it is arabic slang for , you know, fudge. ONLY I DIDNT SAY FUDGE.
so , example, you are naming the iraq army, the 'new iraqi corps'... maybe think twice.
pg 155, 'fiasco', by ricks
george takei aka captain sulu, got married!
to a dude!
20 years younger than him!
i cant imagine in what movie seth rogan will talk about this.
20 years younger than him!
i cant imagine in what movie seth rogan will talk about this.
so what was my point
in the last post....
my point is that i wish there was a 'history', not a journalist diary, of the iraq war.
particularly, i have found, none of these books go into detail about the iraqi side of things.
example: 'fiasco' only mentions ayad allawi two times.
ayad allawi, expatriate, head of the INA, worked with the CIA for years, knew tons of people in Saddams government.. became prime minister or something in 2004....didnt last long...
it be like writing a book about the american revolution, and leaving out some major figures, ... im not going to name one, because honestly i dont know enough about either situation.
i guess maybe its just too soon to see a history.
i guess it just takes time?
another example: naomi klein, disaster capitalism, shock therapy, etc.
ok f it, i havent read her book yet. know why? CANT AFFORD IT. lol. take that marxists. you have priced poor people out of your own damn books. not to mention the impenetrable jargon you use. das kapital is one of the most poorly written, incomprehensible piles of jargon and horrible footnotes in the entire written history of the planet. worse yet is the use of generalizing perjoratives like 'bourgeois'.
if i ever write history, i hope that i do not use words like 'neocons' 'liberals' 'bourgeois' or anything other labels that have no actual definition, and thus, little meaning. 'marxists'. oh wait, too late. woe is me.
---
my point is that i wish there was a 'history', not a journalist diary, of the iraq war.
particularly, i have found, none of these books go into detail about the iraqi side of things.
example: 'fiasco' only mentions ayad allawi two times.
ayad allawi, expatriate, head of the INA, worked with the CIA for years, knew tons of people in Saddams government.. became prime minister or something in 2004....didnt last long...
it be like writing a book about the american revolution, and leaving out some major figures, ... im not going to name one, because honestly i dont know enough about either situation.
i guess maybe its just too soon to see a history.
i guess it just takes time?
another example: naomi klein, disaster capitalism, shock therapy, etc.
ok f it, i havent read her book yet. know why? CANT AFFORD IT. lol. take that marxists. you have priced poor people out of your own damn books. not to mention the impenetrable jargon you use. das kapital is one of the most poorly written, incomprehensible piles of jargon and horrible footnotes in the entire written history of the planet. worse yet is the use of generalizing perjoratives like 'bourgeois'.
if i ever write history, i hope that i do not use words like 'neocons' 'liberals' 'bourgeois' or anything other labels that have no actual definition, and thus, little meaning. 'marxists'. oh wait, too late. woe is me.
---
in search of an iraq war history...
i have been looking at iraq war books.
fiasco
iraq war
shadow warriors
rumsfeld's war
italian letter
hubris
i checked out a few from the library.
there is something i dont get.
they all seem to have an 'angle'.
i liked history classes in college. why? because we had to have evidence for what we were saying.
these guys have evidence... a lot of it, though, has no named source. 'a senior official'. blah blah blah.
fiasco is another example. the title of the book.. fiasco. the heads of some of the chapters , like 'bremer blunders' or something.
would you ever find that in a history book?
maybe,... maybe not.
the theory is, though, i believe... that if you say some guy was running a country, and after a few months, hundreds of people were dead, bombs were going off in the streets, and hundreds of thousands of people were refugees.... i think the reader can pretty much figure out that was a 'fiasco', without you having to tell them, or entitle the chapter 'incompetent jerk screws up'.
so, what is wrong with that language?
i have been wondering... i remember all these months, that rumsfeld and other people in government would not say iraq was a 'war', would not say we were 'occupying it', would not realistically talk about problems and, thus, solutions...
maybe people just got so sick of that, that now, they want you to go after it... use words like failure, fiasco, stumble, horrible, moron, idiot, etc.
the thing is, its against, well, the code of history... the code of logic actually. the code of reason and argument and debate.
---
there is a review of 'fiasco' by some guy, i dont remember his name. he talks about a lot of this... esp anonymous sources... ok. his buddies at 'free republic' love his analysis. now, these people in general make me want to vomit, because they will say things like 'liberals need to be killed' and so forth. i mean its hard to be objective about people who want you to die.
but on the other hand, a lot of their 'facts' are just wrong... or... its not even that. its that they arent interested in debating things. they have a point of view, they want the facts to re-enforce that they were right. you can see this over and over again. consider the 'habbush letter' , reported by con coughlin in dec 2003. the free republic site had dozens of comments about how 'this proves the libtards were wrong... saddam was linked to mohammed atta!' .
ok.. but the letter, most people agree, was bogus... i think there were a tiny minority of comments that wondered about that.
so, im back to these 'modern histories'. they arent histories..
histories are called things like 'iraq, 2003-2005'. not 'the horrifically bad and untrue horribe mismanagement by morons and idiots, which killed billions of innocent babies and dogs'.
also not 'libtards: how liberals, left wingers, democrats, progressives, and moderate republicans are destroying america, were in bed with hitler, and caused 9/11.'
thats not history.
