So I guess the heat wave we just went through has fried more than just a zillion transformers on our nation's power grid. Via Billmon, I am led to a truly frightening article in Harper's magazine.
Could U.S. Troops End Up in Lebanon?
According to the former official, Israel and the United States are currently discussing a large American role in exactly such a “multinational” deployment, and some top administration officials, along with senior civilians at the Pentagon, are receptive to the idea.
The uniformed military, however, is ardently opposed to sending American soldiers to the region, according to my source. “They are saying 'What the fuck?'” he told me. “Most of our combat-ready divisions are in Iraq or Afghanistan, or on their way, or coming back. The generals don't like it because we're already way overstretched.”
I guess the "senior civilians" at the Pentagon refer to Donald "Snake Eyes" Rumsfeld and his merry band of yes men.
So, there really is only one thing to say at this point:
"Holy Flurking Shit!" Who could be this stupid?
We've been subjected to stories regarding how "thinly stretched" our forces have been. Most recently, it was lowering our standards so that we're recruiting members of hate groups. Then there was the old standby regarding the lowering of standards so they can hire high school drop outs and those who score in the 16th to 30th percentile on the US armed forces mental aptitude exam (btw, I took this test out of high school and I have to say that if you're scoring in the 16th percentile, you probably shouldn't even be driving a car much less being trained with deadly weapons n' such). Apparently, even showering the lucky recruits with boatloads of money hasn't even helped. And then there's the fact that we're hemorrhaging the officer class.
But hey! We know for a fact that calling someone a Chickenhawk is one of the stupidest things evah! One might even call the argument an ad hominem attack. Of course, when the attack is a personal attack - an attack actually directed at the person's character - an ad hominem attack really isn't a fallacy. But then ad hominem tuquoque has always been a staple of the right wing's argumentation - even the crypto-conservative's argumentation.
The classic example, of course, is Cliff May's impassioned - one might almost say desperate - assertion that fighting the "war of ideas" on the home front is every bit as dangerous (an even more important) as being in the middle of the exponentially increasing sectarian civil war in Baghdad - worse, even! Because, you know, that carpal tunnel syndrome can be such a bitch and those blogofascist liberals can be so mean.
But hey! Everything is going to be okay because War: we know what it's good for! A few <heh>'s, a few indeed's followed by a healthy refrain of "read the whole thing" and before you know it we'll be up to our eyeballs in the best wars that no one is willing to fight in. At least we have finally figured out how to deal with the problem of the chronically poor. Turns out Swift was rather short sighted. Why eat them when you can send them off to fight for you while you do the heavy lifting here on the fight against blogofascism. One really does have to have priorities, after all...
Think the Army is stretched too thin? You should see the nagahyde seat of the desk chair favored by the Fighting 101. Now that's being stretched thin, brother. That's stretched thin.
While May's post is rather poorly argued, I don't see where he's asserting that those who "fight the war of ideas" are in danger. He merely asserts the importance of the debate.
Surely, you would agree with this: "When we get the ideas wrong, when we misunderstand the problem, we end up with the wrong solution and all that follows from that."
Now, obviously, you disagree with May as to which side is which. But the fact that Bush/Cheney/Powell/Rumsfeld "won" the initial battle in early 2003 was every bit as important--if not more so--than any battle fought on the ground.
"The flies have conquered the flypaper" - Steinbeck, "Moon is Down".
Well, he was responding to this, which sets the correct context for his reply. Quite clearly, he's making the comparison between soldiers in battle with the work he's doing while lounging about with a drink in his hand. He's not merely asserting the importance of the debate, he's making an equivalence argument.
As to the collective winning the initial battle in 2003, I seem to recall there was no debate. As I remember things, there was a lot of talk about mushroom clouds, false information, presentations before the world based on the now proven erroneous statements obtained under torture and a heck of a lot of painting the anti-war crowd as treasonous fifth columnists.
Perhaps that is a "victory", but it's not quite the victory of ideas I think you're intending to portray it as. It's a victory of propaganda over reasoned thought. It's a victory of emotions over cool headed calculations.