Jesse at Pandagon finds Kathryn Jean Lopez wondering why the media isn’t covering an Amnesty International report on terrorism in Iraq. He notes, among other things, that “this may constitute the first time since September 11th that any conservative commentator has honestly admitted that Amnesty writes anything that isn’t a direct attack on America.”
Publius at Law and Politics has a marvelous look at Hitchens’ “sister cities” article.
I understand the emotional need to attack those who you don’t care for anyway. But the idea that the anti-war Left and the sister city program have one damned thing to do with our problems in Iraq is nothing short of full-blown delusion (though it is interesting from a psychological perspective)…
Just to be clear, if we are unsuccessful in Iraq, the people to blame are the people who caused the war to happen, not the people who didn’t want it to happen. If we are unsuccessful, the leaders who executed the war are to blame, not the liberal groups who had exactly zero influence in the war planning and execution.
You may hate the Left so bad that you’d like to wring all their necks. But that hatred has exactly zero relevance to the larger truth that you may or may not be willing to confront – if this war is lost, then Bush lost it.
I’m afraid that we might be having this argument a lot more in the future.
Beautiful Horizons is a just a terrific blog that doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves, because few other bloggers can talk on Randy Paul’s level about Central and South America.
During the Vietnam war, John Steinbeck was writing to the White House with ideas about weapons and tactics, including the idea for a baseball-sized napalm weapon. Funny old world.
Living in Texas can drive a liberal crazy, but the people here do some things right.
Finally, Brad DeLong has the Concord Coalition’s plausible forecast of budget deficits.
{ 21 comments }
jet 08.18.05 at 3:30 pm
Why would anyone confuse humanitarian with pacifist?
Artemis 08.18.05 at 3:57 pm
How does this blog’s impatience with the tendency of conservative commentators to over-generalize in their criticisms of war opponents jibe with your endorsement of Pandagon’s glib generalization about conservative critiques of Amnesty International?
matt weiner 08.18.05 at 4:32 pm
Or could it be that Pandagon was engaging in… deliberate hyperbole? Say, referring the fact there are many cases of conservatives criticizing AI for failing to pay attention to human rights abuses in (country X rather than America) when AI in fact does criticize human rights abuses in country X? It could not be that.
Brett Bellmore 08.18.05 at 4:35 pm
Um, technically, if you’re unsuccessful in a war, isn’t it often the fault of the guys on the other side, who you’re fighting against? It being a competition of sorts, after all… THEY probably think they had something to do with it!
Oh, wait, I forget, we’re not allowed to blame them for fighting for the right to oppress their neighbors, because it’s intolerant to demand that funny looking people living a long ways from us not be murderous SOBs. We can only rightfully demand that people who look like us behave morally…
matt weiner 08.18.05 at 4:39 pm
Wait–I think you’re referring to this. The problem with people who claim that the anti-war forces rooting for the other side isn’t just that they’re overgeneralizing. Overgeneralizing requires that you have some examples, and these folks have, as Kleiman says, “within measurement error of nothing.” Here’s a nice summary.
Artemis 08.18.05 at 4:41 pm
Could it be that one man’s “deliberate hyperbole” is another man’s puppy-blood-drinking slander?
matt weiner 08.18.05 at 4:44 pm
Brett–That’s right! France would have won World War II easily in 1940, if it hadn’t been for the Germans and their allies. Let us lay the myth of French military incompetence to rest forever!
Grand Moff Texan 08.18.05 at 4:44 pm
I’m afraid that we might be having this argument a lot more in the future.
“Argument”? I don’t think so. I think we’re going to keep hearing the same absurd assertion from those who need to keep making that noise in order to drown out the sound of their own massive failure and guilt, but to call it an argument is just silly.
Think of it as a death rattle.
.
matt weiner 08.18.05 at 4:49 pm
Artemis–No. Read the quotes in the Witchfinders-general post. They’re not joking. Jesse, on the other hand, is frequently joking–and he’s also referring to a real phenomenon (described in 3), not something made up out of whole cloth.
neil 08.18.05 at 5:10 pm
That is very odd. If the terrorists win then it is a defeat for Bush not a victory for the enemies of liberal values.
So the primary message the anti-war side would take from such an outcome is not that it would be appalling for the people of Iraq, but that it would be a poke in the eye for Bush.
soru 08.18.05 at 5:56 pm
the other side
Iraq isn’t so much Lord of the Rings as the Hobbit, not the War of the Ring but the Battle of the Five Armies.
The US(-led coalition), Kurds, Iranians, Ba’athists and Al Qaeda is probably a fair summary of the active military factions – every trained fighter will have been trained by someone on that list.
soru
Brendan 08.18.05 at 6:15 pm
The discussion of John Steinbeck should act as a salutory warning to those of the self-proclaimed ‘decent left’ who seem to think that zooming from extreme left to extreme right is a staggeringly original political development that no one ever thought of before. But actually it’s pretty standard, especially in the States: John dos Passos is the other great example, but in Britain we have Arthur Koestler, Irish Murdoch and others. Interestingly enough, almost all of the current loonies and cheerleades for the loonies of the white house used to be Communists: even Robert Conquest voted Labour (allegedly) until Thatcher. Kingsley Amis, of course, was originally a Communist, then a Labourite Socialist then….etc. etc. etc.
