alpha phi

Withdrawl would take the wind out of their sails
The insurgents will no longer be insurgents
(or what ever patriotic name their followers give them)
Instead they would become criminals, and thugs.
With each city we successfuly exit,
the Iraqi goverment, and police become stronger.
The way I see it, we need to take the training wheels off.
The Iraqi people are not our children.

__________________

Ustwo

The nation was ruled by criminals and thugs for years, why would a withdrawal without a prepared Iraqi force to deal with these 'insurgents' suddenly prevent them from taking over again?

You do need to push the baby bird out of the nest to learn to fly, but make sure its still not in the egg.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Rekna

They'd be just like us then wouldn't they?

maximusveritas

But politicophile, if you think the insurgency will not weaken once we withdraw, what makes you think that the insurgency will die down once they have to face more Iraqi soldiers? If the best soldiers and technology from America can't bring a halt to the insurgency, then how are a bunch of Iraqis going to do it? Simply turning the country over to the Iraqis and watching them fail does not take the responsibility off our shoulders.
Also, I don't think your definition of success in Iraq is far sighted enough. Success should not be simply the establishment of a government, but the long-term maintenance of a peaceful Iraq. Once you look at it this way, it's easy to see why many are not optimistic about our chances for success in Iraq. I'm not sure myself. So the question is, should we continue to hold our soldiers in harm's way when the chances are low that success will ever come about?

alpha phi

Iraq was ruled by a dictator.
Thug? yes
Criminal? by our laws...sure....not by his.
He would be (and is) a criminal by today's Iraqi law.
If the Iraqi police can't control just one city by now
we are in serious trouble.

__________________

Rekna

Do you mean kill them in mass without any good reason? Because we seemed to have already done that.

Rekna

Here is a question for those of you that don't think moving our troops out of hte cities would weaken the insurgency. Did the british sending more troops at the US weaken the US's resolve or insurgency? Or did it increase it? The fact is that the marjority of people in Iraq see the US as occupiers not liberators and want us out. As long as we are there telling them how to live the killing of US troops will be considered heoric and gain them support. We are making martyers out of thier insurgents which in turn creates more insurgents. Get our troops out of the cities and see how the cities are then if all goes well we could start withdrawing. Let the Iraqi soldiers and police secure the country. The insurgents will have a hard time being considered martyrs when they die killing their own people.

roachboy

what a goofy thread: the op reproduced a staricial piece without realizing that it was satirical--never a good start---from that you get yet another tiresome rehearsal of the false binds around which debate over the war in iraq has been framed by conservative discourse: you either support everything the administration has done and is doing so you can "support our troops" or you oppose the war and in so doing do not "support our troops"---the function of this false binary is self-evident---to substitute a cartoon for the range of motives that might lead a people--a significant majority of the american public by this point, judging from various polls over the last year or so--to oppose bushwar.

this tedious rhetorical move, like so much else in conservativeland (think of it as an amusement park in which every ride you take narrows your vision), is rooted in the right's mythology of vietnam, in particular the myth of "our boys" being spat upon by "protestors" upon their return from vietnam. never happened. but that's no matter, it suits the purposes of the folk who operate politically by contributing to conservative discourse and so it circulates.

the fact that, in this thread, a debate about withdrawing from iraq is framed by this idiotic binary opposition is kind of depressing to see: that many of the conservative folk in this community seem to find this narrow and uninteresting conversational space one in which they can swim about in circles comfortably is not surprising. looking at it from the outside, however, the thread does provide a domonstration of discourse effects and their uses: the kind of argument they enable, the kinds of arguments they exclude. which gives this a kind of anthropological interest, but not much else.

what i find curious, however, is the total lack of information in this thread: folk are spinning around in generalities as if the factual situation was transparent. it isnt.
that does not stop anyone, but perhaps it should.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

filtherton

The problem is that this administration has repeatedly shown that the standards by which success is measured are more subject to politics than any kind of grand vision. We already know they don't have WMDs. According to the president, our mission was accomplished years ago.

