Recently, I wrote of "the 'counterinsurgency doctrine' so beloved by the Pentagon and eagerly embraced by Barack Obama." A reader took me to task for this inflammatory remark, saying:

That 'eagerly embraced' statement is certainly hard to square with the Pentagon's annoyance and Cheney's charge of dithering.  Its inaccuracy suggests either deliberate inaccuracy or judgment clouded by emotion, but either way it isn't good.

To which, this brief reply:

I realize that historical memory has always been a rare commodity in the United States, but one shudders to see that the onset of this chronic amnesia is now down to the merest months. Was it not just six months ago, in May 2009, that Obama made a great show of firing the commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, and replacing him with a much-lauded "expert" in counterinsurgency, Gen. Stanley McChrystal -- a close associate of the much-lauded "architect" of counterinsurgency in Iraq, General David Petraeus -- the Bush-appointed officer whom Obama has retained as the top dog in the central fronts of the Terror War? Was not McChrystal championed by Robert Gates -- the Bush-appointed factotum whom Obama has retained as the top dog in the Pentagon war machine?

The fact that Obama has not yet signed off on McChrystal's latest plan does not mean that he is not now, before our very eyes, promulgating the Pentagon's time-honored bleed-build-rinse-repeat philosophy of occupation warfare. He has already launched one major Petraeus-style "surge" in Afghanistan this year; the current controversy about the McChrystal plan is confined to how many more troops to send, and how far the vastly stupid and dangerous American war in Pakistan should be escalated. Obama has already explicitly ruled out withdrawing from Afghanistan; that's "not an option," as his mouthpiece put it  just a few weeks ago. So what's left? Only some form of continued "counterinsurgency."

And so what if the Pentagon is "annoyed" with Obama, or if Dick Cheney is critical of the faction that ousted his faction from power? Do you think that factions in regimes of every stripe don't have very fierce and nasty internal battles, even when they embrace the same general philosophy? Ever read any history of the inner workings of Nazi regime, or the Bolsheviks, or the Roman Empire -- or Lincoln's cabinet?

Of course, one can always base one's conclusions on headlines in the NY Times: "Pentagon Annoyed at Not Immediately Getting Its Own Way!" or  even -- gasp! -- "Cheney Slams Obama!" If these "Dog Bites Man, Sun Rises in the East" kind of stories inform your worldview, then more power to you. Personally, I don't get much out of them. [For a brilliant dissection of the kind of threadbare vacuity that lies behind most "expert" analyses in the Times, see Arthur Silber's latest: The Empty Establishment: No One's Home in an Intellectual Wasteland.]

As for the particular criticisms on offer, I have to say that sniffy insinuations of "deliberate inaccuracy" are very far off the mark. Not that I've never been inaccurate, of course, if led astray by some erroneous source material, or by my own lack of insight or understanding in considering a particular situation. But I have never knowingly distorted or falsified a fact in order to support an argument or assertion. And in any case, as noted above, it is no way inaccurate to say that Barack Obama has eagerly embraced the "COIN" doctrine of Petraeus, which has been so blindly feted by the bipartisan elite of our political and media establishments – even though it is merely a regurgitation of similarly debased, and unsuccessful, COIN operations in times past.

And as for judgments "clouded with emotion," let me say, in all candor, that I honestly don't give one good goddamn whether someone thinks my writing on this issue is "clouded by emotion" or not. I mean, Jesus Herbert Walker Christ, we are talking about arms and legs and heads being ripped from the bodies of women and children -- actual human beings, being slaughtered in our names, day after day. And for what purpose? Every ill and evil that the war purports to address is actually made worse by our violent occupation. Eight years down, and the Taliban is stronger, Pakistan is far more unstable, thousands more civilians have been killed, religious extremism in the region is stronger than ever, the opium trade is more virulent and more devastating, brutal warlords rule with impunity … the list goes on and on. And all we are being offered by our new "progressive" administration is more of the same.

