John Hannah, Patriot
By the time he left office, George W. Bush was hideously unpopular among the American people. Indeed, people hated him so much that the public continues to have extremely low confidence in the political party to which he belonged. Indeed, UFO conspiracy theories are more popular than the Republican Party. But as unpopular as Bush was at home, he was much more unpopular abroad.
Barack Obama’s election has drastically improved the world’s view of America to the extent that the Nobel Committee even saw fit to grant him a premature-seeming Nobel Peace Prize. Under the circumstances, any reasonable representative of American policy would try to emphasize as much as possible that he or she shared the world’s extremely low opinion of Obama’s predecessor and emphasize that whatever you may say about Obama, he’s not George W. Bush. For example Hillary Clinton is a smart woman:
Clinton told the students “there is a huge difference” between the Obama administration’s approach and that of former President George W. Bush. “I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him,” she said to a burst of applause from the audience of several hundred students. “So to me, it’s like daylight and dark.”
John Hannah, despised and discredited former henchman to Dick Cheney, himself the the most despised and discredit of the many despised and discredited henchmen of the despised and discredited Bush administration, whines in response:
Does anyone advising President Obama and the secretary of state really believe that this kind of partisanship and trash-talking abroad about another American president is really going to buy us much long-term goodwill among either our friends or our adversaries? Do they imagine that this sort of thing really helps to advance U.S. national interests?
To which Mike Crowley offers the only reasonable response of course it will buy us goodwill.
Obviously, though, Hannah can’t really be so dumb as to not realize that there’s enormous, enormous, enormous good will to be gained through bashing the despised and discredited Bush administration. I take it that he savvily realizes that the world’s greatest fear about Obama is that he might not really be all that different from Bush. Hannah’s attacks, however, emphasize the reality of the change and thus improve America’s imagine in the world. So I say—nice work John Hannah!
43 Responses to “John Hannah, Patriot”
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October 31st, 2009 at 11:37 am
Regardless of the pathetic despised ones, or maybe speaking of which – wasn’t Hillary overall pro the “War” in Iraq? I mean, she did vote for it! Hanah is out so who cares, but Clinton is in – and as she violates promises she herself made to, say, the Palestinians, is she really any different than the privous administration?
October 31st, 2009 at 11:37 am
Maybe it’s the gin talking, but I found this post rather amusing. I’ll have to keep Crowley’s response in mind the next time I talk to any conservatives.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:11 pm
He’s gotta be the change or else claiming to be different will be almost equally risible in retrospect.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Part of the Bush hatred from the left is/was emotional, not rational. In my case, that was a major part of it. There are few of his major policy decisions, including the war in Iraq, that did not have some kernel of reasonable basis. While I understand why I was so infuriated with (both of) his elections I also see why, looking back, a reaction from the left of blind hatred for all his decisions is bad for America. There is good and bad in each of them and what we need is a rational look at each one, salvaging what was right and rejecting what was wrong – not just more unthinking revulsion of everything that he stood for.
The last thing we need is to make decisions according to whether the Europeans will love us more or less – which is what the Nobel prize was about – hoping to assure that we will.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Right, just like Carter believed that he could turn things around that way.
How did that work out for him?
October 31st, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Part of the Bush hatred from the left is/was emotional, not rational.
Really? So which specific actions of the Bush administration that “the left” opposed for “emotional” reasons have been shown by time to have been good policy?
October 31st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Just imagine the international goodwill when BHO arrests GWB and Cheney for war crimes!
October 31st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
> I also see why, looking back, a reaction from
> the left of blind hatred for all his decisions
> is bad for America. There is good and bad in
> each of them
What was “good” about torture, pray tell? What was “good” about violating both the law and the Constitution to conduct illegal spying on US citizens within the boundaries of the United States? What was “good” about actively pursing the Nixon/Cheney theory that “what the President does is not illegal”?
Cranky
October 31st, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Ray in Seattle, best concern troll of the week.
We need to salvage the good of invading countries under false pretenses, illegaly spying on everybody, killing hundreds of thousands of people and torturing prisoners to death.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Cranky, you’re forgetting the moral frame of reference they use: “Does it piss liberals off?” It does, so it’s good.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Do they imagine that this sort of thing really helps to advance U.S. national interests?
You know what would? Prosecuting war criminal apparatchiks like John Hannah. Or at very least ensuring that they are no longer rewarded by the American political establishment.
The ‘criminalizing politics’ line is so often the whine of people who, were they henchmen for a different nation, might be getting acquainted with the decor of a cell.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Shorter Ray: in retrospect, hippies should admit they were wrong.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:53 pm
‘psst, remember don’t talk about the
warAUMF.’October 31st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Ray in Seattle, best concern troll of the week.
