Final Protective Fire

Monday, September 09, 2002

 

Helen Thomas, among the most partisan of Washington's press corps as well as a long-time hater of Israel, writes this vapid screed. It is amusing for several reasons. One, it continues to misrepresent so many long debunked claims - she has the misrepresentation of Kirsanow's remarks, she misrepresents things like the monitoring of attorney-client conversations in prisons that was occurring long before September 11 and she repeats that outright lie about suppressed dissent. Another amusing incoherence in this column has been pointed out by others, and in found in this passage:

This policy of preemption -- might is right -- is antithetical to what America has always stood for -- "magnanimity in victory," as Winston Churchill once put it, helping our former enemies and rejecting policies dictated by vengeance.

As has been pointed out, this passage is completely incoherent. The doctrine of preemption is not "might makes right" but rather that we have the right to strike against those who would do us harm - something almost all Americans do believe. If there is some actual thought behind the "might makes right" slur, she spends no time justifying it. And Thomas is misusing the Churchill quote as Churchill is discussing what he sees as a great character of Americans; our magnamity toward defeated enemies. An idea that has nothing to do with whether or not preemption is a good policy. Incoherent sputtering is all she has to offer.

Robin 4:38 PM