I thought conservatives were supposed to be the realists. What makes you think that our presence in iraq will ever be able to provide the stability and civility necessary to achieve the vague notion of success you subscribe to?

politicophile

Roachboy, I can't properly express over this electronic medium how incredibly irritated I become when you, as you do in very literally EVERY post you make, say something equivalent to:

"This thread is very interesting because it shows the irrational, infantile thought process used by the lumpenconservatives. Notice how they alter the terms of the debate by inserting their dogmatic loyalty to conservative talking points in place of reality."

I haven't the faintest idea why this is permitted. Your contributions to this forum are nothing more than clever, longwinded, typographically incorrect INSULTS of conservatives at large. You repeat over and over that conservatives are irrational and that their arguments are "idiotic", all the while refraining from offering counterevidence.

I am concerned that the moderators have not seen through your trick of couching personal insults inside of dense language. But honestly, you are killing debate, not only on this thread, but on the rest of the politics board.

We had a very civil debate in progress here until you stepped in and refered to conservatives and their arguments as "goofy", "tiresome rehearsal", "false binary", "cartoon", "tedious rhetorical move", "narrows your vision", "mythology", "idiotic", "depressing to see", "narrow and uninteresting", "swim about in circles", "total lack of information".

Let me be clear:

I will not engage in conversation in forums where this sort of insulting behavior is permitted. Period.

__________________
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Cynthetiq

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

roachboy

politicophile: think about the options--what exactly would you have me do?

i am completely opposed to the politics that you espouse.
the question is whether i talk about the effects of the public discourse that shapes the political views of many folk on the right, or i could pretend that a messageboard is transparent, that posts in a messageboard can rationally be connected to who the poster is as a human being in any detail and launch on that basis personal attacks. i do not do the latter. i restrict myself to the former. sorry that you dont like it--so long as you understand why the posts look as they do, the question is aesthetic and as such doesnt concern me.

i think that reasonable people can derive bizarre views of the world if they allow the present conservative discourse to shape them.
this result is a function of how discourse works: it posits signifiers and modes of linking them: the result of that is a carving up of information and the offering of modes of linking factoids together.
so when my posts happen, they are always focussed on the patterns of thinking.
i generally see folk from the right reproducing these patterns, most often at the center of their positions.

this tendency makes positions from conservatives here look like cookie-cutter results at times---i react to that.

finally, i am totally opposed to this discourse, to this politics and find alarming what this discourse does in debilitating the thinking of people who i assume to be otherwise reasonable folk. so it is not--ever--a matter of finding folk from the right to be stupid as human beings--it is that i find the frame of reference you use to lead you (plural form of "you") leads you to narrow and often surreal interpretations of the world.
and because this is a mass politics, i find this dangerous.

and for some reason that i have long since stopped understanding, i find it occaisionally to be worth my time to run out counterarguments in this space.

so you know.
sorry you dont like it, but there is really nothing i can do.

i could, of course, simply attack you as a person for your politics, as you do above to me.
but that is tiresome, at all ends.

give me a better strategy and i'll consider it.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

politicophile

To the contrary, a large percentage of the members are being insulted: namely, all "conservatives". The charter says that:

Only Halx can tell us exactly what it means, but I certainly think that my personal way of thinking is being degraded.

Very disappointing.

__________________
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

roachboy

how about you read the post that apparently went up as yours did, politicophile?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

alpha phi

This is a two way street
I've been called a liberal, a socialist, and a democrat for my views.
I am none of the above.
I am a very conservative person
I no longer support the federal level republicans for many reasons.
I will stop here in order to go back to topic.
This topic could make a good dicussion thread for philosophy.

__________________

samcol

Labels sure are great aren't they. It's interesting to get called every name in the book when you don't follow the usual party line rheatoric. I get called a liberal often too when I'm actually conservative.

Ustwo

Heh I've been warned for using blanket statements about liberals in the past.

