Just to let you know why I haven’t posted — I’m in Pennsylvania again, where my youngest daughter graduated from high school last night.
So as the S.C. General Assembly winds down with a feckless whimper — no budget, no DOT reform, no nothing — I’m keeping up with the doings up in Harrisburg.
Here was yesterday’s big legislative news, which is a very big deal, when you consider the only way you can buy beer here is to go to a special warehouse-type retailer, and you can buy nothing smaller than a case at a time:
Score one for Joe Six-pack.
A Pennsylvania Senate committee gave a 9-2 endorsement
yesterday to a bill that would permit beer distributors to
sell ales, malts and lagers by the six-pack for the first
time in generations. The bill moves to the full Senate,
where it might not see a vote until fall.
Supporters hailed yesterday’s vote as a great first
step.
Pennsylvanians have been limited to buying beer by the case
or paying a premium price for take-out at restaurants and
taverns, where six-pack sales are allowed.
I’ll let you know if anything else dramatic happens while I’m here.
Related Posts
So Brad can find the time to post a story that is completely meaningless to South Carolinians (PA beer bill) yet cannot find the time to do some proper research to show us how our half trillion dollar war in Iraq is benifiting the USA. From the NY Times we have this little ditty underscoring just how desparate our situation has become in Iraq:
BAGHDAD, June 10 — With the four-month-old increase in American troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American commanders are turning to another strategy that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past.
-NY Times
So now we’re arming one group of insurgents who have been killing American soldiers in the hope that they will use our weapons to kill a different group of insurgents. Sounds like a great plan to me.
Really Brad, if you’re going to support something can’t you at least put forth a tiny bit of effort to explain why? And now your man Lieberman wants to invade another country, Iran.
Bring back a 6 of Iron City…congrats on the grad, hope these blog revenues pay for the higher tuition.
Bring back a 6 of Iron City…congrats on the grad, hope these blog revenues pay for the higher tuition.
Wow. I just got back from an exhausting trip, and I read bud’s comment. Is he the champion of the non sequitur or what?
I also have trouble understanding why he wants me to explain something I’ve explained over and over for four years. Just because he didn’t understand it and/or will never be satisfied by any explanation because he doesn’t want to be doesn’t mean it hasn’t been explained.
Of course, I WAS being ironic again, and that’s a problem for lots of people.
Just wondering why Brad’s daughter didn’t go to those fabulous public schools right here in SC?
Hey Bud, it’s hard to take anyone seriously who gets their news and information from New York Times. I mean, I don’t expect you to get your info from anything legitimate like the Washington Times or Fox News Channel, but really…if you want any credibilty whatsoever you simply need to quit trying to make your points using the NYT as your source. You look silly. Ed
C’mon, folks, bud’s just easily distracted. Do you remember the comment where he..
Oh look! A squirrel…
Six-pack freedom is a wonderful thing. I tip my glass to those in the Keystone State.
“I mean, I don’t expect you to get your info from anything legitimate like the Washington Times or Fox News Channel,”
-ed
Legitimate like this story?:
Debunked Insight Magazine and Fox News Smear Campaign
In the past week, many of you have read a now thoroughly-debunked story by Insight Magazine, owned by the Washington Times, which cites unnamed sources close to a political campaign that claim Senator Obama was enrolled for “at least four years” in an Indonesian “Madrassa”. The article says the “sources” believe the Madrassa was “espousing Wahhabism,” a form of radical Islam.
Insight Magazine published these allegations without a single named source, and without doing any independent reporting to confirm or deny the allegations. Fox News quickly parroted the charges, and Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy went so far as to ask, “Why didn’t anybody ever mention that that man right there was raised — spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father — as a Muslim and was educated in a Madrassa?”
The problem with those who support the war is that they spend so little time actually looking at the facts. Brad’s a fine example. He claims his blog is basically for discussions of state issues yet goes off on this tangent about beer laws in PA. Fine, we can use a bit of diversion every now and then. But on something as important as Iraq I’d expect an ardent supporter such as Brad to actually provide some evidence every now and then that the reasons he supports this expensive endevour are actually valid. Brad’s main reason appears to be that he does not want to abandon the Iraqi people when they need us most. In other words this is some type of nation building excercise. But there is absolutely no evidence that this is actually working.
Besides, Brad’s daughter just graduated from high school. I doubt he would want her life put at risk so we won’t “abandon” the Iraqi people. I have children her age and I damn sure don’t want them going over there. Think about that Brad. Do you really think it’s worth your child’s life or health so that we don’t “abandon” the Iraqi people? Just think about that seriously before you answer. Because what you’re supporting is resulting in tens of thousands of American lives about your daughter’s age to be sacrificed.
