Grow up already.

If the measures proposed by the Bush Administration are excessive or otherwise flawed, show us how in the context of alternative measures that will effectively address the threats we face at a lesser cost to civil liberty and convenience.

This juvenile drivel focusing on scary Republicans demonstrates an incapacity to come to terms with geniune external threats.

If Democrats want to reassure the public that they are serious about national security, i.e., that they are capable of robustly facing external threats, they should focus on how they will address those threats rather than serving up partisan obsessions expressed in a tone that resembles a teenage girl rebelling against her mean old dad.

It wouldn't take much of a growth spurt for most citizens to outstrip the adolescent machismo and thuggery that passes for executive leadership in U. S. government today.

The truly scary thing about Republican leadership today is their disrespect for thye genuine facts of the world situation. I distinctly remember the "facts" they had duped Colin Powell into presenting at the U. N. to further their pursuit of Bush's vendetta in Iraq! "genuine external facts" my a**!

You are dealing with adults that are aware of the real threat that this administration poses to the democratic institutions which define and insire this nation.

The "mean old dad" you refer to is abusing his family in the most revolting of ways. Don't defend him!

Idler -

Yes, it's true a lot of the folks who post here don't really have the backbone to get in the face of un-American nut jobs who have nothing more that gives their sorry lives meaning, except for terrorizing their fellow Americans with the twisted lust they share with the nut jobs on the other side for war without purpose or end.

A lot of the folks here show by their arguments they are truly decent people and the best kind of Americans. To be sure, some seem to be fairly more inexperienced than they understand, and apparently just haven't run into too many of the pathetic and the warped on the right (and a few on the left, unfortunately) that some of us have over the years. And I too could do with a whole lot less of their condescending, but hopelessly uninformed arguments on what leadership is, much less what moves people to choose and support their leaders.

But your criticism of The One True Blx's well-reasoned defense of true American values persuades that you and your ilk don't stand for those core American values, but instead stand first and foremost for gain power through fascist tactics of fear and intimidation. To be sure, many Americans are scared and search for leaders who in fact only heighten their irrational anxieties because they don't have a true and informed understanding of what is going on. But your words are not the timid doubtings of that American majority mired in their anxieties. Your words are the aggressive arguments of an abusive predator who gets off preying on the fears of those anxious Americans for his or her own enjoyment and benefit. You advocate nothing less than the most un-American values imaginable.

So tell us specifically, what in the warped, evil fantasies behind those words are the "external threats" that your post revels in? And what actually is it that you'd like to be led by your dry-drunk, mentally-ill, war-criminal-in-chief to do? Explain to us, in graphic detail, the future of America that folks like you dream about and long for, so we as good Americans of courage and integrity can understand what it is we should actually be fearing and need to steel ourselves to stand up to.

insire = inspire in English

oh Idler, you do troll so. Speaking of little girls, yes you and your pissant GWB clones do remind me of a little girl clutching Daddy's leg crying, "Don't let the spidey get me," in order to kill one of the useful garden critters. The BOR will survive you fear mongering pests, the 2nd guarantees that, but more constructively, Americans are a much tougher breed than you all reckon, they will vote you out. The problem for you then won't be the terrorists, it will be that your lies, deceits, and spin will have put you farther out of favor than the '80s arrogance of the Dems ever did them.

Americans don't need a Daddy government, those are the exclusive territory of despots. We don't need a sacrifice of liberty or freedom to squash terrorist bugs. External threats pale in comparison to internal ones. If you want to come over here and start arguments you'd better learn to do a couple things, one is to understand what you've actually said and what you've implied. Another would be to put away the Thesarus and be a little less self-impressed with your rhetoric, you read like a 14 year old who's read a book or two. I won't go into the usefulness of engaging critical thinking, that's obviously beyond your meager gifts.

You do perform a couple useful functions, one is a window into the opposition's mindset and then there's comic relief.

The central problem with the administration's strategy is that the basic assumption is flawed. Their assumption is that democracy is a kind of cure-all for what ails a country, and that once democracy takes root the people in that country will become more or less like we are.

