40 Comments

1. RedneckJihad:

Roger,

I like the idea of a conservative/liberal debate. I suggest ‘Pajama Parry’ for the name. Not using a particular individual’s name opens it to other debaters.

Dec 7, 2005 - 9:08 am 2. Billy Hollis:

Chirality

The “ch” is pronounced as a “k”. If something has chirality, it means that it’s structurally different from its mirror image. (It’s a term from physics/chemistry referring to molecules.) I think that captures the essence of right/left debate these days.

The adjective is “chiral”.

Dec 7, 2005 - 9:24 am 3. Michelle:

How about Bloggers Corner (a la Speaker’s Corner)?

Dec 7, 2005 - 9:39 am 4. Jonathan Sabin:

If it’s always going to be opposing points of view, Left verses Right, then I have a suggestion. In the military, there is a marching command: Mark Time, March! Once given, the marching soldier marches in place, with a little help from the soldier leading the formation. “Left, Right, Left, Right” etc. So “Mark Time” would be my suggestion, although now that I think of it, it would probably require some explaination.

Dec 7, 2005 - 10:00 am 5. PC14:

Oh, just call it:

Throwdown

Dec 7, 2005 - 10:02 am 6. L.B.:

Pajama Parry? What about just calling it Pajama Party?

Dec 7, 2005 - 10:08 am 7. Keith_Indy:

Pillow Fight??? All the fury of a fight, without any real injuries.

Left me wanting.

Wanting to see a real debate, with a little moderation, keeping them focused on the topic, and complete thoughts.

Don’t try and re-do “Crosstalk.” I can turn on any number of cable stations to get high noise/content ratios. I want to see more content, less noise.

And no artifical deadlines.

Sorry if this seems harsh, but honesty is the best policy.

I’d like to see an intellectually honest debate about todays issues from those two fine gentlemen.

Dec 7, 2005 - 10:21 am 8. markus:

What I want to see: Hitchens vs. George Packer, RE: Iraq.

Dec 7, 2005 - 10:37 am 9. Ofc. Krupke:

I would suggest staying away from anything in the Pajama Party/Pillow Fight theme for a title.

Unless you want to wade through a ton of badly spelled comments from lost Googlers to the effect that those were the “Ugliest Coeds Ever!!!”

Dec 7, 2005 - 10:45 am 10. byrd:

Billy: I think that’s a great term…once explained. Without explanation, it’s a head scratcher.

Let’s see…hmmm hmmm net, web, spider, surf internet, interlude…

Interlewd?

No, that’s good for something, but not this. Pajamas, Piranas, Bar stool philosophers…opposites, opposites detract, opposable thumbs, how ’bout just

“face off”?

Dec 7, 2005 - 10:45 am 11. RedneckJihad:

L.B.

Pajama Parry? What about just calling it Pajama Party?

Pajama Parry is a play on Pajama Party. This is much more a parry than party.

Dec 7, 2005 - 10:50 am 12. AlanC:

Sorry Roger, nothing near terrific.

You get two guys who both hate the war and call that a discussion?

Marc was a blithering idiot talking about how there were no decapitators before we got rid of Saddam, and Mike wants us to sing kumbaya and work “politically” to solve Iraq and Iran.

Did he sleep through the 12 years of UN sanctions and resolutions? And exactly what political leverage does anyone have with the MMs?

Twadle dee and twaddle dumber.

Dec 7, 2005 - 11:01 am 13. monkyboy:

Are you suggesting they should find someone who loves the war, Alan? Someone who “loves the smell of napalm in the morning?”

Dec 7, 2005 - 11:57 am 14. Keith_Indy:

How about just supporting the war, or does that not fit into your rhetoric.

I don’t love war, I support it when it makes sense. This war, Iraq and the broader war against Islamofacism, makes sense to me.

I’m pro-peace, and even would have liked a political solution that had a chance of guaranteeing that the goals of the war in Iraq could be accomplished. But given the conditions in Iraq, that was unlikely to happen. Very unlikey to happen, in the strongest sense.

I’m also non-violent, but am very capable of defending myself and others from violence.

