Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has been drawn to Iraq instead.
Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic “Lord of the Rings,” to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.
“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.
“It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.,” Santorum continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”
In an interview with the Bucks County Courier Times editorial board late last week, the 12-year Republican senator from Pennsylvania said he's “a big "Lord of the Rings' fan.” He's read the first of the series, “The Hobbit” to his six children.
A spokesman for Democratic opponent Bob Casey Jr. questioned the appropriateness of the analogy.
“You have to really question the judgment of a U.S. senator who compares the war in Iraq to a fantasy book,” said Casey spokesman Larry Smar. “This is just like when he said Kim Jong II isn't a threat because he just wants to "watch NBA basketball.' ”
According to a Harrisburg Patriot-News editorial, Santorum said the North Korea dictator “doesn't want to die; he wants to watch NBA basketball” as a reason why Iran is the bigger nuclear threat.
Faced with a no-fantasy re-election battle against Democratic challenger and state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr., Santorum has positioned himself as strong on national security.
To counter Casey's claims that Santorum voted with President George Bush “98 percent of the time.” Santorum pointedly mentioned their areas of difference, specifically on Iran and its nuclear weapons program.
He called the Bush Administration's policy to negotiate with Iran “at worst appeasement and at best constructive engagement, either of which are wrong.”
“They believe you can negotiate with [Iran President] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs on the issue of nuclear weapons and you cannot,” Santorum said. “You cannot negotiate something away from someone who has a messianic vision to a religious conviction that they need this weapon.”
Santorum said he managed to work out an agreement between Congress and the White House on a plan to toughen sanctions and fund Iranian pro-democracy groups. But he seemed frustrated by questions about U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Click Here!
“I don't think you ask that question,” he said. “I know that's the question everybody wants to ask. But I don't think anyone would ask that question in 1944, "Gee, how long are we going to be in Europe?' We're going to be in Europe until we win,” Santorum said.
Asked whether he thinks U.S. troops will be in Iraq a half-century later, as they still are in Germany, Santorum said “potentially.”
“Having a presence there as we have since the Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is certainly not against the interests of America if, in fact, we're welcome to be there,” he said.
Santorum insisted the U.S. needed to take out Saddam Hussein because he “by all accounts, had weapons of mass destruction ... he was fomenting terrorism, he was paying for terrorists to kill Israelis and he was supporting terrorist objectives.
“To say we're being bogged down in Iraq, I disagree with you,” he said in response to a question. “We are fighting the war that we are engaged in — Islamic fascism — in Iraq. We are fighting those people right now, the people who, if we left, would come here and destroy us.”
The 911 Commission report found that while Saddam had been in contact with al-Qaida, there was no evidence the contacts ever turned into “a collaborative operational relationship” or that Iraq cooperated in the attacks against the U.S.
Santorum demurred on the growing strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the U.S.'s first post-9/11 nation-building effort, and the failure to capture Osama bin Laden.
“You know, what we have is a lousy enemy,” Santorum said about the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan. “This enemy is really tough. And I underestimated this enemy ... and the problem is [the] American people underestimated this enemy.”
According to his campaign and published news reports, Casey also doesn't support a timeline for troop withdrawal. Casey criticized Bush for going first to Iraq, the weakest link in the “Axis of Evil,” while Iran and North Korea have developed nuclear capabilities.
Casey has been invited to meet with the editorial board, but hasn't yet agreed to do so.
Allow me to be the first to congratulate the Iraqi people for their unwilling servitude as human shields. Honestly, this ranks among the worst defenses of the war I've yet heard.
I had to double-check for satire.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
To be fair, Rick Santorum is stuck in a hole and he can't seem to get himself out of. And, while he deserves to be in that hole, Bob Casey Jr. doesn't deserve to be standing over it, laughing at him. It's been a bizarre campaign. Casey is saying as little as possible and taking up right of center positions and still easily coasting 10 points or more ahead of Santorum. He keeps trying stuff and nothing is working for him.
He tried attacking. THat didn't work. He tried playing it up that he's really a nice guy. That didn't work. He's a better talker than Casey and Casey has a spottier work record. Doesn't matter.
So, h'es going to be trying some longer shot deals, which, for Rick Santorum, he of the man on dog action, should be a sight to see. I've got to admit, I'm enjoying the whole thing a lot more than I should. I'm waiting for what crazy things Rick Santourm is going to come out with next and counting the time till I can vote Bob Casey out in 2012.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.
