Why Adverse to War?

Atrios brings up a good point via a childhood experience, which illustrates a thought I've had. We on the left, for the most part, are quite adverse to war for all the oft discussed reasons, not wanting to kill people or destroy things, all that stuff. But is also the case, that the wingnuts oddly don't seem to understand, that when words are being exchanged, even very harsh words, you can take them back, if later you decide you went to far in what you said. Bullets, however, don't give you that option (with the possible exception of friends of Dick Cheney).

If you get into a quarrel with a neighbor, you might call him all sorts of terrible things, and yet still be able to make up with him if later you discover that he was not so much the source of your injury as you had originally thought. That option is most likely not available, however, if in the course of your quarrel, you shoot him.

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Criticism from both sides

Link to Horses Mouth November 16, 2007 4:49 PM

I concur that the argument "we're making both sides angry, therefore we are doing a good job" from our news media is particularly specious. If that is their philosophy one really has to wonder what they think their job is that they are doing well. As a quick analogy I'm thinking that if at trial, both the defense and prosecution think the judge is doing a lousy job, it might just be that he is, in fact, doing a lousy job. It should hardly be taken as evidence that he is doing a good job.

FISA Bill Status

Well it appears that there is still some hope for a decent FISA bill. The bill coming out of committee in the House is, at this point at least, still free of the dreadful retroactive immunity feature. The prospect of Congress freeing these companies of needing to obey the law, prior to any investigation or public assessment, is unconscionable. Let's hope that the bill can stay clean in this regard.

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