The problem in the Middle East is that the main thing accomplished through democracy is bringing Islamic fundamentalists to power. So we bring democracy to Afghanistan and they end up with courts dispensing Islamic justice, and Islam written into the their constitution. We bring democracy to Iraq and end up with Iran's co-religionists in power. Palestine has elections, and in comes Hamas. The only people who love democracy more than we Americans are the Islamic theocrats.

There are a lot of nasty, undemocratic regimes in that area, but in most cases we can at least work with those governments. The Bush doctrine basically says that those governments are illegitimate, and need to be replaced by democratic governments -- which is an excellent way to promote Muslim fundamentalist governments. While we certainly don't want to be joined at the hip to these authoritarian, non-democratic governments, it is not clear to me how turning them into Islamic theocracies makes any sense either.

B!X,

The entire criminal justice system could be called a “Ben Tre Agenda” — though not “aptly,” and only by recourse to overwrought rhetoric, and at the cost of ignoring the fact that law enforcement is in continual tension with civil rights.

During any presidential administration someone could hysterically charge (and there are always those who do) that we live in a police state. Such people are not to be taken seriously. Civil rights activists who do understand the tension between government power and individual liberty, and who acknowledge real challenges when proposing reforms are to be taken seriously.

As with criminal justice, in matters of national security relating to conspiracy and espionage, sabotage and terrorism, there is a tension between the power of the government and the liberty of citizens (both U.S. citizens, and in the broad sense of the word, including resident and other aliens). To assert that no such tension exists is simply wrong and marks the commentator as incompetent to address the problems we face.

If you want to criticize the present administration for being on the wrong side of the balance and do so while showing your capacity for dealing with the threats, I’m willing to listen. Whether I end up agreeing or not, I’m more likely to identify you as a serious commentator who is actually interested in security.

Likewise, to expand on a point in my original comment, if Democrats appear more motivated by partisan hatred than a sober evaluation of the threats we face, they are likely to retain the reputation of being unsound on matters of national security.

The use of Ben Tre here is interesting in its own right, given Rumsfeld’s recent criticism of the “blame America first” tendency.

The phrase “it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it” was never said by an American officer but was in fact fabricated by now infamous reporter Peter Arnett, who represented the Associated Press in Vietnam in 1968. He originally wrote “town” and an A.P. editor appears to have switched that for “village” for greater effect, even though Ben Tre has multi-story buildings and paved streets.

In the battle in question, the Americans were defending Ben Tre from a Vietcong attack in which the latter were shelling the town. The ranking American officer at Ben Tre believes that he was the “anonymous” officer interviewed by Arnett and has said that his words were taken out of context, having told that Arnett that the Vietcong had destroyed the town and that it was a shame.

It seems that once the Vietcong advanced into the town, the U.S. brought air power against them, but I’ve never found sources that describe how much damage was caused by either party. Not that it matters either way — the quote appears to be made up, and egregiously so, considering that the Americans were defending Ben Tre against a sustained artillery attack by the Vietcong.

Accuracy in the Media (AIM) reports that the Los Angeles’ Times William Touhy wrote a story six weeks after the Arnett report appeared, in which Touhy said, “Only 25% of the city — rather than the reported 80% — was actually destroyed by the Vietcong attack and Vietnamese artillery and U.S. air strikes that followed. And the U.S. advisory group doubts that the [Arnett] statement was actually made in that form. ‘It sounds too pithy and clever to have been made on the spot,’ says one U.S. civilian advisor. ‘It just rings wrong.’”

Peter Braestrup, a reporter for the Washington Post in Saigon at the time of the Tet offensive said Arnett refused to identify the source of the comment, arguing that he was still in military service and that he would “keep my silence until I run into him again and get his clearance.” Cannella later spoke on his own account.

AIM claims that Braestrup said The Washington Post was considering running the L.A. Times debunking of Arnett, but Braestrup’s Saigon-based colleague Lee Lescaze recommended against doing so.

Thus the Ben Tre myth was established, and gleeful blame-America-firsters have been perpetuating it ever since.

