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The
Cornell Coalition for Animal Defense (CCAD) — the campus chapter of
People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals (PETA) — recently
sponsored a student-funded event in which victims of the Holocaust were
compared to starving cows and chickens. The event, called “Holocaust on
Your Plate,” is part of PETA’s nationwide attempt to gain sympathy for
the animal rights movement. CNN first reported on PETA’s insanity in
February 2003, when the fringe group’s anti-Semitic campaign commenced.
The CCAD demonstration, which took place in front of Cornell’s student union, was highlighted by the presence of several 60-square-foot panels with photos of concentration camp prisoners alongside pigs, chickens, and cows. One such placard explained the group’s moniker:
"During the seven years between 1938 and 1945, 12 million people perished in the Holocaust. The same number of animals is killed every four hours for food in the U.S. alone. The Holocaust is on Your Plate."
"The very same mind-set that made the Holocaust possible — that we can do anything we want to those we decide are 'different or inferior' — is what allows us to commit atrocities against animals every single day."
Prescott went on to tell the Ithaca Journal:
"[During the Holocaust] people were beaten, abused, and herded to death. Today, 28 billion animals a year in the United States are subjected to similar treatment."
CCAD members Racheal Wechsler and Amy Icodae handed out literature containing such lovely sentiments as:
“Decades from now, what will you tell your grandchildren when they ask whose side you were on during the ‘animals’ holocaust’? Will you be able to say that you stood up against oppression?”
Their pamphlets also quoted German Jewish “philosopher” Theodor Adorno:
“Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.”
The day after the Holocaust event, the Cornell Daily Sun published a column by Alex Bomstein, a student at Cornell and a member of the local Green Party, in which he wrote:
“The difference between you and a lizard is just a massive exaggeration of the difference between you and me... So let us not judge others by the base pairs of their DNA, but by the content of their beings. By something that really matters.”
Mr. Bomstein may be quite a
bit closer to the lizard than the rest of us. Would he — or any of the
individuals associated with PETA — have considered a comparison between
slavery and animal captivity? Would they have supported bringing giant
posters to Cornell that compared black slaves to caged hampsters?
Never. But Jews are a group that is easily targeted because
anti-Semitism is en vogue on America’s college campuses.
While many Cornell students expressed shock and dismay at the CCAD’s demonstration, they really should not be too surprised. When the rights of animals are equated with the rights of man, man is diminished. The animal rights coalition’s equating of the Holocaust with the killing of farm animals is a logical conclusion for a movement that has no belief in God or in the moral superiority of man. In the animal rights universe, a cockroach exterminator is just an updated version of Heinrich Himmler. There is no reasoning with these people because they are kooks.
Still, a number of Jewish students tried to get into sophisticated arguments with CCAD members. These discussions generally devolved into debates over the similarities between the respective digestive tracts of cows and humans. A few enraged students even started screaming, “Jews are not pigs!”
While their outrage is understandable, these students did not do themselves any favors. When kooks are making jackasses of themselves in public, the best strategy is to get out of the way and let them destroy themselves. Laughing at, shunning, or ostracizing these people are all fine strategies. But when a sane person gets into a public shouting match with a lunatic, passersby can’t tell who is who.
The CCAD’s “Holocaust on Your Plate” rally achieved three major goals. First, the event demonstrated how morally bankrupt the animal rights movement is. Second, it showed that some young people have no conception of what the Holocaust was. And third, it revealed that in the absence of God, evil reigns. PETA’s evil placards serve as an important reminder of the inevitable conclusions of moral relativism.
Joseph J. Sabia is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Cornell UniversityThursday, May 1, 2003 5:30 p.m. PST
HollywoodHalfwits.com
The web site Boycott-Hollywood.us was shut down today due to legal measures brought by attorneys on behalf of the William Morris Agency, which represents various Hollywood celebrities. The web site was known for providing a platform for the public to exercise their free speech rights by commenting on actors who criticize President Bush and the war efforts. Apparently, free speech is a one way street in Hollywood.
The law firm Rintala, Smoot, Jaenicke and Rees appealed to domain registrar Dotster.com and NamesDirect.com to discontinue service to the web site. Before their demise, the site managed to publish an image of the letter sent by the law firm, which threatened that the “persons responsible for the www.boycott-hollywood.us website may be liable, both criminally and civilly, for a variety of offenses."
Just before being brought down, the website's home page stated, "Apparently, our domain registrar (namesdirect.com - subsidiary of Dotster.com) has caved to the pressures of the William Morris Agency giant. On April 29, 2003, Dotster.com received a letter from the William Morris Agency in regards to this website. Their complaint accused us of libel and potentially other civil and criminal offenses."
Where are Tim Robbins and the ACLU when you need them?
The message continued, “I can say only this - - the fact that we're being shut down because of the William Morris Agency tells me that we truly touched a raw nerve in someone, somewhere. At the very least, it tells me that our message was received by the people that it was intended for. The very fact that we cannot express our opinions regarding the views of these stars/celebs shows me, yet again, the double standard that exists in Follywood.”
Boycott-Hollywood’s owner continued, “This is another fine example of how Hollywood feels that their opinion and view is the only one that matters. Average citizens are disallowed the free expression of our point of view because they don't like being challenged for their views. I stand firm on the belief that we have done nothing wrong at this website - - The celebrities have expressed their views, and we have responded in kind by expressing our views regarding the thoughts and ideas that they have, publicly, expressed.”
It seems there was a “legal” technicality that allowed Dotster to inactivate the domain name. The site owner explains on the web page: “Dotster.com has suspended our update information at this domain and have informed us that the DNS information of this domain has been changed and the website will be down within the next 24 hours and our contract with them is now null and void. They are doing this because we did not provide accurate contact information in their public database.
“When I explained that the reason we did not provide accurate contact information is because we have received multiple death threats and I did not wish for just anyone to have my personal information - and asked them for suggestions on what to do - Dotster was unmoved. They did not give me the chance to update the information with accurate information and keep the domain. That's not an option - - they are just simply going to shut down our domain - no explanation needed.”
Hollywood Halfwits spoke with the owner via e-mail today and she insisted that she never received a warning, which she indicated was required according to her agreement. We checked their agreement on their site and it stated that a domain name owner has 15 days to respond to a request to update the contact information. In addition, Dotster did not give the domain owner time to move the registration to a competing registrar; they have effectively prevented them from moving the registration for as much as 60 days.
The discussion forum at www.HollywoodHalfwits.com was buzzing today after the news was announced. The general feeling is that William Morris Agency has just caused the critics of Hollywood to be more vocal than ever. One member’s post was representative: “You know I’m sure they think they've won some sort of ‘victory’ not knowing they have only fanned the flames of outrage even higher.”