Bud, the NYT has long since dropped any pretense at being a legitimate news reporting organization. It has proudly become the house organ of the liberal democrat party and consistently spews left wing talking points. That you believe anyhting in it brings your judgement into question, and if people like you want to trot the NYT out as a source of legitimate news, then you can expect to be called on it. It’s that simple. Ed
ed, do you really believe Fox News is anything other than a right-wing propaganda service? The NY Times is far more fair and balanced. After all it was Judith Miller’s RIGHT wing slant that helped guide our foreign policy toward the failed policy in Iraq. The NY Times was pretty much a cheerleader for the president in the days after 9-11. At least they will occassionally print something that calls into question the GOP party line.
Besides, show me where the NY Times story I cited is incorrect. All you’ve done is attack the messenger. That’s a Rush and Sean tactic that has no merit but somehow the loyal right-wing faithful continue to buy it. Facts ed. Not just this continued recitation of the gospel according to Rush.
Another fine “fair and balanced” story from Faux News:
Cavuto falsely claimed Edwards “used” Hilton sentence to make “class argument”
Summary: On Your World, Neil Cavuto falsely asserted that John Edwards had “used” Paris Hilton “in part of his campaign comments, talking about the dichotomy between the rich and the poor.” In fact, when asked at a press conference to comment on Hilton, Edwards responded that he was “gonna stay out of the Paris Hilton story.”
Bud, you really need to stop trusting those far left wingnut sites to do the “debunking” for you. Far from debunking anything, all they do is give the lefties an excuse to continue believing in their false worldview.
Bud –
I won’t speak for Brad, but I think he’s of similar mind: I support the Battle for Iraq because it’s necessary to our survival, it’s part of an existential war.
Every day there are ups and downs. I have friends, family, and colleagues going in and out of the place and its environs. One, Army SF, just left after being home since January and under orders not to shave or get a haircut. How do you think I feel about what faces him, knowing that he’s gung ho to go? Talk about an emotional rollercoaster, I’m on it. It’s so bad that I always have my cell phone on, always answer every call, and breathe a sigh of relief when it’s just a regular call. But there are intellectual and emotional commitments I and others have made, just like our forebears did in the 1860s and 1940s.
You like the NY Times. Did you read ”Defeat’s Killing Fields”?
There’s more.
I don’t want to fight or quibble about this, especially with folks who’ve invested so heavily in failure. It’s not just that I want our side to win, of course I do. But I know that we have to win if we’re going to have a Western civilization a century or two down the road.
Mike, I don’t even think about this in terms of winning or losing. That is such a black and white choice. To me it’s more a matter of choosing the lightest possible shade of grey. In other words what outcome will give America the best long term outcome. Continuing the military effort indefinately as Brad wants to do is by far the very worst option. It will never lead to victory in the same way that we won in WW II. Instead this war is more like WW I. In that war we achieved military victory just as we did in Iraq when we defeated Sadam’s army. But we blew the peace and that eventually led to WW II. We’ve also blown the peace in the months following May, 2003.
So what to do now? Given that we can never achieve the benevolent Jeffersonian Democracy that the Bush Administration claimed would occur our next best outcome is something that will be generally benign to our security. If we set a timetable for withdrawal and at the same time engage other countries in the region, especially Iran, I believe we can leave Iraq to settle this for themselves without spilling over to other regions. Our continued military presence only serves to disrupt the process, postpone the inevitable and bring suffering, death and misery to the Iraqi people.
And I take umbrage in your characterization that we liberals are invested heavily in failure. We only want the best possible outcome for the U.S. and the Iraqi people. We’re only fighting this battle because the war supporters got us into this mess in the first place. WE war opponents were correct in not wanting to go in and we are correct now in wanting to get out. If I said the war supporters are working toward the goal of killing as many people as possible I’m sure you would be highly offended. Even though I believe the policies you support DO just that I don’t believe that’s what you really WANT.
Further, to claim that our defeat in Vietnam was detrimental to America goes completely against the facts. Prosperity reigned supreme in the U.S. over the last 30 years whereas the Soviet Union collapsed. I’ll take prosperity over collapse any day.
Did you read the column I linked to? Deciding to take second-place had a profound negative impact on the way the world perceived the US, with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as but one result. Millions died, not just in the killing fields.
