Year: 2003

Julie Burchill does her best Camille Paglia impression today (before Camille went soft on the war). Man, does she nail it:

I’ve just heard a snippet of the most disgustingly me-me-me anti-war advert by Susan Sarandon, in which she intones, “Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags, and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know – what did Iraq do to us?” Well, if you mean what did Saddam do to America The Beautiful, not an awful lot – but to millions of his own people, torture and murder for a start. Don’t they count?
Surely this is the most self-obsessed anti-war protest ever. NOT IN MY NAME! That’s the giveaway. Who gives a stuff about their wet, white, western names? See how they write them so solemnly in a list on the bottom of the letters they send to the papers. And the ones that add their brats’ names are the worst – a grotesque spin on Baby On Board, except they think that this gives them extra humanity points not just on the motorway, but in the whole wide weeping, striving, yearning world. We don’t know the precious names of the countless numbers Saddam has killed. We’re talking about a people – lots of them parents – subjected to an endless vista of death and torture, a country in which freedom can never be won without help from outside.

Amen, sister. The day of reckoning is not just coming for Saddam Hussein. It’s coming for the anti-war movement.

Johnny Apple, fresh from a couple of bottles of the best Chardonnay, uncorks a memorable vintage of his: the “This-War-Is-Vietnam” thumbsucker, brought to the table in every conflict, undeterred by its catastrophic record in the past. Actually, there’s something vaguely comforting about this kind of piece. Like a rite of spring, it blossoms early in every recent conflict, a slightly different exhausted metaphor each time – in 2003, in the desert, it’s “quicksand” – a gentle reassurance that the people who have always got it wrong are saying the same thing yet again. Well, we’ll see.

“A MILLION MOGADISHUS”: While the New York Times hails the anti-war movement’s new-found moderation, a Columbia University professor calls for U.S. military defeat. He hopes to se a “million Mogadishus,” a million U.S. soldiers, captured, murdered and paraded through the streets. What the anti-war movement must do now if it is to regain credibility. My take in Salon.

Another peace campaigner – also an Assyrian Christian – comes home from Iraq and recants his opposition to war:

I wept with family members as I shared their pain and with great difficulty and deep soul searching began little by little to understand their desire for war to finally rid them of the nightmare they were living in.

The terrible price paid in simple, down to earth ways – the family member with a son who just screams all the time, the family member who lost his wife who left unable to cope anymore, the family member going to a daily job with nothing to do, the family member with a son lost to the war, a husband lost to alcoholism, the daily, difficult to perceive slow death of people for whom all hope is lost.

The pictures of Sadaam Hussein whom people hailed in the beginning with great hope everywhere. Sadaam Hussein with his hand outstretched. Sadaam Hussein firing his rifle. Sadaam Hussein in his Arab Headdress. Sadaam Hussein in his classic 30 year old picture – one or more of these four pictures seemed to be everywhere on walls, in the middle of the road, in homes, as statues – he was everywhere!

All seeing, all knowing, all encompassing.

“Life is hell. We have no hope. But everything will be ok once the war is over.” The bizarre desire for a war that would rid them of the hopelessness was at best hard to understand.

“Look at it this way. No matter how bad it is we will not all die. We have hoped for some other way but nothing has worked. 12 years ago it went almost all the way but failed. We cannot wait anymore. We want the war and we want it now.”

Eventually, fair-minded people will see the truth about this war and its profound moral justification. Read the whole thing.

Salon has a summary of the worst that can be leveled against the hawks for predicting a “cakewalk.” I think they have a small point with Perle and Adelman, although I suspect that when this war is over, their stock will rise again. But the Wolfowitz and Cheney quotes don’t pass muster at all. When waving at a British soldier can get you hanged, I don’t think we know yet what the real feelings of the Iraqis are. Wolfowitz’s predictions of joy at liberation have yet to be validated either way – because much of Iraq’s population is still not liberated. But none of the quotes match those accredited to Bill Clinton. Here’s another one:

But the former president quickly got serious when Letterman mentioned Saddam Hussein. Letterman asked, “Are we going into Iraq? Should we go into Iraq? I’d like to go in. I’d like to get the guy. I don’t like the way the guy looks.” “He is a threat. He’s a murderer and a thug,” said Mr. Clinton. “There’s no doubt we can do this. We’re stronger; he’s weaker. You’re looking at a couple weeks of bombing and then I’d be astonished if this campaign took more than a week. Astonished.”

