Category: Networks

One of the more bizarre tactics employed by opponents of regime change in Iraq has been to insist that war can’t be supported or even suggested except by those who’ve either served in combat or donated a child to serve in combat. Those of us who haven’t done active duty time are mere “chicken hawks” not entitled to an opinion. But in America we believe in civilian control of the military, as Mr. Christopher Hitchens points out:

This expert delivers himself of the opinion that, “If this is such a great cause, let us see one of the Bush daughters in uniform.” Let me do a brief thought experiment here. Do I know a single anti-war person who would be more persuaded if one of the Bush girls joined up? Do you? Can you imagine what would be said about such a cheap emotional stunt? Stalin’s son was taken prisoner by the Nazi invaders (and never exchanged), and Mao’s son was killed in the war that established the present state of North Korea. I am not sure how encouraging such precedents are supposed to be, but they have nothing at all to do with the definition of a just war.

Much more important than this, however, is the implied assault on civilian control of the military. In this republic, elected civilians give crisp orders to soldiers and expect these orders to be obeyed. No back chat can even be imagined, let alone allowed. Do liberals really want the Joint Chiefs to say: “Mr. President, I’ll respect that order when you have a son or daughter in uniform”? It was a great day when President Lincoln fired Gen. George B. McClellan.* It was a great day when President Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur. No presidential brat needed to be on the front line for this point to be understood.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are either worthwhile or they are not (and I see that nobody as yet requires an “exit strategy” from Afghanistan). The worst exploitation of a hero by our military has certainly been the crass lying by the Pentagon about the “friendly fire” death of Pat Tillman, who was looking to risk his life against the Taliban. However, the majority of American dead have still been civilians living in America, and those who prattle on about the sacrifice of children seem not to have read about Beslan, or thought about it, or broken with the lazy old American habit that supposes that war is always “over there.”

And there’s also that issue of Americans believing in democracy, freedom, and human rights. What ever happened with all that?

This is a very shocking story:

Major League Baseball hasn’t narrowed the list of the eight bidders seeking to buy the Washington Nationals and some Republicans on Capitol Hill already are hinting at revoking the league’s antitrust exemption if billionaire financier George Soros , an ardent critic of President Bush and supporter of liberal causes, buys the team.

Rather than mess with baseball, I suggest extraditing Soros to Malaysia so he can be prosecuted for currency manipulation; upon his release from the Malaysian prison, he can be sent to the UK for a similar reckoning. But don’t mess with baseball on account of this feckless weasel, it’s unseemly.

The key to successful marriage is sexual orientation and gender. gay men have it going on:

In Denmark, where homosexuals have been legally able to get hitched (and unhitched) since 1989, it’s a modern reality. But despite stereotypes of gay relationships as short-lived, the divorce rate among Danish homosexuals is only 17 percent, compared to 46 percent for heterosexuals. Can gay Danes teach us something about lasting marital bliss?…

The vast majority of gay marriages in Denmark are male-male, and only 14 percent of these end in divorce, compared to 23 percent of female marriages. The higher rate for lesbians is consistent with data showing that women initiate most of the heterosexual divorces in Denmark. (In the United States, women request about two-thirds of divorces.)

Gay men know that divorce leads to alimony, and that sucks, so to speak.

Mickey Kaus wasn’t impressed by the NY Times’ editorial plea for an anti-American museum at the Trade Center site. New York grantsmen don’t need any more nurturing:

But this isn’t an institution we need in the first place. Do the 9/11 attacks have to become the occasion for the creation of yet another well-upholsetered non-profit boondoggle for public intellectuals and granstmen, and the NYT culture critics who write about them? There are already plenty of institutions in Manhattan where the “vital impulses represented by the arts” can and do express themselves. The hollow, pompous rhetoric already generated by the Freedom Center’s defenders–“nurture a global conversation about freedom in our world today”–demonstrates that it is a highly unpromising venue for this expression.

He’s right and the Times is wrong. And pretentious.

