[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

[bryant]

You gotta love these little self-fulfilling prophecies. The New York Sun tells us, in the course of arguing that anti-war protests should be forbidden, that "His [Thomas Friedman's] point was that if terrorists strike again at America and kill large numbers of Americans, the pressure to curb civil liberties and civil rights will be 'enormous and unstoppable.' What we took from that was that the more successful the protesters are in making their case in New York, the less chance they'll have the precious constitutional freedom to protest here the next time around."

Well, the Sun writers clearly failed reading comprehension classes. What Friedman meant was that another 9/11 would make more people willing to listen to drivel such as the Sun is pumping out. It's a warning against people like the Sun. Bah.

Comments

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

As an exercise, one might try to count the number of things wrong with the following quote from that article:

And there is no reason to doubt that the “anti-war” protesters — we prefer to call them protesters against freeing Iraq — are giving, at the very least, comfort to Saddam Hussein. In a television interview aired this week, Saddam said, “First of all we admire the development of the peace movement around the world in the last few years. We pray to God to empower all those working against war and for the cause of peace and security based on just peace for all.”

For instance:

* "protesters against freeing Iraq"? One could also say, I suppose, "we prefer to call them lunatic imbeciles, but purely descriptively, you know, we're not trying to use loaded language."

* I mistrust any sentence that starts "There is no reason to doubt...." Of course in this case, it's true that there's no reason to doubt that Hussein takes comfort in knowing that some people don't want to invade his country. Hell, I take comfort in that as well. I suppose the issue is that this is giving "comfort to the enemy"; but somehow I doubt that the "comfort" he's getting will outweigh the discomfort of, say, us invading.

* The quote from Hussein. First off, read the quote in isolation. "First of all we admire the development of the peace movement around the world in the last few years. We pray to God to empower all those working against war and for the cause of peace and security based on just peace for all." I wonder: if that quote were attributed to Gandhi--writing off "pray to God" as an odd mistranslation--would anyone bat an eye at it? Is the Sun really faulting Hussein for being in favor of peace? (Now, admittedly, one could say that he has a certain vested interest in being in favor of peace right now. But even so.)

* The quote was the answer to the question, "I wonder whether you could say something yourself directly through this interview to the peace movement of the world that might help to advance the cause they have in mind?" Which is to say, Hussein was more or less directly prompted to say this, which to my mind puts a rather different spin on it--it makes it sound much less self-serving, for instance.

I think I'm all the happier that I don't read the Sun