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February 15, 2006
Gore's Speech
The hubbub over Gore's latest speech is really rather baffling. I've seen no compelling counterarguments to the actual points he raised (check Joe Gandelman for more on that), just breathless astonishment that Gore dared criticize American policies while on Saudia soil. It's weird. I had no idea that our culture's devotion to free speech and self-criticism (the same one the right's been rhapsodizing for the past few weeks) was only operative within our borders. Does the ideal simply lack a passport? What's the mechanism?
Also, so far as I know, none of the indignant hordes have actually, you know, read the speech. For a crew so instantly suspicious of the MSM, they sure are quick to accept an AP news story as an accurate, textured recounting of the full flavor and focus of an address. Skepticism for me but not for thee, I guess. To get an idea of the potential differences, read the AP story, which emphasizes Gore's policy critiques, and read the Arab News' recounting, where he calls for a "Century of Renewal." The speeches seem fairly different depending on the source. That's not to say the AP is wrong, but such indignation over a speech they've neither heard nor read seems a little, well, planned.
February 15, 2006 | Permalink
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Comments
The whole fake orchestrated righty reaction to this is just so typically... mockrageous!
Posted by: shingles | Feb 15, 2006 1:34:34 PM
You might notice Glenn Reynolds is ready with his "unbiased" comments.
Funny thing is, the location criticism is true. It might be good on one point that doesn't seem to have occured to the pundits : if he was trying to talk to people who weren't totally turned off America to "wait it out" and the current insanity would pass.
It does regrettably miss the point that the people at home need to realize that what is going on in their name is totally batshit nuts. How much willingness is there to listen is another question entirely.
Posted by: opit | Feb 15, 2006 1:53:59 PM
You've seen in and, I think, commented on it at length before...
'They' (and we too, I've seen), are quick to accept statements
that support the conventional wisdom as regards 'the opposition'...
In other words, if we hear something in the MSM or blogs that re-inforces
our negative view of 'them', we're more likely to accept it and pass it along,
whilst we're less willing to accept criticism of 'our side' and it views.
There are times I wonder if I'm looking at a discussion of politics, or of
religion....since religious arguments I've had with people before usually
degenerate into name-calling and ad hominem attacks, because people
stop talking rationally, and start talking on beliefs/faith. One cannot
argue points of Faith rationally, so the discussion ends with each side
essentially shouting it's points of faith at each other and dismissing them
as nuts and flakes.
This might be too passive for the more activist elements in our community, but I'm going to sit back and see where the chips fall, before I move one direction or another. What exactly did Gore say? In what context should it be taken? Punditry be damned...I'll make my own decision
Posted by: justadood | Feb 15, 2006 2:16:01 PM
"Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions."
Indiscriminately rounded up? Every single person rounded up after 9/11 had VISA or Greencard violations and had suspected ties to terrorists, just like the 9/11 hijackers!
What were the unforgivable conditions? American jails? Compared to Saudi jails?
Gore lied about how and why people were rounded up and how they were treated, he has given more aid to our enemy. I would not say he aided the enemy, even though he is a former VP talking bad about his own country on foreign soil, if he was telling the truth, but he lied. Therefore he is giving propaganda to the enemy.
By the way, I thought Michael Moore asserted that Saudi's got preferential treatment after 9/11. I guess the liberal wing of the nut job party needs to get their story straight. And only two Democrats could say two opposite things and still both be lying.
"The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake," Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum. "The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States."
Before 9/11, the US VISA policy toward Saudi Arabia was so liberal that it allowed in 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. So Bush tightened that up.
Does anyone besides Gore believe there should be less scrutiny towards Saudi VISA applicants?
Al Gore is a fool. He is so bitter about 2000 that he has lost his mind. Don't you people get sick of having to defend his statements? But he, and Dean for that matter, are gold for conservatives. Them two remind America over and over why Democrats should not be in power.
Gore in 2008!
Posted by: Captain Toke | Feb 15, 2006 2:38:34 PM
The Rovian/Rightist/Post-Reaganist/Bu$hCoist methods are in Chapter 1 of the Republican Totalitarian Manual (year 2000 edition):
- Attack leadership figures of the disloyal, anti-American Democratic Party leadership at every opportunity
- Selectively quote or misquote every statement they make
- Emphasize how the Dem. leadership is allied with the enemy
- Ensure that they are portrayed as weak, ineffective and unmanly (or unwomanly, if necessary)
- Never discuss the content of their ideas, but do visciously attack their personal characteristics
- more that it too sickening to read....
They are just following their rules....
