Sidelined by reality | The neocons are suffering one humiliation after another

[gravity]

Apr 19th 2007
From The Economist print edition

THE American legal system has rediscovered the virtue of one of the most ancient forms of punishment—public humiliation. Prostitutes' “Johns” can now have their names aired on television. Mail thieves can find themselves wearing a sandwichboard giving full details of their crime. And people who deface Nativity scenes can end up parading through town accompanied by a donkey.

And neoconservatives? These too, it seems, are now being subjected to a grand exercise in public humiliation. Paul Wolfowitz is hanging on to his job at the World Bank by his fingernails (see article). Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a Wolfowitz protégé, is facing prison; Douglas Feith, who worked with Mr Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, is an “untouchable” who is floating around the margins of academia.

...

Betraying the founders

But, more important, neocons have been discredited for ideological reasons. Most of the recent mistakes can be traced back not just to flawed execution but to flawed thinking. The neocons argued that democracy might be an antidote to the Middle East's problems: but democracy proved too delicate a plant. They claimed that the assertion of American power might wipe out “Vietnam syndrome”: but it has ended up making America more reluctant to intervene abroad. They talked about linking American power with American ideals: but it turned out, at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, that power can corrupt those ideals.

The tragedy of neoconservatism is that the movement began as a critique of the arrogance of power. Early neocons warned that government schemes to improve the world might well end up making it worse. They also argued that social engineers are always plagued by the law of unintended consequences. The neocons have not only messed up American foreign policy by forgetting their founders' insights. They may also have put a stake through the heart of their own movement.

More: http://economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9043308

[aquart]

1. If the stake doesn't do it, cut off their heads.

[TwilightGardener]

3. The word "Neocon" is fast becoming a political slur--no one will

want to be associated with that disaster of a movement in the next year or two.

Edit--meant to reply to OP

[aquart]

7. After what they did to liberal, I hope it becomes worse than putz.

[yurbud]

21. It should be spelled neoCon and call them neoConmen.

the dictionary will eventually read, "a form of scam that is successful at first but blows up in the face of the scammers before they can make their getaway."

[pocoloco]

2. Oh well, take the money and run.

[formercia]

12. That was the goal

These people are not stupid. I'm sure they knew it was a losing proposition for the taxpayer but they invested early in the armaments industries and before it all comes crashing down, they will cash out and leave the wreckage for us to deal with.

[formercia]

14. Trireme Partners

Two years to the day before 9/11, Doug Feith , with the help of Richard Perle, set up an investment vehicle called Trireme Partners to act as consultants for those wishing to invest in entities that would likely profit from the upcoming war with Iraq.

[formercia]

15. Some historical background:

The word Trireme means little to most people. It is the term for a three banked slave galley, Favorite of the Knights of Malta and last used militarily at the Battle of LePonto in Oct., 1571. The victory of the combined Christian fleet against the Muslim fleet is celebrated every Year by the Knights and is the time when new members are installed.


INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD IN 2050

by Hon. Frank Shakespeare

http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Dossier/1998-11-12/introduction.html

--snip--

To most Americans, Islam is vaguely a group of guys riding around on camels in the desert. That’s oversimplified , but we have no up close sense of Islam at all. For the Europeans, it is very, very different. Europeans know in their stomach, if they don’t know it in their immediate intellectual consciousness, that it was in historical terms just yesterday, just some centuries ago, that Islam was created in the wilderness of the Arabian peninsula, and went across the whole of northern Africa, that is to say, the southern Mediterranean, and then attempted in two prongs to take Christendom. One prong went up through the Balkans, and was stopped at the gates of Vienna by King John Sobieski of Poland in one of the pivotal battles of all history. And if that battle had been lost, it is probable that most of us in this room would be Muslim. And then at another point they went up through the other peninsula sticking down from Europe. The Balkan peninsula is on one side. On the other side is Iberia. And they went up through Iberia and they went into France and they were stopped only at Tours by Charles Martel, in another of the great, epical, momentous battles of history, and if that battle had been lost, it is probable that most of us in this room today would be Muslim. It took eight hundred years for them to be driven out of Iberia and down across the Mediterranean— 400 years to get them out of what is now Portugal and 800 years to get them out of Spain. And then there was the third critical battle, the naval Battle of LePonto, for which we have the Feast of the Rosary in the month of October. Europeans are very, very conscious in their viscera, that just across the Mediterranean from them is an enormous, forceful idea. Islam is not Russia, Islam is an idea. It is not a nation, it is an idea. And it came within a hair, on several occasions, of conquering Christendom, which would have changed the course of humanity.

