2007 June 24 | Hanlon's Razor

Fantastic poll from Newsweek.

By Hanlon, on June 24th, 2007 at 09:18 PM

I don’t really have anything to add to this. Just check it out for yourself.

June 23, 2007: Conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

CORRECT ANSWER IS IN BOLD

5. From what you know about the situation, do you think the United States is losing the fight against al-Qaeda or radical Islamic terrorism?

52 Yes

37 No

11 Don’t know/Refused

Damn liberal media.

In defense of the soldiers.

By Hanlon, on June 24th, 2007 at 08:41 PM

As a liberal, as a blogger, and as an extremely opinionated asshole who registered Democrat, I have the honor of both running into people who and asked why I don’t have disdain for our American troops. The argument, so it goes, is that these people have a terrible “my country, right or wrong” type of attitude and are willing to throw their lives away simply because the president has decided that we’re going to fight some other country. Apparently these people think I should adopt the Vietnam protester attitude and spit on our soldiers because they fought, as commanded.

Let me explain something here: a military will collapse unless its soldiers don’t ask questions.

No matter how much one disagrees with a given war, to think that an army can survive, or that a nation could survive, with a military that is a group of individuals instead of one cohesive unit is simply stupid.

Imagine for a moment if we allowed anyone who disagreed with a war to get out of serving. First of all, there will never be a war that everyone agrees with, and having our army decrease by some percentage simply because our fighting forces won’t fight in it would be disastrous. But consider the far worse potential effects.

How can we decide if someone doesn’t want to fight in a given war due to ethical disagreement? What separates them from those who are afraid to fight? Lazy? People who just don’t want to make the sacrifice? Honestly, we have a hard enough time getting enough soldiers as it is with a purely voluntary military, I’m not sure we would ever be able to fight a war, let alone win it if we’re letting people out when they don’t want to fight it.

I will fight tooth and nail against any war I disagree with. I support commanders who recommend for or against actions and who may say that a given war is unnecessary. But to begrudge the soldiers for blindly following orders is to insult people who are willing to sacrifice anything, right on down to their own discretion, in order to protect the country they live in. That kind of thing I just don’t tolerate.

Blair out, Brown in.

By Hanlon, on June 24th, 2007 at 03:56 PM

If England gets a new leader, why don’t we? Off to a good start!

Brown acknowledged on Sunday that mistakes had been made with the war in Iraq and said he would learn lessons from the conflict and its aftermath.

Finally, someone’s acknowledging mistakes and they’ll start learning lessons. We need some of that on our end. All we’ve got so far is sort of a sideways acknowledgment that’s immediately followed by firing someone and then plugging along in the same direction.

Brown, however, gave no particular hint he would adopt a different approach, even though Blair’s stance on Iraq arguably hastened his departure from office.

Echoing the outgoing leader’s philosophy in international affairs, he said defeating extremism went further than the sole use of military force.

Well crap. Looks like things ain’t so different.