Blackhawk Clowns

Posted on March 31, 2003 in Morals & Ethics War

My cousin Steve, who worked in a Congressional office for a few years, likes to say that it’s not your enemies you need to watch. They’re predictable and you know how to block them. It’s your friends who cause you the most grief.

Patrick Nielsen Haydn is upset by the predictable editorial in the New York Post which begins:

Hey, if a campus crank can wish for personal calamity to befall U.S. forces in Iraq, why not fantasize about a volley of Kent State-style militia musketry rattled off in his general direction?

I’m more concerned about this “ally” — one Nicholas De Genova who is “an untenured professor at Columbia University” — who shot off thusly: “I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus”.

My beef with De Genova is essentially the same beef I’ve had with many opponents of this war: stop talking just about the American lives which will be lost. Think about the Iraqis, too. They have families, lovers, and friends, too. They dream of a better life in their sleep, they enjoy parties, they love, they look in wonder on the rising sun and the water flowing past in the rivers. De Genova implies that peace activists want American soldiers dead. This isn’t true: most of the hard core activists like Frog N’Blog and myself — to name just two — want Americans and Iraqis to live out their natural lives.

“Eighteen dead Americans, times 1 million, equals – hmmmm,” says the Post columnist (who true to the conservative tactic doesn’t print his own name in association with the column). What no one remembers is that ONE THOUSAND SOMALIS died in the “firefight”. One thousand times a million is an American BILLION. When we check the rationale behind the math, we find that De Genova and the Post columnist are on the same side in that they only count American lives as important to mention and they want a violent resolution to the conflict.

De Genova passes himself off as an ally in the struggle against the Bush Blitzkrieg of the checks against the rampages of the presidency and the sell out GOPher Congress, but he’s a friend I’d rather not have.

I wouldn’t have him at my peace rally and if he started up with nonsense like that, I’d yank the cord on his microphone and publically announce that I was disowning him. Peace is about respecting the lives of all the people. There’s no taking the side of the Americans or the Iraqis in this. Trust no government in the time of war.

Thanks to jeanne d’ arc for pointing to this link.