Mr. Ledeen’s article dispenses quickly with Mr. Auster’s concerns about immigration by saying that he is against illegal immigration “too”. Doesn’t that rather miss the point? Didn’t the 9-11 terrorists enter the country legally?

Yes, unfortunately, and it was absolutely typical. People see that a debate about immigration is going on, and they understand that some sort of response from them is required, so they say: “I’m against illegal immigration,” and they think that handles the issue.

Also, isn’t this the same sort of utopian simplification of “us” as freedom fighters and “them” as tyrants that we’ve seen so often before? Isn’t saying “we are for freedom and equality while they are the oppressor-tyrants,” and claiming that that is sufficient grounds for understanding our differences, the same old closing off of discussion in which liberalism always engages?

Yes, and it’s a kind of trap, because there is a large measure of truth in it. The problem is that people turn that truth into an ideology. For example, the Soviet Union did indeed represent tyranny, and in opposing it we did indeed represent freedom. But what we did was to turn that freedom into an ideology and say that this freedom represented the totality of the good and the totality of what we are. As a result, all the other dimensions of our being and our civilization, as well as the true differences between our civilization and others, were washed out by this one simplistic idea of freedom. While the “freedom” ideology is not as false or as destructive of human reality as the Communist ideology is, it nevertheless represents a flattening, blind force. One might say that it’s the “nice” version of the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem.

In support of his accusation that others are “wrongheaded”, Mr. Auster posts the following: “if this American hegemony were not the carrier of a radical individualism that breaks down all cultural and religious values; and, furthermore, if we were not simultaneously admitting entire populations of Muslims into America, thus increasing the pressures of our hyper-individualist culture on theirs, isn’t it just possible that America would seem a good deal less threatening and hateful to many Muslims?”

These “ifs”, which at first blush lend credibility to the completely unsupportable nicey-nice conclusion, are themselves wrongheaded. Firstly, this “hegemony” is not being shoved down the throats of others. It is being avidly sought by many in Third World countries. I have lived in the Middle East and SEA as a computer specialist. I learned enough of the language to get around, because I learned in University environments, which is to say, polyglot.
The “ifs” are based on ignorance of the behavior of the average Moslem, which, to put it bluntly, is schizophrenic. There is a ritual devotion to prayer and a “pure” life juxtaposed with a fanatical desire for pornography, Alcohol, and a stunning disrespect for individual life, such as we used to hold dear in America. I should know. I made a lot of money (at great personal risk of life) supplying these things to the upper and lower classes. There is no “middle class”.
Yes, the State Department should be purged. It is representing the wrong country. I like the story of the SecState in earlier days who called his Country Specialists in to his office, and asked them to point to the country on the globe on his desk that they represent. When they would invariably, and inacurately, point to the country they specialized in, he would correct them and say, “No. You represent the United States of America”.
I am also a USMC Vietnam combat vet with a DD214 to back it up. I served in the villages in a program known as CAP (www.capmarine.com, a site run by others, which is why I did not list it in the form above), so those who “want no war” have no moral high ground on me. I believe it was Jefferson (but whoever it was he was correct) who said, “No one wants a war less than someone who has been in one”.
The Left made a sham and a mockery of what we did in Vietnam. The current tyrannical regime is bending (slowly) to Capitalism and individual rights as they have opened their doors to tourism. I was given a hero’s welcome upon my return to the villages in 1998; The antithesis of what occurred in April ‘68 upon my return to the “land of the free and home of the brave”, whose opinions were dominated by such cowards as Fonda, and supported by the Left-leaning press such as Dan Blather. If we were in the wrong, why did that happen? The Left is now doing the same thing in poluting the thought process by which we properly (and immediately!) squash So-damned Insane and his ilk, the back-stabbing, smiling, two-faced Saudis.

