Trope Of The Morning To You

Chris Dykstra of New Patriot responds to a Brian "Saint Paul" Ward piece in Fraters, which criticized in turn an earlier New Patriot piece which recycled claims that the US used napalm on civilians in Fallujah.

Got all that? Good. Onward.

Brian's point - that the left (as manifested in New Patriot, a collective (what else) of local leftybloggers) is too busy recycling wives' tales and urban legends about US actions and intentions to bother with things like fact-checking.

Dykstra's response:

Saint Paul employs the time honored conservative tactic of crying "Socialist" when presented with a set of ideologically contrary facts.

Let's get to the "Facts" in a bit. Brian didn't "cry socialist", merely observed that "New Patriot"'s rhetoric is frequently not unlike listening to SWP shills at Fringe Fest.

When confronted with a very uncomfortable moral dillema - That it is obviously wrong to use napalm in civilian populations - he accuses the neutral observer with false moral clarity.

Now, the "facts" - the assertion that the US used napalm on civilians in Fallujah; a Google search shows that while there are many published allegations, that napalm was used, not one comes from a source more credible than Aljazeera.

Aljazeera has served as a cheerleader for the jihadis in Fallujah, acting in the same capacity Baghdad Bob served nearly two years ago. During the initial assault, they passed on "eyewitness reports" of US vehicles blazing in the streets, with American bodies piled around them - numbers that would themselves have accounted for nearly all the Americans killed in the entire campaign.

So what does Aljazeera provide as evidence? More "eyewitness accounts", and a photo of a child being treated for a small injury (and as a parent who's hauled kids to the emergency room enough to have been able to use it as an address for tax purposes, I know - there are no "small injuries" if you're the child or his family; do not go there with me, you'll regret it).

Napalm doesn't give small injuries; it's a jellied gasoline dropped in tanks, which sluices over and sticks to everything it touches before it ignites, causing the most ghastly burns imaginable. It's truly a horrible weapon, designed to demoralize - yes, terrorize - the enemy.

It's also, if anything, less subtle than conventional bombs. It creates massive orange gouts of flame visible for miles, following by dense, unmistakeable black smoke.

I say this by way of saying that, as much as the mainstream media was embedded with the troops, it seems highly unlikely that if napalm were actually used that only Aljazeera would have the story. What do you suppose the odds are?

Dykstra:

As much as St. Paul would assign the qualities of self-righteousness and cynicism to me I ask in return: When is the right going to get real? Although it is a war crime to drop napalm on civilian populations (it is, of course, endlessly arguable whether or not Falluja is a civilian population so let's agree to disagree), that's not the only thing that bothers me about it.

I'm guessing that "the use of civilians as shields to prevent one from being attacked is also a war crime" isn't the one he's thinking about right now...

Number two on the list is that the use of a weapon like that it is so unbelievably, tragically stupid. It is particularly stupid to use it in pursuit of an asinine war, ineptly run.

Leaving aside that Dykstra seems content to believe Aljazeera at all costs - why is the weapon itself stupid? More tragically stupid than any of the myriad other means that humans turn each other into hamburger in wartime? More tragic and stupid than an M16 (whose bullet rips tissue to shreds), or the M-1's HEAT round (which directs its explosion through its target, sending a jet of molten armor, masonry or dirt at 20,000 feet per second into whatever it's protecting), or the Daisy Cutter (which creates an instant firestorm, a fireball that sucks all the oxygen from a quarter of a mile away, above or below ground), or a rusty butcher knife that saws its living victims' head off?

As to whether the war is either asinine or ineptly run - that's an argument that we could take a long time with; stating either as simple facts is both logically perfunctory and factually slippery.

Dykstra continues:

See, St. Paul, the thing is, I want to win the war on terror. This isn't about right and left. It's about winning a war.

Right, and good. So did Howard Dean and John Kerry - where "war" means "finding Bin Laden". Not to put words in Mr. Dykstra's mouth, but ones' definition of "the war on terror" can be important.

In order to win it, we have to come to grips with the fact that the war in Iraq and the way we are waging it is not making us safer. We are selling the soul of our nation to make our enemy stronger.

Another dubious assertion stated as "fact".

In this case, though, Mr. Dykstra provides a source that can be called reliable without herniating one with laughter:

Here's some socialist propaganda that supports my argument, not that you or this administration would ever listen (two bits if you can guess the source)...

It was a Department of Defense memo that said (I'll abbreviate it here) that our military effort is radicalizing Moslems, bringing them out of the woodwork on the side of the terrorists. The memo has been floating around for a while, and it states an opinion driven by one track of analysis, and ignores a number of things that are very germane:

• It's forcing Arabs to one pole or the other; in Iraq, large numbers of Arabs, indeed Moslems in general, are also coming out in support of their democracy. Arabs in many other countries don't have that option, of course - there are exactly three majority-Moslem democracies in the world right now (two years ago there was only one).
• Since Mr. Dykstra does indeed say he wants to "win the war", then one needs to note that the war in Iraq serves a goal that one must achieve to have any hope of winning any war; it seizes the initiative, fights the war on our schedule and tempo rather than the enemy's, denies the enemy a place to organize and a big ATM, and most importantly fights the war on their turf rather than ours.

Inept? It's why Libya and Syria are so quiet these days. It's why the Mullahs are blustering to (literally) save their lives. It's why the Saudis are quietly, frantically trying to clean house. It's why the Indonesians, Filipinos, Turks and Indians are getting serious about the Madrasses and the influences they're spreading, as well as the terrorists in their midst.

A little napalm? Keep it in context. But first, prove that it happened. Sorry - Aljazeera's word doesn't cut it.

It occurs to me that the most interesting exercise might be to ask my liberal readers; what does "Winning the War" mean to you? I mean, in specifics.

Posted by Mitch at December 2, 2004 11:20 AM | TrackBack