Quote of the day
Stephen Colbert, who is apparently funny again:
Sir, we have lost the war on drugs when we withdraw from the war on drugs. While we’re still in it, we haven’t lost it.
Now listen up, America, you got a pretty good record in wars against, you know, actual countries. But abstract ideas are really kicking your ass. The War on Drugs, Poverty, Terror, Christmas, Science, Fat, etc., don’t look like they’re going all that swimmingly. So, let’s stop these various Wars of Words and recognize that they’re generally wars on freedom or wars on our brain cells.
January 9th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
The war on terrorism is a war on your freedom?
January 10th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Our more recent wars on countries haven’t been going to well either…
January 10th, 2007 at 9:48 am
I think a decent case can be made that the war in terrorism generally has gone a lot better than the war in Iraq specificially. We haven’t had a 9-11 type attack in over five years. One possible explanation is that al Qaeda doesn’t hate us quite as much as they used to, so they’re not trying anymore. The other is that the war on terror has been a wee bit more successful than Uncly-Wuncly cares to admit.
January 10th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Yes. My freedom to take various hygeine products on airplanes, for example.
January 10th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Uh, no. Your freedom to take various hygeine products on airplanes, like my freedom to take box cutters on airplanes, is collateral damage. There is no general “war on Uncle’s right to carry lipstick and perfume on planes.”
January 10th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Collateral damage seems to outwiegh the actual war in some cases
January 10th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Right. On the one hand, we have no new 9-11 attacks since, well, 9-11, when there was no declared WOT. On the other, Uncly-Wuncly can’t bring unlimited quantities of perfume, lipstick and box cutters on a plane. Potato, potahto.
January 10th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Number of terror attacks prevented by preventing me from taking items on planes: 0
Number of terror attacks prevented by preventing others from taking items on planes: 0 or pretty close to it; i mean, if one was presented, we’d have heard about it.
And my comment was more directed at the war on drugs.
These regulations are what politicians do instead of something.
January 10th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Number of terror attacks prevented by the same rules that you bitch and moan about: too many to count.
I agree with your objections to the war on drugs, but the war on terror is a completely different beast. Left to their own devices, drugs won’t declare war on us. The terrorists did.
January 10th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
do tell?
January 10th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
No can do. The best I can do is to point to four really nasty terror attacks that were NOT prevented by lax rules that allowed people to bring box cutters on planes, and to one near-miss that was NOT prevented earlier in the game by still-too-lax rules that allowed people to smuggle bombs in their shoes, and note that there have been zero attacks of either kind once everyone declared war on your right to fly without being inconvenienced (unless, of course, you count the inconvenience of being on a plane while it is hijacked).
January 10th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
So, if there is one, then I am right? That doesn’t seem like a very good measure.
Also, there is simply not going to be anything prevented by taking my toenail clippers, more than some random number of ounces of toothpaste, etc., etc.