The “anti-war” crowd paints their opponents as lovers of war. Sure makes us look like bad guys. But, of course, nothing is as simple as that (except maybe to true pacifists.)

The reality of my position doesn’t fit well with the broadstrokes that some would paint with.

I get where Ledeen is comming from. He agreed with the goals, but not the method used. But, now that we’ve accomplished so much, it would be illogical (and immoral) to give up and go home.

Dec 7, 2005 - 12:16 pm 15. Ed Poinsett:

Alan C says it.

Nice try, but two anti-war types espousing why Iraq was wrong leaves me cold. As far as Iran, we’ve given the vaunted European diplomacy route another two years and what do we have to show? Israel to be wiped off the map with the nukes the MMs have been continuing to develop.

Has Iraq been perfect? Probably not, but what action like this is ever perfect? That’s a lousy benchmark. Are we passing milestones in Iraq that we set out to do? Absolutely. Insurgency or no, every significant landmark has been met on schedule. The real test will come over the next year, and Neverland is not the goal!

If there is not continued improvement in the terror situation and the Iraqis aren’t doing their share of the lifting, then is the time to consider options. Right now our plans must be focused on success, not defeat. In any case this global war has a long, long run ahead as both Bush and Rumsfeld have said repeatedly.

Dec 7, 2005 - 12:55 pm 16. AlanC:

Hey monkeybrain nice comeback. Not quite up to “your mother wears army boots”, but, with a little practice you can aspire to that level.

Oh and I wouldn’t be too surprised to find that there are a few Marsh Arabs and Kurds and Shiites in Iraq who loved this war just fine.

Me? I hate war, except when all the alternatives are worse. Kinda like now.

Dec 7, 2005 - 1:01 pm 17. AlanC:

Hey monkeybrain nice comeback. Not quite up to “your mother wears army boots”, but, with a little practice you can aspire to that level.

Oh and I wouldn’t be too surprised to find that there are a few Marsh Arabs and Kurds and Shiites in Iraq who loved this war just fine.

Me? I hate war, except when all the alternatives are worse. Kinda like now.

Dec 7, 2005 - 1:02 pm 18. L.B.:

Roger,

Have you thought about doing this debate by web-cam? It would make it faster and easier for Cooper and Leeden to respond, you think?

Dec 7, 2005 - 1:05 pm 19. L.B.:

Redneck…….

Okay, Okay……How about just “The Debate”?

Dec 7, 2005 - 1:07 pm 20. AlanC:

Damn double post….it told me the first post timed out so I posted again.

To Ed’s point the one thing that annoys me, probably most of all, from the critics is that they seem to believe the TV template; that every problem has to be solved perfectly in an hour….

with commercials.

This is a long, hard slog. That’s exactly what W and company have been saying since day 1. Perfection is the “expectation” of the traitors and assorted anti-Americans. If it ain’t perfect and immediate it’s a failure. We are making great progress in addressing (may we have a drum roll please) ROOT CAUSES!!

These are the same kind of buffoons that don’t have the attention span to listen to a symphony or read a serious book. Pfui!!

PS

for Roger, what great fictional detective prefered “Pfui” as his favorite expletive?

Dec 7, 2005 - 1:10 pm 21. Charles:

How about “Jane, you ignorant slut!” or just “Jane”. Those were some of my favorite debates. I think these weekly jousts have the potential to provide (almost) as much entertainment as SNL’s classic parodies.

Dec 7, 2005 - 1:46 pm 22. monkyboy:

The problem with your logic, Alan, is that we are the root cause of the insurgancy.

As a humanitarian mission, Iraq is a waste of money.

As a mission to improve American security, there is little chance that replacing a neutered dictator with a Shiite theocracy will improve things.

Dec 7, 2005 - 1:55 pm 23. Keith_Indy:

Except that there were no signs that Saddam was neutered (ALL the intel agencies agreed on that.)

And there are no signs that a Shiite theocracy is being created in Iraq.

So there goes your strawman…

And we are the root cause of the insurgency, yet the Iraqis are the TARGET of the insurgency.

Well, no, not all Iraqis, just Iraqis who want to create a free and democratic society.

Dec 7, 2005 - 2:02 pm 24. AlanC:

“…we are the root cause of the insurgancy.”

