Whitaker's Current Articles May 31, 2003

            

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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Editor: Rick Rowland
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