22 Comments on “Imagine if …”   rss feed

1. Q on Sep 20th, 2006 at 8:25 am

   Hi Mark,
   we don’t see eye2eye on some things
   but that cartooooon, well it just shows
   it IS all about the observer’s perception
   —

2. Belizean on Sep 20th, 2006 at 12:01 pm

   I imagine, if you will, a group of countries that believe that American physics is false and a danger to the world.

3. Jen on Sep 20th, 2006 at 12:55 pm

   Very similar to a ‘joke’ I heard in a show by the comedian Mark Thomas in the run-up to the Iraq war. He was proposing to disguise himself as an Iraqi journalist in the US and go around asking people whether they thought the US ‘posed a significant threat’ to Iraq, and whether Iraq should consider a ‘preemtive strike’.

4. David on Sep 20th, 2006 at 2:46 pm

   Oh please, talk about simplistic. The Bush administration’s case (misguided as it was) was a lot more subtle, nuanced, and *tailored to Iraq and it’s history* than this silly simplification. Of course an argument will look dumb if you present it without its details and then abstract the whole thing away from all the particulars those details were meant to address…

   There’s a reason the overwhelming majority of us voted for you guys to stay out of politics in this blog.

5. Mark on Sep 20th, 2006 at 3:12 pm

   If you think the Bush administration’s argument was nuanced, you must have been listening to a different Bush administration than the one I was listening to.

   Not sure what vote you’re talking about.

6. spyder on Sep 20th, 2006 at 4:05 pm

   I believe the cartoon, as i see it above, says nothing about Iraq. Thus one could more easily see the rhetoric about Iran as equally applicable. But then W’s quote within his UN speech was a revelation of sorts:
   “It’s impossible for someone to have grown up in the ’50s and ’60s to envision a conflict with people that just kill mercilessly, using techniques that are kind of foreign to modern warfare,”

   I am only guessing here, but as someone who grew up in school in the 50’s, and had too many occasions to challenge the wisdom of drop drills as an appropriate response to nuclear war, i was never in doubt about the capacity of people and governments killing mercilessly with WMD’s. Maybe he meant the 70’s and 80’s??

7. Delf on Sep 20th, 2006 at 4:05 pm

   Hmm. I think an “overwhelming majority” of folks have been living on a different planet during the past 5 years, or is it hidden extra dimensions? In this world however it’s become painfully obvious, many, many times, that there is nothing subtle about Bush and his policies. He himself incarnates the word “simplistic”. Where have you guys been, seriously? And if scientists don’t speak up about the obvious, then what are we to become as a nation? A giant ostrich farm?

8. Cynthia on Sep 20th, 2006 at 4:45 pm

   Negative consequences are more likely to be prevented if one simply “turns the table” PRIOR to deciding to take military action. By contrast, negative consequences are more likely to ensue if one “turns the table” AFTER deciding to take military action.

   Well, with regards to Iraq, “the table was turned” AFTER, of course, deciding to take military action; therefore, we are suffering these negative consequences of war. Moreover, at this point in time, it’s all - regrettably - just Monday morning quarterbacking at its worst!

9. jovial_cynic on Sep 20th, 2006 at 5:02 pm

   I love the “if you don’t like us, there’s something wrong with you” mentality that folks on the Right seem to endorse. Nevermind that 30% of Europeans feel that America is the greatest threat to global stability…

10. Jim Harrison on Sep 20th, 2006 at 5:07 pm

    For better or worse, America is obviously the most dangerous power on the Earth. We not only have the means to destroy whole continents with terror weapons, but we have a proven record of military ruthlessness and national exceptionalism that goes back to World War II if not before. You’d have to use a chart with a logarithmic scale just to get the fire-bombing of Tokyo on the same page with 9/11.
    The vaunted terorrists of our time are pikers compared to Roosevelt and Truman, a fact that has always been obscured because in earlier wars, we were struggling against genuine powers that represented a real threat while Iraq and Iran cut a pretty pathetic figure compared to Japan, Germany, or the Soviet Union.

    The logic of our national strategy is genocidal. So far, we haven’t drawn the deadly conclusions from premises like total war; but it’s a good bet, we will one of these days.

11. Pingback from sysrick.com » links for 2006-09-21 on Sep 20th, 2006 at 8:20 pm

    [...] Imagine if [...]

12. Anshul on Sep 20th, 2006 at 8:38 pm

    Jim’s right! If you look at the US, then the only strategically correct thing to do should be to control the world. Be it’s king, judge and police. Otherwise all that money you put into the war machine ends up being a big huge waste. World domination is a logical conclusion to the US strategy so far. Since, any other strategy from this point onwards looks bad, one way or the other the US must extend its control of the world. George Bush is not an accident. He is a game-theoretic inevitability. I am not from the US, btw.

13. Joseph on Sep 20th, 2006 at 9:46 pm

    I’m surprised that you’re linking to conservative Republican propaganda cartoons.

    The “group of countries claiming the U.S. possessed weapons of mass destruction”, etc. is obviously a reference to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The first three panels are thus classic cold-war conservative fearmongering.

    The second panel seems to imply that a dangerous country that claims to possess WMDs might actually be found to have WMDs. Nobody to the Left of J. Edgar Cheney believes that anymore!

    And the final three panels are obviously a NRA-style appeal for more private gun ownership.