Copyright 2003
HollywoodHalfwits.com
Hollywood Halfwits LLC
NewsMax.com
Monday, April 28, 2003 6:45 p.m. EDT
Al Franken Goes Fox Hunting at Correspondents Dinner
The increasingly unfunny Al Franken blew a gasket Saturday night at Washington, D.C.'s White House Correspondents Dinner, where he accosted a table full of Fox News Channel personalities, causing a scene that threatened to erupt into physical violence.
"He saw Shepard Smith and Alan Colmes and he came over to incite," "Fox & Friends" morning host Brian Kilmeade reported Monday.
"He said he didn't like the way Alan challenges Sean," the top morning cable talker said, referring to FNC's hit nighttime team "Hannity & Colmes."
Kilmeade said Franken's behavior was so deranged that some thought he was drunk, but that wasn't the case.
Still, the obstreperous comedian got so out of line that Kilmeade asked him to leave, saying, "I personally thought we'd end up coming to blows."
According to Internet scribe Matt Drudge, when witnesses spotted the liberal ranter later he was bleeding from the chin. But Kilmeade said the altercation stopped short of throwing punches.
At the same gathering, Franken was heard to shout in the direction of Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - "Clinton's military did pretty well in Iraq, huh?"
Wolfowitz's response? "F*** you."
The incident isn't the first time Franken has come gunning for Fox News personnel - and he seems to have a particular problem with "Hannity & Colmes."
Earlier in the year, after Franken's name came up as a possible star attraction of a Clinton-backed liberal talk radio network, Hannity told his radio audience that he once had to call security on Franken when he refused to stop haranguing him after a guest shot on "H&C" - following the TV talker down the hall until guards interceded.
Perhaps Fox News Channel honcho Roger Ailes needs to get a restraining order against the belligerent and uncontrollable left-wing comic.
Hollywood anti-war set needs some new lines
April 8, 2003
TO: Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney, Sheryl Crow, David Duchovny, Janeane Garofalo, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Woody Harrelson, Jessica Lange, Michael Moore, Edward Norton, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Eddie Vedder, et al.
RE: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Dear Celebrity Anti-War Activist: Over the last several weeks and months, you have used your status as a person of fame to tell the world you're against the war with Iraq, which you believe to be unwarranted, unethical, unconstitutional and un-American. Some of you have said you "hate" President George W. Bush (hello, Jessica Lange!), while others have expressed mere contempt for the president and his policies.
Even though you are among the luckiest and best-rewarded human beings in the history of civilization, you have moaned long and loud about life in the oppressive United States of America. And you have complained that free speech is practically an endangered species--though it's not as if you've been kidnapped, bound and gagged for expressing your views.
You have talked about how ashamed you are to be an American. You have said you believe this is a war for oil conducted by a power-hungry simpleton in the White House.
You have given speeches at awards ceremonies. You've marched in the streets and held forth at anti-war rallies. You've gone on talk shows and you've written op-ed pieces and you've signed letters and you've flashed the peace sign every time you've gone out in public.
Even after the fighting began and U.S. troops started risking their lives to fight for the very freedoms you've been enjoying--including the right to speak out against government policies--you refused to let the drumbeats of war drown out your voices of dissent.
Fine. You've made your point. And if you want to keep on with the the marching and the protesting and the grandstanding and the speech-making, well God bless America, that's your right.
But I'm just wondering: If you're such a crusader for kindness and decency and the rules of fair play, when are you going to say something about the atrocities committed by Iraqis since this war broke out?
Stop right there. I can already hear you launching into your well-practiced diatribe about how none of these things would be happening in the first place if not for that warmonger Bush--but that doesn't answer my question. My question is, why are you not condemning the unconscionable acts of terrorism committed by Iraqis?
Since the fighting began, American troops have conducted themselves with much honor and courage and have engaged in the traditional rules of war. We've seen story after story about U.S. troops coming to the aid of wounded enemy soldiers, image after image of Americans comforting Iraqi children, quote after quote from American troops expressing deep regret after killing soldiers and civilians who would not surrender or kept charging, even after repeated warnings.
On the other side, some Iraqi soldiers have posed as civilians and faked surrender in order to ambush allied forces. Then there are the suicide terrorists, like the noncommissioned Iraqi officer in civilian clothes who pretended to be a taxi driver and waved to U.S. soldiers for help--only to blow himself up and take four American soldiers with him. We've also seen American POWs mistreated on Iraq TV.
The Fedayeen have been known to use civilians, even children, as human shields. They stage military operations from hospitals. In one incident, Iraqi soldiers fired at a U.S. helicopter that was evacuating wounded Iraqis.
Even if you believe we have no business being in Iraq, you can't possibly endorse any of the tactics used by a significant percentage of Iraqis. They are cowards and they are scum and they are war criminals.
So, Ms. Garofalo and Mr. Sheen and Mr. Moore and Mr. Robbins: Why not hold a press conference to condemn these acts? How about taking out ads in USA Today and the New York Times so you can sign your names to a petition expressing your outrage at this behavior? How about donating your talents to a fund-raiser for the families of fallen American soldiers? At the very least you can update your anti-war speeches to include words of praise for the likes of Jessica Lynch, and words of protest against the Iraqi thugs.
I'm not asking you to march in the streets of Baghdad to protest these atrocities. You can make your point from the comfort and safety of your home turf--the same launching point for all your verbal missiles against the American government.
It won't mean you're against the war. It'll just mean you have a sense of perspective and honor, and that your hatred and contempt isn't reserved exclusively for the president of the United States.
War criminals need loathing, too. Don't be afraid to say it.
Sincerely,
Richard Roeper
DEARBORN, Mich. — An
initiative to recruit Iraqi exiles in the United States to help topple
Saddam Hussein has been gaining support in Dearborn, Mich.
The Iraqi National Congress — a London-based umbrella group of various organizations opposing the Baghdad regime — is spearheading a project to assemble a pool of Iraqis to help coalition forces gain the trust of the country's people.
Emad Alkased of the Iraqi Youth Reunion — an educational group that wants to rebuild a post-Saddam Iraq — has been leading a recruiting drive in Dearborn, which has the largest ethnic Iraqi community of any U.S. city.
The drive is part of an all-out appeal to Iraqi-Americans who want to return to their homeland to help the U.S.-led coalition topple the dictatorship.
"I don't want American people to die for my country — I want me to be the first one," Alkased said. "I appreciate what American people are doing for my country, but I don't want them to spend their blood. I am ready to spend blood for my country."
Meetings are being held in Dearborn, where potential recruits fill out applications and give their address, date of birth, Social Security number and the name of the nearest airport.
Other Iraqi exiles are ready to shed their blood, too.
The Department of Defense has asked the Iraqi National Congress to find 250 volunteers who are willing to return to Iraq on 48 hours' notice.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz recently traveled to Dearborn to meet with hundreds of members of the city's Iraqi-American community.
"I heard one wrenching story after another about Saddam's systematic brutality," Wolfowitz said during a Friday press briefing at the State Department's Foreign Press Center.
