Dear Chris:
As you can tell from my thread, I'm far from the only person who doesn't like the way you abuse your power with quick-trigger bannings of people who challenge you on substance. Nor am I the only one who is amused/disturbed by your non-endorsement endorsement of the probably the most conservative candidate in the race.
And here's the thread in which you decided to ban me, so people (if anyone cares) can judge for themselves what went down.
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?dia
ryId=1536You were angry that I said this:
It's pretty amusing that you've put yourself in the positon of defending the occuption of Iraq
Yet when I first raised the question of the massive military base known as an embassy, here was your comment in its entirety:
The embassy line is a bogus line that has been thrown around for months to try and obfuscate the difference here. We have embassies in every country, and in every country they have military contingents gaurding them. Further, embassies are considered American soil. to try and pull that line again is, at best, utterly bogus and, at worst, intentionally misleading.Every candidate will have troops gaurding our embassy in Iraq, on American soil, and just like every other embassy in the world. The issue is how many troops they will leave in Iraq on top of that. And yes, that is a bigger difference than permanent bases, because you can't have permanent basis if there are no troops in those bases.
To spell this out as simply for you as a I can, residual forces supercedes permanent bases because you can't have permanent bases if you don't have any residual forces. However, you can hae residual forces without permanent bases. Thus, the residual forces issue goes beyond all others.
Clear enough?
Last things first: Your "clear enough" comment was similar to my let-me-say-this-slowly line. It's a rhetorical device, and anyone who's hurt by the implication is strangely sensitive.
Now, for the substance: it's certainly reasonable to infer from this comment that you don't have a problem with the embassy. You dismissed the embassy as "American soil." (Yes, that's exactly the problem!) And you likened this embassy to other embassies in other countries, ignoring the fact that this one is massive, the biggest in the world, and that we just invaded and occupied Iraq. This embassy is not like other embassies--something you came to acknowledge later in the thread. Your opinion did, in fact, evolve during the course of the thread, and I suspect that it was my pointing this out to you caused you to snap. That, and my criticizing you position from the left. You don't like to be anyone's moderate, do you?
Nowhere in that comment or your second comment on the topic (which is below) did you say you opposed it; on the contrary, you said the embassy wasn't the issue. Even if I misunderstood or misrepresented your opinion, that's always done in debate. You did that to me several times, but you reserve the right to treat commenters in a way you don't allow commenters to treat you. That's hypocrisy, and it's one of the reasons you can't stumble onto a blog without finding someone making fun of you and Stoller. Your lack of self-awareness is striking.
As for this comment:
And unlike you, Chris, I don't care if Peter Daou gives me a mean look at Yearly Kos
That was nasty, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. However, I made that comment after you said you would ban me, so it's immaterial in terms of debating what went down.
Now, as for how you acted (which I thought was basically fine: you were just debating, as I was) But just to demonstrate your hypocrisy and utter lack of self-awareness...
In response to my pointing what I saw as a logical weakness in your argument, you said:
What is your point? The embassy is still US soil, and thus not in Iraq.To try and equivocate leaving tens of thousands of troops in Iraq outside the embassy with having a large embassy that all Dems support is unbelievably intellectually dishonest. you are trying to blur a large embassy plus tens of thousands of troops with a large embassy. And that is just crap, right up there with your bullshit hit job on Stoller.
Obviously, as the Stoller reference shows, there was some pent up stuff here. Without provocation, you called me "intellectually dishonest" and called my argument "crap." Then, in response to another polite comment from me, you said:
You seem mainly concerned with attacking and sliming anyone who stands in the way of your shilling for John Edwards.
Chris, I challenged the merits of your argument, and you responded by calling me "intellectually dishonest" and charged me with "shilling." And guess what? I didn't mind at all. I enjoyed debating you, just as I'm enjoying this debate today. I hope you are too, but something tells me you're not.
As for you taking credit for keeping the peace at MyDD, maybe you did, I'm not sure, but I promise you, I'm not the problem around here, and if I had challenged Jerome on substance the way I challenged you, he wouldn't have banned me. He's more intellectually secure.
And of course, progressive values are undermined when you stifle people who disagree with you. I won't go into detail explaining why: it should be self-evident to anyone who considers himself progressive.
As for Iraq, I still think the give-the-massive-embassy-to-Iraq is the right antiwar position. End the occupation, not just the war. I think Gravel has it right: you should have done an ad with him.
I wish Edwards would adopt my position but I don't think he will.
Peace,
David
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