Because of this, internationally it is totally irrelevant if the Marines actually violated the rules of war.

Do these people ever travel? Do they have any idea what internationally actually means? Read some goddamn Pico Iyer people. What's amazing is how people all over the world in countires where we have butchered and rampaged still are surprised and saddened when our multiple moral nadirs are revealed.

What is always interesting in reading the Nazi propaganda is the stuff written just weeks before the complete collapse of the Reich. It is the firm confirmation that the rhetoric spoken by any dominant-conscious regime will NEVER admit to having committed crimes, done wrong, taken improper action or anything else contrary to the best wishes of the people, the nation or God.

You're wonderful Jon, but I don't know how you go on. You heap up endless evidence to demonstrate the falsehoods and self-service of this administration, but we both know that they will never hear, never change and never confess. Time to stop beating the horse and find a way to kill it.

"...they (the left) have made our military and those who support it the people they claim we are."
No.

1. The military are judged by their actions. That was true of the Wehrmacht in Poland. It remains true for US troops in Iraq. Between the two, vast differences and some similarities exist. Denying either is dishonest.
2. The people who support the war are judged by the things they say. They have lied or accepted lies repeatedly. They, not "the left," are responsible for how people view them.
Instapundit has constructed a very weak straw man.

Saheli:

Do they have any idea what internationally actually means?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: no. In fact, not only do they have no idea what the world is like outside the U.S., they have no idea what the world is like outside the swirling fear inside their heads.

Alexis:

Time to stop beating the horse and find a way to kill it.

I'm working on it. Seriously.

But also, I believe bleeeearghs have an important role to play. This is only 85% self-justification. Just people talking to each other, swapping information, and learning others feel the same way has a real effect.

donescobar:

Instapundit has constructed a very weak straw man.

In fairness to him, he's only endorsing a very weak straw man. It was constructed by the other dude.

How sick and twisted can you be? Do they have any idea what cognitive dissonance is?

They should see the brilliant film Downfall although I am not sure they would get it.

Since what they say always reflects the way they want the world to be, as opposed to the way it actually is, then they seem to assume that their opponents act the same way -- only in such a mindset does it make sense to say that "accusing the US military of having committing war crimes" == "wanting the US military to commit war crimes."

In real life, of course, the second side of that equation reads "hoping that if the military's war crimes are exposed, they will be made to stop committing them."

They are OUR military. The ONLY ones who can stop them is US. World opinion was made up BEFORE the war. Waiting on it is a waste of precious time. George and gang doesn't worry about their opinion or ours.

Thanks for the fascinating link Jonathan. It all sounds very familiar somehow.

Check out some history on the Boxer war and how Russia, France, Great Britain, the United States, and Germany all learned to work together to advance their own imperialism when they fought the Boxer movement in China, even the reporters from Reuters were shooting the Chinese while they were reporting on the war, one bragged about shooting six himself.

I was just reading some British propaganda about how John Bull just puts his hands deeper in his pockets signifying how moved John Bull was by the humiliation of Britain in the Boer war and if I did not know better I would swear it was written by David Brooks!

I recall some swill I was reading by some conservative pundit how civilization evolved in order to raise children. But if you look at history the creation of civilization was all about power and how to get more, remind you of anyone?

The only difference between us and the people at the beginning of the 1900's is we have car keys and they didn't.

so instead of just clutching at straws, they are building whole men out of them? their stupidity knows no bounds.

This is the end for the current version of the right wing media machine and its current "patriotic" framework. The masks will be forced off, and the bobble heads will be seen to be the ugly paper tigers they really are.

I look forward to the rightwing blogger crowd on the Oprah/Larry King circuit talking about their recovery from their prescription drug problems, and how these addictions contributed to their "irrational and irresponsible rehtoric."

Johnathan, it is certainly naked facist rhetoric that we are witnessing. That they must invoke it, in such obvious weakness says how over the current movement really is. The Iranian's have presented the US with the first polite dunning letter and already the air is hissing out of the overinflated balloon.

The exit of Cheney et al from the political stage seems nearer everyday. I use Frist and Hastert as the canaries in the coal mine as it were. If they go down either buy losing majorities via election or by criminal investigation the whole rotten pyramid will soon follow.

