Posted on 12/05/2001 10:31:55 AM PST by Pay now bill Clinton
December 5, 2001
David Horowitz, the ex-Communist and former Black Panther groupie turned stereotypical right-winger, has kicked off his pro-war "Think Twice" speaking tour of college campuses on a rather bizarre note. The "red diaper baby" who morphed into a neoconservative went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and gave a strangely disjointed and vehement rant – directed not only at the antiwar movement but at the Chancellor of the University, James Moeser, and the school itself: "I can't find words to express my contempt for the chancellor and this University for supporting these views." Pretty gracious, eh?
Without citing anyone in particular, Horowitz went on to characterize the views of unnamed antiwar professors and students at UNC as "jumping up and down" in glee as the World Trade Center burned. As usual, the implication that the "treasonous" activities of antiwar student groups and professors ought to be shut down was implicit in his complaint that antiwar teach-ins took place at a taxpayer-supported institution. Apparently, only "patriotic" activities – such as his "Think Twice" tour – ought to be permitted. Even the moniker he has attached to his campus blitz is shot through with ominous overtones: students had better "think twice" before they openly oppose the war – and get their name on a list.
Horowitz was always a dubious character, but, post-9/11, he has become positively sinister – and also somewhat out of it. According to reports, his tirade against UNC-Chapel Hill included a denunciation of Moeser
"for considering a proposal to establish a UNC-CH campus with an undergraduate business program in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, which he said is led by 'an Islamic radical.'
"'There are no human rights [in Qatar] – not only for homosexuals and for women but for anybody who disagrees with the sheik,' Horowitz said."
Gee, that's funny, but I could've sworn that was an American military base being hosted by the "Islamic radical" ruler of Qatar – reputedly the largest American base and arms depot outside the United States. When a lone gunman opened fire outside the Al-Adid air base, near the capital city of Doha, he was shot and killed by Qatari soldiers. Qatar has long been in the American camp, cravenly praising the presence of US and British troops for "protecting the Arabs from each other," as Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jasem al-Thani put it in an interview with al-Jazeera television. Qatar was good enough for the World Trade Organization to host a summit there in November of this year: why isn't it good enough for UNC-Chapel Hill?
Horowitz paints a grim picture indeed of life in Qatar, but the US government tells a different story altogether in its official human rights report card. While not exactly a Western-style democracy, Qatar, alone among the Gulf states, does have elections to a consultative body in which women are allowed to vote: as Thomas Friedman points out in the New York Times, Qatar, like other small states on the periphery of the Arab world, is among the most modern and socially progressive of the Muslim countries. Another Qatari idiosyncrasy is a media relatively free of censorship and government control. Extra-judicial killings, torture, disappearances of political dissidents – these routine features of life in many Middle Eastern countries (including Israel) are entirely absent from Qatar.
The US State Department 1999 Country Report demonstrates that life in Qatar is not much different from life in these United States, at least in certain respects: "The law prohibits arbitrary arrest," we are told, "however, the police have the discretion to arrest persons based on a low level of suspicion, and arbitrary detention in security cases remains a problem." Sound familiar? Perhaps John Ashcroft is modeling some of his own methods on the Qatari example. "Suspects who are detained in security cases generally are afforded access to counsel; however, they may be detained indefinitely while under investigation. There were no known recent cases of incommunicado detention." Unlike John Ashcroft, at least the Qataris release the names of their detainees.
If there is any really brutal political repression in Qatar, it is directed primarily against Islamic hard-liners, such as Abdulrahman Al-Nuaimi, a Ministry of Education official who distributed a letter to the press critical of the Amir's decision to allow women to vote and run for office in the Municipal Council elections. This is a "radical Islamic state"?
Horowitz, as usual, is running off at the mouth and demonstrating his complete ignorance of the facts. But facts don't matter to a demagogue whose frenetic posturing has turned him into a caricature, a living parody of his own invented persona.
But there is, in this caricature, a lot that is revealing. In his "The Art of Political War," a pamphlet devoted to strategic questions, Horowitz urges conservatives to lay off the complex arguents that make them sound like debaters at the Oxford Student Union and appeal directly to people's emotions:
"But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.... You have only thirty seconds to make your point. Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it. Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of daily life. You will never have time for real arguments or proper analyses. Images – symbols and sound bites – will always prevail."
Hee...hee...talk about projecting.
I'm sure they can refute this nimrod.
Justin, get away from that mirror!
C'mon, Justin. You ALWAYS sound this way. You've got no room for complaint on this note, jerk.
(News flash, Justin: The anti-war movement was founded as a Communist front group. Every single argument you're using HAS been used before by the commies who were trying to incite "Revolution" here in the Grand Old States. Just shut up already, would you? Either that, or move to Cuba where you can be amongst other "pacifist" murderers.)
:/ ttt
. . .great analysis from a 'land of the lost' Liberal . . .but the fact remains, talented articulation is meaningless when it speaks from a 'deaf mind' of the typical Liberal. . .
Go David; with the truth; may it protect you from the venemous lies and misrepresentations of Lib Media who have yet to prove they are capable of recognzing the truth or are willing. . .; even when it comes down to their own 'ungracious level'. . .
As for Justin's interpretation of the Horowitz's 'think twice' admonition; it really requires Libs to think at least double that. . .
A couple more tries Justin and maybe you will get it right. . .
. . .but of course, you will not try and you will never get it. . .
Congressman Billybob
Projection on Justin's part, I'd say...
I'm too new to all this to know who Justin is, but I think he hit a homer with this line.
More accurately...an anti-American , anti- Semitic homosexual..
And this fruit is a big fan of Pat Buchanan, no less! Twist that logic up and bottle it, why dont you!
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