Bill Clinton was the first American president to welcome Irish terrorist Gerry Adams to the White House, starting a tradition that even President Bush honored for a time, but not this year:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Bush (news – web sites) will mark St. Patrick’s Day this year without inviting Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams or other Northern Ireland political parties, a senior Bush administration official said on Friday.
The White House announced Bush will welcome Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern to the traditional March 17 “Shamrock Ceremony” and that afterward, Bush will greet civil society leaders from Northern Ireland who are “working to promote peace and tolerance in their community.”
The White House statement made no mention of Northern Ireland political parties, which have participated in the ceremony in recent years.
The senior administration official said the White House decided against inviting leaders of Northern Ireland’s political parties, including Adams, for the traditional St. Patrick’s Day reception.
“We are disappointed by the December failure of the Northern Ireland political parties to reach a settlement agreement,” the official said.
One factor in this long overdue sobering-up was a finding by a joint Irish/British government panel that Adams has continued to be involved with the terrorist IRA after pretending to be separated from it:
The report published today on the IMC Web site includes the theft among several crimes it blames on the IRA. The allegations may further hamper efforts to restore the power-sharing government that brought the province’s Roman Catholics and Protestants together under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
“Sinn Fein cannot be regarded as committed to non-violence and exclusively peaceful and democratic means, so long as its links to Provisional IRA remain,” the panel said in the report, referring to the mainstream republican armed group. “Some of its senior members, who are also senior members of Provisional IRA, were involved in sanctioning the series of robberies.”
The commission said it would have recommended expelling Sinn Fein, which has close historic links to the IRA, from the assembly for an undisclosed period had the body been sitting. The report didn’t identify the Sinn Fein members suspected of a role in the crimes.
It’s time to stop pretending that Adams is anything but a rank terrorist, to prosecute him for his crimes, and to sanction any American politician who supports him, including Republican Peter King and Democrats Tom Hayden and Teddy Kennedy.
And of course he should never have a visa to enter the US (unless we plan to arrest him.) Drop the State Department a note to that effect, like this one:
Our country is engaged in a global war on terrorism, yet notorious terrorist Gerry Adams is routinely admitted to our country and feted by politicians from Peter King on the right to Teddy Kennedy and Tom Hayden on the left. Some cities, such as Oakland, CA, have honored him by naming streets after him.
This is wrong. Adams is a brutal murderer of innocent people, including school children. He should not be admitted to this country, and his supporters should not be allowed to raise money for his filthy terrorist organization.
The President made a very strong and constructive step in canceling the Clinton era tradition of inviting this piece of human scum to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day. Please follow up by making it clear that the United States has zero tolerance for terrorists of all kinds by refusing him a visa.
Thank you.
This sort of thing is the kind of thing I stay away from; there’s too much crap on both sides to lay the blame anywhere.
The people in Ireland don’t really give a hoot about Adamas or the IRA; OTOH, it’s the same Sinn Fein that gave them their independence originally. The big news this week was that the IRA apparently passed up a deal that would have saved 6 out of the 10 hunger strikers who died in the 80s.
The Brittish terrorist acts against the Northern Irish are well known too.
Frankly, my own feeling on things like this is: it doesn’t affect American interests. The Brittish are do not have clean hands in this. Neutrality is good. Which means: let the American Irish fund the IRA if that’s what turns ’em on, as far as I care. If you’re going to arrest Adams, arrest Blair. He’s part of a terrorist criminal conspiracy too.
But mostly, I don’t really care, and I suspect you don’t either: at the end of the day, it’s an Irish thing, and neither you nor I really understand it.
And I understand that because I’ve spent too much time with the Irish to pretend that I do know it…
One thing I have to say for you Johnny is that you’re consistent. You support the Iraqi terrorists who’ve been killing Americans, Brits, and Iraqis because they’re “freedom fighters” opposing The Man with his imperial designs on their oil, and you put a man who murders school children by bombing McDonalds – deliberately – in the same category as the duly elected leader of a legitimate government.
I do care about the Irish terrorist scum, owing in no small measure to the fact that I’m married to a British citizen. It’s not “an Irish thing” when these bastards murder innocent Brits.
Does being a Buddhist mean your morals are replaced by a vacuum?
When you can have as much compassion for those who were impoverished, ethnically cleansed, falsely imprisoned, wrongly killed and tortured by the English, then you will start to have some credibility here.
As it is many Irish don’t support the IRA in the Republic of Ireland; on the other hand, not many tears were shed when Lord Mountbatten was killed way back when.
Those folks remember what the English did to them; and karma’s a bitch.
Bloviate all you want about “terrorist scum” but Ireland is the perfect example of why you should invade countries to simply wave your national member around.
But, hey, why tell me here when you could go into any Irish bar and voice opinions like that. See how long you last…
Of course that should say, “Ireland is the perfect example of why you should not invade countries to simply wave your national member around.”
There is no excuse for those actions of the IRA and Al Qaeda which have no purpose but to intimidate and terrorize innocent people. The people of Northern Ireland have recourse at the ballot box for any grievenance, real or imagined, they have, and now the people of Iraq and Afghanistan do as well, as will the people of Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
No thanks to those who who sanction stolen elections like the one in Washington State, of course.
But, hey, why tell me here when you could go into any Irish bar and voice opinions like that. See how long you last…
Now there’s the voice of moral emptiness again.
Anyone who thinks it fair not to weep for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten is either (a) too ignorant to be entitled to an opinion on the subject, (b) blinded by ethnic bigotry, (c) a callous heartless asshole, or (d) some combination of the preceding. The bomb killed three other people along with Mountbatten, including his 14-year-old grandson and a local boy who was either 15 or 17 (Google sources disagree). Care to defend that, Mumon?
