SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
May 2003
Volume 10, Number 5
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
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{{ Material dropped from features or changed solely for
reasons of space appears in double curly brackets.
Emphasis is indicated by the presence of asterisks around
the emphasized words.}}
CONTENTS
Features
-> Christ and the War
-> Wartime Journal (plus Exclusives to this edition)
-> Our Boys and Theirs
-> Innocents Amok
Nuggets (plus Exclusives to this edition)
List of Columns Reprinted
FEATURES
Christ and the War
(page 1)
[[ Material dropped from features or changed solely for
reasons of space appears in double curly brackets.
Emphasis is indicated by the presence of asterisks around
the emphasized words. ]]
Asked to name his favorite philosopher, George W.
Bush famously replied, "Jesus Christ." One thinks of
Blake's couplet:
The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision's greatest enemy.
At least Bush does acknowledge Christ. The usual
modern strategy for dealing with our Lord is to praise
him as "a great moral teacher," who "never made the
claims the churches later made for him" -- and then to
ignore his great moral teachings, whatever they may be.
As one wag has put it, Christ's message is typically
reduced to "being nice," which hardly seems a crucifying
offense, even in the rugged Roman Empire. Is that all the
mob at Calvary was screaming about? Is "Be nice" what
caused men to say, "This is a hard saying; who can accept
it?"
He was the Son of God, which is why he is still
hated and avoided in the third millennium since his
birth. But he was, indeed, a great moral teacher, the
supremely challenging one. He faced the ultimate test of
his life with perfect poise. When St. Peter tried to
protect him from those who had come to arrest him, he
instantly applied his own teaching "Do not resist evil"
with the immortal rebuke: "Those who live by the sword
will perish by the sword."
This is one of Christ's hardest teachings. The
impulse to strike back at evil is well-nigh irresistible.
It is powerfully seductive even for good people, often
*because* they are good. Was any sword ever raised more
righteously than St. Peter's?
Good Christians, who have no appetite for war, often
argue that a truly fiendish man like Saddam Hussein can't
be allowed to stay in power. And who but the United
States has the means to depose him? This was the only
morally serious argument for the war on Iraq.
But the same kind of reasoning led to the Vietnam
war. Who but the United States could resist the global
advance of Communism? Wasn't it our duty to assume the
mission of defeating it? Communism caused untold
suffering to a billion people, including tortures as
horrible as Hussein's.
But from this remove we should be able to see the
*Christian* "lesson of Vietnam." The United States
fought Communism with the wrong means: the sword. The
evil of Communism itself was compounded by a war that
took nearly three million lives, including more than
50,000 Americans who died by the sword without defeating
Communism.
There are some things that must not be done, even
against as terrible a scourge as Communism. And even
against so diabolical a man as Saddam Hussein. We are
forbidden to do evil in the hope that good may come of
it. And war is always a great evil. At some point it may
be permissible -- to defend the innocent, for example --
but not if it also entails *killing* the innocent, as
the war on Iraq did. No vague calculus of "minimizing
civilian casualties" can justify maiming, even
"unintentionally," a single child -- or for that matter
wounding a single soldier defending his homeland.
[[ Some Christians -- Bush is said to be one of them
-- justify U.S. intervention in the Middle East, and
particularly support for Israel, on "biblical" or even
"End Times" grounds, in order to fulfill God's plan. But
God's plan is unknown to us. It is not for man to
fulfill; and even if it were, it couldn't be fulfilled by
violating God's own commandments, including those Christ
added to the Mosaic law. ]] The war on Iraq was one to
which no Christian should have assented.
WARTIME JOURNAL
(page 2)
The U.S. side of the war went pretty much according
to plan -- how could it not? -- but the Iraqis didn't
keep up their end. They were supposed to throw down their
arms and welcome their liberators with a hearty chorus of
"Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead," and instead showed
a marked aversion to the embrace of Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam
had genially pledged to snuff out no more than a
reasonable number of civilians this time; but of course
his charm began to wear thin back in 1991, when, less
solicitously, he bombed water and electrical facilities,
causing thousands of noncombatant mortalities. Then came
the postwar sanctions ... A few soreheads are old enough
to remember, it seems.
* * *
France's president, Jacques Chirac, appeared on
60 MINUTES to explain his country's reasons for opposing
the Iraq war. He denied any hostility to the United
States, saying that when you see a friend heading for
trouble, the friendly thing to do is to try to prevent
it. I found him quite impressive. France has at least one
thing we don't have: a president who speaks fluent
English. As for the French causing us problems, we should
recall that Charles de Gaulle, citing France's recent
experience, warned John Kennedy against getting into war
in Vietnam.
