Contrary to what I say in this morning’s column, it looks increasingly likely that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is the work, not of Al Qaeda, but of elements within the Pakistani government itself. Not necessarily Gen. Pervez Musharraf, but of a faction within the military that is, perhaps, getting ready to dump Musharraf and assume power directly.
To begin with, forbidding an autopsy is just a bit suspicious, wouldn’t you say? Not to mention the offer by the CIA to provide Bhutto with electronic jammers that stop belt bombs from going off and guard against car bombs – which the government refused. Hmmmm ….
As one friend with CIA connections said: “It is suspected that the security detail itself and possibly the intelligence service ISI were somehow involved. No one believes that Musharraf would have been dumb enough to be involved directly, but ISI might be playing a more complex game, and have a candidate in mind for taking over if Musharraf fails to stay in power.â€
I was wrong about this: Pakistan is in a lot worse shape than I imagined. However, I was not wrong about the proper US policy: This is just more evidence that US intervention, in this instance, is hopeless: when the folks we are backing (with a $10 billion aid package) are knocking off the opposition so blatantly – I mean, just look that that video! – without regard either for international opinion or the interests of their American sponsors, it’s time to cut bait and shove off. (Of course, you can bet that our Special Forces are poised to seize Pakistan’s nukes if and when the government falls in the face of a popular uprising: in which case, things will get very messy …)
This new Ron Paul ad is absolutely, outrageously, tragically wrong:
“No visas for students from ‘terrorist nations’�
Rarely has a more ignorant proposal been advanced – and it is made even worse by the fact that this is Ron Paul we’re talking about.
To begin with, it is odd, indeed, for a libertarian to be invoking the concept of collective guilt: is every citizen of these unnamed “terrorist nations†to be declared persona non grata on account of the actions of a minuscule number of their countrymen?
Secondly, just which nations is Rep. Paul talking about? Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia: two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was Egyptian and another one hailed from Lebanon. Is Paul seriously saying that we should deport the thousands from these countries studying in the US? And why stop there? Why allow anyone from these so-called “terrorist nations†entry into the US for any reason whatsoever – just to be on the safe side?
This is pandering to the worst, Tom Tancredo-esque paranoia and outright ignorance (or do I repeat myself?) and is not worthy of Dr. Paul. I have the utmost respect for the candidate, but in using this unfortunate term, “terrorist nations,†the Good Doctor undermines his non-interventionist foreign policy stance. If these are, in truth, “terrorist nations†– which most will take to mean all predominantly Muslim nations — then why not invade them, kill the terrorists, and be done with it? This phraseology gives the War Party carte blanche – and, believe you me, they’ll use it.
As Murray Rothbard explained, the anti-interventionist conservatives of the 1950s made the same mistake when they jumped on Joe McCarthy’s bandwagon. The “red scare†was payback for the “brown scare†of the 1940s in which prominent conservatives were basically run out of public life on a rail for not getting with the program until Pearl Harbor. The original McCarthyite movement was directed against domestic reds, and was a sweet revenge for those conservatives who had been targeted as “subversive†and even “pro-Hitler†for being anti-interventionist during the Roosevelt era. However, it wasn’t long before the domestic witch-hunt spilled over the border and became an international armed crusade that roped us into NATO, lured us into Korea, and got us bogged down in Vietnam.
Thousands of students from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Muslim countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, and elsewhere come to this country and bring home with them the ideas of liberty, tolerance, and fair play that are the predominant themes of our culture. Barring them would be politically foolish, economically counterproductive, and a prelude to much worse.
It saddens me to write this, and yet I cannot be silent in the face of such a brazenly ugly attempt to cash in on barely disguised anti-Muslim sentiment, especially since his proposal would penalize large numbers of perfectly innocent people, young people whose only “crime†is to want to come to America. The Paul campaign should scrap the ad, pronto.
UPDATE: Well, we certainly have gotten our share of comments: this blog entry was posted a mere two hours ago, and we already have 150 comments.
I want to state for the record that I am not: a) accusing Ron Paul of racism, b) arguing with his stand against illegal immigration, or c) arguing in favor of open borders.
What I am saying is that a blanket ban on visas for students from unspecified “terrorist nations†is pandering to the worst, lowest instincts of the American electorate – and, as Tom Tancredo’s pathetic failure of a campaign demonstrated, it isn’t good politics, either.
This is about allowing legal immigration – and, specifically, of a type that benefits us in many ways, economically and in terms of the good will generated throughout the world at a time when we sorely need it. No one objects to vetting each and every visa applicant: a blanket ban, however, is quite a different matter, for all the reasons detailed above.
Looks like I spoke too soon: in Friday’s column: I wrote that Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer are being dropped by Time magazine, because Americans are "done with pundits like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer who were dead wrong about the war, and whom they regard as discredited and no longer worth listening to." Well, not the people who inhabit the editorial offices of the New York Times, where Kristol has just been taken on as a columnist, giving the neocons two podiums (including the one occupied by David Brooks) from which to issue their war cries and smear their opponents as anti-American reprobates.