The Pentagon has been training thousands of Saddam's opponents, including former Iraqi military officials, since last fall. President Bush gave the Pentagon $92 million for the program.
Dave Alwatan needs no convincing.
"As an American Iraqi, all our people here want to go in the front of the American military to fight Saddam's regime," he said.
Alwatan's nephew has brain damage and facial scars after Iraqi soldiers kicked him in the face when he was a year old in order to get information during the first Gulf War. Alwatan said the military was searching for him and his brother.
"I want to fight Saddam's regime, not our people," he said. "Saddam will never, ever go away without fighting. We know that. Saddam, he must go very soon."
Another Iraqi-American, Thea Alemari, said there's no doubt it's time for the dictator to go.
"You can't breathe. If you need to breathe, you have to have approval from government to say something," he said. "If you say something about the government, you be in jail or you'll be killed."
"We can speak to the people of Iraq, we have connection with the people of Iraq," Alemari added. "They feel not safe right now, but when we talk to them, I think we have large support inside Iraq."
Alemari said many Iraqis were afraid to speak out or aid coalition forces because they feared the current regime would survive this war, as it did the first Gulf War.
Exiles said they had not yet been briefed on when or where they might be needed in Iraq. Some of them are former Iraqi soldiers and want to head to the front lines.
At the very least, they said, they could be used as translators to help negotiate the surrender of Saddam's Fedayeen militia and Baath party members.
"It's my backyard. It is my city. It is my village. It is my people," said Casey Mahuba of the Iraqi Youth Union. "I know who is Fedayeen, who is Baath and who is honest people."
She said many people in Dearborn were willing to fight.
About 75 Iraqi-Americans who trained with U.S. forces at a military base in Hungary are now on the ground with coalition troops in Iraq. They're called the Free Iraqi Forces and primarily supporting humanitarian operations.
It was unclear whether the Dearborn exiles would be joining those forces. But they emphasized they were ready to do whatever was necessary to bring peace to Iraq.
"We will liberate our country. We will free Iraq no matter which it is going to cost us," Alkased said. "This is the last choice for us and this is what we are going to do."
Mahuba said fighting for her country would be worth her life.
"For me it is the freedom. It is my country. I want to sacrifice myself there," she said. "I want to die there if that is what it is going to cost. The price is the freedom."
Fox News' Jeff Goldblatt and Liza
Porteus contributed to this report.
*Will's Comments*
I want to point out one thing about these true heroes.
Notice, the article called them, "Iraqi-Americans". But
they called themselves, "American Iraqis". Why can't we take a
lesson from these heroes? In America we all call ourselves "Asian
Americans" or "African Americans" or "European Americans"... Why
can't we be Americans first like these great examples of human beings
and Americans? My hearts and prayers are with them. I wish
them only the best and will always carry them in heart as something I
should aspire to.
Thwack!
Another nail drives into the coffin of Bill Clinton’s legacy.
Dereliction
of Duty is the personal account of Lt.
Col. “Buzz” Patterson while he served the nation during the Clinton
administration as one of the carriers of the “nuclear football.”
As
President, Bill Clinton’s actions with regard to military preparedness
speak for themselves. In less than three years, deployments increased
while
manpower decreased from 2.1 million to 1.6 million. That was, of
course,
Al Gore’s dirty little secret about the “reinvention” of government. As
Patterson recounts, out of the 305,000 employees removed from the
federal
payroll, 286,000 (or 90%) of those were military cuts.
While
the U.S. military was used as a ‘meals on wheels’ service by the
Clinton administration in its nation building adventures, the military
had its own humanitarian crises at home on its own bases. Patterson
points out that
the pay freeze instituted by Clinton was imposed on a military in which
80% of our troops made $30,000 or less.
Despite
the dearth of good news contained in his book, Col. Patterson is not
motivated by a personal vendetta against his former boss but a
conviction that such a man should never reside in the White House again
as commander-in-chief.
Character
Flaws
Character
flaws often show up in the minutia of life. Take, for example, the golf
cheat sheet which Patterson wrote down while following Clinton on the
golf
course. Patterson and the White House doctor kept the real score, which
was 92, but Clinton awarded himself a 79 that day.
The
nuclear football goes everywhere with the President. Several days after
testifying in the Paula Jones deposition, Patterson went to exchange
the
codes for the football with the president only to find that he didn’t
have
them. “I don’t have mine on me. I’ll track it down, guys, and get back
to
you.” They turned the White House upside down and still didn’t find
them.
Patterson
continued to serve in an administration which was “renowned for its
lack of professionalism and courtesy.” Hillary Clinton was no exception
and was known for her temper, her own personal “football” (a box of
files) and for attempting to keep Bill in line. Patterson also paints a
less than flattering portrait of the Rodham brothers who also used the
White House staff as their personal servants.
Botched
Opportunities
Along
with the lack of respect for the military went a failure to understand
its purpose. One of Hillary’s staffers remarked on a drive through
South
Africa that she was appalled by the poverty. Didn’t they have a
military
to do something about this? The Clintons saw the military primarily as
a
humanitarian organization, not as a professional force to defend the
country.
CNN diplomacy meant that if human suffering was on CNN, American troops
would be there.
In
one of his most damning quotes Patterson opines, “This lost bin Laden
hit typified the Clinton administration’s ambivalent, indecisive way of
dealing with terrorism. Ideologically, the Clinton administration was
committed
to the idea that most terrorists were misunderstood, had legitimate
grievances and could be appeased, which is why such military action as
the administration authorized was so halfhearted, and ineffective, and
designed more for ‘show’ than for honestly eliminating a threat.”
"U.S. flags are the emblem of the invading war machine in Iraq today. They are the emblem of the occupying power. The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military."
Those words were spoken last week by Nicholas De Genova, a professor of anthropology and Latin American studies at Columbia University. De Genova went on, in words that will long shame his university, to call on U.S. soldiers to "frag" (i.e., murder) their officers and to wish "for a million Mogadishus," referring to the 1993 ambush in Somalia that left 18 U.S. soldiers dead and 84 wounded.
He wants 18 million dead Americans?
Columbia's administration distanced itself from De Genova (he "does not in any way represent" the university's views) and other professors criticized him - but his remarks are hardly the rude exception to the usual discourse of the faculty at that university. For one: Tom Paulin, a visiting professor at Columbia this academic year, has stated that Brooklyn-born Jews "should be shot dead" if they live on the West Bank.
More broadly, plenty of other Columbia professors share De Genova's venomous feelings for the United States, though they stop short of calling for the deaths of Americans.
* Eric Foner, Dewitt Clinton professor of American history, sees the U.S. government as a habitual aggressor: "Our notion of ourselves as a peace-loving republic is flawed. We've used military force against many, many nations, and in very few of those cases were we attacked or threatened with attack."