I think Clinton was genuine. I don’t buy the argument that this was a brilliant campaign to heighten expectations to make life harder for Bush. Clinton is slippery, but not that slippery. Still, I wonder if any reporter will ask the former president if indeed he is now astonished. Although, to be fair, he still has two weeks to go to be proven completely wrong.

“Sheryl Crow Unsuccessful; War On Iraq Begins WASHINGTON, DC-In spite of recording artist Sheryl Crow’s strong protestations, including the wearing of a “No War” guitar strap, the U.S. went to war with Iraq last week. “Making the decision to go to war is never easy, but it’s that much harder when you know Sheryl Crow disapproves,” White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said at a press conference Monday. “It is this administration’s sincerest hope that it can one day regain the support and trust of the woman behind such hits as ‘All I Wanna Do’ and ‘Soak Up The Sun.'” Fleischer issued similar apologies to Martin Sheen, Janeane Garofalo, and Nelly.” Good one.

The BBC boss responds to criticisms that his organization is biased – in favor of the allies! One thing you have to understand about some of these left-liberal top media honchoes – Howell Raines, Patrick Tyler et al – is that their actual social circle is pressuring them to go even further to the left. Their concern is seeming to be too conservative!

One lesson of the ferocity of the Saddamite resistance is surely this: who now could possibly, conceivably believe that this brutal police state would ever, ever have voluntarily disarmed? Would a regime that is forcing conscripts to fight at gun-point have caved to the terrifying figure of Hans Blix, supported by the even more itimidating vision of Dominique de Villepin? I’d say that one clear lesson of the first week is that war was and is the only mechanism that could have effectively disarmed Saddam. If true disarmament was your goal, it seems to me that the inspections regime has been revealed, however well-intentioned, as hopelessly unsuited to staring down a vicious totalitarian system.

After Pim Fortuyn, the gay anti-Islamist Dutch political leader was gunned down by an animal rights crusader, hard leftists and even liberals did all they could to minimize the seriousness of what had happened. It’s getting harder. The trial of Volkert van der Graaf is revealing that the assassination was motivated by an attempt to stop Fortuyn’s criticism of Islamist intolerance:

Facing a raucous court on the first day of his murder trial, [van der Graaf] said his goal was to stop Mr Fortuyn exploiting Muslims as “scapegoats” and targeting “the weak parts of society to score points” to try to gain political power. He said: “I confess to the shooting. He was an ever growing danger who would affect many people in society. I saw it as a danger. I hoped that I could solve it myself.”

This was a leftist extremist hit-job, by someone who had absorbed the anti-Fortuyn propaganda of Europe’s liberal elites. If it had been done by a neo-Nazi against a liberal politician, the papers would be full of dire warnings about a new wave of political extremism. But this time, the extremism is from the far left, allied with Islamism.

BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION: Yes, I know they use more quotation marks in headlines than Americans do. But hjow about this subhead: “The US delegation has walked out of the United Nations as Iraq condemns US aggression.” Yep, aggression. Some things are so transparent they don’t need quote marks.

A NEXIS transcript from Fox News Sunday’s March 16 show. Some hawks do bear some responsibility for being too optimistic about a short war. But they weren’t the only ones:

SNOW: And we’re back with Brit Hume, Mara Liasson, Bill Kristol and Juan Williams. Democrats are holding a convention in California, that is the California Democrats. A number of presidential candidates have come there to speak their peaces. And it raises the question of the Democratic Party’s policy toward Iraq. There seem to be a series of them.

First we’re going to play you a couple of clips. One, former President Bill Clinton speaking to an audience earlier this week in New York City. And also Senator John Kerry speaking in California just a couple of days ago. We’ll start with those, and then the panel will talk about them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This war is going to be over in a flash, so we can wait to do that. You can always kill somebody next week. You can’t bring them back next week, so… (APPLAUSE) (END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: What I regret is that the United States of America, the strongest military power on the face of this planet, has not had diplomacy that matches it. In fact, it has had some of the weakest diplomacy that we have every seen in the history of the conduct of this nation. (APPLAUSE) (END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: All right, Bill Kristol, that seems to be a majority opinion among at least California Democrats. But I am interested in your reaction to both quotes.

