Posted November 20, 2002

Ridicule

Ridicule was a powerful weapon of the philosophes used against the old regime. You and Antiwar.com are doing a commendable job wielding it. Recently I came across a word in a book called The End of Science by John Horgan that triggered an explosion of laughter on my part. I thought, Mencken would have loved it. Talking about some pseudo-scientific theory Horgan used the word bunkrapt, a twist on bankrupt and apparently a portmanteau word composed of bunkum and rapture. I thought how well this applies to the neocon ideology! The neocons have their own version of the rapture. They, ever the opportunists, will be raptured up to the commanding heights of power from whence they shall separate the acceptable from the unacceptable. The End of History , The New World Order, the Telecosm/Microcosm, the new Abundance, all the stuff of delirium, fin de siecle madness. This bubble too will pop. Keep up the good work.

~ John I.

Israel Elections

Regarding "Israel Elections. So What." by Ran HaCohen:

Mike Villano: If one reads Ran Cohen's comments on Israel, one might be left with the false impression that it's Jewish soldiers trying to kill innocent unarmed Arabs and not the other way around. According to Ran, Israel's policies drive the Palestinian Arabs and the rest of the Arab world to incite and execute the murder of Jews. At this point in time I think it's safe to say the culprit fueling Jewish hatred in the Arab world is the existence of the state of Israel, not its policies.

If Israel can't be called a "democracy" (such a precious word) then so what? What could one call the tribal Arab "utopias" surrounding Israel? On the road to prosperity? Semi-democratic? Please!

Ran HaCohen: Israel is a military dictatorship with several democratic elements reserved exclusively for Jews. Similar to Apartheid South Africa where Israel proper is concerned, but much worse due to its genocidal character in the Occupied Territories.

As for "Arab utopias": to spin away from my criticism of Israel, you accuse me of supporting Arab regimes. Sorry to disappoint you: others (the US government for one) may support Arab dictatorships, but I never did. Read my very first paragraph and see that terming the Arab regimes "utopian" or "semi-democracies" may serve your demagoguery, but it is the very opposite of what I say.

MV: Ran takes full advantage of the fact that at least one generation of Americans and Europeans don't recall the history of the Middle East to know the difference between the truth and the self-loathing revisionism Ran produces. ...

RH: As for Jewish "self-loathing": this accusation is anti-Semitic; it's a racist attempt to use my ethnicity in order to discredit my views. The real self-hatred is that of people like you, who'd rather watch us all get killed than make peace. A safe position to take from 5000 miles away.

Vaccinations

While there are two sides to the smallpox vaccinations I am bringing up the side that is avoided by the controlled mass media that you should know about. Personally I don't want the smallpox vaccination as I have heard on the Art Bell show a presentation that Smallpox is not contagious and my opinion is that it probably isn't and I would rather take my chances and not have it as I avoided the flu shots as far back as I can remember and haven't gotten the flu.

I worked in hospitals and have found many that have avoided it and some even said that they got the flu from the shot. My wife took the flu shot a couple of years ago and got the flu from it. She now avoids the shot. This is why I am cautious about the Smallpox shot. You be the judge.

Other vaccinations and shots will have to be judged independently on their merits since while I was in the Navy I was like a pin cushion as I was given shots and vaccinations by medics from both sides at once. I think there must have been a dozen of these. I was processed in a long line on a below deck aircraft carrier and could see what was in store for me as those in front of me paused long enough to have been stabbed and pricked from both sides.

Then there was my turn and I had no problem and was wondering why everyone was looking in back of me. I turned around to see what was happening and saw guys dropping to the floor as they passed out. They were lucky we didn't see any blood war casualties yet.

I get feedback now that there are casualties in the military from some of the shots and vaccinations they are getting. I think every vaccination and shot will have to be judged independently on its merits.

~ Tony M.

Armenian Genocide

Regarding "The Trouble With Turkey" by Christopher Deliso

Before putting Armenian Genocide in quotes in any article, please make sure you have the moral authority to do so. To gain moral authority, I suggest you to make yourself familiar with the following historic facts among others. Please, don't base your viewpoint on articles written by other's which in turn relies on what Shimon Peres thinks or says. After all, we all know and see before our very own eyes the sufferings the Palestinian people are going through. A government, which Shimon Peres is part of, that perpetrates atrocities and lies about and distorts the reality of our times is certainly capable of denying the facts of horrific part of our world history for the mutual benefit of Turkey and Israel.

~ Artak Kepenyan

Christopher Deliso replies:

You're a funny guy. Understand that this is obviously a damned if you do situation. Not putting the words in quotes – as I have done before – results in angry Turks launching into unspeakable epithets and even death threats against the writer. Now I apparently have an angry Armenian on my hands. It is a no-win situation.

I fear, however, you have hijacked my article and thrown it into an alien context. I have never written an article about Israel. If I did I would no doubt follow the general editorial slant of this website in general. I certainly have no intention of supporting the Turkish-Israeli military friendship. I don't know how you read that into it.

Nor do I understand how you conjured up any anti-Armenian feeling on my part. My personal opinion is in fact quite sympathetic to the Armenians' past suffering. But I hope this article does not derive from my opinion. Your alleged "moral authority," I believe, derives from your personal feelings on the matter. So as for your moral authority – you can keep it, thanks.

Bad Apples

Regarding "Debunking the Myths of 9/11":

Justin Raimondo seems to subscribe to the school of political thought which attributes the problems of government to a few bad apples spoiling its otherwise spotless image.

Witness his latest column promoting a forthcoming book of his on the vast Israeli/Muslim conspiracy to make the innocents in the U.S. government look stupid. How is it possible, he avers, for the 9/11/2001 stroke to have occurred except through the infiltration of terrorists and spies from without. There's no other possible way for it to have happened, to his way of thinking.