* Edward Said, university professor, calls the U.S. policy in Iraq a "grotesque show" perpetrated by a "small cabal" of unelected individuals who hijacked U.S. policy. He accuses "George Bush and his minions" of hiding their imperialist grab for "oil and hegemony" under a false intent to build democracy and human rights.
Said deems Operation Iraqi Freedom "an abuse of human tolerance and human values" waged by an "avenging Judeo-Christian god of war." This war, he says, fits into a larger pattern of America "reducing whole peoples, countries and even continents to ruin by nothing short of holocaust."
* Rashid Khalidi, who will hold the Edward Said chair of Middle East Studies starting in the fall, used the term "idiots' consensus" to describe the wide support for reversing Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and called on his colleagues to combat it. After 9/11, he admonished the media to drop its "hysteria about suicide bombers."
* Gary Sick, acting director of the Middle East Institute, alleges that Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980 by conspiring with the Ayatollah Khomeini to keep the U.S. hostages in Iran. He apologizes for the Iranian government (it "has been meticulous in complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty") and blames Washington for having "encouraged Iran to proceed" with building nuclear weapons.
Sick opposes letting U.S. victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism collect large damages against Tehran. More generally, he sees the Bush administration as "belligerent" and his fellow Americans as "insufferable."
* George Saliba, professor of Arabic and Islamic Science, routinely interrupts his class with political rants, leading one student to observe that it is "continuously insulting" to attend his lectures and another to complain about his course (on the subject of an "Introduction to Islamic Civilization," of all things) degenerating into a forum for railing against "evil America."
* Joseph Massad, assistant professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History, seems to blame every ill in the Arab world on the United States. Poverty results from "the racist and barbaric policies" of the American-dominated International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The absence of democracy is the fault of "ruling autocratic elites and their patron, the United States." Militant Islamic violence results from "U.S. imperialist aggression."
Such sentiments coming from leading lights of the Columbia professorate suggest that De Genova fits very well into his institution. He just made the mistake of blurting out the logical conclusion of the anti-Americanism forwarded by some of his colleagues.
This self-hatred points to an intellectual crisis at a school long considered one of the country's best. Alumni, parents of students and other friends of the university should first acknowledge this reality, then take steps to fix it.
The Fieldsboro, N.J., borough council has unanimously voted to ban commemorative yellow ribbons from public property, causing a uproar with residents who want to honor U.S. troops fighting in Iraq.
Mayor
Edward "Buddy" Tyler supports the decision, reports the Trentonian
newspaper.
"I'm shocked and outraged," Diane Johnson told the paper. "I can't believe the mayor would force me to take down ribbons put there in honor of American troops, fighting for our freedom in Iraq."
According to the report, Johnson and her husband own a liquor store near an official welcome sign on the town's main road. She placed one dinner-plate-sized ribbon on the sign and one on a nearby tree.
Said Johnson, "They were made of all-weather ribbon, and they looked really nice. They didn't obstruct the sign in any way, and a lot of people with family members in the war came into the store to tell me how seeing the ribbons gave them a lift."
Yesterday, said the Trentonian report, Johnson got a mayoral directive delivered by a township maintenance man: "Take down the ribbons, or I'll do it for you."
"I didn't want to get fined, so I took them down," Johnson told the paper. "There are mothers in town who have sons over there. You think [the mayor would] be a little bit sensitive to them."
The Fieldsboro Borough Council approved the ban last week, but Tyler said it does not prohibit residents from placing memorials on their own property, reported the Associated Press. Four of the council members voted unanimously to force Johnson to remove the ribbons after the mayor reportedly received one complaint.
Tyler defended his decision.
"Where would you draw a line if you started allowing the use of public property to exhibit whatever cause anyone wanted?" Tyler told the Trentonian. "Suppose someone wants to tie pink ribbons, or black flags, or a Confederate flag or a Nazi flag on public property?
"We certainly recommend that people should exhibit their support," he said. "Just do it on your own property, not on borough property."
Tyler, a Democrat, does not support the U.S. military action in Iraq, believing U.N. approval should have been secured before going in. While he insisted the decision was not partisan politics, he pointed out to the Trentonian that the Johnsons "are Republicans."
All six members of the borough council are Democrats.
"The whole thing absolutely gets me in my gut," Johnson said. "As far as I know, we're not a Gestapo police state, but they're sure acting like it."Radicals Speak Out
At Columbia 'Teach-In'
By Ron Howell
Staff Writer
March 27, 2003, 7:29 PM EST
At an anti-war "teach-in" this week, a Columbia University professor
called for the defeat of American forces in Iraq and said he would like
to see "a million Mogadishus" -- a reference to the Somali city where
American soldiers were ambushed, with 18 killed, in 1993."The only true
heroes
are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," Nicholas
De Genova, assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University
told the audience at Low Library Wednesday night. "I personally would
like to see a million Mogadishus."
The crowd was largely silent at the remark. They loudly applauded De Genova later when he said, "If we really believe that this war is criminal ... then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine."At least two of the speakers who followed De Genova distanced themselves from his comments. One of them was teach-in organizer Eric Foner, a history professor, who disagreed with De Genova's assertion that Americans who called themselves "patriots" also were white supremacists. In a telephone interview Thursday, Foner went further in his criticism, calling De Genova's statements "idiotic." "I thought that was completely uncalled for," Foner said, referring to De Genova's allusion to the Mogadishu ambush and firefight, portrayed in the film "Black Hawk Down" and known for the graphic image of a slain American soldier being dragged through the streets. "We do not desire the deaths of American soldiers." Foner said that because of the university's tradition of freedom of speech, it was unlikely De Genova would suffer professionally in any way because of what he said. "A person's politics have no impact on their employment status here, whether they are promoted, whether they are fired or whether they get tenure," Foner said. Foner said he did not know whether De Genova had tenure. De Genova was not available Thursday for an interview.
More than 3,000 students and faculty attended the Wednesday teach-in, which lasted from 6 p.m. until about midnight, and featured more than two dozen professors and other scholars. The applause at De Genova's call for the defeat of U.S.-led forces in Iraq reflected widespread frustration at the inability to reverse President George W. Bush's Middle East policies, Foner said.
"A kind of
flamboyant statement like that will get an applause in the heat of the
moment," the history professor said. By turns, the speakers Wednesday
night said the Bush administration's actions in Iraq were bullying,
illegal, deceitful, corrupt and murderous. Some argued that Bush
administration officials had ties to companies that stand to profit
from the war. Using a reference to Nazi Germany, a history professor,
Barbara J. Fields, said like-minded Americans should vigorously oppose
Bush. "The 'good Germans' of the Nazi era were the
few who said, 'No,'" Fields declared.
The ASSHOLE Professors Phone Number in NY is 212-864-7103
"We are a very tolerant state and people in the military also expect to be treated with the same courtesy and respect that we show to others," Lt. Col. Scott Stirewalt, director of security at the Vermont National Guard, told WCAX news.
