NEW SLURS

Look, maybe you support John Kerry, maybe you don't. Maybe you believe the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, maybe you don't.

None of that matters for the point I want to make here.

This is what John Kerry said in 1971:

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command....

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

This is what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote this morning about the contemporary relevance of Mr. Kerry's prior testimony:

Mr. Kerry also spoke of the moral cost of an ill-conceived war - of the atrocities soldiers find themselves committing when they can't tell friend from foe. Two words: Abu Ghraib

There were, we are all clear, abuses committed at Abu Ghraib. They were not "atrocities," certainly not along the line of what was testified to in 1971, whether it was accurate or not, nor is there any proof that what happened at abu Ghraib has been "committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of all levels of command." To the contrary, every report and investigation, while finding fault with the chain of command, has come to the opposite conclusion. Most importantly, contra Mr. Krugman's implication that atrocities grow naturally out of this kind of war, along the lines of what Mr. Kerry had previously testified to, there is no evidence that what happened at abu Ghraib has become standard practice among the force whereever it encounters Iraqis.

For someone so angry over perceived slurs against the service of a veteran, Mr. Krugman appears to have surprisingly little difficulty slurring today's service members.

Comments

[alcibiades]

The guys a moral dingbat. He lives in a universe that very few of us inhabit. The Times should fire him, but they never will.

[medash]

Rantingprof:

Did you actually read the rest of the article? Really read it? Or just cherry pick?

Krugman makes the point that Bush administration is full of a bunch of goddamm cowards who weaseled out of the Vietnam War. Now they want to play Rambo and will smear anyone who was actually a true hero. (A point you seemingly miss.)

Your nitpicking tells me that you would be right at home with this bunch.

[Pat]

Let's just agree that Paul Krugman is a moron and has lost any credibility he ever had because of his limited ability to reason (he's suffering from Bush Hatred Syndrome which leads its sufferers to lose important synapses in the brain). Medash appears to be cut from the same cloth. "Nitpicking" --or expecting someone to be consistent within the same article about his position--is clearly not "nuanced" enough for him.

[Felix]

How can you paint the entire Bush administration as "a bunch of goddamm cowards" and John Kerry as a "true hero", and then accuse dauber of being partisan, nitpicking, and cherry picking?

If you bothered to read what she said, you'd see that she's exactly right. There's no correlation between John Kerry's imaginary atrocities in Viet Nam and the current war in Iraq(other than the wishful thinking of the Left).

[jakeliver]

It seems like your trying to play all sides. You are saying that Krugman is going against the service men, yet you believe the offenses at Abu Gharib are only a result of the people indicted with no influence by officers. What would make these people act this way by themselves I would ask? I think you have missed both Kerry's and Krugman's point about War, which is that not only does War require you to kill but can seriously warp your mind. Krugman does not directly relate the atrocities at Abu Gharib and Viet Nam, and its barely a part of what the article is about.

[Felix]

He doesn't directly relate them, huh?

"Mr. Kerry also spoke of the moral cost of an ill-conceived war - of the atrocities soldiers find themselves committing when they can't tell friend from foe. Two words: Abu Ghraib"

It doesn't matter what the article is about, he makes the comparison when all the evidence we have shows the exact opposite. That's why dauber named this "New Slurs"; it's an accusation against today's military, whether you percieve that or not.

[Ron Hardin]

I was looking for a bit in Wayne Booth's _Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent_, about something being wrong with the arguments when one side simply quotes the other's stuff without comment, and how Krugman, to my mind, is material that falls temptingly into that category, but I needed his wording, when I ran across :

``A more pressing instance is upon us today - an instance so overwhelming that I feel almost guilty about not making it the center of my lectures. For a long time it has been ``practically certain'' that America made a disastrous and brutal mistake in going into Vietnam and that we must get out; let's say, to be very conservative, that the nature of the disaster has been clear, to anyone willing to read and think about it, at least since it became clear to President Johnson in 1968.
The arguments have been complicated, I'll admit, and there are indeed at least two sides to every political question; I'm sure that our failure ot understand the opposing case has contributed to the delay. Nevertheless, I must say that the critics of the war have long since earned a resounding yes, the defenders of the policy a resounding no. Those of you who doubt me will, I hope, read the statement in all the papers yesterday (April 25, 1971) by veteran John F. Kerry, as one of thousands of anguished appeals that to me can only be answered with a yes - which means, of course, a no to U.S. policy.

``My point here is not, however, the rights and wrongs of the war. It is that the issue of getting out, though to most of us morally and politically clear, has been obscured by our rhetoric rather than clarified ...'' p.6

Anyway here is the bit, about a student takeover of the Administration building and nonnegotiable demands :

``At one point things had gotten so bad that each side found itself reduplicating the broadsides produced by the other side, and distributing them, in thousands of copies, without comment ; to each side it seemed as if the other side's rhetoric was self-damning, so absurd had it become.'' p.8

Krugman has been in that category for me, and the only interesting thing is that there are people for who he is not.

[Judasmac]

"cherry-picking" = highlighting revealing slur. Would you care actually to defend Krugman on the point in question, medash? Or is it "nitpicking" to point out that you ignore Dauber's critique and opt for an ad hominem?

[dauber]

Oh, Medash, we've missed you. You drop by, make an insulting argument, then disappear.

