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Hatred of Bush
09/22/2002
Instapundit seems not entirely to address a screed by Hesiod over at Counterspin Central.
Mr. Reynolds (Instapundit) focuses on Hesiod's reasonable worries about the possible dangers of war with Iraq. Hesiod's central concern, however, seems to be that the war "feels wrong" because it "goes against our values." He bypasses a number of arguments (e.g., for hitting Iraq before other countries), which many bloggers, including myself, have addressed at length, to accuse the Bush administration of "lies," "distortions," and "hypocrisy." He even suggests that this unprovoked aggression on the part of the Bush administration may be "the beginning of the end of our Republic"!
In particular, this paragraph caught my eye:
Launching a war on false pretenses is, in my opinion, the HIGHEST crime a public official can commit. An impeachable offense. This is not covering up a consesual affair with an intern. This is war we are talking about. Life and death.
Apparently, our current administration may signal the end of our nation because: "They have no honor. They have no shame." That is, I suppose, in contrast to the Clinton administration, with its entire respect for the American people and the Constitution and its well developed sense of "shame." Hesiod can fume about the Bush administration's actions all he wants, skipping all explanations and declaring them "false pretenses," but I would suggest that the Clinton administration's refusal to take its responsibilities seriously were infinitely more damaging to our nation, even to the extent of life and death. Sure, it's easier to not act than to act, and it is easier for a politician to deflect blame when it is a lack of action that results in calamity.
I'm a bit disappointed that Mr. Reynolds considered Hesiod's to be a "good post." With all of Hesiod's talk about values, honor, Rome (decadence?), and even a reference to "disgraceful deal-cutting with China" thrown in, the essay borders on parody. He calls the Bush administration "pariahs in the entire rest of the world." Has he looked at the rest of the world? Has he looked at what our country had become by the turn of the millennium? I call the administration a renewed hope.
Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:18 PM EST
12 comments
Well, your criticism can be immediately dismissed as kooky. Why? Because you actually wrote this:
"I would suggest that the Clinton administration's refusal to take its responsibilities seriously were infinitely more damaging to our nation, even to the extent of life and death. "
You can "suggest" it all you want. But it's still complete horseshit.
I don't pay much attention to pathological Clinton haters.
Hesiod @ 09/22/2002 09:04 PM EST
"I would suggest that the Clinton administration's refusal to take its responsibilities seriously were infinitely more damaging to our nation, even to the extent of life and death. "
Could this be a reference to the lack of effective action on al-Qaeda during Clinton's administration?
I'm not saying that in a sarcastic, half-rhetorical way. I don't know if this was the intended reference or not, and I'm certainly not addressing that argument. What I am saying, however, is that he is not being Richard Mellon Scaife here when he says that. There is a case to be made for his remark. You can't toss it away that easily.
A. @ 09/22/2002 09:37 PM EST
Hesiod,
You'll excuse me for not being overly surprised or concerned that a person suggesting the impeachment of President Bush dismisses me as a "pathological Clinton hater." Especially considering that dismissing people and their arguments is exactly that quality for which I was faulting your post.
I suppose you'll argue that passing on opportunities to nab bin Laden and break up al Qaeda, running out of Somalia with tail between legs, long-range bombing milk factories and stone shacks, and hoping that Saddam would just go away after the ordeal in 1998 indicate serious responsibility-taking and did not contribute in the least to the currently terrifying state of the world. And that's not to mention the lying under oath, the collection of illegal campaign contributions, the desecration of the Oval Office, and sundry other offenses, including dictatorial rule via executive order, sycophantic acquiescence to the will of unelected, unaccountable international aristocrats, and such "civil-rights violations" as the massacre in Waco, Texas.
Unfortunately, the more I've learned about Clinton, the more harmful I find his administration to have been — it's no visceral reaction, mine. You don't have to agree, and I'm not defending everything that the Bush administration does (airport security is still a joke, immigration is still out of control, and steel tariffs were a bad idea, for three), but I'm on much stronger ground here than you. Unless, that is, you want to offer up some solid arguments other than your pathological feeling that Bush is the harbinger of the American Apocalypse.
Justin Katz @ 09/22/2002 09:56 PM EST
"I don't pay much attention to pathological Clinton haters."
Justin, you must be crushed by this -- just crushed! How will you be able to go on?
David Fleck @ 09/22/2002 10:48 PM EST
I don't pay much attention to pathological Clinton haters.
Boy, that' really something coming from a pathological Bush hater. And were not just talking Dubya. It extends to jeb too.
David Hogberg @ 09/23/2002 01:32 AM EST
Me thinks it is just a tad hypocritical for Hesiod to start accusing people of pathological hatred for Clinton, since he and the rest of the left were even more vile towards Bush. Just look at Vidal, Al Gore, Chomsky, Sontag, all of the movie industry, and the "civil rights" movement.
