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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
We are not the worlds policeman. Take care of your own shit Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, and everyone else.
Interesting reading on the "progress" we made in the region up to 2012 - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/…
Then again, what the hell do I know? I also thought invading Iraq originally was the right call.
I'm a hawk, but I was dead against Iraq from the beginning, and I have witnesses. It was patently obvious that the "evidence" was faked and trumped up. I used the word "clusterfuck" and I was right in 2003, right in 2006, right in 2009, and right today. God damn it.
I guess they're taking a page out of our playbook.
We should not have interfered unless we were willing to see the process through the dissolution of Iraq into individual nations or states that reflected the cultural and religious divisions that have long existed.
With patience and time, Iraq might have reformed as something resembling the UAE or the EU. At this point, such a vision, though, seems mostly a naive fantasy.
Western nations have proven either that they don't know what they are doing when the meddle in the Middle East or, perhaps even worse, that they do.
I find it curious as to why the two editors of this paper, who were for this miserable fucking decade spanning war and such unrelenting douche bags to anybody against it, have never issued official editorial retractions in their own god damned paper.
Particularly curious is how silent you two were on the 10th anniversary of the invasion. Which would've been the perfect opportunity to exhibit this scant conscience you are sorta kinda trying out right here.
As critical as you guys are (on a daily basis) of every other editorial outlet in this town - and how you jump down the throat of every minor slight committed by every other media personality - I kinda think you two warmonger assholes should be a little less glib and maybe a little more contrite and directly apologetic.
I have a feeling if your competing editor had shown such appalling lack of judgment and low integrity the Stranger would be all over that shit at every opportunity.
We throw a wrench into a very complex system and just assume that it's going to all work out in our favor. Now it's fucked and getting more fucked and we risk getting blown up by it unless we can stop it. But we can't stop it because we still don't even understand how shit got this far from our wonderful intentions.
Yeah, we broke it, we don't know how to fix it, we tend to make it worse, but we're also going to be bitten by it big time if we don't do something. Fucked if we do, fucked if we don't.
Whatever Saddam Hussein did to his own people, or might have done had we not intervened and killed him, doubtless pales in comparison to the catastrophe, still unfolding, that the U.S. owns for all time.
The real world doesn't fix itself magically in 90 minutes as America rides off into the sunset and the credits scroll up the screen.
oh. christ. What's this "we" shit?
Like what. Exactly? Send another dictator weapons? Or send in OUR soldiers. Again.
No. Fucking no. We do nothing. That's what "we" do.
Unless we can literally prove beyond a shadow of doubt that there is some immediate imminent threat from Iraq (which there isn't) - or - we can prove that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis want us there (which will be NEVER because they hate our asses), then we stay the fuck out.
YOU wanna do "something?" Then you, Frizzelle and Savage go do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pKMV6e5…
If we can't call the abysmal judgement of our own city's supposed "progressive" local editorial staff into accountability over what is the most outrageously poor editorial judgment — in support of the most egregious policy error in modern history — then what fucking good is progressive local journalism at all?
Particularly when what made that war possible what the total stifling of contrary opinions and facts in the media. On the national AND local level. You don't remember the dripping condescension and derision these assholes had for the anti-war movement? They should be kissing the asses of every hippy in this town. No. Let's just conveniently forget what happened.
The collective amnesia today is what made all that shit collectively possible then.
At the very least let's judge this tabloid by the standards it judges everybody else.
If this one progressive rag couldn't get something so basic, so totally obvious, right — and when they admit didn't get it right at the very least publish an official editorial retraction in their own fucking paper — how can you possible have faith in these two jokers as progressive editors.
1. Oil. "Liberating" Kuwait was absolute BS. Re-installing the dictatorship is not liberation.
2. Oil + some BS about WMD.
How is it all going? Is the world better off? Is oil cheaper yet? Is the US debt high enough yet?
One thing I have learned. Since 1945, the US has not been results oriented.
Desert Storm may have been bullshit, but at least Bush I had the good sense not to kick the hornet's nest by removing a secular dictator from a country itching for some old time theocracy.
