Moe Lane

Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds notes – not publicly gleefully – that Glenns Greenwalds are very upset.  It seems that Greenwalds are bothered by the fact that while it was apparently OK to call Reynolds evil for endorsing a targeted assassination program against Iranian nuclear weapons engineers and terrorist-enabling mullahs, it’s apparently not OK for Obama to be criticized for effectively signing off on such a program.  It’s apparently even worse to publicly approve of Ron Paul’s Israel views when compared to Barack Obama’s.  Poor Greenwalds are feeling aggrieved. And betrayed. And scorned.

In order: (more…)

I am slightly disappointed in this Victor Davis Hanson entry at NRO’s Corner on the curious event of the antiwar movement in the night-time.  It almost, but not quite, goes for the jugular.  For example, here’s this passage about the direct results of this administration’s continuation of the previous administration’s GWOT policies:

The chief symptom of this embarrassment is silence. Gone are the sloppy charges of “war criminal,” the Hollywood movies, the outbursts by celebrities, the anguished op-eds. It is almost as if the 2,000-plus suspected terrorists killed by Predators put a complete stop to all the talk of Guantanamo as a gulag or the water-boarding of three known terrorists as war crimes or any of the other harangues about supposed constitution-shredding. True, for many the hypocrisy is just the stuff of politics, but for others there is a quiet anger that they have been taken for a ride. Fairly or not, it is as if an entire corpus of prior written work, public rants, and activism between 2003 and 2008 — even if sincere — has now been exposed as mere partisan politics.

Good, so far as it goes – but “as if?” “Fairly or not?”  It is eminently fair to characterize the entire body of antiwar progressive thought (pardon the oxymoron) as ‘mere partisan politics:’ certainly the antiwar movement was not shy about reducing the pro-victory movement into something that their intellectually stunted minds could understand*. (more…)

James Taranto over at the WSJ noticed this little scheduling oopsie that probably should have gotten more airplay back in June:

June 23, 2011 (CHICAGO) (WLS) — World leaders are gathering in Chicago next year for two international summits. Both the NATO and the G8 summits will be held in May.

It will be the first time since 1977 in London that two international summits will be held at the same time in the same city. Security experts say it will be a security challenge that no American city has ever had to face. Planning is likely to focus on the possibility of violent demonstrations.

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I knew that we had (and have!) beaten them like a drum.  But I hadn’t realized just how complete their gelding really was until I read this post-from-exile by Matt Stoller about the tattered remnant of the pathetically small Wall Street protests.  It’s like Stoller – and by extension, the people that he’s being an apologist for – has embraced every single stereotype ever made about the passive, excuse-for-failure-laden, shallow liberal whiner who thinks that a back-rub circle counts as ‘activism’ and that contemplating one’s navel is the true mark of the intellectual.  Between the way that the last administration steamrollered these people, and the way that Obama has decided to be just like Bush (well, Obama has apparently decided to be just like an incompetent Bush), you can only conclude that the antiwar movement has finally gone to Dementia Manor and is now almost happily settling in.  After all, they know their place now.  They understand what is expected of them.  They accept their fate.

Seriously.  The last sentence of that Stoller piece should have been This gimp mask is surprisingly comfortable.

Moe Lane

PS: Make me take them seriously.

I love these stories: even through the third-person prose of the news article you can get a taste of the baffled anger and hate that rolls off of these people like a physical funk*.  This wasn’t what they signed up for, you understand.  The antiwar freaks were promised that their desires would be fulfilled.  They were told that they would see Bush administration officials in jail… and now they can’t even do citizen arrests.  They get arrested!  While THAT MAN walks past them as if they weren’t even there!  Like the antiwar movement doesn’t even matter!

Which it doesn’t, of course.

Hey, line of the day:

Police said one protester was arrested outside for assaulting a cop with a bullhorn.

I really hope that just meant that the cop was yelled at through the bullhorn.  Actual swinging at a police officer seems a bit… confrontational.  Well, maybe the cop wasn’t a Caucasian male; your average antiwar protester has a real problem with seeing nonwhites in the way as being, well, real.  And God help you if you’re simultaneously a: nonwhite female; and inconvenient to that crowd…

Via @MarkImpomeni.

Moe Lane

PS: Hey, buy Don’s book!

There’s a reason why dancers usually drive better cars than their customers do, you know.

Executive summary of this NYT article (the Hot Air Headlines title is a thing of beauty, by the way)

1. Harold Koh used to be opposed to the Bush administration, and was thus all about busily opposing the government, and its ‘undeclared’ (note scare quotes) wars.
2. Harold Koh is now part of the Obama administration (State Department), and is thus all about busily justifying the government, and its undeclared (note lack of scare quotes) wars.
3. In other words, Harold Koh went from being a shill for the War Powers Resolution to being a shill against the War Powers Resolution.  Without even really trying to hide his lack of shame about the abrupt switch in beliefs.
4. The antiwar Left is heart-sick about this.

