Month: June 2003

Mrs. Bennett insists that the looting of the National Museum of Iraq was never a big deal, on account of all the stuff being catalogued and therefore hard to move. The real problem is the looting of digs where un-catalogued artifacts are getting ripped-off:

Significant archaeological sites have been looted of tens of thousands of objects since the beginning of the war in Iraq, although some of the most famous sites have escaped unscathed, American archaeologists who surveyed the country last month reported yesterday.

I don’t know how credible this latest looting charge is, but it’s probably at least partially true.

It’s important not to let the Administration off the hook on finding Iraqi WMDs. I don’t say this because I believe Bush lied about the WMDs, any more than hundreds of other politicians in dozens of other countries did; we all know Saddam had WMDs and WMD programs, and we do need to know if they were hidden, destroyed, or dispersed for our own safety. So the search remains a priority, and one that’s more important than the relics, artifacts, and oil fields.

In the interest of maintaining Administration interest in a boring pursuit, Sarge compiles a list of quotes from the Administration on the WMD question before the war:

I’m focusing on the official reasons for the war –reasons presented by those who can be held accountable for the decisions they make. The question of Saddam’s actual possession of WMD is not within the bounds of this post.

It’s great service, and I recommend it.

Right Wing News has a nice collection of quotes on Saddam’s WMD program from prominent critics of the Bush Administration. Some great stuff there.

Via Reynolds.

This article in the National Post lays bare the conspiracy between Neo Cons and the Fourth International to stifle Stalinism wherever it’s found. The twin brotherhoods are woven together through Max Shachtman and Scoop Jackson:

To understand how some Trotskyists ended up as advocates of U.S. expansionism, it is important to know something about Max Shachtman, Trotsky’s controversial American disciple. Shachtman’s career provides the definitive template of the trajectory that carries people from the Left Opposition to support for the Pentagon.

Throughout the 1930s, Shachtman loyally hewed to the Trotsky line that the Soviet Union as a state deserved to be defended even though Stalin’s leadership had to be overthrown. However, when the Soviet Union forged an alliance with Hitler and invaded Finland, Shachtman moved to a politics of total opposition, eventually known as the “third camp” position. Shachtman argued in the 1940s and 1950s that socialists should oppose both capitalism and Soviet communism, both Washington and Moscow.

Yet as the Cold War wore on, Shachtman became increasingly convinced Soviet Communism was “the greater and more dangerous” enemy. “There was a way on the third camp left that anti-Stalinism was so deeply ingrained that it obscured everything else,” says Christopher Phelps, whose introduction to the new book Race and Revolution details the Trotskyist debate on racial politics. Phelps is an eloquent advocate for the position that the best portion of Shachtman’s legacy still belongs to the left.

By the early 1970s, Shachtman was a supporter of the Vietnam War and the strongly anti-Communist Democrats such as Senator Henry Jackson. Shachtman had a legion of young followers (known as Shachtmanites) active in labour unions and had an umbrella group known as the Social Democrats. When the Shachtmanites started working for Senator Jackson, they forged close ties with hard-nosed Cold War liberals who also advised Jackson, including Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz; these two had another tie to the Trotskyism; their mentor was Albert Wohlstetter, a defence intellectual who had been a Schachtmanite in the late 1940s.

The Left never has been all namby-pamby pacifist, you know.

Via Hit and Run.

Financial Times reports on a lit fest in Wales attended by Mr. Hitchens:

At the debate a few hours earlier, he lost his temper when someone asked about country band the Dixie Chicks and the flak they copped for criticising George W. Bush’s Iraq policy.

“Each day they dig up dead bodies in personal death camps run by a Caligula dictator,” Hitchens shouted, “and I’m being asked to worry about these fucking fat slags – do me a favour!” The debate broke up soon after.

So I guess we know what he thinks about the Dixie Chicks and the lying-about-WMD-fanatics.

Via Mr. Layne

You’ve heard all about the looting of Iraq’s precious cultural artifacts, of course, and what a great tragedy it was and all that. Thing is, all that you read is propaganda put out by the Baathist Party to make America look bad:

So, there’s the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it’s nonsense. It isn’t true. It’s made up. It’s bollocks.

So why were the media so quick to believe the spin? Here are two reasons why:

The first is the credulousness of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks of a fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that – these days – you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed.

Next time we hear a story like this, let’s require some proof.

Via Instapundit.