The teens blocked the sergeant as she went into a store and again on the way out, yelling obscenities at her along the way, Roosevelt said. The group also threw small stones at her car as she drove away, he added.
The sergeant said she believed the protesters had taken part in an anti-war demonstration in Montpelier that day. National Guard troops are often deployed to such events to help keep the peace.
"There were various profanities directed in her direction, along the line of '[expletive] murderer, [expletive] baby killer,'" Stirewalt said. "It culminated with some of the individuals throwing rocks at her, and as testament to her disciplined professionalism, she got in her car and left the area."
Roosevelt called it an "isolated incident."
"For every one that takes place there are hundreds of good deeds being done for Guard members," he said.
Roosevelt said other guard members were told in an e-mail to be careful in public. "It was kind of a heads-up to stay alert. We send warnings like that out all the time."
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chastised the stone throwers, calling the incident "disturbing."
"The process leading to the war in Iraq has generated strong feelings across the nation," said Leahy, co-chairman of the Senate National Guard Caucus. "I know that the great majority of Vermonters would never participate in this type of disrespectful behavior because it is not the Vermont way.
"It is important, especially now, for Vermonters of good will on both sides to show that the Vermont way is to respect one another, regardless of our views about the war."
Leahy noted that the state's National Guard helped thousands of residents there during a huge ice storm in 1998 and in the period following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They also played key roles in both World Wars, the Korean War and Operation Desert Storm.
After news of the Sept. 11 attacks, Vermont's 158th Fighter Wing of the Guard scrambled many of their F-16 fighter jets. Over the next 122 days, at least two of the units patrolled the skies over Washington, D.C. and New York City.
But Friday's incident isn't the only case of a Guard facing harassment in the Green Mountain State.
"A car drove up alongside and honked his horn and stuck his hand out the window and gave us the old proverbial, 'hey, you're No. 1 finger,'" Guardsman Brian Tomblee told WCAX news, referring to an obscene gesture. "I just waved back and said, 'Hey thanks for the support,' and drove on."
Protesters at Friday's anti-war demonstration converged at the statehouse in Montpelier to lobby the governor and the legislature. Just as the anti-war rally started, they were met with more than 30 Republican lawmakers lined up on the upper statehouse steps to sing "God Bless America."
Former Gov. Howard Dean -- who left his post to make a run for the Democratic ticket for president in 2004, regularly and loudly criticizes the Bush administration war effort. He has also criticized fellow Democratic candidates for backing the war.
Under Vermont law, assaulting or abusing a soldier because of membership in the military is a hate crime. Conviction could bring up to five years in prison.
About 15 Vermont Air National Guard security personnel will soon be sent overseas to help fight the war on terror, officials said, and could be deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The deployment will bring the number of Vermonters currently deployed to about 200.
The state's volunteer Guard now has about 4,000 members between the Army and Air National Guard. With a population of just 600,000, that figure represents one of the highest Guard per capita participation rates in the country.
Fox News' Liza Porteus and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
At 12:30 P.M. Thursday, over 1,000 students and faculty of Harvard University walked out of classes and assembled in Harvard Yard to protest the war of Iraqi liberation. Unconvinced by the usual antics of peacenik protesters, I made my way to the rally in search of intelligent reasons to oppose war. Surely 1,000 Harvard minds could produce such reasons.
I encountered a motley assemblage of worthies. Aside from the students, there was the Spartacus Youth League, gracing us with a poster: "For Class Struggle Against U.S. Capitalist Rulers." The Socialist Workers party distributed its weekly newsletter. Rita Hamad, a Harvard senior, reminded us of the evils of Zionism in a speech ("the Israeli government will use the Iraqi war as a cover for committing future atrocities [in Palestine]"). In a touching display of multiculturalism, one sign proclaimed "Finland Against This War" — while another bore the Chinese characters for "Fandui Shiyou Zhanzheng": Oppose the Oil War.
Searching harder, I found this trenchant injunction: "Healthcare Not Bombs." I asked the woman holding the sign to explain exactly how health-care will stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. "If we use our wealth to provide health-care and solve problems like AIDS," she answered, "we will have better relations with other countries, who will help us solve problems like weapons of mass destruction." Q.E.D.
At this point, I had an epiphany: Maybe I was listening to the wrong people. Not all of these peaceniks were affiliated with Harvard, and those who were, were mostly students. Perhaps their powers of reasoning were as yet unrefined. If so, then surely it was to their refiners that I should turn. So I listened to a speech by Brian Palmer, lecturer on the study of religion, whom I expected to be a paragon of rationality.
Palmer began by assuring us that the war would be a massacre. He added that "the Iraq war is a skirmish in the war between the Bush administration and the rest of the world." For those unaware of this war, Palmer offered some details. First, Bush is "at war against other democracies, international law, and global institutions." As evidence for this claim, Palmer repeated the statement of the current president's father that "the American lifestyle is not up for negotiation," and construed this to mean that there must be "an SUV in every garage." Next, Palmer waxed metaphorical: "Ghosts of angry Cold Warriors are emerging from the dead ranks of the Reagan administration to wage war against the working classes." As if that weren't spooky enough, Palmer warned that Bush is at war "against us in the universities. We produce inconvenient results, such as that the Bush brothers pushed and bullied their way through the Florida elections."
Here, at last, was the immorality of the war made manifest. Let's summarize: George W. Bush, aided by a handful of ghouls, is removing Saddam Hussein from power so that he can put an SUV in every garage, oppress the poor, and commit election fraud. This was precisely the sort of serious thought I had hoped for.
What I had not hoped for, however, was a revelation from God. Yet Timothy P. McCarthy, lecturer in American history and literature, delighted the crowd by providing one. In a sermon on the topic of "dissent and God," McCarthy announced in his lordly baritone (think of Charlton Heston as Moses) that President Bush has a policy of "waging war against anyone at any time when the Spirit moves [him]." Silly Bush. He should know that the Spirit only moves anti-war protesters — who must, in McCarthy's words, "reclaim the authority of God as we, the prophets of peace, keep doing what we are doing" — namely, opposing the war "in order to save every last one of our souls."
Let me assure the reader that each of the above quotations is real. This is what antiwar intellectuals are saying today. I haven't made up a word.
What is most vexing about these peaceniks isn't the falsity of their claims, but the utter irrelevance of those claims, even if true. A few examples:
"Saddam Hussein Is Not the Iraqi People," read one poster. This is
trivially true, but utterly useless as an argument unless one is making
the ridiculous assumption that targeting a regime requires targeting
an entire people. (Of course, many did make this assumption.
Matthew Skomarovsky, the student emcee, accused the U.S. of planning to
"shock
and awe Baghdad the way Osama bin Laden shocked and awed New York City
on September 11.")
