Is That Legal?: Be Vewwy Vewwy Quiet. They'we Hunting Witches.
Blogger Thoughts: This is priceless.]
Over at Volokh, some just don't seem to know when to leave well enough alone.
First Eugene called for people to compile a handy-dandy little list of "Western commentators who defend the Iraqi insurgents, or at least justify their actions as being a supposed campaign for self-determination, allegedly justifiable rage at Western misbehavior, and so on."
Nobody could really name anyone other than Michael Moore.
Orin Kerr then suggested, ever so delicately, that Eugene's call for a list of insurgency supporters "might be generating more heat than light," and offered a template to explain why. (The template is helpful, but to my eye doesn't fully capture the most important point, which is that there's a big difference between saying you understand why some people in Iraq might be fighting to rid the country of an American occupying force and saying that you hope they succeed or that their tactics are justified. Eugene's post completely elides this crucial difference between perceiving or understanding something, on the one hand, and justifying it.)
But Orin's peacemaking efforts were in vain, because now David Kopel steps in, picks up the grenade Eugene tossed, and throws it a good bit further. Apparently frustrated that the search for "respectable" (that's David's word) Western insurgency-lovers was coming up dry, David does a search on Yahoo and adds several names: James Petras, an emeritus sociology professor from SUNY-Binghamton, the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, comedian and radio personality Janeane Garofalo, and Virginia Rodino, who was apparently a Green Party congressional candidate in the 2004 election.
And, says David, they're just the tip of the traitorous iceberg: "This is obviously not a comprehensive list," he says, "just what was easy to find in a few minutes."
(Just a sec ... I want to jump over to Yahoo to compile a list of ball players who have hit more than 700 home runs. Let's see ... Hank Aaron. Ummm, Babe Ruth. Uhh .... Barry Bonds. OK, I'll stop there in the interest of time, but obviously, that's not a comprehensive list. It's just what was easy to find in a few minutes.)
If you follow David's links, you discover that Arundhati Roy supports not the violent Iraqi insurgency, but "a pristine Iraqi resistance [that] must conduct [a] secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle." But Eugene was looking for Western commentators (query: is an Indian novelist a "Western" commentator?) "who defend the Iraqi insurgents, or at least justify their actions as being a supposed campaign for self-determination, allegedly justifiable rage at Western misbehavior, and so on." Roy doesn't even come close to fitting Eugene's profile.
You also discover that David's evidence for Janeane Garofalo's supposedly treasonous defense of the Iraqi insurgency is the following hearsay recollection of a person whose name I can't even find:
"As Janeane Garofalo and I talked about on Air America last week, it’s a fairly simple thought experiment: It’s 2030. The Chinese and Russians team up and invade the U.S. after manufacturing a non-existant threat. Would you be a collaborator or would you fight back, Red Dawn style?"Notice that from this source we don't even know what Garofalo said; we know only that she "talked about" that "thought experiment."
This, folks, is turning into a witch hunt.
(For what it's worth, I'll give David this James Petras character and the Green Party candidate who scored a whopping two percent of the vote in her congressional race to represent the City of Baltimore, though it's hard for me to believe that a retired SUNY sociologist and a fringe congressional candidate are who OpinionJournal had in mind in the piece that Eugene quoted.)
Posted by Eric at August 14, 2005 05:43 PM
Comments
For those who want a link to original thread at Volokh instead of a link to CNN's election news, here's a permalink:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_08_07-2005_08_13.shtml#1123863417
I seem to remember a house represenative or two from the Northeast suggesting that the iraqi 'resistance' was was in the moral right, but strangely enough there's nothing on it outside of a couple blogs that actually pay attention to the House... strange, eh?
Posted by: blueeyes at August 14, 2005 10:21 PM
Not that it really matters, but actually only three MLB players have ever hit 700 plus homers: Ruth, Aaron, and Bonds. A Japanese player, Oh, hit over 700, as did, I think, Negro League player Josh Gibson.
I find the choice of the term "witch hunt" to be ironic, considering that his (Volokh's) past defense of torture is perhaps most effectively challenged by a close (or even cursory) look at the history of witch hunting and persecution in early modern Europe.
Posted by: Glen Bowman at August 15, 2005 12:03 AM
That was my point, Glenn. (About the home run hitters, that is.)
Posted by: Eric at August 15, 2005 07:15 AM
I left this at that "v" place:
'Good and honest' Iraqis fighting US forcesBy Phil Sands, Staff ReporterPublished: 9/6/2005, 06:25 (UAE)LinkTikritA senior US military chief has admitted "good, honest" Iraqis are fighting American forces.Major General Joseph Taluto said he could understand why some ordinary people would take up arms against the US military because "they're offended by our presence".In an interview with Gulf News, he said: "If a good, honest person feels having all these Humvees driving on the road, having us moving people out of the way, having us patrol the streets, having car bombs going off, you can understand how they could [want to fight us]."General Taluto also admitted he did not know how many insurgents there were. "I stay away from numbers how can I quantify this? We can make estimates by doing some kind of guesswork," he said.He added: "Who knows how big these networks are, or how widespread? I know it's substantial enough to be a threat to the government and it will be for some time."
Posted by: Steve J. at August 15, 2005 08:27 AM
Why are you taking seriously anything posted by a man who advocated following Iran's example and publicly torturing condemned criminals before they are executed?
Oh, excuse me, rightwingers remind me that Volokh only meant that for the most egregious cases, like serial murderers. That is, until he gets bored and decides that pre-execution torture/dismemberment should be extended to those convicted of manslaughter or rape or shoplifting from a Republican-owned supermarket.
Posted by: tristero at August 15, 2005 09:23 AM
"This James Petras character?"
Petras studied imperialism and the resistance to imperialism, subjects that tend to put one in a more or less irritable mode regarding the American escapade.
But Bloggers be oh so very important! And their debates be so very significant. Ignorance never stop bloggers. Heck, faced with no knowledge, just make shit up.
This post ain't much less wanking than the V gang.
Posted by: DeWayne at August 15, 2005 09:32 AM
Post a comment
No comments:
Post a Comment