Hear, hear. We’ve definitely seen a drop-off, I think, in troll quality ever since internet discussions branched outside of USENET. Nowadays, all you need to do to be a troll is mindlessly repeat right-wing talking points or drop some obnoxious one-liner and scurry off (looking at you, ostap and James Robertson). The true masters of trollery were the ones who could say something completely ridiculous but stopped just short of the crazy line in order to make people think he was serious and attempt to reason with him. Ray in Seattle did a good job, but the best recent example I’ve seen of dancing the crazy line while baiting others into giving him attention was Atanarjuat at Balloon Juice.
By contrast, doofuses like Al are just pathetic.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Just so you know, there’s a more famous John Hannah who was a hall of fame linebacker for the NFL’s New England Patriots in the 70s and 80s. Totaly thought this was going to be about him and was very confused at first.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Gah. Lineman, not linebacker. Yay for posting first thing in the morning.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:07 pm
You can tell how much the left actually cares about the whole “illegal war” thing by what it protests. We now have Democrats running the entire show – is Code Pink, or Move On (or anyone) staging “out now” protests for Iraq or Afghanistan? Gosh now – it’s almost as if it was more of a partisan thing.
Since the election, the number of drone attacks in Afghanistan has escalated as well – beforehand, that was wanton slaughter of civilians. Now? Crickets.
Apparently, it all depends on whose ox is being gored. The actual actions are way, way less relevant.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:20 pm
What does “the left” have to do with MoveOn or Democrats?
And Code Pink is still protesting the two wars, to their credit, although they’re not really leftists either.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:30 pm
You can tell how much the left actually cares about the whole “illegal war” thing by what it protests.
You can tell how stupid, cloistered and selfish a fucker J-Rob is from comments like this one.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:30 pm
First, to say that Code Pink and Move On aren’t part of the left is either denial or delusion. Second, neither is protesting much of anything right now. There have been zero large protests of either war since Obama got into office. There have been zero large protests of Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan.
So like I said, it’s clearly more of a partisan thing than an actual set of moral values. If there were actual principles involved, there would still be protests going on.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Actually, in a move that I thought showed Bush’s karma kicking in, he apologized in Montreal last week for speaking under what he called the “Mission impossible” banner in May, 2003.
If I was to compound all the elements that make up the stupid rightwing constituency, from meaningless toughness to cosmic incompetence to psychopathological resentment, I would come up with Bush. He represents everything that has made America sink into second class nationhood.
But even so, I would never, ever come up with a man who could calmly recall that the banner he spoke under in his moment of triumph read, Mission Impossible. This is an exponential level of more stupid – stupid to the point of surrealism.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
it’s clearly more of a partisan thing than an actual set of moral values.
Or, y’know, it’s clearly that mass protests are usually deployed when those in power don’t even pretend to listen to you and standard communications channels are closed off.
Is J-Rob really this dense?
October 31st, 2009 at 1:48 pm
is Code Pink… staging “out now protests for… Afghanistan?
Gosh, I just don’t know.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:49 pm
No, pseudonymous, it’s because J-Rob is making shit up. As usual.
October 31st, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Re: 15, Yglesias was making a joke with the post title, playing off the reference to the more famous (and less odious, even to this Jets fan) Pats player. I thought it was funny.
October 31st, 2009 at 2:32 pm
James, you total fucking moron, ‘the left’ was always somewhat always somewhat ambivalent about Afghanistan. There were those who recognized that the attack on that nation was a childish and violent response to a police problem, and those who confused doing something with doing the right thing.
Your problem (well, that’s hardly fair, you have so many problems though to be honest the root one is you are too god damned stupid to consider facts and evidence) is that you imagine ‘the left’ has the kind of blind followership that ‘the right’ does. Move-On may be on the left, but they are not the left. Code Pink likewise.
Now, considering that we can see thought going into Obama’s actions – as opposed to the simpleminded tantrums of the unqualified oaf that preceded him that produced so much of the death that brings you so much joy – he gets a little slack. And there’s some recognition among people who aren’t dumber than a twenty-pound gold doorstop that cleaning up after the malign thug you supported is no easy task.
October 31st, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Where’s joe from Lowell? He’ll love this title. Hell, I love the title, and John Hannah was the Patriot that was “flattening” half my team’s defense (Buffalo Bills) all throughout the 70’s.
Hey, how much of the Nobel Committee’s decision to give Obama the peace prize was simply to bitch slap the American Right? To say to them, ANYBODY is preferable to you clowns, especially clowns like John Hannah “the Lesser.”
October 31st, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Trying to please the world is fool’s gold, so it’s perfect for the Obama Administration.
October 31st, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Trying to police the world is a violent and thuggish thing to do, so it was perfect for the American right.
October 31st, 2009 at 2:50 pm
yes, the world has demonstrated time and time again that they are much better without us. Haven’t they?
October 31st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Yeah, the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis are just cheering from their graves.
Dumbfuck – WWII was six decades ago…get the fuck over it.
October 31st, 2009 at 3:50 pm
#22 – the Obama administration is listening to the call to withdraw every bit as much as Bush did. He’s also decided to maintain the Patriot Act, and the whole Guantanamo Bay thing looks like a giant game of Kabuki.
