Author: Matt Barganier

Thus grunts law professor Glenn Reynolds.

A few days ago, Terry Jones of Monty Python fame penned a funny and insightful piece about the UK-Iran “crisis.” It began as follows:

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this – allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills.

The same day Jones’ piece appeared in the Guardian, the following appeared in the UK’s Telegraph:

“It was deplorable,” pronounced our tight-lipped Health Secretary, “that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people.”

Telegraph link via LRC.

“A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.”

Read the rest.

UPDATE: As expected, Glenn Reynolds has no problem with the terrorism. The journalists who reported it, on the other hand…

More on Glenn’s new friends here and here. That the U.S. should not be assisting these people in any way is beyond question. Whether the term “guerrilla” is preferable to “terrorist” is worth debating in this case, as in any other – they seem to focus on military targets rather than civilians. But any group in the beheading and car-bombing business is automatically labeled “terrorist” when the U.S. and its allies are the targets, so let’s at least use terms consistently. I know, I know, “moral equivalence” …

Gene Callahan reads up on the Iranian threat:

[T]he next inspiration to bang my head on my keyboard came from an article entitled, “Paper Tigers in West Let Fanatical Regime Roar.” Note: This was not on the op-ed page! No, to the [NY Daily] News, this is news. The story leads off claiming: “Iran keeps getting away with outrageous bullying behavior because the West has no stomach for confronting the fanatical Islamic Republic.”

Then it throws in the qualifier, “That’s how experts on Iran see the standoff.” See, it’s not the reporter’s bias; it’s what the experts are saying. Every last one of the two “experts” quoted in the article says this, in fact.

The first Iran “expert” is “Thomas McInerney, a retired Air Force general and staunch conservative.” Well, if retiring from the Air Force and being a staunch conservative doesn’t make you an expert on Iran, what would?

McInerney, according to the News, “said letting the mullahs get away with pro-terrorism foreign policy amounts to appeasement of a regime potentially worse than the Nazis, should they succeed in making nuclear weapons….” No, they’re not actually worse than the Nazis right now, but they could be, ya know, so… better bomb ’em just in case.

The article continues: “Critics point to Iran’s drive to build nuclear weapons.” So they do, but let’s not mention the lack of any real evidence that that’s what they’re doing, OK? “The UN imposed sanctions last weekend, but Iran turned around and seized 15 British sailors this week. ‘We’re going to appease these guys and lose 200 million people,’ McInerney predicted ominously.” Well, General McInerney, that’s a lot of people to lose. You ought to keep better track of them.

The qualifications of the next “expert”? He is “a more liberal observer.” I don’t know why the News didn’t also seek out “a more dull-witted observer,” and, perhaps, “a more statuesque observer,” in order to achieve a complete survey of expert opinion. In any case, Lawrence “more liberal” Haas says, “Iran is preparing for a much bigger war with us. We have a naive belief that we’ll negotiate our way out of this.” Iran is preparing for a much bigger war than what? Than the covert war the US has been waging against Iran for some time?

The clincher on the case is: “Haas said he fears that many experts have concluded Tehran can’t be stopped from getting nuclear arms and ‘it doesn’t matter because we can contain Iran like we contained the Soviets.’” And obviously, that will never work, because, while the USSR had hundreds of nuclear warheads that they could deliver to US cities, in a decade or so Iran might have one or two it could shoot a few hundred miles. So take that, clown ship of naïve appeasers! […]

Because you need some of both to handle the present reality without losing your mind.

First, the funny, from Mike Gerber and Jonathan Schwarz.

Now, the serious, from Arthur Silber.

It’s always amusing to hear true-blue Democrats explain how their leaders don’t really mean what they say and do.

Oh, don’t you know that Charlie Rangel really isn’t for conscription – he’s just pulling a fast one on the Republicans. Don’t you know anything about how the game is played?!

Aw, c’mon, Democrats don’t really believe in the War on Drugs – they just repeat the slogans and increase the funding because they can’t repeal it anyway. Be practical!

Sure, they vote for every war that comes down the pike and do nothing to stop them once underway, but they’re really doves at heart. That’s just politics!

I’d rather argue with a kid about the Tooth Fairy than try to convince these people of their error – it feels almost as mean-spirited – but I’ll link to this anyway.