I was stationed in what was then West Berlin thirty years after we defeated the Axis in 1945; we still have troops and bases in Japan and Germany. That’s a model that’s suitable for Iraq, although I think that the dumplings and beer would not compare..
How you square getting out without surrendering is beyond me. Tell me, how does that happen? Give us a rough timetable and the measures you’d put in place to withdraw our forces while ensuring the safety of the Iraqi people.
bud, I was completely on top of what was happening back here on the last week of the session. We had plenty about that in the paper through the weekend. But the blog, as I keep explaining, is about ADDITIONAL stuff I’m encountering, whether I’m here at our State House or someone else entirely.
And personally, I think it’s interesting to remind ourselves we’re not the only ones in the world with quirky, anachronistic laws. So I shared that.
And LexWolf, not that it’s any of your business, but that’s the third PUBLIC high school my daughter has attended. The other two were in South Carolina. I have five children, and the other four all graduated from Brookland-Cayce.
My youngest is sort of following a family tradition. I, too, attended three high schools — in South Carolina, Florida and Hawaii. All public, by the way. But I also attended private schools among my 14 or so, and even finished one year with a tutor to make up for the school year south of the equator being reversed from this one. (That was an interesting experience. I learned all the material normally taught in the 4th grade in 24 total hours of instruction — with lots of homework, of course. It’s one of the reasons I have my doubts about the 180-day school year requirement.)
This, and my children having attended schools (both public and private, but none private since 1988) in three states, has given me an unusually broad and diverse experience with educational institutions, which I think adds something to my ability to write with at least some direct knowledge of educational choices.
bud, nothing will lead to 1945-style victory. That was a Clausewitzian situation, and this is more Sun-Tze. Read Keegan’s “The History of War” for the difference. It’s fascinating.
Having a war within a fixed time period and one side giving up clearly when it’s lost is pretty much a Western tradition, which we inherited from the Greeks and Romans. Western war (and Japan was industrialized in the Western manner) is about trying to bring about the decisive battle.
The horsemen who rode into the Mideast and Eastern Europe were hit-and-run artists. They never, ever wanted to fight a “decisive” battle, and even if they did, they did not accept the decision. Fight another day. The brutal truth is that it goes on until they are no longer interested in fighting, or until the ones who want to fight are dead. They have no postwar visions, beyond apocalyptic ones (in the case of the jihadists, anyway).
That’s one way in which what Mike is saying is wrong. Sure, we can surrender, but the jihadists won’t accept that any more than they would accept their own defeat while they live. The war goes on whether we want it to or not, and no matter where we put American troops — Iraq, Afghanistan or Peoria. What the debate is about, whether we face it or not, is whether we will choose the ground, or let them choose it.
It’s strange to me the way so many Americans fail to understand this. I saw a brief clip last week about one of the Democratic candidate debates, and the TV “news” reporter said the candidates were debating how or whether to “end” the war in Iraq. Of course, they were debating no such thing, and certainly no one is so naive as to believe that they were. They were debating to what extent American troops should stay in Iraq. There is NOTHING within our power that would “end” the war within the next year or two, except maybe turning the whole region into a glow-in-the-dark parking lot, which personally I would vote against.
Whatever we do, wherever our troops are, all we can do is choose the proper course that puts us, and the global security situation, in a better position 5, 10, 30 or 50 years from now.
Or am I wrong in assuming most people at least understand THAT? I may be. I have this terrible suspicion that some of the antiwar folks are actually naive enough to believe that if American troops come back here and twiddle their thumbs at some stateside post, the combatants in Iraq start hugging and giving each other flowers.
Of course, some antiwar folks — say, the Pat Buchanan variety — probably don’t care WHAT those foreigners do to each other, as long as our Army is back here patrolling the Mexican border…
… while OTHER antiwar folks entertain fantasies of our not having a military. War makes stranger bedfellows than politics.
Brad et al.
I was referring to the need to get Iraq stable, which in part requires efforts at many other points so that the remaining jihadis regroup out of the territory. This is asymmetric warfare and it is worldwide. We’ve got troops — many special ops — in action or lending assistance in over sixty countries. Nobody made a big deal about Ethiopian forces move into Somalia to kick out the jihadis, but the AC-130 that showed up to do a little mowing belonged to nobody but the US. There’s more like that in the works.
Brad, thanks for finally addressing this issue in a thoughtful manner. You state:
“Whatever we do, wherever our troops are, all we can do is choose the proper course that puts us, and the global security situation, in a better position 5, 10, 30 or 50 years from now.”