Even if terrorism were legitimate, I don’t see what makes Lord Mountbatten a legitimate target for the Irish kind. He was the last viceroy of India, so I can see why some Indians and Pakistanis might (for all I know) have had a grudge, but what had he ever done to the Irish, other than being (a) English and (b) the queen’s uncle-in-law? I suppose Nazis and pro-Tojo Japanese might also have had a grudge, since he spent World War II fighting both, including having his ship sunk under him in the battle for Crete.
Terror never legitimate–whether perpetrated by individuals, small groups, or the state.
It only recieves so-called legitimacy (in the eyes of its perpetrators) when crowned with an aura of righteous vengence, violent altruism,
“purification”, or “saving” the future.
Of course I am not using the word “legitimate” in its strict meaning (lawful) because laws can sometimes be acts of terror, but in a higher, moral sense.
Then there’s the question of deciding who is truly “innocent”…
I don’t have to defend anything; I am merely telling folks that from my experience, the Irish don’t really give a hoot about Mountbatten. That’s not my position; I abhor violence, but unlike Richard, I’m not going to be a moral relativist and blame the Irish for their violence, but not mention the English and their state sanctioned violence. Violence is violence. Perhaps the English violence is worse, though because it’s perpetrated under color of authority.
The ballot box was not how the Irish in the Republic of Ireland- with the help of Sinn Fein- got rid of the English from their neck of the woods.
Moreover, it is impossible to have recourse to the ballot box when you’re dead, or when you’ve been ethnically cleansed out of your area, as was the case in Northern Ireland.
Really, the moral sewer in which conservatives swim amazes me.
I hear you, John.
What’s strange is that neocons & the poor saps who’ve been duped by them, acuse the “libs” of being moral relativists, when they themselves practice the worst kind of moral equivocation, & at the same time consider themselves to be true absolutists–because of the Bible, a turned on his head version of Jesus, a voting fetish, or what have you.
It would be easier to believe that Mumon is not a moral relativist if he’d compared Adams and company to whoever’s running the most brutal faction of Ulster Protestants. But he had to pretend that Adams and Tony Blair are somehow equivalent, as if the British government has ever had a policy of blowing up civilians by the dozens without warning just for being Irish or Catholic. What with having an air force and all, it would be very easy for Blair to target Catholic neighborhoods and kill any number of innocent people without warning. But he doesn’t do that, does he?
Of course, Mumon’s failure to offer any but the blandest pseudo-even-handed criticism of his Irish friends does tend to implicate him in their contemptible attitudes towards the murder of an old man and couple of innocent teenagers. Perhaps he’s been hanging around in the moral sewer with the wrong kind of Irishmen.
His, and kim’s, criticisms would be a lot more cogent if our host, or I, or anyone else was encouraging Bush to invite the most thuggish Ulster Protestant leaders to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day. They haven’t killed nearly as many people as the IRA, but they’re still personae non gratae.
Geez, you don’t know that much about this subject do you?
You don’t invite the Ulster Protestants to the White House for St. Patrick’s day, you do it for Orange Day.
Do we have to explain everything to you?
As for Blair, I don’t recall him offering to settle with the folks in Ireland for all the terrorism they’ve inflicted on the Irish all those years; a little internet research will show that the Brittish come in for their share of senseless violence here, compounded by a history of severe repression.
If Blair’s not correcting that (and he’s not), he’s part of the problem.
Whatever. Has Ian Paisley or the military leaders of the UDF ever been invited to the White House on Orange Day? Yes or no? If not, why not? And why should the IRA’s thugs be invited for St. Patrick’s Day if the thugs on the other side, who haven’t killed nearly as many, aren’t invited on their day?
As for Blair, your vagueness is awfully weaselly. His crimes, and the crimes of the British over the last half-century or more, pale in comparison with the IRA’s murders. Is he supposed to be paying back somehow for things done by other Brits centuries ago, or what? The only way you can begin to balance the scales is to go way way back. Do you really want to do that? And does that apply to other ethnic groups? Do you think it would be OK for (e.g.) German Jews — the few that are left — to start slaughtering German gentiles? If an Armenian group went around killing Turkish women and children, should its leaders be invited to the White House to celebrate Armenian national holidays, or should they be banned from the U.S. entirely? How about the leaders of the Chechen groups that slaughtered all the schoolchildren in Beslan? Should they get to meet Bush? What if Native Americans started killing anyone in the U.S. without some minimum percentage of N.A. blood? Or black Americans blowing up whites with bombs? Each of those ethnic groups has been treated even worse than the Irish over the years, and the Chechens are being brutally repressed right now. Then there’s the LTTE in Sri Lanka: definitely oppressed, spectacularly brutal, and not welcome at the White House. The only hypocrisy here is on the part of those who think the IRA should be invited where the Chechens and LTTE are not, and where these other hypothetical groups would not either.
Yes, good doctor, let’s rate the various perpetrators of violence. Let’s see, this one’s worse than that one; that one’s actions less/more “acceptable” (depending); he’s justified in doing what he did, but he’s not; they’re evil, we’re good; they were evil, now they’re good; x number of children killed can be ignored for ideal x, but not for ideal z…
What hurts most is to hear someone say x’s crimes “pale in comparison” with z’s.
You speak of the futility of “balancing the scales” while holding a pair in your hand.