--snip--

[Morgana LaFey]

16. Thanks so much for that info on Trireme

It's absolutely obscene.

[formercia]

17. They thought it was an inside joke that nobody would figure out.

They forgot about the Internet. Arrogant assh0les.

[Morgana LaFey]

28. Precisely. It takes your breath away, the arrogance. Doesn't it? nt

[formercia]

18. Triremes were powered by Jews

The Knights would raid shipping and take any Jews hostage. Those who had relatives with means were ransomed, those unable to win their release, spent the rest of their days as slaves on the galleys.

The Knights were the last to give up slavery in Europe and they supported the secession of the South from the Union to protect their slave trade in the Americas.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. Triremes required skilled rowers, and thus were probably not slave powered

Clashes between Mediterranean war galleys of the early modern period have all too often been dismissed as unsophisticated donnybrooks, "land battles at sea." A related notion holds that galley tactics were relatively unchanging, based on the observation that, like steam-powered warships, galleys could maneuver independently of the wind. In fact, oarsmen—unlike steam engines—tire rapidly and require food and water. They also require motivation, and the nature of the motivation was important: Galleys rowed by freemen were very different from those rowed by convicts or slaves. To understand the changing nature of galley tactics, we must return to antiquity and the classical trireme. Of a fundamentally different design than its early modern successor, the classical trireme was a thin wooden shell encasing 170 oarsmen, working on three superimposed levels, whose job it was to drive a bronze underwater ram into the hull of an enemy ship.

The ram was effectively the trireme's only weapon, and the vessel's sides were horribly vulnerable to attack. Everything depended on speed and agility, and non-propulsive crew members were limited to a few sailors and helmsmen, plus a handful of marines to throw off grappling hooks and shoot an occasional arrow. These characteristics gave classical galley tactics, of which the Athenians were masters, an explosive, all-or-nothing character. Pivoting and darting to the attack, a well-handled, well-rowed trireme could penetrate the enemy line, strike from the side, sink its opponent, and disengage with impunity.
...
Still, the galley was an inherently offensive weapon, long, slender, and low in the water to pack the maximum number of oarsmen, enjoying the best mechanical advantage, into a suitably-sized hull. By about 1300, the quest for speed yielded an optimal design, the trireme alla senzile (literally, "in the simple manner") in which oarsmen were seated three to a bench, each pulling his own, individual oar. The typical trireme alla senzile had a hull 136 feet long and seventeen to eighteen feet wide, commonly with twenty-four banks of oars—that is, twenty-four pairs of rowing benches armed with oars—though it might have as many as twenty-five and as few as seventeen (the figures cited are representative of the time of the battle of Lepanto, in 1571).
...
The second factor was the sixteenth-century price revolution, which put the wages of free oarsmen beyond the reach of Western states from the 1550s. Since alla senzile rowing demanded skills that slaves and convicts could not master—years of practice were required—there followed a rapid shift in the western Mediterranean to a scaloccio galleys, in which five or more oarsmen pulled a single, large oar. This preserved tactical dash speed and permitted larger and more heavily armed galleys—Don John's Real at Lepanto had no fewer than thirty-five banks and seven men to an oar—but the number of oarsmen increased geometrically, reducing radius of action because of the need for more frequent (and far more massive) provisioning.

http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/guilmartin.com/Galley.html

So your idea of linking the name 'trireme' with slavery doesn't really work. If they did want it to have any symbolism, it's more likely to be a reference to something like the use of triremes at the Battle of Salamis, which was when the Greeks beat the Persians after Thermopylae. Perle and his cronies might have claimed they wer in a similar struggle - they have very high opinions of themselves.