14. B on Sep 21st, 2006 at 4:33 pm

    All the President’s Words

15. David on Sep 21st, 2006 at 6:20 pm

    Mark,

    Perhaps I have been listening to a different Bush administration than you have. I certainly have, if you’ve been going on Bush’s silly speeches designed for illiterate america.

    If you want to learn more about the way the Bush administration really thinks, and especially how it thought leading up to Iraq, you could start here. This document was released about a year after September 11.

    As for the politics on this blog, I guess I shouldn’t have used the word “vote”, but I was referring to Sean’s lurker day post where he asked people to comment on the blog. To my memory–and a quick scan verified this at leats in part–there were quite a few negative comments about the politics here.

    -David

    p.s., haha, I just read my original post. I shouldn’t have said ‘vote’; and I certainly shouldn’t said ‘overwhelming’. But hey, I get excited too sometimes =).

16. Chinmaya Sheth on Sep 21st, 2006 at 10:03 pm

    David, I know I can’t change minds, but we all know that the main reasons given for the war were WMDs and links to terrorism?

17. David on Sep 22nd, 2006 at 11:53 am

    Well, those were the main reasons given to the “american people” in speeches. But oversimplified speeches are just the annoying part of having a democracy with an uneducated populace. If you are educated, you have to put up with them, and look deeper. The Bush administration and the think tanks behind it were saying lots of other things all along, not least of which was the *legality* of the war, which nobody ever talks about (except to say it was somehow illegal… which is flabbergasting). But Iraq was in flagrant violation of multiple UN resolutions, and really it was 100% clear tha an invasion was legal when Saddam finally kicked out the last of the inspectors during Clinton’s term. Unfortunately Clinton got distracted by the Lewinsky scandal, or for whatever reason decided not to do anything about ir other than a few cruise missiles (if I remember aright), and the legacy of Saddam flaunting international law at will began. Conservatives thought that when the US (and its allies) say something, it should carry meaning. We spent a lot of time trying to convince the UN to uphold its own resolutions, and when finally it became clear they wouldn’t, we did it ourself. If Bush sr. had expected the UN to become such a gelatanous organization, I think he would have done things differently after the first gulf war. Anyway, this is an example of one of the issues that was seriously discussed; there was also talk about democratising the middle east for its own stability, enforcing human rights (see especially the introduction to that document I linked to), and probably other causes as well. But WMD (and the whole world believed he had WMD, from the way he was acting, even though we most certainly lied about having *proof*) was but one cause among many.

    But even if it was the only argument, how does the fact that it wouldn’t work back on us mean we shouldn’t have used it? The whole idea of the cartoon is preposterous. If somebody wanted to invade the US, it’d probably be because we are a global hegemon and they consider it a danger to security and freedom to let us continue to have such influence. Do you think the anti-war people in that county (let’s say it’s sri lanka) would make cartoons, saying “Imagine if somebody called us a global hegemon and said we were a threat to freedom and security?”. No, it’s stupid. The whole thing is ridiculous.

18. Jim Harrison on Sep 22nd, 2006 at 2:06 pm

    The Iraq adventure was always a dumb idea from a Real Politik point of view. It was also clearly a preventative war and therefore illegal under the usual interpretation of international law. Perhaps what David is really pointing out is not that it was a good idea or a moral one, but simply that we have the power so we make the rules. We can overturn elected governments, engage in terror bombing, freely torture foreign nationals, and decide who has the right to defend themselves against us.

    The problem with this sort of reasoning is that it presumes that America has the power and stamina needed to support its overwhelming national arrogance. Well, maybe we really will be the first imperial power that figures out how to enjoy the hubris without suffering the nemesis. More likely, like the four year old who kicked his uncle in the shins one too many times, we’ll discover that the victims of our aggression can kick back. So “Imagine if…” is a very relevant theme, indeed.

19. Chinmaya Sheth on Sep 22nd, 2006 at 4:18 pm

    David, But US allies have violated U.N. resolutions multiple times also.

20. PK on Sep 22nd, 2006 at 6:57 pm

    David, no matter how you dress it up, this administration has repeatedly changed the reasons for the war, such as WMD, links to terrorism, and regime change. The first two were wrong and the last is illegal. Moreover, Cheney kept on linking Saddam to Al Qaida until very recently. With all that it doesn’t really matter what other people in close orbit around the White House have written.

    But if you like dubya, you forgive a lot. Imagine Clinton going in on the basis of WMD and not finding them. You guys would have been all over him, not because of the fabrications (which you seem to swallow quite happily), but just because you hate Clinton. And he probably would have gone into Iraq after 9/11, just because it is a good idea for an oil-consuming imperium to have control over the richest oil fields in the world.

    That’s what this is really about: the ultimate goals of republicans and democrats do not differ that much as to warrant this amount of polarization.

21. David on Sep 25th, 2006 at 2:26 pm

    Oh, I don’t like dubya, nor do I like his administration. But even if I don’t agree with their arguments (for war or for whatever), I do actually respect their intellectual rigor. (But I don’t, for example, respect the intellectual rigor of this cartoon’s “argument”, even though it presents a conclusion I agree with.)

    What bothers most people, but doesn’t bother me, is that they dumbed it down for the american people. *shrug* sometimes you have to talk to people at their level.

22. Rose on Jan 8th, 2007 at 6:43 pm

    I feel the dawning of consciousness is going to profit from this deceit. Although the “for or against” kinda had me for a nano second. I had thoughts I was anti American or something, because I needed more global support for our Presidents position!
    Man what a sunrise!

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