Let slip the moonbats of mayhem

CDR Salamander: So, let there be a cleaning

My favorite one-winger* lights another match to the Hindenburg:

On the Republicans. There is only one way to fix the Legislative Republican leadership problem; get a new leadership. Being that they refuse to police themselves, there is only one way to get rid of the present leadership – they must be defeated.

So, let slip the Moonbats of Mayhem. I know what I will get with a Dem House and Senate. They will open hearings against everyone but the Bush Twins. … Republicans will be humbled and shamed. The next two years will be full of divisive acrimony and the economy, already looking to cool a bit, will stagger through ’07 and mellow through ’08.

Let the Dems win in ’06. They don’t deserve to win – but the Republicans deserve to loose. Let them run wild for two years and then give the American people a choice in ’08.

Thank God for Phibian. Read the rest of his post.

JimK sees fires in Rome.

Here are a few more thoughts of my own on jumping ship:

  • A number of my conservative colleagues have noted that we are at war, essentially invoking the ancient adage, “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.” But how about the case when the stream consists of that horse’s urine?
  • The Libertarian alternative. A few commenters suggested voting Libertarian as a protest vote. Maybe I wasn’t clear. I intend to vote Democratic because Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bremer, etc. screwed up. They should be held accountable and replaced. ALL OF THEM. I mean it. Ugly, fratricidal investigative hearings, chaired by John Conyers. Yes, comrades, that’s about all we can do now. As an aside, perceptive news-watchers might notice that the GOP has quietly dropped the line: “Don’t vote for the Dems, because they will hold impeachment hearings.” Good idea. If I were Karl Rove, I wouldn’t promote that right now.
  • Roxanne asked: “Was there a final tipping point or just a steady build of steam?” — For me, it was reading “Fiasco” and several other books on the topic. My first love (uh … intellectually speaking) has always been history. What goes on in the realm of current events, the news, the blogosphere, and political science is inaccurate (unavoidably so because of the pressure to get news out quickly), subjective, and polarized. On the other hand, once several well-researched, documented books lay out “the historical record,” that’s very, very hard to reject. The historical record now shows that Bush, Rumsfeld, Bremer, and others, at the very least, bungled the execution of the Iraq occupation - using too few troops, disbanding the Iraqi Army, purging the Baathists, refusing to admit an insurgency existed, etc. So, my change in views has been brewing since early August. Posts in the last week probably reflects more what I’ve been willing to say than what I’ve been thinking.

*to be precise, he almost became a one-winger

Trackbacks & Pings

  1. Wingnuts claim Rethugs too soft on genocide at PunkAssBlog.com on 03 Oct 2006 at 6:23 pm

    […] By now, most of the wingnuts have pulled back from that position, especially since Frist’s weird pseudo-retraction. Only Commissar remains convinced the Republicans should be voted out for abandoning conservative principles. […]

Comments

  1. Joshua wrote:

    I have to say, as an avowed liberal, I find it encouraging to see this kind of sentiment spreading among conservatives. Not because I love the Democrats so much (I don’t. They’re “liberals” only in comparison to the way out-there Christian right that hijacked the Republican party and got us into this debacle.), but rather because it gives me hope for the future of democracy in this country.

    In my opinion, democracy is founded on a healthy competition between ideas. The current state of our nation is anything but “healthy”. The first step for those of us who want to see the nation get better is to reform the two corrupt parties from within, and the best way to do so is the ballot box. I thought 2004 was a pretty solid referendum against the problems inherent to the Democratic party, and the Liberman-Lamont primary race was even moreso. The latter in particular showed that the Democrats are ready to toss out the old-school politicians that made the party into such a unguided, feckless opposition during the past six years, and the buzz in the liberal blogs indicates the same. The general election next month is going to provide a similar referendum on the Republican leadership, and I’m hoping that the defection of principled conservatives like yourself will send a clear message.

    As I said, I believe democracy inherently depends on a competition of ideas. The leadership of both parties are equally culpable right now of poisoning the well, and if the Republicans get the brunt of the blame, it’s simply the fact of being the party in power. But I look forward to a future where enlightened liberals and conservatives take back their respective parties from the corporate-owned oligarchs than run them and clear the air. Maybe then we can get the real business of democracy done in this country once again.

    Cheers,
    Josh

    Posted 03 Oct 2006 at 4:50 pm

  2. sockpuppet wrote:

    Say hello to your new fan base!

    Also, check for wiretaps. I can not believe they let you get this far off the plantation..

    Posted 03 Oct 2006 at 11:26 pm

  3. wolfwalker wrote:

    The historical record now shows that Bush, Rumsfeld, Bremer, and others, at the very least, bungled the execution of the Iraq occupation

    Yeah, right. Commissar, we’re still finding out new things about the way we fought World War II from declassified files and archives. And in some cases those archives are drastically changing what historians thought they knew about the war’s course. How can you honestly believe that we, today, know enough about this war to say flatly what was or wasn’t done wrong?

