Oh, those Eye-talians!

This morning I went to my favorite website — I need humor in the early hours, and David Horowitz’s Frontpage never fails to deliver, albeit unintentionally — and was definitely not disappointed by the screaming headline above David Horowitz’s “blog”:

Saddam Hussein website comes to the defense of Juan Cole and Justin Raimondo and attacks us“!

Hey, I thought, Saddam Hussein has a website? Wow! They sure are getting lenient in Iraqi prisons these days! But on reading further, it turns out that Saddam ain’t bloggin’ — it’s those Eye-talians!:

“A website devoted to attacking the American ‘occupation’ of Iraq and hosted improbably by Italians supporting Iraq’s incarcerated former dictator (it solemnly posts “special reports on the trial of President Saddam Hussein”) has sprung to the defense of Professor Juan Cole whose sympathies for America’s Islamist enemies has been subjected to withering scrutiny by FrontPage writer, Professor Steven Plaut.”

Watch out, dude: I wouldn’t mess with those Eye-talians! Those guys are friggin’ …. dangerous! What with all that pasta, and tomato sauce — not to mention pesto sauce. Nary a cheese-dog to be found — where will the anti-American subversion end? Luckily we have the “withering” analysis of Little Stevie Wondrous Plaut, who’s so pro-American that he packed his bags and moved to Israel where he spends his time denouncing the American peace initiative and defending the extremist-terrorist followers of the late Meir Kahane. Oh, so “withering”!

And there’s more, as Horowitz breathlessly relates:

“The Saddam site uruknet.info reposts Kurt Nimmo’s response to Plaut’s prior evisceration of Nimmo himself for similar raging sympathies for the enemy: ‘Steve ‘Pinnochio Plaut Is In Need of Seriouus [sic] Therapy.’ Nimmo has apparently been consulting Ahmad al-Qloushi’s professor in how to deal with arguments you can’t handle. Nimmo’s article begins ‘It is comforting to read articles by Juan Cole and Justin Raimondo…’ and descends into further inanity from there. Readers of FrontPage can enjoy and profit from Plaut’s latest Cole extravaganza in today’s issue.”

It really is a great compliment — which I’m sure the hateful Horowitz didn’t intend — to be grouped with Professor Cole of the University of Michigan, a scholar and head of the Middle East Studies Association. Cole’s nuanced analysis, leavened with his characteristic gentleness and plain old common sense, is a bit different from my own shall we say angular style, but it’s interesting how obsessed the War Party is with both of us. I humbly suggest that’s because we’re so effective, each in his own way: Antiwar.com has managed to build up a huge audience, and Professor Cole is regularly featured on such programs as PBS’s “News Hour” and cited in newspaper accounts of events in the Middle East.

This has truly been a banner week or two: Antiwar.com has been attacked by all the right neocon nut-jobs! First it was the Trotskyite-turned-Sufi Stephen Schwartz, defender of Uzbekistan’s scary dictatorship — then it was State Department “libertarian” Tom Palmer, whose upcoming trip to Iraq on behalf of the newly-installed colonial government is no doubt going to prove a milestone for those who want to blend Shi’ite theocracy with the insights of Friedrich Hayek, and now the frothy-mouthed Horowitz/Plaut duo.

A wacko, a weirdo, and a couple of wing-dings: by their enemies shall ye know them. We must be doing something right….

Hamm-handed

The idea that the U.S. would ever engage in covert activities to bring down a government is so inconceivable to Nathan Hamm, of “registan.net,” that he’s shocked — shocked! — that anybody would take the memo purportedly by U.S. ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Stephen Young seriously. It’s an “obvious” forgery, he crows, with the Leisurely Professor (and the world’s leading advocate of State Department libertarianism) chiming in. But as I wrote in my column:

“It is difficult to see how the embassy can maintain this stance of high moral dudgeon in the context of its own actions: regardless of whether or not the memo is real, in whole or in part, they have made its declared provenance all too believable.”