So yes, when I write about this atrocious and obscene situation, there is a bit of "emotion" in it.  And I guess you're right: such a thing "isn't good" -- if what you want is to be taken "seriously" by the oh-so-serious, in that world where portentous headlines form the thrice-chewed cud of "conventional wisdom," But I don't give a damn about that, not in the slightest. I write about these things for one reason only: to bear witness, to put down for the record that I saw the evil being committed in my name, and that I spoke out against it, as fully and honestly as I knew how.  That's it. That's all I want to do. For whatever reason, I feel compelled to give this testimony -- and it really doesn't matter to me what anyone else makes of it. If they find it useful in some way, I'm very glad; if they don't, so what? 

I'm not saying there aren't many other worthy and effective approaches to confronting the horrific reality of our day -- including, yes, writing dispassionate analyses, or striving to couch your dissent in a form that might get a hearing amongst the cud-chewers who control our national discourse. I've done both in my day. I may do so again. But that's not what I'm doing here.

In any  event, to believe that emotion does not infuse, direct and shape all of our judgments is, I think, deeply ignorant – historically, philosophically and biochemically. We know that consciousness arises from the unimaginably vast, unimaginably intricate interactions of physical and mental states. There is no airless, emotionless compartment somewhere inside your mind where you can go to hammer out pure, Platonic, disembodied essences of thought. 

The most important question in this regard is not whether or not something is written with emotion, because this is unavoidable. The real question is whether or not that emotion is an informed one – if it is backed by facts, if it has been subjected to a self-aware analysis, and is not simply a regurgitation of conventional wisdom, shaped by emotions and motives which have been left to lie unconscious and unexplored.

I hope to God that I never write about atrocity, murder, corruption and brutality without a judgment deep-dyed with emotion for the vast suffering they cause. I hope my soul never becomes deadened to these horrors.

Comments (23)

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Brian Mallon said:

He's up! Sounds like you're recovered, thanks be to Allah and St.Dymphna! At least that imbecilic attack on your integrity gave rise to a glorious rebuttal. Your defence of the emotional quotient in sound judgements (regarding war and slaughter) is an important one. Your rejection of the 'reasonable' prime-time-tone is crucial now, with so much of the Left paralyzed by the contortions of conscience needed to palliate the crimes of Obama. As to Cheney and the Pentagon's 'slamming' of Obama, I'm inclined to regard all that as (bad) theatre. It gives to Obama an adverserial pose vis a vis Cheney/Bush, calculated to please the Democratic base. Obama's response was very telling. He attacked Cheney/Bush for being 'distracted' and not waging a bloody ENOUGH war in Afghanistan. Very clearly, he wants to out-bush Bush. Chris, I'm glad you're on the (anti)warpath again. Not only your ideas, but also your brilliant writings, are an inspiration in a time of little hope. Best regards, Brian

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October 26, 2009 | url
Votes: +9

ian said:

	... The generals aren't in the job of winning wars. Afghanistan, from their point of view, is the perfect war since it is perfectly unwinnable. The generals are in the job of winning defense appropriations.
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October 26, 2009
Votes: +4

anemonous said:

... ian, well said. i often wonder about brian mallon's point about "bad theater" as well. yes, there are factions which do not always see eyeball to eyeball, and sometimes people get lost in their little "role," (glenn beck types?) but the cheney vs. obama stuff is mostly for show. it's not Big Brother, it's big brother & sister (or mum und dud). anyway, welcome back, chris. hope you are recovered.