ROTFLMAO!!!!!

You think the insurgency (note the spelling) is the problem???? God damn, you’re thick!

Tell me monkeybrain do you have any sense of history longer than a day and a half? Or a scope larger than your own delusions?

Even though I know that it’s a wasted effort to try and inform you…

The problem in the ENTIRE Muslim Middle East is the fact that they are breeding Islamofascists that like to fly planes into buildings and enslave anyone who doesn’t believe in their death-cult moon god, AND ARE COMING CLOSE TO HAVING NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

THE ROOT CAUSE that breeds these scum is that the entire region has been under the thumb of tyrannical dictators and religious nut-jobs who make the individual nothing more than a cog in their meglomaniacal schemes. The FACT is that your hero, Saddam, was the easiest and most legitimate, cause the most immediately dangerous, target after Afghanistan. When you want to break into a house, you break the window, not the brick wall.

Now that we are helping the Iraqis set up a democracy we are addressing the root causes in ALL of the region. The masses in Iran, Syria, SA, etc. will become much more receptive to the concepts of individual freedom and liberty as they see Iraq start to succeed.

Of course this doesn’t even begin to address the scare that has been put into these SOBs like Daffy Duck, Baby Asshat, etc.

Dec 7, 2005 - 2:17 pm 25. monkyboy:

Actually, Alan, if you study the history of the Middle East, you see that radical Islam has been rising and falling there for over 1000 years.

It usually has a brief success, then fades when Muslims tire of living under its strict rules. The only thing that tends to prolong it is…foreign troops in traditionally Muslim lands.

Dec 7, 2005 - 5:45 pm 26. Piglet:

Finally, our very own monkyboy has done it! He’s given us the left’s plan for what to do about Islamic terrorism. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have been waiting for this for such a long time and whodathunk it would pop up here?! The plan is… to wait until Muslims tire of living under radical Islamic leadership. I can’t tell you how much better I feel now.

Dec 7, 2005 - 6:11 pm 27. monkyboy:

As opposed to the fringe right’s plan:

Suspend every Constitutional freedom you can in the U.S., funnel tens of billions of dollars to Republican front companies, then go slaughter a bunch of brown people.

This plan is workin’ great!

Dec 7, 2005 - 6:38 pm 28. Roger:

So I take it, anonymous monkyboy, that brown people like this don’t count in your unsophisticated weltanschauung….

http://www.osm.org/site/story/2005127omarelectionoroundup?currow=2

Dec 7, 2005 - 6:52 pm 29. Syl:

Man, I was hoping for better from Marc Cooper than the same ol’ same ol’. Really, don’t these people ever find new arguments? Saddam in a box? Sounds like the same video game they’ve been playing for three years.

Monkeypants is just the same. He’s brought up the 1000 years of rising/falling muslim terror before.

And it’s been pointed out to him that the weapons are more destructive now than they were even a century ago. And there are more killers and more people to be killed now than ever before.

We can’t simply wait for it to go away.

Monkeypants, get yourself some new arguments.

You are a yawn.

Dec 7, 2005 - 8:11 pm 30. Syl:

Monkeypants

Speaking of constitutional freedoms, you don’t know how good you have it.

The first one to go will be free speech. You’re already afraid, I suspect, to speak out against Islamists. When they start carrying out assassinations of people who offend them here in America as they’ve done in other western nations, then you’ll know your right of free speech has gone poof.

And without free speech, those other rights cannot be argued for.

Dec 7, 2005 - 8:15 pm 31. Kevin Peters:

Roger:

The mistakes that have been made in the prosecution of this war are legion and if one wants to attack it after the fact it is easy to do. But for those who tear and shred President Bush I have a few questions. How were the efforts of the U.N. and the International community for bringing a democratic change to the Mid East working? How many of the dictatorships that were a cancer to the area and the world were overthrown during the last two decades? Yes, Saddam was “contained’ and he could not carry out a aggressive war against his neighbors but what were the prospects of ending his Bathist party reign and exactly what steps were taken to remove him? Do you really think anything other then a invasion was going to get him out of Iraq and if so, what was the plan and how was it going to be implemented? (please don’t try the economic embargo gambit, we saw what happened to that fiasco) Was the occupation of Iraq by the air force that kept saddam “contained’ but had done nothing to kick him out of power going to go on forever? How were the critics going to handle the declaration of a independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq that would have been declared if the no fly zones were kept on for the next decade and what would they have done when Turkey attacked that state as they promised they would? Do they think that Libya’s dumping of their nuke program had nothing to do with their leader seeing what happened to Saddam?