It’s difficult to make much sense out of Kevin’s angry and meandering post except for his observation that many Muslims are not (contrary to what I said in my article) repelled by our liberationist “culture,” but rather are strongly attracted to it. However, Kevin then contradicts himself, saying that Muslims are schizophrenic on this issue, simultaneously attracted AND repelled. And this is precisely the point, which has been noted by many observers of the Muslim world. Muslims feel the temptation of Western fleshpots, AND feel the horror of that temptation, seeing in it the destruction of everything they are as Muslims. As we know, the September 11th hijackers gleefully patronized “lap-dancing” clubs prior to mass murdering thousands of Americans in the name of pure submission to God. So, notwithstanding (or rather alongside of) Muslims’ powerful attraction to certain aspects of the contemporary Western freedoms, there is a powerful, even murderous, element of hostility. It thus turns out that Kevin, despite his displeasure with me, does not really disagree with me on that point after all.

Let me add that at the same time, it is we, through our liberationist culture, who are making these temptations available. That is why I say that if we repented as a society and became more like the relatively upright and restrained people we once were, that would not only help heal our own moral and spiritual ills, it would help, over the long run, reduce the temptation/rage that many Muslims feel toward us. Stopping immigration and thus reducing promiscuous contact between the cultures is another indispensable aspect of this. As I make clear in my article, however, I do not, in any nicey-nice fashion, claim that these measures would be a cure for the immediate threat of Jihadism, which will require the strongest political and military measures.

Mr Auster is “en pointe” with his response to me, and I thank him and repent of having taken issue with him. It was based on misunderstanding. Just as his response to me clarifies his point, I rather suspect that I could write a page or two for each to clarify several points I raised but did not thoroughly explore in what he denigrates as “rambling”. They may not have been fully developed, but they were all “en pointe”.
Am I, as he dismisses, angry? Youbetcherass! And anyone who is not oughta be.
Freedom is not free
and as Edmund Burke so eloquently put it, “The only requirement for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing”.
We can waste an awful lot of time spittling (H’mmmm, good Freudian… Of course I meant “splitting”) semantic hairs. Meanwhile we have megalomaniacs running several countries who have developed, and have stated the intention of using, WMDs.

I agree with most of what Mr Auster said about the neo-conservative rational for war. Forcing democracy on a people that aren’t committed to that form of government is unwise. However, I disagree with Mr Auster’s claim that Iraq presents a threat to America. To its own people, perhaps, but not to America. How could Iraq blackmail us with one nuke (assuming they want to destroy us in the first place)? Where’s the evidence that Iraq has lately become chummy with al-Qaida? There is no evidence, only speculation.

I thank Kevin for his reply and I’m glad the misunderstanding was cleared up. But could he tell us what exactly is the object of his anger?

I say to Brezinski and all the others who profess not to see the intolerable danger represented by a Hussein regime in possession of nuclear weapons, that they are not seeing the forest for the trees. Their logic is analogous (please note that this is only an ANALOGY, not a substantive comparison) to that of Holocaust deniers who say, “As long as we don’t have a piece of paper signed by Hitler ordering the mass murder of the Jews, we refuse to believe that there was a deliberate extermination of the Jews.” The truth, of course, is that the totality of everything the Nazis said and did points irrefutably to that conclusion, except in the eyes of those people who for some reason of their own are unwilling to recognize it.

The same logic or illogic applies here. The totality of Hussein’s behavior shows an extreme tyrant, a man who places no limits on his will and desire. This is not, as so many have said, a “cautious” leader who just wants to hold on to power. Remember, he could have had peace in 1990-91 simply by withdrawing from Kuwait, but instead he brought on the U.S. attack which would have destroyed his regime and killed him but for the perverse U.S. decision to stop the hostilities prematurely. This is someone who for sheer spite set all the oil wells in Kuwait on fire as his armies were retreating from that country. Please understand this basic, simple fact: Someone who would do THAT, would do ANYTHING.

So, in answer to Brezinsky, I don’t have the “evidence” he demands. What I have is a total picture of Hussein’s record and character, leading to the rational/intuitive/moral conclusion that it would be suicidally irresponsible of us to allow such a person to possess nuclear weapons.

