Antiwar.com and al-Qaeda

Poor Justin Raimondo. Your correspondent’s humble request that the Antiwar.com chieftain provide a link to his site’s attacks on al-Qaeda, which he assured us do in fact exist, seems to have sent him into something approaching a meltdown. Indeed, the request for evidence has earned yours truly the droll title of “Commissar Laksin” and the assertion that I’m engaging in libel. Now that’s touchy, even for a libertarian. For all his bluster, however, I’m happy to report that Justin has obliged.

Just one problem: It doesn’t help his case.

In fact, the September 2001 piece starts off on a rather embarrassing note for our paleo-propagandist, as he confidently predicts that the invasion of Afghanistan, so feverishly desired by the hated neo-con quislings, will not happen after all—an assertion that does not, to say the least, recommend Raimondo’s powers of political analysis. But never mind that. Let’s turn to the good stuff, the smash-mouth attacks on our nation’s Islamist enemies. Yes, well, you see, the trouble is… those don’t exist. Instead, Raimondo makes Bin Laden’s case for him, rehearsing the litany of supposed terrorist grievances and calling it analysis. Thus:

"To point out that it is a mistake to garrison thousands of American soldiers on the Saudi peninsula does not justify the destruction of the World Trade Center: it only helps us to understand why it happened. To hold that it does not serve American interests to unconditionally support Israel hardly justifies terrorism. To say that the continual bombing of Iraq is a war crime is not to engage in `moral equivalence' – it is to state a fact glaringly obvious to the Arab `street' and Muslims all over the world. To point to the sources and inspiration of bin Laden's movement is not to prettify it but to analyze it: for only by such sober analysis will it be possible to rip up the terrorist network by its roots. Those roots are ideological, in the conviction that the American and British `crusaders' are out to destroy Islamic civilization…"

Elsewhere, Raimondo avers:

"The massive intelligence failure that made September 11 possible can be fixed – some seem to think – by throwing money at the problem and a quick change of personnel. But the real failure, here, is of our interventionist foreign policy. (emphasis mine)"

If you’re thinking that this sounds less like a rhetorical broadside against al-Qaeda and more like threadbare isolationist boilerplate, you’re in possession of an I.Q. at least twice the mean of Antiwar.com. Which, I regret to say, is not a noteworthy achievement.

A few final points: Raimondo takes issue with my calling Michael Scheuer a “disgraced” CIA agent: “Scheuer is ‘disgraced’ because … well, he got a bad review in Commentary.” Um, no, Justin, Scheuer is disgraced because he has gone from authoring intelligence reports on matters of pressing national security, however incompetently he did so, to filing crude Israel-bashing polemics for Antiwar.com, where they go to die a slow, unread death.

One can understand Raimondo’s sympathy for Scheuer as he seems to share the shamed spook's belief that Israel is a “theocracy-in-all-but-name.” Justin writes, “And we aren’t supposed to ask why a nation that isn’t a theocracy wants to be known as ‘the Jewish state.’”

First, it never fails to amaze me how the margins of the Left and Right gravel about their inability to say certain things even as they’re saying them. If Raimondo were more honest, he would say what’s really bugging him: namely, that no one’s listening. No doubt that hurts, old sport. But, as the late Hubert Humphrey used to say, the right to freedom of speech does not imply the right to be taken seriously.

The second point seems too blindingly obvious to make, but this is Antiwar.com so we must take nothing for granted. The fact that Israel is a largely Jewish state does not make it a “theocracy” any more than Europe’s Christian heritage makes that continent a theocracy or the Judeo-Christian ethic at the heart of American culture makes our country a theocracy. A theocracy would be a country like, say, Iran. You know Iran, Justin. That’s the country your coherency-challenged contributors are so assiduously shilling for.