So I stand by what I said – the “protest movement” has received its marching orders, and has stood down.
October 31st, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Pretty sure I never mentioned WWII. Checking…nope. Did not.
And “hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis?” Are you listening to Janeane Garafolo again? I thought we talked about that.
October 31st, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Without the American right? Everyone is better off without the American conservative base. It’s an immature movement based on cultural anger and paranoia over imaginary webs of left-wing elites (Hollywood, scientists, “the media,” Noam Chomsky, MoveOn.org) that have zero power in the world and often have no real connection to each other in the first place.
October 31st, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Once again, more cultural resentment. Nevermind the studies in major research journals like The Lancet. (And nevermind that Garalo’s most recent role was on 24).
October 31st, 2009 at 5:21 pm
So I stand by what I said – the “protest movement” has received its marching orders, and has stood down.
And James “hey didn’t Woodrow Wilson cause Bush to murder Iraqis” Robertson proves my point – he’s too fucking stupid to notice that no one actually gives marching orders to ‘the left.’
And to the other dumbfuck – can you point to an actual need for American force to police the world since WWII? We can agree that removing Hitler was a good thing. Was the senseless slaughter of a million Vietnamese citizens too? How about the destabilization of Cambodia? Death Squads in Central America? The restoration of monarchy to Kuwait? The brutal and unprovoked slaughter of Iraqis (James thinks this was a good thing because he appears to hate the Iraqi people – he has provided no other reason why he thinks they should have been murdered beyond “they’ve been asking for it for decades” which no person should be stupid enough to accept).
On balance, since WWII we haven’t seen much need for America to police the world. Which is why I mentioned it you dipshit. Guess what, the fact that you didn’t mention it doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant. How clueless are you?
October 31st, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I stand by what I said – the “protest movement” has received its marching orders, and has stood down.
Since you’re too stupid to click on a “Let Me Google That For You” link, I’ll spell it out: Code Pink held a march against the war in Afghanistan in Chicago on Oct. 3, this year. This is in direct contradiction to your claim that Code Pink has not protested against the war in Afghanistan. In direct contradiction. If you stand by what you say, it’s because you’re an incredibly stupid person who doesn’t know how to look up the simplest fact on the internet, or a bald-faced liar. Either way, you should shut the fuck up.
October 31st, 2009 at 7:59 pm
John Hannah was a great tackle for, oddly enough, the Patriots. University of Alabama. I don’t think he was stupid, though.
…paranoia over imaginary webs of left-wing elites (Hollywood, scientists, “the media,” Noam Chomsky, MoveOn.org) that have zero power in the world and often have no real connection to each other in the first place.
You left out college professors, though you did name Noam Chomsky who is unknown to 98% of the American public. I guess you’ve noticed the Right’s obssession’s with small, basically powerless groups like Code Pink, Acorn and those you listed.
Meanwhile, insurance companies and defense contractors are our friends, even if Dwight Eisenhower did have his doubts about the defense contractors. We all know he was just a communist, though.
October 31st, 2009 at 10:54 pm
For all the talk about Yglesias not correcting his errors, let’s see if James Robertson will ever come clean about his glaring factual error that was the basis for his comment — and his doubling down on said comment.
November 1st, 2009 at 12:52 am
It’s funny, in a sad way, that Mr Compoundista has decided that I am a number, not a free man.
As others have said, Code Pink is still protesting. In other areas, Obama is under probation, just as a new coach who inherits a fucked-up team tends not to be jeered from the stands until it’s clear that it’s the same old same old. The decision on whether or not to escalate in Afghanistan is one of those touchstones.
And it’s not as if J-Rob considered the six-figure protests against his beloved Iraqi misadventure to be anything other than dirty fucking hippies, is it? Six-figure protests don’t happen that often — the teabaggers still claim otherwise, but they couldn’t do it with Dick Armey’s flying monkeys doing logistics — and when they do happen, it’s generally out of a sense of utter marginalization from politics. Perhaps J-Rob is just pissed that millions of tight-faced solipsists haven’t risen up in anger, though J-Rob’s idea of protest is to whine about the jackboot of Big Government when fishing Valuepak coupons out of his mailbox.
November 1st, 2009 at 1:13 am
So Hilary spent her time in the senate oposing torture and the two wars right? Or was she for it just like the majority of all Americans that were for it but now try to say “not me was all Bush”.
November 1st, 2009 at 9:53 am
Which fears, on matters of “national security,” at least, are fully founded. One major reason the Chicago didn’t get the Olympics was the (justified) fear that all those visitors, athletes and dignitaries would be subject to the tender attentions of the TSA.
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:03 am
So Hilary spent her time in the senate oposing torture and the two wars right? Yes just like then Senator Barack Obama. Unlike Senator Clinton, Senator Obama also bravely opposed FISA as well.