if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
Thus Spake Hitchens
by Lee
I just got in from work (another 14 hour day) and I started browsing through shows on my TiVo. I started watching a Dennis Miller show from a few days ago because Christopher Hitchens was on it, and I wlays find him enjoyable and interesting. During the interview he pointed to his lapel, and stated that this was the fglag of independent Kurdistan. From here on I’ll paraphrase his remarks.
“Think back a couple of years ago to all the naysaying about bringing Jeffersonian democracy to Iraq. Well, here in America we have Jeffersonian democracy, yet we’ve never elected a black or a Jew as president. But in Iraq they have gone, in the space of two years, from a fascist dictatorship to holding fair, free elections. And the man elected is a mamber of an oppressed minority. That’s something that we’ve never done here in America, and we’ve been around for over 200 years.”
A damn fine point, if I do say so myself. The naysayers and antiwar idiots simply refuse to recognize the significance of what is going on in Iraq right now. It’s far from perfect and nowhere near over, but something big is happening. And for all of those scumbags who signed the Not In Our Name petition, when Iraq turns into a success you can know that it was all done not in your name.
Comments
How about that. I’ve been using that word wrong my entire life, nobody’s ever pointed that out before.
And for all of those scumbags who signed the Not In Our Name petition, when Iraq turns into a success you can know that it was all done not in your name.
Q: How do you pronounce “bi9g”?
A: Just like “big” - the ‘9’ is silent. ;-)
who signed the Not In Our Name petition
I signed… under the name Ivan Awfulitch
It was nice to see my submission noted in BOTW when they were tracking the “interesting” names.
~
(token mostly-liberal reader here, be warned)
Hitch’s point is similar to the one that Bill Maher keeps making on his show, and I think they’re both right.
I opposed the Iraq war, for the very basic wrong-war-wrong-place why-the-hell are we invading there? Even signed the Not in Our Name petition. Those questions and arguments are two years old, and there’s no point re-hashing them now.
Once the war was on, I wanted it to succeed--what’s the point in rooting for a war to fail? Anyone who roots against success in Iraq is fundamentally rooting not only against the US but against the people of Iraq having some sort of safety and security, and that’s what bothers me about the truly radical ANSWER crowd. They’re impractical.
Post-war, most of my criticisms (to friends, I don’t argue online much) were because the guys who ran the war didn’t seem to have a clue how to get things right, make things work, and get Iraq to the point where we wouldn’t have to have such a large chunk of our military and our money tied up there.
We’re there, so good things happening are good. That pretty much sums up my viewpoint.
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e·nor·mi·ty
n. pl. e·nor·mi·ties
1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness.
2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage.
Usage Problem: See *enormousness*