Antiwar.com Blog

In Iran.

Surely you didn’t think Michael Ledeen would rile up his yahoo readers by dissing America the virtuous, did you? Naw, Michael’s been wavin’ the Stars & Stripes, drinkin’ Gallo, and dancin’ to John Philip Sousa over there in Italy. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with the US of A, no-siree. Now let’s go liberate them long-sufferin’ Iranian dope fiends!

A U.S. soldier in Afghanistan describes his work:

Yes . . . F—ING Yes!!! I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don’t.

Mighty white of him to allow that some Afghans might not deserve to have nasty things done to them. Just goes to show you the value of a good upbringing.

By the way, it’s no wonder the U.S. military is trying to keep GIs offline. The MySpace page quoted above “included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned ‘My Sweet Little Habib’; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.” Of course, as Jonathan Schwarz notes, this may all be an al-Qaeda plot to discredit a great American bulwark against dhimmitude.

Mobs of cops were in Washington, DC last week for National Police Week. Their behavior was so bad that the DC police chief formally notified them that their public drunkenness would not be tolerated.

Many of the cops were bicycling around to draw attention to their campaign for a memorial to cops killed on duty.  I was cycling around downtown on Saturday, May 12.   Not only were they running red lights en masse, but they would surge out into busy streets and hold their hands up as if every driver was obliged to slam on the brakes (despite the green light) – and let royalty proceed.  They could have easily caused an accident – and perhaps they did at times when I was not watching.  (I did not see the cop biker I photographed above on his bike, and have no idea if he violated any laws).

The Washington Post reported early last week:

“D.C. Police Chief Cathy L.  Lanier  put out fliers yesterday warning officers in town for National Police Week that they must obey city laws covering disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and other ” unacceptable behavior.” 
     Lanier  ordered the fliers distributed around downtown in hopes of curbing complaints about officers drinking in public, playing loud music and causing other trouble.

The Washington Post printed a couple letters to the editor on lawless cops on Saturday.  Greg Davis of Reston, Virginia, complained:   

Every year about this time, the District is subjected to bands of revelers who terrorize the local populace. Many of them are arrogant, belligerent and inebriated, and they violate laws at will. And our local police pretty much ignore them.

   Why? Because these are police officers from other jurisdictions around the
country who have come here to “honor fallen officers.”

**

I wonder if federal antiterrorism grants paid for some of the cops’ trips to rampage in DC.

Comments on this topic welcome at my blog here  (where there is a larger photo of the cop).  

An astonishing piece by Andrew Sullivan in the Times of London on antiwar Republicans, featuring Ron Paul. Aside from the condescending airs and insulting description of Ron as a “crank” — “even cranks have a point sometimes” — Sullivan gives an enthusiastic account of the rise of the antiwar right, and clearly recognizes that what’s happening in the Paul campaign, and in a wider section of the conservative movement, is the revival of the Old Right, or, as Sullivan puts it, “the fiscally prudent, freedom-loving isolationists of the United States.”

I say this is an astonishing piece because its author has come so far since 9/11 as to make a complete reversal: it’s as if Wendell Wilkie had suddenly morphed into Robert W. McCormick. Here’s Sullivan a few days after 9/11, in the same newspaper:

“This was the myth of the place apart, the city on the hill, the eternal elsewhere. And when you saw the squeamishness of Americans to intervene abroad, their often dangerous reluctance to embroil themselves in foreign entanglements, it was at some level this myth that prompted them. Isolationism, for all its faults, was always the flip-side of American exceptionalism. It was a naivete that was nevertheless founded on a dream that refused to die.

“But in one morning, this dream ended as America was wakened from its long sleep. The elsewhere is now somewhere. The refuge is now insecure. The threat from without is now also within. The new world is now just the world. Isolationism is no longer even a choice. It is lying in the rubble in downtown Manhattan.”

“Isolationism,” averred Sullivan in his previous incarnation as the Avenging Angel of 9/11, “is dead.” What one has to wonder is how, or why, it was suddenly revived in Sullivan’s mind. While I am always glad to see new converts, surely such a complete turnaround requires a bit of an explanation, or, at least, more of an explantion than Sullivan is giving.

Sullivan’s hostility to Pat Buchanan has been pretty consistent over the years, and yet Paul’s differences with Buchanan are pretty much confined to the trade issue: Ron’s a free-trader (not the Bushian fake variety, but the real thing), while Pat is a protectionist. On foreign policy, however, their views are so similar as to be virtually indistinguishable. So why the double-standard — why is Sullivan gushing over Paul, and yet is presumably set in stone in his contempt for Buchanan?

Let’s just hope no one tells Sullivan about Ron Paul’s position on gay marriage.

Ouch!

I’m glad to see what’s-his-name Matthew Yglesias is back in form after the transition to his new home on The Atlantic‘s blog — and remind me never to get on his bad side.

Clearly, there are too many candidates to give all of the different points of view a fair hearing. What to do? I suggest two podiums. Behind podium one, Ron Paul; behind podium two, the other nine, in an orderly, grade-school water-fountain line. After each question from the moderator, Ron Paul answers. In rebuttal, the other nine take turns howling “America, F*ck Yeah!“