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October 26, 2009
Votes: +1

Viv Savage said:

Many Thanks Chris, your eloquent and impassioned defense could not have been more to-the-point. I suspect that your critic is just another member of the hopelessly enthralled. As I peruse various blogs and "alternative" media news sites, I'm finding that pieces attacking Obama's failings (and there are many to choose from) seem to be increasing in number. A legion of breathless worshipers of all things Obama rush quickly, and mindlessly, to his defense in the "comments" sections. The unquestioning and unjustified hagiographies, many of which conclude with that idiotic retort, "why do you hate America," are frighteningly similar to the sycophancy of the Bush years. Proselytizers of hope and change whinge constantly that Obama has barely had ten months in office and that, therefore, anyone finding fault with this man is rushing to judgement and must be a closet Limbaugh supporter. You've said in your reply to your accuser that you write as you do essentially because you must and that if anyone should take exception to what they find on your site, you don't really care. That's refreshingly honest. For what it's worth, I have never been disappointed with what I find on your web site and will continue to urge my friends to familiarize themselves with your work and that of Arthur Silber. All the best.

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October 26, 2009
Votes: +2

Ovid said:

... Let's just stick to the issue of whether Obama has "eagerly embraced" the COIN counterinsurgency strategy of Petraeus, as you assert, or is instead "dithering" like a traiterous bastard, as Cheney has said, though he only sneered the last part. Historical memory is indeed good, but Harry Truman always had a historical analogy at hand and it was invariably a bad one. The lesson there is that before you invoke history, you should make sure you're doing it right. I don't think you are. No one can overlook that Obama campaigned for the Presidency on the importance of winning the war in Afghanistan, not ending it, and that is indeed important to remember. But for the very reasons you constantly site, Obama couldn't run for President as anti-war, because The Powers That Be don't let anti-war candidates get elected. It shouldn't be surprising that politicians take positions that help them win, and it shouldn't be all that surprising that occasionaly they rethink those positions, especially if they don't really like them and think nothing good will come of them. Obama has the right to consider his options, and to the infuriation of the elite that appears to be what he is doing. Frankly, the bipartisan elite you refer to don't like anti-war Presidents much better than anti-war candidates, so when a President starts rethinking his commitment to a war, in this case Afghanistan, he receives immediate discouragement. David Bromwich has a post over at the Huffington Post about how the New York Times has been doing just that this month, and you yourself in your post note that the COIN strategy "has been so blindly feted by the bipartisan elite of our political and media establishments." You are right that the COIN strategy has strong elite support, and yet despite overwhelming military and elite support, Obama has not yet adopted that COIN strategy. Certainly he is being pressured to do so, and yet to date he has not. So the charge that he has "eagerly embraced" Petraeus's COIN strategy is false. False charges create confusion and error and ultimately can lead people to be manipulated, so I don't like them even if they are well intended. It's nothing personal. I generally like people who oppose militarism. That Obama is taking his time deciding doesn't mean he now deserves the Nobel Prize, or sainthood, or is a peace President, or will stop the drone attacks. It may only mean he wants to wait for other reasons, perhaps even reasons that are no damn good. Perhaps he doesn't want to embrace Petraeus's strategy and inflame his liberal supporters while health care is still so unresolved. Hell if I know. It certainly could be something like that. He is, after all, a politician playing the dirty game of politics. So I don't know what the delay means, because I have no confidential information, but my hope is that it means he is considering what Andrew Bacevich has written recently (and even better, the whole of Bacevich's writing). Some reports indicate that Bacevich was at least somehow involved in the discussion about the options, but whether he has Obama's ear I don't know. That's just a hope. At least for now, Obama hasn't "embraced" (let alone "eagerly embraced") Petraeus's COIN strategy, and I strongly and passionately disagree with your view that it really makes no difference whether he does because he will inevitably sanction "some form of continued 'counterinsurgency'." The difference between the options before him could be enormous. A more limited antiterrorism strategy will be much easier to extricate us from, both in Afghanistan and elsewhere. What Obama does in the details of his pending decision may make an enormous difference, and you should read what Bacevich has been writing and consider it. Of course, it won't end the war, and people who shouldn't die will continue to die, but that certainly doesn't make avoiding the deaths of even more people, in this and future wars, a matter of no consequence. Especially if those unnecessary deaths are vast in number, they matter, and it's proper to be emotional about it, as long as that emotion is used constructively to avoid tragedy.

