17 Comments

1. richard mcenroe:

The neat part: It doesn’t matter! Bush could panic like Kerry on the Mekong and we still couldn’t withdraw from Iraq before the election date anyway, so as long as Allawi sticks to his stand, we’re gonna be there for the election. Might as well pitch in…

Dec 7, 2004 - 7:07 pm 2. jedrury:

Roger:

Sorry to be “off subject” but here is a more complete obituary for Joseph Hansen in the Post than the Times. Thought you might like to read it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41855-2004Dec6.html

Dec 7, 2004 - 7:29 pm 3. chuck:

Sounds like he wants to have it both ways. Nothing personal, it’s just politics, as the Don would say.

The BBC, of course, is in the propaganda business. I regard them as one of our chief adversaries.

Dec 7, 2004 - 7:36 pm 4. mudmarine:

Just to slip back a couple of posts, you see, Roger, some people take three pages, some take three paragraphs, some attempt with three dots. The dots are too little, the pages perhaps too long, but a good writer can perfectly do in three paragraphs. As you illustrate so well.

And you are so correct, I believe, on exactly what is happening in the world today. ‘Amerika’ must be defeated at all costs. Many and varied reasons for this I suppose. Does it come down to pure simple jealously? Is it base greed? Is there a simple motivational factor? Is it just a primal urge to tear the ‘big dog’ down. Or, is it just one big guilt trip? To be honest, I truly do not know anymore.

Please forgive the OT.

Dec 7, 2004 - 8:19 pm 5. Calico Jack:

Another aspect of media coverage in the weeks since Nov 2 is the resurrection of various aspects of the Abu Ghraib scandal. This reinforces the public perception of American moral failure, and furthers the defeatist mood mentioned by Roger above.

Dec 7, 2004 - 9:11 pm 6. David Thomson:

ìIt’s pretty clear that many people would prefer to see fascism reinstituted in Iraq than it be the United States that brings democracyî

The national Democratic Party and its allies in the MSM and other liberal institutions are a greater threat to the Iraqis than the terrorists (and yes, Iím dead serious). This is a repeat of Viet Nam. They continuously focus on the bad news so that Americans become demoralized and demand that our military forces be removed. It is their subconscious, if not even conscious desire, to see the nihilist Muslims win.

Am I saying that all Democrats are objectively pro-totalitarian? Of course not. I suspect the figure to be no more than one/third of the total membership—but these are the folks who possess the ultimate veto power over who obtains this partyís presidential nominee every four years.

Dec 8, 2004 - 2:49 am 7. Fausta:

Cost of registering domain name for a couple of years: $100

Monthly badnwith fees: $100

Being able to refer to Vladimir Putin as Pooty-Poot for thousands of visitors: Priceless!

After this commercial message, the latest news is that the medical evidence is in: MEDICAL experts have confirmed that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraineís opposition leader, was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning, the doctor who supervised his treatment at an Austrian clinic said yesterday

Dec 8, 2004 - 6:05 am 8. Fausta:

(also priceless are the commenters who can’t spell “bandwith” and type $100 when they mean $1000 for “bandwith fees”)

Dec 8, 2004 - 6:09 am 9. Cosmo:

Just grand. A former police state apparatchik pontificates on the subject of democratic institutions, and he’s taken seriously by the house organ of statist utopians.

What’s next? A treatise on Soviet agricultural innovations? Technological advances made possible by the Cultural Revolution? the 2005 investor’s guide to North Korea?

Consider the source(s).

Dec 8, 2004 - 8:54 am 10. Terrye:

Putin is just pissed off he did not get his way in the Ukraine.

I bet we are out of Iraq before the Russians are out of Chechnya.

But as usual that is different.

Dec 8, 2004 - 2:02 pm 11. David Gillies:

Vladimir Putin is a very bad man. One of the most distasteful aspects of Cold War Realpolitik was the unpleasant bedfellows the West had to endure in order to counter Soviet expansionism. Now that the USSR has been destroyed and Russia is essentially Belgium with nukes, there’s not nearly the need to mollycoddle people like Putin. We should resist the notion of ‘my enemy’s enemy’ just because Russia is fighting Islamofascists itself.

Dec 8, 2004 - 2:07 pm 12. Caroline:

Totally off-topic – - however, inasmuch as the subject of Roger’s post essentially boils down to “defeatism”, this is relevant.

Are readers aware of the many articles written by the person writing under the pseudonym “Spengler”? He/she? writes for the Asia Times online: http://www.atimes.com. Scroll down on the left to the bottom icon where it says: “The Complete Spengler” – and then read his/her? many articles dating back to 9/11. The articles include “Writing off Europe”, “Muslim Anguish and Western Hypocricy” and many more. I spent hours reading these articles today and I came away feeling extremely depressed.

To connect this to Roger’s post today, there is simply no way to understand the defeatism among the Europeans and the American “blue states” vis a vis Iraq and the Islamist threat today without absorbing what “Spengler” is saying about the death – no – rather the SUICIDE of western Christian civilization. Just another example actually in a long line of cultures that have essentially committed suicide – whether actively or passively.

