Reply to “Dear Larry…”

I have received a reply from Larry Beinhart in response to my “Dear Larry…” posting.
While I respect Mr. Beinhart’s time and the thoughtfulness of his argument, there are just some points I just can’t get past. By his definition, at least in theory, all murderers are courageous.
His assertion that Saddam was “stable” bothers me.
Also, I understand that he is parsing the phrases “kill Americans everywhere” and “kill all Americans” in a very literal sense. I think they are still the same, especially since 9/11. If the Americans are in America, then where are they going to go to kill them?
Anything with a “greater than sign” in his email is a direct quote from my email to him. I’ve let this debate go about as far as it will go on the site, although I will reply to him one more time in email.
That said, Larry Beinhart’s reply appears below and, like last time, the content is unedited.
~WS~

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—–Original Message—–
From: Larry Beinhart
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 11:10 AM
To: William Smith
Subject: Re: ConBlog Feedback
Dear William;
Thanks for the letter.
For the record, to assume that my Bush hatred is some sort of thoughtless knee jerk reaction is a mistake. My Bush hatred is a careful, thought out part of the neo-neo-liberal latte drinking tie- dye hippie t-shirt free sex conspiracy to undermine all your values and recruit you into the homosexual atheist muslim agenda.
I wrote the original piece because Republicans have run as good on national defense. They have success on running on that issue. I would have thought it was perfectly obvious that this administration is really bad on national defense. For the reasons stated in my original post, which was short and pithy (I like to think) because that was its purpose, but could be fleshed out in greater detail to even book length.
And while I accept your parsing as it relates, perhaps, to a matter of manners, I don’t think I sound like a moron. Nor do I think your refutations, there, or here, demonstrate that what I said was moronic, or bullsh*t or half-a**ed, or even typical left-wing Saab driving, heli-skiing, origiastic bi-sexual, hillary-loving cliches.
As to the Clinton thing, which you go on and on about – it’s an obsession with you guys like fancy coffee and teaching good Christian children how to put condoms on freedom hating bananas is for us – there were, at the time, limits on using US forces to strike overseas. Even clandestinely. The political will was not there. I do not blame Bush II for not launching an invasion of Afghanistan or unleashing special forces assassins on the day he took office. He couldn’t have gotten away with it as a domestic and international political matter. Later on you do say:
> did not take the threat of Osama “seriously” …, honestly, did any of
> us? Did any of us think that there would ever be attacks on our own
> soil? No, we were over confident and arrogant— and I do mean *we.*
The fact that Clinton tried to assassinate bin Laden at all is pretty strong stuff. Not that I expect you to praise him for that or learn to love him for his saxophone playing or for having had his saxophone played.
I think, as you also point out, that at the presidential level, at the level of the people whose job it was to worry about such things – it was imagined. Someone who was with Warren Rudman of the Hart- Rudman Commission Report on 9/11/2001 told me that he said, in shock, and indignation, something to the effect of ‘we told them, we told them this would happen.’
But does that mean either Clinton or Bush should have taken out bin Laden?
Apparently assassination wasn’t possible – Clinton did request it and the services couldn’t figure out how to do it – i don’t know if a Bush request would have gotten much further – and again, i don’t think invasion was then politically possible.
So, what could have been done?
As I’ve noted, while sipping this morning’s double shot cappuccino with extra foam and a dusting of imported french cinnamon, making it a priority down through the bureaucracy might have helped.
Did you know, by the way, that the FBI had requested the NSA to monitor the phone number in Yemen that one of the bombers called, but they didn’t because they didn’t. Perhaps because Gen. Hayden was busy figuring out how to climb ever higher into incompetence. And that’s the same call that Bush later used to justify wiretaps without warrants by saying if we had the program we would have caught them.
No, if Hayden had paid attention, or his minions, we would have caught them.
Anyway, if the administration had passed on the alerts they were getting, back down to the other parts of the government – rather than sending their appeal the signal they didn’t want to hear about terrorists – something might have been done. If they had made it a public issue, the terrorists certainly – yes, certainly – would have been caught. The terrorists screwed up over and over again. It was only inattention that let them slide.