This is the point at which a gambling addict really makes the house money. When he is in the hole and rather than walking away, he doubles down again.

The rumours in Australia are that our troops have "made it known" that they prefer NOT to patrol with the USA troops, PARTICULARLY the marines! Similarly, one Brit officer has said that American troops AND their officers regard the iraqis as 'untermenschen' I've been to The States, at home you are a remarkably friendly bunch, but sympathetic as I am to you as a people I am mindboggled by your abandonment of even the VENEER of civilisation. Oh yeah, y'all as dumb as a box of hammers, as well. Many yanks I met wondered why I spoke such good English, being from Austria and all, I even got asked if we had electricity! Um, Australia is one of the most urbanised populations in the world, almost 80% live in cities of over a million people. Perhaps that is why we do have a differing world view. As I understand it, 50% of Americans come from small towns with under 10,000 populations. When a country's Attorney General says that the Geneva Convention is "quaint" that country is fucked. Regards.

Jonathan, if you keep taunting the right about their lack of originality and smother them with your condescending pity about how difficult it is to come up with new ways to be fascistic, you'll only goad them into proving you wrong. And whatever they come up with will be entirely your fault.

Besides, there are new ways to be fascistic already outlined in science fiction--technology just hasn't caught up with the vision just yet. I expect to see our personalities downloaded into some Matrix-like concentration camp any decade now.

I should mention in passing that not all us Australians are as polite as Greg.

F*%k'n oath.

;)

Hey, just how many Australians do post here, anyway?

Only ones with electricity.

Ingemi's point, as I took it, is that crying wolf leads in the end to moral callousness, as people assume that there's no point in behaving morally when they're going to be called monsters anyway. This seems rather uncontroversially obvious to me.

And this is the so-called religious-right? Dear God, give me strength should I ever encounter the irreligious right. . .

Once that happens however any compunction about respecting them will be gone, and remember one side is armed and one is not.

Ooooooooooo! I'm so scared!

Mark Twain said,

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - 1899

I blame all the ills of the world on schools for not teaching the little peckers proper history. And grammar too. Same goes for you grammpa!

I am waiting to be raptured, without my k-boy boots, of course.

The uncle - age 39 and a former Marine himself - of Miguel Terrazas, the Marine from El Paso whose death sparked the shooting gallery spree, has stated that

". . . Marines are trained not to lose their cool under pressure.

Jarheads don't just go out and kill because they get frustrated Their training is exquisite. It just doesn't make sense."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/31/AR2006053100969.html

Grief makes people see things differently, I guess, but still, I'm waiting to be raptured, and I hope quickly and exquisitely.

You know, Professor Reynolds is welcome to call me a babykiller every day until the sun explodes. Yet somehow I still won’t come to his house and shoot his children.

Yeah, but you have the unfair advantage in this instance of being opposed to unprovoked violence. Reynolds, it seems, isn't so opposed.

"crying wolf leads in the end to moral callousness, as people assume that there's no point in behaving morally when they're going to be called monsters anyway. This seems rather uncontroversially obvious to me."

Such a stance demonstrates a true shattering of the writer's inner moral compass -- the thing that tells him what's right and what's wrong -- and shows that what truly matters to him is whether he is perceived as being in the right or wrong.

This calls to mind the essay, "On Bullshit" -- by whom I can't remember, or Colbert's "truthiness."

If I may be allowed to ramble on ...

It's a very cold, amoral way to approach the world. I would even call it Darwinistic (completely hijacking the term, of course) because it's a survival of the "fittest," without regard to right/wrong/morals, kind of like the Karl Rove approach to politics. Thus, people who have the "weak" and limiting characteristic of conscience or morals will necessarily be beaten by those who have the "strong" characteristic of will, untrammeled by conscience and unlimited by anything other than the appearance of propriety. History being written by the victor, not the vanquished, and all that.

Is it really this bleak?

