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PRETENTIOUS
AND CONTENTIOUS
AMERICA'S LATTER-DAY PEACENIKS
By: John Guthmiller
It has been occasionally considered noble, in the past, to stand as the sole defender of an unpopular position, when doing so endangers a career, a public reputation, or even a life. One of the citations in John Kennedy's Profiles in Courage involves Edmund Ross, the crusty Missouri senator who defied his constituents and demolished his political career by casting the deciding vote against Andrew Johnson's 1866 impeachment conviction. We all like to think of ourselves as the courageous, if naïve, child from the Andersen fairy tale who boldly reported that the Emperor had no clothes. And it is invigorating to think ourselves martyrs to our ideals, Horatio at the bridge, forsaken by our comrades but breathing our last breath in their defense.
I'm sure apologists Barbara Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and America's latter-day peaceniks would like to see themselves in a similar flattering light. But the fact is, there is nothing noble about their actions, airy rhetoric and lofty pretensions notwithstanding. Self-destructive, yes. Antagonistic, to be sure. But noble? Never. They are motivated not by a desire for peace as much as a sociopathic need to oppose the majority. They are simply reactionaries, basing their decisions on a pure contrarian creed, the arrogant presumption that they are the touchstones of righteousness, and that the majority is always wrong.
They are Yang to our mediocre Yin, down to our bankrupt up, darkness to our feeble light. Yet far from providing any counterbalance to the argument, they only inflame the discourse by turning justifiable retribution into Theater of the Absurd They are not the voices of reason they'd like to think they are, the calming oil on troubled waters. By responding irrationally, they exacerbate the situation and push inflamed passions to the borders of extremism.
The attacks of Sept. 11 were acts of war, albeit a war unlike any we've fought in the past. The attackers weren't military men, dressed in recognizable uniforms, and bearing the insignia of their governments. Their weapons weren't standard-issue military tools, the fulminating implements of the soldier. Their targets weren't fortresses, bunkers, or supplies. Their victims weren't captains and kings, but brokers, bakers, and candlestick makers.
But although the accoutrements weren't the common trappings of warriors, the outcome was. A target, inappropriate in any military context, was destroyed in a covert mission, using makeshift but highly effective field expedients. The physical target was eliminated with great cost to the enemy, and only minimal cost to the attackers. Though of dubious strategic value, the mission was a tactical success.
If a squad of grenadiers was dug in on a craggy hillside, and an assault team was sent in to dislodge them, it would clearly be within the realm of reason for each side to try their hardest to eliminate the other. The huddled grenadiers to defend their position, and the attackers to reduce the formers' defenses until they were either forced to surrender or destroyed in the process. The Sept. 11 attacks were no less acts of war than this. Only collective madness would allow the victims of such an attack to continue business as usual. Frederic Perls, the guru of the Gestalt movement, believed that all actions are relevant only in a context, and that the context defines the validity of the action. If the playground bully boxed your ears, you'd be insane to go home and paint his treehouse. Running down the street in your nightshirt would probably get you arrested, unless you had sprung out of bed because your house was on fire.
And the response of Ms. Lee and her ilk to the context of wholesale murder that snuck out of the sky Sept. 11? Stammering apology. Hand-wringing. Fearful retreat from the threat of reprisal. Ultimately, cowardice in the face of the enemy, and defiance in the face of the victims. The mantra of the Kumbaya crowd is that the attacks were the result of hegemonic foreign entanglements in the Middle East, that by sticking his nose in all over the world, Uncle Sam was just asking to get it bloodied. Those doomed souls in the Trade Center paid for the sins of the Founding Fathers, or at least their ideological heirs.
In other words, we only got what we deserved.
Another rotten plank in their shaky platform is that war against Osama bin Laden is ineffective and will only beget additional violence. We should negotiate with the terrorists, try to "connect" with their sense of frustration and hostility, hold their hands, send Barney to rap with bin Laden. All they need is a little love, and they'll realize the error of their ways and stop killing us. As it is, war is a gory quid pro quo; the starving urchins of Afghanistan pay the price for American imperialism and abraded Western egos.
All of which is a crock of organic garden enhancer.
Set aside the moral implications of casually murdering 7,000 innocent citizens. The Congressional vote on retaliation was, at its root, an admission that the United States government has an obligation to protect its people, and that, distasteful though the task might be, the Congress was willing to meet that obligation. By casting a vote against an armed response, Ms. Lee effectively said that the government could slough off its duty, or that lukewarm, ill-defined finger-wagging was appropriate tender to discharge that burden. Either argument denies both the magnitude of the offense, and the onus arising therefrom. It has been said that "An eye for an eye" just results in two blind men. But quivering retreat ends up with one - us.