Of course I have a pair of scales in my metaphorical hands. All human decision-making involves choosing the better alternative, or the less-bad alternative, and for that you need judgment. My objection to Mumon’s “balancing” of Gerry Adams and Tony Blair is that it is fraudulent: he has to put a big fat thumb on the scales to pretend that they are somehow equally objectionable.
Neither I nor anyone else has claimed that “we” (whether that means me, our host, Bush, or the U.S. as a whole) are pure good or that any other country is pure evil. The point is that some governments, and some political movements, the IRA among them, are so vile that their leaders should not be treated as honored guests.
Can we somehow avoid judging? The only alternative to rating perpretators of violence by how violent they are is to pretend they are all the same. I’m sorry if it “hurts” kim to say that some people’s crimes pale in comparison with others’, but e.g. Gen. Jaruszelski, the last Communist dictator of Poland, though a disgusting thug with blood on his hands, was still only about 1/100th as brutal as Stalin. It would be dishonest to equate them.
What is the alternative to such comparisons? To assume that if one person has been murdered by the state, that’s just as bad as a thousand or a million? So if police or soldiers have killed even one innocent person in the past century in Belgium or Barbados or New Zealand, that makes those countries’ current prime ministers just as guilty as the dictators of North Korea, Sudan, Iran, and Belarus?
I hope kim is never allowed to serve on a jury. By her principles, you can’t lock up a Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson unless you lock up every jaywalker in town, and for just as long.
Readings of history always wash some blood off some hands, add blood to others. They are products of time, & prone to the prejudices of the reigning “now”.
Adams & Blair are both objectionable. Equally? No. What is equal? Nothing is “equal”.
“Vile”? Yes, I too have used the word, but as a word of feeling, not “judgement”.
I have not equated any two crimes or criminals. The scope or intensity of one crime does not nullify another.
What is the alternative? Condemn all crimes against humanity. No matter the ideology, state, or religion being “served” by the perpetrators.
Good lord. The issue isn’t whether there’s a minor difference between Tony Blair and the so-called violence inflicted by his state in the service of human rights in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Northern Ireland and the violence inflicted by Gerry Adams and his mafioso terrorist thug army against innocent men, women, and children in Northern Ireland, it’s whether there’s any comparison at all.
Kim says violence is violence, and equates Adams and Blair because they share a common activity, which is about as meaningful as equating them because they both breath. Violence in the interest of self-defense or the defense of the innocent isn’t just defensible, it’s a moral imperative; unprovoked violence, targeted to intimidate innocents, is a completely different kind of activity. You can’t compare the two if you’re a morally serious person.
Mummie is playing his typical trollish game, and withdrawing into his typical snobbery when called to account for his lack of moral seriousness. I’m not interested in taking his Hollywood Buddhist bait this evening, thank you very much.
Gerry Adams is a criminal, a terrorist scum, and a sub-human who uses the alleged suffering of the Northern Irish Catholics as an excuse for sadistic and self-aggrandizing criminal acts. He should not be allowed on American soil, and the President’s refusal to invite him to the White House is an important, if largely symbolic and long overdue step. I’d like to see Bush and Blair increase the pressure on Adams not because doing so would make me feel my national member stiffen, but because it would be good for Human Rights, something that our wannabe Hollywood liberals have forgotten in this incarnation.
Flights of fancy:
“minor difference”
“so-called violence”
“mafioso terrorist thug army”
“equates Adams and Blair”
“trollish game”
“typical snobbery”
“Buddhist bait”
“sub-human”
“wannbe Hollywood liberals”
*
The most sensible thing in the comment:
“the President’s refusal to invite him to the White House is an important, if largely symbolic and long overdue step.”
Any morally serious person questions the violence against innocent men, women, and children that occurs on a mass scale during the course of modern war.
Flights of fancy or clear analysis? You said (, and I quote): “Adams & Blair are both objectionable. Equally? No. What is equal? Nothing is “equal”.”
Which I read as “Adams and Blair are damn near equally bad”, but I could be wrong because of the equivocation around the meaning of “equal”.
There’s no comparison between these two guys. Modern warfare aims to reduce civilian casualties as much as possible, but modern terrorism aims to increase them as much as possible.
One’s white, the other’s black.
I thought I was clear:
“Adams & Blair are both objectionalable. Equally? No.”
There is no “damn near” stated or implied.
I object to both men. For different reasons. Period.
I agree, there’s no comparison between these two guys.
I’m not big on comparisons anyway. More often than not they fog clear analysis.
Indeed, since the first Gulf War, there has been talk of reducing civilian casualities through “surgical strikes”.
Yet cities are targeted. I know the argument that this is the unfortunate nature of contemporary warfare, because of the hidden nature of the enemy. I am not arguing with this, but simply state that this is a terrible
contradiction of contemporary war.
As for the history of modern warefare: I disagree. Modern warefare has aimed at inflicting civilian death & civic destruction. Think of the bombing of cities during WWII (culminating in Hiroshima), the napalming of villages in Vietnam, & numerous other scenerios worldwide. These were purposeful military actions.
I agree, the aim of terrorism is to kill civilians.
I criticize warefare AND terrorism.
What exactly do you find so objectionable about Tony Blair that you feel he deserves mention in the same sentence as Gerry Adams?
And when we talk about “modern warfare” we generally don’t mean anything more than 20 years ago – we’ve made great strides in the technology of targetting that allows missiles to be precisely aimed to within a couple of meters of an intended target.
And politicans do not, for the most part, order soldiers to destroy entire villages in order to save them any more.
Everybody knows that war is harmful to children and other living things and all that cheap hippie crap from the 60s; we also know that repression and totalitarian torture are bad too, and as moral agents we choose.