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October 26, 2009
Votes: -4

Sean O'Neil said:

an excellent retort to an inane "criticism" as usual, Mr Floyd, you combine wisdom, passion and eloquence in response to the type of moronic, purely ideological "criticism" that was full of the spittle and phlegm that precede a death-rattle. excellent comments in this thread as well. ian's point on "unwinnable wars" is a good one -- because these wars aren't about military victory or deciding points of foreign-relations-contention... they're about conducting wars for the sake of profiteering and for the sake of using military power to murder others for "intimidation" purposes... another death-rattle, this time it's the death-rattle of empire.

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October 26, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

... Ovid again comes to Obama's rescue, apparently (due to the length of Ovid's post, I mean) it's supposed to be "convincing" because Ovid types so many letters, spaces and punctuation marks. Why does Ovid fear Chris Floyd's writing? Why must Ovid pretend to be the voice of reason, while arguing for respecting Obama? Doesn't the suggestion of respecting Obama's refusal to change things indicate Ovid is wrong? Yes, it does. As usual. As usual, Ovid is Obama's pet. Good Ovid... good Ovid. Here's a doggy treat!

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October 26, 2009
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Chris Floyd said:

... If I'm "using history wrong" by citing the actual history of Barack Obama's actual appointments and actual actions in his prosecution of the war in Afghanistan since taking office, well, what can I say? I suppose one should rely more on op-eds and "process stories" in the New York Times, and what have you. I agree with you that Obama may well be a totally unprincipled liar who ran for office under false pretenses -- but all that matters to me is what he actually does. We can argue the semantics of COIN all day -- and also argue your apparent belief that the specific plan being offered right now by McChrystal is the only thing that constitutes the "COIN" strategy, and is not simply one refinement of an overall strategy that Obama has embraced by retaining COIN's chief architect, Petraeus, its chief government champion, Gates, and by firing McKiernan and replacing him with yet another staunch COIN figure, McChrystal. (We can also overlook the fact of the Petraeus-crafted "surge" Obama launched a few months ago, and say that this action, which led directly to an increase in civilian deaths, is not somehow indicative of Obama's approach.) We can also agree that anything that lessens the death count of civilians is to be welcomed. But I do not see and have not seen any actual policy or action taken by Obama that will lead to this outcome. Quite the contrary. I have seen in his actual actions every indication that he embraces -- without qualm, if the word "eagerly" disturbs you so much -- the militarist philosophy of the system whose leadership he fought so hard to gain.

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October 26, 2009
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Michael Hureaux said:

... I cant' go with the attacks on Ovid's character, it says a lot about the "left" in the United States that so much of what passes for "progressive" politics is the unquestioned assumption that the ruling class of the U.S. has the right to prescribe or reshape the entire world to meet its notion of what is civil or democratic. And yet, if some blathering stalinist government were making the same argument somewhere else, they'd all be aflame with mighty indignation. Malcolm X used to say that you have to be careful what historic and cultural sources you listen to in shaping your political judgement, otherwise these butchers in this country will have you hating your allies and loving your enemies. And here we all are, with the "progressive front" so hamstrung in its thinking that it can't even recognize an apologetic company whore in the person of Obama when the truth is as plain as day. Sad, sad, sad.

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October 26, 2009
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Viv Savage said:

A Question . . . Ovid, if, as you rightfully remind us, Obama clearly campaigned on the promise of an augmented military strategy in Afghanistan, could he not have simply used that "promise" to win votes and satisfy those Powers That Be and then swerved in the direction of reduced militarism and creative diplomacy once elected? He seems untroubled, insofar as I can tell, that he hasn't delivered on any of the other campaign "promises" he made. Why couldn't he simply have abandoned this pledge, too? Frankly, the strength and passion you so proudly declare in your last paragraph run perfectly counter to the sorta-kinda-basically-maybe wonderings of the two preceding paragraphs. What's your point? You're certain that you don't know what Obama's feelings and political calculations might be and yet Chris Floyd isn't allowed the same certainty when he bases his statements on the actions of political players, e.g., the promotion of McChrystal and the retention of Gates, rather than what can be supposed? Where, by the way, in Chris' piece did he assert that, "avoiding the deaths of even more people, in this and future wars, [was] a matter of no consequence"? Pray, how should one be "constructively" emotional about any death, whether unnecessary or, as you seem to suggest, regrettable though unavoidable?

