The Valor of the Columnists

The war appears to enjoy wide support, which gives the warmongers an opportunity to appear populist in their writing. National Review, for example, seems to have suddenly discovered that wisdom of the common man in contrast to the "cultural elites" who are said to have the most doubts about the war. Completely out of character, Ramesh Ponnuru, Rich Lowry, and the gang have risen to the defense of the workers and peasants.

What National Review doesn’t mention is the absence of support among the working class for the foreign policies that got us into this mess in the first place. I’d venture a guess that there’s less than 1 percent backing among full-time workers who earn less than $30,000 per year for permanent stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia, for example.

War populism is one thing. Far more bizarre is a related phenomena: the rise of blood-soaked rhetoric among the non-enlisted punditry class as a substitute for the display of classical virtues. This style is called various names, like Jacksonian or Churchillian. In this model of writing, nothing you say is too outrageous. The stronger your rhetoric, the more elevated the language ("we must vanquish the forces of evil"), the more courage, valor, and moral conviction it is said to represent, even when what you are advocating is immoral.

The idea is to appear, as you type into your word processor, to be unflinching in the face of the enemy, to contemplate and mentally conquer the possibility of horror. The ultimate objective is to break down the normal sense of morality that readers have ("Isn’t it wrong to punish or kill innocent people?") and replace it with a new wartime ethic and language ("No robust defense of national interests can rule the possibility, however regrettable, of civilian casualties").

Another trope is the use of the first person plural. "We must send in ground troops." "Our resolve must not lag." Never mind that the writer is neither a decision maker nor a fighter. This by itself is strange. If I said, "We must increase the production of Cadillacs," the normal response would be to ask what executive position at GM I hold. The listener would be confused to discover that I hold no position at all. Writers who use the first person plural to discuss US foreign policy do this all this time, but hardly anyone raises a question.

Let go on to an example. Rich Lowry has issued a call "to send U.S. troops in on the ground to capture key cities and hold that which we consider strategically essential.... there is no avoiding these hard decisions—because there are no free lunches, including in Afghanistan." Thus do we see how the courageous Rich, as a mere web journalist, has conquered the national reluctance ("hard decision") to send young men and women into a poor land, where there are hardly any paid lunches, to conquer and occupy civilian areas.

Rich is himself impressed by an even more vivid example of this style of thinking: Senator John McCain in an article for the Wall Street Journal:

"War is a miserable business. The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted, economies are damaged. Strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that will be lost when war claims its wages from us."

Very chilling indeed. But McCain would have us believe that his frankness and courage have permitted him to deal with the awful realities to a greater extent than mere mortals.

"We must expect and prepare for our enemies to strike us again.... We cannot fight this war from the air alone. We cannot fight it without casualties. And we cannot fight it without risking unintended damage to humanitarian and political interests.... We must destroy them, wherever they hide. That will surely increase the terrible danger facing noncombatants, a regrettable but necessary fact of war.... We shouldn't fight this war in increments.... War is a miserable business. Let's get on with it."

Bracing stuff. We are supposed to respond with awe at his supposed toughness of mind. And yet even McCain couches matters just a bit more than is necessary in these times. He is still too guarded and not fully embracing the grim reality. For example, there’s no need to talk of "unintended damage" to "humanitarian...interests" when he really means imposing massive suffering and death on wholly innocent people.

And what’s with this "unintended" qualifier? Let’s say I wave a gun around the room and shout: "When I shoot this, I may unintentionally kill you." In court, will I be convicted of involuntary manslaughter or murder? McCain is talking here about doing exactly what he intends. Let’s not pussyfoot around.

McCain has stepped up the rhetoric, but not enough. If he and his editorial cohorts are really serious about this war, and truly committed to appearing brash and brawny to the readers of the world, they must move beyond euphemism altogether. Thus do I offer my own contribution to the escalation of courage notable among the writers of our time:

"Now is the time for us to stand up for honor and decency against vile foreign elements that threaten our way of life. Let us murder every foreign Muslim man, women, and child, and starve those we can’t find with cruel blockades, allowing anyone who remains to die miserable deaths from disease, even if it means hurting our economy and sending thousands of American men and women to their own violent deaths, leaving their own children and spouses abandoned. Let us flatten every mud hut, kill every goat and goatherd, blow the arms off little children with our bright yellow cluster bomblets. Do it with strength and honor, and do it now.

"This may incite more terrorism at home. We will endure it. Our cities may be bombed, our water poisoned, our highways wrecked, our hospitals turned into morgues. No price is too high.

"And, friends, we may never get Bin Laden. May we never stop trying. The Taliban may actually grow in strength, as governments attacked by foreigners tend to do. We will not flinch. We may cause every decent person in the entire world to despise America. But we will show the world that no insult can break our will. Our government may never again allow a foreign visitor or product to pass our borders. We will adjust and prevail.

"Yes, we will have to give up our liberty, property, and even family members. The money we earn from our jobs will be taken by the government and spent to create more weapons of mass destruction to be dropped on foreign people’s homes, hospitals, and water-treatment plants. They will thirst but have no drink, because we paid to destroy their clean water. They will hunger but find no food, because we made it possible to destroy their crops and any means of transport.

