Airstrip One

Samismear

I always judge the effectiveness of a position by the smears it attracts. Antiwar.com must have been having a good week. In Samizdata Perry de Haviland smears with gusto:

Jeremy Sapienza writes in his article called Only Terrorists Kill Innocents on Anti-War.com:

Err, it's actually on anti-state.com a rather smaller anarcho-capitalist site which Sapienza founded. I understand that Sapienza works on antiwar.com as the webmaster, although a quick google of the site showed only one article by him, another google of antiwar.com shows no mention of the mentioned article at all.

De Haviland then mentions "anti-war.com" four times, and anti-state.com, err none. So the article is clearly an attack on antiwar.com for an article that they never bothered to publish.

The article is, needless to say, dissected to throw the worse possible light on Mr Sapienza. For example this bit is quoted:

There seem to be many people, even in libertarian circles, who think that America was attacked because of abstract principles like "freedom" and "prosperity" and even "democracy." And I didn’t want to say it, but so far it has been overwhelmingly true: the libertarians who would otherwise agree with the rest of us on most things but have done complete 180s here are Jewish. They support Israel blindly and fanatically, out of some allegiance to, as one writer put it, his "creed."

Sounds a nasty anti-semitic piece of work, doesn't he? So it's funny, very funny that this bit is not quoted:

Part of my family is Jewish, but my mother doesn’t imply that Arabs are less than human. I must have lucked out with my set of raving liberal Jewish relatives who don’t particularly like Israelis, because they are generally pushy, obnoxious, and rude, which probably comes from their perch atop the class ladder of the Middle East. It’s not their way or the highway. It’s their way or you get shot. And many American Jews like this attitude because they wish they had it and were not such nebbishy armchair warriors.

So instead of being anti-semitic as Perry may have been implying (and why else would he write "I am a so-called 'pro-war' libertarian, though 100% Goy" if not to imply that) this is actually inter-Jewish criticism. It may not be fair (and I think Jeremy is being unfair to American Jews, and the pushiness of Israelis is probably more due to do with a macho Meditaranean culture as the half Italian Sapienza should realise) but it is not being driven by racial hatred.

Then there is the fact that the article was written on 17th September, 2001 - eighteen months ago. This final bit of evidence is circumstantial compared to de Haviland's mis-attribution and selective quotation - but it still looks more fishy than it should. Why else drag back an article from so long ago, not mention that it is dated less than a week after September 11th and then attack it as if it were an argument against the then barely contemplated invasion of Iraq? The lack of context in Samizdata is telling.

I've probably burned all bridges to British "libertarians" as I write this, and the more personal comments have been deleted. However I can only say that this piece was either honest or compent - it could not be both.

Article reproduced in case it is changed in Samizdata:

Jeremy Sapienza writes in his article called Only Terrorists Kill Innocents on Anti-War.com:


There seem to be many people, even in libertarian circles, who think that America was attacked because of abstract principles like "freedom" and "prosperity" and even "democracy." And I didn’t want to say it, but so far it has been overwhelmingly true: the libertarians who would otherwise agree with the rest of us on most things but have done complete 180s here are Jewish. They support Israel blindly and fanatically, out of some allegiance to, as one writer put it, his "creed."

[...]

It is a very easy concept to understand: the US government bombs innocent civilians all over the world, with hundreds of thousands dead in Arab parts, and so they hate us. They hate us because our government exterminates them like mosquitoes. So, in response to our government killing civilians, they kill OUR civilians. It is not right, but it is the only logical sustaining impetus for this utter hatred of Americans and our country.

[...]

Don’t worry, if we carpet-bomb Kabul there will still be Afghanis. I mean, they can still make more, right?

[...]

What the hell is the matter with you people!? Why are you so thirsty for innocent blood!? There has not been any arguments thus far that have convinced me that Muslims or Arabs are innately evil, or innately hate America because it is a prosperous, capitalist country. These are the ravings of people who are either lunatics or are too lazy to apply otherwise-heeded libertarian principles to their knee-jerk emotional reactions. Death is horrible. We should be working to eliminate it, not perpetuate it.

