Archives for 2003

Opposing war on general principles can be an honorable thing. However, opposing war, regardless of the outcome, is not only unprincipled, but it is lazy, stupid, immoral, and an intellectually vacant approach to life. That is the main reason I despise the anti-war crowds (not to mention their odious background, best documented here by Tacitus). Kos does a fairly decent job of summing up some of my positions regarding the anti-war crowd. My chief complaint, usually, is that they are simply wrong- and thus- no amount of protesting is going to get me to change my mind. I am not sure why the left things of the protest as some sort of cure-all for any social ill. Most of the time, I think less of protestors AFTER the protest. Most of them look like a Grateful Dead concert without a coherent message and worse music. At any rate, some of the dumbest anti-war stuff as of late has been the ridiculous remake of the “Daisy” commercial. I don’t want to waste too much time on this, so I will let Christopher Hitchens swing away.

From Hardball on Friday, 17 December:

It (the commercial) certainly illustrates two things about the circle of peace movement. One, illiteracy and second, conservatism. This is the ad with which Lyndon Johnson helped to lie and bully the United States public and Congress into Vietnam. A peace group that has a memory as bad as that and a propaganda instinct as poor as that really doesn’t deserve a name of peace movement at all. All they’re saying is let’s keep the status quo in the Middle East. Let’s, as Americans, lead a quiet life. This is not a radical position at all. It’s a scandal.

Mmmhmm. Later, Hitchens notes:

I mean the same people who make these tremendously alarmist pieces of propaganda, it’s not just this item, are the same ones who say Saddam Hussein doesn’t have any weapons. So, he’s going to threaten us with the weapons they say he doesn’t have?

Clearly, these people do not understand the framework of the U.N. Weapons Inspections nor do they understand the nature of evil. Here is Hitchens in Front Page Magazine:

A year or so ago, the “peace movement” was saying that Afghanistan could not even be approached without risking the undying enmity of the Muslim world; that the Taliban could not be bombed during Ramadan; that a humanitarian disaster would occur if the Islamic ultra- fanatics were confronted in their own lairs. Now we have an imperfect but recovering Afghanistan, with its population increased by almost two million returned refugees. Have you ever seen or heard any of those smart-ass critics and cynics make a self-criticism? Or recant?

To the contrary, the same critics and cynics are now lining up to say, “Hands off Saddam Hussein,” and to make almost the same doom-laden predictions. The line that connects Afghanistan to Iraq is not a straight one by any means. But the oblique connection is ignored by the potluck peaceniks, and one can be sure (judging by their past form) that it would be ignored even if it were as direct as the connection between al Qaeda and the Taliban. Saddam Hussein denounced the removal of the Sunni Muslim-murdering Slobodan Milosevic, and also denounced the removal of the Shiite-murdering Taliban. Reactionaries have a tendency to stick together (and I don’t mean “guilt by association” here. I mean GUILT). If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the 19th province of Iraq (and based on his own recently produced evidence, Saddam Hussein would have acquired nuclear weapons). Moreover, Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghan-istan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority that surrounds those who intone the “peace movement.”

It is amazing how some people can be so consistently wrong yet remain relevant.

The Anti-War CrowdPost + Comments

The Smoking Gun has this document written by Pete Townshend. It seems to bolster his defense (or would defence be more appropriate?).

For Pete’s Sake:Post + Comments