His/her many articles explain the forces at work that account for Spain’s (and the Vatican’s appeasement) of Islamism, the Islamization of Europe, the demographic trends shaping Europe, and America- in short – everything that is going on right now as we read and type. Its a very stark picture.

One thing I took away from all these articles was a sense of the forces shaping American culture – in particular – the evangelical Christian movement in America – which Spengler seems to see as not only endlessly reinventing itself but also as bucking the demographic trends among Christianity more broadly. I was left with the sense that the future will be an all out fight between American Christian evangelicals (red staters – who are actually reproducing in sufficient numbers to survive) and Islamists – who will already have taken over Europe in a decade or so.

Anyway – its worth reading through Spengler’s many articles to get a broader perspective on what is going on. It all looks quite familiar actually, but rather scary when outlined so objectively. And again while it is indeed off-topic it should be mentioned in order to give a broader cultural context in which to interpret these otherwise baffling anomolies on our current political/cultural scene: take e.g homosexuality. A culture that champions homosexuality is essentially committing suicide, is it not? (please note that I couldn’t personally care less about homosexuality from a moral perspective, and I suspect that I share that sentiment with many readers of Roger’s blog). The fact is, however, that unless a culture reproduces itself on the order of at least 2.1 offspring per couple, it will die out. These are simply facts.

Hope you will check out “Spengler”’s writings…….

Dec 8, 2004 - 3:36 pm 13. BeckyJ:

As Terrye alluded to, Putin is not one to talk about free elections in Iraq or anywhere else for that matter. He just failed in his attempt to completely manipulate the elections in Ukraine. Roger’s right; Putin is KGB and old-style Soviet apparatchik through and through. I don’t think he could change even if he wanted to!

Dec 9, 2004 - 3:31 pm 14. Caroline:

Since this is a dead thread I hope no one will mind if I take just a little bandwidth to elaborate on my previous post about Spengler, in order to make clearer what I took to be Spengler’s basic explanation of “defeatism” as it relates to broader demographic phenomenon. As has been made abundantly clear in the news, Western Judaeo-Christian peoples in Europe are dying off through lack of reproduction and as Bernard West has pointed out – Europe will be Islamicized before the end of this century. What Spengler points out is that people who are not anticipating a next generation are not willing to die in war. What after all would they be dying for, as their cultural identity will not survive anyway? In other words, what appears to be defeatism is really much deeper than that and is essentially related to the phenomenon of cultural suicide. He points out a similar trend among our blue-staters – who are also not reproducing at a sufficient rate to survive past perhaps another couple of generations (is it not relevant that the blue-staters champion both abortion and gay-marriage?). It is interesting that our blue-staters evidence the same “defeatism” with respect to the current war on Islamism as the Europeans. It makes me wonder whether the reelection of Bush represents some sort of implicit awareness of all of these trends and a basic cultural survival instinct of sorts?

Dec 9, 2004 - 5:50 pm 15. Caroline:

a survival instinct among red-staters that is…

But after feeling very depressed about the apparent suicide of Judeo-Christian culture – (not to mention the siege of Buddhist culture, Tibet – who knows about the fate of Hindu culture in the face of the Islamist onslaught? – what fate awaits Israel if the Palestinians, backed up by the Islamists and cheered on by the suicidal Europeans and American leftists – in fact ultimately succeed in destroying Israel?) – it later occurred to me – isn’t Judaeo-Christian culture rather enlightened after all?

And what if the end of comparative cultural enlightenment is extinction? Maybe its not a defeat after all but simply the end of a people’s journey on earth – leaving the physical realm to cultures who still have much to work through on the earthly plain with all of its suffering?

Because frankly if Islam succeeds in taking over the world, there will without a doubt be a great deal of suffering. And what if that is the point after all? What if the good die young?

Dec 9, 2004 - 6:13 pm 16. Caroline:

My apologies Roger for blathering on. I promise to behave myself on your site in the future. I do, however, hope you check out Spengler. He/she? should have been nominated in the essayist category for the web awards. For a while there, I thought I might be reading Victor Davis Hanson in disguise…..

Dec 9, 2004 - 6:26 pm 17. 100rk3r:

To “Caroline”:

Found this thread because I was googling to learn the identity of “Spengler”.

You said: For a while there, I thought I might be reading Victor Davis Hanson in disguise…..

This is from Spengler’s most recent:

Those who seem to think that such provocations as the murder of Theo van Gogh by terrorists will revive Europe’s will to live, eg Victor Davis Hanson, sadly misestimate the depth to which Europe has sunk.

http://atimes01.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GC08Aa02.html

By the way, there’s a thread about Spengler’s true identity here:

http://forum.atimes.com/pop_printer_friendly.asp?TOPIC_ID=66

Mar 8, 2005 - 8:49 am

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