan, then the counterfactual is that if we weren’t in Afghanistan, the terrorists wouldn’t be attacking Afghan civilians either (because they’d be fighting us here).

   Finally,

   I love intellectually strawweight commenters.

   No doubt, being one yourself and all…

8. 

   Tommy

   October 19, 2006 | 9:43 pm

   But then the Sailer/Tommy argument is that they are non-white and of lower intelligence so it’s OK to kill ……

   Rudi,

   Sailer, like me, was opposed to the war in Iraq.