Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Christopher Hitchens writes a painful but necessary column on the lamentable tendency of liberals to root for bad things in Iraq and Afghanistan (not all liberals, probably not most, but too many).
I've encounted the same thing, though anecdotally - someone who solemnly swears that the Bush administration has bin Laden on ice for a hasty October thawing. Seen another way, such individuals will not celebrate when a mass murderer like Osama is brought to justice; they'll knash their teeth and look for a conspiracy. Picture Republicans complaining about the Japanese surrender in 1945 because it invalidated their campaign plans for 1946 and you get roughly the same thing.
I don't know that the phenomenon is as widespread as Hitchens thinks it is, but it's troubling nonetheless. There is an intellectual disconnect between one wing of the party and the present situation - the blind willingness to believe that all will be better once we get Kerry in the White House. It won't be that simple. John Kerry is campaigning to be president at one of the most trying times of the last 100 years. All these cocktail party conspiracy theorists would do far better to think long and hard about how Osama is to be caught than theorizing (against all evidence) that he's already in secret custody. If they don't get their acts in gear, they'll have another four years for insipid theorizing.
I've encounted the same thing, though anecdotally - someone who solemnly swears that the Bush administration has bin Laden on ice for a hasty October thawing. Seen another way, such individuals will not celebrate when a mass murderer like Osama is brought to justice; they'll knash their teeth and look for a conspiracy. Picture Republicans complaining about the Japanese surrender in 1945 because it invalidated their campaign plans for 1946 and you get roughly the same thing.
I don't know that the phenomenon is as widespread as Hitchens thinks it is, but it's troubling nonetheless. There is an intellectual disconnect between one wing of the party and the present situation - the blind willingness to believe that all will be better once we get Kerry in the White House. It won't be that simple. John Kerry is campaigning to be president at one of the most trying times of the last 100 years. All these cocktail party conspiracy theorists would do far better to think long and hard about how Osama is to be caught than theorizing (against all evidence) that he's already in secret custody. If they don't get their acts in gear, they'll have another four years for insipid theorizing.