"Your son, whom you have nursed from sickness to health many dozen times from infancy through his teen years, may be slaughtered on some godforsaken mountain between China and the Caspian sea, because that’s where your government sent him to kill or be killed. Your daughter, whom you comforted through adolescence and later dressed so beautifully for the prom, may be ripped to shreds. So great is your courage and determination that this is the price you will pay.

"This war may never end. Every bomb we drop will create more enemies, and thus more people who must be killed. We will go anywhere to do this. If we discover that the Czech Republic or Costa Rica or even Berkeley, California, harbors these enemies, they too will become targets of our wrath. There is no place safe from the sword of justice!

"Your fellow citizens who have lent aid and comfort to the enemy, in thought, word, or deed, will be humiliated, robbed, jailed without trial. As for war supporters, we are safe so long as we never disagree with our government’s official line, which is the very definition of truth.

"To eliminate freedom and replace it with a police state is what our high ideals require of us. For we know that no matter what happens, it is the fault of our enemies, for they dare to believe of themselves what we believe of ourselves. Let us get on with the war!"

"After we manage to arrive home, said youths sneak in the backyard, pour gas on our children, and burn them alive. My wife turns to me, fingering a butcher knife, and says 'Find them and bring them here to me."

No, no, no problem, that's what we're here for. ---Analogy Correction Central

Both your analogy and mine are valid. In both cases taking a shortcut through a rough neighborhood with an empty tank was extremely foolish. In both cases the youths are worthless punks who deserve to die.
Working on the assumption that there will always be worthless punks in the city, can we please agree that the wisest course of action is to stay away from their neighborhoods?
Or, for readers who are too obtuse to understand analogies: let's assume that there will always be evil psychopathic fanatics in this world and let's agree that it is unwise to effectively run their recruiting campaigns via US foreign policy.

This should be required reading for every member of the Armed Forces. It is important for them to understand that the very essense of the freedom that they're are prepared to die for insists that fools like this can sit back nice and safe and write this gutter rubbish.

I'm sure that crockwell must realize the kind of response his BS would invoke from them...that must be why he continues to wear his arse as a crash helmet.

I take a short cut and run out of gas right in the middle of the most dangerous part of the city.

I see. Working on the 100th floor of WTC One is 'taking a shortcut through the most dangerous part of the city'? :-)

Actually, your "local youths" have a 1500-year-old chip on their shoulders the size of Mohammed's mountain, and they crashed a party on the nice side of town.

Rockwell shouldn't try to blame Osama's little murder raid on American foreign policy, and neither should you.

BTW - freepers driving on the bad side of town usually "accessorize". ;-)

Naturally, you neglect to mention that your wife, after looking at you like you've lost your mind, would then argue against increased police patrols in the area, or reviewing the criminal justice system, because the youths who "roughed" you up won't likely be apprehended.

And his neighbor would make a plea for understanding and tolerance, and plead with him to understand why these youths hate his kind.

On September 11th, some Arab muslims murdered thousands of wholly innocent people and destroyed billions of dollars worth of property. We're not really sure who was behind it...

Right. The murder of Massoud two days before September 11 was just a BIG OL' COINCIDENCE.

"let's agree that it is unwise to effectively run their recruiting campaigns via US foreign policy."

No. Let's agree that loony religious psychos who blame the Jews for all their problems AND are peed-off about something somebody did four hundred years ago need to be killed and their corpses stuffed with pig guts.

Both your analogy and mine are valid.

There are levels of validity. Mine embraces more of the specific facts in the case under discussion. Yours is truncated; mine is more accurate.

In both cases taking a shortcut through a rough neighborhood with an empty tank was extremely foolish. In both cases the youths are worthless punks who deserve to die.

But they didn't seserve to die in your analogy. They only looted our assets. It took my correction of the analogy to reflect the moral dimension of the object of the analogy.

Working on the assumption that there will always be worthless punks in the city, can we please agree that the wisest course of action is to stay away from their neighborhoods?

Simplistic, and therefore not useful as an analogy. We can agree that the wisest course of action is to take another route, given your set-up to the analogy, i.e. my wife and I are on a private trip, there is another route available, our gas is low, etc. But it simplistic to say there is no situation in which any innocent upstanding citizen should go through the neighborhood. And there is no reason to cede the neighborhood to those who "deserve to die".

Or, for readers who are too obtuse to understand analogies: let's assume that there will always be evil psychopathic fanatics in this world and let's agree that it is unwise to effectively run their recruiting campaigns via US foreign policy.

Let us agree it is unwise to craft US foreign policy around the psychopaths, who, by your argument, will always be with us.

Of course, it would be more moral to bomb military targets in a rich country

You're going to need to find yourself another straw man with whom to argue. I did not say bombing rich countries is any more moral than bombing poor countries - it obviously isn't. However, the poverty of the Afghans is absolutely relevant because it means that attacks on them are all the more devastating. Think freezing or starving to death whilst fleeing a war zone.

