Melos, Morals, Matryoshkas and Majorities: Of Sudetenland and South Ossetia

[jfxgillis]

Been a lib/lefty my whole life, but I guess I have a bigger streak of paleoconservatism than I thought. Excerpt:

"Yeah. Right. According to Kagan, if you forget about the facts, it all makes sense. The main reason Boot and Kagan bamboozle as they do is simply this: If the current crisis is Sudetenland revisited and Putin is Hitler and Georgia is Czechoslovakia, then, um, unless he is willing to push Russia back by force of arms rather than relying on diplomacy and other non-lethal instruments of state power, that means that in this little morality play, the part of the "appeaser" Neville Chamberlin is played by George W. Bush. Ooooopsy. What happened to the Winston Churchilly Bush of the last seven years worshipped by Kagan and Boot and the rest of the neoconservatives? Can you be all Winston Churchill one minute, all Neville Chamberlin the next while the presumed adversary is simultaneously Hitler and Stalin while invading Stalin's homeland? Things would get real stupid real fast, which is why these bellowing neoconservatives change the subject as quickly as possible after getting their Hitler analogy in.

But let me give Kagan some credit due and even a modicum of praise because although he rather buried the lede, he did say something important and intriguing and surprising in there: The Sudetenland Crisis was characterized by moral ambiguity. He does not go so far as to say "Hitler was right," but he allows for that possibility, or for the possibility that he was partially correct, anyway, or that the situation was too complex in real time to reduce it to a simple dualistic judgment on its own terms distinct from the events that followed."

Melos, Morals, Matryoshkas and Majorities: Of Sudetenland and South Ossetia

[KharmaTrain]

1. They Construct Strawmen As A "National Resource"

The biggest sin of any military planner is to fight the current war with the weapons and motives of the past ones. But then we're not dealing with anything military here...Kagan and Boot were draft dodgers, as were most of the chickenshit neo-cons. They live in a 1950s world of boogie men at every turn and think that only military power is the answer to all questions. They're even more embolden as they think that as the worlds remaining "superpower", the US can dictate the world like a Risk game. Now, the reality doesn't matter as these goons have made a lot of money and amassed a lot of influence and power with this game...and they'll continue until they're totally discredited.

Given the Sudenten scenario, these spinners have forgotten what led to that crisis...the Anchluss of Austria. That set the stage of establishing new "spheres of influence"...and it was the age of nationalism. Britian and France still dominated large colonial empires where they justified their military actions in the similar vein as Hitler did at the time...the protection of their nationals on foreign soil.

The problem with these goons is they've gone to the Hitler/Stalin well one too many times. Saddam wasn't a Hitler...just another tin-horn dictator...the world is full of them, and the US has long supported many. But for the right wing hive...longing for bloodlust and glory, the scenario fit nicely...hiding the economic motives behind the "fear factor" of nasty A-rabs coming across to pillage our country just like they used to claim the Russian were.

What's ironic is back in the 30's, it was the GOOPers like Kagan and Boot who were the champions for the German cause of "self-determination". They would have been at home with the "America Firsters"...all but in bed with the bund groups of the time...a reason Prescott booooosh was more than happy to profit from the rearmmament of Germany.

Cheers.

[jfxgillis]

2. Re: They Construct Strawmen As A "National Resource"

Kharma:

No shit. I had actually drafted a paragraph about these dimwits thinking that people's sense of self could be moved around like a piece on a "Risk" board but had to cut it out because it was one metaphor too many, but you nailed it perfectly.

(some paleoconservative who likes my take just posted my essay on FR and hilarity is ensuing)