Not Anti-War, But On The Other Side

Outstanding piece here from the Asia Times by John Parker, an American writer living in Vietnam:

[T]he costs of anti-Americanism will be borne not by Americans, but by others. And their numbers are vast: Cubans, North Koreans, Zimbabweans, and countless others suffer and starve under their respective tyrannies because the democratic world’s chattering classes, obsessed with denouncing the United States, can’t be bothered with holding their criminal regimes to account. Meanwhile, in Iraq, fascist rabble, with no discernible political program save a pledge to kill more Americans, try desperately to extinguish the slightest hope of democracy, economic growth, and stability for that long-suffering land; but the world, instead of helping to beat back the wolves at the door, basks in anti-American schadenfreude. How countless are the political problems, cultural pathologies, and humanitarian disasters that fester unnoticed, all over the globe, as the anti-American cult, wallowing in ecstatic bigotry, desperately scrutinizes every utterance of the Bush administration for new critical fodder.

Read, as they say, the whole thing. Hat tips to Best of the Web for spotting the review (of Jean-Francois Revel’s Anti-Americanism), and to the Blogfather for the title line.

Also check out Steven den Beste’s take on this week’s actions in Iraq:

The primary goal of guerrilla action is to use control of initiative to select time and place for attacks against an enemy which is much more powerful, and then to fade away and hide. To give the enemy a stand-up fight permits the enemy to use his superior power, and that’s the opportunity the insurgents in Falluja are permitting us.

… It is not certain that the outcome for us will be positive