* * *
One unexpected casualty of the war is Michael Kelly,
who died at 46 when his humvee plunged into a canal near
Baghdad. He was a brilliant writer and editor (most
recently of THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY). Sad. He wanted this
war, but let's not draw facile morals from his odd death.
I prefer to remember him for his hilariously trenchant
anti-Clinton columns, which provoked Martin Peretz to
fire him from THE NEW REPUBLIC as a "right-wing wacko."
* * *
I always like to see a young man make good, but I'm
at a loss to explain the success of radio talk-show host
Sean Hannity. He's what passes for a conservative these
days -- loud, crude, jingoistic, accusing, unacquainted
with any truly conservative thought. And, naturally, he's
a compleat Israel toady. Rush Limbaugh is bad enough, but
at least Rush has some talent: an occasional good point,
a dash of humor. Hannity, totally devoid of talent and
ideas, incapable of memorable expression, won't even let
an opponent finish a sentence and can turn any debate
into a petty quarrel. For him these tactics are probably
prudent: he can lose an argument even to his own straw
men.
* * *
Pat Moynihan is gone at 76, and he is sincerely
mourned in Washington. Even I felt a pang. He was a
thoughtful liberal and an instantly charming gent, with a
lot of personality even for a bibulous Irishman. Yet as a
politician, he could and should have been so much better
than he was, because he knew so much better than the
others. He wasn't the worst man in Washington, not by a
long shot; he was only the most disappointing.
* * *
Friends, we frankly need your help! Tempers are
high, and the war is taking its toll even on our
subscriber list. (Puzzling. Did anyone think we were
going to *endorse* this war?) If you enjoy SOBRAN'S,
please tell your friends about us. If you can enlist even
one new reader, we'd consider that a great service. Many
thanks.
Exclusive to the electronic version:
We are told that "the separation of church and
state" requires public schools to be "religiously
neutral," and that this forbids even nondenominational
school prayer in public schools, lest some atheist within
earshot be offended. So why doesn't it also forbid the
teaching of evolution, which is a direct *denial* of
many people's religion? Is atheistic materialism
"religiously neutral"? Only to liberals.
* * *
Which do Americans know more about: Michael
Jackson's nose or their own political tradition? When
Michael was a little brown boy, his nose looked like it
was built to last. Now it looks like what your parents
warned you would happen if you kept picking it. The
Constitution also looked built to last, but has come to a
similar end.
Our Boys and Theirs
(page 3-5)
In its first few days, the war on Iraq proved to be
something more difficult for the U.S. forces than the
predicted cakewalk. The Iraqis put up a very brave and
tough resistance, not necessarily for Saddam Hussein, but
for their country, against a foreign invasion; just as
Russians once fought, not for Stalin, but for Russia,
against a German invasion. Abstract promises of
"democracy," coming from the invaders, have little
plausibility or appeal when people's homes and families
are under terrific assault.
Many of the soldiers themselves were disillusioned
after less than a fortnight: they were assured that the
Iraqis would welcome their "liberators." The American
press was full of color photos of Marines holding little
Iraqi girls (wounded or orphaned), but the rest of the
world saw different pictures: of mangled bodies, faceless
corpses, sobbing parents, and other "collateral damage."
The vaunted high-tech American bombs and missiles turned
out to be somewhat less discriminating than promised. So
far, the war has given us little to be proud of.
Do Americans really support this war? In a sense,
yes. Polls show large majorities -- 70 per cent or so --
answering in the affirmative. But whether "yes" means
"With all my heart!" or "Yeah, I guess so" is another
matter.
There was no popular demand for this war. After the
9/11 attacks the country was in the mood for the "war on
terror" President Bush called for at the time. But nobody
below the rank of elite journalist interpreted that as a
war on Iraq. The government first made war on
Afghanistan, on grounds that its Taliban regime had
harbored al-Qaeda, and few objected. Then Bush and his
circle, egged on by the neoconservative press, shifted
their aim to Iraq, giving several reasons that had little
if any connection to 9/11 -- and little relation to each
other -- but fed on the anger 9/11 had ignited. The
reasons ranged from Iraq's suspected possession of
forbidden weapons to its suspected backing of terrorists
to its dictator's extreme nastiness.