American support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s was roundly condemned,
as though the United States were responsible for having failed to
divine the horrors Saddam would commit. But suppose the U.S. did
bear partial (or total) responsibility for the humanitarian disaster in
Iraq? The
peacenik argument would still be getting the idea of moral
responsibility
backward by assuming that to cause a problem is to free oneself of the
duty to resolve it.
Endless venom was spat at George W. Bush, as though to insult the man
was to discredit his policies. What if President Bush were
stupid, or did steal the election, or really wanted to
gain access to Iraq's oil? The war is not being justified on those
terms, but on grounds of national security and humanitarian concern.
The sufficiency of those
justifications doesn't rest on claims about Bush's intelligence,
political
activities, and personal motivations, and you don't need a background
in
formal logic to understand this.
The utter irrelevance of these arguments only exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of the antiwar movement. Any serious criticism of the war must rely on one or both of two claims: First, that it is not in the security interests of the United States forcibly to remove Saddam from power; or, second, that a war to rid the Iraqi people of a psychopathic dictator is worse for that people, in humanitarian terms, than letting them continue to suffer under him.
Rather than make these claims, Harvard's high-minded intellectuals recite their usual litany of complaints about capitalism, about globalization, and above all, about George W. Bush. Yesterday's protest was an exercise in many things: vanity, condescension, evasion, arrogance, and smug self-righteousness. But it failed miserably as an effort at persuasion. This should come as no surprise to those of us who recognize that war is tragic, but who also know that life under tyranny, or life overshadowed by the danger of apocalyptic slaughter, is more tragic still.
— Jason Steorts is a senior at Harvard University.
When Fox asked me to write a column about the war
this week, I was a bit at a loss. For about six months now, I’ve
advocated
against the war. But I also decided that once the bombs start falling,
the debate ought to end. And last week, for me, it did end. Now
that we’re in the thick of the mission, it’s time to unite, and to pull
for a swift, decisive victory that’s as bloodless as it can be.
Given my precarious position, I’ve found myself regularly frustrated by hysterics coming from either side of the debate. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to list and address some of the more egregious examples.
1) The World War II Analogies.
Saddam Hussein is not Hitler. He’s certainly not worse than Hitler (as Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens once said on the floor of the U.S. Senate). He’s likely every bit the moral midget Hitler was, but he hasn’t the means, the capacity, the wealth, the support or, frankly, the charisma Hitler had. Hitler was a threat to the world. He conquered most of Europe. He killed six million Jews.
Saddam Hussein is a threat to his own people, and, at most, a neighboring country or two.
Likewise, Basra isn’t Normandy. You’re free to believe that this is a just, moral war, but it’s insulting to say that it presents a moral imperative on par with World War II. Retired General Barry McCaffrey said recently that the allies in Iraq risk 3,000 dead before the mission is over. That number ought to turn your stomach. You might still think it’s regrettably acceptable, but it ought to at least get you queasy. That’s another September 11’s worth of dead Americans, a voluntary one, in an effort to prevent another September 11, one that may or may not happen, and may still happen once (or even because) we topple the Iraqi regime.
Three thousand dead to topple Saddam Hussein is a travesty. Three thousand dead in the effort to liberate Europe and the Pacific would have been a blessing.
2) Moral Relativism
Much as this war troubles me, there is no moral equivalency between the Bush administration and Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. Our president occasionally enacts policies that I find troubling as an advocate for civil liberties. Saddam Hussein has thrown dissenters into vats of slow-acting acid. The two aren’t comparable.
There is no moral relativism between invading U.S. forces and Al Qaeda operatives. And, in fact, there’s no moral relativism between U.S. forces and the Iraqi forces we’re fighting.
I’ll give you some examples.
As we’ve seen, when U.S. forces have conquered Iraqi villages in the past week, they’ve handed out chocolate and bottled water to Iraqi children. When Iraqi soldiers invaded Kuwait in 1990 and encountered Kuwaiti children, they killed them.
When U.S. forces capture Iraqi soldiers, they abide by international treaties, and often grant the enemy better accommodations than they have themselves. When Iraqi forces capture U.S. soldiers, they humiliate and then reportedly execute them on videotape, then feed that footage for broadcast to the world.
No country that I can think of in the history of warfare has gone to the lengths our military has in this conflict to avoid civilian casualties. We’ve spent billions on "smart bomb" research and development, we’ve altered our military strategy, and, some have argued, we’ve even risked the safety of our own forces at times to avoid unnecessary civilian carnage. Iraq, on the other hand, has willingly endangered its own civilians by deploying them as human shields, by camouflaging soldiers as civilians, and by instructing soldiers to fight under the white flag. There’s no moral equivalence here. We’re doing more to protect Iraqi citizens than Iraq is.
3) Objection to This War Makes One "Subjectively Pro-Iraq"
This argument was put forth most recently by Rush Limbaugh, who said he’d yet to meet an antiwar protester who could answer the question "If we do go to war, do you hope America wins?"
I can only speak for myself, of course. But I can answer that question unambiguously.
I originally opposed this war. And yes, I hope we win. Decisively.
There are lots of other thoughtful, patriotic people who originally opposed the current war for reasons not rooted in anti-Americanism, people not named Michael Moore or Susan Sarandon or Chrissie Hynde. Some of us even voted for President Bush.
And we, like you, get goosebumps when Iraqi civilians greet American troops with cheers and flowers; we, like you, get nauseous when we see photographs of the bodies of American soldiers; we, like you, choke up when we see interviews with those soldiers’ families; and we, like you, would like nothing more than to see a Marine emerge from a Baghdad bunker with Saddam Hussein’s head on a stick.
I have no desire to let loose with "I told you sos" after this war is over. I’d much rather say, "I was wrong."
4) Uni- vs. Multi-lateralism
Another one from the antiwar crowd, unique in that it’s wrong on two levels. The argument says:
1) We’re acting unilaterally.
2) That’s a bad thing.
Well, first, we aren’t acting unilaterally. We’re acting against the objections of France, Russia, China and Germany.
We all, of course, know well of Germany’s pacifist tradition (that’s sarcasm). Russia’s still in its own brutal war with Muslim rebels in Chechnya, even as it threatened a U.N. veto. China’s still suppressing Muslims in its Xinjiang province. And, as former undersectretary of defense Jed Babbin said recently, "Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion."
Thirty countries are on record as supporting the war effort, including Italy, Spain, Britain, and most of Eastern Europe.
More importantly: So what?
Our national sovereignty is too important to place in the hands of a body of international bureaucrats -- a body that exalts brutal dictators like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, that allows a country with an active slave trade (the Sudan) to sit on its human rights commission, and that allows Libya to chair it.
I’m not happy that we went to war. But if we had to, I think take solace, not umbrage, that we did it over the objection of the United Nations.
