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Posted November 14, 2002
Conservatives Today
Regarding "Jonah Goldberg, Bottom Feeder" by Justin Raimondo:
Just read your latest column on Jonah Goldberg et al. I confess to being a born and bred, life long leftist. But it is way past time somebody said what you just said.
These people (Christian Zionists) are loonies on the one hand, and what passes for conservatives today (on the other hand) is astonishing. I know little about conservative thinking, at least of the kind you embrace, but you have convinced me to start reading and learning.
As for an antiwar movement of real conservatives, the thought brings joy to my heart.
What you and your Antiwar.com colleagues are doing strikes me as enormously important. Perhaps the only effort that can save the US from its inexorable march toward totalitarianism.
Don't Alienate Canadians
Regarding "Jonah Goldberg, Bottom Feeder" by Justin Raimondo:
Sometimes
dear old uncle Pat says things that you should just ignore. I know it's
hard, but it's for the greater cause. We really don't want to alienate
any more people than necessary do we! Not that I personally can't rise
above it, because I can. It's just that a lot of Canadians are not going
to and that my antiwar friend is a fact. Now somehow think of a way to
say you're sorry and we will be able to get on with our noble cause with
the backing of quite a few peaceloving Canadians. (And while you're at
it, try to get the lefties you have been trying to alienate back onside
too! It's not like we don't need everybody we can get pal!)
~ DHG, A proud citizen of Soviet Canuckistan
Claims
Elisha Svetitsky: Ran Hacohen claims that the Palestinian Authority does not incite young Palestinians to murder Jews. This URL – http://www.israelnn.com/tv.php?g=2 – has two videos on the subject, "Seeds of Hatred" and "Jihad for Kids." Please watch them and respond. If you cannot respond I ask that you have the decency to acknowledge your mistake in your column.
Ran HaCohen: Kindly supply a precise reference to my alleged claim that "the PA does not incite young Palestinians to murder Jews". If you cannot do so, I demand you explicitly retract your allegation, and apologise.
ES: You often write or imply that those behind anti-Israel terrorism are not Palestinian Authority officials but members of groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad (http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h090402.html, for example). You wrote that Arafat's involvement in terror is (sorry, "may be") "an outright Israeli fabrication" (http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h041202.html). If I were ignorant of the current situation in Israel I would assume from reading this that Arafat has not set up training camps for children in which they learn how to carry out terror attacks. This is the lie most easily dealt with, which is why I addressed this specific one. If you want a list of the lies that you have used in your column I will compile one. It will take some time to find them all, so I will only bother to do so if you request it.
RH: I'd be delighted if you compiled a comprehensive list of lies I use in my columns. However, it would be good if you first brush up your reading comprehension. My claim (in the first column you mention) that Jihad and Hamas want to throw all Jews to the sea, does not even slightly mean that "the PA does not incite young Palestinians to murder Jews" as you imputed; in fact, it has nothing whatsoever to do with it. My reference to an article doubting the authenticity of some alleged Palestinian documents produced by Israel, does not imply that claim either. I understand that you target the lie most easy to refute, but it would have been nice if you had verified that this "lie" came from my writing and not from your own misreading and desire to target fabricated claims since you cannot refute any of my actual claims.
Foreign Aid
While I enjoyed the article "US Aid to Israel: The Numbers", the article was not accurate; foreign aid to Israel (and other even less savory regimes) is much larger than stated.
Under the Monetary Control Act of 1980, the Federal Reserve prints money and pays for foreign loans made through private money-center banks. No accurate calculation of US foreign aid can be made without knowing the informal agreements between the money-center banks and the Fed. As I point out in my recent article "Aid to Dependent Dictators," the true US foreign aid expenditures are much larger than the official figures, but we don't know what they are.
I hope that Antiwar.com continues to feature works on foreign aid, because foreign aid is a subject that the usual academic and think-tank sources have left in obscurity. When American taxpayers find out how much of their money is going to support dictatorship and ethnic conflict around the world, they won't be so happy with the Fed, or with their elected "representatives" who are generally no better informed than the TelePrompTer readers.
Looney Quote
I ran across the following stirring quote taken from an interview published in the Washington Post, August 30, 1999, with then Major General William Looney.
As it so richly deserves wider exposure, I thought I'd pass it along.
"If they turn on the radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs. They know we own their country. We own their airspace...we dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need."
Were the General to speak today concerning Iraq, no doubt he would be staying 'on message', singing the praises of 'liberation' and 'democracy'. Yeah. Right.
Hawk-Dove Splits
Be wary about articles that highlight the hawk-dove splits in the Bush administration.
The reason why I think they are leaking this information to the public, that is, that splits between hawks and doves exist within the Bush administration on how post-Saddam Iraq will be governed is to trick Iraq into believing that they really are intent on invading Iraq. If Iraq chooses to believe that they really are invading, then certainly they would be far more likely to hide weapons of mass destruction from the inspectors. If, in fact, the Iraqi government was then consequently, and "conveniently" found in violation of the inspections process, surely Bush and his hawkish, bloodthirsty cronies would invade Iraq immediately. So be wary when you see articles about dove-hawkish splits in the administration. Ask yourself, how did the media come by this information? Why is the administration leaking such information? What does the U.S. government and the Bush administration have to gain by making such information available to the public? ...
I say let us, in common unity, play back and use every opportunity of hope that this war can be avoided to bolster, strengthen and mainstream this patriotic antiwar movement that is beginning to take shape before us. ...
~ Eric E. Johansson, Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69, San Francisco, CA
Awkward Convergence
Various commentators on the Iraq obsession have pointed out at least two situations that might arise, in the event that not everything goes according to invasion plans. One is that Saddam Hussein does not give in after an extended bombing campaign, and the US military is forced to fight house-to-house in Baghdad. Another is that Saddam, in a final act of vengeance, uses weapons of mass destruction against Israel, thereby precipitating the nuking of Baghdad. I have yet to see someone point out how extremely awkward it would be if these two scenarios converged. I just saw a TV report that stated there would be a high degree of cooperation between the US and Israel to avoid friendly fire, but I don't see how this would work in a 'troops on the ground/nuclear response' situation. If Israel waited until US troops were evacuated, that would greatly limit the ability of a nuclear response to limit deaths from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Presumably, Israel would first try to use its air force and Arrow missiles, but if those failed, how many Israeli civilian casualties would Ariel Sharon accept before he decided otherwise?
~ John Spindler