Roachy often gets directly insulting too, and those are ignored by mods as well.

I think the problem is the mods are using the ignore on his posts

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Bill O'Rights

In alio pediculum, in te ricinum non vides



Look it up.



edit
Oh, and by the way...the preceding was not directed at any one particular individual. Think about it.

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

filtherton

I think the problem is that roach talks about conservative thought, while you mainly deal in one liners based on liberal stereotypes. In other words, roach has something interesting to say concerning conservative thought as it appears on this board, while you often don't have anything to say beyond sardonic remarks based on mostly insular notions of liberalism.

Ustwo

Iniuria non excusat iniuriam

Yea right and his personal attacks against me?

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

filtherton

I must have missed them.

stevo

leviculus probus est nunquam gauisus

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

Bill O'Rights

Ok...obviously I started that I shouldn't have...seeing as my latin is rusty, at best.
Mince pies don't grow on trees?

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

stevo

It was something about fat birds not flying, but I thought of a better one and made a quick edit...

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

alpha phi

empty something and name happy?

__________________

Bill O'Rights

Exactly! And, ya know...you, personally, have gotten much better.
It's been much appreciated.



Personal attacks? Against you...personaly? Or against conservatism as an institution? Big difference. Huge, even.
If, however, there have been attacks directed against your person, let me, or any of the other moderators, know.

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

stevo

......close

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

Bill O'Rights

Mouthfull of dried pigeon?
Eat crow? You're telling me to eat crow?

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

stevo

now you're way off, bill. I was telling alpha phi she was close. The edited one has nothing to do with birds...well bird brains maybe...

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

alpha phi

probus seems to be a last name associated with rank
used from Marcus Aurelius Probus to King Henery IV Probus

The ranks are name happy.

__________________

Cynthetiq

smells like a crows fart?

I don't read or speak latin...

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Bill O'Rights

Not saying this is the most authorative resource available, but...still. It was found on the interweb, afterall. It must be true. Right?

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

roachboy

nice latin match:
reading it was like watching ping pong on tv.
almost made me wish i was drinking a beer as i read, since ping pong on tv seems to require one.


to go back to the issues raised by my style of posting for a moment


the strange thing about running the kind of arguments that i tend to post here is that they work up to a point but havent really triggered what i had hoped they would: a reflexive response from the folk on the right--you know, a step out of the framework and a moment of wondering about/thinking about or even arguing about the frame itself. it seems that the mode of interacting with the discourse is to assume it to be a kind of natural horizon and run everything through it--which amounts to watching combination and recombination of the same moves with some variation as to inputs--and that's about it.

this is not the kind of relation to politics that you see from every position: it is in fact quite peculiar. that a feature of right discourse is projection (the claim that the characteristics of that political field are reactive comes up often enough) changes nothing. folk from the right tend to act as though everyone interacts with their political views as they do, that is immediately, as a matter of (apparently) semi-religious committment--two thread in this forum have been generated in the past days that address this, not by making it a problem, but instead by using arguments (the value of which is impossible to determine from the truncated accounts presented) that politics is by its nature irrational.

well, folks, if that is true we are all fucked.

anyway, given this, politicophile's response--to get offended rather than think about what is being said--follows. it is a sad state of affairs, really: this kind of relation to one's own views runs wholly counter to how one would expect folk who participate in a democratic polity to act. it is only possible if democracy is nearly meaningless operationally, if the polity has no real power, no real posssibility of exercizing power. it reflects an assumption particular to contemporary conservative discourse itself: that public opinion is a management issue and nothing more.
suffice it to say that there really is nothing personal about the way in whcih i go at political questions here (well, i like to think so anyway--obviously no-one is totally consistent and sometimes i do step outof this detached view--it usually doesnt work out so well, so i dont do it often)

the only criticism of how i have been operating in here that i took seriously was from host, who noted at one point or another that i appeared to be treating the forum as a kind of laboratory and threads as experiments. he was right. he was right about quite a few things beyond that as well: it is a shame tht he seems to have been driven out by what were--to my mind--really ridiculous arguments about how much reading his posts required.

