Rant Not

I try. I really do.

I try to be ecumenical, to achieve the fabled "meeting of the minds" that is supposed to accompany real intellectual well-roundedness.

But what if you hold a meeting of the minds, and nobody shows up?

Last week Luke Francl from New Patriot linked to a puerile "rant" by someone named "Athenae" (who seems to be an Atrios wannabee, down to the anonymity and the pretentious pseudo-Greek nom de plume) at a fairly vapid groupblog, "First Draft". Francl set the piece off with this:

The Power Line boys get it from both barrels in this awesome rant..."

Both barrels?"

Hm.

"Both barrels" of the rhetorical shotgun are loaded with intellectual blanks. Yes, it is a fusillade indeed.

On to the "rant".

Says "athenae"

Freedom isn't free, you miserable chickenshits. You cheer the war, you love the war, you love the troops, you support the troops. But to recognize their sacrifices would diminish your pleasure so you send the images away.

Dearest "athenae":

Can you name on soldier, sailor, airman or Marine that's died in Iraq?

Here's one:

The body of Philip “Phil” Brown, a Jamestown resident and Jamestown College student who died Saturday in Iraq, has been returned to the United States, according to his father, Richard Brown.

“We’re sorry that God took him away from us but we don’t question why things happen,” he said, his voice thick with tears. “And we are grateful to have had him on this earth for 21 years and four months.”

Phil Brown's uncles and aunts were high school classmates of mine. His other uncle was my junior high history teacher. I know his parents (albeit not very well, by small town standards). The costs of the war are indelibly real to them, and, lesser by the orders of magnitute with which I'm blessed by separation, to me as well. In my little, Republican home town, you can be pretty sure everyone remembers.

I have a son who just turned 12. He's six years away from being old enough to join the service. And I feel the twinge of fear that any parent must feel as they contemplate their children not only going off into the world, but going off into a world at war. Why the hell couldn't all this have happened when I was a teenager I (and maybe we) think, not because I have any real wish to go to war, but because I want to end the war before my children need to fight it. The way my grandparents ended World War II, so my father and I could study it rather than live it. He makes the occasional noises about wanting the join the service.

Anyway, yes. Yes, "athenae", you anonymous person who decries the "cowardice" of people whose names and characters I do know, I do remember the dead. I read their names, see the pictures, wonder about them, pray for those they left behind. All the time. They are many things to me and my family; people who loved their fellow man enough to lay down their lives for them; founts of limitless potential, cut off in the prime of life; each of them once a little boy or girl, an object of a father or mother's boundless love and hope.

Among the things they are not, however, is rhetorical clubs for the specious, cowardly and manipulative to try to bludgeon the bystander.

When I remember the dead, I also remember these dead:

And this one:

They were Kurds, among the thousands gassed at Halabja. We don't know their names. And God help us if we forget them. it was one of the most horrific acts of genocide in history; the entire thing was, reportedly, an experiment - a live-fire test, with unwitting human subjects whose only "crime" was belonging to an ethnic group that opposed Hussein.

I don't imagine "athenae" remembers Halabja; if he (or she) (or it) does, he probably assumes the US was involved, because, indeed, a fair chunk of the left does believe that the US is the root of most evil.

Or "athenae" will respond "But that's not why we attacked Iraq!!!", which is garbage on many levels. The President had four reasons for war, and human rights abuses were one.

I remember these people as well:

There are no photos of the Ma'dan, the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq. 90% of the 500,000 Marsh Arabs were killed, or fled to Iran or elsewhere.

We remember them, all right. And we celebrate the fact that due to the awful sacrifice of families like Spec. Brown's, the mass grave industry in Iraq has pretty well dried up.

More people we remember:

We - and by "we", I mean soldiers like Spec. Brown - put that bunch of mass murderers out of business.

We - and this time by "we" I mean people of conscience and who are not duped by the fantasy-based community's delusions of diplomacy - know that there are many more mass-murderers in the world.

We remember her:

She was 16-year-old Ateqeh Rajabi, lynched by an "Islamic Court" from a hydraulic crane for vague, "Un-Islamic" ""acts incompatible with chastity". There are those who think we're going to have to do for the mullahs in Iran what we did for Hussein. We'll see.

And above all, we remember this:

And before the likes of "athenae" inevitably bleat "But no! Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11! Hah!", I call bullshit. Terror is terror. Like Hitler and Stalin, like Luciano and Lansky, terrorists and tyrants all work together with their left hands and stab each other with the right. There are fewer degrees of ideological, personal and financial separation between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden than there are between Kevin Bacon and I.

Back to "athenae":

You jackholes ["jackholes". Hm. Cicero weeps with envy. Perhaps the word you want is "Jackal?" - Ed] are the ones who are always bitching that the left "blames America first."

"The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." - Michael Moore.

" If the U.S. wins a cheap victory, the world is in deep trouble,. Don't let them get away with it." - Noam Chomsky

Shall I go on?

You're the first to blame "the media," to blame "bias" when things don't look the way you saw them on the outside of the box.

No. We're not.

Guys like this are . The people who've been there, who've seen the situation first-hand (as "athenae" has not), and said the major media are not reporting the truth, merely the parts that fit their agenda.

Why do you now blame the photographers who bring you images of the dead and wounded, of protest, conflict?

We don't. We blame the almost-universally liberal edtorial staffs who ignore the massive progress that Iraq has made, who somehow fail to report that over 2/3 of Iraq is peaceful, that Kurdistan is probably safer than the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis. You know - the ones that are flogging a liberal agenda.

Why don't you blame the terrorists?

Er...we do?

Why don't you go wave a little flag in the face all this carnage because certainly it's exactly the item you put your finger next to on the menu. THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED. LOOK AT IT. Print out every single one of those photos and paper mama's basement with them, chickenhawks. Here's your war, in all its glory. Max your credit card out, because freedom isn't free.

As the insurgency fades, they must be blowing out overstocked cliches.

I'm tired of their constant yapping about the media, especially these war reporters out in the trenches in Iraq. Do you know how many of these guys have died?

Yes, I do. Do you?

Now - do you know how many of the actual embedded reporters have earned the ire of the right-wing blogosphere?

Fewer than the number of facile, puerile cliches in the paragraph above.

They are out there every day risking their lives to bring us news about the war you started.

Um, technically Al Quaeda started it.

But you only want to listen when the news is good. Tough. Here in the real world, we take the good and the bad at the same time. If you've got real information showing the media got something wrong -- and they do, we all do sometimes -- by all means, blog it. But if you are making insinuations because you don't like the stories that are getting reported, shove it.

"Shove It". "Hey Everybody! Stop complaining! Fall in line behind the all-seeing, all-knowing high priests of knowledge! Be happy they allow you to be as informed as you are!"

Sorry, "athenae". The Media slanted the story until they couldn't slant it anymore. Now, as the insurgency dies off, they're abandoning Iraq. We are trying to hold their manicured feet in the fire. We have that right, so far.

And that's what we do; show where the media is wrong. Constantly. We'll keep doing it, by your leave.

Posted by Mitch at April 11, 2005 05:21 AM | TrackBack