[formercia]

24. The Knights of Malta took slaves

and Jews were their favorite prey. It's well documented history.

I'm sure one skilled oarsman per oar could give a cue when to pull. They had plenty of time for OJT.

http://www.angelfire.com/al/AttardBezzinaLawrenc/Slaves/Slave.html

In 1567, Large numbers of Jews, escaping to the Levant from the persecution of Pius V, fell victims to the Knights. "Many of the victims sank like lead to the depths of the sea before the fury of the attack. Many others were imprisoned in the Maltese dungeons at this time of desolation," writes the chronicler. It was not only those who went down to the sea in ships over whom the shadow hung. Of the Marranos of Ancona who fell victims to the fanaticism and treachery of Paul IV, thirty-eight who eluded the stake were sent in chains to the galleys of Malta, though they managed to escape on the way.


They surely weren't the first nor the last to be assigned there.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. No mentions of 'triremes' there in your link, you see?

The point is that a trireme only had one rower per oar. So "one skilled oarsman per oar" means "no slaves". And each oar had to coordinate very well with those in the same bank - which required a lot of training.

[formercia]

26. The Trireme was their primary war vessel.

Your argument is pitifully weak. It wasn't until 1571 that the trireme fell out of favor for whatever reason.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. Weak? I've shown 2 sources saying triremes were too difficult for slaves

where you've just asserted that triremes used slaves, without evidence.

Maybe I should weaken my argument further with another reference:

A lesson we learn from John Morrison is just how limited book learning can be. It's one thing to say scholarly things about an ancient warship. It's another thing entirely to build one and row it. The first oar crew on Olympias back in 1987 was made up of trireme-loving classicists, and the results were comical. By the `90 and `92 trials, the Trireme Trust had realized that rowing the ship required experienced athletic rowers—oarsmen who could row like an Athenian. You see, Athenian oarsmen were highly disciplined and well paid; unlike Roman galleys, Athenian triremes were too nuanced for slave labor. Moreover, the act of rowing Olympias has illuminated many pieces in the historical puzzle that had hitherto been obscure.

http://www.credenda.org/issues/13-5historia.php

Weaken it fatally with another?

It was clear from the literature that triremes were evolved from earlier warships (above), the top two shown here, at the top the 50-oared single-level ship and in the middle the later two-level 50-oared ship. The trireme represented an astonishingly large step from the middle ship. Its cost to build and maintain would have been four or five times as great and, more importantly, crewing costs would have been four times as great. Remember these crews were paid, not slaves.

http://www.soue.org.uk/souenews/issue5/jenkinlect.html

[formercia]

29. Your references are for Roman and Athenian Galleys

I'm talking about the late 16th Century and the Knights of Malta.

Are you inferring that Jews are not capable of learning how to row? They had plenty of time to learn. To infer that slaves are not intelligent or skilled flies in the face of history.

About 200 galleys were sunk at the battle of LePonto but they continued to be used by the French as prison ships until the French Revolution. The Knights were loyal to the Kings of France and served until they were driven out during the Revolution. Napoleon finally drove them from Malta in June of 1798.

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. And they're about the 16th century too

Go and read the Guilmartin piece again.

I'm saying, and so is the historian Guilmartin, that the skill and teamwork that a trireme required couldn't be got from a bunch of recalcitrant slaves, who were unenthusiastic about honing their skills to help their enslavers.

A different kind of trireme became the dominant type of late medieval galley. In this type, three oarsmen, each having his own oar, shared the same bench. Instead of piercing the hull along three levels, the oars passed over the wales along the same level in clusters of three. Early modern galleys typically had about 24 banks of oars; their hulls were 36-39 m (120-130 ft) long and just over 6 m (20 ft) wide.