I admit, however, the habit of non-productive secrecy is deeply, deeply ingrained and hard to overcome. It needs to be seriously rethought.
Interestingly you say there’s plenty of blame to spread around and it should be spread around.
That’s what I did in my post. I spread some of the blame around. You ought to applaud it. But what you’re really saying is that you want me to do your share of the spreading – on to Clinton – on top of my share – which is to put the blame where I think the blame belongs, on this bunch of Republicans.
>
> Sure people blame the guy sitting in the chair when it comes to the
> economy or housing starts.
Do you know what the Dow Jones was when GB II came into office and what it is today?
Do you know what it was when GB I left office and what it was when Clinton left office?
Do you know what the job creation rate was during Clinton’s 8 years and Bush’s so far?
Feel free to pro-rate them.
I know that the housing start numbers are pretty good and the gdp growth numbers are good.
But I would argue that housing bubble was created by a combination of low interests rate and pumping huge sums into the economy that had no productive place to go, so they wandered off into real estate.
That, and excess spending, including the war, go into creating a good looking GDP, but, I expect, it’s a bit of a blow up doll.
Which is how, on the reality side (it’s not really liberal conservative, it’s reality based v. faith based, remember) is discount your numbers. I know how you discount ours.
I do not at all seriously blame Bush I for pushing Osama toward radicalism, I just want to point out that once you start going backward to blame the guy who was in the saddle last time for the bad riding of the guy in the saddle now, you can go back to the guy before that and before that.
the difference by kuwait and saudi is that there are no holy places in saudi, that’s what the issue is ostensibly about.
>
> In 1998, Osama bin Laden signed a fatwa pledging to “kill Americans
> everywhere.”
as to nitpicking over what exactly was said and not, that was a moronic slip you just made. I objected to “all Americans”
not Americans everywhere. There is a difference.
I take that mean attack Americans wherever they can, in Bali, in Afghanistan, Iraq, America. Which is dangerous indeed and must be countered.
Never would have argued with that.
>
>
> I thoroughly disagree that Saddam was stable. Saddam might have
> indeed kept order in Iraq but dictators who rule out of fear and
> violence are rarely ever stable. Order imposed by dictatorial or
> tyrannical rule is not stability. Engaging in torture is not
> stability. Engaging in murder and genocide is not stability.
stable means “steady and not liable to change.”
The closest available model for a post-Sadam Iraq was never post-WWII Germany and Japan, it was post Tito Yugoslavia. Horrific, brutal, multi-part, multi-regional civil wars. In Yugoslavia it has resulted in a multitude of ethnically based countries – Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia,and now Montenegro, Macedonia and possibly Kosovo as a separate entity. In Iraq it will be at least, Kurdistan, Sunnistan, Shia’astan, and Shia’a Iranistan. Kurdistan will be a military and political problem for Turkey, though friendly to the west. The rest will hate the west and be at war with each other too.
With, realistically or not, justifiably or not, the US blamed for it all.
I don’t know that anyone has ever thought through to a realistic third, and good possibility.
Which takes me back to the opening.
Why my Bush hatred – not expressed in my original email – is a thought out, rational idea.
I have a sense, that for both illegitimate domestic political reasons and legitimate international images reasons, doing something that can be labeled cut and run is a mistake. Yet we should be out of Iraq.
Because we can’t fix it. Short of 1,000,000 pairs of boots on the ground. Which means a draft. Which we can’t have for other domestic political reasons.
So the way out is to Blame Bush!
Say, we’re sorry, we were led by a deluded man who thought he talked to God, or whatever – we didn’t understand that – but now that he’s gone, we can say, we’re sorry, that wasn’t America, that was America gone off the rails, now we’re back, we want to be the good guys again. It wasn’t America’s war, it was Bush’s war. We’re not cutting and running, we’re fixing what he did wrong.
I also think it is good to point out how bad the Republican record on national security is. First, because it is. It’s remarkably bad.
Second, because they have used national security as a cover to do a series of other things that I disagree with.