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October 26, 2009
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Jimmy Montague said:

Obama is stupid Obama is stupid. He's currently trying to out-fox FOX News and Glenn Beck and Rushbo. All he really needs to do is get together with Pelosi and Reid and agree to pass everything that Rush and Glenn DON'T like. So pass socialized medicine into law. Create and fund the bureaucracy and the infrastructure to make socialized medicine a reality. CALL IT 'socialized medicine' and NOT 'single-payer healthcare' or any of the other euphemisms. END THE WARS in afraqapakistan. Tomorrow. Bring the troops home next week. STOP FOREIGN AID to ISRAEL and thereby cut the cojones off the Israeli lobby in Washington. Call Glenn and Rush and tell 'em point blank if they don't STFU and stop telling lies, you're gonna shove every last thing in the world that they DON'T WANT right up their nasty brown asses. See how they react to that gambit. The upside to that would be that Obama would immediately get his big poll numbers back. And the dumb-bells who currently listen to and believe Rush and Glenn -- once they got a taste of just how GOOD socialized medicine actually is -- would probably quit listening to all the lies and start listening to those who tell the truth. But no. The Democrats -- instead of doing what's right -- keep trying to fine-tune their lies, to make them more appealing, to fool more and more people (who can no longer BE fooled in that way), so they can go on doing the same bullshit they always do. And jerks like Ovid will keep walking around the Internet trying to cover up the piles this AWFUL ADMINISTRATION drops all over the rest of us. And so to those who haven't noticed I'd like to say: The sky isn't falling. It's just raining shit.

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October 26, 2009
Votes: -1

Sean O'Neil said:

... to Michael Hureaux -- I'm not attacking Ovid's "character" as much as I'm suggesting he regularly wallpapers over the truth with some back-handed way of excusing Obama. I'm saying he's deceived, and being deceitful in turn. Ovid uses florid pseudo-academic prose to defend Obama by ultimately saying either Obama "can't" change anything, or suggesting that Obama's critics are weak-minded. Neither of these two themes is true. The former is blatantly false. The latter is untrue where I'm concerned. I'm not of the "left" that you are criticizing, Michael. I don't orient myself in a polar or linear scale between "left" and "right". I think right/left dichotomies are distractions. They seek to lump all decisions together as if they are all "right" or "left" in origin or orientation. The only way to see American government that way is to let others dictate the situation for us, to constrain our views to what "experts" and pundits tell us. Sorry, that's not how I examine things. If my writing makes you think that's how I examine things, then either you're making bad assumptions about my thinking, or I'm not being clear enough. And I thought I was being pretty clear most times.

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October 26, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

... to Jimmy Montague -- "But no. The Democrats -- instead of doing what's right -- keep trying to fine-tune their lies, to make them more appealing, to fool more and more people (who can no longer BE fooled in that way), so they can go on doing the same bullshit they always do." Yep, that's right. The Democrats are doing what George Lakoff has urged everyone to do -- circle the wagons and rewrite the debate to have a "winning" spin. The debate isn't about fixing problems or taking America in a different direction. The debate is, sadly, just about the debate itself. That's Lakoff's angle, and that's the angle the Democrats use. They just want a winning soundbite, even if the situation continues as before.

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October 26, 2009
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yankee 30 said:

Sad, sad, sad. Very sad. However the COIN flips... Heads-more bloodshed and carnage Tails-more acceptable levels of violence(like in Iraq) ...like the Agent Orange used in Vietnam, the depleted uranium weapons used extensively in Afghanistan will keep killing and deforming for many, many years to come. This toxic legacy will certainly keep pace with any "dithering" on the part of our really bitchin' nation-builders.