It's a paradox. We know that this will end badly if we don't do anything as when our CIA helped create Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan that begat BinLaden's attack on us. At that point we were obligated to take care of our mess there, or would it have been better to let Bin Laden continue to launch attacks against us and the West? Well, that didn't go as well as we'd hoped after a decade of fighting the Taliban.
Iraq was a different story entirely and I still don't know what the fuck anyone hoped to gain by invading that country. But it's been done and now we're looking at the consequences. What's going to happen when ISIS takes over? Maybe nothing to us, but maybe not. We do know that it will be pretty bad for anyone living in Iraq and Syria under ISIS. But what's the next step for ISIS? An Islamic caliphate for the entire middle east? Maybe Turkey? Why not Africa? What about Spain? That was once a Muslim country. Or maybe they turn on themselves and the whole thing blows up. Who knows. The point is that we're severely fucked either way. Gas prices, shipping costs, and yeah…security will all cost us. We're paying for it now and will be for a long time.
Not in the paper for which he is the editor as an editor. He linked to it. A link to video hosted on another outlet is weak fucking sauce. They wouldn't stand for that if it was somebody else.
But that a video on another site is not an official editorial. The idiotic Pro war views here were official editorials.
Christ. You ass kissers have no idea what actual journalism IS.
Why do you keep reading if it makes you so mad? Answer honestly - I plan to keep asking if you try to blow me off.
Politicians and defense contractors will be itching to get in - please don't let them talk us into it.
They have to figure it out for themselves.
Don't mistake my flippant tone for approval of such participation. It's just how superpowers prioritize things. Iraq has more oil than anyone but Saudi Arabia.
George Bush 1 and his buddies Baker & McClendon(?) were against Iraq 2. But what did they do? A few articles. With so much at stake they should have been in DC lobbying against it. THAT would/might have made a difference. And in a parliamentary system, they might have.
But Bush 1 thought that it was Bush 2's "chance" -- as if his son's career was more important than the nation's. Fuck that.
Is that so? Second in oil to Saudi?
Well then in that case we SHOULD be involved. As does Europe and Japan. How? Intelligently? I have no idea.
I love democracy.
Everyone has an opinion.
Just say 'the end if the world is nigh'. Easier to fit on your body billboard.
I was always opposed to the Iraq war, our lack of justification and purpose always suggested that it would become more twisted over time.
I also always understood Dan's perspective. His position was motivated by profound sympathy with the minorities that were tortured and murdered under Saddam Hussein, and he believed more in the moral center of America than I did. I thought he was wrong, but I really hoped he was right.
Morality is an imaginary personal and social construction. The morality expressed in the familiar phrase "Kill 'em all and let Allah sort 'em out" is in no way a less valid or inferior 'moral' position.
Further, justification and purpose =/= morality.
Leave morals out of war and politics. Morals are inherently subjective, and do more harm than good in those domains.
Dan was wrong, he's admitted it and eaten some crow over it, and now most of us trust his judgement that much less on foreign policy issues. To me, all this makes him is just another blogger who used to disagree with me on something and doesn't anymore. This simply doesn't stir up the same level of rage that I've reserved for Cheney, Bush, and Rove. If that's your definition of ass-kissing, then man you've got the loosest definition I've heard so far.
I appreciate that you work with him and want to think the best of him, but I have to assume at least part of Dan's support for invading Iraq sprang from Islamophobia. He was, rightly, disgusted by the gay- and woman-hating strains of Muslim belief and incorrectly, since Iraq was largely a secular state, thought that invading Iraq was somehow a solution to that.
The fact of the matter is that destabilizing the balance of power in the Middle East only leads to more theocracy, not less, and Dan could have benefited eleven years ago from listening to those of us who knew that.
@46, you probably don't realize how revealing those comments are.
Seriously, that may be the most laughably simplistic, adolescent bit of sophistry I've ever heard. LOL! Please, teach us more about morality!
