Prostitution of the pen and the dark side of the free market

[fpb]

Four years ago, the government of the French Republic took the lead in refusing to support the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. The French, who had taken a very active and successful part in the first Iraq war, simply did not think that an invasion followed by the occupation of an Arab country was a good idea. That was their prerogative (see under "sovereign state").

(My position was that I loathed Saddam Hussein so much that anyone who wanted to drive him out was fine by me. I would even have supported an Iranian invasion. But I would not have started to insult people who disagreed.)

The idiot part of the American right suddenly made France the bout of all their hatred. Someone spotted a market opportunity, as Americans do (the French do that as well, but when the French do it, that's evil!) and prostituted a certain amount of historical knowledge in the search for a quick buck, producing some sort of tract which rewrote history with the claim that "France have always been our enemy, but they have concealed it under a pretence of friendship".

I would dismiss this intellectually contemptible and factually fraudulent thesis in as many words, and not even bother about it, were it not that one of the finest minds in my f-list seems to have been taken in by it. As it is, I want to ask how you imagine you can trace a consistent attitude of hatred, and what is more, of subtly disguised hatred, in a nation that has, since the foundation of the United States, experienced three royalist constitutions, five republican ones, two bonapartist ones, and one fascist tyranny, and completely boxed the compass in terms of attitudes, views, and alliances. This is the kind of things that rabid anti-Semites postulate about Jews - attitudes consistent across the centuries, constant vicious subtlety in carrying them out, hatred fertile in invention but completely barren of reason. The French ought to be proud: they have been promoted to the rank of Chosen People, next to that other target of unreasoning, blind, stupid, despicable hatred. In case anyone had any doubts, I regard Jew-bashing as a stain on the face of mankind.

No doubt the prostitute or prostitutes who set out on this bit of free enterprise got out of it what they wanted - money, admiting letters from ignorami and fanatics, and the odd spot on TV talk shows; rewards that serious historians get rather less often. But as we are still free people here, I want to use my own freedom of expression, rather less despicably than the prostitute or prostitutes concerned: first, by calling whoredom by its proper name; and second, by stating clearly that there shall be no pity here for such views. The historical slag or slags who sold their integrity for popular success will not be treated as anything but filth, and anyone who takes them seriously is warned that I will do what is in my power to restore them to sanity.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for the terrible Muslim regular armies, can you point me at a single war since 1689 in which Western armies or navies have met Muslim forces without ripping them apart? Muslims are bad soldiers, because they are only willing to die. A good soldier is willing to fight and win; death is not something he wishes for, but something he is willing to risk in the pursuit of victory. And if there is one thing that history proves over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, it is that the educated soldier inevitably has the edge over the illiterate one, however obedient and brave. Illiteracy and ignorance are so widespread in the Muslim world that Muslim soldiers remain hopeless human material. It is largely because of the enormously higher educational level - allowing greater flexibility at all levels, a clearer understanding of specific goals, and more effective use of tools and weapons - that Israel has consistently overcome much larger Muslim armies. You can put a Muslim in a tank, but you cannot make him an engineer. And as for that dreadful Iranian army, what does it say about its real potential, that Iran is actually incapable to refine enough oil for its own use, and has to import petrol and other fuels from abroad? Not only is petrol, as the Nazis found out, of some importance in modern war, but a country that is so incapable of satisfying its basic needs cannot possibly have enough educated and trained men to take its army to a Western level. The same goes for the Muslim armies in Africa. The only successes they have achieved are in places like Sudan, when they were already in control of the state machinery and went after helpless iron-age villagers who started the war with old British Lee-Enfield rifles. And even so, Col.Garang's rebels, in spite of their isolation, poverty and lack of starting military resources, managed to give such a hard time to the government forces, that they were forced to reach a peace deal with the South (in spite of Garang's own mysterious death) which has not yet been breached. And believe me, if they felt strong enough to be able to breach it, they would. The truth is that the tribal southerners, starting with nothing but their courage, have thumped the Hell out of Khartoum Arabs with tanks and planes.

[bufo-viridis.livejournal.com]

can you point me at a single war since 1689 in which Western armies or navies have met Muslim forces without ripping them apart?

Gallipolli?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

War, not battle. Turkish troops distinguished themselves both in the Russian war of 1877 and in WWI, where they trashed the British not only at Gallipoli but at Kut-el-Amarah and in Palestine, but they ended up suffering total annihilating defeat. Besides, Gallipoli was a poorly chosen object. Only three years before, the Italian Navy had successfully stormed the Straits and bombed Gallipoli to put an end to the Italian-Turkish war (in which Italy conquered Lybya and Rhodes). Gallipoli and the Straits generally were an obvious target.