The stupidity and arrogance of U.S. foreign policy is doubly underscored in the example of Kyrgyzstan, where the wide distribution of the Young memo is creating ill will and resentment against the U.S. as fast (or faster) than the distribution of dollars is creating compliant yes-men — and fueling the growing Islamist elements. As John Laughland points out in an excellent piece:

“The US has spent $746,000,000 in Kyrgyzstan since 1992, and that all our old friends – the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the International Foundation for Election Systems, Freedom House “and other American sponsored NGOs” are active in this small poor country. As the ambassador says, “The amount of money we spend in Kyrgyzstan per capita is far and away the highest rate of any of the Central Asian states … our partnership with Kyrgyzstan has made those assistance programs among the most effective of all those countries of the former Soviet Union.

“As it happens, the NGOs are particularly numerous in the Ferghana Valley, where the trouble started. The National Democratic Institute has offices in Jalalabad and Karasuu, a tiny town on the Uzbek border; USAID has an office in Osh; and so does the US Peace Corps.[5] USAID funds many things – click here for a summary – including blatantly biased media outlets like Internews.[6] The Eurasia Foundation, chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Madeleine Albright, James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger, has offices in Bishkek and Osh.[7] (Its funders include Philip Morris, Yukos, Citigroup and of course the ever generous US taxpayer.[8]) Oddly enough, there is a similar plethora of NGOs across the border in the Uzbekistan part of the Ferghana valley, many of whom pursue political goals underneath the veneer of charitable work: the “Ferghana Valley Peace Building Project,” for instance, promotes both water and “a gender specific strategic action plan”.[9]

“Within the US embassy in Bishkek itself, the “Democracy Commission” finances media outlets including radio and TV stations.[10] Freedom House opened an office in Bishkek in November 2003, and it now prints sixty different journals and newspapers in Kyrgyzstan. (The Freedom House office in Tahskent is headed by a former US diplomat, Robert Freedman, whose last posting was in Ukraine.) Although Ambassador Young claims that US support for NGOs is non-political, the Assistant Secretaries of State Elizabeth Jones and Lorne Craner travelled to Bishhkek for the inauguration of the press, which was funded by the US State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, as well as the Open Society Institute (George Soros) and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. In fact, the printing press itself is legally operated by the “Media Support Center Foundation,” a body which is referred to as “a Kyrgyz NGO” but which is in fact chaired by US Senator John McCain, with former US National Security Adviser Anthony Lake on the board.”

Who do these people think they’re kidding? Now that the country is on the brink of civil war, with TWO rival parliaments and criminal elements rampaging through the capital, Bishkek, one might forgive the Kyrgyz people if they’re less impressed by their pending “liberation” than Glenn Reynolds and Nathan Hamm.

Giuliana Sgrena – shot from behind?

Naomi Klein has interviewed Giuliana Sgrena in Rome. The revelations in this Democracy Now interview of Klein significantly challenge the stories we’ve heard thus far in the press:

One of the things that we keep hearing is that she was fired on on the road to the airport, which is a notoriously dangerous road. In fact, it’s often described as the most dangerous road in the world. So this is treated as a fairly common and understandable incident that there would be a shooting like this on that road. And I was on that road myself, and it is a really treacherous place with explosions going off all the time and a lot of checkpoints. What Giuliana told me that I had not realized before is that she wasn’t on that road at all. She was on a completely different road that I actually didn’t know existed. It’s a secured road that you can only enter through the Green Zone and is reserved exclusively for ambassadors and top military officials. So, when Calipari, the Italian security intelligence officer, released her from captivity, they drove directly to the Green Zone, went through the elaborate checkpoint process which everyone must go through to enter the Green Zone, which involves checking in obviously with U.S. forces, and then they drove onto this secured road. And the other thing that Giuliana told me that she’s quite frustrated about is the description of the vehicle that fired on her as being part of a checkpoint. She says it wasn’t a checkpoint at all. It was simply a tank that was parked on the side of the road that opened fire on them. There was no process of trying to stop the car, she said, or any signals. From her perspective, they were just — it was just opening fire by a tank. The other thing she told me that was surprising to me was that they were fired on from behind. Because I think part of what we’re hearing is that the U.S. soldiers opened fire on their car, because they didn’t know who they were, and they were afraid. It was self-defense, they were afraid. The fear, of course, is that their car might blow up or that they might come under attack themselves. And what Giuliana Sgrena really stressed with me was that she — the bullet that injured her so badly and that killed Calipari, came from behind, entered the back seat of the car. And the only person who was not severely injured in the car was the driver, and she said that this is because the shots weren’t coming from the front or even from the side. They were coming from behind, i.e. they were driving away. So, the idea that this was an act of self-defense, I think becomes much more questionable. And that detail may explain why there’s some reticence to give up the vehicle for inspection. Because if indeed the majority of the gunfire is coming from behind, then clearly, they were firing from — they were firing at a car that was driving away from them.

