i have a confession to make.

i’m one of those crazy leftists who want us to “lose” in iraq.

why? how could any true scotsman want to see his mother country fail?

it’s quite simple really.

a country that launches a war of choice against a country that posed no threat based on false pretenses and seeks to consolidate that land-grab with an ill-conceived bloody occupation founded on the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands and the desperate flight of millions, producing a diaspora that is destabilizing the region, while making a small coterie of profiteers immensely wealthy by bankrupting its taxpayers and their children, is a country that deserves to “lose”.

and the country must “lose”, in a manner that all can see and understand, in order to fully demonstrate the folly of its current path.

many thought we learned our lesson in vietnam. unfortunately those that didn’t — because at the time they “had other priorities” — have crept back into the saddle and will ride this ragged mare off a cliff rather than admit they took the country hostage as they recommitted one of the greatest crimes of the last century.

they must be repudiated.

and if this country must “lose” in iraq in order for that to happen, i really can’t see that as a “loss”, if the country wins back its soul as a result.

of course, my comment is somewhat lacking in the “glee” department, and i’ve yet to hear anyone describe me as a person “of some consequence”, but one out of three is as good as it will get.

No nation has ever benefitted from military defeat

Examples that even McCain might be hard put to refute (not that I care to have him try):

Argentina 1982
Cambodia 1978/79
Germany 1945

If we want to limit “nation” to more or less liberal democratic nation states, I will propose the following examples of benefitting from military defeat:

France, taking several colonial wars (especially Algeria) as ending in military defeat. If someone were to argue that France was not militarily defeated in Algeria, I would say no more than the UK in the American Rebellion).

The Southerners, whose mid-19th C polemicists at least considered themselves a nation. I realize that many readers here, including probably you, Daniel, would not agree that the Southern nation “benefitted from military defeat”, and I recognize that 1) we don’t really know what path the CSA would have followed if the secession had been successful, and even if we did we probably couldn’t agree on what constituted a net benefit. I consider not keeping 40% of the population as slaves to be a substantial benefit, even if, pace Sam Francis, the slaves and their descendants spent the next hundred years as serfs.

But there are, at this point, more of “us” than “them” – and the numbers over here in reality are growing.

Of course, it will take a single terrorist attack, or attempt, to prove them “right.” But about what? That the U.S. has enemies? That has never been the issue; the issue all along has been how we pursue those enemies “wisely.” In quotes because the likes of McCain think the only “wise” choice is sustained belligerence until… I dunno, we somehow cow or kill everyone who would dare look cross-eyed at us.

BTW, I also love the argument about if only the cowardly Brits (and French! he forgot the French!) had shown some neoconserative manliness, they might have stopped Hitler in his tracks. Not as if either country had just come through a war to end all wars or anything, resulting in an understandable reluctance to do it all again.

That was as high as they could count.

The trouble is, as Nate Silver pointed out after his interview with John Ziegler, the wingnuts don’t even understand that the rest of the world doesn’t view things as they do. They truly were gobsmacked that the country could go for Obama in a near-landslide. The idea that everyone who opposed the war is a nation-harming, defeat-celebrating, failure-loving pacifist is utterly obvious to them, like saying the sky is blue. They don’t try to actually *argue* their points, because they feel they don’t have to do any persuading or offer any evidence. Therefore, if you don’t agree with them already, you’re an idiot, and now the majority of the country – to them – are idiots.