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"To the Iraqi people, let me say this: There are a lot of reporters embedded with coalition forces in your country. The reporters should be interested and willing to listen. This is your opportunity to tell them your stories so that history properly records the viciousness, the brutality of that regime, and so that history is not repeated. To the free reporters and journalists in Iraq, this is your opportunity to listen and report. It is an historic opportunity for journalists. This is also true for Iraqis here in America, who can now speak freely to the press without concern about their families and friends still in Iraq." These are brilliant points. I sincerely hope that journalists take their "opportunity." Let's watch together.
But then his extreme bitterness at the liberation of Iraq would have deflated you. He accused President Bush and Tony Blair of "fabricating evidence against Iraq." He said that the "Anglo-Saxons" simply had a bad "attitude." No matter what the Right says about the U.N., it's usually — sadly — true. Or worse.
"Recently, al-Saadi was the public face of Iraq's supposed cooperation with United Nations weapons inspectors — but a decade earlier, the British-educated, German-trained scientist helped his country build a chemical testing range near Baghdad. "He courted German assistance with the project because 'you Germans have great expertise in the killing of Jews with gas,' he told Karlheinz Lohs, a chemical-weapons expert from the former East Germany, in 1991. "Lohs added that al-Saadi wanted to harness Germany's 'knowledge' to 'destroy Israel.'" Ah, what a lovely world.
Ms. Maya Sen, a national organizer of Not in Our Name, was none too happy. The pictures of jubilant Iraqis disgusted her. As reported in the New York Sun, she huffed, "I was appalled to see the footage and the coercion the U.S. and U.K. military have put on the people of Iraq. It's a little hard not to do what they tell you to do when they are armed with machine guns." The pattern holds true: Apologists for tyrants always accuse their opponents of doing what the tyrants themselves do. It is a perfect mirror image, or something.
You would have thought, yes. But the important thing is that "the Right" — including democratic liberals — never, ever be comforted.
The spokesman's language was confused — in more ways than one — but we get his drift, I think.
And who is the Falwell/Robertson of this season? Halliburton. Yes. You can see it in their cartoons, for example. Bush might have gone ahead and destroyed an evil, people-killing, hope-killing, love-killing machine: but they'll always have Halliburton, won't they? "Blood for Oil" lives on.
Hmmm. Which is the only democracy in the Middle East? How, exactly, is defending Israel incompatible with defending democracy? And in freeing the Kuwaiti people from the deprivations of Saddam Hussein, were we really defending oil, exclusively? Do Kuwaitis themselves feel this way? And what Arab democracy, pray tell, should we have been defending, instead of oil? But then, his Pulitzer prizes will keep rolling in, for talk like that.
Language is ever-so-revealing of attitude.
The response to the recent horrors in Cuba has exemplified the pattern. The "liberals" (I always wince to write that word, in the contemporary fashion) have pounced all over those they consider "right-wing." They're not upset that democrats and independent journalists have been summarily jailed. They're upset that Castro's actions have spoiled the accommodationist agenda, and marred the image of the revolution. David Gonzalez wrote an analysis in the New York Times. He ended with a quote from Brian Alexander, of the Cuba Policy Foundation. (This means that the author agreed with the quote — that's why the article ended with it.) "Painting Castro as the bad guy could very well lead to the triumph of the hard-liners in the Cuba debate." Painting Castro as the bad guy? You see, it's not Castro himself; it's his unreasonable enemies. Charlie Rangel was peeved mainly that the crackdown made it harder for people like him to continue to defend Castro: "They [the Communist regime] know how to support their enemies and get rid of their friends." Ponder that statement for a while, in all its implications. And if you're still charmed by good ol' "Chollie," you are . . . well, different from me. And another Democratic congressman, Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts, said, "There is a parallel here between this administration [the Bush administration] and the Castro government. They are both going backward." That one ended a David Gonzalez New York Times article too, folks. And so on, and so on.
Jian-li's wife, Christina Fu, is an American citizen — as are their children — and I spoke to her the other day. She is in good spirits — as good as can be expected. I will say once more: The U.S. government must not take its eye off this extraordinary fellow. Neither will we.
"Jay, I am a Marine Major who is right now in Iraq (gotta love technology). I wanted to add my two cents on the feeling of liberating Iraq. I have met and seen hundreds of Iraqis while I have been here. Never have I witnessed a people so 'gosh darn' happy to see Americans. Mothers holding their small children up so they can see and wave to the Americans, women blowing kisses at us, kids literally running to the roads as we pass by just so they can see their liberators. It makes the weeks we've spent in this desolate, hot, sandy hellhole worth every minute! "God Bless & Semper Fi . . ."
"What impressed me is that these youngsters, raised in a culture steeped in relativism, post-modernism, and 'diversity,' were able to grasp the concept that it is we who have the moral high ground. We cannot forget that. The war protesters, the Ted Ralls, the Chiracs, et al. have taken the cowardly low ground. While Bush is too polite to point that out, it's refreshing to see people like Dennis Miller level the Left for their squeamish, whiny anti-American rhetoric. "Last [and here's the money quote], I am asked at the restaurant whether we've renamed our French fries 'freedom fries.' My response is always, 'No, I kinda like dipping French things in boiling oil.'" Bye, y'all. |
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Well, Baghdad has been liberated for days, and — far from
being blasé — I'm still grateful, aren't you? Nothing
wrong with it, no matter what NPR says.