The TOOL he used? More like a nickname for Sauron himself. Bah, darn Tolkien virgins...heh.
quote:A spokesman for Democratic opponent Bob Casey Jr. questioned the appropriateness of the analogy.
“You have to really question the judgment of a U.S. senator who compares the war in Iraq to a fantasy book,” said Casey spokesman Larry Smar.
Mr. Casey is wrong. It is a perfect analogy. And Casey knows nothing about LOTR to call it a mere fantasy book. It's like calling War and Peace a fantasy book.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
[edit: I just realized I was restating Samprimary's point. Oh, well.]
Santorum's metaphor is flawed because the distraction he mentions in LotR was the armies of Gondor and Rohan, knowingly proffered as bait by their leaders to give Frodo and Sam their chance to destroy the Ring for the good of Gondor, Rohan, and really, everyone.
Whereas in Iraq, their leaders before and after the invasion certainly did NOT and do not profer their people to be used as targets just to draw fire away from the US. Ricky's really getting desperate. . .going after the nerd vote like this.
quote: Asked whether he thinks U.S. troops will be in Iraq a half-century later, as they still are in Germany, Santorum said “potentially.”
“Having a presence there as we have since the Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is certainly not against the interests of America if, in fact, we're welcome to be there,” he [Santorum] said.
We pulled out of Saudia Arabia more than 3 years ago, aside from a few training officers. Why doesn't a US Senator know this? And why doesn't the reporter who quoted him?
posted
To say nothing of the fact that a large source of terrorism against the US was due to the fact that we did have troops on Saudi soil.
The analogy works on the surface, but I don't like it for other reasons. The US isn't Orodruin, it's Minas Tirith. But regardless of that, and the fact that the Fields of Cormallen were uttterly and totally destroyed after the battle there because of the Ring's destruction (I'm sure the Iraqis would LOVE that part of Santorum's allusion), it presupposes that something is actually being done in the US that will have long term effects on the war on terror.
Frodo and Sam aren't in the fires of Mt Doom in the US, because it's an ideological war, not a physical one. It'd be the equivilant of us talking Sauron into renouncing the teachings of Morgoth and agreeing to live in peace in Gorgoroth. I'd say we aren't even near Sammath Naur with the way things are going.
The entire point of the feint at the Fields of Cormallen (and this is where the analogy is actually quite beautiful), is that it was done KNOWING THAT THE BATTLE WOULD BE LOST. They never went there expecting to win, it was a delaying action, meant to be used for a short period of time to give Frodo and Same a chance to unmake the Ring. Gandalf said it himself when he said 'victory cannot be achieved through force of arms, whether you endure siege after siege, or march out to be overwhelmed, you have only a choice of evils.' (might be a bit off on the quote, it's from memory).
Where is our Rohan? Britain? They're fleeing the field, as is everyone else. Where is our final victory? Santorum pretty much says right in that analogy that he KNOWS we're going to lose in Iraq, but it doesn't matter because it gives us peace of mind at home.
So far as I'm concerned with the analogy, we haven't even found the Ring yet, let alone are on our ways to destroying it.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
If you are just now hearing about the 'flypaper' rationale for the Iraq war, welcome to America. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I was positive it was an Onion article...then I realized it was real, and what much more disturbed.
Posts: 3658 | Registered: Jan 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
It is astonishing how fast the GOP is becoming beyond satire...
Morbo is correct. Instead of offering ourselves as a "distraction" to serve some higher good, we offered up other people so that we could feel safe. Cowardly at best.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
The analogy probably works much better the other way around. The U.S. is distracted fighting and expending our resources on a war in Iraq while terrorists are in our own country, presumably plotting some attack bigger than 9/11 - not to mention while North Korea and Iran get their hands on nuclear bombs.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Tres, if we reverse the analogy, we can call Ricky Santoruman.
quote: It's hard, in truth, to find any useful Middle Earth analogy to the Iraq War: the parallels break down across the board. Still, you might think of Bush's invasion of Iraq as the equivalent of a beleaguered Gondor, attacked by the armies of Mordor across the River Anduin, sending its army off on an expedition to Far Harad, after its leaders issued proclamations that the White Council had incontrovertible evidence of the Haradrim's possession of Rings of Mass Destruction.
posted
I will probably get to meet Mr. Colbert this morning. Do we think I should put on some lipstick?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
President Galdaph W. Bush addresses the White Council and other present. "We must put together a true Fellowship of the WMD Ring. Who Volunteers."
"I do," say Gimli and Legolas together.
"No, I'm sorry, but we can't have folks like you going on this journey."