Though the advent of the lateen (fore-and-aft) sail and the stern rudder rendered the galley obsolete for commerce, it retained its military importance into the 16th century. Beginning about 1550, the trireme was replaced by galleys in which four or more oarsmen on the same bench pulled a single large oar. This change accompanied a shift from predominantly free oarsmen to convicts and slaves. Sometimes as many as eight oarsmen were used on each bench. In the Battle of Lepanto (1571), the last great galley fight, some galleys had over 200 oarsmen.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/1820/WSP/ships.html#galley

In Venetian ships the rowers were freemen , in the fleets of Pisa, Genoa the Ottoman Empirethey in the main consisted of : the captured enemy; their own convicts; those given or sold to them. The great fear of the Commanders and crews carrying slaves were uprisings,more so in Moslem ships carrying Christian slaves.

The Venetian use of free men as rowers greatly affected ship design.Ship breadth was dictated by the number of crew carried.The Venetian rowers did not need to be guarded and so it was possible to carry less crew,the rowers doubling as fighters,their ships of narrower beam ,and therefore faser.Contributing to the speed of the Venetian galley were their angled rowing benches forming a herring bone pattern,the oarsmen three to a bench ,all controlling a single oar.When viewed from the side a single bank of oars would have been seen grouped in to divisions of three, a slight gap between each grouping. One wonders however how such vessels behaved in a storm.

http://www.geocities.com/manzikertca/lepantoarmada.html

'Galley' does not mean 'trireme'. A trireme was one particular type of galley, that had almost disappeared by the time of Lepanto - the Venetians were still using them, crewed with free men. Since this whole subthread developed from your claim that the use of 'Trireme' by Perle et al. was some reference to slaves, I want to show that triremes, whether ancient Greek or medieval, were not crewed by slaves. Your theory doesn't stand up to examination.

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[formercia]

32. If you ever get to Barcelona....

http://www.spain-info.com/barcelona/barcelona-museums.htm

• Museu Maritim
With a large collection of model ships, including a full-size replica of Juan de Austria’s Lepanto slave gallery, the Maritime Museum is a must-see for boat lovers and Barcelona history enthusiasts.

Av. De les Drasanes


They misspelled galley....

[formercia]

33. Which leads us back to Junior's Quixotic campaign....

http://members.aol.com/lammermuiruk/lepanto.htm

Jorge Luis Borges was a great admirer of the writings of G. K. Chesterton, who was born in London. Chesterton imagined the infinite road followed by Cervantes' knight in his poem, 'Lepanto', about the famous battle of 1571 against the Turks, that formed part of the Christian crusade against Islam. That battle was won by the handsome young Don John of Austria, the bastard half-brother of Philip II of Spain, who once planned to marry Mary Queen of Scots. In the last verse Chesterton celebrates Don Juan's victory and he imagines Cervantes, who fought at the battle, having a vision of Don Quixote riding forever up a straggling road in Spain.

"Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath

(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)

And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,

Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,

And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade ...

(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

Don John of Austria rode home from the crusade, but Cervantes did not. He was wounded in the battle and lost the use of his left hand, then on his way home he was captured by pirates and taken to Algiers where he was made a slave. Decades later, after many years of struggle and poverty and several stays in Spanish jails, Cervantes wrote the picaresque tale of his "lean and foolish knight", and in that tale Don Quixote hears a man relate his experience of the battle of Lepanto that he said was such a happy day for Christianity but so unhappy for him, because he found himself the night after the battle with chains on his feet and handcuffs on his hands. This man, called the Captive, swears that he is telling a true story.

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. I link to historians, and you link to Nostradamus?

This is hilarious. :rofl:

Don Juan's galley? You mean this one, with just one set of oars? It's not a trireme, is it? And, strangely, G. K. Chesterton has nothing to do with triremes.

By the way, I deeply resent being called an 'apologist'. Why you've decided to start insulting me, I don't know. All I'm doing is pointing out the flaws in your claims about how triremes were rowed, and thus your idea about what the name Perle used. I just want DUers to know what a trireme was.

[Name removed]

35. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[muriel_volestrangler]

36. How dare you? That's Godwin's Law on steroids

I show you the historians' view that triremes were crewed by paid volunteers, and because that doesn't fit your pet theory, you say my view is equivalent to Holocaust denial?