Well I am a so-called 'pro-war' libertarian, though 100% Goy, so I assume at least some of what is being written on anti-war.com is being directed at me and those of my ilk. However I do not support Israel 100%... in fact probably rather less that 50% if the truth be known.

Nevertheless I think it is clear that America was indeed attacked for abstract principles, just not ones like "freedom" and "prosperity" and even "democracy". It was attacked for the abstract principles upon which the Islamic fundamentalism is based, which is to say 'anti-secularism' and as a corollary, anti-capitalism. You see Islam is indeed under attack in ways that really terrify fundamentalists the world over. However it should be obvious that the people who brought us the latest in Kamikaze tactics that bombing, and violent death generally, is not what frightens and engenders hatred from Islamists... it is an aggressive, global, unbounded secularism, whose carrier wave is a global and God-neutral capitalism which they fear. Not B-52s or F-16s or Tornados or Cruise missiles, but Playboy and Nintendo and banks-which-charge-interests and cheap DVD's and satellite TV which mullahs cannot effectively control and so on and so on...

The likes of Al Qaeda want 'us' to leave 'them' alone... and by 'them' they mean the world's Muslim population. But 'we' will never ever do that, because 'we' not really controlled by any authority who can make us stop making and selling whatever nominal Muslims the world over want to buy. And so out of desperation, the people to whom the very reason for their existance on earth is an imposed morality centred on certain abstract conceptions of God and Man which the secular world cares nothing about, attack us.

But Jeremy Sapienza does not see that, just the fact Iraq has been bombed since the 'end' of the last Gulf War, ergo that is the reason 'they' attacked 'us'. And yet on September 11th the USA was not attacked by Iraqis angry at their treatment by the USAF, so I cannot see the relevance of Mr. Sapienza's remarks about that being why 'they' kill 'our' civilians ... neither was the USA attacked by members of the PLO or Hamas, who regularly get bombed by Israel, so I am not sure what relevance that has either... and just for completeness, neither were the hijackers that day Serbians who were pissed off about losing Kosova due to US and NATO actions, or German smarting over the end of the Third Reich or Japanese lamenting the loss of the South-East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

For the most part they were Saudis... and I cannot off-hand recall the last time the USAF bombed Saudi Arabia.

But then I think the article about which I am commenting is just a litany of misunderstandings and outright fallacies...leaving aside the patently false and positively libelous notion that the USAF/USN intentionally targeted civilians in Afghanistan (or anywhere else in the last decade). I wonder if Mr. Sapienza realises 'carpet bombing' is a technical military term which actually has a specific meaning. If Kabul had been carpet bombed, it would look rather like Dresden or Hamburg circa 1945, with tens of thousands killed in each air attack.

So what is the matter with us? Well for a start, we are not 'pro-war'... we are pro-liberation. If Jeremy Sapienza can come up with a way to end mass murderous Ba'athist Socialism in Iraq by using harsh language and grimaces and singing Kumbayah, then I will quickly become a generous benefactor of anti-war.com. Until that is the case, I do wish he would stop his knee jerk emotional reactions and realise that yes, death is horrible... and the best way to stop the epidemic of state sponsored death is Iraq is to engineer the overthrow of Ba'athist Socialism so that Saddam and Uday, and their coterie of thugs, end up hanging on meathooks in a public square in Baghdad.

You see, some libertarians see the world the way it really is and want to actually see tyranny overthrown with the tools at hand now and replaced with liberty and justice for all. Quaint but there you have it.

Yes we all know that what will follow Ba'athist Socialism will not be some libertarian nirvana, but it will be better that what is there now... if you are an isolationist, then call yourself an isolationist, I have no problem with that. Just don't think you are taking a moral libertarian position. You ain't. The anti-war.com crowd are very willing to contemplate the cost of war and the benefits of peace... but that rather misses the obvious fact that the alternative to war in Iraq, right now, is not 'peace' but continued tyranny. So what is the cost of tyranny in Iraq, Mr. Sapienza... year after year after year?

So when he writes "Death is horrible. We should be working to eliminate it, not perpetuate it"... why is he so keen to see Saddam Hussain, the principle cause of unnatural death in Iraq, perpetuated? That may not be his desire, for I have no reason to think Jeremy Sapienza is an evil man, but that is the reality of an anti-war position.