Those were some of the most ignorant, virulently racist, idiotic justifications for blood lust that have ever appeared in this paper. The second editorial in particular where he laments that GW wasn't invading enough countries or killing enough Muslims was certainly a "perspective."
You people are such hypocrites.
This paper dedicated six articles to god damned Macklemore wearing a fake nose and and deliberately generated more hyperbolic outrage and louder demands for an appology than Frizzelle and Savage's enthusiastic support for murdering tens if thousands of innocent people.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
He has linked maybe twice to his video on Sullivan. That's it.
He linked to a video of an interview once before. A video recorded over ten years after his support for invasion.
Those are his only public statements that he has linked to on the Stranger. And it sure as shit hasn't appeared in print in this paper.
One would think as an editor he'd tackle that shit head on in his own paper.
Sure. Morality gave you the anti-gay movement (google Michael Sam kiss). Morality gave you slavery (google graduate from elementary school).
I could go on, having gone to college and all, but I think that will be enough to expose you as complete fucking idiots.
WTF? I tire of but appreciate Dan's frequent mea culpas on his early Iraqi War II stance - I wish far more journalists (any?) would wear their past failures as prominently as Dan does. I've seen/heard it from him at least a dozen times.
"more than a dozen" > "never" for you math-challenged folks.
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…
Granted, it's technically the day afterwards, but to characterize this as Slog ignoring the 10th anniversary of Iraq is downright dishonest, and you know it.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like this piece is was posted on Slog itself, and that 2007 is less than 10 years into the Iraq war:
http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/12/me_a…
Oh, and let me know if I'm wrong about the phrase "I was wrong" constituting a retraction, which is defined as the "withdrawal of a promise, statement, opinion, etc." according to dictionary.com.
And here's one example of what we mean when we talk about how Dan occasionally refers to his wrongness in passing during semi-related posts:
http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/08/dick…
Besides, even without these, you haven't explained why it matters that Dan's self-corrections MUST take place on the 10th anniversary of Iraq, AND specifically on Slog, in order to "count." To me, these seem like meaningless things to harp on when assessing whether or not somebody has owned up to their wrong former opinions.
Oh, and I've noticed that you're already shifting from demanding a "retraction" to demanding an "apology." If one of us manages to dig up an "apology" post, are you going to declare that only a musical version would suffice, and that it must have been posted on a Tuesday during Lent on a website ending in ".co.uk"
Oh, and one last link:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionar…
(Doesn't seem to be the right word to describe people who remember, and never denied, that Dan was wrong about something but ALSO remember that he changed his opinion).
I prefer Al Jazeera. For some reason the statements and opinions of Dan Savage aren't considered newsworthy on that network. Weird, right?
As for gain from our Iraq involvement, apparently oil + Halliburton windfall + hunger for 9/11 revenge, clouded the judgement of strategists who made the sophomore mistake of having no end game or any clear plan.
The Kurds are consolidating, and perhaps we get a stable Kurdistan and better stability in Turkey. You'll get some people migration, but that's what the desirable end-game looks like.
Pakistan has and continues to destabilize as a consequence. Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal.
Better to focus on what is occurring within Pakistan.
@7 and others, I don't understand how you can imply that we "broke" Iraq. Unless you consider the 500,000 civilians killed by Saddam (plus another 300,000 dead from the war with Iran) along with 2 million refugees as evidence the country was working just fine before we got there. The victims of Saddam's sons rapes and murders might oppose your views.
For what it's worth, I understand why Savage came to the conclusion way back in the day that the Iraq invasion was worth it, on balance. Atheists/agnostics (myself included) can't really grasp how fucking backwards the religous zealots in the middle east are (and how many people agree with or sympathize with their worldview). One can be forgiven for believing in the fantasty that the majority would prefer a western style democracy over tribalism/barbarism.
That us literally first time I have seen that 2007 piece. It's weird nobody linked to it before and I could not find it when I searched.
It's still should've been in the print edition like his pro war editorials, but I guess that's all we'll ever get.
So I will then apologies and retract my statements.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Conte…
Hmm, think I need your help on this, college grad. What's an Objective reason to go to war?