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I (and Legal Insurrection) AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.  It all has to do with that flotilla that antiwar activists are putting together to help notorious terrorist group Hamas out in the Gaza strip via a little blockade-running; turns out the Greeks have impounded a number of the boats, so 0ur favorite Useful Idiots are calling for antiwar activists to call up the State Department Monday morning and sing “Let My People Go” at them*.

Lyrics were provided.

(pause)

Normally, I’d now suggest that the Antiwar Left’s next tactic would be to flood the White House switchboard to ask if they had Prince Albert in a can – only, given that old rumor that the man was really  the illegitimate son of a Jewish German baron, it’s entirely possible that nobody in the Antiwar Left would actually want to let him out. (more…)

Lord love academics, but they will be long-winded. Twenty pages to express the following three ideas:

• The antiwar movement was largely taken over by the Democratic party between 2002 and 2007;
• The Democratic party abandoned wholesale the antiwar movement without a qualm just as soon as they were finished using* the antiwar movement; and
• The antiwar movement collapsed like the empty suit that it was, just as soon as the elements were removed that made it more than a haven for some of the most vile examples of depraved scum in Western society**.

…which was, of course, already obvious to anybody with a triple-digit IQ.  But I suppose that when people give you grant money to do a survey, you should write a paper.  If only out of elementary politeness.

Via Instapundit (grinding antiwar progressive’s faces in this) and Megan McArdle (more in sorrow than in anger).

Moe Lane

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Well, it’s really the same question. Lee Stranahan asks “Why Do Liberals Applaud Awful Behavior?” Ann Althouse asks “Why did the anti-Palin protesters think it was right and good to shout her down?”  The answer is the same in each case:

Because they hate us.

Seriously, folks: this is news? We’re talking about people who think that this…

…falls within the range of ‘acceptable discourse.’  Or ‘coherency.’  And in their world, well, maybe it is.  But many of these people aren’t well, and they have neither the ability nor the actual desire to get better.

And at that, it could be worse: at least most of these people are too craven to do anything that’s actually violent.

Daniel Stone of The Daily Beast is being sloppy here…

A new study by the American Red Cross obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast found that a surprising majority—almost 60 percent—of American teenagers thought things like water-boarding or sleep deprivation are sometimes acceptable. More than half also approved of killing captured enemies in cases where the enemy had killed Americans. When asked about the reverse, 41 percent thought it was permissible for American troops to be tortured overseas. In all cases, young people showed themselves to be significantly more in favor of torture than older adults.

…and you can tell by the fact that he didn’t actually directly link to the survey in question.  At first glance it’s not exactly obvious why: after all, the question that was asked is potentially even more depressing.  The statement that got the 59% approval was: “Torturing captured enemy soldiers or fighters in order to get important military information.”  But it’s not entirely… useful to Stone, because the big question in the US government was never “Is it OK to wire up terrorists to car batteries on a regular basis?”  That was easily answered with a “No.”  The big question was, “Are interrogation techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation actually torture?” – an argument that Stone and his ilk clearly think is “Yes.”

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Bless their hearts, who cares?

Below I’m going to answer some questions asked by the Brittanica Blog (via Instapundit), in the order that they were given at the end of a blog post.  To give the background, the author of said blog post has noticed something that the rest of you knew already: based on recent events, the Democratic party never really gave a tinker’s dam about the Iraq War except insomuch as it allowed them to scream about the Republican party.  And, even though that party’s leadership has by now pretty much contradicted everything that they have ever said on the subject of going to war, there seems to be a certain… passivity… thus far in the progressive antiwar movement’s response to the Libya situation, too.

Fools, dupes, and knaves, in other words.

Anyway, on to the questions! (more…)

[Welcome, Instapundit readers.]

People like Andrew Sullivan were dumb rubes to actually believe that any functional candidate for President would actually believe in the progressive anti-war strategy (let alone implement it, once they were in office), and you told them so.  Heck, I told them so – admittedly, when I wrote that it was before the financial meltdown turned what had been a moderately tough election campaign cycle for the GOP into an impossible one, thus making it unnecessary at the time for the then-Senator to actually address his mendacious pandering to the anti-war movement with regard to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  But the Right blogosphere knew that “All Barack Obama Statements Come With an Expiration Date. All Of Them” right from the start, and we were not shy about saying so.  If the rubes over on the anti-war Left are now upset about that, well, they should try voting sober next time.

And since we’re bringing up uncomfortable truths, let me add this one: we were right on the war, rubes, and you were not.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Lest this turn into a lovefest for the President, let me remind you of something else: Barack Obama is bad at this, mostly because it takes him far too long to come up with a response in a crisis.