Do you turn your back on repression lest you get blood on your hands by destroying it? That might make you feel good, but it doesn’t make the world a better place.
Oddly enough, you’ve exiled the facts of the torrture by the Bush and Blair administrations from your mind…
Innocent people were tortured by the United States.
Are you turning your back from repression?
The perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib panty-head torture were punished, or don’t you read the news?
There’s no comparison between the acts of the UK and the US in the interest of self-defense and human rights and the brutal terrorist actions in Northern Ireland, New York, Jerusalem, and Baghdad. Get a grip, dude.
I wonder what the total number of “non-combatant” men, women, & children that have been killed in military actions during the last 20 years is.
Of course, what does it matter, considering that concern over those deaths is nothing more than “cheap hippie crap”.
Tally it up, by all means, but don’t forget to compare it to the suffering that could have been averted by military action; the Rwandan genocide, for example.
There’s a price for acting, but there’s also a price for sitting around sipping latte and going “tut tut” about all the oppression and tyranny in the world that we’re too good to stop.
If you were 19 or 20, would you be in Iraq right now, as a soldier, or in college or at a computer terminal waxing eloquent about the need to wipe out oppression & tyranny?
Does it matter?
Interesting answer.
So, kim, did you go to Iraq as a human shield before the U.S. invasion? There’s more than one way to put your life on the line for what you profess to believe, and if enough people had done so, the invasion would not have happened.
The difference between enlisting in the armed forces and being a human shield is that the armed forces have age limits, so I can’t enlist (I’m 51, and I think our host is about the same), while the human shield movement was recruiting people from 12 to 80. Too bad (according to you) they didn’t get enough. So, were you one of them?
No, Doctor Weevil, I didn’t go to Iraq as a human shield. There weren’t any state-sponsored flights for human shields as there were for soldiers.
I know how old Richard is, that’s why I asked “if you were 19 or 20″…
You’re 51; yes, too old to enlist. But did you serve in Vietnam? You were the right age for that war.
I did not. I was opposed to the war. So was Richard (Richard, correct me if I’m wrong).
Yes, I was opposed to the Vietnam War because I was young and stupid and the planners were old and stupid. I’m no longer young, but there are lots of young people who can speak for themselves on the young person’s view of Iraq and what have you without my trying to speak for them.
But frankly I don’t see any parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, even though I know the left and so-called Peace Movement insists on seeing every war through their Vietnam prism.
But as long as we’re on that subject, what about the 100,000 South Vietnamese who were slaughtered by the VC after the US high-tailed it out of town – are their lives worthless?
And what about the Rwandan Genocide, which could have been averted by as little as 200 troops? Of no consequence to us high-minded Americans?
The thing about the so-called Peace Movement that annoys me is their arrogance. We all want peace and security, we just have different ways of getting there. Some — like the selective use of force to install democratic governments — work on this planet, and some — like fasting and praying — don’t.
Does that mean if you knew then what you know now, you would have enlisted & fought in Vietnam?
No life is worthless.
What, in particular, is arrogant about fasting & prayer?
Few paralles between Iraq & WWII either, for that matter, though I’ve heard many commentators compare the two.
Anyway, sounds like it’s pretty much a hawk/dove standoff between us.
Best wishes.
The US didn’t fight the Vietnam War (under LBJ and Nixon) in a way that could have reasonably produced a victory; I don’t see the point of such a war.
The arrogance of the so-called Peace Movement is their conceit that they’re the only ones who want peace. I think we all do, but we differ on tactics.
Iraq is like WW II in the sense that we fought a fascist power, and we wanted to win.
Best wishes indeed.
kim’s reply (32) is pathetically inadequate. Is she saying that she would have gone to Iraq as a human shield if someone else had paid her way? I do not believe that that is true. In any case, the objection is inane. When you consider foregone income and opportunity, giving up three or four months of your life plus round-trip plane fare to Iraq is far less of a financial burden than signing up for three years or more in the armed forces. Yet kim can smugly imply that those unwilling to do the latter are cowards or hypocrites, while not even seeing that she is just as cowardly and/or hypocritical herself, at least by her own silly argument. An apology would be in order.
As for her disingenuous question, I neither supported nor opposed the Vietnam war. Unlike Richard, I could see that a Communist victory would be a massive disaster and would lead directly to the murder of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. What the Viet Cong did to the people of Hue during the Tet Offensive made a big impression on my 13-year-old self: they slaughtered women, children, nuns, every government employee they could catch, including ordinary postmen, and they buried many of them alive. Of course, even I didn’t imagine that the Cambodian Communists would kill not thousands but millions. So I could hardly oppose the war. But I couldn’t support a war that the U.S. seemed to have no intention of winning: Richard’s quite right about that.
In any case, kim’s assumption that I could and should have joined up and served in Viet Nam is ignorant as well as disingenuous. It is unlikely that I would have made it to Viet Nam even if I had dropped out of high school on my 18th birthday (which is asking a lot of an honor student only 3 months from graduation) and enlisted in the Army or Marine Corps. By 1971, U.S. troop levels were dropping fast, from a high of 536,000 in 1968 to 161,000 in 1971, 24,000 in 1972, and 50 in 1973. Supposing I had enlisted, by the time I finished boot camp and any additional training the army thought appropriate, it would have been 1972, or close to it. Would an Army of 2,000,000+ with only 24,000 of them in Viet Nam have made me one of them? Not likely, and it wouldn’t even have been my decision.
