Mail columnist very uncomfortable with the killing of bin Laden

Karl D. writes:

Have you seen this article by the twit Max Hastings in the Daily Mail? I don’t know where to begin. The back handed compliments to America? His utter discomfort with the dirty business of killing? This man is the definition of a “Toffee Nose.”

Karl continues:

With a little research I found that Max was a Labour man up until the last election. This from Wikipedia:

Hastings has supported both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. He announced his support for the Conservative Party at the 2010 general election, having previously voted for the Labour Party at the 1997 and 2001 general elections. He claimed that “four terms are too many for any government” and described Gordon Brown as “wholly psychologically unfit to be prime minister”.

“Four terms are too many for any government.” THAT’s what passes for deep penetrating analysis in his mind? How do people like him even get a job?

LA replies:

Most British writers and intellectuals eschew conceptual thinking. It makes them feel antsy. It doesn’t seem quite British.

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Alan Levine writes:

I am familiar with Max Hastings’s works; he’s a well-known military historian. Karl D. is right—he is a “twit.” He is not, generally, biased, but he is not very careful, either, so his books are, intermittently, unreliable. He must, however, have been a rather rightwing Labour supporter, and he has criticized PM Cameron for being too publicly critical of Britain’s history, albeit in his usual careless way.

Am a bit troubled by one aspect of the Bin Laden raid. Was it really wise to have the President and other top Washington officials monitoring the operation in “real time?” That is not a profitable use of their time, and it seems to me to put avoidable psychological pressure on those involved to have levels of command which cannot possibly do anything to support them “looking over their shoulder” in such an operation. [According to (as I remember) the ABC story I posted early this morning, Obama and his people did not monitor the raid in real time; it was CIA director Panetta who listened to the raid in real time.] However, one has to compliment the President on this one. Launching a raid, rather than simply bombing OBL, may have provided intelligence far more important than securing Bin Laden’s demise.

Either the Pakistani government as a whole has been protecting OBL, or a powerful faction has. The only other alternative I can think of is that those we have been aiding are deaf, blind or have IQs in minus numbers. I can’t think of a fourth choice, and it is doubtful if even the second would justify our continuing to give money to these creeps. In fact, we should bill the Pakistan government for the entire cost of the operation to kill OBL!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 03, 2011 02:47 PM | Send