All of these arguments are rather ridiculous, a couple of them down right hysterical. I feel silly even attempting to refute them. But they’re being thrown out by otherwise serious people, and so it’s important to put them into context.
Radley Balko is a writer living in Arlington, VA. He also maintains a weblog at www.theagitator.com.
For weeks, we've watched and listened as the
so-called anti-war movement has stepped up its efforts to vocalize its
message through demonstrations, newspaper ads and celebrity
spokespersons.
Last Wednesday here at the University of Kentucky (UK), about 200 students joined thousands nationwide in a day of rallies to protest the upcoming war with Iraq.
The event was sponsored by an array of groups that one would probably expect: Leftist Student Union, Feminists' Alliance, UK Green Party and the like.
As I have watched more and more of these events, I have become convinced that the majority of these folks are not really anti-war, but, in fact, anti-Bush.
Take, for example, two of the signs used during Wednesday's rally: "Save America, Spare Iraq, make Texas take him back" and "W stands for 'Wrong for America.'"
Something tells me that if president Al Gore were in the same situation, many of the people at these "peace" rallies would be throwing war parties.
I am not pro-war. I don't know anyone who is. I do think that in some situations, war is necessary. I heard some people at the protest say that war can never be justified. Professor Pat Cooper said peace can never be gained through violence.
Both of these statements are fundamentally wrong. Who would claim that war was not justified after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor? Or after the Sept. 11 attacks? In the first case, peace was achieved through war, and for 50 years, Japan has been one of our strongest allies. In Afghanistan, our armed forces and those of other nations have terrorist leaders on the run, a violent and repressive regime has been dismantled and Al Qaeda associates are being arrested left and right, just as we saw last week.
Other protesters claimed the humanitarian costs of a war with Iraq far outweigh any objectives that the United States might have in fighting.
They say the civilian lives that will be lost and the refugees the war will create should force the Bush administration to reconsider its plans. What they don't seem to take into account are the thousands of civilian lives that Saddam Hussein's government has taken and the thousands more who have been beaten or tortured, many of them children.
There are human costs in any war. They are always terrible results of miscalculations or simple mistakes, and they are always inevitable, especially when the brutal leader of the nation under attack places human shields at strategic sites he knows will be bombed.
Still others attending the rally claimed President Bush has not taken the diplomatic road to solving the crisis. I guess they have been ignoring the past two months of news.
The Bush administration has done more than enough to try to solve the situation through diplomatic means.
Whether Germany and France -- two of our "allies" -- support us in the war is unimportant. From what you hear on the news, you might believe that Britain is our only supporter. Yet there are over 20 European nations supporting the war, as well as several Middle Eastern nations.
The Left thinks that if we don't have the support of France, we’re acting unilaterally. This is simply not the case.
The protesters at the rally seemed to be nice people, some of whom might actually be anti-war.
Those whose beliefs are not formed by the fact that the president is a Republican should be commended for their courage in demonstrating their views. They are rock-solid in their beliefs.
Yet they are wrong. If Saddam Hussein is left in power, he will only become more and more dangerous, not only to Middle Eastern nations, but to the United States as well. That is something we cannot stand for.
Wes Blevins is a senior at the University of Kentucky where he majors in history. He is a contributing columnist for The Kentucky Kernel, the campus newspaper where this column originally appeared. Students at the University of Kentucky watch the Fox News Channel on their campus cable system.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam’s troops set 600 Kuwaiti oil wells ablaze "creating a toxic smoke that choked the atmosphere and blocked the sun," according to news reports. The smoke was so thick for a time that the temperature in Kuwait was 10 degrees below normal.
Iraqi troops dumped an estimated 50 million barrels of oil into the Kuwaiti desert, forming huge oil lakes and contaminating aquifers.
Another 4 million barrels of oil were dumped into the Persian Gulf — an act of eco-sabotage some 25 times larger than the accidental Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska.
The environmentalists almost gleefully have persecuted Exxon. Saddam, though, gets a free pass.
All the Sierra Club has to say about Saddam is that it supports the United Nations inspection process as a means of disarming him. Does that include taking away Saddam’s matches so that he can’t start any more oil well fires?
Coalition forces, after all, have only secured about 600 Iraqi oil wells. There are 900 others left to be secured.
The Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense, both of which fret that carbon dioxide emissions from SUVs are contributing to global warming, have had nothing to say about removing Saddam — even though the Kuwaiti oil well fires emitted an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to the annual emissions from about 500 million SUVs.
The environmental groups’ silence is deafening — but understandable. Fenton Communications, their chief PR firm and former adviser to Nicaragua’s Marxist Sandinistas, has advised the environmental groups not to Dixie Chick themselves.
"Don’t issue a press statement about the war… Don’t hold a press conference," advises Fenton.
Not all of Fenton’s clients listen very well, though.
Greenpeace is actively protesting the war, even going so far as to mimic U.S. attempts to persuade Iraqi troops not to fight. Greenpeace used a hot air balloon to drop anti-war leaflets over a British air force base shortly before U.S. B-52 bombers took off for Iraq.
I wonder what would have happened had Greenpeace tried that over an Iraqi air force base.
Though Saddam is prepared to sabotage Iraq’s oil wells and oil pipelines and has already ignited oil-filled ditches surrounding Baghdad, some environmentalists seem to think we’re the bad guys.
"Environmentalists say that U.S. fighter jets, tanks, armor-piercing shells and ground-shattering Massive Ordinance Air-Burst (MOAB) bombs likely will destroy or seriously damage Iraqi water and sewage treatment plants and dams; ruin archaeological sites and harm what little remains of the Mesopotamian Marshlands, the primary source of freshwater in southern Iraq…," reported the Washington Post.
I guess they missed all the reports of our precision bombing capabilities, intention not to destroy key public works and commitment to rebuilding Iraq after the war.
Hard as this is to fathom, the real environmental criminal in the minds of environmentalists is not Saddam — it’s President Bush.
Environmentalists, who tend to range from the politically liberal to outright Marxists, react viscerally to President Bush, whose environmental policies, particularly withdrawing the U.S. from the Kyoto global warming treaty, have only added fuel to the fire.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, for example, has gone to great effort on its Web site to track and castigate President Bush’s record on environmental issues. Saddam, however, doesn’t rate any criticism from NRDC.
The environmentalists certainly hope that Operation Iraqi Freedom results in the removal of a president — but apparently that would be President Bush in the 2004 elections, not Saddam in Spring 2003.
They won’t admit that publicly, though. With 70 percent of Americans supporting President Bush and Operation Iraqi Freedom, "attacking Bush may be a no-go for awhile," advises Fenton.
While the environmentalists bide their time for a more appropriate opportunity to attack our President, going after the real threat to the environment, President Saddam Hussein, isn’t even on their agenda.
Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | "Coming into Basra as part of a massive military convoy, I encountered a stream of young men, dressed in what appeared to be Iraqi army uniforms, applauding the U.S. Marines as they swept past in tanks," David Willis, the British Broadcasting Corporation's correspondent in southern Iraq, reported Saturday night.
It must have pained him to do it. No Western broadcast news organization outside of France has been as vociferously anti-American as has the BBC. Andrew Sullivan calls it the "Baghdad Broadcasting Corp."
The Independent and the Guardian are two of the most left-wing of British newspapers. Their editorial pages and columnists strongly have denounced President Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and war with Iraq. But their reporters "embedded" with U.S. and U.K. troops are reporting the same things Willis saw:
"As a huge British convoy crossed into Iraq yesterday, hundreds of children came to greet it," the Independent's Paul Harris reported Sunday. "As the troops moved past small boys ran up to the windows smiling and grinning. Older men stood and watched. Occasionally they gave a thumbs-up signal." "Iraqi civilians lined the streets and cheered American and British forces moving up from the south," the Guardian acknowledged.
"You're late. What took you so long?" the Guardian quoted one Iraqi as saying. "God help you become victorious...I want to say hello to Bush, to shake his hand."
The Telegraph's Olga Craig witnessed the Iraqi surrender at Um Qasr. "We never wanted to fight - only the diehards did," she quoted one Iraqi soldier as saying. "We hate Saddam, but we are scared," said another.
These reports come from southern Iraq, populated overwhelming by Shi'ia Muslims long oppressed by Saddam. Support for the regime likely is stronger in Baghdad and its environs, populated chiefly by the Sunni Arab minority that has run Iraq since its creation after World War I.
But reports that Saddam is just about as unpopular with his base as he is with the Shi'as and the Kurds has come from an unlikely source: repentant former "human shields."
"A group of American anti-war demonstrators, part of a Japanese human-shield delegation, returned from Iraq yesterday with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present, with Iraqis eager to tell of their welcome for American troops," the Washington Times' Arnaud de Borchgrave reported from Amman, Jordan Sunday.
Rev. Kenneth Joseph said some of the Iraqis he interviewed "told me they would commit suicide if the American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny." "I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam," wrote Daniel Pepper, who went to Iraq with a British anti-war group, in the Telegraph Sunday.
Pepper's awakening began, he said, in a conversation with a taxi driver who was taking him back to his hotel in Baghdad:
"I said, as we shields always did, 'Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good.' He looked at me with an expression of incredulity," Pepper said.
"As he realized I was serious, he slowed down and started to speak in broken English about the evils of Saddam's regime," Pepper said. "Until then I had only heard the president spoken of with respect, but now this guy was telling me how all of Iraq's oil money went into Saddam's pocket and that if you opposed him politically he would kill your whole family."
Pepper asked another taxi driver, who took him and five others from Baghdad to Jordan, if he feared American aerial bombardment.
"Don't you listen to Powell on Voice of America radio?" the cab driver said.
"Of course the Americans don't want to bomb civilians. They want to bomb the government and Saddam's palaces. We want America to bomb Saddam...All Iraqi people want this war."
Back in London, Pepper attended an anti-war rally last Thursday. This time, he was disgusted by it.
"Anyone with half a brain must see that Saddam has to be taken out," he said. "It is extraordinarily ironic that the anti-war protesters are marching to defend a government which stops its people from exercising that freedom."
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Mr. Moore is naturally a big hit among the French. The jury at the Cannes Film Festival created a special, one-time only award to honor his film and then gave it a 13-minute standing ovation. "Not since Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer have we seen such a successful export of anti-Americanism," observes Andrew Sullivan in London's Sunday Times.
Mr. Moore plays into all of the worst stereotypes and distortions about America. "Bowling for Columbine" attempts to explain interventions by the U.S. military as rooted in an inherently violent domestic culture. "I agree with the National Rifle Association when they say, 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people,' " he told NBC's "Today" show. "Except I would alter that to say, 'Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people.' We're the only country that does this, and we do it on an personal level in our neighborhoods and within our families and our schools, and we do it on a global level. The American attitude is that we believe we have a right to just go in and bomb another country. This is where Bush is going right now, right?"
To make this strained connection, Mr. Moore tries to make us believe that the two mentally disturbed high school students who massacred their fellow students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., grew up in a community that has a sinister connection to the military-industrial complex. A Lockheed Martin factory in Littleton manufactures "weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Moore claims. The factory actually makes rockets that carry TV satellites into space. And the very title of Mr. Moore's film is based on a deception. It refers to the bowling class that the Columbine killers supposedly took the morning they committed their murders. The only problem is that they actually cut the class.
Forbes reports that an early scene in "Bowling" in which Mr. Moore tries to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain guns in America was staged. He goes to a small bank in Traverse City, Mich., that offers various inducements to open an account and claims "I put $1,000 in a long-term account, they did the background check, and, within an hour, I walked out with my new Weatherby," a rifle.
But Jan Jacobson, the bank employee who worked with Mr. Moore on his account, says that only happened because Mr. Moore's film company had worked for a month to stage the scene. "What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing," she says. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. "Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period," she says. Ms. Jacobson feels used: "He just portrayed us as backward hicks."
Mr. Moore makes the preposterous claim that a Michigan program by which welfare recipients were required to work was responsible for an incident in which a six-year-old Flint boy shot a girl to death at school. Mr. Moore doesn't mention that the boy's mother had sent him to live in a crack house where her brother and a friend kept both drugs and guns--a frequently lethal combination.
Some of the fact-bending and omissions of "Bowling for Columbine" could charitably be chalked up to really sloppy research. (I called the chief archivist for Mr. Moore's film, Carl Deal, yesterday, but he hasn't called back.) Others show a willful aversion to the truth. Mr. Moore repeats the canard that the United States gave the Taliban $245 million in aid in 2000 and 2001, somehow implying we were in cahoots with them. But that money actually went to U.N.-affiliated humanitarian organizations that were completely independent of the Taliban.
David Hardy, a former Interior Department lawyer who delights in debunking government officials and pompous celebrities, has uncovered even more evidence of Mr. Moore's distortions. The film depicts NRA president Charlton Heston giving a speech near Columbine; he actually gave it a year later and 900 miles away. The speech he did give is edited to make conciliatory statements sound like rudeness. Another speech is described as being given immediately after the Flint shooting . In reality, it was made almost a year later. All of these and more inaccuracies can be found at Mr. Hardy's comprehensive Web site.
Ben Fritz ofSpinsanity.org also notes that Mr. Moore has "apparently altered footage of an ad run by the Bush/Quayle campaign in 1988" to buttress his claim that racial symbolism is frequently misused in American politics. His leading example is the case of Willie Horton, a murderer who became a major issue in the 1988 presidential campaign. Mr. Moore shows the Bush ad that generically attacked a prison furlough program in Michael Dukakis's Massachusetts . Superimposed over the footage of prisoners entering and exiting a prison are the words "Willi