Was the status qou of the stability for oil program of both Democratic and Republican administration over the last 6 decades working for the world in general and for the people of the middle east? I think it would have been better for the Iraqi’s to have overthrown Saddam themselves but that was the plan that Bush 41 suggested and we saw how Saddam crushed that attempt without breaking a sweat. I agree, political solutions are always better then War. But other then wishing for them I have not seen a political solution that was going to remove Saddam and there has been more movement towards democracy in the middle east during the current administartion then in the previous 5. Is this transformation going smoothly? No. But at least it has started. Other then empty proclamations there was nothing going on before this President. The regimes of the area were not changing one bit and no one was taking any concrete steps to do anything. NOTHING WAS CHANGING.

Dec 7, 2005 - 10:09 pm 32. Jim Rockford:

Monkeyboy and Leftists make the same mistake for the same reason:

A reactionary fear of change.

Unfortunately this change is inevitable and we will have conflict with the Islamic World if we like it or not. We can either wait until thousands or tens of thousands (a few hours later and 14,000 would have died on 9/11) or millions and believe me THEN the killing will REALLY start.

Muslims see the total failure of the Islamic World (in 2004 gross revenues of NOKIA exceeded that of non-oil related exports from Arab nations) and must find someone to blame. The Jews, Israel, and of course the evil Great Satan the United States. Are not Britney and Christina on MTV on satellite TV? What more proof of evil can you have than the righteous Muslims suffer (and see with their own eyes the wickedness of the infidel) while the right hand of Satan prospers? It is the duty of the faithful therefore to destroy the infidel whenever and wherever he can be found.

The general Muslim reaction is to destroy modernity and rule the embers. MODERN LIFE itself as epitomized by the US makes this conflict inevitable, accelerated by technology like TV, radio, Satellite TV, DVDs, and the internet.

Yes it would be nice to think that Saddam or Osama or whoever had “stopped most of the killing” but that’s a fallacy. Like imagining that suppressing 80% of the population by a Sunni minority was any more stable (or different from) Apartheid or Pinochet’s military government and attempt to turn Chile back into 1932. Saddam WAS a problem, aggressive, harboring terrorists, acting against the US, refusing any prospect of dropping hostility or regional ambitions.

Monkeyboy and Leftists both suffer from the same delusion: that with just enough effort it can remain 1994 forever. Well, it won’t. CHANGE WILL HAPPEN. We can either try and shape it for the better or just sit by passively till the next atrocity ala Beslan or worse hits us. There is also on Monkeyboy’s (but not I believe Marc’s) the belief that the US is the sole source of all evil and for the world to be utopian the US simply has to disappear (best) or withdraw into a shell and apologize for existing.

Marc at least recognized that a. the lesson of the Iraq War was that to remove tyrants ONLY the US will do; b. people around the globe desire something more than to be ruled by a hereditary dictatorship (Castro, Saddam, Kims etc); c. the US MUST ACT or be shaped by a changing world, the Ostrich strategy is simply stupid.

Marc still does not recognize that there is a difference between using the Marines to overthrow legitimate but anti-American governments that don’t pose a security threat in the Cold War (Honduras, Dominican Republic) and the modern challenge of hostile states aligned with terrorists planning things along 9/11. He’s not there yet on military force but I think he will get there.

Dec 7, 2005 - 11:14 pm 33. monkyboy:

Roger,

You don’t need a sophisticated taste in art to judge the drawings of toddlers. You don’t need a sophisticated world view to understand the ham-fisted Republican plan for Iraq.

I believe what we are setting up in Iraq is something the late, great, Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman would have called a “Cargo Cult Democracy.”

From his book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character:”

We really ought to look into theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science. I think the educational . . . studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science.