By the way, those of us born in 1953 were the last ones subject to the draft lottery. The draft was canceled before any of us could be drafted, but we thought we might be, and those with low numbers were called for draft physicals before the cancelation. Some of my college classmates got notes from crooked doctors or went on starvation diets to flunk their draft physicals, but I did not. I’m not ashamed that I didn’t join up — I’m not particularly well-qualified for the military life — but I am proud that I did nothing whatever to evade service, and would have willingly (but not gladly) served if called upon to do so. When Carter restored draft registration some years later, students at Stanford wanted to burn a giant replica of a draft card, and had trouble finding an old one to copy. (New ones hadn’t been printed up yet.) I still had mine in my pocket, but I didn’t lend it to them, and wouldn’t have if they’d asked me. (I lived in San Francisco at the time.)
In sum, kim is a hypocrite who ought to be ashamed of charging others with cowardice when she has shown at least as much cowardice herself, by her own silly argument. And she still has nothing to say about the poor murdered Rwandans. The Canadian general on the scene still thinks that he could have saved 800,000 people from murder with a few hundred troops and 50 armored vehicles which Clinton had but refused to provide. No doubt he would have had to kill some people to do so. I think that if (e.g.) 2000 Rwandan thugs had been killed by UN troops, and (e.g.) 200 innocent people tragically killed in the crossfire, and doing so had prevented the Rwandan thugs from killing more than (e.g.) 10,000 or 50,000 innocent civilians instead of the 800,000 they actually killed, that the world would be a better place today. Rwanda certainly would be. I don’t see how kim can possibly think herself a moral person if she disagrees. She definitely shouldn’t try her arguments on any Rwandan Tutsis — not that she’s likely to run into very many now: most of them are in no position to argue with her because they’re dead.
Incidentally, Kim’s a dude.
Dr Weevil, your “I’m not particularly well-qualified for military life” speaks volumes.
Actually it makes a simple non-voluminous statement. Since at least one of my stupider readers doesn’t seem to get it, let me spell it out. I’m not particularly muscular or athletic, have never had 20/20 vision or particularly fast reflexes, and have no particular aptitude for leadership. That means that I wouldn’t make a particularly good soldier, though I certainly wouldn’t have been the worst. And that means that I would never choose the military as a career, since I’m not particularly suited for it. No one ever told me when I was growing up “you oought to join the Marines! you’d love it and would be good at it”. I wouldn’t have and wouldn’t be. I would however have served if called on (i.e. drafted), unlike my sleazier and (dare I say) more cowardly classmates. That seems more than sufficient to qualify me to speak my mind today on political and military matters. Clear enough? Or does kim think that only the McCains and Dentons who survived years of North Vietnamese torture are entitled to a say on war and peace?
Of course, kim is just a troll who ignores all the arguments he, she, or it can’t handle, which is damned near all of them. Any decent person would have apologized by now for the ‘chickenhawk’ smear, and any intelligent person would have figured out that accusations of cowardice looks particularly stupid and hypocritical when they come from someone who provides neither a web-page nor an e-mail address (not even Hotmail) nor even a last name in his (her? its?) own messages.
I do not have a web-page, but if you’d like my email address, I’ll provide it. My name is Kim Dorman.
You insist on an apology from me after calling me stupid & a troll. Your anger speaks volumes.
Your failure to understand that calling other people cowards using arguments that apply even more strongly to your own self will quite rightly make them angry shows that you are in fact either stupid or a hypocrite. Take your pick. Do you think I’m a coward for not dropping out of high school and trying (and most likely failing) to get in on the tail-end of the Viet Nam war? It appears that you do. Now you can apologize for the imputation, and admit that your own failure to volunteer for human shield duty in Iraq is even stronger (and far more current) evidence for your own unwillingness to back up your purported beliefs by putting your life on the line, or you can continue to look like an asshole and a common troll. Again, take your pick.
Now it’s “asshole”.
Goodbye.
Fuck you, too. If you don’t understand that the ‘chickenhawk’ argument is only made by assholes, then you’re stupid. If you do, and fail to withdraw it, you’re an asshole. As I said, take your pick.
Beliefs aside, you disgrace this blog.
Richard is an old friend, & sarcastic as he can get at times, he always remains witty, intelligent, & a gentleman.
Silly me. When I read comment 11 I thought kim was calling people like me stupid. It’s hard to see what else “neocons & the poor saps who’ve been duped by them” could mean except that Bush supporters are stupid and pathetic as well as wrong. And “the worst kind of moral equivocation” in the same comment looks like an accusation of dishonesty, too. If kim can’t take insults, maybe he shouldn’t be so quick to dish them out. Either that, or take some credit for dragging this thread into the rhetorical gutter.
I can “take” insults.
Should I ask you for an apology for being called an asshole or for your throwing the f word at me? Those tactics are not part of the kind of dialog I find involving.
So, enough.
As for your argument with pacifism, consider taking it up with Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, King,
or numerous others who can speak more eloquently than myself.
You guys might tone it down a bit.
Dr. Weevil has a point about comment #11, Kim. You say those of us who support the liberation of Iraq are saps who’ve been duped by the religious-fanatic neo-cons, or words to that effect. As I’ve pointed out previously, it’s factually-challenged to conflate neo-cons with religious conservatives, but for some reason known only to yourself you insist in continuing the practice. It’s not helping your argument that you’ve got the facts wrong.
Now how is it that those of us on the pro-Iraqi Freedom side are “dupes” and the rest are presumably enlightened and well-informed highly moral beings? What moral high ground can you claim while advocating a course of action that would have kept Saddam’s torture chambers and rape rooms in business and prevented the Iraqi people from holding their elections? What moral glow do you get from apologizing for murderers and bank robbers like Gerry Adams?