-Brad
It is so crystal clear to me that our security situation improves significantly if we withdraw our troops from Iraq. I’ve said that all along. But beyond that I simply don’t buy all this scare mongering about the foreign hordes bringing death and destruction to American shores if we leave the region. I never have bought it and never will. The so-called enemy the conservatives bring up over and over again is just a figment of someone’s very vivid imagination. The REAL dangers to American security are things like traffic deaths and disease. Terrorists have claimed just a tiny number of American lives and fewer still will die if we simply leave the place and give the radicals one less recruiting tool. Since we spend more on the military than the next 20 nations combined I find it laughable that we should be held hostage to such a small threat. Fact is, our response to this “threat” is costing us many more lives than were lost on 9-11. That’s the real tragedy in all of this.
Sorry. That title is, “A History of Warfare.”
One of our disconnects, bud, is that I don’t think merely in terms of American security. I think of it in global terms. I believe it’s critically important to American credibility in the future (and American credibility is important to the whole world’s security, not just our own) that we not leave Iraq in the lurch again. (And now you’re going to say, “Then we need to not be going it alone,” and you’re right. As I’ve made clear, but in our partisan environment it’s hard for people to hear it, fighting in Iraq and fighting in Iraq the Bush way are two different things. We should always preserve the option of going without some or all of our allies, of course, he adds before the OTHER side starts yelling about surrendering our sovereignty, but we should be more diplomatically skillful. It’s a balance we’ve often failed to achieve so far.)
I’m not much of a defensive guy, whether in sports or warfare. I don’t think it’s possible to defend a free country, or even a fascist dictatorship, from terrorism. To say that there are billions of variables involved in whether a terrorist can get into this country and kill several thousand civilians is to underestimate the threat. I don’t say that to get people all scared, but to face facts. I tend to be fatalistic about these things. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. Sure, we can make it harder, and break up this or that incompetent little conspiracy (and the main thing working for us is that most of these people appear to be operationally incompetent), and thereby make it harder for them. And we should keep trying. But terrorists only have to get lucky once.
The fact is that, while it’s hardly a complete strategy, we probably accomplish as much by giving terrorists two other places to strike at us Americans — Iraq and Afghanistan. That way the nutballs are more likely to flock there, where they can operate in a place that is closer culturally and otherwise to their home turf, rather than having to overcome the challenges of operating here. That is NOT to justify our presence in Iraq with the overly simplified “better to fight them there than here” argument, but it is a factor. Fighting there and dealing with terrorism here are not the same things, but there is a relationship.
As long as there are cultures that churn out lots of terrorists, we will be in danger. That’s why we have to be fully engaged — in economic, diplomatic, and humanitarian terms as well as military, leaving nothing out — in changing those countries. It’s bigger and more complicated than I think the president has ever grasped — or at least, more so than he has ever been able to communicate effectively over time. Of course, “changing other countries” is a concept that is inherently offensive to many. But it is a survival imperative that we try. The alternative is to retreat into the fantasy that we can go our merry way here within our own borders and keep our way of life and just put a couple more cops on the corner, figuratively speaking. The situation does not, and will not, allow us that choice — partly because our culture is engaged in a full frontal assault on the rest of the world through millions of TV and internet channels 24 hours a day, and those cultures are going to keep fighting back.
This country — just by being itself, doing business, cranking out movies and Coca-Cola — is just too intertwined with the entire world. Once, traditionalist cultures could comfort themselves with the insulation of our two oceans, just as we embraced that luxury to keep us militarily secure. We live in a much different world now, and the technological and cultural toothpaste will never go back into the tube.
Yes, this is but a partial explanation. It would take volumes to explain all the many reasons we need to be in Iraq — or somewhere else very much like it — and will have to be for a very long time. That’s why, bud, I think you get so frustrated that I am not able to fully explain my viewpoint to you in discrete terms that are easy to examine and dispute. I wish I could, but the truth is that I don’t have time to be doing a blog at all; I only do it because I am compulsive and a terrible setter of priorities.
But as long as I’m on this one piece of the puzzle, the American cultural assault thing, I’ll share with you a column I was reading on the subject just today, at the allergist’s office. It was in the Economist, and it used Tony Soprano as a jumping-off point…
Oops, I have to run. I’ll look that up and post the link in this same thread.
bud –
Please respond to the questions I posed above:
We are in an ideological struggle against forces of evil, again.
To many the word “evil” may seem quaint, perhaps anachronistic, but when one considers the methods employed by Spanish Inquisition, Fascism, National Socialism, and Communism, one finds that torture and summary execution are the means to their end. The true believers use these methods to vanquish their opponents and send a strong message to others who just want to live their lives out in peace.