Third, because they have waved the bloody flag as a campaign issue and used it to win elections and then put in policies that they did not run and have nothing to with national security. So removing that issue will allow – i hope – the other issues to emerge.
> Tony Blair is stable. Saddam is a madman.
> To
> classify him otherwise
Saying that the country was stable under his rule – with sanctions and constraints – is not reclassifying him. They are separate categories.
Tito was at least a murderous tough guy with a secret police. Stalin was a mad man, Russia was sure stable under him. Stable is stable.
There’s nothing in the definition that says it’s has to be a candy bar, good’n'stable to be truly stable.
Maoist China and post-Maoist pseudo-communist China, both stable.
You can’t redefine things to make your case.
> serves no other purpose than to try and humanize a man who is guilty
> of heinous violations of basic human rights.
How does that humanize him?
> With regard to the Mujahadeen and al Qaeda: you mentioned in your blog
> that “[Osama] wanted our troops tied down in an Islamic country so
> that an insurgency could do to them what the Afghanis did to the
> Russians and to the British before them.” I think that’s a bit of
> comparing an apple to an orange, in a sense, because the Mujahadeen
> were largely painted as freedom fighters trying to expel the Soviets
> from their homeland and they were not conducting a jihad to kill as
> many Soviets as possible.
What Osama wanted to do was turn an apple into an orange.
Yes, with a foreign occupation the terrorists or whatever they are, can be called ‘freedom fighters.’
Not only that, they are more active, more eager, more committed, more violent and don’t have to travel to kill.
Traveling costs money and makes people uncomfortable and is inconvenient for fighting.
> I don’t think that
> al Qaeda’s goals are anywhere near what the Afghans were trying to do.
> I don’t think it is close at all.
Didn’t use to be. Now it is. At least in part.
>
> OK…cowardice and al Qaeda. Where to start? Well, let me ask the
> questions you posed first.
>
> “Would you, if you had the chance to kill an al Qaeda associate hijack
> and airplane and fly it into him with the certainty it would cost you
> your life?”
>
> Kill him…instead of me being killed? Yes, I sure would! You bet.
> If it’s him or me, you can be damned sure it’s going to be me coming
> out on
> top—
it’s not him or you, it’s him and you. it’s you committing suicide to kill him.
if you’re willing to do that, i admire your courage.
I do. Sincerely.
And challenge, provocatively. Sign up. They’re desperate for people.
Desperate.
You’re calling marines back into service who have done their four years.
> I say “cowardly” because they will kidnap innocent Americans and
> behead them while covering their faces to hide their identities.
Those were different people.
> I say “cowardly”
> because they will hijack airplanes and use them as guided missiles to
> kill thousands of civilians. I say “cowardly” because they don’t have
> the courage to accept that others have different ideals–they’d rather
> destroy their society and way of life.
you’re saying courage is only courage when it is applied to the things you believe in or in the ways you would apply it.
here’s what my computer dictionary says: the ability to face danger, difficulty, uncertainty or pain without being overcome by fear or being deflected from a chosen course of action.
it’s mistake to misuse the word just because you like the accusation, because it implies that when you then plan your counter against them you will assume cowardice on their part, that they will be overcome by fear and be deflected. They wont. They may duck and dodge when they’re outgunned, but it will be to plot and plan.
>
> There is no honor,
perhaps no honor
> no bravery and no courage in being a “homicide bomber.”
but I certainly would be afraid to do it.
There are plenty of things to say about terrorists and fanatics that are true you don’t have to add the ones that aren’t true to villify them.
>
> TRUE bravery is in standing up to people like that and telling them we
> won’t be intimidated and they won’t destroy our way of life and they
> won’t murder our citizens. That’s bravery, sir. *That’s* courage.
That’s the kind of courage you want to applaud. Me too. But that’s like saying that Rocky Road is not ice cream because true ice cream is one of the pure flavors (I say this to my children all the time, knowing that the argument is somewhat specious) and only vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, coffee and latte mocha chip is real ice cream.
It’s a pleasure corresponding with you and perhaps someday we will find a point of agreement. I think we came close to it somewhere there.
Thank you
Larry Beinhart