ZGram - 1/10/2002 - "America in Peril: The Paul Revere Series" - Raimondo: Part II

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

January 10, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I give you the second installment of Justin Raimondo's analysis of the most
serious crisis facing America in its over two hundred years.  It is one of
the best overviews of the sinister forces and ideological currents
coalescing to the detriment of America.

Maybe Raimondo's clarion call, if made known to millions in the country,
will yet rouse the truly patriotic elements out of their seeming stupor.
We do not have to let these disastrous policies take their course.  Things
are not inevitable.  A properly informed and sufficiently aroused populace
can take action to avoid this disaster in the making.

Here goes:

[START]

THE BIG CHANGE (Part II)

 David Talbot and the rise of Warrior Liberalism

 This war has already increased the power of government by leaps and
bounds, and liberals were quick to sense their opportunity. Senator Tom
Daschle wasted no time in going on the offensive on the tax issue, and the
liberal punditocracy, from Al Hunt to the Washington Post, gleefully
proclaimed that "big government is back!" The Democratic Party's "amen
corner" in the intellectual community is remaking itself in the image of a
new warrior liberalism, one that combines the airy-fairy one-world
Wilsonianism of the Clintonian Democrats with the "it's all-about-me"-ism
of their disgraced and increasingly ludicrous leader. Writing in Salon, the
online journal of Left Coast Clintonianism, editor-in-chief David Talbot
details his own conversion to the New Hawkishness in relentlessly
self-referential terms, blithering on about how both his children "are
prone to florid nosebleeds." Mercifully, however, he states his essential
thesis at the outset, a great convenience when it comes to Talbot's
extended bout of self-contemplation:

 "From the Gulf War on, the hawks have been on the right side in all the
major debates about U.S. intervention in the world's troubles. The
application of American military power - to drive back Saddam Hussein's
invasion of Kuwait, stop Slobodan Milosevic's genocidal campaigns in the
Balkans, and destroy the terrorist occupation of Afghanistan - has not just
protected US interests, it has demonstrably made the world safer and more
civilized."

  EGALITARIANISM WITH A VENGEANCE

 Talbot also berates his fallen hero for not intervening in Rwanda, and
even calls for the revival of a military draft. This last is done in the
name of egalitarianism, of course. As long as everybody fights and dies in
a foreign war, it's okay with Talbot: equality, in the liberals' litany, is
an absolute good. That all slaves are equal has never bothered egalitarians
in the past, and it troubles them even less now. The post-9/11 left-liberal
agenda is perfectly served by the war fever. Even, amazingly, the
anti-military agenda of the Clintonians, which they never bother to hide.

 ANTI-MILITARY MILITARISM

 For a great deal of Talbot's screed is directed at Colin Powell, the
resident dove in an administration of hawks: Salon's editor echoes the
neoconservative charge that Powell failed to "finish the job" during the
Gulf War. The Pentagon, Talbot points out, is the most "isolationist" force
in American politics, and the generals (embodied by Powell), in their
reluctance to promiscuously intervene overseas, have been the ones most
traumatized by the "Vietnam syndrome." The generals, in short, are cowards,
and it's time our brave liberals, like Talbot - who avers that political
leaders must themselves be willing to personally fight the wars they
advocate, or else have their children as stand-ins - called them on it.
Good Lord! Is there nothing this opportunistic chameleon won't say to
satisfy his need to feel self-righteous? From "give peace a chance"
pacifism to more-macho-than-thou - the David Talbots of this world are in
the forefront of every trend.

 TALBOT RECANTS

 Notice how the new liberal dispensation conforms almost perfectly with the
neoconservative line on every foreign policy issue since the Gulf War.
Talbot recants marching against that war, and goes on to embrace the Big
Lie of Serb "exterminationism," without mentioning that the victims of the
"genocide" supposedly carried out by the Serbs in Kosovo turned out to be a
few hundred Kosovar terrorists. Talbot rejects the "pacifistic" legacy that
supposedly motivated him and his fellow peaceniks to oppose the Vietnam
War, and goes on to explain how he came to be an advocate of projecting
American military power as a "civilizing" force in the world.