These reasons depended heavily on popular ignorance.
Polls also show that many who supported the war assumed,
without evidence, that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden
are "linked" -- or even that they are the same man! Hard
telling these evil Arabs apart, you know. And Bush is not
one to emphasize subtle distinctions, such as the
difference between Hussein's secular Ba'athist regime and
the fanatical Islamic creed of al-Qaeda, which are bitter
enemies. (Al-Qaeda has tried to assassinate Hussein, whom
bin Laden calls a "socialist" and "apostate.") But Bush
is shameless enough to welcome the support of ignorant,
knee-jerk patriots who can't find Iraq on a map, just
because he needs it.
Reservations about the war, and opposition to it,
are likewise strongest among those who are reasonably
well informed about the Middle East, including Jews. Only
Likudnik journalists -- "neoconservatives" -- unanimously
favor war; they have also been Bush's fiercest and vilest
propagandists.
Bush also enjoys the backing of the great mass in
the middle who didn't necessarily want the war as such,
but who feel a patriotic duty to "support our president"
or "support our troops." It seems to be lost on them that
the government is supposed to be directed by the people.
That's the official national creed, anyway -- We the
People, and all that. The people aren't supposed to be
awaiting orders from the executive branch.
There was no congressional declaration of war.
Instead, a rubber-stamp Congress gave Bush carte blanche
to make war when and where it pleaseth him. Not exactly
the original idea. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution
defined tyranny as the concentration of too much power in
too few hands. A president who can make war at his
discretion -- a "war of choice," as this one was called
-- meets the definition of a tyrant. Congress abdicated
both its power and its duty.
So have the American people, particularly those who
say we must "patriotically" refrain from criticizing the
president during wartime -- and who were complaining
about dissenters even before the war started! Refusing to
let the hawks monopolize the national conversation became
"anti-Americanism," next thing to treason. Even
traditional U.S. allies were expected to fall in behind
Bush, regardless of their own moral judgment and national
interests; the shameful campaign of invective against
France typifies this attitude. The hawks don't want
debate.
Abraham Lincoln was the first president to use war
as an excuse to criminalize free speech, jailing
thousands of citizens and closing hundreds of newspapers
for the crime of objecting to his war on the Confederacy.
Lincoln said the war was being fought for the principle
of self-government; but free discussion is absolutely
essential to any self-government worthy of the name.
After all, self-government means government by persuasion
rather than raw force. It simply can't exist unless
citizens are free to speak their minds to each other.
It's absurd to say that the people may use their votes,
but not their voices.
American conservatives seem to forget this. They
have allowed the Left to claim freedom of speech as its
own cause, especially during war. Naturally, the Left has
made the cause seem dubious at times, as when it claims
protection for pornography under the First Amendment. But
the real principle at stake is something nobler than nude
dancing: it's the God-given right to use our God-given
reason in civic conversation. Under a form of government
in which the people are sovereign, the government can
have no authority to silence the people -- or even any
single person. When the government and its supporters
monopolize speech, there is no real speech at all -- only
propaganda. And propaganda is addressed to passions, not
to reason. It seeks not to persuade, but to overwhelm.
But of course many citizens are always ready to
allow the government to silence other citizens, and even
to lend a hand. Worse yet, many are willing to forswear
exercising their own reason and freedom of speech out of
misplaced loyalty to "the government" -- meaning its
martial aspect. During both world wars, Americans by and
large submitted willingly to the suppression of free
speech, just when free speech was most urgently needed.
That baneful tradition began to crack during the Vietnam
war, though protesters were still widely viewed as
traitors.
In the United States, of all places, patriotism
shouldn't be equated with mere submission to the elected
government. But of course it usually is, though such
submission is really, properly speaking, servile -- and
therefore unworthy of the free men we boast ourselves to
be. A real patriot wants to take pride in his country;
but for that very reason he won't refrain from piping up
when its government does something shameful, wounding its
own best traditions.
And just as a good family man respects other
people's families as well as his own, a real patriot will
respect other people's patriotism. That's why it should
be so grievous to our patriotic feelings to see Iraqis
dying to defend their country against Americans, as the
rest of the world looks on with moral outrage against us.
Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, crass avatars of raw
American power, don't understand this. "A decent respect
to the opinions of mankind" is lost on them. As far as
they are concerned, mankind will just have to deal with
it. America equals "freedom" by definition.