    Another question: what if you live in a district represented by one of the good Republicans, rather than one of the ones who deserves replacing (which some of them do)? My choice next month is between a good solid non-religious-right-nutcase Republican, fiscally conservative, socially moderate, who usually votes the way I’d want him to; and a cut-and-run tax-and-spend pure liberal-socialist Democrat. I’m supposed to vote out the one I like, in favor of the one I don’t like, just to “send a message” to the professional pols and their crooked cronies?

    Sorry, I don’t think that way.

    (PS: your math-based validation script is bungled. It doesn’t work in Firefox.)

    Posted 04 Oct 2006 at 8:01 am

  4. commissar wrote:

    wolf,

    I’ve read eight books* on the topic in the past couple months. They (and others) all tell basically the same story. I have no doubt that our understanding will be sharpened in the coming years. But will that sharpening reverse the broad conclusions that we screwed this up? that the occupation was not destined to fail? that it failed through several key bungles? that our leaders behaved arrogantly and with ignorance? I doubt it.

    As for your question about who to vote for, go for the the quasi-socialist.

    *I realize how lame that sounds. But pick a subject, any subject. Let two impartial people of equal intelligence learn about it solely through blogs, media, emails and other as-it-happens sources. Let the other read eight thoughtful, serious books on the topic as well. I contend that second person would be significantly better informed on that topic.

    Posted 04 Oct 2006 at 9:13 am

  5. wolfwalker wrote:

    I’ve read eight books on the topic in the past couple months. They (and others) all tell basically the same story.

    And you believe these tell-all books … why?

    For fifty years every single English-language account of the Battle of Midway told basically the same story of how three of Nagumo’s four carriers were turned to funeral pyres just as they were about to launch a strike that would have destroyed the smaller American carrier force.

    For fifty years, every single English-language account of the Battle of Midway got it wrong.

    Why?

    Because for fifty years, every single English-language account of the Battle of Midway based its description of the Nagumo Force’s demise on the very detailed account by Mitsuo Fuchida in Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan. Fuchida was a senior pilot in the Nagumo Force, he was aboard the carrier Akagi when she was bombed, he had access to all the surviving battle records, and his book is a meticulous account, detailed in every way. What better source could you ask for?

    Five years ago someone translated some just-released Japanese battle records into English. They got a couple of scholarly articles out of it, and then they turned it into a book: Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. They found that Fuchida’s book — that meticulously written book by an eyewitness, based on official Japanese records, accepted as authoritative by every historian all the way back to the Grand Master of Naval History himself, Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison — was wrong in so many ways, indeed in so many _obvious_ ways, that in retrospect it’s hard to see why the mistakes weren’t seen earlier. And it’s even harder to claim the mistakes weren’t deliberate. Fuchida lied about Japanese carrier operations doctrine. He lied about Nagumo’s plans. He lied about the situation when the American dive-bombers attacked. His book was a gigantic, systematic coverup of the battle — and despite the flaws in it, it survived for fifty years.

    Another example? For thirty years after WW2 ended, U-boat commander swore to anyone who asked them that the Allies had the key to the U-boat radio ciphers, and were reading the U-boats’ mail. But if you read any book about the Battle of the Atlantic published prior to 1973, you won’t find a single word about Bletchley Park, Enigma, or the entire codebreaking operation. Instead you’ll find a complicated story of how we tracked U-boats using a mix of HFDF, sonar, radar, airborne search, and a couple of intelligence officers with a nearly psychic insight into how Doenitz thought when he was directing his boats. Go find an old 1962 book called The Tenth Fleet by Ladislas Farago and read it. To someone who knows the full story of Enigma the book is an incredible joke, and its butt is its unlucky author. He knew nothing about Enigma, so he relayed the official story, as told in the official records and confirmed to him by naval officers who were there. But the official story, of course, was rubbish concocted only to cover the existence of Enigma.

    I could go on, you know. The Nanking Massacre, forgotten by Western historians for fifty years. The operations of Unit 731, hidden in the Japanese archives for fifty years. The recent discovery that Operation Market-Garden failed partly because of an unknown, undetected geomagnetic anomaly around Arnhem that interfered with the British paratroopers’ radios. The long-buried connections between the Nazi Party and the Arab Ba’athist Party.

    So, again I ask: what do you know that makes you believe these tell-all books actually do tell everything that’s been happening in Iraq, and form a valid basis for judging the war to be a complete and total failure?

    Posted 04 Oct 2006 at 10:05 am

  6. commissar wrote:

    wolf.

    Very impressive. And I must read that revisionist account of midway. Thanks.

    Operational matters surely will be better understood. At the high levels, the big decisions? … I’ll be surprised.

    Posted 04 Oct 2006 at 10:15 am

  7. wolfwalker wrote:

    Very impressive. And I must read that revisionist account of midway. Thanks.

    You’re welcome. And thanks for the compliment.

