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| Assassination chic (with special bonus fisking) |
| 2006-11-24 |
| by Jim Geraghty, National Review So, the KGB has successfully whacked a Putin critic in Great Britain. I'm sorry, the KGB has allegedly successfully whacked a Putin critic in Great Britain. This comes after about two years after they allegedly nearly successfully poisoned Yushchenko in Ukraine, in an attempt to whack the leader of the Orange Revolution. The Syrians successfully whacked... whoops, there I go again. The Syrians allegedly successfully whacked a critic in the Lebanese cabinet, less than two years after they allegedly successfully whacked the Lebanese Prime Minister. (I expect any minute now to hear the news that Bashir Assad signed a deal with News Corp. for a book entitled, "I Didn't Order Hariri Assassinated, But Hypothetically If I Did, Here's How It Went Down.") Saddam Hussein got the death penalty in a two-year-and-change trial that the organization Human Rights Watch has deemed "fundamentally unfair" and "unsound." I suppose we may have the wrong Iraqi dictator; perhaps it was some other Saddam Hussein who slaughtered all those people. And the last time a great butcher faced an international tribunal, Slobodan Milosevic, he died in the midst of a trial that was stretching into its fifth year. In other news, the Germans wanted to put Donald Rumsfeld on trial for war crimes. Because if there's any country that has the moral authority to judge American actions in war, it's Germany. There's a reason Americans are generally skeptical of international institutions and their laws, rules, and regulations. They generally stink. Besides the revelation that "Grosse Pointe Blank" was an inadvertent documentary, the current assassination chic reveals that democratic reformers, the international order, civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc., are doomed, at least as long as they play by these rules. The Syrians, the KGB, terror groups, etc. ignore all rules and laws and simply do what is necessary to kill anyone who stands in their way. The "good guys" not only don't use the same tactics, they've pledged to never consider it, through executive orders and death penalty bans. It's funny how Rep. Charlie "Let's Reinstate The Draft Specifically Because It Will Make the U.S. Military Less Effective" Rangel can lament the "assassination" of Uday and Qusay. The killing of Abu Zarqawi was also often described as "an assassination" in the U.S. press. Sadly, a hellfire missile coming out of the sky does not pause to read the target his rights. I made the mistake of watching "Munich" last week, in which I learned that assassinating members of Black September who helped plot a terrorist attack is "not righteous." That it's not something that good Jews do. No, good Jews lay down and die for their assailants, apparently. Or they live safely in Hollywood like Spielberg and make movies about how immoral it is for Israelis to assassinate terrorists. In a world in which the innocent are not safe while eating in Britain, or driving through the streets of Beirut, or running for office in Ukraine or working in skyscrapers in New York City, I turn to my social betters, the ones so quick to lament the blood on our hands from "assassination" and ask, "Okay, how do you want to fight this war?" Or perhaps, more specifically, "how do you want to win?" The bad guys are out to win, and will put out all the stops. And if they say "international tribunal," they might as well come out and say, "we're okay with dying." Because, you know, waterboarding is mean. Much meaner than poisoning someone or shooting up his car. UPDATE: So not long after this initial post, I got quite the response from a reader in Europe: There is no such thing as the KGB, so such an organization could not "whack", or even "allegedly whack" anyone, whether in London or elsewhere. Semantics. The Russian secret police and spy network can change the letterhead, but they’re the same bunch of cold-hearted SOBs. If it bothers you so much, print out the posting, cross out KGB and write “FSB” above it. Indeed, the British police are not even certain the man was deliberately poisoned and have downgraded the investigation to "suspicious death", which suggests they're moving away from that theory. He ate sushi just before he fell ill. Interesting. The man is on his deathbed, pointing the finger at Putin, and the insistence is, “the fish did it.” Round up the usual sushi chefs. Of course, eating bad sushi often leaves diners with their hair falling out, their throats swelling, severe damage to the nervous and immune systems and sudden heart failure. Happens all the time, right? I’m sure it’s strictly coincidental that he had tea with a former KGB bodyguard before falling ill. The interesting thing is why he was investigating this woman journalist's death and on behalf of whom. Since the neocons/Israel Lobby have been screeching from day 1 that it was Putin who did it, finding evidence to