Rational protest against this war was especially
urgent once the war was under way. Street demonstrations
are fine, not because they prove that the war is wrong --
marches in themselves prove nothing -- but because they
encourage people to express their doubts in the
confidence that they aren't alone. But they are really
valuable only insofar as they lead to persuasion.
Otherwise they can easily become no more than another
form of propaganda.
Besides, the war on Iraq may only be the first phase
-- the Polish phase, as it were -- of a new world war.
Neoconservative advocates like Eliot Cohen and Norman
Podhoretz are already calling for what they openly call
"World War IV" (the Cold War being "World War III").
Michael Ledeen doesn't consider the Iraq war a war in
itself, but "just one battle in a broader war." Echoed by
Richard Perle, Ledeen calls Iran "the mother of modern
terrorism." Ariel Sharon has let it be known that he
would like the United States to attack Iran and Syria
next. And Rumsfeld has just threatened both countries.
All this dovetails with Bush's announced agenda of
inducing "regime change" throughout the Middle East. He
makes it sound positive, of course -- "democracy" for
all, in the interest of peace and stability. Can he
really be obtuse enough to believe that popular
government in the Islamic world would be pro-American
(and friendly to Israel), or does he intend to make sure
that the new "democracies" are U.S. satellites?
Protest did not stop the late war, but it can help
prevent it from expanding into the wider war Sharon and
the neocons (and the Bush team?) seek. The neocons have
already been smoked out; they are no longer able to hide
behind the scenes, concealing their motive. Their desire
to promote Israel's interest -- as defined by Sharon and
the Likud -- is now discussed in the mainstream media. We
no longer have to pretend not to notice what they're up
to, and Perle himself has come into disgrace for his
apparent conflicts of interest.
The most important fact about the "neoconservatives"
is that they are not, in any significant sense,
conservative. Their goal has always been war between the
United States and the Arab-Muslim world, nothing more.
Max Boot, one of their number, recently wrote that
support for Israel is "a chief tenet of neoconservatism,"
but this is a little disingenuous. Support for Israel is
*the* chief tenet, the sine qua non, the very raison
d'etre of neoconservatism.
The neoconservatives formed an alliance with anti-
Communist conservatives during the Cold War and, joining
the Republican Party, quickly found positions of
influence in the Reagan administration. As Democrats they
had accepted the New Deal and the Great Society, but the
party's McGovernite, "peacenik" turn had marginalized
Zionists, making support for Israel and war against Arabs
problematic; so, without changing their principles, they
changed parties.
This wasn't mass conversion, as conservatives hoped;
it was mere infiltration. The neoconservatives aped
conservative rhetoric, much as Communists had once aped
liberal rhetoric in order to infiltrate liberalism; but,
like the Communists, they had done so strictly for their
own purposes.
As it turns out, it was the conservatives who
underwent the mass conversion. I can bear witness.
Twenty years ago, when I worked at NATIONAL REVIEW,
I was introduced to a bright young Jew named David Frum,
who has lately gained his 15 minutes as the author of
Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, laying the rhetorical
groundwork for Ledeen's "broader war." In those days Frum
was fresh from Yale and had just written an article for
NATIONAL REVIEW protesting Reagan's sale of spy planes to
Saudi Arabia. Frum argued that this was bad for Israel
and would alienate many people from the conservative
cause.
It struck me as an odd article for a conservative
and Reaganite magazine to run. Shouldn't the question be
whether the plane sale was good for the United States,
not whether it was good for Israel? I was still rather
naive about the neocons.
Beyond that, Frum made no reference to conservative
principles. Conservatism was a pretty wide-ranging
political philosophy. Despite many differences among
them, conservatives generally agreed on such principles
as Natural Law, tradition, constitutional restraints,
prudence, limited government. Who would reject all these
tenets of sound governance over a single arms sale?
The neocons, that's who. Philosophies and principles
meant nothing to them, except to the extent that they
were useful to Israel. For a long time I could hardly
comprehend this, but it is absolutely essential to any
understanding of "neoconservatism." If the neocons had
found Bolshevism or white supremacism "good for Israel,"
they would have embraced it as readily as they did
conservatism.
To this day, most conservatives don't get it, as
witness such "conservative" pundits as Rush Limbaugh.
Older conservatives, like the venerable Russell Kirk, saw
just what was happening. When Kirk said so, the neocons
immediately accused him of "anti-Semitism," their all-
purpose mot juste for the semitically incorrect. Pat
Buchanan and I would later get the same treatment.
