Month: May 2006

After a whiny Hugh Hewitt quotation about Haditha coverage in the Emm Ess Emm – which, by the way, lost two members in Iraq on Monday, as the warbloggers slathered on suntan lotion – Glenn Reynolds shares a rather disturbing letter from a reader. Read the whole thing, but don’t miss the conclusion (emphasis mine):

The real danger is that we who support the war will reach the point that we say “we might as well be taken as wolves then as sheep“. At that point the left can celebrate that they have made our military and those who support it the people they claim we are. Once that happens however any compunction about respecting them will be gone, and remember one side is armed and one is not.

That is a fate that I don’t wish on any of us.

Uh, thanks for your concern, nutcase.

It’s always amusing to watch the authoritarian Right respond to evidence of U.S. military atrocities. The same people who scream “Guilty!” and erect the gallows every time a sensational crime makes it into the Fox News rotation suddenly get all Phil Donahue on us when the accused is GI Joe. Rush to judgment! Context! Mitigating circumstances! Sometimes kids need killing!

Think that last one is hyperbole? Then you obviously aren’t acquainted with Michelle Malkin. Read this post, and make sure you catch the photos of Palestinian kids holding (or just near) weapons. Why Palestinians? Eh, they’re towelheads, close enough.

In some parallel universe, Michelle Malkin’s counterpart in the United States of al-Qaeda is “contextualizing” a massacre out on the fringes of the caliphate with photos of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

Now that you have some time to yourself, this Memorial Day weekend, and can while away the hours reading, a few blog recommendations: Bill Kauffman is a writer who defies categorization, which is only appropriate because people who defy categorization happens to be his favorite subject: his latest book, Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists, just out from ISI Books, illustrates how the tired old labels of “left” and “right” no longer seem to apply — not when ostensible “conservatives” espouse a Jacobin radicalism and exhibit an abiding faith in the power of the state to effect revolutionary transformation on a world scale. His book is a series of portraits of disparate individuals whose stubborn individualism captures the underlying spirit of the real America: from Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, to regionalist painter Grant Wood, and including farmer-writer Wendell Berry, publisher Henry Regnery, and Senator Eugene McCarthy. These mini-biographies, taken together, add up to a patriotism more authentic than the nationalistic leader-worship and war hysteria promoted under that label by the neocons.  

In any case, the book has — naturally! — given birth to a blog, Reactionary Radicals: along with Bill, featured writers include Alan Crawford, Caleb Stegall, Clark Stooksbury, Daniel McCarthy, Darryl Hart, Jason Peters, Jeff Nelson, Jeremy Beer, Jesse Walker, and John Zmirak. It is a delight to read.

Another weekend delight: Dan McCarthy’s Tory Anarchist. Dan is the book editor of The American Conservative, and his comments are consistently interesting, and imbued with the same fierce anti-imperialism that animates his Old Right confreres at TAC and Reactionary Radicals. Well worth reading.

Speaking of reactionary radicals (or is that radical reactionaries?), one can’t continue without mentioning the wonderfully reactive and radically delightful Taki Theodoracopulos, whose Spectator and TAC columns are archived here. I met Taki for the first time on a recent trip to the Big Bad Apple, and I have to say he lived up to his reputation: although he has got to be at least 60 years old, he doesn’t look a day over 50: tanned, bright-eyed, and jaunty, with the muscular shoulders and bearing of a boxer (which he was in his youth), Taki looks like he just stepped off his yacht. I was met at the door by his butler, a young man who graciously offered me a drink as I sat in Taki’s drawing room and had the mischievious look of someone who has seen much and had the good sense not to say much except for an occasional raised eyebrow. 

Taki and I had a wonderful lunch, and I had the sense, as he talked to me, that here was a representative of a world that I would have loved to have lived in — but, alas, I was born too late. Charming, witty, and yet very serious, Taki is my kind of guy (no, no, not in that way!), and so I was glad to see his recent interview with the LA Weekly in which he told the interviewer that he doesn’t have much in common with the leftist element of the antiwar movement, in spite of being against the Iraq war, and yet:

“Can I tell you something? It just boggles the hell out of me to be on the side of those guys. Because I don’t respect the Left, I think the left is phony and all that, but here I am on the side of Justin Raimondo [of Antiwar.com].”

He then goes on to opine that, in a more rational world, “If Rumsfeld was named Ford and a great-grandson of Henry Ford and owned 100 percent of the company and ran it this way, he wouldn’t get a job selling hubcaps.” Yes, but tell us what you really think, Taki! While I don’t agree with his wholesale dismissal of the left as “phony,” and am not at all boggled to note that I am on the same side with the Nation magazine on the question of war and peace, Taki’s endorsement highlights Antiwar.com’s unique appeal: we are beyond traditional concepts of “left” and “right,” the only website that unites admirers of Pat Buchanan and Dan Ellsberg. Go figure …

While I’m on the subject of my favorite online reading matter: check out Billmon, frequent Antiwar.com contributor Leon Hadar, Jim Henley, and, of course, James Wolcott, and Laura Rozen.

 

Bush to West Point graduates:

“This is only the beginning,” Bush said. “The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom, and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation.”

Today in Iraq:

An Iraqi tennis coach and two of his players were shot to death this week in Baghdad because they were wearing shorts, authorities said Saturday, reporting the latest in a series of recent attacks attributed to Islamic extremists.

The Bush administration is moving aggressively from a policy aimed at neutralizing Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions to one of regime change, according to a fascinating piece by the indispensable Laura Rozen, whose blog, “War and Piece,” is one of my faves. David Denehy, of the International Republican Institute, has been put in charge of a new “Office of Iranian Affairs” set up within the State Department: he will report to Elizabeth Cheney, assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs. Exile groups are reportedly disappointed that the cash isn’t being handed out fast enough, but one fears they haven’t got long to wait. What the future holds is laid out in pretty stark terms by Rozen, who writes:

“As much as $50 million of the funds requested will go to the Voice of America for Persian-language broadcasts. The State Department also is planning to send 15 foreign service officers to countries neighboring Iran and to capitals with large Iranian exile populations to serve as ‘Iran watchers.’

“At the Pentagon, the new Iranian directorate has been set up inside its policy shop, which previously housed the Office of Special Plans. The controversial intelligence analysis unit, established before the Iraq war, championed some of the claims of Ahmad Chalabi. A number of assertions made by the former Iraqi exile and onetime Pentagon favorite were later discredited.

“Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable declined to name the acting director of the new Iran office and would say only that the appointee was a ‘career civil servant.’ Among those staffing or advising the Iranian directorate are three veterans of the Office of Special Plans: Abram N. Shulsky, its former director; John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst; and Ladan Archin, an Iran specialist.”

Our old friends at the “Office of Special Plans” — who channeled so much of the phony “intelligence” that ginned up the war with Iraq — are planning a little reunion, it seems. Whether these old dogs have learned some new tricks, or are just content to re-run some of the old ones, be warned: they’re back on the loose….

From Reuters:

A five-hour security scare at the U.S. House of Representatives Rayburn office building on Friday was likely triggered by noise made by construction workers, police said.

“The cause of the loud sound appears to have come from construction workers in the area during the course of their routine work,” said Capitol police spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider.

Iraqi officials must be gasping from laughter.