 OUR SPINELESS LIBERALS

 From "give peace a chance" to "give war a chance" is not that great a
betrayal for our spineless 1960s-style left-liberals, who never believed in
anything but their own specialness to begin with. It is just that
specialness, after all, which exempts them from having any moral
compunctions about such a shamelessly unprincipled reversal.

 LEFT COAST IMPERIALISM

 And so Left Coast liberals who want to transform the whole world into
Marin county join with "compassionate" conservatives, like Michael Barone,
who can only be truly inspired by visions of "national greatness": together
they have created a new national consensus in favor of Empire. And to think
that this is only Part I of Talbot's liberal interventionist manifesto! The
next installment, we are promised, will deal with the question of whether
(or, no doubt, how) to invade Iraq. Oh boy, one can hardly wait=8A

 But really, we needn't even read it: for Talbot, the dove sprouting hawk
feathers, lays the groundwork for imposing "democracy" on the Middle East
in the first part of his essay. According to him, Saddam Hussein is "the
most bloodstained and dangerous dictator in power today." Somehow the
remaining Communist countries seemed to have slipped his mind. Is Saddam
really more demonic than the rulers of, say, North Korea? What about China
- and Cuba? The dark lord of the Cuban gulag is no less sinister than the
Butcher of Baghdad - yet how come we don't hear any calls for a Bay of Pigs
II coming from Talbot's direction?

 UNITED THEY STAND

 Here, at the end of history, the conservative lion lies down with the
liberal lamb, and all are united in a single party: the War Party. Left,
Right, and center, all are marching off the precipice, ready to sacrifice
the remnants of our old Republic because, after all, everything's changed,
and it's time to make the Big Change - from republic to Empire.

 DEMONIZING DISSENT

 That both wings of the same War Party are going along with this massive US
invasion of Central Asia should come as no surprise. There has been
virtually no debate over foreign policy for some 25 years, and the whole
purpose of the war consensus is to make sure that this remains the case.
There has been a very effective campaign by the court intellectuals - the
Andrew Sullivans and David Horowitz clones on the right, and the
Christopher Hitchens-David Talbot brigade on the left - to demonize any and
all dissent. Anyone who breathes so much as a word of criticism is
immediately caricaturized as a supporter of Al Qaeda, a Johnny Walker who
ought to be stood up against a wall and shot. And, who knows, before this
is all over, it just may come to that=8A.

 OUR TIME WILL COME

 As for the opponents of the War Party, on the right as well as the left,
what hope is there, after all? The dogs of war are unleashed, and the mob
is howling down our message. Let them howl, then. Our time will come. The
military draft Talbot, in his perverse nostalgia, pines for, would create a
mass movement in response, and wake up the young to the folly of their
elders. The cycle, having come full circle, would be repeated again -
although, perhaps, this time with new intensity, since the stakes are
higher.

 WHAT'S AT STAKE

 Make no mistake about it: what is at stake here is whether or not the US
is going to fight World War III. The propaganda campaign to invade and
conquer Iraq is, in effect, a proposal to invade and conquer the entire
Arab world: to start and "win" a civilizational war in order to seize the
the world's oil supplies, appease the Israeli lobby - and subjugate a
billion-plus Muslims in the process.

 A STEP AWAY

 This is madness, but who will dare to say it in the present atmosphere?
The War Party is hoping that they can set the terms of the debate, and
that, therefore, no real debate will ever occur. What they want is to
intimidate any potential opposition from consolidating, and, if necessary,
even illegalize most opposition to their war plans. While this latter may
seem far-fetched, or even completely out of the question, think of how
quickly that could change if another terrorist attack is carried out
successfully.

