{"id":62,"date":"2003-10-04T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2003-10-04T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=62"},"modified":"2004-12-21T22:06:48","modified_gmt":"2004-12-22T03:06:48","slug":"no-flies-on-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=62","title":{"rendered":"No Flies On The U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his recent article <a href='http:\/\/andrewsullivan.com\/main_article.php?artnum=20030906'>Flypaper:<br \/>\nA Strategy Unfolds<\/a>, Andrew Sullivan trots out some confirming<br \/>\nevidence for the theory that the U.S. is pursuing a &ldquo;flypaper<br \/>\nstrategy&rdquo; in Iraq &mdash; encouraging the Islamist terror<br \/>\nnetwork to fight American soldiers there so they won&#8217;t be attacking<br \/>\nAmerican civilians here.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Sullivan&#8217;s analysis is plausible. Plausible enough that my reaction<br \/>\nto the article, especially the last paragraph in which he urges Bush to<br \/>\narticulate the strategy as a way of scoring domestic political points. was:<br \/>\n&ldquo;OK, you&#8217;ve demonstrated your cleverness.  Now would you kindly<br \/>\nzip your lip before you undermine the strategy?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The leaders of the Islamist terror network are certainly evil and<br \/>\narguably insane (if only in the general way that all religious<br \/>\nbelievers are insane) but they&#8217;re not <em>stupid<\/em>.  If the<br \/>\nPresident of the United States got on network T.V. and yelled<br \/>\n&ldquo;We have a flypaper strategy!  We&#8217;re encouraging all the world&#8217;s<br \/>\nnut-jobs to attack us in Iraq so they won&#8217;t attack us in the<br \/>\nU.S.&rdquo;, just what do you suppose would be the result?<\/p>\n<p>Would our favorite murderous ragheads nod agreeably, say<br \/>\n&ldquo;Peachy, we&#8217;ll play your game and keep attacking you where you<br \/>\nthink you&#8217;re strongest?&rdquo; Or would they bend all their efforts<br \/>\nto ginning up another mass-murder in the U.S. just to prove they can<br \/>\ndo it and the flypaper isn&#8217;t working?<\/p>\n<p>For anyone to talk about a flypaper strategy in public is<br \/>\nirresponsible.  For Sullivan to urge that Bush should cop to it in<br \/>\npublic in order to one-up his domestic opponents is beyond<br \/>\nirresponsible into idiotic and feckless.  The President of the<br \/>\nU.S. would be profoundly derelict in his duty if he courted lethal<br \/>\ndanger to American civilians by doing any such thing.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m normally a fan of Andrew Sullivan.  His writing is witty if<br \/>\noccasionally a bit febrile, and he is clear-eyed on a handful of<br \/>\nsubjects that normally induce rectocranial inversion in conservatives.<br \/>\nBut today he should be ashamed of himself.  He has engaged in the<br \/>\nexact same error he has excoriated in others, which is treating<br \/>\nthe rest of the world as a mere backdrop to domestic American<br \/>\npolitical feuds.<\/p>\n<p>And I have some advice for him: Mr. Sullivan, next time you feel<br \/>\nthe urge to be clever in public, do us all a favor and ask yourself<br \/>\nhow many innocent lives you might be endangering by running your<br \/>\nmouth.  If the answer is more than zero, <b>shut up!<\/b><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/enetation.co.uk\/comments.php?user=esr&amp;commentid=106533559497921692\">Blogspot comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his recent article Flypaper: A Strategy Unfolds, Andrew Sullivan trots out some confirming evidence for the theory that the U.S. is pursuing a &ldquo;flypaper strategy&rdquo; in Iraq &mdash; encouraging the Islamist terror network to fight American soldiers there so they won&#8217;t be attacking American civilians here. Mr. Sullivan&#8217;s analysis is plausible. Plausible enough that&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=62\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">No Flies On The U.S.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}