Positive Liberty

With Sandefur no longer writing at Positive Liberty, it seems he feels a lot more able to speak his mind about yours truly:

Those who are inclined immediately to believe the worst conceivable allegations about American soldiers will doubtless react with their usual glee to the Washington Post’s report about the alleged “bait” method; supposedly “the American government is paying people to kill” whoever picks up ammunition that they leave by the side of the road as bait.

…and…

…with regard to the glee with which critics of the war greet these kinds of stories, I think it speaks for itself. There is a sort of person who strangely relishes such accusations to the degree that they will immediately believe them without awaiting indicia of credibility. Such people may not enjoy the substance of the story, but they so enjoy whacking what they think is a mole that they’ll bang away at anything that moves.

If this is what he sincerely believes of me, then I’m not surprised he left the blog.

I hope, though, that this is not what he believes, and that it is simply a knee-jerk emotional reaction from him rather than a considered or rationally held belief. I understand that his prior political commitments often require him to think that I’m a credulous fool. I just wish he didn’t think that I was an evil credulous fool. Yet I would have to be evil to take glee in the idea of Americans shooting Iraqi civilians over bait.

I don’t know how I can make him understand this — since he apparently has his mind made up already — but I don’t feel glee at stories like these. I feel a grim sense of frustration and despair. I feel disgust and revulsion. I can’t see how anyone could read my original post and think I was happy about any of it.

To illustrate, let me use an analogy of a type that I know he likes: Suppose that an abolitionist in the North were to run stories in his newspaper describing the horrors of slavery.

“Ah,” says a critic. “But look how the abolitionist reacts with glee at the thought that Americans might be doing something reprehensible! Sure, maybe — maybe — he doesn’t enjoy the thought of black people suffering. (Then again, maybe he does enjoy it!) You know what? Either way, he certainly hates America. That’s why he is so eager to believe bad things about it. And he even believes the testimony of blacks, who have every incentive to malign the system out of their own personal interest!”

In other words, don’t presume to tell me what I feel.

Worse, as Brayton has noted at his other blog, the evidence favoring the existence of this tactic includes sworn testimony from a soldier who supports it (and this soldier, contra Sandefur’s inexcusably careless reading, is not on trial for murder). There is little reason to think that he would have a motive to lie here. As one of Brayton’s commenters pointed out, the non-denial denial from an army spokesman isn’t exactly reassuring:

“There are no classified programs that authorize the murder of local nationals and the use of ‘drop weapons’ to make killings appear legally justified.”

This is Clintonesque. Except that Clinton was a little less obvious about his obfuscation. I await more evidence, and I would welcome — with relief — the evidence that would prove the original story wrong.

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