Some bits and pieces from throughout the blogosphere.
“If the Bush Administration Lied About WMDs, So Did These People”–says it all, really, but you’ve got to read some of the assertions by people who’ve magically transmogrified into doves now that a Republican’s in the White House. Via Instapundit.
Also via Insta, Howard Kurtz on the non-looting at Baghdad’s national history museum, and the lack of any corrections or apologies from the news media. To quote Jack White, I said it once before, but it bears repeating now.
(I would like to point out that I wouldn’t be surprised if some of what we heard about Iraq wasn’t true. One constant about government, all government, is that it lies to its people on a regular basis, and despite my support for some of the foreign-policy aims of the current administration, there’s no reason to assume this isn’t still the case. But basically you’d have to come up with a hell of a whopper to make me think that your dishonesty outweighs the moral necessity of ousting fascists.)
Little Green Footballs, meanwhile, has a chart documenting the countries that provided weapons to Saddam Hussein during his years in power, and–get this!–the United States isn’t even in the top ten! Who’d’a thunk it? I’ve always thought the anti-war “argument” that “The U.S. created Saddam Hussein, man!” was idiotic for an entirely different reason–as Christopher Hitchens often puts it, wouldn’t that double or treble our obligation to get rid of him?–but here’s a whole ‘nother way for it to be dumb. (Of course, this is not to say that we didn’t provide support in other ways–intelligence, for example; general handshakes-from-Rumsfeld cheerleading; and of course, oil revenue), but given the information linked to above, five’ll get you ten that we weren’t close to No. 1 on those lists, either. Our suddenly principled anti-war friends the Russians, French, and Chinese, on the other hand…
Speaking of the French, here’s another discussion (via LGF) of France’s various impending crises, this one focusing on the influence of radical, non-integrated Muslim immigrants. I’m a little uncomfortable with the way all French Muslims are tarred with the same brush by some of the people in the discussion, but it’s hugely important for European nations to come to terms with the problems posed by their Muslim citizens and non-citizens. Arabs are an ethnic group, Muslims a religious one, and neither should be discriminated against. But Islamists–radical, intolerant Muslims who believe in the subjugation of women, homosexuals and non-Muslims by any means necessary and who apparently are the most prevalent and vocal demographic group in many Muslim countries–are a political group espousing a violent, fascist ideology, and this has to be addressed. The problem, of course, is that some of the nations of Europe are cozying up to the Islamists’ bosses in the Middle East, and making excuses for them when their supporters kill people for speaking out.
(That, of course, was what happened in the Netherlands with Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn was gay, and not just a little bit–he was a Wildean dandy. He disliked Islamists because–can you believe the nerve of this guy?–they think people like him should be executed. What a right-wing lunatic this Fortuyn was! And so he was assassinated by a left-wing activist who decried Fortuyn’s “intolerance.” This sentiment is echoed in the BBC obit I linked to above, which talks about how Fortuyn succeeded politically in the Netherlands “despite” its legacy of tolerance. Calling a political movement out on its stated aim–to institute sharia law and openly persecute homesexuals–is “intolerant,” I guess.)