I'll cut to the original money quote from Peter Ingemi's letter to Glenn Reynolds. There's been more water under the bridge since, but it remains the center of the matter:
The real danger is that we who support the war will reach the point that we say "we might as well be taken as wolves then as sheep." At that point the left can celebrate that they have made our military and those who support it the people they claim we are. Once that happens however any compunction about respecting them will be gone, and remember one side is armed and one is not.
This is one of the most refreshingly honest descriptions of the War Party mindset I've yet seen -- or half of that mindset, at any rate: The "depressive" side. For the sake of completeness of record, here's the "manic" side:
We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
When the appropriations are being handed out and the tanks are rolling and the ragheads are obediently dying, these guys are on top of the world. Rock stars. Demi-gods, maybe. But when the shit hits the fan, when they start to look bad, when it looks like there may be actual penalties for their stupidity (even if someone else has to pay those penalties) well, they're just an oppressed minority bein' picked on by The Man. Nobody likes us, everybody hates us, guess we'll eat some worms ... unless, of course, we decide to shoot y'all.
I trust the Prozac I mailed has reached Ingemi by now, so perhaps we can talk about this in real-world, rather than bipolar, terms. There are most definitely a few things we need to get straight.
First of all, I don't know which "side" Ingemi thinks is "armed," but if he thinks it's only the War Party side, he's got another think coming (if he's ballsy and stupid enough to test the proposition).
Not all opponents of the war on Iraq are pacifists by a damn sight. Last time I noticed, there were allegedly 70 million gun owners in the US, with 210 million small arms at their disposal. One out of three American males (myself included) is a veteran with military training. And a majority of Americans (and probably American gun owners, and probably American veterans, and probably American troops) want this war over, and a substantial percentage want the war criminals at every level brought to account. If the War Party wants to play "wolf" on American soil to suppress that sentiment, they'll find out most ricky-tick why that species nearly went extinct. And yeah ... that is a threat.
Secondly, here's how it is:
If you're lucky and smart, you'll pray that the Bush administration gets the troops home as quickly as possible, then muddies the waters enough that nothing gets resolved and nobody "important" pays; that the War Party (R) administration and Congress will be replaced by a War Party (D) administration and Congress (which is pretty much bound to happen no matter what you do); and that most of America will sit down, sing Kum Ba Ya together and try to pretend the whole thing never happened. Until next time, of course.
If you're not lucky and not smart, you'll egg on the dragging out of the farce and the inevitable accompanying atrocities. More of the peons will pay with sentences at Leavenworth and maybe a few of the higher-profile ringleaders will find themselves in orange coveralls trying to explain themselves before their vacations at Club Fed, or in court defending their fortunes against civil claims by their victims.
If you're stupid enough to advocate pushing it to the brink, and if you get your way, then things will take a truly ugly turn for your first-string lineup. After proper criminal and civil trials, the personal fortunes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the members of Congress who enabled them, and the assets of the corporations which colluded with them, will be disbursed to damaged Iraqis as restitution. George and Dick and the congresscritters won't need those fortunes anyway, since they'll be lined up on gurneys at Terre Haute awaiting the same kind of intravenous drug fix their spiritual sibling Timothy McVeigh got, to be followed by cremation and the scattering of their ashes -- half over Hiroshima, half over Nuremberg.
And if you've got a problem with that -- if you decide to get all wolfy and stuff on the premise that "your" side is armed and that the rest of America is one big herd of sheep -- no problem. We'll shoot you down like rabid dogs in the street, or maybe just brand each of your foreheads with a big red F for "Fucktard" and shun you until you get despondent enough to off yourselves. More in sorrow than in anger, of course. Think of it as the "collateral self-damage of neoconservative stupidity."
So you might want to re-think taking a chance on that shiny coup d'etat what's behind Door Number Three.
Selah.
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Technorati Tags: Politics, War, Iraq, Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, Peter Ingemi
IceRocket Tags: Politics, War, Iraq, Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, Peter Ingemi
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