Pacifism isn’t a serious moral position, because it relies on other people to get their hands bloody doing the work that has to be done. Gandhi was successful in India because there were other groups actively committing acts of violence, and beside that, the British were ready to shut down the Empire after WW II in favor of a more profitable scheme anyhow. Same deal with King and SNCC and the Panthers.
Jesus and Buddha were just the Pat Robertsons of their day, and as such a big “so what” in any discussion of politics.
Thanks, Richard, you’re right, we’d best tone it down.
I understand your point about the difference between neocons & religious fanatics. They do, however, seem to be working hand in hand.
BTW, it’s not just me who points out the marriage between neocons & religious fanatics, it’s all over books, magazines, blogs. Not to say they’re each & all right.
I do owe you some clarification on my comment #11. My argument with the neocons & the Bush administration extends beyond the Iraq invasion. I was thinking mainly of Bible Belt working poor who vote for neocon policies that end up not being in their best interests.
Thomas Frank outlines this in his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”, which I’m sure you’ve read (or read portions of it) & fully disagree with his premise. But I do not regard you or Dr Weevil as “dupes” or “saps”–the neocon world-view is fully understood by both of you; you’ve embraced it knowingly.
But I will apologize to the working poor for calling them “saps”.
Pacifism is a serious moral position.
I’m fully aware of the fact that it’s one you don’t believe in. That doesn’t remove it from the realm of seriousness. Russell, Merton, Stafford–just to name a few, & in addition to the persons I mentioned before–were quite serious about morality.
BTW Richard, there’s an interesting debate at the openDemocracy website called “Rethinking Iraq”. I would provide the link, but confess I’m new to computers & the internet, & don’t know how.
OK, here’s how to enter a link: type <a href = “http://opendemocracy.com/… ” > Open Democracy discussion of Iraq </a> .
That’s all it takes. Replace the http part with another link, and the description with another description and there you go.
It’ll look like this: Open Democracy discussion of Iraq.
Hey, thanks, Richard.
Why don’t you try it out?
You can also format comments with italics and boldface with similar incantations: <b>bold face words</b> etc.
I don’t normally cuss on other people’s blogs, but I don’t normally find myself arguing with people who toss vile and unsubstantiated insults and refuse to either defend or withdraw them. kim seems to me to have clearly called me and Richard and every other non-veteran Bush supporter cowards and hypocrites, using the discredited ‘chickenhawk’ argument. I have shown how poorly it fits me and also how easy it is to turn the same argument against kim, but he still has not withdrawn or clarified the charge. Why not? A simple “Sorry, that’s not really what I meant” or “Gee, I guess you’re not really a chickenhawk” would have helped. All I got was sneering remarks about “speaking volumes”.
By the way, calling Jesus a pacifist is at best a gross over-simplification. He did call on his followers to turn the other cheek, but he (or if you like, He) also said “I come to bring not peace but a sword”, and when a Roman centurion asked him to heal his servant (Matthew 8.5-13) he (or He) commended his faith but did not tell him to quit his day job.
I don’t think Martin Luther King was a pacifist either. He certainly preached and practiced nonviolent resistance to racial oppression, but Bull Connor and Strom Thurmond were not Hitler, and I’ve never heard that he thought that it was wrong to fight World War II or the Civil War. (Wrong for the North, I mean.) Even if he opposed the Viet Nam war, you can only call him a pacifist if he opposed all wars without exception. Every sensible person this side of Genghis Khan opposes some wars.
That leaves Buddha and Gandhi. I guess two out of four isn’t bad — two and a half, if I give you the benefit of the doubt on Jesus.
Even Gandhi suspended his movement during WW II so the Brits could take Hitler down without India being a distraction, so in a sense he was a collaborator. I don’t know that it makes any sense to say the Buddha either was or wasn’t a pacifist, since his whole philosophy was about turning inward and ignoring the world, which is a form of shirking.
We could all be pacifists if our enemies were as civilized as the Brits, but that’s not the case in the real world. So pacifism is generally nothing more than shirking, and it only seems to work because pacifists know that other people are willing to fight their wars for them. That’s why I find it so repugnant, and the posturing of pacifists so indefensible.
Here goes: Open Democracy discussion of Iraq
Hey, it works. Thanks again, Richard.
Dr Weevil, I don’t want to get into it with you on Richard’s blog. It seems you’re still quite angry, & our host has asked us to tone it down. (Your last post refered to my “vile” insults. I read carefully over my comments & yours, & quite simply the words you’ve spoken to me fall more into the category of vile & insulting. Try to keep in mind that this is a public forum, so to speak. I clamed up once you started in with the anger & cussing. I’ve heard the same anger & name calling on the radio–Savage, Hannity, Coulter, Ingraham) If you want to email me & thrash it out, that’s fine, let me know.
I said tone it down a bit, but that doesn’t mean you have to shut up or anything. I think that people who are used to complaining about the other side to their buddies often don’t realize how insulting their characterizations can be. This “chicken hawk” thing is a good example. It’s funny to listen to Air America because they sound so loony to me but obviously not to their audience.
Just try and get beyond the name-calling, or at least some of it.
Here goes. I don’t listen to Air America, so I don’t know what is said there. I’ve heard a few people use the term “chicken hawk”–I personally never used before, nor did I use it in this blog.
I have not out & out accused you or Dr Weevil of cowardice, because I know matters of courage & cowardice are immensely complex & cannot be easily encompassed by slang terms like “chicken hawk” or “loony”. I intended that you examine the shades of meaning in what you say, just as you have wanted me to do the same. This is good, as far as I’m concerned.
I’m quite happy to discuss pacifism.
