US Politics: we are all liberals, we are all conservatives

[Ormond]

I'm not objecting he could be senile and hypocritical, but you probably shouldn't stoop to wishing those you disagree with would have been killed. How would you react to, "I wish Obama's classmates in Kenya would have beat his dumb ass to death".

Oh, Sturn, you haven't been paying close attention to the US Politics threads the last couple of months, have you? The Libertarian Rand Paul fan Ramsay Gimp would probably heartily endorse this statement about Obama. :)

(But I agree that no one should be making statements wishing death on those with whom they politically differ.)

[sologdin]

would hope that libertarians are annoyed by the limitation on elective office by jus soli nationality.

[DanteGabriel]

I think you guys are being a bit hard on DebL. Pretty clearly making an effort to debate on good faith. What say we hold off on this issue til we know a bit more? Virtually everyone on both sides agrees the facts aren't in yet.

I disagree with your assessment of good faith, but fair enough.

[sologdin]

dunno, DG. uncomfortable making mere wrongness, even mere complete wrongness-in-the-face-of-substantial evidence-to-the-contrary-but-possessing-none-oneself, the burden of proof for bad faith. that kinda wrongness is more kuhnian than anything, not rooted in willfulness or knowing falsehood.

[Sturn]

Well, I think the fact that McCain was a captive in Vietnam is fairly established fact, while Obama being raised in Kenya is a dingbat smear from the deepest reaches of right wing xenophobia, so congratulations, you managed to top Ramsay's offensiveness!

Congrats, you managed to miss that I wasn't supporting that claim. Or did you think I was objecting to wishing someone's death by wishing someone's death?

Oh, Sturn, you haven't been paying close attention to the US Politics threads the last couple of months, have you? The Libertarian Rand Paul fan Ramsay Gimp would probably heartily endorse this statement about Obama. :)

You are assuming I was objecting to bashing of a conservative when I was objecting to wishing death on those we disagree with, regardless of political orientation. Ramsay Gimp's political beliefs have nothing to do with my objection.

[TrackerNeil]

The senile fucker probably forgot what he previously believed. I really wish the Viet Cong had rid us of McCain when they had the chance

I'm no fan of McCain, but this is just offensive. The man served the nation in the military, and he's served it in the Senate. I don't have to agree with him or even like him to think that wishing death upon him is low.

[Galactus]

would hope that libertarians are annoyed by the limitation on elective office by jus soli nationality.

Err, the limitations on elective office is a break from the principle of ius soli, not a consequence thereof.

[Ormond]

Congrats, you managed to miss that I wasn't supporting that claim. Or did you think I was objecting to wishing someone's death by wishing someone's death?

You are assuming I was objecting to bashing of a conservative when I was objecting to wishing death on those we disagree with, regardless of political orientation. Ramsay Gimp's political beliefs have nothing to do with my objection.

You are making a completely unwarranted assumption about me. I understand that you would still object if you had known his political beliefs, but why would you have used your Obama example if you had known what they were? It would make no sense to ask him how he would react to a statement involving harm to someone with whom he politically disagrees even more than he disagrees with McCain.

[sologdin]

ari--

the US permits jus soli citizens of the US to be elected to the presidency, but not naturalized US citizens, who are of course jus soli citizens of other states. I thought that i was saying that jus soli citizenship should not matter for the presidency, merely citizenship period, for libertarian principles.

[DanteGabriel]

dunno, DG. uncomfortable making mere wrongness, even mere complete wrongness-in-the-face-of-substantial evidence-to-the-contrary-but-possessing-none-oneself, the burden of proof for bad faith. that kinda wrongness is more kuhnian than anything, not rooted in willfulness or knowing falsehood.

I think there's some willfulness beyond mere wrongness, as evidenced by some self-contradiction and past statements on other topics, but beyond this reply I will respect Ini's request.

Congrats, you managed to miss that I wasn't supporting that claim. Or did you think I was objecting to wishing someone's death by wishing someone's death?

I merely pointed out that your example was of unequal offensiveness, as it was based on a commonly touted right wing smear. As I spelled out.

As to how illogical it would be to object to some offensive statement by making a heartfelt offensive statement of like nature, I'll refrain from pronouncing judgments on your capacities in that regard.

[Sturn]

You are making a completely unwarranted assumption about me. I understand that you would still object if you had known his political beliefs, but why would you have used your Obama example if you had known what they were? It would make no sense to ask him how he would react to a statement involving harm to someone with whom he politically disagrees even more than he disagrees with McCain.