Okay. I live and work on Capitol Hill. I have for over 20 years. The Stranger, as it's masthead is coyly proud of saying, is (for this community) Seattle's Only Paper. I read it becuase it's, for better or worse, an integral part of where I live and do business. And like many old timers on the Hill I find my self reading it less and less.
I have to say from that war on, and this will literally be last time I talk about the 2002-2003 editorial stance on Iraq, the paper went from a cultural gatekeeper to an internet political tabloid to more recently a kind of pseudo-progressive kingmaker and a cult-of-personality tabloid. It has lost some of its sharpest minds and has less integrity in this transition. This affects my community.
As a result with only a couple VERY notable exceptions, Eli Saunders being again one, the paper since 2003 has gotten worse.
All over this country the same thing happened. Anti-war voices in the media got pushed out of the mainstream and ghettoized. And the pro-war voices saw significant career boosts. That happened here in Seattle. At to one degree or another at the Stranger.
If it's any consolation to you I always feel a little ashamed and dirty posting and reading these comments. And why I don't do it very much anymore. But the war topic is a sore spot. But this will be last I say on Savages opinion about it.
That said, I won't bother asking again. It doesn't matter that much.
"Those were some of the most ignorant, virulently racist, idiotic justifications for blood lust that have ever appeared in this paper."
I think you would have a difficult time coming up with any comments posted by anyone else on The Stranger staff that would equal them.
Here are a couple of examples of Dan's comments.
Defending his own bigotry.
http://slog.thestranger.com/2006/02/isla…
"I’ve used the term “Islamo-fascist,” and I’ve been called a racist for doing so. I don’t think it’s racist—and it’s not a term applies to all Muslims."
Killing children is good. As long as they're Iraqi kids.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Conte…
"War may be bad for children and other living things, but there are times when peace is worse for children and other living things, and this is one of those times."
From Al Jazeera:
LGBT rights may eclipse Winter Games (Jan 15, 2014)
LGBT boycott Russian vodka (Jul 30, 2013)
The scourge of bullying (Oct 27, 2011)
Democracy, We Deliver!
How many apologies are enough? For anything and everything?
NO.
Now what? Lay it all out there step by step.
Damn they were angry at being wrong.
I do (and did) understand his anger at how gays and women are treated in Iraq. I hate it too. My opinions on religious fundamentalism (including Islam, especially Islam) are similar to Bill Maher's and Sam Harris', so I get where he was coming from. But that he would take that anger and place in the Bush administration's hands ... I'm still blown away by his ignorance, and the incredible arrogance with which he displayed it.
I don't know why they (the editors who where pro-war) have never written a formal editorial about their ignorant, wrong-headed, and embarrassing behavior leading up to the war, but I my guess is that they know they'd be eaten alive both here and elsewhere. Look at how Dan's other missteps are treated by the masses. He probably just doesn't want to bring that on himself. I'm not excusing him, just taking a guess.
Dan's video apology on Sullivan's blog is sincere. That's obvious. And Sullivan doesn't take comments, so he might have felt safe allowing it there.
At this point, even bringing the issue up (like he did here) stirs up resentment, but not mentioning it (like on the 10th anniversary) makes him look like a coward. He can't win. Nor should he be able to. He's stuck with this. And he deserves to be.
Also, a lot of people seem to have a misguided view of Islamic history. There haven't been caliphates for centuries, and I doubt that a Sunni group would want to start one, since they were the ones who started having Sultans instead anyway. Second, Sunnis and Shiites haven't been constantly fighting since the beginning of the religion. The Sunni Mughals and the Shiite Safavids were allies against the Sunni Ottomans. Sectarian violence is not inevitable, just as it isn't inevitable that Protestants and Catholics hate each other.
What a devil our countries have helped create. Fucking very scary , cruel stuff. Wtf to do to help- repair- they are devil men. Subjugating their women.. And the western countries who invaded Iraq, more devil men. Gez if I could get an Amazon army together. But I can't. To my sisters of Iraq. Stay safe.