NATIONAL REVIEW, meanwhile, has continued down the
road to perdition, and is now hardly even vestigially
conservative. Bill Buckley's magazine, originally a
staunch defender of Whittaker Chambers, has gone the way
of Alger Hiss. It is completely pro-war and abjectly pro-
Israel. Neocons roost in its pages like bats in an old
barn.
Lo, a recent issue of the magazine [April 7, 2003]
features a long cover story -- a harangue, really --
denouncing "paleoconservatives," the sort of
conservatives who founded the magazine itself, as
"unpatriotic conservatives" who are waging "a war against
America." Buchanan, Samuel Francis, Robert Novak,
Llewellyn Rockwell, and I are named among the warriors
against America.
The author: none other than David Frum!
Throughout the article, Frum, as ever, makes no
appeal to classical conservative thinkers or principles.
He makes no effort to define conservatism (apart from
militant anti-Communism, which is an application of
principle rather than a principle in itself), or to
identify genuinely American traditions. He merely
asserts, without offering evidence, that we paleocons
"explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's
enemies." He even swipes at "the editors of this
magazine, [who] questioned and opposed the civil rights
movement."
The sublime irony of having one's patriotism
challenged by a neocon ... Frum, born and raised in
Canada, has recently become a U.S. citizen, but his
loyalties appear not to have changed. He produces
quotations to show that paleocons are -- horrors! --
suspicious of Israel, but he never explains how this
amounts to a "war on America." In fact, his whole attack
on the paleocons is exactly the sort of thing liberals
used to write about NATIONAL REVIEW, back in its
conservative days; but neither he nor the magazine's
current editors would know about that.
In the end, loving America is a rather different
thing from merely finding it useful to other interests. I
suspect that the simplest Iraqi soldier proved with his
blood and courage that he loves his country infinitely
more than Frum and his kind, whatever their passports may
say, will ever love this one..
Innocents Amok
(page 6)
Terry Teachout, the film reviewer of the neo-
Catholic magazine CRISIS, accuses THE QUIET AMERICAN of
"anti-Americanism." Otherwise, he admits, "it is -- up to
a point -- a very good movie."
Fearing just that dreaded label, the film's studio,
Miramax, withheld it from release for a year after 9/11.
The country was in no mood for criticism just when it was
most timely. But the star, Michael Caine, pushed hard to
have it distributed, and it won a couple of Academy
Awards (and a nomination for Caine himself) along with
raves from most reviewers.
To call the film "anti-American" is to convey
nothing of its flavor. It's a subtle, searching story,
from Graham Greene's short novel, of a tragic, well-
meaning young American, Alden Pyle, in Vietnam during the
days when the Vietnam war was being handled by the
French, with the United States waiting in the wings.
Pyle, played by Brendan Fraser, arrives in Saigon in
the early Fifties, ostensibly on a medical relief
mission. He meets an aging British journalist named
Fowler (Caine) with a beautiful young Vietnamese mistress
(Do Hai Yen). Fowler can't marry the girl; his Catholic
wife back home won't give him a divorce. He takes an
immediate liking to Pyle, who also falls in love with the
girl.
It transpires that Pyle is actually working for the
CIA, trying to prop up a native democratic "third force"
as an alternative to the French colonialists and the
Communists. The ruthless "third force" proves to be a
fatal illusion, and Pyle is fatally compromised. He is
already dead at the beginning of the story, and the whole
film, narrated by Fowler, explains how he got that way.
The handsome Fraser, familiar from countless dumb
comedies, plays Pyle convincingly and winningly. You see
why Fowler likes him and even puts up with his
eccentrically earnest courtship of Fowler's exquisitely
beautiful mistress. Pyle wants to make an honest woman of
her by offering her the marriage Fowler can't offer, just
as he wants to redeem Vietnam itself from Communism. Both
these noble aims turn out to be beyond Pyle's power; his
best efforts only make matters worse.
Several of Greene's novels have made excellent
films; the greatest of these films, THE THIRD MAN, was
actually scripted by Greene before he turned it into a
novel. It is this one THE QUIET AMERICAN immediately
recalls, with its earnest, bumbling American hero, Holly
Martins (played so memorably by Joseph Cotten).
Graham could be excessively scathing about America
-- in 1952 he compared this country unfavorably with the
Soviet Union -- but his novelist's imagination was fairer
than his top-of-the-head opinions. Pyle, like Martins, is
impossible to hate or despise. We recognize him as a man
of generous instincts. Even Fowler is touched by this.