support that claim would be nothing new. However, if he had uncovered evidence that she had been murdered by someone else, and was too honest to suppress it, that would be a sensation that the guilty parties might not want to come out. A qui profite le crime? It was Neocons! Honest to God, this is like a parody of inane lefty conspiracy theories. Putin critics like "this woman journalist" Anna Politkovskaya are getting shot, dying in mysterious circumstances left and right, and the suspicious mind of our friend slips right over Putin and goes straight to Tel Aviv and the American Enterprise Institute. Come on, man, even Inspector Clouseau got the right guy eventually. I have never before heard anyone claim that Yushenko was poisoned by any agency of the Russian state or any other foreign state for that matter. Yushenko himself has never made any such claim. I assume you just made that up. Which do you, prefer, ABC News? . . . Or, the Washington Post: . . . Or how about the guy who just got poisoned himself? Courtesy of that noted neocon propaganda rag, the New York Times: . . . Anyway, back to our friend the skeptic: The ordinary principles of criminal investigation suggest that neither Syria nor Iran nor the US had anything to do with the Gemayel murder. All three had everything to lose and nothing to gain by such a crime. A qui profite le crime? Gemayel’s claim to fame is that he was an anti-Syrian politician; and yet our friend sees absolutely no benefit to Syria in this guy getting whacked. I also note that this “give-Syria-the-benefit-of-the-doubt-because-they-have-no-motive” thinking has yet to extend to the Lebanese: Mourning gave way to calls for unity, defiance and confrontation. Demonstrators in the crowd shouted for the resignation of the Lebanese president, Émile Lahoud, who is allied with Syria. They cursed the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and spat on pictures of Gen. Michel Aoun, a Christian who has aligned his party with Hezbollah. It seemed that Lebanon’s struggling pro-Western movement, at least for a day, had regained its footing in outrage and fear at yet another political assassination. Mr. Gemayel, 34, was the fifth anti-Syria leader to be killed since Mr. Hariri was killed in February 2005 — and his supporters immediately blamed Syria and its allies in Lebanon, charges that Syria strongly denied. But hey, what would the Lebanese know? I’m sure they’re too busy dodging bullets and bomb shrapnel to conduct a rational investigation. When I see you reduced to ranting and sneering, I realize that you believe that your ideology is defeated. Welcome to the club. Reassuringly, this e-mail comes from an account with the European Court of Justice, the supreme court of the EU. I feel safer, don’t you? |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #4 Our third enemy is our own civility. Our work is cut out for us, let's get on it. I'm going to start being less civilized right now! :-) |
| Posted by: gorb 2006-11-24 15:15 |
| #3 So, our first enemy is stupidity. Our second enemy is Islam. Our third enemy is our own civility. Our work is cut out for us, let's get on it. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-11-24 14:29 |
| #2 Ah, it's all suddenly so clear to me. When the Soviet Union dissolved and the KGB was reorganized as the FSB, they cleaned out all the bad guys and put a bunch of guys with pressed suits and ties and the highest of morals and intentions. Then, of course, came the rise of the neocons and their Joooooo allies in Washington DC and Israel. When the stuff started to hit the fan in Lebanon, of course the peaceloving Syrians agreed to move their troops and intelligence agents out of the country right away and without hardly a bit of hesitation. You see, it was the evil Joooooos and their neocon allies in Washington DC and Israel that were pulling all the strings and, actually, yeah, it was them that put the hit on Hariri and Gemayel and they just made it look like it was Syria behind it. Of course! It all makes sense! Naturally, since the evil Joooooo Zionists are in complete control of the entire world, and the Nine Unknown are controlling things from their secret mountain hideouts in And, of course, the evil Joooooo Zionists and their neocon allies in Washington DC and Israel are totally behind the poisoning of this ex-KGB agent in London! I'll bet they're also behind stirring up all the violence and everything in Iraq and that North Korea, Iran, Syria, and all the rest are just peaceful players in the game. After all, what does North Korea or Iran need with nukes, really? I mean, I'll bet it's all just a ploy and that the Iranians aren't really doing anything nuclear at all. It's those evil Joooooos and their neocon allies in Washington DC and Israel doing it all and behind it all. Damn! I never woulda' believed it could possibly be so! Idiots. |
| Posted by: FOTSGreg 2006-11-24 13:24 |
| #1 Common, it's way too clumsy for FSB. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-11-24 12:44 |