I've never been so fucking insulted on DU. I never said that the Knights Hospitallers didn't use slaves, nor did I dispute that some of their slaves were Jewish. I just pointed out that historians don't think slaves were used in triremes, ancient or medieval. That puts a big hole in your idea of why Perle and his partners chose the name 'Trireme'. But rather than showing any counter evidence (hint: showing that Nostradamus knew of the existence of triremes isn't evidence that slaves were use to row them), you call me an 'apologist' (I presume you mean for Perle), and then suggest I'm like a Holocaust denier? Outrageous. After that, I have to wonder if you're calling me an apologist for Hitler.

To make it clear: you did care about the number of oars a trireme had ("It is the term for a three banked slave galley"), but faced with evidence against the 'slave' part, you've backed into a gross insult against me. It's the biggest 'ad hominem' argument I've ever had attempted against me. It's despicable.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[formercia]

39. The truth is always despicable to those it's levied against

You can whine and moan all you want. The truth is there for all to see and the apologist references you cite aren't worth the virtual paper they're printed on.

The Knights will be exposed for who they are.

Below you will find the phone number of the maritime museum in Barcelona Spain. They have a full scale replica of Don Juan of Austria's slave galley that was used at the battle of lepanto.
Call them and they will verify what I say.

Museu Marítim (Maritime Museum)

Situated at the bottom of Las Ramblas, in the most important civilian gothic building in the world. A unique museum outstanding not only for what it displays but also for the way it displays. Houses an extensive range of nautical treasures including model ships, instruments, maps and charts. The virtual reality exhibition Sea Adventure, in all major European languages, lets visitors imagine life as a galley slave on the Don Juan of Austria, stride the stormy decks of a Cuban-bound corvette and experience what it would have been like in the bowels of the first submarine in history . Metro : Drassanes (L3) Tel [phone]. Mon-Sun 10.00-19.00, July to September 10.00-23.00.



http://www.bcninternet.com/Whatson/museumfun.htm

[muriel_volestrangler]

40. See post #34 again, both for the pictures of the galley and my objection

to your use of "apologist". I really don't know who you think the sites describing triremes are apologists for now, though.

The picture in #34 comes from the museum, and there is also a link to a Spanish government website, giving a detailed drawing of Don Juan's galley (about half way down). In both, there is clearly only one level of identical oars - it is not a trireme. It's perfectly simple to understand.

"The Knights will be exposed for who they are." What on earth do you mean by that?

[formercia]

41. Perhaps you should go whine

and get the rest of my historically valid posts deleted.

The point you were making was that they didn't use slaves. The historical facts say otherwise.

[muriel_volestrangler]

42. No, go and read my posts again

I didn't say "they" didn't use slaves. I said that triremes weren't rowed by slaves - and I linked to historians who said that. My posts do talk about other types of galleys being crewed by slaves. You, on the other hand, have just asserted that triremes were crewed by slaves, with no evidence to back you up.

And there were no 'historical facts' in the deleted posts. Obviously, your posts were deleted because of your insults; but if you feel like quoting a Nostradamus verse again, as if that shows anything more than the existence of the word 'trireme', go ahead.

[formercia]

43. Nostradamus was well respected in his time

and it is the first time I have ever referenced him. He lived during that period and knew the knights, so his reference of the Trieme was a valid one.

As for his predictions,The one I cited came true.

I'm perfectly happy to keep this thread going ad nauseum. Hopefully a few thousand more will read it.

[The Magistrate]

38. Thank You, Ms. Volestrangler

For a pleasant discursion into this seldom recalled area of maritime history. You have found the right references for the subject.

[ronatchig]

4. One can only hope

the neocons have not only exposed their own pipe dreams, but also the idiocy of spending 750 billion +

on a DEFENSE Department that could or would not protect the country from some supped middle ages era

religious fanatics.

[leveymg]

5. There are two roots to neoconservatism: one comparatively benign, such

as Daniel Patrick Moynihan who sought an alternative to the protypical welfare state, not because he wanted to deny the poor essential services, he just thought maybe state bureaucracies were not the most humane or efficient way for poor people to get the things they need most. Moynihan suggested cutting everyone under the poverty line a check, and letting them spend the money as they saw fit. That idea went on to become the earned-income credit, that's proved to be one of the most effective means the federal government has of lifting the working poor out of destitution.

