{"id":25788,"date":"2015-10-05T11:59:15","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T19:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=25788"},"modified":"2015-10-05T13:12:28","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T21:12:28","slug":"afghan-twitter-firestorm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/05\/afghan-twitter-firestorm\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghan Twitter Firestorm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"arial\"><a href=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/ct-afghan-hospital-bombing-20151003.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-8820\" src=\"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/ct-afghan-hospital-bombing-20151003.jpg\" alt=\"ct-afghan-hospital-bombing-20151003\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Saturday afternoon, I read about how the U.S. had bombed the only hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which was being staffed by the French volunteer group, Doctors without Borders.I recalled the 2004 U.S. bombings of a hospital in Fallujah.\u00a0 So I tossed out a tweet &#8211;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Blowing up that Kunduz hospital is a small price to pay in the greater campaign to rid the world of extremist violence.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; James Bovard (@JimBovard) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JimBovard\/status\/650366816624226304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 3, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><\/font><font face=\"arial\">Nattie Roman responded with a great quip &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/TsarKastik\/status\/650492430249250816<\/p>\n<p><\/font><font face=\"arial\">Her tweet got lots of pickup &#8211; boosted after I replied, &#8220;Close enough for government work.&#8221;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><\/font><font face=\"arial\">Then Wick Allison, the chairman of the board of the American Ideas Institute, the publisher of the American Conservative (where I&#8217;m a contributing editor), replied with a message aimed at me and\u00a0Clark Stooksbury, another\u00a0contributing editor who had retweeted (or favorite) my original line:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JimBovard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@JimBovard<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/clarkstooksbury?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@clarkstooksbury<\/a> Sorry you weren&#39;t in it. Might have introduced  a different  perspective.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Wick Allison (@wickallison) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wickallison\/status\/650446550284406784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 3, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Allison later clarified that he lives in an &#8220;irony-free zone&#8221; and missed my attempted humor.<\/p>\n<p>After Angela Keaton @antiwar2 kindly retweeted my original line, the topic reheated. Here&#8217;s an insightful response from a twitter user named DJkilllist<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/djkilllist\/status\/651106462324781056<\/p>\n<p><\/font><font face=\"arial\">On Saturday Kevin McKenzie replied to my original tweet, so I tossed out another line exonerating all government killings:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KevinMckenz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@kevinmckenz<\/a> Govt. killings are never extremist because they are done for the good of the people.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; James Bovard (@JimBovard) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JimBovard\/status\/650503883937218560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 4, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><\/font><font face=\"arial\">Alas, this was not well-received by Twitter users calling themselves Anarchoantihero and Lo<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/anarchoantihero\/status\/651107178896560128<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Hey, kill yourself. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/l5wzp5St9s\">https:\/\/t.co\/l5wzp5St9s<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Lo (@Lo_b_) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Lo_b_\/status\/651109864085721089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 5, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><\/font><font face=\"arial\">Regardless, I continue to have unbounded hope that social media will cure all the ills of Attention Deficit Democracy.<\/p>\n<p>If nothing else, my Twitter account will increase the number of people who dance at my funeral &#8211; or who at least do cartwheels upon hearing of my demise.<\/p>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday afternoon, I read about how the U.S. had bombed the only hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which was being staffed by the French volunteer group, Doctors without Borders.I recalled the 2004 U.S. bombings of a hospital in Fallujah.\u00a0 So I tossed out a tweet &#8211; Blowing up that Kunduz hospital is a small price to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-25788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25788"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25794,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25788\/revisions\/25794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25788"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=25788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}