There’s more….

An Israeli Refuser visits the US Congress

Brad Brooks-Rubin writes about visiting the U.S. Congress with Israeli refuser Yonatan Shapira on Andrew Schamess’s blog Semitism.net.

The American press has clearly found this a compelling story, which probably explains why the American public is so well-informed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is entirely in sync with the reaction Rubin and Shapira encounter in Congress:

Inevitably, what follows after Yonatan tells his story is a long litany of excuses, of rationalizations, of head-scratching. About why even though they are in a position to demonstrate their own courage, to refuse to give into the dominant beliefs and currents of their milieu, as Yonatan and the others have done, they do not. Time after time, we hear “I am with you personally, but…” But the Jewish community. But our constituents. But the media. Translating these statements into militaryspeak – “I’m just following orders.”
Yes, civilians too can suffer from the same syndrome as soldiers seeking immunity from war crimes.

At first, I’ll admit I was excited just to be able to get in the door. And perhaps over-enthusiastic about the power of the refusers to start shaking the foundations of the mainstream’s understanding of and activity around the situation. But with time, with more meetings, and with optimism about the chances for peace growing by the minute, I find myself increasingly pessimistic.

Herbert Spencer Was Right

I note that Antiwar.com has been under attack, lately, from the more whacked-out wing of the ostensibly "conservative" movement, and under that general rubric I have to include the ravings of one Tom Palmer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who recently smeared one of our employees, Jeremy Sapienza. Palmer goes through his usual litany of lies about me, claiming that I want to see American soldiers killed – of course, the whole point of getting them out of Iraq immediately (which Palmer opposes) is so that they won’t be killed, but never mind … He then latches onto a statement made by Jeremy on another website:

"In the words of Mr. Raimondo’s colleague, senior editor at antiwar.com, Mr. Jeremy Sapienza: ‘I will stand up proudly for it. I have cheered on men attacking US troops. I will continue to cheer any defeat US troops meet.’ Perhaps I have misunderstood the meaning of those remarks. Perhaps Mr. Sapienza only meant that he would stand up and cheer when jihadis attack U.S. troops *and* simultaneously his favorite football team scores a touchdown."

The only proper answer to Palmer – who seems to spend an inordinate amount of time trying, without success, to smear both me and Antiwar.com as "anti-American"– is not printable, so this quote from Herbert Spencer’s famous essay on "Patriotism" will have to suffice:

"Some years ago I gave my expression to my own feeling – anti-patriotic feeling, it will doubtless be called – in a somewhat startling way. It was at the time of the second Afghan war, when, in pursuance of what were thought to be "our interests," we were invading Afghanistan. News had come that some of our troops were in danger. At the Athenæum Club a well-known military man – then a captain but now a general – drew my attention to a telegram containing this news, and read it to me in a manner implying the belief that I should share his anxiety. I astounded him by replying – "When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves."

Is Herbert Spencer an "anti-Amerian" subversive? I’m waiting to hear from this fountainhead of pomposity that the author of Social Statics, The Man Versus the State, and other classics of laissez-faire liberalism is the nineteenth-century version of Ward Churchill.

Palmer tells us he is traveling to Iraq very soon, and bloviates on about his own bravery and supposed virtue, informing us that he is going there in order attend a conference on "constitutionalism" – presumably a conclave convened by the U.S. government, paid for by the U.S. taxpayers. So who is paying for Palmer’s trip? Cato? The U.S. Treasury? Or some combination of both? Is Cato sucking at the teat of the U.S. taxpayers? And even if they aren’t, and the whole shameful affair is privately funded, what is one of their top employees doing acting as an "advisor" to the U.S. government on how best to administer a newly-conquered colony? Is this what "libertarianism" (Beltway edition) has come to? There is just one word for this kind of craven opportunism: disgusting.

