"A million Mogadishus": Some antiwar leftists bring moral squalor to their cause (Andrew Sullivan)

Salon ^ | March 29, 2003 | Andrew Sullivan

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[Free ThinkerNY]

The Left is, and always has been, intellectually bankrupt.

[friendly]

The liberals are opposed to capital punishment only for criminals (one of their key voting constituencies).

Our own soldiers and Republicans should be killed as much as possible, whenever possible.

[Abn1508]

Over on Baen's bar we did some "back of the envelope" calculations.

A million Mogadishus. Okay. Eighteen American dead. About 1000 skinnies.

Takes off shoes...

That makes eighteen million American males dead. That is very bad. That's a good part of our total available "grunt" force. If we figure on the current averages for the forces. BUT! We can use women for anything but combat arms. If you put all the women in support positions and push forward all the males into combat arms that can qualify, then you start to have a viable number to make up that eighteen million. Horrible tragedy for the US, but we can sustain it.

But the rest of the world?

That's a billion dead "wogs." I mean, first of all, we'd have to have fought _everybody_ in Latin America, Africa and Asia. And in each of the countries wiped out their males of military age between fifteen and fifty.

Hmmmm...

I don't think this guy is very smart but...

S**t happens. If that's what it takes, that's what it takes.

Oh, and based upon using _real_ forces... the ratio's going to be much more in our favor. Something like 1:1000 so we'll lose, say, a million to do it... But the third world will be having a hard time finding husbands.

Time to invest in body-bag manufacturers...

[sirchtruth]

...the marginalization of the left in this country, already profound, might become irreversible.

PLEASE, no one wake me from this fabulous dream!!!!

[John Valentine]

Then last week, someone actually came out and said it. Columbia University professor Nicholas De Genova hoped at an "antiwar teach-in," hosted by left-wing writer and historian Eric Foner, that there would be "a million Mogadishus" in this war.

Six hundred Somalis died in the action so fondly remembered by De Genova, and although it was obvioulsy not his intended point, he was REALLY saying that the deaths of 600,000,000 blacks and people of color would not be too high a price to briang about a socialist rule in the United States.

This bastard's hateful rehoric should be headlined: "Prominnent Leftist says Death of Six Hundred Million Blacks acceptable price for Defeat of America".

[Faraday]

Can someone please define where "free speech" ends and sedition begins? Some of the anti-war activists seem to have crossed this line. The Constitution, including the First Amendment, is not a suicide pact. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for exposing the America haters in their own words.

[Mister Baredog]

describes President Bush as an unelected, maniacal tyrant, a caricature that is useful to Bush's political enemies.

What they don't get is that they are just as useful to BUSH. You know the saying "with enemies like these...."

[John Valentine]

"Prominnent Leftist says Death of Six Hundred Million Blacks acceptable price for Defeat of America".

[Mister Baredog]

Prominnent Leftist says Death of Six Hundred Million Blacks acceptable price for Defeat of America".

Were he a conservative the headline WOULD have read just like that.

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

Ping!

[Eva]

This lazy form of moral equivalence is not rare among the radical left in this country

CLICK HERE to read about the link between the anti-American anti-war protesters and the terrorists.

[Nick Danger]

Those are questions the rest of the antiwar left never answered categorically before the war, because they didn't have to. Now they do.

But they won't, and one of the reasons they won't is that Sullivan wrote this column.

On the left, Sullivan is now a turncoat; he is no longer one of them, no matter how much he might protest otherwise. To now do as Sullivan suggests is to join him on the Dark Side. Few will dare.

There is a second reason, and it is that so many on the "mainstream left" live their lives in close little circles that admit no dissent. They are totally out of touch with their fellow citizens, but they do not know it. Michael Moore imagines that a majority of Americans agree with him; Howard Dean imagines that he can win the Presidency. Neither has a clue what most Americans really think; everyone they know agrees with them.

And so these mainstream lefists will not recognize how offensive most people found the comments of Professor De Genova. They understand that he stepped over the line, but it does not seem all that offensive to them... not on a gut level. And so they think they can ignore it, not understanding that failure to condemn will be seen as quiet support.

We saw the same thing again tonight. MSNBC imagines that they can "explain away" the behavior of their Baghdad correspondent Peter Arnett, who appeared on Iraqi State Television to denounce the Bush Administration. Peter's future is with the Dixie Chicks, and so is MSNBC's if they do not drop Arnett like a hot rock... but they can't even see it. They tell us he merely performed a "professional courtesy" and that it was no big deal. They are totally out of touch; another bunch of New York liberals like Michael Moore who imagine that everyone thinks the same way they do.

This war is going to bust the chops of the American left, and it is going to do worse to the American press.

[okie01]

James Carroll, Eric Alterman and Nicholas De Genova all hold leadership positions in the Fedayeen Daschle.

[Wil H]

James Carroll, Eric Alterman and Nicholas De Genova all hold leadership positions in the Fedayeen Daschle.

Add Charles Rangel and Peter Arnett to that list.

[beckett]

On the left, Sullivan is now a turncoat; he is no longer one of them, no matter how much he might protest otherwise.

Despite his aversion to the religious right, Sullivan has been supporting mostly conservative Republican positions for quite a few years, with the exception of his stand on gay marriage and homosexuality in general. He was a vocal supporter of George Bush in 2000.

Sullivan is an Oakeshott conservative, and did his doctoral dissertation on him, conducting some twenty years ago, as I understand it, one of the last interviews the old philosopher ever sat down for.

Even during his brief editorship of The New Republic Sullivan was known for pushing that publication to the right. And Howell Raines declared a few years back, in so many words, that Sullivan's work was too conservative for The New York Times. Temperamentally, intellectually and in most every other way, Sullivan, a practicing Roman Catholic, is a foundationalist, and thus a man of the right on today's political spectrum.

[patriciaruth]

Rhetorical hyperbole by lefties that ignores basic math and basic science is the norm, like that fellow that talked about the sharks still swimming around in the Atlantic waiting to eat Africans that were thrown or leaped overboard when they were being transported for the slave trade.

That's why they are lefties, because they couldn't pass math and science and thus can't digest facts.

And that's why they are against the war, because in war, masculinity and strength and physical agility are important, and they weren't good at sports either.

All they can to is spin b.s., which they call "analysis."

They've felt pretty left out during the aftermath of 9/11 and now the war in Iraq. Policemen, firemen and military men are our heroes now, and the leftie eggheads are upset that they are not so attractive to the females right now. After all, what female ever felt protected by an analyst?

[Intolerant in NJ]

Even if you take Iraqi numbers of dead at face value, even if you believe that every explosion in Baghdad has been the result of allied air power, the number of civilian casualties is still minuscule...especially when compared to the civilian casualties racked up every day (sometimes literally) in Saddam's prisons, torture chambers, and firing squads.......

[wildbill]

Please God, let some speechwriter in the White House realize that De Genova's words, properly dissected in a Presidential speech, will destroy the radical left's influence.

They have gone over the line--now sock it to them.