KRISTOL: Well, Bill Clinton never fails to appall. I mean, the most recent president of the United States, first saying “Believe me, this war is going to be over in a flash.” He doesn’t know that. It’s totally irresponsible to say that. Some of my fellow hawks over the last six, nine months have been saying it’s going to be a cakewalk. I’ve always said we do not know that. And you need to prepare the American people for the possibility that things will go wrong in war. Biological and chemical weapons could be used. This man isn’t just a pundit. This guy is the former president of the United States saying the war is going to be over in a flash. Totally irresponsible. And then he says, “You can always wait to kill somebody next week. You can’t bring them back next week.” So that’s what the war’s about? We are just going to kill people? You know, there are U.S. soldiers sitting there. It’s a serious question in terms of when is militarily the best time to go. And Clinton has this cavalier attitude that, well, it’s going to be over in a flash. We can kill people whenever we want, so let’s just delay. I mean, it’s one thing, as I say, for a candidate to say. It’s one thing for a commentator to say. But for the most recent president of the United States to be so flip and glib when 200,000 American troops are sitting on the verge of war on a wa front is really appalling.

WILLIAMS: There have been moments when Bill Kristol and I have disagreed about things. I don’t know if you remember any of them. But on this one, I’ve just got to say absolutely right on. I mean, how do we know it’s going to be a quick war? I fear also it’s a, you know, possibilities that would be so sad. And we don’t know. There is a great push in this town to say the administration is going to use sort of such a dominating force in order to get it done quickly for political purposes because the president wants the economy to recover in time and the stock market is suffering only because of the possibility, anxiety over war. But we don’t know. And you can’t put that out there in the way that Bill Clinton did as if it’s a fait acompli.

Here’s an open invitation to any reader who can find any quote from anyone in the Bush cabinet or military who said the equivalent of Bill Clinton’s remark.

A reader monitors the french evening news for me and sends in reports. His latest is the most disturbing yet:

Today’s evening news broadcast on French ratings leader TF1, http://www.tf1.fr (streaming video at “News,” under “Les JT a la carte”), finally has gone over the edge in directly supporting Saddam Hussein against the US and allied forces.-Many, many of the stories center on civilian casualties and hardships.-According to the leading story, the population of Baghdad no longer believes that the air attacks are meant to avoid civilians; the population of Basra is being actually targeted with “illegal” cluster bombs, shown in the video.- (They looked like little canisters to me.) And the military situation isn’t going any-better for the Americans:-Iraqis are proud that their army is matching up with the American forces, explains the broadcast.-The video accompanying all this is filled with angry people on the street shouting in Arabic at the cameras, desperate people crowded around water and food distribution points, and sad wounded children in hospital beds.-Story after story pounds these points home, repetitively, sickeningly, sadly. The strangest part of all this are the contradictions.- The streets of Baghdad’s government quarters are shown as a grey, deserted, and lined with bombed-out-buildings; the residential quarters are shown teeming with people everywhere going about their daily business, most of them angry at the US, says the narration.-As for the-US army, it’s practically losing the war –but Baghdad will be encircled within five or ten days.

De Villepin’s awkwardness when asked whether he actually wants Saddam to be defeated was not misleading. We should realize that the French in their heads know we must win. But perhaps because of that, in their hearts, they want us to lose. They are not an ally.

GAY MILITARY DISCHARGES: Thanks for some challenging emails, many of which challenged my view that the drop in gay discharges is largely due to war. As one pointed out, the numbers go back to October 2001 – long before war with Iraq. One military emailer argues: “The gay discharge rate is down in the military because more gay soldiers want to stay in and they don’t mind keeping their sexuality out of the barracks. And we routinely throw heteros out how can’t keep sex out of the barracks as well.” As i worte, increasing acceptance of “out but discreet” gay soldiers may also be a factor. Another possibility is that discharges doubled under Clinton because the military was trying to make a point against the administration. Inexcusable, of course. But possible. With a new commander in chief, they might be more willing to let this issue die away. None of these explanations is mutually exclusive, of course.