"Like us?" asks Legolas.
"You know what I mean. You and Gimli's special relationship. It would be uncomfortable for the rest of the group. No. Sorry. We can't have folks like you messing up the morale of the rest of the group."
"I'll go." Said Frodo.
"And me! Wherever Mr. Frodo goes, I go." added Sam.
"No, sorry Sam, but you are a Gardener, and one that snuck into this fellowship in the first place. We all know what that makes you--an Illegal. You won't be allowed to go, leaving room for Legal Fellowshipian's to do the work you were trying to steal. Now personally, I have nothing against my gardening and illegal friends or their families, but the others on the council are adamant about this."
"I'll go. To save my homeland" said Borimor Cheney.
"Now my friend, that is a great idea. But please, don't shoot many more eagles. They may be useful in the future and already their a bit upset with you."
"What about me?" asked Wormtongue Rove.
"My friend, I can not waste you on this trip. Our big enemy is none other than Sauron Bin Laden, but one of our allies has turned. Husseinamon is creating his own army. Sure, he says he is going to use it to destroy Sauron, but as President of this council, I can not take that risk. I must assume that he will really give military aid and support to our enemy, so we must destroy him first. You can help."
Wormtongue Rove considered. "I can do it. But I'll need help. Frodo, Aragorn, you are with me. The hero's are off to distract the Eye of Sauron, and defeat Husseinamon."
"Well," pondered Gandolph the Grey. "That just leaves Borimor Cheney, and the two halflings--Pippin and Merry--to go after Mt. Doom."
Merry turned to Pippin. "Did we volunteer?" Pippin just shrugged his shoulders as Borimor interrupted, "You've been re-activated."
Scared, Merry interupted. "What about the elves. We can get the elves to help."
"And the Ents. Don't forget the Ents" added Pippin.
"Oh no," said Gandolph. "The elves are a bunch of litigating, activist judges who are actual tree huggers. We can't have them joining our true Americ--Numerians can we? And if we don't want tree huggers, we definately don't want hugging trees."
Boromir smiled. "You don't mind if we stop by my home town on the way, do you?"
Gandolph scratched his beard. "You mean Haligondor? Sure. Take your time. Here's the ring. Have a good day."
posted
I'm still not sure how much worse this analogy is than those who have effectively said, "It would have been better if we had kept the brutal dictator in control of Iraq because then all the people would be too oppressed to be terrorists." (Edit: or insurgents, or sectarian militia-men)
I find both statements fairly sickening, although for some reason only the one gets mocked here.
I wonder why that is.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't think I've ever heard a statement like that. Could you maybe point one out from a source that it's possible I might have seen?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Knew that Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship was the only thing keeping Iraq from civil war. Knew that, once we went in, there was no good way out. Knew that it wasn't going to be a "cakewalk". Knew that beating the Iraqi army would be the least of the problems. Knew that it would be enormously costly in terms of money and casualties and relationships with the rest of the world.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: kmbboots: Could you have seen any way to remove Saddam and not have the country fall into civil war?
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Why did we have to remove him? He was contained. The crimes for which he is being tried happened a long time ago. He wasn't a threat to us.
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: kmbboots: the reason I supported the notion of invading Iraq (though not how it ended up being done) is that at some point Saddam was going to die, and there was no viable successor (by Saddam's own machinations), creating a powder keg situation, particularly as one of the easiest ways to solidify a hold on power is with an attempted military campaign.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: So we wait till that happens, the UN goes in to stablize the country. We then have the backing of the rest of the world.
There's more to the conversation.
Of course, kmboots didn't explicitly acknowledge the oppression was what prevented the disintegration, just as Santorum didn't explicitly acknowledge that it's the Iraqis dying in our place that makes his analogy work.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Try quoting the entire relevant section next time Squicky.
The edit in my first post ("Edit: or insurgents, or sectarian militia-men") was there long before you commented squicky. For proof, note the lack of the edit message in that post and your post being an hour and fifteen minutes after the no-message edit period.
So it's not just terrorists. It's also insurgents and sectarian militia-men.
Perhaps you could explain how insurgents and sectarian militia men aren't "anything like" civil war and sectarian violence.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's not, "not just terrorists". There was nothing about terrorists. You made that the main focus for some reason, perhaps because saying: "It would have been better if we had kept the brutal dictator in control of Iraq because then all the people wouldn't be fighting each other." doesn't really have any punch to it.
There was no justification for saying terrorists. If you want to ammend your statement to the above, you might have a case, but you've got no leg to stand on with even including terrorists, let alone having it as the main focus of your statement.
