Another just mind-blowing development. Here is the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, coming out against the war against terror. Not just war against Saddam, but against the entire panoply of brutally homophobic tyrannies in the Middle East that actively support terrorism and just as actively persecute gays. Again, this is a gay group concerned with human rights. Here’s part of their rationale:
Our position is guided by our sense of solidarity with and accountability to the activists we work with all over the world, and especially those in regions which are greatly impacted by US foreign policies. The US policies of military aggression have served to render those who deviate from sexual and gender norms and people living with HIV/AIDS especially vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence and discrimination.
Better, in other words, for gay people in, say, Afghanistan to be punished by being crushed under rocks than to be liberated by the evil of America. These gay activists are simply depraved.
SECULAR SADDAM VERSUS FANATICAL ISLAMISM?: One more email delineating why this alliance is not implausible:
Note also that Kaiser Wilhelm was positive that reactionary absolutist Russia could not possibly ally itself with regicide-honoring, radical post-Dreyfus France. Wrong. Note also that his Catholic Majesty of France found it easy enough to ally himself with Suleiman the Magnficent against the Catholic Habsburgs. Note also that Cardinal Richelieu found it expedient to aid Protestant Gustavus Adolphus against Catholic Ferdinand. Note also that Adolf Hitler was positive that the capitalist powers’ alliance with Josef Stalin could not positively endure.
Well, it endured long enough, didn’t it? And why do none of these epxerts mention the explicitly Islamist rhetoric that Saddam now constantly uses and has deployed for more than a decade? Oh, and one more word of reader wisdom:
If an accountant is sent to scrutinize the books of someone believed to be involved in fiscal highjinx, and finds $80,000 in an account that the books say has $100,000 in it, said accountant is not then asked to go find the other 20 grand. The discrepancy ITSELF is the “smoking gun”. So, too, with the glaring omissions between Iraq’s last document dump, and the inventory of prohibited material already in hand from past inspections.
More sharp feedback – including a complaint that I was far too nice to Mary McGrory – on the Letters Page, edited by the one and only Reihan Salam.
The Dish 