His underlying assumption of the US government being caught unawares, off-guard, ill-informed, and otherwise thoroughly incompetent, however, flies in the face of the continually mounting evidence to the contrary (see press chronologies all over the web). ...

~ Alan Koontz

Justin Raimondo replies:

There is considerable evidence that Israel had foreknowledge of 9/11. The investigative reporting done by Carl Cameron, and the follow-up work done by Christopher Ketcham, Insight magazine, Intelligence Online, Le Monde, etc., as well as the most recent revelations in Die Zeit. But there is absolutely zero evidence that the US government bombed itself – which is, perhaps, why you didn't cite any in your letter.

I, for one, am sick and tired of this endless repetition of the idiotic slogan: "Bush knew!" Oh yeah? Prove it. Until then, do us all a favor and pipe down.

Propaganda War

This AM (November 17) on NPR I heard host Lee Ann Hansen ask a former head UN Arms inspector from the UNSCOM regime in Iraq in the 1990s (David something) whether the new regime would share intelligence with the US and other UN member nations. The inspector's answer came back regarding the new inspection teams not using intelligence supplied by member nations.

This conversation continued without any indication that it had made a 90-degree detour around the fatally delicate subject of the discovery (quietly suppressed by NPR and the US media) in 1998 that the CIA and other US intelligence agencies were using the UN arms inspection to spy on Iraqi governmental operations and possibly to locate Saddam himself for a hit.

With the help of NPR and the rest of the US media the propaganda for war gets louder by the day.

~ Carl Reynolds, Sherwood, Oregon

Conservative Imperialism

Regarding "Liberal Imperialism" by Justin Raimondo:

I find it amazing how Justin Raimondo can turn one quote into a movement. No doubt there are some "liberals" who may come to support a war in Iraq just as many supported the Kosovo interventions. However the driving force to move this nation to a confrontation with Iraq has come from the Right, the Neo-Cons, the old Bush I guard now running the show again in Washington and a handful of lame Democrats afraid to lose their seats in the misguided belief that Americans are blood thirsty.

I, for one, a lifelong liberal who believes that the government has a responsibility to use our tax dollars not to build huge militaries but to provide for its citizens (and that means having the right to see a doctor if you get sick among other things), opposed the Kosovo war in spite of misguided liberal support of Clinton's war there, and I oppose the invasion of Iraq unless Iraq were to be found conclusively plotting something deadly.

The similarities between the Naderites and the Buchananites is more telling than the sad spectacle of House and Senate Democrats and the occasional columnist from the Left rolling over to give King George his new war to take care of daddy's nemesis once and for all. The old terms of Left and Right mean very little anymore when it comes to foreign affairs; there are interventionists on both sides as there are those opposed to imperial designs. The real difference between Left and Right relate still to domestic issues: separation of church and state, the caring for our less fortunate (and I would dispute Raimondo's spin on that – his calling it ambitious and thereby implying its futility is both a sign of his inherent selfishness and his misguided"libertarian" belief that we should all take care of ourselves in a society where it's already every man for himself beyond any measure of acceptable greed), gun control (11,000 plus deaths by guns yearly), environmental concerns versus corporate influence, and a whole host of "moral" issues. Any true liberal with brains sees the link between foreign and domestic issues at least insofar as they relate to money: spend fortunes on war and there's nothing left for our poor or for valuable programs meant to help the citizens.

However I see another troubling thing emerge from the Left, with whom I often stand side by side. Where a war in Iraq seems ill founded, imperialist by design and dangerous without real motivation, the need to deal with Islamic fundamentalist terror is urgent. How to deal with it can be discussed and disputed, but I too often find many on the far Left falling into dusty dogmatic reactions that blame the West for everything. No doubt the US has helped provoke the conditions that led to the expansion and motivation of the Islamic terror groups, but in this day and age when we do indeed face a reverse crusade (in the words of their own leaders), it would be naive at best to lump the struggle to combat Al Qaeda and related groups to the war in Iraq as the same thing.

And here again I take Raimondo up on this. By focusing on the "liberal" imperialist tendencies that may appear in pockets here and there it is in fact the conservative imperialism that has done its best to link Iraq and Al Qaeda as being the same battle. It has been the Republicans en masse (with Chaffee the only exception) voting to go to war. It has been the Fox news network and the blowhards on the other media outlets from the Right who have been priming us for a cowboy imperialism – even CNN uses the term "Showdown with Iraq". Showdown indeed. I would venture to say that the term itself indicates the OK Corral mentality that is the real danger here, not some handful of liberals who may find some justification for war in Iraq.

~ Carlo Haber

Justin Raimondo replies:

I'm afraid Carlo Haber is attributing to me powers that I most certainly do not possess. I didn't create liberal imperialism. It has been a current of American political life since end of the nineteenth century, the offspring of Woodrow Wilson and the evangelical do-goodism that comes out of post-millennial pietism. In the foreign policy realm, this tendency comes down to us in secularized form as "humanitarian interventionism," Clinton-style.

The pro-interventionist arguments advanced by Richard Just are no different than those made by the liberal-Left during the 1930s, or the cold war liberals of the Vietnam era: the US has an historic mission to spread "progressive" ideas worldwide – by force of arms, if necessary. Whether this is done under the rubric of "unilaterialism," or "multilateralism," seems to be the crux of the debate between the "left" and "right" factions of the War Party. But I suspect the ranks of the liberal imperialists will swell, considerably, as the United Nations gives its imprimatur to Bush's war, and the Democrats jump on board.