In the third paragraph of my post above, I failed to insert "major Phil Cannella" after "The ranking American officer at Ben Tre."

I should also have said "Ben Tre had" rather than "has" paved streets, etc.

Next time I'll preview.

Jeez, the irony of someone like 'Idler' criticizing others' arguments for “recourse to overwrought rhetoric"!

His implication that our outrage at the administration's suppression of civil liberties is just hysterical cries of "Wolf" is a tacit admission that he is the one not taking matters seriously. He is harping on the administration's sideshow of boogeymen which they are using to distract the yokels while their partners-in-crime are pick-pocketing all we hold dear.

Bush's criminal administration is not interested in the least in balancing civil liberties with police powers. They take the Congress' Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq to mean they can exercise any "inherent powers" they can dream up. They decide that the FISA court is too restrictive, and secretly wiretap in defiance of the intent of the law written in response to the Nixon administrations's overstepping of executive powers.

It is not partisan hatred which informs the Democratic Party's ire, but the Republicans administration's self-aggrandizing betrayal of the principles of our Founding Father's Revolution against a government claiming the overweening powers over honest citizens trying to make a good life for themselves under difficult circumstances.

Idler -

If you want to criticize the present administration for being on the wrong side of the balance and do so while showing your capacity for dealing with the threats, I’m willing to listen.

Don't sit there deflecting by spinning "history" with as much fiction as fact. Step up and tell us what the "threats" that excite you so in your reality, and what you would like to do. Quit intoning vague and unidentified "threats" to scare people, all the while castigating those who stand up for genuine American values, and without showing us what really spins your top when you fantasize about how you would like to respond to those "threats".

Ed Bickford, Chuck Butcher, Pat Ryan and paulie, and of course Blx-

Bravo for your comments. We need to take the battle to them by keeping on point and hammering home that it is the betrayers of genuine American values that we truly need to fear and fight.

By the way, if you haven't seen this it is significant in the current context:

Bush’s Shift of Tone on Iraq: The Grim Cost of Losing http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/world/middleeast/02prexy.html?ref=washington

Rather than stressing the benefits of eventual victory, he and his top aides are beginning to lay out the grim consequences of failure.

Idler is with the shock troops who already have been given the talking points, and who right now are pivoting to another angle of attack against our country and our most basic values.

For a spot-on explanation of the genesis of American fascism, don't miss Thom Harttmann's article "Reclaiming The Issues: Islamic Or Republican Fascism?" on Common Dreams.

Us Libertaian types are not too much appreciated by either the left, or the right for our stance of non-internevtion, but one thing is certain we have got ourselves into a mess thanks to a group of people in this administration who have little, or no knowledge of what they were doing. George Keenan, often recognized as one of America's most influential diplomats, noted some years ago that one of our short comings was the failure to understand other cultures. That problem is highly visible in the present circumstance that we have become embroiled in through the Middle East and not just Iraq. From Bush on down there is a lack of knowledge of the history and culture that we are trying to deal with and it is going to come home. Whether that will be in the form of a terrorist attack or our own financial problems is unclear. In 1983 when the Marine barrack in Beirut were attacked and the 241 personnel were killed Reagan responded by invading Grenada. So much for never cut and run. Then and there there those in the fight new we could be chased and they have been at it ever since. M.H.W.

Good Ed. - exept everyone with a brain knows that it is our direct support of Israel's military is a root-cause of their hatred of the US. Yes,we should cut and run, I dont think that the US is up to dealing with Middle East fanatics-- they are too tough and brutal(see the beheadings on the web sites if you disagree), and this isnt America 1940. Then, we were pretty much all spoiling for a fight after suffering through the harsh depression years, not as now, philosophy majors from San Francisco who think that military spending is wasteful.

Obviously not everyone with a brain is capable of coherent thought. I studiously avoided getting caught up in the red herring about "their hatred of the US."

Indeed, this not America 1940, but our lives were formed by those living then. My parents lived through those times, and believe me that the Depression did not leave them spoiling for a fight, but scarred for life. Indeed, the point of the Thom Hartmann article referenced is that the generation of Henry Wallace learned to their pain the true horrors of fascism. You sir may well be due that same lesson if you learn nothing from them.

