12 Comments

I don’t think that in general liberals, or rather the left, was ever sincere about democracy, women’s rights, progress, or any of those other wonderful things, they were just wedge issues to gain influence. Not that many don’t sincerely believe that they are sincerely concerned, it just doesn’t work that way in practice.

I will venture out on a limb and say the same holds for the rest of the political spectrum. It takes a special sort of person, maybe even a bit of a nut, to be sincerely concerned about such things in distant countries.

Roger you are right we should support the Democracy movement in Iran. My question is how? Do we declare war or something less drastic?

Some historians have suggested that our demand for unconditional surrender to Germany in WWII caused the uncommitted to fight longer and harder. Roosevelt’s joking (I hope) suggestion that we castrate all the German males and Morgenthau’s plan to eviscerate all their industry probably didn’t help us either (source “New Dealer’s War” by Thomas Fleming). Perhaps Germany’s murderous slaughter of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Communists, Homosexuals and any that disagreed with the Nazi agenda justified our reaction, but the question is tactically was it the right move?

If Iran is the equivalent in evil of Nazi Germany do we tactically do the same as we did to Germany? If so aren’t there some other nations (North Korea) that justify a similar response? Perhaps we should draw the line at nations that are murderous and dangerous to other nations and exclude those who are murderous only to their own citizens.

Let us hope Obama and the rest of the American people hear the pleas of those brave people marching in the streets of Tehran.

@Joseph, in regards to the WWII discussion:

Unconditional surrender was exactly the right course in WWII. It was a hard won lesson from the failures of WWI. WWI was a horrific war which saw a negotiated peace which solved none of the underlying problems. The unhealed wounds of WWI festered until they burst in an even greater explosion of violence and hatred. In contrast, the unconditional surrenders after WWII allowed for unprecedented nation (re)building that arguably forms the foundation for what degree of prosperity and peace the industrialized western world enjoys today.

Iran and North Korea are thorny problems that will not be easy to sort out by any means. The Korean peninsula has effectively been an ongoing hostage crises for the last 6 decades, as any attempt to depose the North Korean regime by force would risk a conventional attack on Seoul that would almost assuredly kill millions of innocent South Korean civilians. With the chemical and nuclear weapons we know North Korea possesses, combined with their fairly advanced ballistic missile technology, added into the equation death tolls of tens to hundreds of millions in South Korea and Japan are not out of the question. Given such harsh realities it’s no wonder that the insane and brutal North Korean regime yet survives.

Iran is a different case but realistically it would be at least as difficult to invade and maintain order as it has been in Iraq. Not to mention that given the current state of internal conflict inside Iran, invasion may not be the best option for overthrowing the current regime (though don’t look at me as to what the best option actually is).

I don’t know what’s going to happen in/with Iran but I do know that the Obama administration could hardly have done worse in the way they are handling both the Iranian regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the Iranian public’s discontent with that regime.

Robin Goodfellow

Perhaps for domestic U.S. reasons unconditional surrender was required.

“Both Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin disapproved of the demand for unconditional surrender, as did most senior U.S. officials (except General Dwight D. Eisenhower). It has been estimated that it helped prolong the war in Europe through its usefulness to German domestic propaganda that used it to encourage further resistance against the Allied armies, and its suppressive effect on the German resistance movement since even after a coup against Adolf Hitler there was no “assurance that such action would improve the treatment meted out to their country”. It has also been argued that without the demand for unconditional surrender Central Europe might not have fallen behind the Iron curtain.” (source Wikipedia and their source “Another Look At Unconditional Surrender” by Micheal Balfour)

As a tactic in war it maybe overrated, though WWII is a special case.

As for Obama messing things up vis-a-vis the Democracy movement in Iran, I think he could do a whole lot worse but also a whole lot better. What I’m asking is how can we help to support those elements fighting the regime as a nation which is much disliked by many in Iran? Perhaps Roger and you Robin have some ideas. If so please share them and maybe if enough of us push the Obama administration to do more we can aid these brave liberal Muslims in their fight for freedom.