I believe in the virtue of non-violence, & have for years. Leaders, writers, thinkers, & activists from all countries have been interested in non-violence for a long, long time. Whether Camus, Thoreau, King, Berrigan, Roy, Aung San Suu Kyi, I have applauded them all.
I am also interested in the just-war theory, & am starting to read about it.
I’m back. Had to break, just got back from work earlier.
Richard, I love what you said:”people who are used to complaining about the other side to their buddies often don’t realize how insulting their characterizations can be.” So true. Just as you’re struck by the “looniness” you hear on Air American, I’m struck in the same way when I listen to the Savage Nation. (Wish I could find Air America on my radio, wonder where it is…)
Since kim seems disinclined to withdraw his slander, or to defend it by engaging the arguments I’ve offered against it, this will be my last message to him. I’ll leave him with three basic points to ponder:
1. There are worse sins than dirty words. Just as most men would rather be called sh*th**d than have their mothers called prostitutes, even though the former is an obscenity and the latter is not, most of us think that calling someone a coward and hypocrite is worse than calling someone an a*s*o*e, especially when the former is gratuitous and the latter a reply to it. If you’re going to do so, you should have the guts to say it out loud, instead of leaving it on the table while getting all weaselly about not having used the specific word ‘chickenhawk’.
2. If you can’t tell the difference between someone who screams for Commie blood while weaseling his way out of a clear and legitimate draft notice, and someone else who (like me) merely failed to volunteer to serve in a war that he did not support and that would have been over by the time he finished bootcamp, then you are indeed some kind of expletive deleted. (Specifics omitted so as not to injure kim’s virgin ears.) Courage and cowardice are not all that complicated. Draft dodging is cowardice. Failing to volunteer when not called is not.
3. Anyone who admires Gandhi’s pacifism should read “The Gandhi Nobody Knows” by Richard Grenier (Commentary, March 1983). Commentary charges for their archives, but there’s a copy on-line here. Gandhi’s commitment to pacifism was subject to huge lapses into bloodthirstiness, and his advice to the Jews of Europe was obscene. Here’s Grenier’s paraphrase:
“. . . the advice that the Mahatma offered [the Jews] when faced with the Nazi peril: they should commit collective suicide. If only the Jews of Germany had the good sense to offer their throats willingly to the Nazi butchers’ knives and throw themselves into the sea from cliffs they would arouse world public opinion, Gandhi was convinced, and their moral triumph would be remembered for ‘ages to come’. If
they would only pray for Hitler (as their throats were cut, presumably), they
would leave a ‘rich heritage to mankind’.”
I also don’t see how Camus can be considered a pacifist. Whether he ever killed someone himself or not, he was a member of the French Resistance, whose main purpose (quite noble to us nonpacifists) was killing Nazis.
Now goodbye. I’m sorry I wasted so much time arguing with someone who is unwilling to defend or withdraw or modify his arguments so as to answer criticism of them.
Who do you think you are that you feel “slandered”? My god…
Your question about Vietnam service implies a lot, Kim, especially against the backdrop of the current war. Many in the anti-liberation movement charged the proponents of Iraqi Freedom with being too chicken to serve in the military itself but only too willing to send others to fight in their stead. The great champion of truth, justice, and the Big Mac Michael Moore is one such. So simply asking the question brings all that into play.
And why indeed should you ask?
Speaking of Gandhi, those who knew him had much less respect for him than those who didn’t. I seem to recall Raja Rao saying he was a wife beater, and there was that business about sleeping with a teenage girl to test his brahmacharya.
It’s all too often that high-mindedness goes hand in hand with pretentious silliness.
Questioning who goes into battle & who doesn’t has a long history, & multiple meanings; it’s not simply about who’s “chicken” & who’s not. Herodotus wrote about the irony of fathers sending their sons to die; others have written about the the poor fighting for the rich. There are valid questions about violence any “hawk” should ask themselves, just as there are valid quaestions about non-resistence any “dove” should ask themselves.
I still believe the most important issues are not black & white.
I know veterans of battle who were disgusted by Cheney’s comment on why he didn’t serve.
I know other veterans of battle who aren’t in the least bothered by it.
Your comment about Gandhi is only partially true. Yes, I also heard Raja Rao say that. I have read writings highly critical of Gandhi, as a leader & a human being. But I’ve also read lavish praise of him as a leader & person by those who knew him.
You bring up Raja Rao. If I was to take the same approach you seem to have taken, I would respond by saying something negative about him.
Indeed, who is there whose life & ideals are entirely free of any contradiction?
Dr Weevil calls me “weaselly”, while he writes about being unsuited for military life.
Anyway, I apologize to you & Dr Weevil for not being direct.
I should have asked this way:
Were you willing to personally kill & die to prevent the spread of Communism in Vietnam?
(I know for Richard the answer is No. That’s why I asked “Knowing what you know now…”)
Are you willing to personally kill & die in Iraq?
If you were to answer What does it matter? (I’m too old, not in good health, etc)– it still seems a significant question to me.
That’s an insulting question at least at a couple of levels. Think about it.
No intention of insulting you or anyone.
You know me, Richard, I value manners & respect.
I’ll think about it.
Good enough. Now back to pacifism. The problem here is that it’s a free-rider philosophy. Pacifists have always been able to count on the fact that theirs is a minority philosophy, enabled to function by the non-pacifist majority.
The classical dilemma for pacifism is what you’d do if a member of your own family were being violently assaulted, sit back and watch or take violent action to protect. Honest people admit they’d take whatever action was needed to stop the assault. Given that, why would you prescribe a different course of action at the level of national defense?