Ben Fischer @ 09/23/2002 10:34 AM EST
It seems to me that you guys are right, Hesiod = Hypocritical.
Antoinette McGeehan @ 09/23/2002 12:10 PM EST
Classic examples of rightwing idiocy.
You accuse me of being hypocritical. But, implict in your argument is that you are also hypocritical.
As we are now discovering [via the Congressional investigations] Bush is not exactly LOW on the exculpatory meter when it comes to preventing the 9/11 attacks.
In any event, I don't take your criticism all that seriously.
Hesiod @ 09/23/2002 12:18 PM EST
Since you seem to be checking here, Hesiod, I'm just curious -- how do you feel about Operation Desert Fox? Four days of aerial bombardment against Iraq launched without reference to Congress or the Security Council to degrade Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction? Did you support that effort, which was after all an unprovoked attack on Iraq?
Bill Allison @ 09/23/2002 12:44 PM EST
Hesiod,
It is hardly hypocritical for somebody who disliked a president for good reasons to critize somebody who dislikes another president for no good reason. The key is offering the reasons.
Relatedly, I address the Congressional hearings in this post.
And by the way: taking others' criticism seriously is usually a prerequisite to being taken seriously by them.
Justin Katz @ 09/23/2002 02:13 PM EST
I fully admit to the fact that I dislike Clinton. But I don't call Clinton the source of all evil, hitler like, or the greatest monster ever. If one wishes to be taken seriously, one must learn to not engage in name calling. That is the lesson that seperates Ann Coulter from Charles Krauthammer, Eric Alterman from a gentlemen like Nat Hentoff, and Instapundit from Hesiod.
P.S. Clinton did eight years of nothing. Bush did about a years worth, than made it up double. Clear difference, no?
Ben Fischer @ 09/24/2002 12:37 AM EST
"William M. Cooper" <coopr2000@yahoo.com> wrote:
Subject: This is the letter I sent the New York Times.... I think that even if you don't find as much as a
primer to a bullet cartridge, you have still found
thousands of body parts of the thousands of innocent
civilians who were butchered at the hands of a madman.
You have unending stories of the victims coming
forward and testifying of the brutality that they
lived in every day. You have the Kurds who were
gassed to death. Not soldiers, but women and
children. You have the jubilation of the freed people
as they tore down the statues of their tormentor and
beat the head of it with the bottom of their shoes;
which for them was the highest insult to offer up.
You do the President, Great Britton's Prime Minister,
the military forces from differing contries and their
sending nations a great injustice by calling the war a
bad move to have taken. To clarify this position;
what if Hitler hadn't been grabbing all the countries
he did, but kept to all his secret projects and his
genecidal activities. Would we not had gone after him
once we learned just how brutal he was and how
murderous his power over the peoples of Europe had
become? Perhaps you would have wrote then something
like: "well it's only Jews, Gypsies, Retards,
Handicappers, Elderly, Ministers and a mixed group of
nonGermans, so why waste the fuel and manpower?". I'm
so sick to my stomach to say, that the way the news
and Democrats are using airtime and prose for nothing
better than showing the world your total contempt for
the suffering masses around the world. A very
obnoxious and macabre way to slam the integrity of a
man you obviously want to loose the next election,
while doing it over the tombs of those whose blood
cries out for some justice, and protection to those
they leave behind. The media was so biased against
the then, Governor Bush during Bush's election that it
really opened the eyes of a lot of people who saw your
tactics. But you still didn't learn anything. When
the war started, the networks started the propaganda
machinery all over again and lost ratings, because of
their baseless cries of destruction to the American
Military and other such nonsense. Now you're at it
again with slam articles about not finding weapons of
mass destruction.
I think you and every body else who has verbated all
the parties previously mentioned, owes President Bush
and Prime Minister Blair, and all the other noble men
and women who freed the multiple people groups who
were brutalized in Iraq a huge and resounding pat on
the back for what they did do and not what a madman
with ample warning was able to successfully ship
accross his borders and hide before the war started.
The intelligence that the President used was also from
previously found items that were found before the war
by UN inspectors who saw the illegal hardware with
their own eyes. So continue the antiBush/Blair
stance you seem to be insanely devoted to, but you'll
not find a sympathetic ear from me, because it is
obvious that your minds are so polluted with
prejudice, that every thing appears evil in your eyes,
even when good is all around and in clear sight.
I say this to your shame.
For our noble President, England's Prime Minister, the
troops, the victims, the grieving mothers, fathers,
children of Iraq.
William M. Cooper
1227 W. Kenedy #52
Kingsville, TX. 78363
http://www.1stbooks.com/bookview/8857
coopr2000@yahoo.com
william m cooper @ 11/06/2003 05:45 PM EST