    Incidentally, the authors of the book also wrote an article for Naval War College Review that summarizes their findings. That article is available online. The authors also have a detailed summary of the book here.

    One more thing that I just realized, based on a continuation of the same line of thought: these books you’re reading and basing your opinions on are almost certainly not trustworthy. Here’s why: There are three possibilities with regard to the author’s access to sealed files.

    1) he doesn’t have access and no one will leak them to him. In this case his book is incomplete and you, the reader, don’t get the whole story.

    2) he (or his sources) does have access but in keeping with the law and his sworn oaths, he won’t discuss classified data. In this case also, his book is incomplete and you, the reader, don’t get the whole story.

    3) he (or his sources) does have access and violate the law and his sworn oath by publicly discussing classified data. In this case, your author (or his sources) is a poltroon with no honor and no integrity. That means you can’t (or at least I wouldn’t) trust him to give you the whole story. You’ll only get the things that support his position, or at least don’t demolish it. Consider what happened just last week with the NIE summary.

    I don’t deny that a lot of mistakes were made in Iraq. That would be stupid. Of course mistakes were made, including some with critical consequences. I simply question whether the mistakes were made when and where the conventional wisdom says they were. In particular I’m suspicious of anyone or any source that claims we could have or should have had better control of the Iraqi internal political situation. I know just enough about Arab culture to know I have no understanding of how it works day-to-day. No Westerner does. I refuse to condemn Bush or his advisors because they did (or didn’t) do certain things until I know whether or not they had any realistic chance of doing (or not doing) those things given the on-the-ground situation at the time the decision was made.

    Posted 04 Oct 2006 at 10:52 am

  8. canuckistani wrote:

    I’m also curious about the revised history of Midway. Do you feel inclined to give us a capsule summary?
    My approach to revised history is to subject it to the smell test; I was recently rereading John Toland’s Infamy, where he argues that FDR was prewarned about Pearl Harbor and did nothing. Since I can’t interview the principals myself, I have to go on the sources I have, and I have to say the conspiracy theory just doesn’t ring true to me. The problem though is that history is jammed full of unlikely and bizarre things that it might be true, and I could be in the position of believing the U Boats were caught by pure luck. The Enigma revelations were, to me, a very plausible revision that easily passes the smell test. I wonder where future Iraq revelations will fall on the scale?

    Posted 04 Oct 2006 at 10:59 am

  9. commissar wrote:

    wolf,

    “I’m suspicious of anyone or any source that claims we could have or should have had better control of the Iraqi internal political situation. ”

    In a sense, that cuts to the heart of the matter. We were told it wouldn’t be a problem. The historical record to-date is quite compelling: not only weren’t we told, the top guys did not want to hear about it. And there were plenty of highly respected publicly stated views to the contrary, in advance.

    To deny all this, solely relying on speculative future revisionism, borders on the Commissar’s 8th Deadly Sin: Non-Falsifiability. “Anything we think we know might change in the future.”

    Posted 04 Oct 2006 at 11:03 am

  10. wolfwalker wrote:

    Canuckistani,

    I’m also curious about the revised history of Midway. Do you feel inclined to give us a capsule summary?

    The links I gave cover most of it. Stripped to a bare minimum, the re-examination (I dislike the term “revisionist” because it has unpleasant connotations) by John Parshall and Tony Tully revealed that the famous image of the dive-bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown blowing the Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu out of the water just as the Japanese carriers were about to launch a deckload strike against the American carriers — a scene which is specifically described in Fuchida’s book and echoed in all subsequent English-language accounts of the battle — can’t possibly be true. The logistics of Japanese carrier operations forbid it. The previous attacks by other American air units had saturated the Nagumo Force’s defenses, forcing Nagumo to keep his flight decks open for fighter operations. He couldn’t possibly have had a strike spotted and ready to launch when the American dive-bombers struck. As a veteran carrier pilot and Akagi’s air group commander, not to mention an eyewitness to the attack, Fuchida must have known this. So everything in Fuchida’s book that contributes to that image, and everything in it that draws conclusions from that image, is intentionally false.

    My approach to revised history is to subject it to the smell test;

    Mine also, which is why I accept this re-description of Midway even while rejecting other recent re-examinations of various WW2 battles and strategies. It’s the same test I use when examining any scientific claim: does it fit the evidence? In this case the evidence is the various books I have about Midway and what I’ve been able to learn about carrier operations from all my reading about the Pacific carrier war. I’ve read Fuchida’s book, as well as several of the books by American authors that used Fuchida as a source. The inconsistencies and impossibilities in Fuchida’s account are there for all to see, as are the contradictions between his words and the reports of the American dive-bomber pilots who delivered the crushing attack. So I think these authors got it right: Fuchida’s account is, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, “a great, big, thumping, obtrusive, uncompromising lie … a clumsy fabrication which simply could not be true.”

    Posted 04 Oct 2006 at 6:37 pm

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