A Self-Awareness Moment

Kevin Drum:

There are plenty of people... who understand that bellicose rhetoric is a display of weakness, not strength, a fact that that we recognize easily enough when other people engage in it but not so easily when we do it ourselves.

Surprisingly, he was not talking about the Nutroots.

Comments

[NotAtrios(honest)]

Drum is just a f*****, g**d*** neocon fascist apologist for the sh**** Bushco regime.

Disagree? F*** you neocons!!

[MikeS]

Okay. Notatrios(honest) is a hoax right?

[NotAtrios(honest)]

Okay. Notatrios(honest) is a hoax right?

Yep - I forgot to remember that it can be risky to do parodies/caricatures on the internet anymore.

Remember Drum's maxim above?:
Bellicose rhetoric is a display of weakness, not strength, a fact that that we recognize easily enough when other people engage in it but not so easily when we do it ourselves.

That was TM's point.

[Scott Malensek]

"Drum is just a f*****, g**d*** neocon fascist apologist for the sh**** Bushco regime. Disagree? F*** you neocons!!"

Ahhhhh, but in less than 365 days you'll still vote for someone who promoted the war, "lied about the intelligence," authorized it, funded it, supported it, and will keep it going; ie, you'll still pull the handle for Hillary proving that all the rhetoric about hating the war etc is just a front, just propaganda for your political partisanship for if you really opposed the war, you'd oppose her as much as you do W and the "neocons" that Bin Laden complains about as well. Quick! Make an excuse! Hurry before the reality sets in!

[GMax]

Are we sure the good retired spook is not channeling Jimmy Carter on this? It sure sounds like ole Jimmy...

[NotAtrios(honest)]

Drum is just a f*****, g**d*** neocon fascist apologist for the sh**** Bushco regime.

It was a tongue-in-cheek post.

Drum's thesis is that "bellicose rhetoric" is used as a cover for weakness.

As TM pointed out, does this standard apply to the nutroots, those who regularly use such over-the-top rhetoric? E.g., foul language, inflammatory accusations, et cetera.

[MayBee]

Who is it spouting all the rhetoric about war with Iran?
That's yet another irony in his post-- it seems to me the netroots and their heros like Sy Hersch that have been talking about how imminent an attack on Iran is.

[Clarice]

Halevey is regarded as a fruitcake-an Isralei version of Zinni.

[Clarice]

Halevey is regarded as a fruitcake-an Isralei version of Zinni.

[Rick Ballard]

MayBee,

The comments during the Republican debates can be construed (by a complete idiot - which is, after all, the subject here) as being "bellicose rhetoric". I keep wondering how the same idiot[s] construe Ahmanutter's promises to destroy the Great and Little Satan.

I don't believe in bellicose utterance myself. We should just conduct a quiet aerial site clearance campaign as a gesture of good will towards Iranian reconstruction efforts. A gentle push towards upgrading and refurbishing their infrastructure.

The sooner the better.

[centralcal]

Upgrade and refurbish. I like it.

[SteveMG]

smart foreign policy is all about putting together lots of little steps and pushing on lots of little levers to get what you want.

That encapsulate the liberal view of foreign policy about as well as any single sentence I've ever read.

Obviously, to a certain point, it's true. Foreign policy-making is about using the instruments and tools - carrots and sticks - that you have. But this approach can only be effective if both parties negotiate in good faith. That is, both parties are willing to abide by agreements. Trust but verify, Reagan said. But some "trust" must be there.

Iran, of course, is a signatory to a number of agreements re nuclear proliferation (among other contentious issues) that were created by "pushing levers". Agreements that they are now violating. Repeatedly.

Apparently, Drum's response is to advocate more lever pushing and more agreements. Ignoring the failure of the previous levers to work. Or, more accurately, that were ignored after being pushed.

Because, in the liberal view of the world, disagreements between the US and other countries are based on our failure to offer the right set of carrots and incentives. Or to push the right levers.

Well, not our failure. The failure by the necons, the hawks, Bushco, the Republicans. If the progressives ran things, these failures wouldn't arise.

In this view, other nations do not act based on their own self-interest, regardless of US actions. No, they act because there are levers we are not pushing. It's our failure to find the right buttons and levers (notice the metaphors? levers? no humans involved)

Sure, the US most exhaust every peaceful means of getting Iran to abandon its nuclear program. Every means. All of them, plus that extra mile.

But nations act in their own best interest as they see it. And no levers, no buttons, no carrots can dissuade them from that interest.

SMG

[Clarice]

Spengler says that Iran is facing a demographic problem and is ratching up the rhetoric because they know if they do not dominate the Persian Gulf area now they never will.

I agree with SMG. Absolutely.

I am not in the school that believes if we get something on paper with red sealing wax and ribbons we can walk away from it. We had that with Saddam, and now with his arch rivals, the mullahs.

[Nobody of Importance]

Meanwhile, in the linked thread, lefties worry about the Israeli and American "nuclear problem(s)" in the comments.

Is that the sort of bellicose talk to which Drum refers or is that just plain old ordinary stupid?

[narciso]

So when Khruschev said in 1960; "We will bury you," and then promised to place missiles in Cuba, and followed through with
that promise in 1962; we're supposed to take it as just bluster.

When Saddam Hussein in the spring of 1990, promised to "burn half of Israel away" that
was also to be taken as bluster.

When Ahmadinejad, a paid up member of the chiliastic Hojjateieh sub cult of Twelver
Shiasm with ties to the highest levels in
the security services and the army, promises
to "put an end to the US and Israel" and kill 2/3 of the world is working on a nuclear program, and is adapting the Shahab to carry warheads that can reach Eastern Europe to say nothing of our bases in South
West Asia and the emirates; we say he really
won't do that?

[SteveMG]

Is that the sort of bellicose talk to which Drum refers

He and his friends are apparently only concerned with the "bellicose talk" from us.

Inflammatory words from our enemies can be dismissed because they are caused by the policies of the neocons, or Bush or Republicans, or Israel or ____(fill in the blank).

Such language is never indicative of the actual thinking or worldview of our adversaries. It's only indicative of the failure of our policies to remove or to prevent such thinking (I particularly enjoyed the first post who said that Iran couldn't trust Bush because he didn't negotiate fairly with Saddam).

We simply push the right levers and the language disappears.

Sleepwalking through history, Reagan called it.

SMG

[Toby Petzold]

Chiliastic is the shizznit!