I think, however, that this reinforces my thesis in that piece by illustrating the growing gap between popular and elite political culture, with anti-neocon sentiment typical of the former and total accommodation the rule for the latter. The liberal New York Times only recognizes one variety of "conservative," and that is the warmonger, pro-Big Government sort.
The New York Times has just issued a retraction to their piece a few days ago attemting to link Ron Paul to white supremacists. They admit that the piece “should not have been published.”
I hope their retraction gets as much attention as their original post did.
Two weeks ago, Antiwar.com received a letter from a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Marine Corps wondering what motivated our behavior. One of my jobs for Antiwar.com is handling letters like these, and since he asked like a gentleman, I’ve done my best to represent the site and the case against the war.
What follows, with his permission and with his name and rank omitted, is our discussion:Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:05:06 -0800 To: @antiwar.com Subject: Inquiry from website—-(USMC) submitted a link…here are the results! Subject: motive
I just want to know what your reason is for starting a website of such substance. As a Marine who anti-war activists commonly bash, I always seem to be on the offense while discussing the matter of war. Did I do something wrong? I want to serve my country and hopefully, keep my children from fighting these battles in fifteen years. Because, we all know that if we don’t keep the terrorists “over there,†they will inevitably, end up, “over here.†Maybe your opinions contradict. To debate would be a welcome experience. You can definitely consider that a challenge.
The Smear Bund never rests — not even on Christmas. Especially not on Christmas. And they’ve been really active lately, what with Ron Paul gaining in the polls and in the hearts and minds of a growing number of young people: we can’t have that! I’ve waded through the muck and mire, so you don’t have to — go here to read a full accounting.
One would think that the sheer counterintuitiveness of the proposition that the country’s leading libertarian politician is a Nazi sympathizer would deter the Smear Brigade from trying to pull that one off — but no. From the left-leaning cyber-lair of “Orcinus,” where the professional “extremist”-hunter David Neiwert (a kind of low-budget John Roy Carlson) holds court, to the supposedly opposite end of the spectrum over at “Stormfront,” where the “Commander” of the American National Socialist Workers Party pontificates, the hue and cry is going up: Paul is a Nazi!
This morning the New York Times took up this theme, with a vicious taunt coming out of the mouth of Virginia Heffernan, who repeats the laughable accusations of an admitted Nazi as indisputable fact. Paul “seems to have Nazi troubles, as in they’re saying he’s one of them,” she gloats — and hails a “vid-lash” against Ron Paul. Yeah, the Paul supporters have so far dominated Youtube and the internet in general, where their movement was born, but we’ll show them: Heffernan posts a video by one Mike Fluggenock, a shrill leftist propganda short that focuses not on Paul’s positions but on two or three individuals in a crowd of some 5,000 at a rally in Philadelphia.
What’s interesting about Senor Fluggenock, however, isn’t his skills as a film-maker, or even as a propagandist, but the fact that he was one of six American “artists” to make contributions to Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust cartoon contest. Here it is.
Gee, I don’t wonder that Fluggenock’s entry didn’t place. That is kind of heavy-handed, even for the Iranians. After all, is the evil of the Holocaust really equivalent to the admittedly brutal Israeli occupation? I haven’t noticed the Israelis killing 6 million Palestinians in extermination chambers, but I’m sure this is just an oversight on my part. What I couldn’t help noticing, however, is that Fluggenock travels in some of the same circles as Bill White, the neo-Nazi “Commander” and source of the charge that Paul is a secret “white nationalist. DC Indymedia, where Fluggenock is part of of the “editorial collective, seems to have it’s own Nazi problem. DC Indymedia has also been promoting White’s story. Hmmmmm …..
Ms. Hefferan, described herein as “a newly ubiqitous [sic] cultural critic,” apparently determined to follow in the footsteps of Judith Miller, isn’t too picky about her sources. Judy had Chalabi: Virginia has Bill White, the supreme “Commander” of the American National Socialist Workers Party, and Senor Fluggenock, a cartoonist with a cartoonish view of world politics.
In her MediaBistro interview, the fresh-faced golden-haired Ms. Heffernan burbles on about her faaaaabulous career, from fact-checker [!] at Tina Brown’s New Yorker to her ascendance as A Newly Ubiquitous Cultural Critic:
“I was disillusioned—not radically disillusioned, just a little disillusioned—with graduate school, and had decided to spend the summer in New York working at a bookstore—Chapter & Verse on St. Marks, which isn’t there anymore. My now-friend Rob Boynton came in while I was reading Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer, and struck up a conversation. I learned he was a journalist, and it was through him that I got the idea that it could be a profession.”
She was disillusioned — and now I am. How in the name of all that’s holy could such an air-head possibly become A Newly Ubiquitous Cultural Critic? Yes, but air-heads have their uses, and the Smear Bund couldn’t function without them: smearing doesn’t take much talent. And it pays.
