A Textbook Example of Having Read Too Many Modern Textbooks

Boo-yeah! I've been offered "help". One of blogosphere's many arrogant Trolls has set himself about the task of helping us poor, unsophisticated participants in Vox Bloguli IV.

http://satp.blogspot.com/ What have I been doing?

Well, one of the real (National Review, Weekly Standard, Al-Qaeda=Terrorists=Saddam) nutters is Hugh Hewitt . However, he has hit on an idea that I think other people who like to think "meta" have missed. Namely, what he calls Symposia. It's a bad name, since there is little-or-no give-or-take, but I bet Joi Ito , who is a savvy technobabbler, would like the idea.
What have I been doing? I've been going to all the blogs listed here http://www.hughhewitt.com/, and commented, where possible, trying to debunk their mysterious, and always misinformed notions about why Bush would make a good crackhead, I mean President.

You might want to read Josh's profile at this point.

...and compare for yourself my submission and his comment thereto.

There are four sections to his comment [supposedly debunking my thesis, let me know what you think -CR] each requiring separate treatment.

I'd go in order, but the most important matter is that the second section of his comment is a series of questions which deserve answers:

JN: Do the terrorists hate Japan?
CR: Yes!

JN: Do the terrorists hate France [?]
CR: Yes!

JN: and Germany?
CR: Yes!

JN: Are they slave countries?
CR: In those areas where the French police dare not go anymore, yes!

I'm grateful for the chance to further clarify my position on those points.


Unfortunately the rest of his commentary is not at all to the point. Take the first paragraph:

America has been brutal in the Middle East. We stopped the Syrian democracy in 1949. The Iranian democracy in 1953. We overthrew the Iraqi government in 1960 (the British invaded and conquered Iraq in WWI and WII).

Perhaps this is an attempt to establish credibility, but it is quite the straw man. First he asserts that America "has been brutal" in the Middle East and then goes on to cite wrongs of the waning British Empire.

What I think Josh most misses is that the fatwas against America seldom mention any of the wrongs he cites [so seldom I've never seen one -CR]. Nor does the doctrine of jihad specify that you attack only those who have previously wronged you. No, jihadists believe that all infidels are fair game for bloody conquest. Another problem I have with this litany is that it seems to ignore that the Soviet Union was ever a bad actor in the Middle East.

I'm not about to defend our pre-911 Middle East policy [I take it that baiting me to do so is the purpose of his setting up that particular straw man -CR]. Yet to deny that that policy was driven by the Cold War and the actions of the Soviet Union, as Josh seems to, is tantamount to insanity. It is a familiar form of insanity.

American neo-Marxists indulge in this particular insanity all the time. It would be hard for them to justify Marxism if they were forced to acknowledge its effects in real-world practice. I suppose I could also go in to my complete lack of guilt over policies for which I was not alive to vote on nor argue against, but we'll pass on that. The 20 years post WWII are really quite irrelevant to the modern jihadist.

In paragraph 3 we move on to some familiar clichés:

Bush lied and lied and lied about the threat from Iraq.

I hear this a lot, but before I will stipulate to it someone is going to have to supply at least one example of an actual lie.

Josh, are any of these statements lies?

Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world. "

President WJ Clinton, 16-Dec-98
full text here

We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

Al Gore, 23-Sept-02
full text here

There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), 27-Sep-02
full text here

It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), 9-Oct-02
full text here

Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destructionSo the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real

Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), 23-Jan-03
full text here

Josh's follow-up to that cliché is:

You, apparently, don't care about being lied to.

[Trolling par excellence! -CR]

Au contraire mon ami. When a man lies before the Senate accusing American servicemen of being war criminals, and when he meets with enemy delegations while holding a commission in the US Navy, and later claims to have done no wrong in so doing I care very much indeed.

Josh, do you not care that you are supporting a man who is a self-admitted war criminal?

Look, when people want to say "My tax cut will make the gov't richer!" (Reagan and Bush II, based on Supply-Side Economics), it is hard to prove them wrong in the first place.

There are more straw men here than at a scarecrow convention. I'll give you a hint though: The intermediate value theorem.

Paragraph 4 is yet more of the same. Every sentence of it is disconnected from my post, so it's not a response. I suspect it is boilerplate with which he trolls blogs. It is very telling about what he has allowed himself to believe a priori about the person to whom he is responding. I am forced to the suspicion that his mind is just addled with assorted vitriol.

What I find most amusing is his apparent assertion that the real war is about protecting the "right" to engage in some unspecified ancient sexual practice. I'm utterly at a loss about how the supposed private practices of individual Athenians is related to my post. However, I am quite aware "Athens" is a favorite battlecry of isolationists.

The lesson of ancient Athens is not "never act outside your own borders". If you think it is then you need to re-read Thucydides. [perhaps several times -CR] Carter-ism has been tried. We have the festering wound on civilization known as the Islamic Republic of Iran in part because of that philosophy.

The underlying irony of this "Athens" reference, is that the left in this country was quite obsessed, throughout the cold war, with comparing ancient Athens to the US. Yet in the end, it was the Soviet Empire which collapsed due to having adventurously and arrogantly over-extended itself.

I suppose a person who's blogging (and slinging clichés harder than hosts of daytime TV talkshows do) and yet believes he is engaged in some sort of underground paleo-leftist revolutionary movement can't be expected to understand that.

UPDATE: Eh Hugh, is no one on your end is reading the entries to the symposium now? Your Thursday 4:20 PM batch includes the blog of the above described and liberally quoted leftist troll: RemainCalm. Dare I hope you are going to comment on this silliness?