The blame-America-first tendency is demonstrated by an inclination to blame the United States for whatever ill in the world, even if the evidence suggests equal or greater blame ought to be placed on other parties. It includes but is by no means limited to people willing to make the United States look bad in order score partisan political points. For various reasons people on the right are more likely to notice and be indignant about the blame-America-first habit, but it’s even been denounced in the pages of Mother Jones, of all places. The Ben Tre slogan fits right in with the mentality, since the actual events of Ben Tre do not reflect poorly on United States.

Accuracy in Media has its bias (I never said it didn’t) but you commit an ad hominem fallacy (or more precisely “poisoning the well”) by dwelling on the source rather than the argument. The only factual inaccuracy you can demonstrate is a misspelling. Not much of a refutation.

Dismissing the charge as “he said, she said” without examining the plausibility of the case is evasive. Given that there is no attribution to the supposed quote, how could it not be a case of competing claims? That said, it’s clear that Arnett originally wrote “town,” but someone down the line chose “village,” which unmistakably adds a certain brutality to the quote — a great military power mows down helpless villages. Regarding the authenticity of the original Arnett version, again, major Cannella the ranking officer at Ben Tre was interviewed by Arnett and believes he personally was misquoted by Arnett in this instance. Arnett has not chosen to refute him. You give no reason doubt the veracity of the L.A. Times article, whatever the correct spelling of the author’s name.

You argue that it’s a red herring to insist that the U.S. had to wantonly attack for the quote to be real. But what is the Ben Tre reference supposed to be about, if not some supposedly insanely perverse inclination to destroy something as a substitute for saving it?

What actually happened at Ben Tre bore no resemblance to any such insanity, especially since the attack on Ben Tre was by the United States’ enemy. The fighting at Ben Tre was not unusual — for example, similar situations occurred all over Europe during WWII. The U.S. didn’t behave insanely or otherwise egregiously, which is probably why the L.A. Times reporter’s bullshit detector went off when he read the oddly crafted quote attributed to nobody in particular.

The implication of the quote is clear enough, making it indeed very unlikely for a military commander to have made it, even if we had no other reason to doubt its plausibility. That implication — that the U.S.’s actions at Ben Tre were motivated by some kind of insanity or grotesquely twisted priority — is illustrated by the way the original phrase is typically misquoted: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it” — variations of which can be found in the thousands. See any blame there for the people who actually attacked the village? See a sober appreciation of what actually happened at Ben Tre?

Regarding a later post, I think a discussion on actual issues such as port security and the other things you cite would be a step in the right direction — which was basically my point in the first place.

The "various reasons" that people on the right are "indignant about the blame-America-first habit" are that they are desperately trying to suggest the evidence places equal or greater blame on other parties when their ruthless fascist agendas cause havoc in the world.

Whatever the genesis of Arnett's report, it stands as an indictment of our policy in prosecuting the war in Vietnam, that we had to destroy it to save it.

Idler -

You made the propagandistic charge that

This juvenile drivel focusing on scary Republicans demonstrates an incapacity to come to terms with geniune external threats.

in the very first comment to Blx. And folks just have to read your comments in other threads to see just how dissembling your comment:

Regarding a later post, I think a discussion on actual issues such as port security and the other things you cite would be a step in the right direction — which was basically my point in the first place.

actually is.

You set out to propagandize by making the allegation. You have had the chance to lay out exactly what those "genuine external threats" are that you fantasize can be demagogued as the key to the right-wing holding power. Instead, you have filled your comments with pedantic arguments about historical irrelevancies as a distraction from your failure to do the honorable thing and prove your accusations.

Furthermore, you have presented no evidence you were a participant or eyewitness, even though you base your distractions on your personal, idiosyncratic interpretation of "What actually happened at Ben Tre". If indeed it is the case that you were not a participant or eyewitness, your third-hand interpretation of what happened has little meaning. It certainly is insufficient as the basis for arguments which, in fact, misrepresent the point Blx made. Your comments are cartoons of argumentation, they ape the form of intellectual argument, but lack the substance.

