[UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers.]
You know what’s missing from this Tom Junod piece on drone strikes?(Via Instapundit)
Oh, sorry, quick background: a US drone strike recently killed a sixteen year old American called Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was the son of notorious traitor Anwar al-Alwaki. There’s no immediate reason to explain why the younger al-Awlaki was killed; it could be anything from an accident to a recognition of the old rule of thumb that ‘nits make lice.’ Anyway, Mr. Junod here is very, very upset that this death happened. He is very, very sternly lecturing the Obama administration about not revealing its reasoning for the death, assuming that the Obama administration even has one. Mr. Junod is very, very much the model of principled opposition to this “Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama,” as he so pithily put it. But, again: do you know what’s missing from this piece of Junod’s?
Any repudiation of this piece Junod wrote in response to Election Night 2008:
I wasn’t looking for hope, that’s for sure; I was looking for evidence that Obama couldn’t win in the face of an evil as potent as the Republican party. As my mother got weaker and the light began to be blanched from her eyes, I would go to the blogs right after my daughter went to school, and then just before I went to visit my mom, and then as soon as I came home, and then for a few minutes while my daughter took her bath, and then, after I kissed my wife and she went to bed, in the dark hour past midnight. I hated Joe the Plumber more than I hated anyone on earth. He was my comfort, because he was death itself, and he allowed me to hate not just him but it.
I’d told myself on the plane that I wasn’t going to look at any of the dozens of inescapable televisions that line the terminal in Atlanta. I’d told myself that I was going to wait till we got home and Nia got to bed before I started to check any of the returns. My vow lasted until I saw the hovering face of Campbell Brown reporting on Kentucky. Campbell, she of the gorgeous hair, was calling Kentucky for John McCain — and suddenly I felt something I hadn’t felt since my mother died. I felt nauseous. I was doubled over, not by the news of McCain’s win but by the prospect that Obama might lose.
Speaking as one of the ‘moldering’ people that the author later gleefully mocked in that article: YOU wanted this, Tom Junod. You wanted every particle of this. You drank deep at the well of hate in 2008, as the above passage shows, and in your hate you fixated on getting Barack Obama elected. And Barack Obama was. And then Barack Obama decided – because he was and is a weak man, with neither George W Bush’s compassion, nor Bush’s moral strength – to pursue the Global War on Terror on the cheap, and from a distance, and without listening to the screams. So, you want to know why Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was killed, Tom Junod? Why, it was all done for you. So that you could continue to hate your domestic opponents in peace, and without hindrance. Own it.
Coward.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Well said, Moe. Very well said, indeed.
Own it, and I’ll add for my part, choke on it.
What can I say, I’m just not as nice a guy as you are…….
Harsh! And the feckless fool deserves every bit of it.
Hopefully we’ll laugh at morons like this like we did those who supported Jimmy Carter. But it sure does mark supreme moral idiocy.
I respectfully disagree. Junod isn’t a coward.
He’s a excellent example of a modern leftist. He has a desperate need to feel morally superior and hence to feel good about himself.
He’ll use any device, lies, double standards, false outrage, anything he can invent, to maintain the veneer of narcissism.
Was he wrong about Obama? No, he doesn’t care. Junod only cares about giving himself mental strokes for being so [b]caring[/b]. What better than to care about the people who are trying to murder you? Isn’t that moral perfection?
Remember one thing about modern leftists. [i]It doesn’t have to make sense, it only has to feel good. [/i]
I propose that someone saw the name Awlaki and said, hey, didn’t we kill this guy? Better kill ‘im again!
@megapotamus: “And STAY dead!!” ? 😉
The cowardice of Tom Junod and others of his ilk are on display every time there is an “anti-war” demonstration. The demonstrators aren’t opposed to war, as you can see today, they are self-loathing cowards who understand that what the average soldier does every day is more than they can every think of doing. They’ll carry a sign, they’ll ask for signatures on a piece of paper, they will even send in money to get some other coward like Obama elected. But stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other men and women to defend something greater than themselves…no way. They’d rather use their “higher intellect” to convince themselves that they are the greater person, knowing fully well that they are not worthy to like the Afghan dust of the bottom of a 19 year old soldier’s boot.
Amen.
We saw this coming four years ago. We can’t detain (and interrogate – waterboarding!) them? We must just eliminate them. It’s easier that way, you know.
I hope Mr. Junod gets to read this. Not that he cares what bloggers think.
Not recognizing his name, I wrote up a reply to some commenter’s assertion that We The People seem to have democratically ratified BO’s killings without due process, to the effect that only BO – Constitutional Scholar! – would take comfort in the idea that we’ve voted down conlaw rights.
But then I tried to post it, and faced the moronic “sign in through Facebook!” screen.
I was confused until I found your explanation of this guy here, because it’s been my experience that only liberal weenie sites require Facebook participation to comment. So thanks for that.
Have you delved through the comments over there. They are blaming Bush for this. These peeps are so delusional that it is amazing that they can actually function in life. I agree with Carl. The cognitive dissonance forces them to walk around with their hands on theirs ears trilling “lalalalalalalalalalalala” to make it stop!
Classy all the way that Junod feller.I hear he spends his lunch hour ripping wings of flies,seagulls and the occasional bald eagle,for fun.
Oh, how they luvs their hates. It’s their heroin. It’s their precious. As he points out, it’s what they take out in the dark of night and stroke. Accept responsibility for his choices? You might as well ask a lemon tree to produce apples (and I apologize to lemon trees for the harsh comparison).
That 2008 piece should be excoriated just for the writing. The poor fellow positively oozes drama.
Also, I want to know who was blanching his mother’s eyeball light, and how the sentence that describes that made it past the editor.
Here is Tom: Behold, the face of evil
http://journalism.unt.edu/sites/default/files/Tom%20Junod.jpg
Look and jeer.
At least he is saying something. Normally the left is so hipocritical they would not even criticise the ONE for something that if done by Bush would be drawing Code Pink and ACLU people in droves. Of course if he does more than saying something, and says this should be a reason for the left to oppose Obama, since he is no better than Bush, that would be really standing up.
Mr. Lane, I’m a fan. I read you religiously. I’ve agreed with a lot of your stuff, and some has been long and well-researched and well thought out and cogently written.
However, this short piece sort of distills the best analysis of the central struggle for the soul and direction of America today, between the small but very loud and powerful minority of Americans who are far-leftists (including much of the MSM, academia, Hollywood and democrat politicians) who despise American strength and our ability to impose our will on the rest of the world, regardless of the stakes or the circumstances, and people like President Bush, and in this case obama, who think Americans and American interests should be vigorously, pre-emptively, jealously and aggressively defended.
Even obama, of the “sorry for American history tour”, is not anti-American enough for Junod, and he epitomizes the MoveOn-Kos-Progressive Caucus-MSNBC mindset and worldview.
In short, this may be the best and most important piece you ever wrote.