Deploying The Marines For Gay Rights

Again a service for our readers in a hurry, Speed Coulter...

Title: Deploying The Marines For Gay Rights, Feminism And Peacekeeping
Liberals don't believe in defending America.
Kissinger is working with the liberals. Bad Kissinger, bad, bad.
We need to get Saddam before he nukes Manhattan.
Irrelevant aside: Saddam is worse than Milosevic.
Again mention risk of Saddam nuking Manhattan.
Bad liberals. Bad, bad. (Blame them for Vietnam.)

Now if you still feel the need to read more, here it is:

Deploying The Marines For Gay Rights, Feminism And Peacekeeping
by Ann Coulter
August 21 , 2002

Sadly, the title is a come on. No Marines were deployed for Gay Rights in the making of this article.

ON A BREAK from lachrymose accounts of Palestinian women weeping for their children, the New York Times has been trying to induce hysteria over the shocking Bush policy of deploying American troops in order to protect American interests. Such self-interested behavior is considered boorish in Manhattan salons.

As she often does, Coulter starts with a cruel aside: "lachrymose accounts." The implication is that the Times, in typical bleeding-heart liberal fashion, spends too much time covering Palestinian women weeping for their children. So Coulter doesn't give a damn for heart-broken Palestinian mothers? She thinks tears are wasted on Arabs? What cruel idea is she trying to convey with this hard-hearted introduction. Of course, one (or she) could deny that she intends to be cruel or insensitive, but then why the use of "on a break" (which suggests the Times has been spending excessive time doing this), or the use of the phrase at all? Finally, a reality check: the Times actually spends very little column space covering mourning Palestinian women.

The only just wars, liberals believe, are those in which the United States has no stake. Liberals warm to the idea of American mothers weeping for their sons, but only if their deaths will not make America any safer.

And what wars are these? I thought us liberals were a bunch of pacifists who opposed all wars?

Thus the Times and various McTimes across the nation have touted the idea that invading Iraq "only" to produce a regime change is unjustifiable, contrary to international law, and a grievous affront to the peace-loving Europeans.

As the left's new pet, Henry No-Longer-a-War-Criminal Kissinger, put it: "Regime change as a goal for military intervention challenges the international system established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia…And the notion of justified pre-emption runs counter to modern international law, which sanctions the use of force in self-defense only against actual, not potential, threats."

As Coulter admits, it's not just liberals who have doubts about invading Iraq just on the Prez's say-so: Kissinger (who many of us STILL feel is a loathsome toad), hardly a bleeding heart, has expressed grave reservations. Furthermore, Coulter ignores the fact that a few other Republicans, including, most surprisingly, Brent Scowcroft, Bush senior's National Security advisor, have also criticized Bush's Iraq plan. I understand her need to leave these facts out: to admit that there was dissension in the Republican ranks would force Coulter to abandon her "all liberals evil, all Republicans good" philosophy.

The idea that America would be transgressing the laws of man and God by invading Iraq (unless and until Saddam nukes Manhattan) is absurd.

Does no one remember Clinton's misadventure in the Balkans? Liberals loved that war because Slobodan Milosevic posed no conceivable threat to the United States. To the contrary, as President Clinton put it: "This is America at its best. We seek no territorial gain; we seek no political advantage."

Again, another distortion. Many, many liberals opposed Clinton's involvement in the Balkans. Nasty fights between leftists ensued over what was the right thing to do.

Deposing Milosevic, Clinton explained, vindicated no national interest, but was urgent because it was akin to stopping a "hate crime." Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said our purpose in the Balkans was "ending ethnic strife" and creating "multiethnic societies."

One searches in vain for some description of an American interest in the Balkans.

Instead, Milosevic was denounced -- by Clinton, Albright, Tony Blair and the whole croaking chorus -- for "genocide." Clinton's defense secretary, William Cohen, estimated that 100,000 Albanian civilians "may have been murdered."

Hold on here, why is Coulter denouncing poor Blair? He's one of the few foreign leaders who has been giving Bush's Iraq plan full support. Very odd, maybe she just doesn't like Brits. Or doesn't think before she types.

Liberal enthusiasts for our "humanitarian" war in the Balkans, it turned out, were over-hasty in their use of the word "genocide" in connection with Milosevic. In the end, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found fewer than 3,000 bodies, most of them men of military age.

