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Monday, June 11, 2007

Afghan Addendum

By the way, as a side note, I would not want to seem to endorse Rorty's defense of the war against Afghanistan (one of many snippets of opinion expressed in his last words, quoted below, most of which I found to be right on the money).

Although the arguments for attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan were at any rate legible, I suppose, especially when compared to the surreally stupid, incomparably immoral, and conspicuously illegal "pre-emptive" invasion and occupation Iraq, I want to say that I was one of those people who disapproved of war (as opposed to, for example, more limited police actions) in Afghanistan.

I expected that it would be innocent civilians who would suffer most as always in war, rather than the literal terrorists and their few enthusiasts. Not to mention the fact that I recognized quite early on that the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight would likely make a disastrously bad situation worse in Afghanistan. Although such arguments rarely get much play these days despite the left's slow-moving arrival at an anti-war and anti-occupation consensus of opinion (as if one would ever even know that this consensus exists, and massively so, given the timidity of our elected representatives on these matters), definitely there were plenty of people who agreed with me at the time, and as far as I'm concerned it seems to me that circumstances have vindicated our doubts.

Of course, vindication of this kind is the coldest kind of comfort these days when it comes to the endless catastrophes of the Killer Clown Administration, inasmuch as we all, whether right or wrong, are forced to sleep in the shit.

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