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Posted August 8, 2002
Ideology
I found the letter "Leftists Will Stab You in the Back" from the August 3rd Backtalk to be somewhat disturbing. Being quite liberal (by the dictionary definition) in my outlook, I don't know where the author is coming from. From conservatives I hear, all the time, the line, "All on the left lie." Rarely do I hear what those lies might be. Just the accusation that the left lies. I'd really like to know what lies the left are spreading but I've never seen them spelled out. I get the feeling that some conservatives, rather than take on issues that disagree with them, just call the other side liars. This is not constructive at all. As a matter of principle and habit I never lie.
The author goes on to accuse lefties of supporting a Borg collective and a police state. What is he talking about? Both of these are foreign to me and as a lefty, I fight against. I opposed Clinton primarily because of his adding 200,000 new police officers, his meddling in the Balkans, and his bombing of Iraq. I oppose Bush primarily because of his drive for war and his efforts to destroy civil liberties. Compare this to those over at Free Republic who were anti-war when it was Clinton's war but turned to war hawks as soon as Bush decided to wage war. Who stabbed the antiwar movement in the back? It certainly wasn't this lefty.
It really is unfair to use one's ideology as a basis for determining one's honesty and character. There are good and bad, honest and dishonest, and rational thinkers and nutballs on all sides.
~ Edward H., Boulder, Colorado
USS Liberty
I am new to your site; I am an antiwar libertarian (small "L"). I noticed in ...[Justin Raimondo's "Et Tu, Israel?"] column the phrase "sinking of the USS Liberty". Actually, the ship remained afloat, despite Israel's best efforts to sink it. The truth is, if anything, even worse. The Israelis kept on trying to sink the ship long after they should have realized their "mistake." They even fired on a life raft and retrieved one flotation device with the ship's identification, AGTR-5, clearly printed on it. They nevertheless continued the attack until US Navy carrier-based jets took off to defend the ship. The jets were recalled by Defense Secretary McNamara, but by then Israel had already apologized for her "mistake" so she could not very well resume the attack.
Clinton
Re: Raimondo's aside in his "No Truer Love" piece:
It is not accurate to say we all know Clinton wouldn't fight for his country, or even that he ultimately dodged the draft (to which he actually submitted himself).
It is true that he opposed the draft for the Vietnam War, for the good and sufficient reason, which should be agreed upon by any Libertarian, that it didn't involve this country's defense. However, as the letter to Col Holmes actually says, he decided not to refuse to submit to the draft, but to submit to it.
It is true that he gained a deferment from being in the draft, via his arrangement to do an ROTC gig once his Rhodes Scholar time in Oxford, England was over. This is just like the automatic deferment many received to do graduate school, before that automatic deferment was discontinued. Had it been just a few years earlier, Clinton wouldn't have needed to make any arrangement to defer his being in the draft, nor are those who chose graduate school and thereby stayed out of the draft normally described as having thereby 'dodged' the draft.
Even if this characterization is apt, and it is agreed that Clinton's ROTC deal was dodging the draft, once he declined to honor this obligation, he was immediately made eligible for the draft, as he knew he would be. He stood in the draft, had jeopardy to be drafted and inducted into the US armed services, and simply was not called, as the luck of the draw had it. I myself stood for the draft, got a high number, and thereby escaped being drafted into the armed services. I in no way dodged the draft, nor did the Selective Service System's passing over me mean that I refused or wouldn't fight for this country.
Obviously, Clinton didn't volunteer for Vietnam, and did seek deferment of his draft obligations in order to do his Rhodes Scholar time abroad. And he opposed that particular war, and he opposed the draft for that particular war. None of that was wrong, and it mostly goes to his credit.
Declining (out of principle) to do his ROTC obligation wasn't a refusal to fight. The ROTC gig was a way not to fight (since it would keep him out of the draft, and with no commitment to serve other than in the reserves). By making his ROTC obligation deal, Clinton skated on being in the draft for that period of time he was in Oxford, and then after declining to honor it, was put right back in the draft, as he knew he would, and as he explained to Col. Holmes.