Does that answer Brezinsky’s objection?

As Mr Auster noted, there is ample evidence to suggest that there was a concerted effort to exterminate the Jews in Nazi Germany. However, the evidence Auster presents to suggest that Hussein is a suicide bomber, just waiting to set off a nuclear bomb in the United States isn’t remotely as great. Auster reasons that someone who would set oil wells on fire and risk the destruction of his country by refusing to withdraw his armies from Kuwait “would do ANYTHING” (which, I suppose, would include not attacking the US).

I must say, that’s an illict assumption on Auster’s part. The conclusion — that he “would do ANYTHING” — does not follow from the premises — that he set oil wells on fire as his army was retreating and his refusal to withdraw from Kuwait. A petty tyrant, perhaps, but suicidal madman bent on destroying a country that could turn his into rubble? That seems like an illicit assumption to draw. And, as I said, given that Auster thinks that Hussein would do anything, this would also include the possibility of him not attacking the United States. So, it seems the only illogic on display here is Auster’s.

Brezinsky is bending my words out of shape. When I say Hussein is a man would do ANYTHING I simply mean there is no rational limit we can place on his likely actions. That does not mean we can say with certainty that he will do something inconceivably horrible with nuclear or other weapons. It means that it’s an entirely reasonable supposition that he would do something horrible with them.

Beyond that I cannot go. If what I’ve said leaves Brezinsky unpersuaded, I don’t think anything will persuade him, other than the smoking gun itself.

In light of recent revelations about North Korea, which would have the greater urgency: Saddam Hussein - who is developing WMD but does not yet have the means to deliver them to the US, or Kim Jong Il - who has at least 2 nuclear weapons (according to our own State Dept.) along with a delivery system capable of striking Alaska and possibly the West coast of the US right now?

Assuming it’s true that North Korea has nuclear weapons, that makes the world situation much worse, but it doesn’t change the situation vis à vis Iraq. There are practical differences between the two, which lead to practical differences in the way we deal with them. The Hussein regime is relatively weak now and can be overthrown to rid the world of its becoming a much greater danger in the near future. But North Korea now has the ability and probably the willingness to use its nuclear weapons against South Korea, a fact that precludes any immediate action against the North. For starters, North Korea must be completely isolated, not coddled and given various forms of assistance, as as been happening. Ultimately its government must be replaced, hopefully by a continuing breakdown from within as occurred within the Soviet Union. This is a terrible problem and we don’t have an immediate solution to it. But that is no argument for not acting in a different area where there is a solution at hand.

As with the invasion of Grenada in 1983, we overthrew the Caribbean Marxist government which we had the means to overthrow safely, while leaving in power the other Caribbean Marxist government, Cuba, that we did not have the means of overthrowing safely. Yet our successful action against Grenada had an enormous effect in changing the dynamic of the Cold War in our favor.

One more point: If Carl agrees with me that North Korea has become a serious danger to the world now that it has nuclear weapons (so dangerous that we dare not move against it militarily), isn’t that all the stronger argument to act NOW to prevent Iraq from becoming an equally menacing threat? I assume that Carl would not prefer a world in which there were two, rather than one, aggressive third-world Stalinist dictators threatening to use nuclear weapons against their neighbors.

Good point. It is most certainly true that North Korea would be considerably more difficult to overthrow via a military operation then Iraq. I hadn’t thought of it, but the analogy regarding Grenada and Cuba is quite accurate.

Mr Auster’s whole case on Hussein rests on a hypothesis — that given his behavior in the past, we have good reasons to suspect that if he gained nuclear weapons, he could use them against the United States.