Posted by: JimPortandOR | Feb 15, 2006 2:50:02 PM
Does anyone have a link to the actual speech? I can't find it on the JEF website or anywhere else.
Posted by: Jack | Feb 15, 2006 2:50:31 PM
The hubbub over Gore's latest speech is really rather baffling.
Ezra, I suggest you spend a little less time trying to understand the hubbub and a little more time condemning it. You know it's an organized joke by a bunch of Bush-following loudmouths. I hardly see the point in trying to "understand where they're coming from" on this.
Posted by: Constantine | Feb 15, 2006 2:52:57 PM
Hey Jim,
If the Democratic leaders didn't make the statements, conservatives wouldn't have all the ammo.
America believes Democrats are weak on national security because of the things Democratic leaders say and policies they support. Don't blame the right for using Democrats own words against them.
Posted by: Captain Toke | Feb 15, 2006 2:56:44 PM
Yes Captain toke....Gore and Dean are "CRAZY".....which in your world apparently means not being a lunatic fringe winger.....oh and F9/11 was referring to the Saudi aristicracy...you know..the ones hanging out with Bush and other giant business interests?....the ones with their own Lear Jets. Hmmm, maybe you should actually watch and/or pay attention more to the things you reference before you prattle off some half baked recycle BS.
On a saner note - I do believe that people on both sides of the fence tend to take anything from the Media Corps that reinforces their beliefs with little or no grains of salf...and vice/versa....however, that still leaves many regular people (the people that Captain Toke probably calls 'lunatic liberals') who have just tuned out major media because of the BS....and stopped paying attention all together.
Posted by: Zedd | Feb 15, 2006 2:59:22 PM
"F9/11 was referring to the Saudi aristicracy"
I did watch it and paid attention. That is how I know that it is still a lie. Richard Clark told Michael Moore it was bullshit before the film came out, but Michael Moore did not correct it. Do you know why? Because the whole film was bullshit. Michael Moore is a propagandist, he does not care about the truth. He cares about pushing an agenda.
Posted by: Captain Toke | Feb 15, 2006 3:05:18 PM
Zedd,
The very beginning of F9/11 claims Gore actually won the 2000 election. The film starts out with a lie and goes from there.
Posted by: Captain Toke | Feb 15, 2006 3:07:13 PM
Ah, a knowledgable government source told Michael Moore that an assertion in his movie was false and he failed to remove it. I see. Unforgivable and clear evidence of propaganda to promote an agenda. Even if that is true, shouldn't your high standards apply to say, for example, a presidential address to Congress?
And, for what it's worth, it's indisputable Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, and Florida was certainly not as clear cut as right-wingers like to pretend. You know, it's funny that recently exit polls have suddenly become less reliable, and always in the favor of the GOP. But, hey, let's question the integrity of Michael Moore, because, you know, that's important.
Posted by: Magenta | Feb 15, 2006 3:20:39 PM
Yeah, ok, the location critique would be quite valid if Gore hadn't made these exact same points a million times in the US. This has been one of his themes since very early in 2002. If he's gone to Saudi Arabia, to a paid conference, and trotted out a whole new critique of the US Admin, then that would have been, well, cheap. That's not what happened. Any of the rich, American-educated professionals at the conference who cared enough to know already would have been aware of his positions on detentions, on VISAs.
Anyway, I think Gandelman is wrong. The problem for Gore wasn't location; it was what it always is: hyperbole. Succeeding in American politics requires using no adjectives at all: "terrible", "indiscriminately". Adjectives are for activists, not politicians, which is sort of a microcosm for why Gore is such a terrific activist and problematic politician :-)
Posted by: Laura | Feb 15, 2006 3:25:15 PM
"Any of the rich, American-educated professionals at the conference who cared enough to know already would have been aware of his positions on detentions, on VISAs."
But Al Jazeera got another soundbite from an American liberal. The common Arab now has confirmation from an American official (a former VP) that Americans abused Muslims and Arabs 'indiscriminately'.
Posted by: Captain Toke | Feb 15, 2006 3:32:09 PM
Captain Toke:
So what does any of that - whether accurate or innacurate - have to do with your completely false claim that Michael Moore "asserted that Saudi's got preferential treatment after 9/11" and the inplication that it completely contradicted Gore's argument?
Well, I'll help you out since that was the cutch of my criticism towards you: Nada.
Your terrible arguments bely your lack of factual foundation.
Posted by: Zedd | Feb 15, 2006 3:32:24 PM
"your completely false claim that Michael Moore "asserted that Saudi's got preferential treatment after 9/11"
Let's read what you wrote.