i have to say that debating with most of the conservative folk here gets really tedious for me because they simply will not or cannot step outside of their immediate responses and think about why they are as they are. maybe they think there is no need: i cant really tell. but i think the framework through which conservative folk tend to operate--what i call conservative discourse--is weak descriptively--it uses a very strange mode of presenting claims, which would pass them off as transcendent. it seems to me that the whole project--which has been developing since the 1970s--is predicated on a kind of wish fulfillment in that the discourse seems geared at erasing the political, social and cultural problems that were raised by the civil rights movement, vietnam, etc., all of which functioned to blow apart the idea that the surface of reality is adequate, that you can sever the present configuration from its history, from structural factors, etc. the one lasting result of this period is that politics could drift back toward its origin in philosophy. i think this an important thing. this is more or less the space from which i operate, both in and in general. it means that you have to think both through and about particular frames of reference--to think about what these frames do, how they do it, what they enable you to get at, what they exclude. i do not see this as a bad thing. i does mean that being certain about things is a problem--but that's fine...any philosophical project worth developing has this feature as well. it makes it harder to be in the world maybe--but it seems to me to be worth it. this is as close as i have come here to a direct statement of my own politics, which tend to disappear a bit behind the style i usually adopt.

in some sense, the conservative project seems to be not so far from that of edmund burke---it is rooted in the same type of reaction to the 60s as burke had to the french revolution--but unlike burke, folk who either make or use this discourse seem to imagine that going back to a simpler time is possible. it isnt. and that fact alone seems to drive folk crazy. the discourse, with its penchant for transcendent propositions, offers the illusion of a response. this response might work to an extent if you inhabit that political space--but not everyone does, and so there will always be limits, always folk who point out the problems with all of this: with these people, for folk on the right, it seems that the operative assumption is that there is no possibility of meaningful discussion. but sometimes the people behind the combinations of conservative elements peer around the edges, and when they do conversation can actually happen. such is the situation i find myself in here relative to most of the folk from the right. mr. pollyanna broadcasting to you from his livingroom in philadelphia dixit.



as for ustwo: i find your hit-and-run style of posting to be patronizing in the extreme.
you can choose to see in this a personal attack, but it is not meant as such: again, it is about your posts. i do not know you. i do not imagine that i can get to know you through this board, or any such board. i see what you write and i react to it--often on the basis of what i take to be a patronizing relation to this whole space. you write short, often goofy things. what that indicates is that you think your readers stupid. most of your shorter "witty" posts are kind of offensive personally to me at this level. if you are really concerned about the quality of debate in this space, try raising the content level of your interactions with it. you reap what you sow, as the cliche goes.

mr pollyanna now ends his broadcast day.
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Cynthetiq

I see and understand what you are saying but then the practicality of it then discludes many from the discussion.

I could easily state in any of the computer threads, "Well if you truly want to understand what to do then you must read about electrical engineering, GUI design, and programming coding."

But that's not a good method of discussion since it halts and stops it. It gives one a little pause to discuss. In the case of host or even yourself, I need to read the rhetoric and then double check the facts, read the implications and inferences and decide for myself the motivators of the writers being cited. If that's how you coffee clatch, then I'd not ever be interested in sitting down in real life discussing anything with you or anyone who's style it is to make the other individual feel incompetent, stupid, or ignorant about the subject being discussed.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Willravel

In alio pediculum, in te ricinum non vides: You see a louse on someone else, but not a tick on yourself, equivelant to the parable from Jesus in Matthew 7: "And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" Take care of your own big problems before worrying about others littl problems.
Iniuria non excusat iniuriam: One wrong does not justify another. Of course, this philosophy is contraditory to Ustwo's response in the Ann C. thread in which the argument about Ann Coultier was deflected by using a liberal play about killing the president.