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October 26, 2009
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Ovid said:

... Chris, Let's not be naive about politics or the National Security State, because that will get us nowhere. I'm not sure it wouldn't be easier for Petraeus to get rid of Obama than the other way around. Don't be fooled by stories about Truman and Macarthur. If you truly are committed to the cause you wrote so much about--saving lives--then take more seriously the real issue at hand, which is whether Obama will give McChrystal what he has asked for. That issue is hugely important, yet from what you have written it would seem to be a trifling matter, because Obama will essentially be an obscene militarist no matter what he does. Indeed, you approach this issue as though he already is, so what's all the fuss about? In a way, that's actually right, because nobody gets to be President without agreeing to keep the Empire going, which involves our unjust wars of aggression, but in a more important way, that's completely wrong, because killing thousands of people is still better than killing ten times that many people. Of course, that may not feel right to those of us who have lost the stomach for the whole dirty business, but the people who don't get killed certainly will be glad for to not be killed. The difference between Obama sanctioning an antiterrorism strategy without an increase in forces and a counterinsurgency strategy could be enormous, and I presume you want your readers to understand that. Being an avowed opponent of The National Security State can't be a pass for inaccuracy, because the cause of peace is too easily destroyed by the discord of its proponents and by the power of the National Security State, which is to say the least meddlesome and capable of all kinds of evil. For that reason, I think you should defend your positions without invoking so much rhetorical nobility. Also, if you haven't done so, you should read everything that Bacevich has written, because it's all important. I assume you have read it, but if you haven't you should definitely put down your pen and do that before proceeding.

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October 26, 2009
Votes: -3

mjosefw said:

Sonorous prose Note to self: Andrew Bacevich, or someone to that effect, a professor at a Vatican institution, military veteran officer, and pundit-level celebrity foreign policy analyst, has or does not have an ear, or partially an ear, of the current commander of the world's by far largest military, currently gobbling up trillions of budgetary dollars after destroying the US State department, and waging voluminous wars and proxy wars across all continents and into space. And if we imagine that just one African child can be saved by reading the great new Kissinger's every textual effusion, then we will all drop pretense at thought and record the Great Andrew's conservative Catholic dogma word for word upon biblical tablets. It's a hard job to be saving the world, one unthrown land mine and one unactivated human incinerator space laser at a time.

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October 26, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

	... Ovid, your "argument" reminds me of Samantha Power mixed with Abe Foxman. Please drop by again, with more of your distractions. They're amusing.
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October 27, 2009
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Chris Floyd said:

... Where is the "inaccuracy" you continually speak of? Am I "inaccurate" because I look at the facts and draw conclusions different from yours? You go on and on about the magic lodestone of the McChyrstal plan, when Obama has ALREADY increased the forces in Afghanistan, he has ALREADY greatly increased the attacks in Pakistan -- killing hundreds of people who would cetainly have been glad not to have been killed. He has ALREADY adopted a "counterinsurgency strategy"; it has ALREADY happened. And God alone knows what an "antiterrorism strategy" that is not a "counterinsurgency strategy" might be -- when Obama has ALREADY foreclosed the option of reducing America's military presence in the region -- which guarantees the continuation and growth of the insurgency, which, presumbably, must then be "countered" in some fashion. And would it be better for mere thousands of people to be killed than tens of thousands? Yes, of course; this is so self-evident that I would consider it an insult to my readers' intelligence to beat them over the head with this point. But again -- what exactly is your point? That despite the fact that Obama has ALREADY been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent human beings, we should -- what? -- cut the poor little guy some slack in this apparent internal tussle with McChrystal? Because if we criticize him now on this issue, why, he might give way to McChrystal (the man whom Obama himself appointed to set the strategy for the war)? And if this happened, then we critics would -- what? -- be responsible for all the extra deaths that follow? Is that what you're saying? You think this blog has that kind of effect on policy decisions, do you? If only. Despite all the "rhetorical nobility" that you employ, this whole exchange actually seems to come down to one thing: I said something about Obama that you didn't agree with; i.e., that he has "eagerly embraced" the counterinsurgency strategies of the Pentagon. And how, exactly, does criticizing Obama -- a man who has, yes, eagerly embraced the leadership of the American war machine and has pledged to enlarge it -- constitute "sowing discord" among the proponents of "the cause of peace"? Are you saying that a man who retained the leadership of Bush's war machine, a man who put a leader of death squads and torture units in charge of Afghanistan, a man who has ALREADY escalated the war in Afghanistan and greatly EXPANDED the war into Pakistan (while still retaining 130,000 troops in Iraq) is somehow a "proponent of the cause of peace," whom we bloggers with a few hundred readers are harming with our intemperate descriptions of his behavior? As another commenter noted, your stance seems nothing more than moral blackmail: "If you criticize one act of horrific evil by our leaders, then you will be responsible if something even worse happens later." I have no interest -- and certainly no time or energy -- to debate any further on such a ludicrous premise.