"oh and F9/11 was referring to the Saudi aristicracy"
You say yourself "F9/11 was referring to the Saudi aristocracy". As far as facts, check out the one cited below. I know it is the Left's favorite fact.
Magenta,
Do you know why the Democrats are where they are right now? Because they believe the propaganda.
Check this out:
"In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted."
Correcting liberals with one hand wrapped around a big, fat giant doobie of the stickiest of the icky, just to make it fair.
Posted by: Captain Toke | Feb 15, 2006 3:45:27 PM
ALGORE is a has-been politician who is now getting to do the speaking circuit. He is much more saleable if he keeps his name in the headlines and being controversial does just that.
The bottom line is GORE is helping no one other than ALGORE.
Posted by: Fred Jones | Feb 15, 2006 3:50:14 PM
Has Captain Toke become to the 2000 election what Fred Jones is to gay issues?
Posted by: Constantine | Feb 15, 2006 4:07:50 PM
Has Captain Toke become to the 2000 election what Fred Jones is to gay issues?
Shorter Dean: "Don't confuse us with facts. It ruins the meme."
Posted by: Fred Jones | Feb 15, 2006 4:45:50 PM
If I can cut through all the vituperation for a moment… has can anyone respond to Toke's accusation that Gore lied about "indiscriminate" arrests?
Because that is the key point for me. Gore played into the existing dogma in parts of the Arab world that America hates Muslims and wants to destroy the Muslim world. The damage this could do to our foreign policy is significant.
What happened to "Politics stops at the water's edge"?
Posted by: Mastiff | Feb 15, 2006 4:49:00 PM
What happened to "Politics stops at the water's edge"?
Mastiff, it may be time to take a good, long look at the 2002 and 2004 election cycles.
has can anyone respond to Toke's accusation that Gore lied about "indiscriminate" arrests?
Yes, in that if we don't want people saying that our detention and incarceration practices since 9/11 have been inhumane and egregiously unjust, we shouldn't engage in inhumane and unjust (and unconstitutional) arrests and incarcerations. Re: Hamedi, Padilla, Gitmo
If the truth of our government's actions is too much for you to bear, welcome to the world the rest of us have been living in for the last five years.
Posted by: NBarnes | Feb 15, 2006 8:00:03 PM
Democrats are too readily inclined to believe propaganda.
You bring the funny, Captain Toke.
Posted by: Magenta | Feb 15, 2006 8:33:39 PM
Captain
Are you aware of the photos that are being sent all over the world from Australia ?
Or that the Brits, who try to maintain some semblance of reporting, are mad as hell about the crap pulled on them by their government re: necessity for war in Iraq ?
The clothes are off the Emperor and his p.r. machine is really going to have to work for a living : try as they might it doesn't do Dick for perceptions outside the country.
Perhaps it isn't such a bad thing for foreign people to think that perhaps someone in the U.S. has some clue that all is not well. Wasn't that part of "selling democracy" ?
Posted by: opit | Feb 16, 2006 1:19:23 AM
NBarnes, you will notice that I did not ask about whether our incarcerations were constitutional (though I believe they are), but whether they were indiscriminate.
Citing individuals who were intimately involved in al-Qaida operations (Padilla, Hamdi) or detention centers reserved for people captured on battlefields (Gitmo) as "proof" for Gore seems to undercut him rather efficiently.
Try to identify key terms before you hit the Autorant button, please.
Posted by: Mastiff | Feb 16, 2006 1:28:38 AM
opit,
Are those pictures altered and sent by the Australian vice prime minister (whatever they are called)? Are those Brits gov't officials spreading lies that would hurt Britain?
Al Gore told lies, on foreign soil, that feeds our enemy and helps them recruit. Al Gore gave the enemy propaganda. Lies = Propaganda
Al Gore aided our enemy.
Again I ask:
Indiscriminately rounded up? Every single person rounded up after 9/11 had VISA or Greencard violations and had suspected ties to terrorists, just like the 9/11 hijackers!
Please show me evidence of Muslims indiscriminately rounded up. If you can't, and Gore refuses to, then Gore lied and helped our enemy.
Gore or his handlers will not clarify his comments.
What were the unforgivable conditions? What were these conditions? Gore won't say. Do you think these people would have rather been in a Saudi jail? Egyptian jail?
I don't think he meant Gitmo since he was talking about right after 9/11. But even if he did, he lied again. A group of mostly Democratic congressmen went to Gitmo last year and they unamously concluded that the US Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is a model that should be replicated by the rest of the world.
Wow, no one can back up what Gore said, not even Gore.
Gore in 2008!
Posted by: Captain Toke | Feb 16, 2006 10:14:11 AM