Let us agree it is unwise to craft US foreign policy around the psychopaths, who, by your argument, will always be with us

I advocate crafting US foreign policy around the prescriptions provided by Presidents Washington and Jefferson. That such policies would coincide with what bin Laden et al claim to want is not a reason to discount them.

Incidentally, I hope everyone realizes that bin Laden's actual motivation for his jihad is basically irrelevant. What is relevant is what he says, whether he is lying or not.
Let's assume that the Fox News punditry are correct when they say that he is motivated by a hatred for freedom, capitalism, and all other things virtuous. If that was his actual 'platform' then he would attract a following that would probably fit into one of his American-made SUVs. However, by broadcasting his list of alleged grievances - Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq etc - he has become a folk hero to vast numbers of muslims throughout the world.

There you guys go again: confusing explanation with justification.

Let's try a simple analogy. I take my wife on a drive to the other side of town. I take a short cut and run out of gas right in the middle of the most dangerous part of the city. We are quickly surrounded by youths who, despite looking like millionaire rappers, extract us from our vehicle, rough us up and steal all of our possessions. When the ordeal is over, my wife turns to me and refers to the mess into which I have got us. I correct her by pointing out, freeper-style, that it was in fact the local youths who got us into this mess. She looks at me as though I have completely lost my mind. End of story.

This is just an excuse. You could use the same explanation about the Japs bombing Pearl Harbor in 1941. No matter what you call it, it is still horsesh*t. You guys are Lew Rockwell are living in a fanatsy world.

"FLAME ON !"
You forgot the Barf Alert and Lew Rockwell warnings.

"FLAME OFF !"

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LoanPalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

However, the poverty of the Afghans is absolutely relevant because it means that attacks on them are all the more devastating.

So being dead and poor is worse than being dead and rich?

Or did you mean that it was tougher for the survivors? The same ones who are virtual slaves to the Taliban, and can be murdered for not joining the military, for not professing the Islamic faith, or (for females) for allowing one's skin to be exposed, voice to be heard or opinion to be known? Personally, I'm betting that they see that their true oppressors are getting bombed, and are holding on to hope that things will be better when the Tally-tubbies are gone. (Recall that they are a minority ruling party)

In this case, the silent-for-a-darn-good-reason majority are glad we're bombing the Taliban's resources, and are trying to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible. Their valuelessness on the eyes of the Taliban means more to them than their lack of cash. It would be nice to have more money, but being in a war zone sucks equally for all. (Having been raised in a family that danced with destitution for a few years and lived in a shelter for a while, I can tell you that the poor aren't the victim class that the Left makes them out to be... it stinks when toast is all you have to eat for a week, but it does not define your life.)

So being dead and poor is worse than being dead and rich?
Or did you mean that it was tougher for the survivors?

Yes, of-course I meant it was tougher for the survivors. That is why I made reference to the refugee crisis; I wanted to make sure my post was unambiguous to all but the most half-witted of dolts.

(Having been raised in a family that danced with destitution for a few years and lived in a shelter for a while, I can tell you that the poor aren't the victim class that the Left makes them out to be... it stinks when toast is all you have to eat for a week, but it does not define your life.)

How on earth did we get to talking about the left's immoral and destructive class warfare ideology? It has nothing to do with bombing nations whose GDP is less than Winn Dixie's quarterly revenues. And speaking of hardship stories: I attended an English boarding school. The toast there was decidely sub-par too. I didn't let it define my life though.

The point of the analogy was to differentiate between justification and explanation, not to offer a parallel with the WTC attack and about ten years of history!

Well, let's see:

I take my wife on a drive to the other side of town. I take a short cut and run out of gas right in the middle of the most dangerous part of the city. We are quickly surrounded by youths who, despite looking like millionaire rappers, extract us from our vehicle, rough us up and steal all of our possessions. When the ordeal is over, my wife turns to me and refers to the mess into which I have got us. I correct her by pointing out, freeper-style, that it was in fact the local youths who got us into this mess. She looks at me as though I have completely lost my mind. End of story.

Where is the justification here? Who is being proved blameless? The driver, or the youths? Are you suggesting the youths were justified in "roughing" him up because he decided to take a short cut and ran out of gas? That's where your analogy fails. Your defense of your analogy (in italics) relies upon your own definition of "justification."

That's the problem with Lew . . . he is so wrapped up in the idea of isolating the U.S., bringing the troops home, etc., that he fails to see when his own arguments become intellectual failures. He relies on the notion that the U.S. would be left alone if only it withdraws from the world; in other words, he relies on his own definition of "peace."

Take our current police-action. Lew would argue that if we had stopped supporting Israel (among other things), the Muslim radicals would leave us alone, and none of this would have happened. Apparently, he has more faith in radicals than I. He so desperately wishes that his version of peace occurs that he fails to acknowledge the weakest part of his argument. He's too busy pounding the square peg into the round hole.

Naturally, I'm too "obtuse" to pick it up. I'm too busy trying to "sell" the war. It's all about oil, anyway. [chortle]

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