roachboy

jesus, cyn: there really is nothing to be said about your last post.
you feel that way--fine.
it does i suppose raise the question of why you bother with any of this, if you really feel that way.
there is no need to respond, really.

what i will say is that i would hope the 3-d person behind "cynthetiq"--whoever that is--- doesnt actually limit himself the way the persona does.
there is so much around us that neither you nor i knows about.
being in the world is a kind of adventure.
nothing is given in advance, nothing is stable, nothing knowable from its surfaces.
no point in hiding from that within some illusion of certainty. not really. nothing to be gained, nothing to be learned. the result: always and everywhere the same old stuff. always and everywhere only repetition. i dont see the appeal.
what's to be afraid of?

as for your swipe at me as a human being: this board is a small part of my life. you see nothing about me from it, not really. you have no idea who i am or how i am. you get an idea of how i write when i am here.
how i write here is an even smaller part of my life than the board is as a whole.
so when you say stuff about who you imagine me to be, i have a hard time not laughing.... sorry, but there we are.

roachboy is an illusion.
he is a voice.
he is a series of sentences.
so are you, cynthetiq.
that's it, that's all you know about me, and all i know about you.
the voice is all there is.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

Anonymity is relative. There is a representation of everyone's persona here on FTP, whether that representation is reserved and controlled, or free and total. While one could see each avatar as a mask, and the words as if coming from nowhere, the words themselves are very much telling of the persona of the wizard behind the curtin. While clearly not face to face, this is a community. I try to see this as a blind community. It is as much a community as any other community, but it simply lacks in sensation. I cannot hear or taste or touch any other member. Does that make the other members less real?

I know that roachboy and Cynthetiq are real people to an extent. I could write a book about either of their post histories, and either book would be a complete character with likes, dislikes, storyline, facts, roads of trials, antagonists, friends, and conclusions (maybe even climaxes). Let's not downplay the importance of persona on TFP, because it's all we have.

roachboy

will: i am on my way out the door, kinda (have to go warm up before a performance in about an hour and a half)
dont take what i wrote the wrong way: there is a kind of community here, yes. i hold myself at a bit of a remove from it because of my awareness of the degree to which roachboy is, in fact, a persona. in the forums, the distance between myself and roachboy can be quite great--i think kind of the same way, but the voice that comes out through roachboy is very very different from the person pulling his strings. not unrelated. not the same. roachboy is a surface. he, too, has adventures. they are and are not my adventures.

this is a silent space.
the world i live in is not.
this is a 2-dimensional space.
the world i live in is not.
the fit between 2 and 3-d is highly variable.
what ends up migrating from one to the other, when the folk here meet up, is what each of us pulls from one to the other.
that's it.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

I'm sure you'll do famously at the performance.

Some of the thing's I've read on TFP have conveyed truely brilliant ideas coming from truely brilliant minds; minds that live in the 3D world. Even though it is impossible to represent a full 3 dimentional person on TFP, that doesn't make the 2D persona any more or less important. The way that we communicate, language, is a 2d form of communication. True, nonverbal communication, which can communicate volumes, is not present, but the center of communication is often in the words. TFP is about the words. My words, your words, even Ustwo's words. Those words are inately valuable.

/end threadjack

Cynthetiq

what's amazing is that you have a hard time fathoming that the same applies to the other individuals who are here. You may espouse it, but IMO you don't get nor apply it.

I respond to what I can in the the confines of the context applied. When the context is broadened to have to include more background and depth, then the only way to continue the conversation is to either acquiese or read and understand and then return. To read and understand can sometimes take weeks or months to properly vet out and investigate, would it be better to just gloss over the connections you, host, or any other makes? Should I read the cited texts and not understand the bias or motivator? Or should I take it on faith that your opinion is good enough and that since I cannot cite as many quotes to refute your/host quotes that I adamantly stand firm in my position and dig in? That would be irresponsible wouldn't it?

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.