alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

September 26, 2006

His New Book is Called ” Stupidity for Dummies”

by AltHippo @ 2:01 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

From one of the doughiest pantloads that has ever walked the planet, comes one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read:

A Brief Dissent [Jonah Goldberg]
Folks, regardless of the details of the NIE controversy can I just say that I’m not particularly troubled by the NIE’s alleged finding that the Iraq war has increased terrorism. I mean, doesn’t that make sense? I think Bush is mistaken to dismiss this criticism as factually absurd when in reality the absurdity lay in some folks’ interpretation of the facts. He said in his August 21, press conference that the notion the Iraq war stirred up a “hornet’s nest” “just doesn’t hold water as far as I’m concerned.” He added, “The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.”

That’s all fair enough. But, why shouldn’t we think that the Iraq war has increased terrorism in the world, or at least the risk of it? The hornet’s nest analogy is apt, albeit clichéd. We were stung — and stung badly — well before the Iraq war. And after the multiple stings of 9/11 we decided to take the fight to nests.

If my backyard is festooned with hornet nests, I will likely be safer from a sting on any given day if I do nothing than I will be on the day or days I begin destroying them. Since when is any large, important, task required to show positive results at every stage? Declaring war on Japan increased the threat of war from Germany dramatically. And waging war on both countries, obviously, made things less safe for Americans in the short run. As I wrote a long time ago, lots of things go badly until they go well.

Yes, I suppose if Iraqis were actually behind 9.11, and terrorist cells were literally wasps…

You know, some arguments are so stupid that to deconstruct them is an insult to deconstructionism.

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One Response to “His New Book is Called ” Stupidity for Dummies””

  1. Bulworth Says:
    September 26th, 2006 at 2:47 pm

    Yeah, OK. Uh huh.

    The problem, though, is that once upon a time the administration and its media lackeys claimed that the source of
    terrorism was (a) states that directly sponsored terrorism or (b) failed states that lacked sufficient control over
    their territories which resulted in the provision of “safe havens” for terrorists.

    The administration claimed that Iraq was originally A (although this has been widely disputed, if not disproved). But
    there is no doubt Iraq is NOW B, a failed state, which insufficiently conquered or at least controlled, is and will
    provide a breeding ground an ample safe havens for terrorist groups.

    And then of course there’s Afghanistan and the border area into Pakistan, whose government won’t let our military into
    for fear their population would overthrow it.

    So, we’re either back to where we started, or significantly worse off. Probably the latter.

    And the problem is that thanks to the administration and its various enablers, we now are faced with a signficant problem B.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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