I wonder what the Kossites will think when they read (if they bother to) Omar Fahdil’s wry account of the search of his Baghdad house by US troops last night. Last week, after the Fadhil Brothers were quoted by President Bush, several choir members at the Daily Kos started singing a full-blown oratorio (accompanied by various backup performers in the MSM) asserting that Omar and Mohammed must be CIA agents or the like. They couldn’t possibly hold such pro-democracy views on their own. After all, they’re Iraqis!
And now they have been searched by the US Military. What are we to make of this? I’m sure any upstanding Kossite would agree that this is an obvious set-up – a disinformation effort in the grand tradition of similar operations we all know from LeCarré novels. Omar knew all along that the Americans would be showing up! Why else would he have had a barbecue going?!
Now accusations of the Fadhils being in the CIA – because they happen to like democracy – are not new. (Would that the CIA liked democracy as much as they do.) They were already occurring back in December 2004 when I had the pleasure of hosting the brothers at my house. (Here is a Cathy Seipp article – touch my heart – for NRO about the occasion.) But what’s truly interesting about the reaction to Omar and Mohammed is how they create an inability-to-hear among the self-described “progressive” elements in our society. Cognitive dissonance, the term I used in the title of this post, is perhaps not entirely accurate. It may be something closer to good, old-fashioned shame. When confronted with the Fadhils, they are face-to-face with the best in human idealism, something our soi-disant Left lost decades ago. No wonder the Kossites want to disbelieve Omar and Mohammed. I would too were I in their shoes.
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25 Comments
1. Charlie (Colorado):What you said, Roger.
What you said.
Mar 31, 2007 - 5:38 pm 2. Grokodile:Baaa. Baaaa. Is it sheering time yet?
Mar 31, 2007 - 7:23 pm 3. sammy small:What the Kossites think isn’t worth the time to write about it. They’re irrelevant when it comes to rational thought.
Mar 31, 2007 - 8:17 pm 4. Jamie Irons:Roger,
I’m not sure of this, but I think you were the first to characterize the soi-disant left as “reactionary.”
It took me a while (I’m slow) to understand fully what you meant. But perhaps the incident you record here is as good an illustration of the reactionary left as one could hope (if I may put it that way) for.
One can only pray that we are seeing here “good, old-fashioned shame,” because that might mean that at least some of these individuals are capable of change.
(Right.)
(It’s an odd synchronicity that I had a pleasant visit today by a well-known blogger friend of yours, and we were discussing the Fadhil brothers, but did not yet know of the incident you cite.)
Jamie Irons
Jamie Irons
Apr 1, 2007 - 12:05 am 5. SDN:Kossites can read?
Apr 1, 2007 - 6:18 am 6. Curtis:The Kossites have too much invested in their current stance to allow the “threat” of common and decent discourse.
Apr 1, 2007 - 6:28 am 7. shannonlove:Interestingly enough, we saw the same pattern of thought in Vietnam era whenever someone from Indochina spoke out against Communism.
Leftist of the era convinced themselves that (1) the people of Indochina wanted to live under a mass-murdering totalitarian ideology and that (2) letting the people fall under the control of a mass-murdering totalitarian ideology would in fact be the best thing that could happen to them. The grim outcome is known to all.
In pursuit of political power, Leftist must automatically market themselves as advocating the opposite policies of those on the Right. Since the Right in the free-world opposes totalitarians and promote democracy, Leftist quite often find themselves the strange bedfellows of the totalitarians. They eventually argue themselves around to the idea that the totalitarians are in effect the good guys in the conflict. Therefor, anyone in the region opposing the totalitarians must be a bad guy.
Its amazing how selfishness corrupts our reasoning.
Apr 1, 2007 - 6:47 am 8. Dean Esmay:I’ve been referring to this strain of the left as “reactionary” for years now. It means people who react without thinking. It’s a perfectly appropriate term.
The Kosite position on Iraq is and always has been anti-progressive, anti-humanist, and reactionary. The exact opposite of what the left historically claimed to stand for.
Apr 1, 2007 - 7:07 am 9. photoncourier.blogspot.com:“Progressives” often combine a self-concept of being very courageous people with a rather complete lack of courage in their personal lives. They believe they are doing something very brave by trashing “the establishment”, while usually that “establishment” that really matters to them–the other senior professors at the university, the producer at the film studio–are 100% in agreement with their positions. Moreover, many of them follow career paths based on the minimization of risk.
For someone like this, the sight of a *genuinely* courageous individual is a severe psychological threat.
Apr 1, 2007 - 7:30 am 10. postroad:It has always bothered me that bloggers devote so much energy to badmouthing “the other side,” instead of making a statement, a case about something, and, in the process, dumping on MSM. In fact, many of enjoy MSM because we don’t run itno so much sniping and back and forth venom. You don’t like Kos? fine. Ignore him and tell us something about something of substance. I seriously doubt that readers of blogs on the Left, or those on the Right, bother with what the other side says anyway, since each is convinced that truth and beauty is all on the side they believe in…the other side–we know–is living in a makebelieve world, devoid of substance, facts, objectivity. Our side has it all. So let us tell each other how smart we are and how stupid THEY are.
Apr 1, 2007 - 7:45 am 11. Bostonian:and the rest, dear Roger, is silence
What really, really gets me is that when leftists say that the Fahdil brothers are “too good to be true,” they are saying, in effect, that it is inconceivable that any Iraqi (out of 25 million people!), could possibly be in favor of deposing Uncle Saddam and electing a government instead.
What does that say about the left’s view of human nature? Or do they reserve this scorn for middle easterners?
I am just dumbfounded.