The choice of the Obama example wasn't directed at him at all, but for others. I used an inflammatory statement for the majority of the board here. If I had instead used an anti-Bush example, quite a few here wouldn't have been bothered by it at all. Now I see it was a mistake since some are having trouble seeing past the Obama comment to what I was actually meaning to discuss.

[Suttree]

I disagree with your assessment of good faith, but fair enough.

Indeed. Not seeing much if any good faith here. Also nice to see this guy called a "shitbag" in the same post where there is an acknowledgement of mental illness possibly playing a role. Pure class that.

Oh and as for more details, the poster has been shown to flat out ignore them when convenient(holding to a suspiciously yell radio sound bite narrative). When cornered they fall back on vague appeals to insider knowledge. Not impressed.

Anyway let's talk about all those deaths being attributed Bergdahl:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/world/middleeast/can-gi-be-tied-to-6-lost-lives-facts-are-murky.html?_r=0&referrer=

But a review of casualty reports and contemporaneous military logs from the Afghanistan war shows that the facts surrounding the eight deaths are far murkier than definitive even as critics of Sergeant Bergdahl contend that every American combat death in Paktika Province in the months after he disappeared, from July to September 2009, was his fault.

All across Afghanistan, that period was a time of ferocious fighting. President Obama had decided to send a surge of additional troops to improve security, but they had not yet arrived. In Paktika, the eight deaths during that period were up from five in the same three months the previous year. Across Afghanistan, 122 Americans died in that period, up from 58 in 2008.

In addition, a senior insurgent commander known as Mullah Sangeen, who was part of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, had been carrying out attacks in the area for several years. A joint military statement by American and Afghan security forces released a month before Sergeant Bergdahl vanished warned that the mullah had brought in hundreds of foreign fighters.

Two soldiers died during the most intense period of the search after Sergeant Bergdahls June 30 disappearance. Both were inside an outpost that came under attack, not out patrolling and running checkpoints looking for him. The other six soldiers died in late August and early September....

The first two deaths the critics link to Sergeant Bergdahl involved a major assault by insurgents on a combat outpost called Zerok on July 4, 2009. Their view is that the Taliban knew the Americans were stretched thin by the search mission and took advantage of that opportunity to try to overrun it.

Mr. Bethea, the soldier who wrote the essay in The Daily Beast, said the company executive officer for the unit at Zerok believed that the attack would not have happened had his company received its normal complement of intelligence aircraft: drones, planes, and the like. Instead, every intelligence aircraft available in theater had received new instructions: find Bergdahl. My friend blames Bergdahl for his soldiers deaths.

Military officials, speaking in recent days, have countered that additional surveillance aircraft had been brought in from other areas to help in the search, so air traffic in the region was intensified, not diminished, by the search.

Separately, context supplied by the leaked logs complicates claims that insurgents attacked the outpost because of the hunt.

Insurgents had been shooting at the outpost with escalating intensity in the preceding months. A June 24 log described a mortar attack inside its perimeter and cited intelligence that insurgents were planning a complex ambush of the outpost....

Where those events are identifiable in the logs, they do not mention any link to Bergdahl search operations, although the logs are terse and contain few contextual details.

Mr. Bethea wrote that of the six men killed in August and September, two died in a roadside bombing while on a reconnaissance mission, a third was shot during a search for a Taliban political leader and three others were killed while conducting patrols two in an ambush and one who stepped on a mine.

He suggested some connection to Sergeant Bergdahl for several of the deaths, saying the Taliban leader and a village that was in the area of one of the patrols were thought affiliated with Bergdahls captors. He also said a village in the areas of the other patrol was near the area where Bergdahl vanished.

Still, those villages and insurgents were in the overall area of responsibility for the soldiers, and the logs make clear that the region was an insurgent hotbed. A log on May 21, 2009, for example, said it had historically been a safe haven for the Taliban.

A retired senior American military officer, who was briefed at the time on the search for Sergeant Bergdahl, said that even though soldiers were instructed to watch for signs of the missing American, they would have been conducting patrols and performing risky operations anyway.

Look, its not like these soldiers would have been sitting around their base, he said.

The soldier who spoke on condition of anonymity agreed that it was ludicrous to lay 100 percent of the blame for the deaths at Sergeant Bergdahls feet, and he acknowledged that patrols were going to get hit in Paktika during fighting season anyway.

[Ormond]

The choice of the Obama example wasn't directed at him at all, but for others. I used an inflammatory statement for the majority of the board here. If I had instead used an anti-Bush example, quite a few here wouldn't have been bothered by it at all. Now I see it was a mistake since some are having trouble seeing past the Obama comment to what I was actually meaning to discuss.