The director, the Australian Philip Noyce, captures
Saigon in the Fifties nearly as poignantly as Carol Reed
captured Vienna in the earlier film. He shows a world
that can't last, but which nonetheless has its own
distinctive look, sound, and flavor; you almost wish
you'd been there before it was destroyed forever. The
girl epitomizes it. When a night-club chanteuse sings (in
French, of course) "Mademoiselle de Paris," you feel the
beauty of a lost way of life and the cruelty of time
itself. Why did this have to end?
But Fowler, corrupt as he is, appreciates this
Saigon in a way Pyle can't. It has become his home. He
can do nothing to save it, and he knows it; Pyle merely
thinks he can, but remains a naive outsider. If he really
knew the place, he wouldn't have optimistic illusions
about it, but he might love it all the more for being
doomed. Trying to save it from Communism -- at least with
dubious weapons -- only makes things worse.
Is this "anti-Americanism"? It's not an "ism" at
all. It's a wise recognition of ineradicable evils in
this world, a recognition Americans tend to be blind to.
Holly Martins has illusions much like Pyle's. There is no
implied endorsement of evil in the awareness of tragedy.
Finally Pyle is dead, as we knew he would be. The
film updates the novel by showing headlines from the
years after the book was written, recording America's
growing role in the Vietnamese tragedy -- and implying so
much more in more recent times. THE THIRD MAN remains a
great film in large part because of its total
indifference to the propaganda of its time, right after
World War II. THE QUIET AMERICAN has the same quality of
aloofness without inhumanity.
This time, the hero gets the girl, but you're not
sure he's the hero. Maybe the movie is anti-British.
Whatever it is, THE QUIET AMERICAN is the most moving
film I've seen in years.
NUGGETS
WELL-HIDDEN: Not only did the U.S. and the UN inspectors
fail to find those "weapons of mass destruction": in his
hour of need, apparently Saddam Hussein couldn't find
them either. (page 7)
QUERY: What's the difference between women and
neoconservatives? Answer: You can get a few women to go
into combat. The pretty Private Jessica Lynch should be
the lasting symbol of the Iraq war. Perhaps the new
American battle cry could be "Jessica! You go, girl!"
(page 9)
PROPHECY: Another easy win for the United States over a
feeble foe advertised as a deadly global threat. But as
always, the bill will come in later, when we discover
that this triumph has bred us new and unforeseen enemies
and problems. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden (remember him?)
should find business booming. (page 10)
BUT OF COURSE: The losers will be tried for war crimes.
They will also shoulder the blame for all the civilian
casualties the victors tried so hard to minimize, as well
as for the foreign journalists who were accidentally
killed while covering the war from the wrong angle.
(page 11)
SURPRISE! As we go to press, the United States appears to
have defeated Iraq. Fuller comment will have to wait till
next month. Meanwhile, the victors have drawn the usual
moral: the righteous side has inevitably won. Not that
anyone doubted the outcome; yet Americans are gloating as
if their big war machine proved them the Master Race. But
if this war had been decided by valor alone, the doomed
Iraqi soldiers, who defended their country to the death
against hopeless odds, would have won -- in a cakewalk.
(page 12)
Exclusive to the electronic version:
CONSOLATION: If there is a silver lining in this war,
it's that the designs of the pro-Israel neoconservatives
who planned it for years before 9/11 (the supposed reason
for the war) have been exposed for all to see. This will
make it harder for them to expand this battle into the
wider war they covet -- a "World War IV" against the
entire Arab-Muslim world, starting with Iran and Syria.
WELCOME LIBERATORS! The U.S. media featured images of
jubilant Iraqis celebrating the U.S. victory, thereby
proving to the dullest mind (and few others) that
President Bush was right to call this a war of
"liberation." Some were no doubt truly relieved to be rid
of Saddam Hussein; others were simply grateful to be
alive and unharmed. And no conqueror has ever lacked
eager collaborators. Hitler analogies, anyone?
REPRINTED COLUMNS (pages 7-12)
* Wilson, Bush, and History (March 11, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030311.shtml
* What Would Jesus Do? (March 13, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030313.shtml
* Benign Bombers (March 27, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030327.shtml
* The Media War (April 1, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030401.shtml
* Telling the Story (April 3, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030403.shtml
* Minimizing Civilian Casualties (April 8, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030408.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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[ENDS]