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Monday, June 12, 2006

Left-Wing Self-Parody

How has the left responded to the killing of Abu Zarqawi? By diving into the deep pools of self-delusion. Ben Johnson has the rundown at FrontPage.com. It's too long to copy in its entirety, but here are a few of myriad examples he gives of what passes for insight on the dyspeptic left:

Kurt Nimmo - whose article appeared in The Final Call, the newspaper of the Nation of Islam - wrote Zarqawi's death was "simply another dimension of a rather transparent psychological operations campaign run out of the Pentagon." That is, the CIA put one over on the American people. "Al-Zarqawi is little more than hype, a neocon propaganda program...in fact, it is difficult to prove 'al-Qaeda' itself actually exists." In his view, America also "engineered" the Iraqi "civil war."

Ron Jacobs also endorses the belief that Washington created Zarqawi:

"There is a likelihood that the forces of sectarian hatred have already done so much...that those hopes for a united nation without foreign occupation have been destroyed forever. Some folks even suggest that this was part of Washington's plan all along."

Jonathan Cutler, who is - surprise! - an Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies at Wesleyan University, dubbed Zarqawi the "ideological 'mirror image' of Washington's Neocons/Right Zionists." The good doctor blogs these perfidious Jews - err, "neocons" - may have lied about Zarqawi's death altogether:

"Right Zionists will not shed a tear for Zarqawi, but they may miss him when he is gone. If he is gone. For Right Zionists, Zarqawi is really an indespensible enemy."

TalkLeft floats the opposite conspiracy theory: perhaps Zarqawi had been long dead by Thursday:

"His face looks very intact for someone who was killed by two 500 pound bombs...Because this Administration has so little credibility and a history of distracting us with terror news when it is hurting politically, like now, I can't help but wonder if al-Zarqawi wasn't killed some time ago and they just decided to announce it today and tell us he was killed in yesterday's raid."

Air America host Randi Rhodes - whose program previously joked about assassinating President Bush - upbraided the troops for their inhumanity. Even al-Qaeda, she noted, asked Zarqawi to stop killing fellow Muslims. "Then you have to say to yourself, my God: Al-Qaeda is telling Zarqawi to cut the crap with the killing of the Iraqis, and yet we haven't cut the crap with the killing of the Iraqis." Her Air America colleague and rumored Ohio Democratic candidate Jerry Springer agreed, "We killed a hell of a lot more people just by the decision to go to Iraq than ever died at the hands of Zarqawi."

And on it goes. America is thoroughly evil, ergo anything America does is evil, therefore even killing Zarqawi must be shrouded in evil.

These people are a parody of themselves. There are more examples at the link.