They use torture, not what’s alleged at Gitmo or Abu Grahib, but this sort of stuff. Go ahead, read it, it’s the real deal.
They do so to break their opponents, to render them a nullity, to cancel them out, to make the world forget about them, to purge the world of heresy. Their purpose is to eliminate any semblance of opposition to what they aim to achieve.
I’m interested in your response because I’m still of the opinion, and I think that this is Petreus’s point, that if the US with Iraqi support can create enough breathing room for politics — the give and take inherent in a free exchange of ideas tempered by the voting power, interests, and influence of interest groups — to take hold, Iraq can attain a measure of stability wherein folks acknowledge that persuasion is better than force.
For those who think that this is a neocon dream, let’s look at the history in that neighborhood. Turkey and Lebanon have enjoyed bouts of political freedom that serve as examples of what’s possible. Outside of the region, democratic forms of government looked unlikely in South Korea and Taiwan, but thanks to US perseverance, became possible. The Philippines is an interesting case too.
So what’s your response to my original questions? I’m quite interested.
Mike, you bring up Korea. That was an effort supported by the U.N. with many participating nations. The North Koreans were the aggressors in that conflict. We nearly blew that one by overplaying our hand when we invaded the North. And we still have 25,000+ troops stationed there.
The Iraqis view that as a warning of what we might intend to do with their country so when we discuss Korea as a model for Iraq that only hardens their resolve not to let that happen to them. Besides, Korea was dominated for centuries by outside aggresor nations. The people of South Korea have adapted to this situation over many centuries. The people of Iraq are unlikely to do so anytime soon. The bottom line is if Korea is to serve as the model for Iraq we can expect decades of occupation along with trillions of dollars and 10s of thousands of lost lives. I don’t believe that is worth the cost, and ultimately it may not even work. The British tried in the 1920 and ended up leaving. In the meantime our security is greatly diminished as our occupation serves as a recruiting tool for the extremists in the region.
As for your “surrender” question, I think I’ve addressed that many times in Brad’s blog. It’s really a non-sequetor. This is not about winning or losing. It’s about the best possible outcome for the American people and American security. Bringing our troops home is simply a recognition of the fact that staying makes us less secure. Bringing the troops home is simply a proactive method of improving our security.
Here’s the link to that piece in The Economist that I mentioned, which makes the point about American culture’s unrelenting assault on the rest of the world. The column doesn’t condemn this assault or anything like that; it simply points it out as a fact of life — and one we have to consider when we entertain isolationist thoughts (such as, "let’s bring our troops home and leave the rest of the world alone and they’ll leave us alone," which I realize is just one subset of the antiwar movement, but it’s a subset worth addressing). In case you have trouble calling it up, here’s an excerpt:
I’ve been meaning to comment on this statement by Mike several posts up:
Deciding to take second-place had a profound negative impact on the way the world perceived the US, with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as but one result.
-Mike C.
This is really funny. You’re claiming that our “defeat” in Vietnam led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. If so, that certainly was to our benefit. The Soviet Union’s version of imperialistic quagmire was Afghanistan. Because of that the USSR collapsed sooner than they otherwise would have, much to our benefit. So if our withdrawal from Vietnam somehow precipitated the Russians to commit troops to Afghanistan, GREAT! That only furthers vindicates the decision to pull out.
To follow up on my previous point. If our withdrawal from Iraq leads to an Iranian invasion of Iraq, FANTASTIC! They would eventually become bogged down there and we’d have one less axis of evil country to worry about.
Bud-
Your humor is awe-inspiring.
You state that you’ve answered my “surrender” question, many times in Brad’s blog, calling it a non-sequetor. I’ve looked, but can’t find your answer. So please enlighten me:
Give us a rough timetable and the measures you’d put in place to withdraw our forces while ensuring the safety of the Iraqi people.
The Baker/Hamilton report would serve as a good start for a withdrawal timetable. They used something like the spring of 2008. We could probably accomplish this faster though. After we declare our intentions to withdraw the various factions would probably ease up for a while so we could pull our forces out in an organized manner. After we leave it will be up to the Iraqi people to sort things out for themselves, perhaps with “help” from the Iranians. In the end they would be better off without our involvement.
Surrender implies a surrenderer and a someone to surrender to. We wouldn’t be surrendering to anyone so it is in effect a meaningless statement, one often used by war supporters as a negative perjoritive. (The neocons are very good at the word game. As a liberal I’m jealous of how they can frame the wording of most debates).