What’s even more disturbing, however, is that the Cato Institute, which has up until this point been very good on the Iraq war – i.e. implacably opposed — is now showing signs of going wobbly. A recent debate held at Cato featured speakers from the Objectivist Center (followers of Ayn Rand), Ron Bailey of Reason magazine, and conservative Bush acolyte Deroy Murdock for the pro-war side, and Charles Pena and Christopher Preble of Cato, as well as Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute and Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation representing the antiwar side. The Cato boys, Higgs, and Hornberger made short work of Murdock and the Randians, and the event was a great success. But a recent article in Cato’s Policy Report describing this event oddly fails to mention either Higgs or Hornberger – they are simply dropped out of the proceedings, as if they never appeared. Furthermore, the event is reported in an "even-handed" way, helpfully informing us that "the hawks had arguments of their own," and approvingly citing the pretentious Nick Gillespie’s exhortation that "urged libertarians to debate divisive issues like the Iraq war openly. Libertarians, he argued, should cherish debate and dissent rather than demand conformity to dogma."

Gee, isn’t it funny but that fake "libertarians" like Gillespie – who stupidly claims that libertarianism isn’t a political philosophy but (God help us!) a "design for living" – find our government’s foreign policy of mass murder and permanent revolution "debatable," but abortion, gay marriage, cloning, and legalizing heroin so that we can put it in vending machines and sell it to schoolchildren – none of these things seem to be open to "debate and dissent" within the libertarian movement (or, at least, within those tiny precincts of it represented by Reason magazine.) Opposition to the Bush administration’s goal of global hegemony is "dogma" – but Nick Gillespie’s libertine monomania is not.

Reason has long been a sandbox for the overgrown adolescents who have taken it over, but what’s up with the Cato Institute? There are many good people at Cato, especially in their foreign policy division, and I don’t want to denigrate their work, but often it isn’t the scholars who make the policy, and in this case it seems that Cato is involved in some morally perilous activities. Is it really the function of a libertarian thinktank to advise the U.S. government in how best to put a liberal, free-market face on Iraq’s budding Shi’ite theocracy? There are a lot of donors to the Cato Institute who, I know, will question the wisdom of such a role, and I, for one, don’t blame them.

It’s worth reprinting the rest of Spencer’s remarks on "Patriotism," just to remind ourselves how a principled libertarian – as opposed to a two-bit whore like Palmer – views his relationship to the American state and its war machine:

"I foresee the exclamation which will be called forth. Such a principle, it will be said, would make an army impossible and a government powerless. It would never do to have each soldier use his judgment about the purpose for which a battle is waged. Military organization would be paralyzed and our country would be a prey to the first invader.

"Not so fast, is the reply. For one war an army would remain just as available as now – a war of national defence. In such a war every soldier would be conscious of the justice of his cause. He would not be engaged in dealing death among men about whose doings, good or ill, he knew nothing, but among men who were manifest transgressors against himself and his compatriots. Only aggressive war would be negatived, not defensive war.

"Of course it may be said, and said truly, that if there is no aggressive war there can be no defensive war. It is clear, however, that one nation may limit itself to defensive war when other nations do not. So that the principle remains operative.

"But those whose cry is – "Our country, right or wrong!" and who would add to our eighty-odd possessions others to be similarly obtained, will contemplate with disgust such a restriction upon military action. To them no folly seems greater than that of practising on Monday the principles they profess on Sunday."

This last defines the problem with phony Beltway "libertarians" like Palmer to a tee. The pontificating Palmer, who spends all his time defending the American state, and smearing anyone who opposes its war plans, isn’t even half the libertarian – or the human being – that Jeremy Sapienza is, and, what’s more, he knows it. So go to Iraq, Tommy boy, and suck up to the "libertarian" ayatollahs: I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear your views on "constitutionalism," gay marriage, and the evils of "homophobia."
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