(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
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[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Sunday, February 09, 2003
The sometimes awful, sometimes better than awful Matt Welch is today, well, awful. That's what happens when you allow Andrew Sullivan to function as your assignment editor.
Welch alerts us to the "Noxious Moral Equivalence of the Day," a Guardian columnist's assertion that, "Nations that were once the vassals of the Soviet Union are now in danger of becoming vassals of the US." A large scale fit ensues, with Welch hollering, "No, they are not. They are democracies, with governments they can peacefully replace, and a free press they can bitch about."
Even a third-rate dictionary tells you that a 'democracy' is a government by the people, executing their will. Of course, governmental arrangements such as these are unavailable in America. On the score of the threatened war against Iraq, it seems that Welch's democracies are anything but. Consider that the most formidable of these countries, devastated by unemployment, recently borrowed $3.8 billion from the U.S. Congress to buy 48 F-16 jets. Never mind that, according to last week's Economist, a rival bid - submitted by a manufacturer whose product was "just as high-tech" and lower in price - "included an offer to build an assembly plant in a depressed part of Poland, with knock-on jobs for up to 50,000 people." If you trust the disreputable Raines Times - and the wagging, warblogging fingers of disapproval suggest you shouldn't - read its write-up of the deal and ask yourself if it doesn't seem if the Poles are practicing a bit of anticipatory self-defense and jockeying for better ground under America's thumb.
As an overly facile additional exercise, you might want to ask Taskmaster Sullivan, the self-professed friend of Kurds and oppressed persons everywhere to whom Welch links, how those "Eastern Europeans [who] have a better appreciation of what tyranny is" are treating their Roma populations. posted by Anonymous5:37 PM
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The Watchers
WBW: Keeping track of the war exhortations of the warbloggers.
