Lack of Logic and Civility in Discourse…on the ‘Liberal’ Left?

An e-mail discourse with an acquaintance who is a ‘liberal’ Democrat, which started cordially enough, was abruptly terminated once I started challenging some of his internalized memes. Sadly, it is not just this particular acquaintance but many, many other ‘liberal’ Democrats who fall back on the memes generated by the Clinton Administration.

In the second of his e-mails, he points to a State Department Report on Kosovo from 1999 and says:

“According to the State Department, at least 90%(!) of the entire 1998 Kosovar Albanian population were forcibly expelled from their home

Perhaps you dispute this, but this strikes me as justifying NATO's war.”

I find his statement that “…this strikes me as justifying NATO's war.” disquieting on a variety of levels. Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t the then head of the National Security Council and now Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, make the rounds of the Sunday talk shows prior to this Administration’s attack on Iraq, bruiting the meme of “…we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." And yet, after our attack upon Iraq and a most thorough search for that ‘smoking gun’, no such weapons were found. But, according to the ‘reasoning’ of my acquaintance, that statement of Ms. Rice ‘justified’ the Bush Administration attack on Iraq.

Further, this acquaintance is an attorney by trade. Therefore, the idea of there being any ‘justification’ for a war other than a UNSC resolution or serious threat of an imminent attack is totally farcical! This is akin to the nonsensical notion, arrived at by the British parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee, that:

"The NATO military intervention was illegal but legitimate. It was illegal because it did not receive prior approval from the United Nations Security Council...."

The internal illogic of the first sentence is simply stunning! The first definition in the dictionary of the word ‘legitimate’ is: “Being in compliance with the law; lawful: a legitimate business.” So, the ‘great minds’ of the cruise missile Left have had to come up with a sentence that is totally and completely self-contradictory! How can something, anything, be both ‘illegal’ and yet ‘legitimate’?

Yet, this ‘liberal’ Democratic acquaintance would be, and to my knowledge has been at the forefront of decrying Bush’s illegal attack on Iraq because he, too, never bothered to get the imprimatur of the UNSC.

Also, many ‘liberals’ laud such as Gen. Wesley Clark as being ‘honorable men’ while decrying such as Gen. Petreaus as being a ‘war criminal’ and a ‘political general’. And yet one of Gen. Clark’s direct subordinates, Lt. Gen. Michael Short, NATO’s air war commander said:

“Lt-Gen Short told the New York Times Yugoslav civilians had to be made to suffer. “I think no power to your refrigerator, no gas to your stove, you can't get to work because the bridge is down -- the bridge on which you held your rock concerts and you all stood with targets on your heads. That needs to disappear at three o'clock in the morning.” As for targets in Kosovo, Lt-Gen Short said he wanted to “take the monkey off the (bomber's) back.”

Yet, far too many ‘liberals’ laud NATO’s air war on Yugoslavia as a ‘humanitarian’ war. Odd, agitating explicitly for the commission of heinous war crimes hardly seems to fit the definition of ‘humanitarian’! And, it should be noted here that, even excepting NATO’s attack on the Chinese Embassy (an act of war, by any definition), there were far, far too many attacks on obviously civilian structures (hospitals, water purification systems, power systems, schools, private residences) to be classed as ‘collateral damage’. By the way, the definition of ‘collateral’ is: Of a secondary nature; subordinate.

As far as Gen. Wesley Clark himself was concerned, he presided over the massive use of Depleted Uranium weapons during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. As to his being a ‘political’ general, he was “…in charge of NATO's "spin" in the Yugoslavia bombardment. Clark called the destruction of a Yugoslav train filled with civilians by a NATO missile "an uncanny accident." He said the same each time that NATO bombed civilian targets, which happened frequently.” ~ “Gen. Wesley Clark: War Criminal” By MITCHEL COHEN And yet, to this day, he is reverently deferred to as some kind of ‘honorable’ man whose opinions and judgments should be taken seriously.

Again, it needs to be pointed out, simply because Clinton and his administration are, in comparison to the Bush administration, better, that is hardly something to be proud of. A band of syphilitic chimps would show themselves superior to this administration.