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October 27, 2009
Votes: +6

Jimmy Montague said:

Killing people in America is getting to be like theft. In America, as we all know, if you steal $50 from a cash register, you go to prison. But if you steal $50 billion from the stock market, you elected to the Republican National Committee and go to work as an economics professor at USC or Yale. And so it is with killing people. If I snuff my nephew (He deserves it), I'll go to prison for 20 years to life. But if I kill 5,000 American GIs and a quarter of a million Arabs just because I want to, they build a library in my name at SMU, give me a six-figure pension for life, and put me on the lecture circuit at $50,000 per appearance. So we can blame Ovid for thinking as he does. In America, thinking like Ovid's has become a social disease and it's spreading like gonorrhea. Those of us who don't want to catch it would be well-advised to leave the country like Chris and Richard have done. Everyone who stays here will catch it sooner or later.

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October 27, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

... Amen to Mr Floyd's reply. Amen to Jimmy Montague's post. Ironic that Ovid would speak about morality while he engages in moral equivocation for the sole purpose of defeding Obama. As Jimmy notes, this has become regular behavior for many Americans. The lack of shame and/or the absence of personal discomfort in making such arguments doesn't speak well of those engaged in defending Obama. The naive ones I can almost forgive, they just don't know better. Ovid's posts reveal Ovid to be less naive... but they also reveal Ovid to be poorly informed -- poorly, because the information gained (as revealed by Ovid's arguments in this thread, at least) is but partisan excuse-mongering, defense of American "power projection." How curious Ovid chooses the handle he does. The original Ovid wasn't too keen on such things as the Ovid here argues.

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October 27, 2009
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Ovid said:

... Chris, I didn't say you shouldn't criticize Obama or anyone else. I just pointed out something you said was inaccurate, which remains my view. And the inaccuracy isn't trifling--it's important. I don't think there is a good reason to say Obama "eagerly embraced" the COIN counterintelligence strategy that the whole freaking military and political and media elite is pressuring him to embrace and yet that he still hasn't. As I said, I don't even know that he has an honorable reason for holding out--maybe he doesn't. On the other hand, maybe he does, and I hope so. All those other bad deeds you talk about are fair game, but I hope you're not starting to think like a dirty cop, which is to say justifying false charges because it doesn't matter if this one is true, since Obama is obviously guilty of something else anyway. Because if that's the idea, it's misleading people. I think the inaccuracy is there in plain sight, and I don't have anything new to add about that.

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October 27, 2009
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John said:

	Previous Post (Oh dear) Chris Floyd: Dirty Cop. Every Tuesday @ 9 on Discovery!
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October 27, 2009
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demize! said:

	... As a dispassionate observer of the comment wars on this fine site, I can only say that there is an analogous poster over at Mondoweiss named Richard Witty. What's astonishing is that he employs the same opaque intellectual technique employed by Ovid to defend The Zionist State. It is quite remarkable. Thank you
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October 30, 2009
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