Whitaker's Current Articles May 31, 2003
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Fun Quote:
Hitler was living in Argentina in the 1960s when some Germans asked
him to come back and take over.
After they spent hours trying to persuade him,
Hitler said:
OK, I'll come back on one condition."
"What's the condition?" asked the Germans.
"This time," said Hitler, "No more Mister Nice
Guy."
Hitler
and Saddam
An African economist I knew
was often faced with proposals to
build little inefficient railroads. Some of those railroads got
built despite his opposition. Those who had wanted the
railroads built would then ask my friend whether he thought those railroads should
now be
destroyed.
No, he said, with all the money
already sunk into them, it would be better to keep them than to tear
them up. People would then say that he was wrong to oppose building those railroads in the first place.
Any logical person can see why
this conclusion was wrong.
Once something is built, you
are no longer dealing with the question of whether or not to build
it.
Today those who supported the
war in
Iraq are saying, “Would you like to
have Saddam back?”
The question of whether or not
one wants Saddam back is not the same as the question of whether we
should have gone to war in
Iraq. The fact that Saddam was a
horrible man was not the reason we went to war.
There is a lot to be learned
from decent people who opposed the Iraq War. There is a lot to
learn from decent people who opposed
America’s entry into World War II.
This does not mean that we want Hitler back.
But just because you don’t want
Hitler back doesn’t mean that there was not nothing wrong
with the way we got into World War II.
Why I Didn't Bother to Oppose the Iraq War
I
stopped opposing the war in
Iraq as soon as I saw it was inevitable.
I have supported Lost Causes in
my time, but if I support a Lost Cause, it has to be one that is
very important to me. Saddam was not very important to me.
When something is inevitable
the best thing you can usually do is to get in and try to redirect
it. But that is a rule you have to be very, very careful about.
Supporting something because it is inevitable is an awfully tempting
path to immorality.
I have complained about people
who say that the odds are on the bad guy’s side, so we should all
give up. First, I don’t think that’s true. Second, if you
surrender to evil simply because it is strong then you are as bad as
the enemy.
Defeatism is the enemy of good.
Anyone who argues that we should surrender for any reason is an
enemy, no matter what his real opinions may be.
On the other hand we cannot
simply throw our limited resources into lost causes.
Leftists Shot Themselves in the Foot Over Iraq
Leftists who opposed the Iraqi
War shot themselves in the foot. This is not because they were
wrong, but because their opposition to the war showed their warts.
Leftists hate
America and what they said in
opposing the war was one long exercise in Hate America rhetoric.
Many leftists are now trying to
say they were right about the war because no weapons of mass
destruction have been found. If they had said they opposed the war
because they doubted the existence of weapons of mass destruction,
they would be in a strong position now. But that is not what
anti-War leftists said in the period leading up to the war.
In the pre-war period leftists
said
America was Evil. They said that
America was killing its young people just to get cheap oil. They
said America was greedy, bloodthirsty, imperialistic and racist, and
those were our good qualities.
Ever since World War II
Americans have paid professors in American colleges to
insult the American public. Every leftist
spent most of that time telling us how awful Americans were and how
good our enemies were.
Especially Communists.
Americans never did anything but
grin and applaud these insults.
But at last, during the run-up
to the Iraq War, those grins actually faded. Even the people who
had cheered most loudly every time professors and Europeans told us
how awful we were in the past suddenly woke up and wiped the drool
off their faces.
Liberals shot themselves in the
foot by opposing the Iraq War, but not because they opposed the War.
They shot themselves in the foot because of the way they
opposed the war.
For decades we have paid social
science professors to insult the American public in college
classrooms. For decades we have paid the United Nations to attack
us.
Many people felt particularly
good about paying professors and the United Nations to attack us
because a lot of people have the idea that if something hurts it
must be good for you.
That’s sick thinking. In this world, you will be denounced plenty without
paying anybody to do it.
Anti-War people who joined in
the chorus about how evil or ignorant Americans are were the ones
who really screwed up.
Those people included
leftists, the United Nations, and Europe's Fashionable Opinion.
Why Fashionable European Opinion is Formed by
Nasty Little People
It is hard for a person who can
take criticism to become really nasty or really mean. It
is the people who cannot imagine that they are anything but
wonderful who get really small and nasty.
If you can look at yourself
from the outside there is a limit to how bad you can get. If you
assume you are practically perfect in every way there is no limit to
how bad you can get.
At the turn of the twentieth
century Europeans thought they were wonderful as their sophisticated
brilliance led them into World War I.
Europeans in the 1930s thought
they were sophisticated and wonderful as their continent divided
between Communists and Fascists.
Western Europeans insisted they
were brilliant after World War II, when a third of them voted for
the silliest kind of democratic socialism, a third of them voted
Stalinist and the other third became Catholic theocrats.
In the run-up to the Iraq War,
Europeans once again insisted they were being brilliant.
European opinion opposed the
Iraq War because they said Americans were awful and low and ignorant
and selfish. They said, as usual, that Europeans were True
Intellectuals and True Sophisticates and that Western Europeans were
the only people who were capable of Generosity and True Compassion.
In other words,
Europe went back to the same old
crap. But this time some Americans actually noticed how silly they
were.
So Who Didn't Shoot
Themselves in the Foot Over Iraq?
n't Shoot Themselves in the Foot Over
Iraq?
As
America went to war, National Review
had a cover article
saying
that those on the right who opposed the Iraq War were traitors.
It didn’t stick.
In fact, all that National
Review managed to do in attacking rightists who opposed the war was
exactly what liberals did while opposing the war. They showed their
hates.
If you opposed the war by
saying Europeans were brilliant and Americans were stupid, you
screwed up. But if you had previously said that that Europeans, the
United Nations, and leftists hate
America, you had a right to dissent
on Iraq. The rightists who opposed the Iraq War had
consistently done that.
If you opposed the war by saying
that neoconservatives just want to use America to please the Israeli
Lobby, you may yet be proved right.
The lesson is that if you are
going to fight the mainstream, you had better be damned careful you
make it clear exactly why you are doing it. Don’t join
America’s enemies against America.
Don’t join the leftists in their hates.
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