As one other example of your cartoonish version of argumentation, you also are incorrect in characterizing that Blx commits the fallacy of "poisoning the well". Blx points out that history that you repeat is unsubstantiated by any authoritative source, contains a sloppy and easily corrected misstatement of fact (the spelling of the reporter's name), is actually a chain of speculation and unconfirmable facts, and comes from a source which has a demonstrable bias and less than netural approach to the facts. In addition, the L.A. Times as a paper has a rather checkered history itself when it comes to biased reporting and editorializing. A cautious scholar doing historical research would take into account the character of the L.A. Times at the particular time a story was run, and seek confirmation for the facts and interpretation of any event reported solely by them (as he or she actually should do for anything reported by just a single newspaper). All of this is quite legitimate argumentation, since facts matter, and only a sophmoric or deceitful intellect would misunderstand or misrepresent this as the fallacy of "poisoning the well". As already noted, you've been invited to clarify which is the case. Thus far have declined to do so.

Your words prove you don't want a honest discussion. Instead, they strongly support the contention that you want to use fear as a power tactic. What good Americans have to fear most is those among us who propagandize and demagogue to gain power --- putting us in even more danger --- and attack the true patriots who defend American values and work towards lasting solutions to the challenges we face.

B!X,

The problem is that Ben Tre doesn’t offer an example about how especially effed up war can be, only how generally effed up it is. As I suggested earlier, Ben Tre regrettably has no special status as a municipality fought over that had a significant part of it destroyed. Making it emblematic of anything else is artificial and either ignorant or dishonest.

My gratitude to Ed Bickford for his post (immediately after my last one), which demonstrates how ignorance and blame-America-first animus gravitate to the misquotation I alluded to, placing blame for the destruction of Ben Tre on the United States alone (“We had to destroy it to save it”).

Leaving aside the reality of Ben Tre, to say that the Administration’s actions amount to destroying the freedom the terrorists hate is beyond hyperbole and not to be taken seriously. I’m grateful that so many Americans will watch what this Administration or any other will do to affect civil rights, but my point is that excited presentation of Bush, et al., as pantomime villains is not a substitute for sober criticisms that address novel threats.

With regard the L.A. Times article, there’s no reason to doubt its existence. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to get a hold of since the L.A. Times’ online archive does not offer access to all of its articles from the period in question. My efforts to look up Tuohy only resulted in a single article, which is clearly not the only thing the Pulitzer Prize winner ever wrote for the publication.

AIM not only refers to the article itself but also says that Braestrup refers to it. In mentioning Braestrup’s reference to the article and his conversations with Lee Lescaze, it’s most likely that AIM is referring to Braestrup’s book “The Big Story.” Both that work and the work of Tuohy are well known. Is it possible that AIM just made the article up? Sure, but it’s very unlikely. You know from your own work that your credibility as a commentator wouldn’t last if you were in the habit of inventing things that could be proven false beyond the shadow of a doubt. One can reasonably question the effect of AIM’s biases on what they do with the facts, but its not plausible that they simply fabricated the existence not only of the article itself, but of Braestrup’s commentary on it.

I only wish that you would apply such searching skepticism to Peter Arnett’s reporting.

My post in response to the troll 'Idler' showed that the righties' "blame America first" whinging is a risible attempt to deflect blame for the fallout from their toxic foreign policy onto their victims, and that Arnett's report which they are so desperate to discredit did nothing but reinforce the comprehension of the American public that the prosecution of the Vietnam war was a self-defeating exercise.

I use the appellation "troll" advisedly, as they are continuing to eat up column-inches with no new arguments after being clearly refuted.

<h2>The best thing about having intellectually dishonest posters like Idler here is that it should provide an opportunity for folks here who hold and defend the best American values to practice their skills at getting in the face of the unpatriotic right-wingers. The way to stop them is to continue to hold the brightest possible spotlight on their fascistic un-American goals and their abusive tactics.</h2>