The other branch of neoconservatism is poisoned at the root. That is the neoconservatism associated with the Chicago School of sociologists and free market political economists, particularly Leo Strauss, the theoretician of authoritian elite rule who held that democracies can not be trusted and must be ruled by deception. This had great appeal to some Cold War liberals who steadily moved to the Right for several decades as center-right parties took near dictatorial power in the United States and Israel under emergency rule since 2001.

[nealmhughes]

8. Nor must we omit the early ties to Trotskyism. It seems that the Long War

is merely a substitute for Old Lev's Perm. Revolution. Likewise, these guys are rooted in theory, and woe to he who should not toe the line -- only Trotsky actually could fight a war, as it was the dependence of the Revolution's success that would ensure the continuation of the Revolution throughout the world.
Likewise, liberal democracy must be brought to the world, even if at the point of a bayonet and woe be to he who dare get in the way.
Of course, a lot of Not True Believers also found a strong executive and massive military entirely to their liking, as there is a lot of money to be made from Perm. War.
Throw in some Tribulators and Rapturists and assorted Telebangelists, and one has a recipe for disaster.
An Iraq where one cannot live next door to a person of the "other" religious bent, where Saudi Arabia fuels Sunni war and Iran Shiite, and what is the use of the liberal democracy and free market if no one is alive to enjoy them?
They latched onto Fukuyama so readily and fastly to show that like an inverted Inverted Hegel (as Marx called dialectal materialism "standing Hegel on his head") that the age of the nation state was over! Liberal Democracy with Chinese cars alongside German ones, all would be fine forever, history would be dead and only a chronology of important scientific discoveries and heads of state would be needed, that time would stand still with the entire world going off to work at 1 of the 100 worldwide corporations. . .
Good God! The Serbs and Croats fought a war over which shoulder to touch first when making the sign of the cross and whether to write the same language in Cyrillic or Roman and whether or not people who don't go to the mosque should have hegemony over people who do not go to church.
How could these guys not have counted nationalism and ethnicity in their equation? Is there no k factor for their formulae?
To hell with 'em. They are living there now in their sleep with proverbial blood-drenched sheets covering their sleep tormented with images of the Iraqi democracy, meanwhile, Wolfowitz continues to suck his comb and find new no-show jobs for his squeeze. Disgusting demented individuals, the lot and parcel.

[annabanana]

19. This post should be recommended, highlighted, memorized

and recited to children at every opportunity! People should grow up knowing this like they do their own pillows.

[gravity]

13. Neoconservativism is like most ideologies

They start off having good intentions, but they either get hijacked or suffer from their unintended consequences

[CJCRANE]

6. The whole assumption is false.

Bushco do not believe in democracy. It's just window dressing for military adventurism.

[rhett o rick]

9. They may be suffering but I will feel a hell of a lot better when they are out of power.

Cheney, Wolfy, Gonzo, are still in power. All we got so far is scooter.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

10. I must slightly disagree

They would suffer if they had any shame. They don't. All they care about is tactical victories, expecting a string of them to destroy the democrats, indies and moderate GOPers.
The fact that so many connected with the neoconman movement have been caught thieving, lying, or committing other crimes does make them feel bad - but only that they were caught, not about doing the actual crime.

That is the unique aspect of NeoConmanism. It is a criminal class, genetically spliced onto soul-less whores with political insight and talent, and artificially pumped up with MSM steroids, corporate supporters and war-mongering military and pols. Now sprinkle on a big dose of demented religious reichists, and you end up with another fine mess you've got us into, Ollie.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Don't underestimate the power of PUBLIC social disapproval.

It has to be public, because, you'd be surprised how many people won't do the right thing, until it is.

[yurbud]

20. read that Rummy was getting shit at his retirement home

all these guys shouldn't be able to take a piss without someone throwing rotten fruit at them.

[formercia]

22. Just like him to move into the home of a notorious slaver

he needs to be reminded of that often.