But, given his past behavior, we have even better reasons to doubt that he’d use them on the United States. Firstly, he has shown no previous signs of being a potential suicide bomber. I don’t know where Mr Auster got the idea that Hussein is so eager to destroy the United States (which he couldn’t with one nuclear weapon). Secondly, Hussein isn’t friendly with the terrorist network that threatens America. If he obtains nuclear weapons and decides to use them against the United States by giving them to terrorists, which terrorist group would that be? And finally, by attacking the United States, he would in effect be annihilating his own country. A counter-strike by the United States is just too big a gamble for him.

Another point to be made on Korea is that even if Kim Jong-Il’s regime disintegrated into chaos tomorrow, the chances of radical Islamists making away with pieces of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal are a lot lower than the chances that Jihadists might get their hands on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in a Post-Saddam societal collapse of Iraq.

As for Brezinski, his position is plain. Unlike some relatively reasonable anti-war people, who say we should only move against Iraq if we know for an absolute fact that Iraq is on the verge of acquiring and deploying nuclear weapons, Brezinski has “no problema” with a situation in which Hussein both possesses and has deployed nuclear weapons. I have nothing further to say on that, except that I am very very glad that Brezinski is not the president of the United States.

I suppose a possible interpretation is that Brezinski simply has not seen the bulk of the Iraq discussion on VFR. That might explain the same issues that have already been discussed at length popping up repeatedly like dust bunnies from the corners of Lew Rockwell’s closets.

I urge Mr Auster to remove his blindfold when reading my future posts. I didn’t claim that I wouldn’t favor US intervention in Iraq if Hussein had plans to deploy his nuclear weapons. At this point, my arguments should be obvious to Mr Auster: that Hussein’s motives for deploying a nuclear weapon on the United States is unclear; that the risk of him doing so is far too great; and that he has *nothing* to deploy the weapons we have no proof he has with. This makes it *improbable* that he’ll ever attack us.

If he had plans to attack the United States, that would be an act of war, in which case I would endorse a US strike against Iraq.

Let me also add that Brezhnev was also a tyrant, and, unlike Hussein, had a large nuclear arsenal in his possession and the means of delivering them, yet what happened? I’m afraid history, as well as logic, isn’t on Mr Auster’s side.

After several exchanges, it became clear that Brezinski and I had unbridgeable differences on the issue of a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, and I identified those differences by way of letting the discussion draw to a close. But now he comes back with a new “condition” on which, he tells us, he WOULD favor a pre-emptive strike: If Hussein had “plans” to attack us. Unfortunately for Brezinski, this does not contradict at all my previous characterization of his position, that he “has no problem with a situation in which Hussein both possesses and has deployed nuclear weapons.” Clearly, Hussein could possess and deploy nuclear weapons without evincing any identifiable “plan” to attack us with them. So despite Brezinki’s correction of my supposed illogic and my supposed failure to understand him, my description of his view is still correct. Maybe Brezinki should remove the curtain from his own eyes before looking for the blindfold on mine.

Finally, Brezinski’s re-hashing of the supposed equivalence between Cold-War Super-power mutual deterrence and the Iraq situation, a false comparison that has already been addressed many times, suggests that Brezinski has not even been attending to the debate. Maybe he should do less talking for a while, and more reading and thinking.

*****this does not contradict at all my previous characterization of his position, that he “has no problem with a situation in which Hussein both possesses and has deployed nuclear weapons.” Clearly, Hussein could possess and deploy nuclear weapons without evincing any identifiable “plan” to attack us with them*****

Thus, Mr Auster’s rebuttal of my position consists of another absurd hypothesis, one that isn’t even half-believable since Hussein has nothing to deploy nuclear weapons with and an unclear motive for doing so. This is very speculative Mr Auster.

Mr Auster closes by claiming the Brezhnev comparison has been dealt with earlier, but apparently forgot the content of it because he neglects to restate it here.

Brezinski seems to think it worthwhile to re-post entire threads that anyone can access through the VFR archives. That seems like it would be a waste of time, space, and effort to me; but somehow Brezinski seems to think that the fact that Mr. Auster “neglects” to re-post the (readily available) archives here scores a point or two for the side of ignorance.