STUPID versus SMART
Round 1: Maureen Dowd versus Thomas Sowell
STUPID versus SMART
Maureen Dowd vs Thomas Sowell – Articles on Torture Compared Side-By-Side
Today we compare two recent articles (see links below) on the important topic of ‘torture’ that is front and center. One published by Maureen Dowd of Slutrag (New York Times), the other by Thomas Sowell through RealClearPolitics.com.
Cheney: Rogue Diva of Doom - Maureen Dowd, Slutrag
Debate Over 'Torture' Lacks Seriousness - Thomas Sowell, RealClearPolitics
The Dowd article offers nothing of substance. It is basically a panoply of pesonal attacks on Cheney. Neither an intelligent, nor thought provoking article. Not that one should be expected from an author who predominantly pens fluff, and strings together unrelated assertions to support a not-well-thought-out personal bias. Undeniably naive is Dowd. The extremist jihad are a self-empowered group. The United States freeing and empowering 50 million people in Iraq neither created nor enhanced the intent of our enemies. Dowd, who has never exhibited much in the way of intellect or common sense, fails to connect the larger strategic value of having a potential democracy sitting geographically within the Middle East. Her statement about ports and food supplies is a weak trivialization of complex issues that plague defense logisitics on a non-partisan basis. Dowd bizzarely claims Cheney made America more vulnerable - a faux message given Obama's ill-advised recent release of internal CIA memos.
The liar Pelosi/Dowd/MOVE-ON-CON-JOB.org misson to promote a 'truth commission' are the kinds of things which really make America vulnerable. In her silly article, Dowd disingenuously proclaims in grammar-school playground-like style that Cheney "still loves torture" and that "He's batty, and he thinks he was the president." That's pretty cornball stuff right there. Green Eggs and Ham is a far more enlightening read than Dowd's Liberal Hubris vitiated journalism.
The only things we really learn from the Slutrag fluff piece is that Dowd's priorities are screwed up, she does not stand for national security for all Americans and that Slutrag will keep anyone on their payroll if they tow the Liberal credo. With scant substance in her piece, the trite excerpt below was the strongest segment to be unearthed. Here is that key excerpt from her dishonest/ignorant critique of Cheney. I expect Dowd is already deeply engrossed in the busy-work of whipping up an equally intellectual support of Madame Liar, Liar of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
He has no coherent foreign policy viewpoint. He still doesn’t fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America. He left our ports unsecured, our food supply unsafe, the Taliban rising and Osama on the loose. No matter if or when terrorists attack here — and they’re on their own timetable, not a partisan red/blue state timetable — Cheney will be deemed the primary one who made America more vulnerable.
The Sowell piece contains so much substance it is impractical to do it justice by selecting a mere sentence or two to enable the comparison. Off the bat, he challenges readers at the individual level to separate ideology from how they would choose to behave in circumstances that bring the questions of morality, ethics and prudence onto one's own shoulders. The most effective way to drill to the core is to have individuals place themselves in situations. Often, when forced to think through the logic of their own decision making, it turns out that actual individual behavior contradicts one's stated ideology, as Sowell clearly states. He wastes no time inviting the individual to be involved in the process at a personal level. Note below how his discussion is quite opposite of Dowd who merely casts aspersions at a person she doesn't like very much.
People's actions often make far more sense than their words. Most of the people who are talking lofty talk about how we mustn't descend to the level of our enemies would themselves behave very differently if presented with a comparable situation, instead of being presented with an opportunity to be morally one up with rhetoric.
What if it was your mother or your child who was tied up somewhere beside a ticking time bomb and you had captured a terrorist who knew where that was? Face it: What you would do to that terrorist to make him talk would make water-boarding look like a picnic.
Sowell follows up his well-made point by forcing the reader to evalaute what his/her attitude would be when having to internalize dealing with the situation at hand, living with the decisions.
You wouldn't care what the New York Times would say or what "world opinion" in the U.N. would say. You would save your loved one's life and tell those other people what they could do.
Then for useful broad perspective, Sowell deftly executes a giant zoom-out to view the larger, critically important aspects of civil populations comfronting reality. He draws upon a relevant historical record of societal behaviors prior to the torrent of Hitler.