So you were making assumptions that the "liberals" on this board would agree with Ramsay Gimp's comments? I'm sorry, there is no indication of that in your original post. You posted it immediately after quoting Gimp, so there the logical conclusion was that the "you" in your statement was singular, not plural.

Not to mention that your assumption that the majority of the "liberals" on this board would agree with this statement about McCain is itself offensive.

[Suttree]

Not to mention that your assumption that the majority of the "liberals" on this board would agree with this statement about McCain is itself offensive.

Not to mention TP's sarcasm went straight over his head.

[The onion wight]

My most optimistic reading, and the reading that a few well-balanced commentators have taken, like the CSMonitor link I shared earlier, is that this is essentially the equivalent of freeing Edmure to make peace with Riverrun. Obama has misjudged the nihilism of his opponents in the past (domestically and internationally) so maybe it's a futile gesture, but I think that's the hope. Though I'm sure DebL66 just thinks this is so Obama wants to please his buddies in the Taliban.

Well, I think the fact that McCain was a captive in Vietnam is fairly established fact, while Obama being raised in Kenya is a dingbat smear from the deepest reaches of right wing xenophobia, so congratulations, you managed to top Ramsay's offensiveness!

I can't remember even the most dingbat paleocons claiming that Obama was raised in Kenya. That he was born there sure, that he forged his birth certificate and that he's a Muslim homosexual atheist communist.. certainly. But actually raised there, went to school there? Can't recall that.

[Hereward]

Sean Hannity is a Republican, isn't he?

http://www.thewire.com/politics/2013/06/sean-hannity-obama-kenya/66403/

[Sturn]

Not to mention TP's sarcasm went straight over his head.

Looks like it was actually a case of my statement going straight over yours since I literally asked whether TP's statement was sarcastic or not....

TP please tell us you were commenting sarcastically on what McCain did and not showing support of wishing those we disagree with had been killed.

Going over my head would indicate I had not noticed the possibility of sarcasm at all.

[DanteGabriel]

Anyway let's talk about all those deaths being attributed Bergdahl:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/world/middleeast/can-gi-be-tied-to-6-lost-lives-facts-are-murky.html?_r=0&referrer=

From an Atlantic article, not sure if I linked earlier, some interesting tweets from Andrew Exum, a former Army officer who was there when Bergdahl disappeared:

(I'm just going to copy the text of the tweets rather than figure out some way to artfully paste them)

I was working in ISAF HQ when #BoweBergdahl went missing. It was a WTF moment, because the reports suggested he just wandered off.

We can state with pretty clear certainty that a lot of very fine men died trying to recover #BoweBergdahl.

If how #BoweBergdahl disappeared is true, this will not be the 1st time men have died trying to rescue someone who did something dumb.

Remember when those guys from A Co. 1st Rangers died trying to rescue that SEAL who fell out of a helicopter in March 2002?

Did anyone ever ask why that SEAL wasn't clipped in?

We don't leave men behind. I understand the frustration, but I don't get those who want to throw #BoweBergdahl in the clink for this.

#BoweBergdahl should know how many men died in efforts to get him back, and that's punishment enough, even if he did the right thing.

I'm glad we got #BoweBergdahl back. I assume he suffered enough in captivity. Now we need to let it go.

And when the next soldier goes missing? Yeah, we're going after him (or her) too. Because that's what we do as a nation.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/the-three-kinds-of-bowe-bergdahl-backlash/372002/

I am glad there's some deeper investigation of how much those deaths can actually be traced to Bergdahl's disappearance, but the larger point that soldiers have risked their lives for people who did dumb things before, is worth remembering. This Bergdahl case is getting treated as a series of unique circumstances, when in reality these things have happened before.

[Inigima]

We are actually developing some conservative regulars. I think they are wrong about nearly everything, but that is pretty cool.

[Sturn]

I can't remember even the most dingbat paleocons claiming that Obama was raised in Kenya. That he was born there sure, that he forged his birth certificate and that he's a Muslim homosexual atheist communist.. certainly. But actually raised there, went to school there? Can't recall that.

Congrats, you managed to miss that I wasn't supporting that claim.

My bad, I will start over by removing the magnet since I obviously know the answer to that part of the question now.

I'm not objecting he could be senile and hypocritical, but you probably shouldn't stoop to wishing those you disagree with would have been killed. How would you react to, "I wish Obama's classmates in Kenya would have beat his dumb ass to death".