Typical

[k3nt]

Whatever, Beavis. You're really, really reaching.

To think that this says something about me, because I refuse to get on the right-wing bus for every stop it makes at crazy land, that's just sad.

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A link to what we're talking about, in case anybody cares

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Thomas_Beauchamp
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I think the underlying thought processes here are way, way more important than Scott Beauchamp himself. He's just a soldier who told stories about what he experienced and what he did. In order to understand how this turned into something certain people went crazy over, you have to understand the back story.

For certain people on the far right wing (not sure whether this applies to Beavis), anybody who says anything bad about the US during wartime is "undermining the troops" "rooting for the enemy" and all sorts of other stuff. It's based on a very Manichean world view (think Star Wars), where we are entirely "good" and our enemies are entirely "evil," and all that matters is that WE triumph over THEM. Nothing else matters.

Whether we should even be fighting the war at all -- doesn't matter.
Whether peace would be a superior outcome to war -- doesn't matter.
All that matters is winning winning winning. Go team.

Some people on the right (again, not sure whether Beavis fits here) are still traumatized by the fact that we "lost" in Vietnam. We should have won and we would have won if it weren't for all those people at home who undermined support for the war.

My take on the Vietnam conflict, for what it's worth, is that (1) the war was started on a series of lies (Gulf of Tonkin); (2) the war was carried on for ideological reasons which were simply false (if we don't contain communism in Vietnam there will be a domino effect and regimes will turn communist all over the world --> none of that ever had a chance of being true, and only an out-of-touch ideologue could have believed it would; (3) once we left Vietnam, we paved the way for peace (eventually), and now Vietnam is an ally and a trading partner of ours. In short, the war was a massive mistake from beginning to end, in which tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese were killed for literally no reason whatever. The story is pure tragedy, very Shakespearean in fact: ludicrous misunderstandings and personal vices by leaders on all sides leading to massive, unnecessary death. (Parallels to the Iraq situation are not perfect, but they're awfully close.)

But all that certain people on the right can see is a "war" that we "lost," which makes them very, very, very angry. Angry at the people who conducted the war? Angry at the people who committed atrocities? Angray at the utterly unnecessary loss of literally millions of human lives? No, they're angry at the people who protested against the war. Seriously, the war protesters who helped bring the war to a halt were the bad guys. This is the lesson they drew from Vietnam: don't let anybody criticize America, or you'll lose a war. Anybody who criticizes the US during wartime is evil. They're on the other side. They want us to lose. They're traitors.

It's the "stabbed in the back" narrative.

Google that phrase and here's what pops up first:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080

"Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies."

Nicely said, IMO.

And that's why Scott Thomas Beauchamp matters so much to certain people on the far right. They think that the only reason people are turning against the Iraq war is because of our internal enemies, people who are supposed to be on our side but are intentionally undermining us. This is exactly the narrative that the far right has been singing about ever since the 1940s, when the eastern European bloc was "sold out" to the Soviets, intentionally undermining us.

The article I linked to above has a lot of historical context for how the right wing has been singing exactly the same tune over and over again for more than 60 years. Really interesting stuff. A little bit frightening, too, how this simplistic and ludicrous story is told over and over, and believed so wholeheartedly by so many.

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Beavis (since I'm sure you're the only one who will read this far! ), I have some serious things to say to you.

Liberals don't want us to lose in Iraq.
Liberals don't hate America.
Liberals don't root for our enemies.
Liberals don't want to undermine the troops.
Liberals do not spend their days thinking of stories they can make up to intentionally undermine the war effort.

We don't. We really don't.

But we also don't believe that the US is always and everywhere good, and that our enemies are always and everywhere evil. No. We know that both good and evil coexist in the hearts of every person, and in the actions of every nation. Where the US is the one on the side of evil, we think it's important to root that out. We need to be a better nation than we have been. And in order to do that, we need to know what we have done wrong, where we have been stupid, where thousands of Americans died for no reason at all -- so that it doesn't happen again.

We are against the war in Iraq, because we see it happening again.

[pokerzen]

[NorthView]

We?

[pokerzen]

[NorthView]

[pokerzen]

[iceman5]

What does voting have to do with anything? You think that everyone who voted for Frist wanted him to kill online poker?

I doubt it.

These people who are suppossed to represent the people who they serve do no such thing.

[Rhound50]

I think the responsibility is somewhere in the middle of what NV and Pokerzen speak. I didnt vote for Bush or any of the idiots that are driving this war so I am not at the same level of responsibility as those who support it or even worse the people in power who funded it. At the same time those people that funded the war are elected by the people and there is a lot we could have done to stop this. I could have done a much better job of voicing my opinion, writing letters, protests, etc and I did none of these so I am at some level responsible as well. Writing about it on a poker board is all well and good but does nothing to change the problem.

[Beavis68]

[NorthView]

[iceman5]

I didnt vote for Bush, but I still disagree 100%.

I could say that anyone who voted for Clinton has the blood of every American who died in the World Trade Center on their hands.

Then not only are we just playing the blame game again, we are now blaming people who had no sayso whatsoever other than to try to make an informed decision about a candidate based on what they are told in the media which more often than not is a farce.

[NorthView]

I think you're comparing apples and pears.

It was pretty obvious to any sentient person in 2004 that the Iraq invasion they'd been led to believe was going to be over in a few months and that would lead to a peaceful democracy without massive loss of life on a scale that even Saddam would've been proud of, was in fact a gigantic mistake and was leading inexorably towards civil war.

I don't see the parallel with Clinton and the WTC.

[pokerzen]

[iceman5]

[pokerzen]