---
'shadow warriors' in particular makes me want to throw up. why?
i cant put my finger on it.
its something about the sources, the way it presents things.
the problem is... it doesnt do it all that much differently from other books.
it is not dispassionate about certain figures, like porter goss, but then again,
'fiasco' makes david patreus look like a genius with a golden touch, and the author says
of the critic he mentions, that he doesnt think its fair.
thats fine. but a historian, if he believed a criticism was not fair, would have written a couple pages about it. maybe a large paragraph...
---
ok. maybe im giving a bit too much credit to historians. they all have their heroes. thats what they do, tell stories, thats what history is.
i just wish... i just wish.... someone was there, who was dispassionate. who really didnt care one way or the other. who just wanted to get at , what happened.
fiasco is pretty good, as it constantly will quote someone who doesnt agree with what was just said.
on the other hand, i can see some of the people i have known in life, decrying the lack of 'clarity'... aching, wanting so badly, for there to be no questions, no debate... just tell me one way or the other.
i wonder if i would be like them if not for fancy education. ok, actually, real education came in a public university, and not a famously academic one, but there are good teachers there, regardles, and a fine library, and this is all you really need to come out of the cave, and not be horrifically depressed just because two people disagree on what happened, and you have to come to your own conclusion.
fiasco
iraq war
shadow warriors
rumsfeld's war
italian letter
hubris
i checked out a few from the library.
there is something i dont get.
they all seem to have an 'angle'.
i liked history classes in college. why? because we had to have evidence for what we were saying.
these guys have evidence... a lot of it, though, has no named source. 'a senior official'. blah blah blah.
fiasco is another example. the title of the book.. fiasco. the heads of some of the chapters , like 'bremer blunders' or something.
would you ever find that in a history book?
maybe,... maybe not.
the theory is, though, i believe... that if you say some guy was running a country, and after a few months, hundreds of people were dead, bombs were going off in the streets, and hundreds of thousands of people were refugees.... i think the reader can pretty much figure out that was a 'fiasco', without you having to tell them, or entitle the chapter 'incompetent jerk screws up'.
so, what is wrong with that language?
i have been wondering... i remember all these months, that rumsfeld and other people in government would not say iraq was a 'war', would not say we were 'occupying it', would not realistically talk about problems and, thus, solutions...
maybe people just got so sick of that, that now, they want you to go after it... use words like failure, fiasco, stumble, horrible, moron, idiot, etc.
the thing is, its against, well, the code of history... the code of logic actually. the code of reason and argument and debate.
---
there is a review of 'fiasco' by some guy, i dont remember his name. he talks about a lot of this... esp anonymous sources... ok. his buddies at 'free republic' love his analysis. now, these people in general make me want to vomit, because they will say things like 'liberals need to be killed' and so forth. i mean its hard to be objective about people who want you to die.
but on the other hand, a lot of their 'facts' are just wrong... or... its not even that. its that they arent interested in debating things. they have a point of view, they want the facts to re-enforce that they were right. you can see this over and over again. consider the 'habbush letter' , reported by con coughlin in dec 2003. the free republic site had dozens of comments about how 'this proves the libtards were wrong... saddam was linked to mohammed atta!' .
ok.. but the letter, most people agree, was bogus... i think there were a tiny minority of comments that wondered about that.
so, im back to these 'modern histories'. they arent histories..
histories are called things like 'iraq, 2003-2005'. not 'the horrifically bad and untrue horribe mismanagement by morons and idiots, which killed billions of innocent babies and dogs'.
also not 'libtards: how liberals, left wingers, democrats, progressives, and moderate republicans are destroying america, were in bed with hitler, and caused 9/11.'
thats not history.
---
'shadow warriors' in particular makes me want to throw up. why?
i cant put my finger on it.
its something about the sources, the way it presents things.
the problem is... it doesnt do it all that much differently from other books.
it is not dispassionate about certain figures, like porter goss, but then again,
'fiasco' makes david patreus look like a genius with a golden touch, and the author says
of the critic he mentions, that he doesnt think its fair.
thats fine. but a historian, if he believed a criticism was not fair, would have written a couple pages about it. maybe a large paragraph...
---
ok. maybe im giving a bit too much credit to historians. they all have their heroes. thats what they do, tell stories, thats what history is.
i just wish... i just wish.... someone was there, who was dispassionate. who really didnt care one way or the other. who just wanted to get at , what happened.
fiasco is pretty good, as it constantly will quote someone who doesnt agree with what was just said.
on the other hand, i can see some of the people i have known in life, decrying the lack of 'clarity'... aching, wanting so badly, for there to be no questions, no debate... just tell me one way or the other.
i wonder if i would be like them if not for fancy education. ok, actually, real education came in a public university, and not a famously academic one, but there are good teachers there, regardles, and a fine library, and this is all you really need to come out of the cave, and not be horrifically depressed just because two people disagree on what happened, and you have to come to your own conclusion.
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