Great news! In case you just moved here from some distant planet, the great news is we captured Saddam Hussein.
I say, “Great news!!” So does my man Howard Dean.* So does most of the world.
But the Right-Wing is so very disappointed. Not about Saddam’s capture–they agree that’s great news.
The Right is mad because this blows their story that the anti-war Left was entirely
pro-Saddam, pro-Osama**, anti-American, and pro-terror.
Andrew Sullivan begs readers to send him left-wing responses matching right-wing beliefs that anti-war was pro-Saddam. Instapundit links to a slanted round-up of far-left blog reaction, supposedly representative of all non-Republicans. Just about the only Democrat whose reaction they like is Joe Lieberman who predictably, blasts Dean for loving Saddam.
Right-wingers, I’m sorry for you, but I’m happy for us, as in all us people who rejoice when some decent results come out of the blood and treasure spent in Iraq. Especially if this means we might get back to focusing on Osama’s international terror machine.
*What Dean said:
“This is a great day for the Iraqi people, the US, and the international community.
“Our troops are to be congratulated on carrying out this mission with the skill and dedication we have come to know of them.
“This development provides an enormous opportunity to set a new course and take the American label off the war. We must do everything possible to bring the UN, NATO, and other members of the international community back into this effort.
“Now that the dictator is captured, we must also accelerate the transition from occupation to full Iraqi sovereignty.”
** Osama Bin Ladin, whose pro-Islam anti-secular terrorist organization inspired the September 11 hijackers (among many, many other civilian murders.) Saddam Husseim was a totally different, from-a-different-country, mostly-secular although ugly-bearded Middle-East guy.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Glenn // Dec 14, 2003 at 10:04 pm
Sorry to rain on your parade Betsy, but I consider myself to be rather liberal, and you would know that if you checked out my posts. I was a supporter of the Iraq War, and surely that colors my views. But I call it like I see it. The round-up of anti-war bloggers showed a wide range of reactions. Kudos to Oliver Willis, Crooked Timber, and Dohiyi who, like you are saying, expressed much joy over the Saddam capture despite their position on the war. On the other hand, Daily Kos, Atrios, Juan Cole and TBOGG were (to borrow a word from Randy Paul) a bit too CHURLISH for my tastes. And bravo to Howard Dean for his statements, I won’t even dare stomp on him for making the right (and also politically correct) decision to hold war gripes for another day.
2 Glenn // Dec 14, 2003 at 10:07 pm
politically smart decision, not politically correct as in p.c. (as in PCU).
3 Betsy Devine // Dec 15, 2003 at 7:08 am
Glenn, thanks for your comments. I based my take on your post (http://hippercritical.typepad.com/hipp/2003/12/antiwar_blogger.html) to some extent on the many complaints people made in the comments there–e.g. that you ignored several people’s praise of the capture while linking to more grumpy posts. I invite interested folks to go to your blog and decide for themselves whether you express more joy over 1) Saddam’s capture or 2)your hope that anti-war folk would now grovel.
4 Betsy Devine // Dec 15, 2003 at 2:34 pm
Hmmm, Glenn has edited that post quite a bit since I first read and linked to it. If you now read the comments, you may wonder why Hesiod and Pandagon complain that Glenn misrepresented them by ignoring their first enthusiastic posts and linking to later grumbles as if that were all they said. Glenn’s post now has no trace of those misleading links–and I can’t predict what further editing might do.
5 Glenn // Dec 17, 2003 at 5:07 pm
i have made my apologies to jesse and ezra on both my site and their site for missing their earlier post on the saddam capture, and that was why i added their links back to the post.
all other links stayed exactly the same.
your boy dean waited a whole day to make another ridiculous comment. good job on waiting a day, though!
6 Glenn // Dec 17, 2003 at 5:10 pm
we also traded e-mails and have agreed to move on. so should you.
7 Betsy Devine // Dec 18, 2003 at 6:41 am
Move on? Awwww…..I thought it would be a good use of time for both of us to have a long argument in this comment thread. ;-)
BTW, I apologize that my saying you’d changed your original post sounded harsher than I meant it to. I was just trying to explain, for the benefit of the 2.36 readers who might someday read this stuff, that some of what I’d objected to was gone.