Make of it what you will.
(What is much more interesting, and completely outside the scope of a brief comment here, is the effect of their political allegiences on their fiction or philosophy).
Slocum 08.18.05 at 9:06 pm
Just to be clear, if we are unsuccessful in Iraq, the people to blame are the people who caused the war to happen, not the people who didn’t want it to happen.
I think that’s kind of missing the point of Hitchen’s piece — his criticism is of the refusal of progressives (so called) to embrace the Iraqi democrats. It is not that their indifference to Iraqi democrats is likely to be decisive in the outcome, but — I believe Hitchen’s point is — their failure to feel and show solidarity is appalling in any case — it is a betrayal of those values they professed to hold most dear.
And from a bit later in the same target article, this is just demented:
Look, I’ll be the first to admit that Saddam is a murdering bastard who should be shot in the head tomorrow. But just because Saddam was horrible doesn’t mean that Iraq wasn’t stable. Certainly, Iraq had some underlying ethnic and demographic tensions that would have eventually bubbled up one day, similarly to every other Middle Eastern country including allies like Israel and Turkey. But Iraq was stable.
Ugh. Iraq was ‘stable’ BECAUSE it was under the boot of Saddam’s brutally efficient police state, which used state terror ‘liberally’ to keep the country and its citizens under tight control. And we have ‘progressives’ arguing that, in such cases, it is best to leave well enough alone?!?
Elliott Oti 08.19.05 at 2:04 am
“It is not that their indifference to Iraqi democrats is likely to be decisive in the outcome, but—I believe Hitchen’s point is—their failure to feel and show solidarity is appalling in any case—it is a betrayal of those values they professed to hold most dear.”
The “display of solidarity” demanded for here has one sole purpose: to strengthen public support, or the appearance thereof, for the US administration and its policies. The impact of a bake sale or what-have-you on the lives of the average Iraqi is nihil. Such gestures of “solidarity” are purely intended for domestic consumption.
As for “feeling” solidarity with the Iraqis, the current war has long since turned into a proxy for domestic US politics. The increasing amounts of buffoonery emanating from the US chattering classes over Iraq illustrates this clearly.
Mr Ripley 08.19.05 at 2:38 am
Iraq was ‘stable’ BECAUSE it was under the boot of Saddam’s brutally efficient police state, which used state terror ‘liberally’ to keep the country and its citizens under tight control. And we have ‘progressives’ arguing that, in such cases, it is best to leave well enough alone?!?.
This was the argument used against critics of the Afghan mujahadeen in the Eighties, right? It’s like everything’s recycled now.
Randy Paul 08.19.05 at 1:14 pm
Ted,
As usual, you are much too kind. I would like to point out some other blogs on LatAm issues:
Bloggings by Boz
Juanson World
David Holiday
Latino Pundit
Miguel Centellas
Plan Colombia & Beyond
Tim’s El Salvador Blog
nolo commentre 08.19.05 at 3:20 pm
“Publius at Law and Politics has a marvelous look at Hitchens’ ‘sister cities’ article.”
Publius says that he “predict[s] the power and influence attributed to politically impotent, liberal, anti-war interest groups will increase at the exact same rate that our prospect for success in Iraq decreases.” Publius therefore goes on and on about how it will be Bush’s fault, and not the fault of the left, if we lose in Iraq, but I think slocum (comment above) is correct: Hitchens is criticizing how these groups are using the power and influence that they have, not making any claims about how much power and influence they have.
Hitchens thinks liberals should use what influence they have in support of the war because “It is a combat defined very much by the nature of the enemy, which one might think was so obviously and palpably evil that the very thought of its victory would make any decent person shudder.” Whether Publius agrees or disagrees with this logic, I can’t tell.
Publius does confront one of Hitchens’ actual claims: Hitchens thinks Iraq was inherently unstable and Publius thinks it was stable. But no arguments are adduced by either and this seems like such an inherently difficult thing to be sure about either way – call me wishy-washy….
soru 08.19.05 at 5:00 pm
This was the argument used against critics of the Afghan mujahadeen in the Eighties, right?
And the opposite is the argument made by the South African far right with respect to majority rule.
Face it, there are more people than there are arguments, some have to share.
soru
jon 08.19.05 at 5:48 pm
Actually, as I argue here, I think Publius has missed the whole point of Hitchens’ article.
I also think Publius minimizing of the importance of restoring the Arab marsh wetlands to be distasteful. The UN has called Hussein’s draining of the marshes “one of humanity’s worst engineered disasters.”
Penta 08.20.05 at 1:58 pm
Jon:
And I would agree with you.
Except that the UN seemingly calls everything one of humanity’s worst (whatever)s.
jon 08.21.05 at 12:00 pm
Penta, point noted. But it’s not just the UN. Check out what the Environmental Literacy Council says about the marshlands.
Also, the url of my post was wrong. Here is the right one.
Comments on this entry are closed.