So the fact that they were of "military age" somehow makes it ok to slaughter them and bury them in unmarked graves?

Commentators were soon rushing in to explain that these "new details" did not change the fact that Milosevic had engaged in ethnic cleansing and the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

That doesn't make Milosevic a hero, but he's a piker compared to Saddam, who has gassed tens of thousands of his own people and killed almost a million enemy troops in the war with Iran. Liberals oppose a war with Iraq, despite Saddam's far more impressive credentials as a mass murderer, because acting against Saddam is in the self-interest of the United States.

Or maybe they, and others, have doubts about how winnable such a war might be, or how much it might hurt us in international opinion, or how long our troops will be tied up in Iraq. I mean, why exactly to some people hate us so much they want to fly planes into our buildings? Maybe because we invade other people's countries just a little too easily. Sure Saddam is scum, but there are a lot of scum on this planet, we go invading them all.

Also, it's a bit much to mention Iraq's crimes against Iran when WE supported Iraq during that war. Should we invade ourselves now as punishment for our crimes against Iran?

The left's theory of a just war is that: (1) military force must never be deployed in America's self-interest; and (2) we must first receive approval from the Europeans, especially the Germans. (Good thing we didn't have that rule in 1941!)

Yeah, WW2, a war opposed by Republicans (until the Japanese bombed us) and fostered by a Democratic president.

By liberal logic, preventing Saddam Hussein from nuking Manhattan is not sufficient justification for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq because the United States has a special self-interest in not being nuked and therefore can't be trusted.

Saddam has no capacity to nuke us. He almost certainly has no nukes, and even if he's managed to scrape one together (which all intelligence agencies say he hasn't) he doesn't have any missiles that could hit us. Heck, he couldn't even reach the darn French.

And why all this obsession with Saddam nuking Manhattan? I know Coulter lives in Manhattan, so I guess she must be staying up late nights worrying. Not like me. I live in Manhattan too. But I stay up late nights worrying about Coulter. We all need our little obsessions.

Similarly, Israel has less claim to act against Yasser Arafat than NATO did against Milosevic because actual Israelis are getting killed by the terror forces they are battling -- so they are self-interested. The Times was warmly enthusiastic about Clinton's humanitarian effort in Kosovo, but is indignant about Israeli self-defense in Gaza.

The Times is not "indignant" about Israel's self-defense in Gaza. Some Times pundits back Israel, other show some limited sympathy for the Palestinian position. An honest assessment (something Coulter is unable to make) would say that the Times remains pro-Israel, albeit with some doubts as to Sharon's policies. And as for Gaza, Israel's "self-defense" is the name of a few thousand settlers (less than 1/200 of the population) whose presence justifies, in Israeli eyes, massive curfews and repression of the Palestinian majority. Trying to justify the Gaza settlements is a joke, morally speaking.

Moreover, if forced deportation (aka "ethnic cleansing") is grounds for a war crimes trial of Milosevic, what is Arafat doing when he demands that all Israeli settlements be removed from the disputed territories of the West Bank? Milosevic gets a trial at the Hague for forced deportations. Arafat stages terrorist attacks to compel the forced deportation of Israelis, and he's a martyr if Israel messes up his office furniture in Ramallah.

And does the fact that most of those Israeli settlers are recent arrivals who have moved into the West Bank and Gaza with the sole purpose of annexing those territories and expelling the Palestinians themselves affect this moral equation just a trifle? I guess not in Coulter's mind.

The point -- which is always the same point -- is that we must not protect ourselves but should just let liberals run the world. Liberals believe they are best qualified in war and peace and forced busing because they aren't going to suffer the consequences. Thus, they can act freely for "humanity." If it turns sour, like their adventure in Vietnam, they can always drop it and pin the blame on others.

Wait a sec? Didn't the Republicans back that war? Am I missing something? Sure Kennedy and Johnson were in it up to their eyeballs, but it was Nixon and boys who did there best to win the sucker, escalated things in Laos and Cambodia, and then pulled the plug when it all went bad in the early 70s. Coulter sometimes has to play fast and loose with history to make the liberals always come out the villains.

©2002 Carl Skutsch. All rights reserved.
All opinions expressed herein are those of the author unless otherwise noted
(and it goes without saying that they make more sense than Coulter's opinions.)

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