Here‘s Andy Sullivan, the man who once denounced opponents of Bush’s War as a “fifth column,” continuing his strange metamorphosis:
Here’s a challenging essay by Michael Vlahos in the American Conservative, a magazine that for all its troubling underbelly, is taking intellectual risks not seen in more established venues like the Weekly Standard or National Review.
Ah yes, that “troubling underbelly” — he means this, and, of course, this. Oh, go f*ck yourself, Andy — that is, if you can find anyone to do that dirty job. And please spare us the condescending “praise” — your brand of “skeptical” conservatism is a euphemism for opportunism of the rankest sort. Speaking of underbellies, take a gander at Sully’s more than ample example:
The sophisticated form of anthrax delivered to Tom Daschle’s office forces us to ask a simple question. What are these people trying to do? I think they’re testing the waters. They want to know how we will respond to what is still a minor biological threat, as a softener to a major biological threat in the coming weeks. They must be encouraged by the panic-mongering of the tabloids, Hollywood and hoaxsters. They must also be encouraged by the fact that some elements in the administration already seem to be saying we need to keep our coalition together rather than destroy the many-headed enemy. So the terrorists are pondering their next move. The chilling aspect of the news in the New York Times today is that the terrorists clearly have access to the kind of anthrax that could be used against large numbers of civilians. My hopes yesterday that this was a minor attack seem absurdly naïve in retrospect. So they are warning us and testing us. At this point, it seems to me that a refusal to extend the war to Iraq is not even an option. We have to extend it to Iraq. It is by far the most likely source of this weapon; it is clearly willing to use such weapons in the future; and no war against terrorism of this kind can be won without dealing decisively with the Iraqi threat. We no longer have any choice in the matter. Slowly, incrementally, a Rubicon has been crossed. The terrorists have launched a biological weapon against the United States. They have therefore made biological warfare thinkable and thus repeatable. We once had a doctrine that such a Rubicon would be answered with a nuclear response. We backed down on that threat in the Gulf War but Saddam didn’t dare use biological weapons then. Someone has dared to use them now. Our response must be as grave as this new threat.
Any truly skeptical person, conservative, liberal, or whatever, would have to first be skeptical of Andy himself, whose positions change with the public mood and who still hasn’t disavowed the above-cited grotesque call to use nuclear weapons against Iraq.
Andy needs to be reminded of what a fool he is: go and remind him of his bloodthirsty cry of “nuke Iraq!”, and tell him Antiwar.com sent you: andrew@theatlantic.com
