Blood On Their Hands

Iraq, Media, War, WMD

On June 25, 2003, I wrote:

“When the administration plants or uncovers a couple of dozen drums of inactive, old goop, minus the necessary dispersing systems, ‘Boobus Americanus’ will easily accept these as the real ruse for war.

That day arrived. Last week, the administration issued a low-key announcement: it had unearthed in Iraq pre-Gulf War munitions containing degraded sarin.

“Hallelujah, proclaimed some of the Boobi. Salvation at last: the reason for an unjust war had been found. The administration didn’t quite go along with them.

War mongers and apologists must either expiate, or be doomed to wonder about, forever searching for a symbolic salve for rotting souls, and alternately muttering, “Out, damned spot! out, I say!”

Updated: Is the FBI Entrapping Idiots? (& No, Timothy McVeigh Was No Idiot)

Conspiracy, Fascism, Government, Law, Media, Terrorism

CNN reports that seven Miami-based men “concocted a plot to ‘kill all the devils we can,’ starting by blowing up Chicago’s Sears Tower, according to charges in a federal indictment revealed Friday.”

It transpires that this information was elicited by an “FBI operative posing as a member of the terrorist network.”

I watched the sister of one of the suspects enter “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer. The woman, bless her, was illiterate and probably borderline retarded. Let me tell you something: If American schools are producing the likes of this poor woman, homegrown retardation is more urgent a problem than homegrown terrorism.

Entrapment is equally worrisome. If the woman’s brother, also one of the accused, is as simple as she, then a wily and intelligent FBI agent could have a field day leading him on. The FBI is supposed to uncover existing plots, not help develop them by leading on a bunch of very simple, if unsavory, characters.

Rich Lowry has compared the hapless Miami bunch to Timothy McVeigh, who, according to Lowry, was also not very bright. This is a manifestly unperceptive observation. McVeigh was certainly intelligent. Read the interview he gave TIME and tell me it doesn’t reflect considerable intelligence. Read the interview the sister of the terror suspect gave Blitzer and tell me it doesn’t reflect extremely poor cognitive skills.

Compare this:

Asked by TIME magazine who were his favorite authors of political philosophy, McVeigh said:

“Patrick Henry, John Locke, of course many of the Founding Fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams. I thought those men were, at the time they were extremely well-educated. They could talk us in circles these days, we wouldn’t know what they were talking about. I really respected their observations and analyses of history past.”

To this:

Asked by Blitzer about her terror-suspect brother, Marlene Phanor said:

“Actually, he’s, um, he was, he was working and he got into this group and they started going to church, trying to help the community. But the guy, the leader, I never know where he came from, who he was. Actually, my brother and them don’t even know where he come from. But he came positive for them. He came to them where he can help them and help the community and humble their minds and humble their souls and everything.”

Morality aside, a couple of IQ standard-deviation points separate these two. To compare McVeigh’s intelligence to the likes of Phanor is a little strained, to say the least.

Provided the sister doesn’t represent a genetic anomaly (and her accused brother and his associates are bright), I’ll repeat my contention: it would have been easy for the FBI to ensnare this group.

Gottfried on the Why of Systemic vs. Personal Responsibility

Individual Rights, Intellectualism, Morality, Neoconservatism, Socialism

Professor Paul Gottfried offers this insight as to why, “When speaking about crime and culpability (punishment is not an option), left-liberals like Jolie use the passive voice. Crimes are caused, not committed.”

I think Ilana’s observation about the widespread tendency to blame all non-white and non-Western atrocities on abstract causes such as “violence,” “poverty,” and “white racism” serves a necessary function within the context of (non-neoconservative) leftist thinking. This ascription allows the user to blame morally revolting actions on neither the perpetrator nor any specific person or group of persons belonging to the white Western world. It goes without saying that blacks, who form a martyr people within leftist victimology, cannot be called to account by white Westerners because they rape and murder each other. To do so would undermine the reigning anti-fascist, anti-racist ideology. But neither is it wise to lay the blame for Third World atrocities at the door of one’s parents and associates, assuming they are white, if one intends to maintain civil relations. Therefore the problem becomes “structural” or “economic” rather than personal. And this also suggests that everything can be set right by adopting the right socialist, redistributionist policies.

—Paul Gottfried

Angelina's Color-Coded Kids & Other Contrivances

Hollywood

“When speaking about crime and culpability (punishment is not an option), left-liberals like Jolie use the passive voice. Crimes are caused, not committed. Why, then, do Africans butcher, mutilate and rape their compatriots with clockwork predictability? Why do grown, Sierra Leonenean men hack off the arms of little Sierra Leonenean girls and rape them to shreds? Why is this repeated in Uganda, Sudan, the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia – you name them?
Jolie offers a tautology: It’s ‘from the violence’ – ‘they had their limbs cut off from the violence.’ Or if you find this redundancy meaningless, she whips another bunny from her hat: blame ‘drugs, perhaps.’
…When it comes to Western inaction or American stinginess (which Jolie codifies as ‘the broader picture’), our iconic brainiac is quick to recognize both evil and linear causality: “We have – we colonized them,” she stammers…”

The excerpt is from my new column, “Angelina’s Color-Coded Kids & Other Contrivances.”