In the flickering light from the Pentagon fires, the traitor Left dusted off their doves' feet and stumbled from moldy crypts of social irrelevance to relive the treason of the 60's. Their rhetoric is the same Maoist gibberish it was 40 years ago, only it rings even more hollow today than it did during Vietnam. The communist bloodbath that followed American withdrawal from Southeast Asia validated our intervention in that theater, and the deaths of a million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians under the benevolent dictatorships of Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot should shame the anti-war crowd. But ever true to their Marxist roots, they simply outshout the memory of their failures, and rush to repeat yesterday's sins. Here's another war, and another chance to vindicate their wasted existence, to piss on liberty's torch by giving a psychological bracer to the enemy. Lenin described them as "useful idiots." He was half right.
We didn't ask for this war, and we didn't deserve it. If negotiation and compromise are our duty under the moral banner, then they belong equally to the disgruntled third-worlders who hijacked those airplanes Sept. 11. They sought to exorcise their displeasure through violence against America. We have a duty to show them that that is not acceptable. Any other response encourages further mayhem, and betrays one of the most sacred trusts placed in government.
Yet Ms. Lee and her senescent peacemongers would have us believe that they are the conscience of the nation, advocates of inaction when action is clearly demanded. You don't negotiate with the fire while your house is burning down. You don't "connect" to a rapist who is brutalizing your wife. You don't hold hands and hug Charlie Manson while he's disemboweling you.
And you don't pretend a war away. Denial is a subtle form of madness. Pretending that the Trade Center attacks were the quixotic indulgences of foreign gamins is not only denial, but also an act of political cowardice, not the stuff of heroism. The rejection of appeasement has less to do with demagoguery than with harsh reality.
The appropriate action after Sept. 11 is war, war in a degree that will crush any intent to repeat the atrocities of that day. War that will strangle the murderous terrorists in their cradles. War that will give our enemies pause as they contemplate the smoking ruins of those who murder us. Ms. Lee, a communist sympathizer since her days as Ron Dellums' handmaid, cast her vote against US military involvement not because it is wrong, but because she is. The only thing more dangerous than hunting bin Laden down is not hunting him down. And our war on Halfgone-istan is nothing more than a premeditated act of self-preservation.
You don't avoid a war by pretending you're at peace. The anti-war rabble needn't give themselves airs. There's nothing admirable about self-impressed reactionaries or pretentious collaborators. They're just the usual refuse that surfaces whenever a storm sweeps the sewers, and the dreck usually hidden from public view bubbles to the top.
AND CONTENTIOUS
AMERICA'S LATTER-DAY PEACENIKS
By: John Guthmiller
It has been occasionally considered noble, in the past, to stand as the sole defender of an unpopular position, when doing so endangers a career, a public reputation, or even a life. One of the citations in John Kennedy's Profiles in Courage involves Edmund Ross, the crusty Missouri senator who defied his constituents and demolished his political career by casting the deciding vote against Andrew Johnson's 1866 impeachment conviction. We all like to think of ourselves as the courageous, if naïve, child from the Andersen fairy tale who boldly reported that the Emperor had no clothes. And it is invigorating to think ourselves martyrs to our ideals, Horatio at the bridge, forsaken by our comrades but breathing our last breath in their defense.
I'm sure apologists Barbara Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and America's latter-day peaceniks would like to see themselves in a similar flattering light. But the fact is, there is nothing noble about their actions, airy rhetoric and lofty pretensions notwithstanding. Self-destructive, yes. Antagonistic, to be sure. But noble? Never. They are motivated not by a desire for peace as much as a sociopathic need to oppose the majority. They are simply reactionaries, basing their decisions on a pure contrarian creed, the arrogant presumption that they are the touchstones of righteousness, and that the majority is always wrong.
They are Yang to our mediocre Yin, down to our bankrupt up, darkness to our feeble light. Yet far from providing any counterbalance to the argument, they only inflame the discourse by turning justifiable retribution into Theater of the Absurd They are not the voices of reason they'd like to think they are, the calming oil on troubled waters. By responding irrationally, they exacerbate the situation and push inflamed passions to the borders of extremism.
The attacks of Sept. 11 were acts of war, albeit a war unlike any we've fought in the past. The attackers weren't military men, dressed in recognizable uniforms, and bearing the insignia of their governments. Their weapons weren't standard-issue military tools, the fulminating implements of the soldier. Their targets weren't fortresses, bunkers, or supplies. Their victims weren't captains and kings, but brokers, bakers, and candlestick makers.
But although the accoutrements weren't the common trappings of warriors, the outcome was. A target, inappropriate in any military context, was destroyed in a covert mission, using makeshift but highly effective field expedients. The physical target was eliminated with great cost to the enemy, and only minimal cost to the attackers. Though of dubious strategic value, the mission was a tactical success.
