Switcheroo
After calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah (which is an iffily realistic request, anyway, especially on the Hezbollah side of the equation), here's some reasons why conservatives have weight.
There's this column purporting to show why some Democrats have been less-than-forthright in staking out "Bush Lied, People Died" claims. There's the fact that Israel is small and had 200 rockets fired into it the other day, to take only one day as an example. I mean, come on, what if someone were firing rockets into the middle third of North Carolina, where I live? Would we let Virginians punk us like dat? There's the way bullies operate if allowed free reign, and the fact that militants in the middle east are basically bullies, even if their enemies are also bullies. There's what does seem to be a horrible aspect to Currently Powerful Islam. Horrible enough, in actual practice, that any comparison to the disagreeable aspects of Currently Powerful American Christianity are not always useful in a surface discussion such as this. That would be like starting off a conversation about a dispicable wife-beating husband by bringing up the cheating, lying, and stealing of his wife: maybe she really did provoke him to it, but he must not allow himself to be so provoked. Must not. OK, that's a twisted analogy. I'm making a single-person-level ethical point, not a political-level moral one. Drilling a power-tool hole in the head of a fellow Iraqi who is of a different sect, and dumping his body in the river is not defensible, regardless of circumstances. Neither is suicide bombing, on the previously defined level. Whew, blogging politics is hard.
I could go on; but, actually, I can't. It's too depressing, and I'm not clever enough, nor is this coffee strong enough, to sort it all out in my head at the keyboard -- especially when I'm trying to pull a POV switcheroo. I have responses to most conservative talking points, but when it comes to this war, or set of wars, oy!, I like these words by Gershom Gorenberg in the Times:
"I don’t have a quick list of alternate strategies, not today. Yet the fact that I do not have a screwdriver, cannot even describe one, does not mean that a sledgehammer is the proper tool. Now that the sledgehammer has been chosen, I’d still like to hope it produces something positive – say, a breakthrough to peace. The hope does not eliminate doubts."
And neither does my own viewpoint eliminate the interestingness of other views, to me.
There's this column purporting to show why some Democrats have been less-than-forthright in staking out "Bush Lied, People Died" claims. There's the fact that Israel is small and had 200 rockets fired into it the other day, to take only one day as an example. I mean, come on, what if someone were firing rockets into the middle third of North Carolina, where I live? Would we let Virginians punk us like dat? There's the way bullies operate if allowed free reign, and the fact that militants in the middle east are basically bullies, even if their enemies are also bullies. There's what does seem to be a horrible aspect to Currently Powerful Islam. Horrible enough, in actual practice, that any comparison to the disagreeable aspects of Currently Powerful American Christianity are not always useful in a surface discussion such as this. That would be like starting off a conversation about a dispicable wife-beating husband by bringing up the cheating, lying, and stealing of his wife: maybe she really did provoke him to it, but he must not allow himself to be so provoked. Must not. OK, that's a twisted analogy. I'm making a single-person-level ethical point, not a political-level moral one. Drilling a power-tool hole in the head of a fellow Iraqi who is of a different sect, and dumping his body in the river is not defensible, regardless of circumstances. Neither is suicide bombing, on the previously defined level. Whew, blogging politics is hard.
I could go on; but, actually, I can't. It's too depressing, and I'm not clever enough, nor is this coffee strong enough, to sort it all out in my head at the keyboard -- especially when I'm trying to pull a POV switcheroo. I have responses to most conservative talking points, but when it comes to this war, or set of wars, oy!, I like these words by Gershom Gorenberg in the Times:
"I don’t have a quick list of alternate strategies, not today. Yet the fact that I do not have a screwdriver, cannot even describe one, does not mean that a sledgehammer is the proper tool. Now that the sledgehammer has been chosen, I’d still like to hope it produces something positive – say, a breakthrough to peace. The hope does not eliminate doubts."
And neither does my own viewpoint eliminate the interestingness of other views, to me.
posted by shimmy | 6:56 PM
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