Jeff Jarvis is also right.

Regarding recent incidents of crazy talk involving Dick Durbin and Karl Rove, we here at Mossback Culture don’t endorse the current trend of calling for apologies and resignations on the basis of insensitive remarks. We believe that all Americans have an obligation to toughen-up a little and not take words as if they were actual, you know, bombs or something.

If you don’t like what these bastards say, vote them (or in Rove’s case, their boss) out of office. But don’t tell me how freaking “offended” you were by some asshole’s “insensitivity” in a time of war or I’ll kick your ass.

Now if you want to complain about beheadings, I’m with you.

This is a crying shame. Kinky is a Plan II alumnus from UT who’s fallen so low he appeared on TV with skanky Malkin. I don’t know what that boy was thinking.

OK, actually I do: Kinky never was one to look down his nose at a skank…that doesn’t sound right. He never was one to put on airs around the common people…no, that’s not it either. We’ll have to go all the way back to his sarong-wearing Peace Corps period to make sense of this, for sure. Sigrid would understand.

With Rasheed, McDyess, and Billups in foul trouble – and Billups unable to beat the tenacious defense of Parker and Bowen – the Pistons didn’t have enough bench to beat the Spurs, so the Good Guys won another.

We’re going to see this matchup many more times in years to come.

I wonder how well the Spurs would play with a true point guard like Billups instead of Parker, who’s really more of a shooting guard.

SI blogged Game Seven.

Now on to Wimbledon and the College World Series.

Arundhati Roy and some of her closest friends are staging a Kangaroo Kourt in Istanbul that promises to put the Conyers Pretend Impeachment Hearing to shame. The goal is to say a lot of really, really nasty things about Chimpy McBushitler without once mentioning Mr.Hussein by name.

Roy says the legitimacy of her Kourt derives from universal principles of morality, such as:

* the duty of all people of conscience to take action against wars of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other breaches of international law;

For some reason this duty was suspended during Saddam’s reign, but Roy doesn’t address that minor little detail.

H/T Jodie Evans, professional moonbat.

This is the most hilarious thing I’ve seen in a long time: Tom Hayden, notorious 60s guy and lover of all things Marxist, has a blog in which he reveals (big surprise) that Iraq is a big, fat, quagmire just like Vietnam:

There are three scenarios to prepare for:

First, the US occupation may collapse with the defeat of the US-trained and US-financed Iraqi security forces. The answer to the Times question – what do they want? – can be inferred from the battlefield. “They” want to force the US conventional forces into an impasse, then destroy the US strategy of “Iraqization”, of substituting Iraqi blood for American blood. The insurgents probably are closer to this outcome than the American media will report. If Iraqi soldiers and police cannot be sufficiently motivated to kill other Iraqis, the client regime will collapse and sue for peace, an extremely dangerous situation.

Second, and most likely, an indefinite quagmire will continue for the time. The insurgency will go on. The 150,000 American troops will remain, frustrated bbut not defeated. By next year, the number of dead American soldiers and military contractors will pass 2,500, the number of wounded 20,000. The client regime will not extend its authority – not to mention basic services – to a majority of Iraqis. American diplomats will be isolated, and world public opinion will descend to new levels of disgust with all things American. This means a tough year for President Bush in next year’s Congressional elections. Even if the Democratic Party remains silent, increasing numbers of American voters will favor something like immediate withdrawal.

Third, facing quagmire, the US will escalate – the policy which was followed in Vietnam. This escalation could come any week now; with Israeli collaboration, the US bombs Iran. Or the US bombs North Korea. Or another possibility: somehow American citizens are attacked again due to an intelligence “lapse”. In any scenario, the immediate political result would be renewal of the draft, which would lessen the pressures on the Pentagon in Iraq.

You can’t make shit up that’s funnier than this. Like Karl Rove said: “Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers, conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war.”

If you substitute “Tom Haydens” for liberals and “most people” for conservatives you’ve got it right.