---
As for the sectarian thing, invading and removing the thing that was keeping the sectarian violence at bay without having a reasonable plan for dealing with that violence is, to me, arguably a worse idea than not invading. Certainly, the suffering of the people involved appear to be higher. What metric are you using to say that the current situation is better than the things the people you quoted said?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:It's not, "not just terrorists". There was nothing about terrorists. You made that the main focus for some reason, perhaps because saying: "It would have been better if we had kept the brutal dictator in control of Iraq because then all the people wouldn't be fighting each other." doesn't really have any punch to it. There was no justification for saying terrorists. If you want to ammend your statement to the above, you might have a case, but you've got no leg to stand on with even including terrorists, let alone having it as the main focus of your statement.
Whatever, Squicky. There was certainly no reason for you to leave out two things I made an explicit point of adding.
quote:As for the sectarian thing, invading and removing the thing that was keeping the sectarian violence at bay without having a reasonable plan for dealing with that violence is, to me, arguably a worse idea than not invading.
Sure. I agree. It's absolutely arguable, and might even be correct.
quote:What metric are you using to say that the current situation is better than the things the people you quoted said?
I'm not. kmboots clearly and explicitly opposed any invasion, even a theoretical one with a proper response plan.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
BTW, I found one example that met the specifics of my statement (the three types of violence-contributers being joined by the disjunctive). As I said, you can do other searches yourself.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Dag, You haven't presented any statements that are justifiably mockable. You haven't even provided any statements that make your including (and in fact focusing on) terrorists anything but dishonest.
So, I guess that's the reason why the statements you referred to were missing.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:You haven't even provided any statements that make your including (and in fact focusing on) terrorists anything but dishonest.
It did not focus on terrorism - it listed all three. I've provided an example that covers two.
So stop with the dishonesty crap, Squicky. It's tiresome. I presented three things. They were all part of the same list and on the same level.
Whatever the reason for you inability or unwillingness to comprehend that I gave three things in that list, cut out the dishonesty crap.
quote:So, I guess that's the reason why the statements you referred to were missing.
No, it's because, as I stated, I WAS ONLY LOOKING FOR ONE EXAMPLE THAT MET MY CRITERIA. I found one. I gave it. I stopped looking.
Does the all caps help? Is there something else I can do to get it through your thick skull. Please, let me know.
You can claim my statement is unsupported with respect to one of the three things in the list. That's fine. You can't claim it's dishonest, at least not if you care at all about being honest.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Maybe the better question is, who gave us the power to play god and make the decision ourselves?
Whether a couple thousand die by the hand of a brutal dictator, or a half million die because of a poorly coordinated, planned, and executed war...who are we to decide? Who are we to tell them that the freedom we've chosen for them is BETTER for them than living under the rule of a dictator, which by the way, gave them more religious and secular freedom than any other nation on the region.
I think that question is more important than choosing whether or not this war is a distraction or that leaving alone would've been better for both of us.
I can't begin to imagine what the average Iraqi thinks of America by reading the news. To say nothing of watching a war unfold before them, they have to deal with Santorum call their homes a distraction for the sake of saving the US homeland, and they have to listen to us debate the future of their nation as if we were Eru or Manwe, and they were the Noldor and the terrorists Morgoth. THERE'S a LOTR analogy for you (if you've read the Sil). The arrogance alone would piss me off as an unforgiveable offense.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Boy the things I miss not having internet at home!
Any point in me jumping in here? Oh, why not.
Yes. Fewer people would likely be dead if we had left Saddam Hussein in power. It is true that he was a mass murderer. None of that particularly bothered us when he was doing it - back when he was our buddy. (It should have. Had we bothered we probably could have restrained him. He owed a lot to our support.)
Barring a direct threat to us, we had no right to decide for the Iraqi people how "they would be better off."
And this presumes that an invasion was the only way to remove Saddam Hussein from power and I don't think that was necessarily the case.
As horrible as he was, that horror was what was keeping a lid on religious extremists in Iraq. Hussein was a secularist - a religious moderate. That was why we kept him in power. Before they invaded Kuwait (and he practically asked our permission first) Iraq was a comparatively liberal, modern country. Women had a great deal fo freedom, for example. Literacy rates were high.
Maybe the Iraqi people do prefer the current chaos, but we had no right to choose that for them.
Oh, and given the administration's attitudes, and the way they sold the war, and the neo-cons published position on the middle east, the chances that we were going to do it "right" were pretty darn slim.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