That Clinton would have declined to fight for his country, let alone did so refuse, isn't information available in the evidence. It is unsubstantiated, speculative, and an unworthy smear, considering it comes from a Libertarian source.
Gleiwitz
On September 1, 1939, a contingent of SS men dressed in Polish army uniforms attacked a German radio station at Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia and the necessary rationale for a German "response" had been provided. That response: A crushing attack on Poland along a broad front by well equipped German Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe units and the Second World War had begun. Perhaps nothing better than Gleiwitz characterized Hitler's taste for war at the time and his determination to have it. One comes away from recent statements by President Bush and members of his Cabinet with the sense that a similar determination is moving events in Washington at the moment.
There is a certain momentum to the insane calculation of war and a detachment that makes its authors utterly insensible to the human cost involved. Which of us imagines, for example, that the current jingoism of a William Bennet, or a Gary Bauer has much in common with the Christian heritage both so vocally claim to defend. No, something else is at work here, not Christianity, or at least not Christianity as it had been understood until the arrival of the Scofield Bible some few decades ago. Rather what's going on here is a kind of self-satisfying emotionalism, enhanced either by the requirements of an outsized ego, a crackpot theology or both. And that is what makes all of this war talk so frightening: Its irrationality and its seeming inevitability.
An attack on Iraq without a clear demonstration of a connection of its leadership with the events of September 11, 2001, would be a mistake of epochal proportion, but we're moving toward such a event with all the bloodlust characteristic of a Hitler or a von Ribbentrop in 1939. Will there be a Gleiwitz this time?
Unseen Threats
...Some politicians, security agencies and military men continue to expound on these vague threats because it builds their power and influence, increases their budgets, gives them more control over the populace, or allows them to purchase weapons which they would not be able to afford otherwise. Yet these men do not see that they are being used by the enemy as well to spread fear, for they are dull spiritually, though they may be sharp intellectually. They do not understand that in publicizing these various unseen threats which have little or no way they can be defended against, they do not help their people but demoralize and discourage them. This plays into the enemy's hands, for such people are then ever more willing to give up their freedom, their liberties, their money for greater security, greater surveillance, greater government control....
~ Ted Rudow III, MA, Menlo Park, California
Where Are the Interventionists?
...Why isn't anyone able to see that Sharon's policy is suicidal and genocidal? Israelis and Palestinians are being needlessly killed in a senseless conflict.
The issue is this: There must be a Palestinian state. This must be established as soon as possible. A de facto provisional state must be established by the UN. Israeli occupation and settlement must cease because they violate international law and are only making the situation worse. Without these two preconditions, you will never have peace. And that is what Sharon wants. He wants a fight to the finish which he feels his better armed and better financed forces can win. This is the policy of a madman. He must be stopped.
Where are all the humanitarian interventionists and New World Order state-builders now when we need them. Where is the Open Society of George Soros and Human Rights Watch to build a nation for Palestinians and to stop the carnage? ...
Behind the Scenes
According to the USAToday, the Bush administration has stated that they don't want to attack Iraq before the November elections. I believe they are lying and do want to attack but because of the courage and honesty of people like Scott Ritter and the folks at Antiwar.com there is a building opposition to a war in Iraq. I think the hawks stated they don't want to attack before November to give themselves an alibi. They say they don't want to attack before November, but they might be forced to attack before November when Iraq does something dastardly and creates a sense of moral outrage and imperative.
Rumsfeld, according to military officials, wants to "get something going" in the war on terrorism and has held talks with the commander of special operations, Gen. Holland, concerning increased Special ops activity which would be "aggressive, unilateral, and behind the scenes" including search and seizure of other countries' ships and increased use of ground forces.
Is it going to create a sense of outrage when a group of Navy Seals gets killed or captured as they try to assassinate Saddam? Or when a boat sinks as some US Marines are trying to take command of it? I'll be outraged, at the hawks for putting US soldiers in harms way to "get something going."
~ Jeromy McKim