Afghan Twitter Firestorm

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Saturday afternoon, I read about how the U.S. had bombed the only hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which was being staffed by the French volunteer group, Doctors without Borders.I recalled the 2004 U.S. bombings of a hospital in Fallujah.  So I tossed out a tweet –

Nattie Roman responded with a great quip –

Her tweet got lots of pickup – boosted after I replied, “Close enough for government work.”

Then Wick Allison, the chairman of the board of the American Ideas Institute, the publisher of the American Conservative (where I’m a contributing editor), replied with a message aimed at me and Clark Stooksbury, another contributing editor who had retweeted (or favorite) my original line:

Allison later clarified that he lives in an “irony-free zone” and missed my attempted humor.

After Angela Keaton @antiwar2 kindly retweeted my original line, the topic reheated. Here’s an insightful response from a twitter user named DJkilllist

On Saturday Kevin McKenzie replied to my original tweet, so I tossed out another line exonerating all government killings:

Alas, this was not well-received by Twitter users calling themselves Anarchoantihero and Lo

https://twitter.com/anarchoantihero/status/651107178896560128

Regardless, I continue to have unbounded hope that social media will cure all the ills of Attention Deficit Democracy.

If nothing else, my Twitter account will increase the number of people who dance at my funeral – or who at least do cartwheels upon hearing of my demise.

4 thoughts on “Afghan Twitter Firestorm”

  1. Don’t forget about the hospital bombing during the nato war against Serbia. A coworker’s mom was in there when it happened.

  2. Employing sarcasm on the internet invariably demonstrates why satire dies on Saturday night.

  3. For general consumption, you have to make it more obvious. The original tweet would gone down better if "extremist" had been replaced with "gratuitous".

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