Just giving moral support to the pro-democracy side would be an improvement.

Obama’s behavior is consistent, however. Consistently anti-democratic.

Leftism is the inexorable march toward totalitarianism.

Leftists have never met a totalitarian tyrant, thug, and/or brutal mass murderer that they wouldn’t prop up, grovel beneath and provide conspiratorial cover for…no matter where in the world they reside.

The blood on their hands is not from the brutality and genocide…it’s from being an “agrarian reformer” in the fields…making the world “green” (instead of flowing red with innocent blood)

Hollywood’s mental midgets, including imbeciles like “The Mouth that Roared”, Sean Penn…the “West Wingnut”, Martin Sheen, “Hanoi Jane”, …and the double agents who have littered the landscape at the NYTimes…have trailblazed America into a deep bow all the post-modern Caesar’s….great revisionist writers that they are.

Who cares what happens in Iran or Israel or anywhere else? Who cares that Obama is Commander-In-Chief and Pelosi and Reid are poised to take over the economy? We’re too busy purging the impure from the Republican Party to worry about those trivial matters.
Anyone care to join me in a new start-up company specializing in manufacturing guillotines for the Tea Partyers to use and bomb shelters for when the Revolution is complete? I expect that there will be a near term boom in demand for the guillotines when the True Conservatives and the Social Liberals/Ayn Randie Objectivists began to deal with each other. I suggest that we accept payment in MRE’s.

7. Kenneth Daves as they say in Aussie land good on you mate. The crazies do seem to have taken over the asylum.

Kenneth, what should the Republican party do with the traitors and Obama suck-ups in its midst? There are too many “moderate” Repubs. (see Snowe, Scussie, et. al.) that do not agree with the principles of individualism and small, constrained (i.e. constitutional) government. Many of this group would fall to the left of many Democrats. Remember that the ultimate “Big Tent” is a one party state.

Unfortunately the true elite party in the country is the one that resides primarily within the DC beltway, a geographic area to which all these types aspire. The motto of this group seems to be “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine”.

Now, it sounds like you might not be left yourself so don’t you think that electing Republicans that will actively help “Who cares that Obama is Commander-In-Chief and Pelosi and Reid are poised to take over the economy?” is just a trifle counter productive?

And do you think John McCain would be playing Hamlet over Afghanistan or that Congress would be in session preparing to take over “health care” if John Boehner were Speaker or Mitch McConnell were Majority Leader?
All the Pork Busters, Minutemen and Tea Partyers have accomplished is to increase the Left’s power in Washington.
I don’t know what you were doing during the ’70’s and ’80’s. I was on active duty in the Air Force. I saw what happened when divisions in the Republican Party led to Mr. Peanut’s election. I have been determined ever since to fight that kind of foolishness.

Sorry you are wrong.

The increase in the left’s power in Washington came about as a result of Republican potentates acting more like Democrats after Reagan was gone. The Republican pork fest was the perfect breeding ground for Barney Frank & co. taking over the mortgage market with a wink and a nudge, Murtha and his ilk pouring billions into the coffers of his friends. Then it was a simple case for the Dems to win on an agenda which paints the Pubs as just as bad as the Dems. The MSM was more than happy to run with that meme. Unfortunately it was all too true in so many cases.

The power of the Republicans (hah) is in fighting the big spending pork barrel corruption of the Washington elite NOT in joining in and NOT in supporting all of the big Dem pork barrel. The Rockefeller Republicans were happiest back in the ’60s & ’70s when they could stand on the sidelines and revel in their own “principled” non-partisanship while criticizing the right-wing more than they criticized the left. Good old “go along to get along” was the mantra of the Pub establishment then and now.

Oh, in the ’70s I had my small construction business run into the ground by Carternomics. It never really got off the ground with the interest rates and their effect of drying up all work for anyone not politically connected.

The oligarchs of the Dems find way too much common cause with the oligarch wannabe “moderate” Pubs.

Thank you for making my point. You don’t care what happens if you can defeat the evil Repubs. I believe I’ll call it the “AlanC Principle.” Goodby and happy delusions.