 A WARNING, AND A GUIDE TO ACTION

 We are but a few steps away from imposing martial law in this country,
and, if that comes, there will be opposition: the blood of the Founders has
not been entirely diluted. Of one thing you can be sure: this final
transition to Empire will not take place without a furious fight. Whether
victory is likely for the partisans of our old Republic, or even possible,
is the kind of speculation that every writer should avoid, unless he is
ready, willing and able to go in for writing novels. In the present
circumstances, all I can do is cite the prescient words of Garet Garrett,
which must serve as a warning and a guide to action:

 "What you have to face is that the cost of saving the Republic may be
extremely high. It could be relatively as high as the cost of setting it up
in the first place, one hundred and seventy-five years ago, when love of
political liberty was a mighty passion, and people were willing to die for
it."

 HAVE PATIENCE

 Whether that mighty passion can be rekindled, or has flickered out beyond
hope of revival, is a subject for a book, rather than a mere article. But
remember that the passion of a few can over come the apathy, lethargy, and
ignorance of the many, and that in any battle worth fighting it is always
the most passionate who will likely win out. I can say, without
oversimplifying matters, that the American people will never fight for
Empire, and that a war for conquest can only be disguised as a war for
vengeance, or justice, for so long. So, to the antiwar movement, left and
right, I can only say: be patient. Our moment has not yet arrived. Until it
does, let us expose the lies of the War Party and get ready for the day
when the people are ready to hear the truth. That day, I reckon, is not
far.

 A CONSOLATION PRIZE

 Let us also take consolation in the undoubted truth that the antiwar
movement is a lot better off without Talbot and his fellow greybearded
hippies. It was they, after all, who gave the movement its wimpish,
wishy-washy tie-dyed look: let them celebrate the alleged "liberation" of
Afghan women by the US and its pet "freedom fighters" of the moment, and
fatuously declare, as Vanity Fair's resident socialist did, that
Afghanistan has been "bombed out of the Stone Age."

 The Left is merely doing what comes naturally: warmongering is one of
their most sacred traditions. It was, after all, the American Communist
Party that beat the war drums the loudest just prior to our entry into the
last world war. It was the Commies and their tens of thousands of fellow
travelers at the time who denounced the antiwar movement as "Hitler's fifth
column" and called for their prosecution as "traitors" well before Pearl
Harbor. This leopard never really changed its spots, except superficially,
and is now rapidly reverting to its natural coloration: a screaming
blood-bright red.

 WAR IS THE HEALTH OF THE STATE

 War, as Randolph Bourne famously averred, is the health of the State.
Every giant step on the road to centralized government and state socialism
was taken under the pretext of a "wartime emergency," and every attempt to
increase government power is invariably declared to be a "war." The "war on
drugs," the "war on poverty," the "war on teenage pregnancy," the list of
social engineering schemes launched in the style of a military campaign
describes practically all of the major failed government boondoggles of the
past forty years.

 In wartime the State is all-powerful and its legitimacy is unquestioned -
except in defeat. Government officials can get away with anything in the
name of winning a war - and so the idea is to declare one as often as
possible. The Left's almost religious faith in the power of government to
cure practically all social ills is ideally suited to a time of perpetual
crisis, dislocation, and fear. Big Government, once thought to be totally
discredited, is now making an amazing comeback - and that's why Talbot and
the folks at Salon have suddenly seen the light and learned to love the
bomb.

 A NOTE: DELISO GOES TO MACEDONIA!

 While a grand "anti-terrorist" alliance goes on a hunt for Muslim
terrorists, what is forgotten is that the US was and still is backing these
very same Muslim terrorists in southeastern Europe. Al Qaeda was and still
is a presence in the Balkans, where bin Laden's "mujahedeen" fought
side-by-side with Bosnian Muslim military units and the Kosovo Liberation
Army: one has difficulty believing that the few arrests recently made in
Bosnia even scratched the surface of the Evil One's underground assets in
the region. So I am pleased to report that Chris Deliso, a very talented
and knowledgeable scholar of Byzantine civilization whose writings have
often graced our pages, is traveling to Macedonia - the center of the
Balkan maelstrom - within days. He will be sending us reports from that
now-forgotten battlefield, so look for his byline: this is going to be very
interesting=8A.

[END]

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Thought for the Day:

"A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state."

(William Blake)