Talking about yourself again Mark. Have a look in the mirror!

Rock on, Mark. Rock On.

The Leftard who wrote the original post is using the Pee Wee Herman “I meant to do that� defense, claiming that he knew it was a metaphor, he just thought it was a stupid one. Riiiight.

To finish, I’ll quote the last paragraph of the FAQ page I linked to:

Troll Policy: trolls will have their IDs banned. What are trolls? In short, they are commenters who annoy the Management…

(Let’s see if THAT gets through…)

Why is there not a single right wing blog in Australia that engages with Australian politics? Why do they only specialise in climate change denialism, Islamophobia and attempts at “gotcha” moments vis-a-vis the left? I ask these questions rhetorically, but unless anyone believes that “the answer is Liberal”, the answer ought to be obvious.

I don’t believe for a second the faux confected outrage of the flying monkey commenters about this post is genuine. All their “faith based” crap has crumbled into dust, and they’re reduced to straight out vulgar and offensive abuse against demons of their own imagination.

In so many ways, the world has moved on.

When Howard goes, the rest of their “reality” will crumble over night. It will be interesting to see how they deal.

Perhaps they’ll have to come to terms with the fact that spending your leisure time hurling bile filled insults on blogs is the mark of a sad fucking loser with no life whatsoever.

I made a similar statement in July 2006, before Saddam’s execution, over at Quiggin:

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission along the lines of South Africa’s is established. People with grievances and accusations present them to the Commission. The accusers confront the accused. Forgiveness may be achieved by malefactors who make the fullest disclosures of wrongdoing and crimes. Less than full disclosure to result in criminal prosecution to the fullest rigour of the law.

I also suggested then that:

Iraqi groups themselves may not want this procedure. They may prefer to fight their civil war to the bitter end. It’s up to them.

Naturally, the usual Flying Monkey suspects questioned my sanity and/or my loyalty.

I believe that time has been unkind to the Soaring Simians.

“Mandela did convince the ANC to commit itself to an act of self-denial in accepting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. …. It was truly a remarkable feat of humanity and statesmanship. Never before have victors been so generous to their erstwhile oppressors.

Yes indeed.
Prior to the Truth & Reconcilliation Commission [ which heard what happened from BOTH sides in the conflict], Nelson Mandela was merely well-known, someone who could be held up as their own hero by followers of all sorts of causes and movements: a bit like Ned Kelly, Josef Stalin, Al Capone, Adolf Hitler, John Kemnnedy, Che Guevarra, etc., etc, and soon like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin-Laden. However, it was the Truth & Reconcilliation Commission, not his earlier actions nor his long imprisonment, that put Mandela on such a high pedestal.

Nothing in his previous statements on international affairs gave me any confidence at all tnat Bush actually had much understanding of who Mandela is or what he stood for.

Think of all the lives that would have been saved if there had been a Truth & Reconcilliation Commission in Iraq immediately after the Invasion …. not as exciting as shooting or degrading Iraqis or blowing up Americans and their followers perhaps but a darned sight more useful.

Not primarily the actual stuff itself of course, but what comes from controlling a significant source of it.

It appears that you agree with me that it is perfectly clear what Bush was saying. You simply disagree with the accuracy of the claim that Saddam killed off all of the people who could have played the role of Nelson Mandella. I am perfectly happy to agree that their is room for debate on the accuracy of this claim. In fact, I do not know whether it is true or not. I am no fan of the war. I think the original invasion was incredibly misguided and I am starting to wonder whether or not the Iraqis would be better off if the US and its allies simply pulled out. But the accuracy of the statement is irrelevant to the point I was making. The original post did not question the accuracy of the statement. Instead it deliberately misinterpreted the statement in an attempt to ridicule GW. This is the sense in which it was pathetic.

Nursing further illusions about it is not likely to help.

Amen to that.

We all agree that the present predicament is that Bush has the Iraqi tiger by the tail.

I think we agree that the tiger is growing more obstreperous.

I think we also agree that the US is incapable of hanging onto that tail for much longer. Bush hopes he can hang onto it until the White House door hits him on the arse for the last time, in Jan 2009.

I think we agree that bush can’t kill the tiger.

I think we agree, therefore, that Bush’s successor will have to let go.

How can Bush and his successor influence the behaviour of the tiger once heis released?

Can Bush both tug the tiger by the tail and reduce its anger? I think not, however, I’m willing to listen to arguments against my assumption.

But here is something that US voters and citizens might think about. Whose interests is Bush promoting by refusing to let go? This morning Amnesty International reported that there are more than 4.2 million Iraqi refugees, overwhelmingly Sunni, who have fled Iraq since the US invasion. This is the work of the tiger whose tail Bush even now grasps.

Is this what you Americans want from the expenditure of your blood and treasure?

This is a question for the future, not one about the past.

Consider (which I think Cliff alone of all the commenters on this thread to date has noticed) that Bush is not a grad student in ME history, he is a politician trying to peddle an unpopular line in the face of opposition that is sometimes stiff and often preposterous. What he says in a speech is not a doctoral dissertation to be defended; it is a policy, one which for diverse highly debatable reasons he and his advisors think to be best; a policy to be defended, against people many of whom have still less of a clue than he has. I think it is a rather sour note indeed for American democracy that the level of discourse over such a vital matter is this dishonest and retarded, but still, here we all are. (And you won’t *believe* who *I* blame for it.)

A second matter to consider is even more germane, but has crept into the background: the war was undertaken not as an experiment in social work, despite the absurd salesmanship we’ve all had to sit through; it was undertaken in the interests of US national security in the wake of egregious acts of war which had the ability to be replicated many times over if action was not taken. (As it happens, I think the war was the wrong thing to do IN THAT LIGHT, but I was not in charge, so again, here we all are.) Viewed in this way (and again I’m not talking about ‘justice’ but what’s on our plate at present) there’s a certain hierarchy of preferred outcomes, most of which include a peaceful stable Iraq; but these were not the primary goals, just as the prosperity of the Toyota Motor Co. turns out to be nice, but was not the goal of war with Japan. It no longer matters, from a certain standpoint, whether this war was wise, unwise, or otherwise; it’s happened, for good or for ill, and now it has to be mitigated and managed to the optimal outcome. Nursing illusions about these things was partly what led us to this pass. Nursing further illusions about it is not likely to help.

Even under the relatively benign regime of Qasim (1958-1963) the Party attracted fewer than 30,000 members.

Earlier, British interests were happy to see the party repressed.

And under Saddam, the US applauded Saddam’s persecution of Communists as a theatre of the Cold War in the strategically vital Middle East.

Therefore the fate of the Iraqi Communist Party serves to prove my point.