Yes I read the whole argument. So what? It is neither nitpicking nor cherrypicking to note that in advancing his argument -- which I was careful not to engage -- he explicitly makes an analogy between the atrocities Kerry testifies to (without challenging the extent of his 1971 words) and today's events. That analogy can easily be examined as distinct from the rest of the article.

Were officers involved in today's events? Yes, we've established that. That isn't what Kerry claimed was the case in 1971 in the testimony Krugman is adopting as his own. "Officers" and "the entire chain" are not the same thing, which you'd know if you knew anything at all about the military.

As for their being "cowards" for not fighting in Vietnam, that's a damned interesting argument for a Democrat to make (and I think, actually, that you are putting words in people's mouths there: Harkin was the only one foolish to use that phrase, a bad call given how similar his Vietnam record is the President's.)

If seeking a deferment from Vietnam makes you a coward, (recalling that the President flew jets, something you may not have respect for but that I do, and recalling that Sec. Rumsfeld also flew jets during his time in, which didn't happen to overlap the war), then there are a long line of Democratic cowards, starting with Bill Clinton. Is that really the argument you want to make? That men who have not gone to war are cowards?

Or perhaps your argument is more specific: that men who did not fight in VIETNAM, a war that until now the left defined as the wrong war at the wrong time, are cowards. Doing so would certainly upend thirty years of progressive belief about draft dodging, deferments, even going to Canada.

How do you feel now about President Carter, who gave dodgers amnesty?

I'm not even going to respond to your comment about "that bunch," but I'd look to your own quality of argument before attacking others on those grounds.

Answer the substance or you've got nothing.

[CYNIC]

not speaking for medash, but i will have a go at your arguments dauber.

If seeking a deferment from Vietnam makes you a coward, (recalling that the President flew jets, something you may not have respect for but that I do, and recalling that Sec. Rumsfeld also flew jets during his time in, which didn't happen to overlap the war),(interesting you exclude 'other priorities' Cheney, but no matter - - cynic ) then there are a long line of Democratic cowards, starting with Bill Clinton. Is that really the argument you want to make? That men who have not gone to war are cowards?

no, but those who actively sought to avoid going to a war but push to send others to an ill conceived and ill planned war ARE cowards.

Bill Clinton avoided the draft. He made no secret of his distaste for it. His distaste for active combat continued in office when he elected to make Bosnia an air war. Say what you will about dropping bombs from a distance, he kept American casualties to a minimum.

Or perhaps your argument is more specific: that men who did not fight in VIETNAM, a war that until now the left defined as the wrong war at the wrong time, are cowards. Doing so would certainly upend thirty years of progressive belief about draft dodging, deferments, even going to Canada.

Not at all. It just means that those who served in Vietnam have earned the right to disagree with that war itself. Just as von Stauffenberg tried to assassinate Hitler, it is possible to be an honourable soldier and oppose the war.

You sound like you are intentionally misunderstanding Krugman's point, which is:

John Kerry talked of other vets who had said they committed atrocities. War tends to make ordinarily good people do really bad things, for example, Abu Ghraib, just as John Kerry described.

Is Krugman so off the mark when he paraphrases Kerry with moral cost of an ill-conceived war - of the atrocities soldiers find themselves committing when they can't tell friend from foe. ?

Hell, cops in New York and LA do crap like this when they cannot tell friend from foe - you think soldiers in a war don't?

[Bill]

no, but those who actively sought to avoid going to a war but push to send others to an ill conceived and ill planned war ARE cowards.

Gee Cynic, ever here of some places called Somalia and Bosnia? Sorry no, you're argument doesn't fly. The fact is any President can easily be put in the position of having to prosecute a war that some are guaranteed to call ill conceived and ill planned. Basically, taken to it's logical conclusion, your argument would require that any president would have to have willingly gone off to fight in a war or he could never adequately discharge his duties. It would also, incidentally, disqualify John Kerry, since he also tried to avoid going at every opportunity.

[jake]

ex·plic·it ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-splst)
adj.

Fully and clearly expressed; leaving nothing implied.
Fully and clearly defined or formulated: “generalizations that are powerful, precise, and explicit” (Frederick Turner).
Forthright and unreserved in expression: They were explicit in their criticism.

Readily observable: an explicit sign of trouble.
Describing or portraying nudity or sexual activity in graphic detail.

Once again you both mention that Krugman directly relates the atrocities and/or explicitly states a comparison between these atrocities. I assure you that any allusions are implicit. The article is a critique of BUSH and co., not veterans, for not understanding what war can do to a person.

[Felix]

... and in order to critique Bush, Krugman casually claims that U.S. armed forces are committing atrocities.

See how that works? If it makes attacking Bush more convenient, he'll slander all the men and women serving honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Does that remind you of anyone else?

And if you don't think this quote explicitly states a comparison...

"Mr. Kerry also spoke of the moral cost of an ill-conceived war - of the atrocities soldiers find themselves committing when they can't tell friend from foe. Two words: Abu Ghraib"

... then I'm sure you won't find the explicit comparison here either...

"The poster Felix wrote of the moral cost of backing an ill-conceived argument - of the garbage-literature posters find themselves writing when they can't tell right from wrong. One word: jake."

I assure you that any allusions are implicit, jake.