Apr 1, 2007 - 7:47 am 12. Roger:postroad, basically I agree with you. I almost never comment on the Daily Kos, etc. on this blog. I hae neither the time nor the inclination. But in this rare instance where I know the human beings involved personally, I was moved to write.
Apr 1, 2007 - 8:05 am 13. Bostonian:Postroad:
Apr 1, 2007 - 8:05 am 14. SMGalbraith:Feel free to take your own advice.
I plead guilty to being a reactionary.
When a story is disseminated accusing the US of a wrongdoing, my initial (kneejerk if you insist) response is to challenge the report and try to debunk it.
I’ll study the report looking for errors or inconsistencies.
I don’t want to believe it.
Similarly, when a report is made that is beneficial to the US or her interests or showing the country in a positive light, I want to believe it.
But when a report or story critical of the US or injurious to her standing in the world is released, the Left’s usual response is to embrace the report and uncritically accept it.
They (not all; but many) want to believe it. Indeed, they celebrate it.
And they wonder why they’re accused of being anti-American.
Apr 1, 2007 - 9:12 am 15. Gerard Van der Leun:They don’t wonder. They revel in it. It is their reason to live.
Apr 1, 2007 - 9:55 am 16. Captain Hate:“In fact, many of enjoy MSM because we don’t run itno so much sniping and back and forth venom.”
I’m not sure what agenda you’re trying to advance with this garbage but you’re deliberately choosing to ignore much of the content. Except it’s overwhelmingly in one direction.
Apr 1, 2007 - 10:12 am 17. Terrye:Speaking of the reactionary nature of the left I saw something over at Flopping Aces that sort of reinforces the notion of the left as reactionary:
[T]he leader of Cambodia in 1975, wrote a letter to the US Ambassador John Dean as Mr. Dean made plans to evacuate him and his family out of the country in which the US would no longer help:
Dear Excellency and friend,
I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion.
As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave us and it is my wish that you and your country will find happiness under the sky.
But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.
Please accept, Excellency, my dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.
Sirik Matak.
{Sirik Matak was murdered by the Khmer Rouge}
Apr 1, 2007 - 10:56 am 18. Matthew:Postroad,
I agree that a little negativity goes a long way, and that it is very easy to over-indulge in criticism.
However, judicious sniping is occasionally called for. Otherwise, our intellectual/political rivals’ need to be held accountable will be neglected.
The thing I don’t get about the Kossite labelling of Iraqis as being covert CIA agents is how that is supposed to be a bad thing.
If I were a democratic Iraqi, and I wanted to make a difference, I might be reluctant to work on an official basis with a foreign occupying power. But when terrorists and kidnappers and Baathists are all trying to sow anarchy and destruction, joining forces with the CIA would be an admirable and brave choice.
Apr 1, 2007 - 10:57 am 19. Roger:Wow, Terrye, I never read that before.
What can we say?
Apr 1, 2007 - 12:03 pm 20. AMR:The American Left aids and abets our enemies, whether they intend to or not. If they manage to succeed in causing the anarchy in the US now found in Iraq, they will not last long. They might find out that those free speech rights they now enjoy will get them killed under the new order. That is what the intelligentsia found out after they supported the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Apr 1, 2007 - 4:29 pm 21. Tex Lovera:Iranian Revolution? Hell, try the Russian Revolution!! The lessons people refuse to learn…
Apr 1, 2007 - 8:47 pm 22. Thomass:Posted by: Dean Esmay at April 1, 2007 07:07 AM
“I’ve been referring to this strain of the left as “reactionary” for years now. It means people who react without thinking. It’s a perfectly appropriate term.”
Me too… but because I see them as reactionary in the old left way… They’re against progress..
They’ve got nothing to offer and seem to be picking up more and more old right stances as they go.. luddite, organic, greenies romantising the pre industrial past, anti-globalism, distaining the US due to its
Apr 1, 2007 - 10:31 pm 23. Dan Wismar:Another example of this phenomenon is the embarrassment of the so-called feminist movement in the U.S. caused by the presence of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is a symbol and a reminder of the relative pettiness and partisanship of their movement, when compared to the “big picture” cause embraced by Hirsi Ali; the enslavement and oppression of women around the world by Islam, among others, about which the PC-censored American feminist movement is largely silent.
Apr 2, 2007 - 11:01 am 24. Buddy Larsen:When American feminist organizations couldn’t bring themselves to speak out for the Taliban women (maybe the most gender-oppressed group on the planet), for the painfully obvious reason that to’ve done so would have supported the American war effort, American feminist organizations exposed themselves as organizations only using feminism as a front, in order to advance the anti-capitalist (AKA “Marxist”) agenda.
Apr 2, 2007 - 4:05 pm 25. waterdragon52:Betrayed: How Mideast Progressives Feel About Their Western ‘Comrades’
Amir Taheri
New York Post, April 1/07
WHILE elements of the Left in the United States and Europe are calling on Western democracies to abandon Afghanistan and Iraq to the Taliban and al Qaeda and surrender to the Khomeinists in Iran, new alliances are emerging against the jihadists in the region.
In much of the Middle East, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq, the Left is part of these new alliances.
* In Iraq, two rival Communist parties, along with Social Democrats and other center-left groups, supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and continue to play a significant role in the new pluralist system. They are resolutely opposed to a premature withdrawal of American and allied forces, as demanded by the U.S. Congress.
* In Lebanon, Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party is at the heart of the democratic movement to against the Islamic Republic’s attempt to dominate the country through its Hezbollah surrogates. The Lebanese democratic movement includes other parties of the Left, notably the Socialist Salvation Movement (Inqadh) and the Movement of the Democratic Left.
Read it all:
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/20678
Apr 3, 2007 - 9:51 am