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head for headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas - he’s the controller - and they wait for the airplanes to land.

They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land.

So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.

It takes a lot more than purple thumbs and a piece of paper to turn a country into a democracy.

Dec 7, 2005 - 11:53 pm 34. Syl:

It takes a lot more than purple thumbs and a piece of paper to turn a country into a democracy.

You think?

What is Roger’s place to you? Practice? I mean you’re getting the form down, it’s just the content that is lacking.

Dec 8, 2005 - 1:20 am 35. Keith_Indy:

I believe AlanC already dealt with the issue of some peoples short attention span, and inability to stay focused…

“the one thing that annoys me, probably most of all, from the critics is that they seem to believe the TV template; that every problem has to be solved perfectly in an hour….

with commercials”

Dec 8, 2005 - 5:17 am 36. Piglet:

It’s just unbelievable to me that monkyboy has no idea how racist his last comment was. Or am I giving him too much benefit of the doubt?

Dec 8, 2005 - 7:25 am 37. monkyboy:

My last comment was aimed at the greedy and violent idiots running our country, Piglet, not the good people of Iraq.

The idea that central-casting Politburo members like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld could call into being anything as fair and delicate as a democracy is laughable.

Dec 8, 2005 - 8:09 am 38. Piglet:

Come on, Monkyboy, please reread your post and have the decency to admit that at best it was a poor analogy. And in your analysis, what is that essential thing that is missing that prevents Iraq from having a democracy?

Dec 8, 2005 - 9:09 am 39. Keith_Indy:

monkeybutt, gotta wonder if it’s the nom de plume for peabrain???

Dec 8, 2005 - 9:09 am 40. Kevin P:

Roger:

Whether MB is a racist or not is a pointless argument. I doubt that he is. The fact that he has adopted the Pat Buchannon foreign policy that states that the people of the middle east do not want to have a Democratic state with rights and participation in their government, that they prefer the “strong hand” of a dictator, and that if you assume that they have aspirations for freedom you are an idiot because they don’t and it is wiser to accept that fact, deal with the tyrants, ignore the Human Rights violations and let the competing tyrants go after each other now and then if they want to as long as we get our oil. This is Security for Oil, this has been the defacto policy of the U.S. for the last 60 years,both Democratic and Republican, and this was the policy that the current President was going to follow until events opened his eyes.

Please don’t recite the poetic appeals for Human Rights that flowed from various White House Administrations and from the U.N. over the last few decades. The various tyrants of the Middle East read them and used them to wipe themselves. They could do this because they knew these were empty threats and that no concrete actions would be taken. “Oh, but look at the first Gulf War and the help we got from the region and the world”. That is true but the aid was given with the promise that we would not remove Saddam. That was why Saddam felt free to crush the opposition groups that rose up because we told them to rise up and the entire world ignored his actions and took no concrete steps to remove him. They contained him. But that allowed him to send $25,000 to each suicide bombing, it allowed him to corrupt the U.N. and use the aid that was intended for women and children and use it for his cronies. And before 9-11 the pressure to remove the embargo was growing and it would have been removed without removing Saddam. And when he got hold of the billions of petro dollars that the oil of Iraq would generate I feel it is the height of naivete to believe he would not reach out and aid the terrorist groups that had shown that they would attack us all over the world. He was contained but I have never seen any plan, any action that was going to remove him and other then saying that it was up to the Iraqi’s themselves to get rid of him I have not seen a single realistic plan that was going to topple the Saddam regime. Because he had no problem with the notion of mass murder of his own people there was no way that an Iraqi insurrection was going to work. Look how well it worked after the first gulf war.

I despise Buchannon’s foreign policy but he is consistent. He is against nation building, he thinks that if a tyrant has something that we need for our our security, oil, we have no choice but to work with the devil we know and ignore what he does to his own population or any other population as long as it doesn’t directly hurt America. If he is overthrown by someone who will give us what we need and is not evil great, but it is none of our buisness what other countries do and unless they attack us it is none of our buisness. It is simple and it is practical. But I think it is short sighted and it is the ostrich method to foreign policy that doesn’t works.

Dec 8, 2005 - 11:32 am

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