If a squad of grenadiers was dug in on a craggy hillside, and an assault team was sent in to dislodge them, it would clearly be within the realm of reason for each side to try their hardest to eliminate the other. The huddled grenadiers to defend their position, and the attackers to reduce the formers' defenses until they were either forced to surrender or destroyed in the process. The Sept. 11 attacks were no less acts of war than this. Only collective madness would allow the victims of such an attack to continue business as usual. Frederic Perls, the guru of the Gestalt movement, believed that all actions are relevant only in a context, and that the context defines the validity of the action. If the playground bully boxed your ears, you'd be insane to go home and paint his treehouse. Running down the street in your nightshirt would probably get you arrested, unless you had sprung out of bed because your house was on fire.
And the response of Ms. Lee and her ilk to the context of wholesale murder that snuck out of the sky Sept. 11? Stammering apology. Hand-wringing. Fearful retreat from the threat of reprisal. Ultimately, cowardice in the face of the enemy, and defiance in the face of the victims. The mantra of the Kumbaya crowd is that the attacks were the result of hegemonic foreign entanglements in the Middle East, that by sticking his nose in all over the world, Uncle Sam was just asking to get it bloodied. Those doomed souls in the Trade Center paid for the sins of the Founding Fathers, or at least their ideological heirs.
In other words, we only got what we deserved.
Another rotten plank in their shaky platform is that war against Osama bin Laden is ineffective and will only beget additional violence. We should negotiate with the terrorists, try to "connect" with their sense of frustration and hostility, hold their hands, send Barney to rap with bin Laden. All they need is a little love, and they'll realize the error of their ways and stop killing us. As it is, war is a gory quid pro quo; the starving urchins of Afghanistan pay the price for American imperialism and abraded Western egos.
All of which is a crock of organic garden enhancer.
Set aside the moral implications of casually murdering 7,000 innocent citizens. The Congressional vote on retaliation was, at its root, an admission that the United States government has an obligation to protect its people, and that, distasteful though the task might be, the Congress was willing to meet that obligation. By casting a vote against an armed response, Ms. Lee effectively said that the government could slough off its duty, or that lukewarm, ill-defined finger-wagging was appropriate tender to discharge that burden. Either argument denies both the magnitude of the offense, and the onus arising therefrom. It has been said that "An eye for an eye" just results in two blind men. But quivering retreat ends up with one - us.
In the flickering light from the Pentagon fires, the traitor Left dusted off their doves' feet and stumbled from moldy crypts of social irrelevance to relive the treason of the 60's. Their rhetoric is the same Maoist gibberish it was 40 years ago, only it rings even more hollow today than it did during Vietnam. The communist bloodbath that followed American withdrawal from Southeast Asia validated our intervention in that theater, and the deaths of a million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians under the benevolent dictatorships of Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot should shame the anti-war crowd. But ever true to their Marxist roots, they simply outshout the memory of their failures, and rush to repeat yesterday's sins. Here's another war, and another chance to vindicate their wasted existence, to piss on liberty's torch by giving a psychological bracer to the enemy. Lenin described them as "useful idiots." He was half right.
We didn't ask for this war, and we didn't deserve it. If negotiation and compromise are our duty under the moral banner, then they belong equally to the disgruntled third-worlders who hijacked those airplanes Sept. 11. They sought to exorcise their displeasure through violence against America. We have a duty to show them that that is not acceptable. Any other response encourages further mayhem, and betrays one of the most sacred trusts placed in government.
Yet Ms. Lee and her senescent peacemongers would have us believe that they are the conscience of the nation, advocates of inaction when action is clearly demanded. You don't negotiate with the fire while your house is burning down. You don't "connect" to a rapist who is brutalizing your wife. You don't hold hands and hug Charlie Manson while he's disemboweling you.
And you don't pretend a war away. Denial is a subtle form of madness. Pretending that the Trade Center attacks were the quixotic indulgences of foreign gamins is not only denial, but also an act of political cowardice, not the stuff of heroism. The rejection of appeasement has less to do with demagoguery than with harsh reality.
The appropriate action after Sept. 11 is war, war in a degree that will crush any intent to repeat the atrocities of that day. War that will strangle the murderous terrorists in their cradles. War that will give our enemies pause as they contemplate the smoking ruins of those who murder us. Ms. Lee, a communist sympathizer since her days as Ron Dellums' handmaid, cast her vote against US military involvement not because it is wrong, but because she is. The only thing more dangerous than hunting bin Laden down is not hunting him down. And our war on Halfgone-istan is nothing more than a premeditated act of self-preservation.
You don't avoid a war by pretending you're at peace. The anti-war rabble needn't give themselves airs. There's nothing admirable about self-impressed reactionaries or pretentious collaborators. They're just the usual refuse that surfaces whenever a storm sweeps the sewers, and the dreck usually hidden from public view bubbles to the top.