This is rudimentary analysis, and because pacifism can’t even address this basic question it can’t be taken seriously as a grand-scheme-of-things philosophy.
Of course I’m all too aware of the classical pacifist delimma. And a genuine delimma it is, too.
But the philosophy of non-violence has engaged many great minds for a long time–as an ideal there must be something to it.
The just war philosophy has its own delimmas & illusions, for sure. For me, personally, I’m attracted to the ideals of non-violence, & would rather see them glorified than war.
PS: What’s that image of a brick building that’s at the top of your site?
The bricks is just some picture that came with the template, no special significance.
If you look at it a little closer I think you’ll find that pacifists are generally second-rate minds. Some are well known, but so’s Paris Hilton. Thoreau was a misanthropic hermit, Gandhi a delusional sex pervert, Buddha a death-obsessed rich kid, Martin Luther King a sleazy philanderer, Joan Baez a moron and Jesus a cult leader with a deficient understanding of politics much like Al Sharpton.
They may have been nice to puppies and old people, but none left us with great ideas or profound philosophies on the order of the strongly pro-war Bhagavad Gita, where the argument is that you fight because it’s your duty, even if the cause is unjust.
Taking the same approach, one could say
Krishna was a cross-dressing adulterer & thief.
Who are some of the first rate pro-war minds you admire?
Make a list of the 100 greatest thinkers in world history and then strike off the pacifists. You’ll still be left with 98 or more.
Ancient Greece and Rome weren’t pacifist, neither was enlightenment Europe or Vedic India or Ming China or any other major civilzation.
Pacifists only exist in societies where their free speech is protected by men with guns.
Aw, come on, bud.
I named names, why don’t you?
I agree no major civilzation was pacifist.
Maybe a few tiny, out the way societies were…
OK, your greatest Western philosophers are generally regarded as: Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Arnauld, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Kierkeguaard, Schopenhauer, Bentham, J.S. Mill, Nietzsche, William James, Frege, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Sartre.
No pacifists on this list.
And BTW, Krishna is fictional but no pacifist.
Thanks. Well, I guess it’s arguable whether or not all those you named are first rate minds, either by themselves or as compared with Thoreau, Gandhi, or Buddha. I admit I haven’t read all of them. Wouldn’t be surprised if you have, so I’ll bow out.
Agree, Krishna (like Mohammed) no pacifist in anyone’s book. Fictional? Likely. Read once that he may have been “based” on a legendary tribal hero.
BTW, Jesus is GWB’s favorite philosopher.
I’m not so sure Buddha was a pacifist; it seems that he was more apathetic about state power than anything else. So that leaves you with Thoreau, Gandhi, and some folks like Rousseau and Bertrand Russell.
What sort of contribution did these guys make to the philosophy of politics or statecraft? Thoreau, as far as I can tell, lived the life of a hermit and wrote fanciful essays that didn’t inspire much in the way of action. Gandhi is somebody we tend to idolize in the West, but he certainly wasn’t much of a philosopher, and the efficacy of his anti-imperialism is the subject of much question. Imperialism pretty much collapsed after WW II around the world, or at least morphed into a different form where the soldiers and colonial administrations were replaced by trade and advertising. So the Brits were going to shut down their administration of India anyway, and they probably stayed about ten years longer than they wanted in order to try and stem of the bloodshed between Hindu and Muslim that followed their withdrawal.
Malaya got their independence at about the same time, but without all the unpleasantness. In fact, the Malays invited the Brits back in 1bout 1952 to help put down a Commie rebellion. And the Malaysian economy has consistently outperformed India’s because they weren’t held back by quaint notions about homespun and economic isolationism.
So I’m still looking for one pacifist that can reasonably be considered a first-rate thinker; if you find one, let me know.
Buddha (I agree) not interested in state power, nor Jesus I dare say. Thoreau & Gandhi probably wouldn’t have called themselves philosophers, as such. HDT mainly a poet who wrote essays & a kept a huge journal. Their contribution to politics & statecraft has mostly been “don’t trust it” which isn’t a bad idea, as far as it goes. Agree imperialism has morphed into the form you describe. And now there are conservative think tank guys in America who openly, enthusiastically use the word again.
Don’t know much about Malaysia. Wasn’t their one time glorious leader something of a crook? I remember reading about billions of personal dollars for him & his family…
I don’t know…first rate, second rate…
I still like HDT’s journals (Emerson’s too, & Dorothy Wordsworth’s, & Coleridge–guess I got a thing for the poetic journal), & would rather read them than Machiavelli or Sartre.
What books/authors have stayed with you over the years?
My point vis a vis Thoreau, Gandhi, Buddha, and Jesus is that they didn’t contribute any new insights in philosophy, culture, or politics, and in a couple of cases were actually counter-productive. So they’re second-rate thinkers in my book.
Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov”, Mark Twain’s “Huck Finn”, Aldous Huxley’s “Island”, R. H. Blythe’s “Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics”, the Mahabharata, Plato’s “Republic”, Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, Weinberg’s “The Psychology of Computer Programming”, Wittgenstein’s “Blue and Brown Books”, Burton Raffel’s “Beowulf”, Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”, Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”, and and the “Complete Idiot” Volkswagen repair book have stood the test of time for me.
Great stuff, my friend. To that list I might add all of Borges’ fictions, & two overlooked masterpieces: Evan S. Connell’s “Notes From a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel” & “Points for a Compass Rose”. Both have afforded me endless delight.
Been a long time since I read Huxley’s “Island”. Will check it out again.
One of the themes of “Island” is the limits of pacifism, BTW.