Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Damned Southern Fifth Column CryptoCivilWarriorMenace

Anybody remember Digby's historic "fuck the south" essay after the 2004 election, when she put up the map showing that the slave states were still voting, essentially as a bloc, for Bush and the union states for Kerry? I can't find it online so maybe I'm misremembering it but send me a link and I'll put it up. Guess it was truer than we know. Not only are they still fighting the Civil War but they are right to do it since we're still occupying them. Bill Scher reports to us:

Today, RedState sent an email alert to readers to further push the point ... making a, shall we say, novel argument (emphasis added):

Clearly McCain was talking about a peace time standing presence ... Someone should ask the Democrats if they think we're still at war with the confederacy, the Germans, and the Japanese given all the standing American armies in the South, Germany, and Japan.

But hey, at least Germany and Japan are like Iraq in that they are other countries. I can't believe I am wasting 15 seconds of my life to type this, but having military bases in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina does not constitute a permanent occupation. Does RedState really believe that 140 years after the Civil War, American troops have a "peace time standing presence" in the American south? Conservatives are still flogging the notion that they hold an innate superiority on national security and foreign policy. The disaster of Iraq has already stripped the veneer off of that fallacy. Trying to claim that having military bases in Iraq for 100 years -- when our own intelligence community says "fear of Western domination" is what fuels the "jihadist movement" -- is just like having military bases in our own country, is probably not the best way to regain the public's trust on national security.

Regain the public's trust on national security? Hell, it calls into question who is "the american public" since it seems like "the south" are still the occupied enemy, a fifth column at our very throats. In fact, the email makes me think this Iraq thing is *even more of a lost cause* than our own lost cause.


Doesn't this kind of put the lie to the Republican conviction that the Iraqis will *ever* forgive us for invading and occupying them? I mean, if 150 years, the TVA, the rollback of african american rights during Jim Crow, the slavish worship of the stars and bars, the use of the word "cooter" and "hoo ha" for the lady parts, the ascendancy of Kentucky Fried Chicken and some other really weird local foods won't appease those losers why on earth do we think five years of bombing and a bunch of AEI junior losers and bootlickers are going to make the Iraqis happy with us? Can we expect to hear bitchy comments from our 51st state 150 years from now (right after stuffed John McCain agrees that its time to pull out?) about how its all "heritage" and not "hate?"