Jonathan, Jonathan, you are so forgetting our militia days at Stutts! Remember how, after that unfortunate incident where the Pie Kappas shot those 28 kindergartners (a prank that turned, admittedly, bad -- none of the PKs defended it, and I remember one of them took up a collection from the supposedly grieving parents) (who, as it turned out, were using their supposed sorrow to try to con money from Pie Kappa parents. Typical)

As I recall the incident, there was some threat to prosecute a Ken boy, Buzzy and Foggy, wasn't it? I think that prosecutor moved to Durham, North Carolina -- last I heard. Well anyway, the threats just went too far, like we were totally sorry? so we did have to march through New Craven, where the unfortunate prank occured, to blow up the New Craven Standard -- before Jacky Murdoch's father bought the thing. Man, was it cheap! Like firesale cheap!

Those were good days. Those were Manly days. I don't remember Glenn back then -- I think he hadn't yet hired that wierd guy with the wireframes to take the SAT for him.

With regard to the urban/nonurban population distribution in the U.S., here's something I got from the University of Montana Rural Institute:

Rural America: 3,444,930 square miles; more than 97% of the total U.S. land mass; 21% of the total U.S. population.

Urban Clusters: 20,485 square miles; almost 1% of the total U.S. land mass; 11% of the total U.S. population.

Urbanized Areas: 72,021 square miles; 2% of the total U.S. land mass; 68% of the total U.S. population.

Data is from the 2000 Census.

It's not so much rural life, as miseducation, that leads to the pathologies of the American mindset, in my opinion.

And let me add that I intend "miseducation" to also refer to the disinformation campaigns of the government officials, corporate media, and religious organizations.

So "the devil made me do it" seems to be making a comeback, eh? It looks like we have yet another small parallel between Iraq and the Vietnam era.

Quoting this again just because the weeping, melting boggleiciousness goes on and on and on.

"crying wolf leads in the end to moral callousness, as people assume that there's no point in behaving morally when they're going to be called monsters anyway. This seems rather uncontroversially obvious to me."

Glenn isn't part of the religious right. He's actually part of the personal responsibility right. You know, the folks who claim there are no possible mitigating factors (in culture or circumstance) to any crime - if you're a black Congresswoman or a rioting French youth or for being Palestinian, etc.

Shorter Glen Reynolds:

Treat us like murderous thugs and we'll act like murderous thugs, dammit!

"we might as well be taken as wolves then as sheep".

than.

Sorry for being so picky.

"I guarantee you'll find a dozen statements just like it—the same weepy self-pity and righteous sense of victimization from people with all the power, the same warnings that the powerless are soon going to get what they've been asking for FOR SO LONG, etc."

-- you do, do you? How about a citation then?

This reminds me of Goebbels' promise to the party faithful of a "victory orgy" after the war -- when they'd "settle accounts" with the traitors, defeatists and nay-sayers.

Rowan, if you follow the link provided by the poster, you'll find one quickly enough. I did.

The article in the Sydney Morning Herald says that the conditions at Haditha were "shockingly different" than at other Marine Encampments in Iraq. It is an important distinction, at the core of the pro-Occupation rhetoric: we who support peacemaking in Iraq do not make that distinction.

Do we? How many of us are willing to concede that those at fault are not the "shockingly different" Marines who are stationed at Haditha, but the "shockingly indifferent" leadership who sent them there. Until the leadership is indicted, every War Crimes trial is a travesty.

Truth is . . .

The left and the Dems signed on to this war in the same flurry of mindless "get the bad guys of 9/11" that the administration and conservatives did.

When the time for conscience-reckoning came after realizing Iraq was a ruse for other matters, of course then comes the hand-wringing and accusations.

Bull. Supporting the continuing idiocy of governments which tax the hell out of citizens, impose ludicrous laws, and send our kids off to kill innocents in some land far, far away, or die trying, all the while pretending that we are civilized, is an exercise in sheer idiocy.

And discussions about the politics of govenment are merely expressions in various degrees of the very same idiocy. Pretending to inject morality into politics or war, as does Reynolds (or anyone else), is but a lunch-time discussion in Bedlam.

Freedom is a lost concept, and my saying so would make most wish to deprive me of it.

Terrorism is always home-brewed, and found in the backyard first.

Go and learn what this means, as one supposedly authority once said.