When we look back at history, it is amazing what foolish and even childish things people said and did on the eve of a catastrophe about to consume them. In 1938, with Hitler preparing to unleash a war in which tens of millions of men, women and children would be slaughtered, the play that was the biggest hit on the Paris stage was a play about French and German reconciliation, and a French pacifist that year dedicated his book to Adolf Hitler.
These comparisons of message and content on both a practical human level and a moral intellectual level are not even fair. Dowd's cranky obsession with the prior adminstration is expressed as a childish temper tantrum like the 5-year old denied another candy after digesting a handful. After all, her Liberal Democrat elitist friends are in complete control of Washington, yet her most important goal remains an arrogant wish-fulfillment, a misguided one at the expense of safety and national security for 300 million Americans.
Dowd does not come across as a person strong enough to accept personal responsibility for future American deaths in the name of not waterboarding a high-value terrorist captive. Conversely, it would not be surprising at all were she the very first one on the horn, hounding and pounding the Central Intelligence Agency to take stronger measures were it one of her kin imprisoned by a bomb-wearing jihad-screaming terrorist.
Sowell tackles the issue as an intellectual and with integrity. Encouraging readers to place themselves in the decision making capacity to work through the logic allows them to determine, and more importantly, to see.... visualize their own behaviors and choices in complex, time-critical, gut-wrenching situations.
Let's see how each author concludes their messages:
DOWD: But with W., “Back Seat” — Cheney’s Secret Service name in the Ford administration — clambered up front. Then he totaled the car. And no amount of yapping on TV is going to change that when history is written.
SOWELL: If we have reached the point where we cannot be bothered to think beyond rhetoric or to make moral distinctions, then we have reached the point where our own survival in an increasingly dangerous world of nuclear proliferation can no longer be taken for granted.
Given the wide gulf in message, intellect and case-making, summing up the presentations of these two articles for comparison is an easy task. One is an embarassing selfishly-driven personalization of an issue where the author has no reference point beyond personal opinion and personal dislikes for specific individuals; and offers no challenge for readers to weigh the virtues versus the impacts of tough decisions and their vast array of outcomes. The other is a thought-provoking directive which neatly balances the questions of ethics and morality offset by requiring each reader to respond and commit to actions every individual must themselves consider.
The illustrious essence of the Sowell piece imparts what is necessary to both protect the security of our nation while simultaneously impelling individuals to make a distinction between what is acceptable when thrust into positions of direct responsibility for the most precarious of cirumstances. The Dowd vendetta-rubbish makes no effort to place national security interests as the prime factor and sweeps under the rug all that must be considered in favor of launching her attack against conservative individuals she despises. Dowd comically states that should America be attacked again, somehow, it is the fault of Dick Cheney.
The difference between STUPID and SMART in these two essays is beyond debatable (see actual results below).
For further insight into this discussion, 3 excellent new MUST-READ articles are posted below:
Victoria Toensing cuts right to the core of the legalities with regard to interrogation methods and cleanly chops into mincemeat the case for those obsessed with whiting-out Post 9/11 actualities. She also carefully disrobes Slutrag's prostitute-in-chief Frank Reich and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson of their uninformed and irresponsible comments.
Debra Saunders boxes up Madame Liar Pelosi tightly in a neatly summarized chronology of events and statements. She puts the finishing touches on her Speaker-fillet by slicing and dicing the hollow inadequacy of the so-called Harman protest letter.
Interestingly, Mark Steyn also elects to point out specific weaknesses in the Dowd article in his piercing reveal of Pelosi's lack of credibility (and lack of competence) -- He humorously sums it up this way: "Watching the Democrats champing at the bit last week, I thought perhaps we could cut to the chase and handcuff Cheney and Pelosi to a radiator in the basement of a CIA safe house somewhere. But on reflection this would be an unacceptable level of torture. It would be ungallant to say for whom."
➜ Now the Lady Doth Protest Too Much - Debra Saunders, San Fran Chronicle - Sun / May.17
➜ Pelosi's Erratic Public Performance - Mark Steyn, Orange County Register - Sun / May.17
➜ Critics Still Haven't Read the Torture Memos - Victoria Toensing, WS Journal - Fri / May.16
In the Final Analysis of STUPID versus SMART
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Thomas Sowell *crushed* Maureen Dowd.
Hence, Slutrag columnist Maureen Dowd winds up in the STUPID column.