This ties into another point I have wanted to make about the militant dishonesty and anti-intellectualism of the moral bullies and warhawks now trying to cow everyone else into silence. I have written before about the profoundly offensive arrogance and moral condescension of those who dare to criticize Iraqis for not being sufficiently "grateful" for our freeing them from Saddam's vicious rule. It should be noted that these same moral poseurs -- these people who proclaim their own moral superiority at every turn, and condemn those who do not agree with them in every detail as loathsome "Saddam-lovers" who "hate America" -- apparently never learned, or are now determined to forget, that it was the United States, Britain and other Western nations who built up and supported Saddam when it suited our purposes, and that it was the United States that stood by while courageous Iraqis were slaughtered literally under our noses.

For these reasons, the most disgusting and reprehensible lie in the remarks of one Mr. James Lileks has to be this one:

To borrow his style: let me explain this in simple terms, Lileks-baby. In view of the fact that Saddam most probably would not have achieved or maintained power in the first place without our aid, considering that we supported him in countless ways while knowing a great deal about his vicious and brutal tactics, and in light of the fact that we stood by while thousands of Iraqis were killed after we ourselves had encouraged them to rise up against the evil of Saddam's rule, the Iraqis owe us precisely nothing. To the contrary -- and try to get this simple moral truth through your incredibly thick and intentionally self-blinded skull -- we owe them. Indeed, we owe them so much that it can never be repaid -- and once again, we appear to be failing miserably in our attempts to right our past wrongs. We are failing because, yet again, we have refused to learn anything from the past, and we are therefore repeating all the same mistakes over and over and over again.

I want to state one thing very clearly and unmistakably for the benefit of any warbloggers who might read this -- particularly those warbloggers and other hawks who strut their self-announced moral superiority and constantly shove it in the face of everyone else, and who act as if any disagreement with their historically ignorant views of the world constitutes some sort of treason. You are the enemies of America -- just as you are the enemies of thought, of history, of ideas, of any conception of what genuine liberty means, and how it is to be achieved.

You are a disgrace to this once-great nation, and if you have your way, this nation will follow many others on the route of total self-destruction in a conflagration of military might strewn purposelessly and mindlessly around the globe, while an increasingly authoritarian government destroys what remains of freedom here in the United States. And I also want to make it clear that there are many of us who are not at all cowed by your moral blustering. Many of us see it exactly for what it is: the phony posturing of a coward who relies on intimidation in place of argument, who feels that shouting mindless slogans will silence any opposing viewpoints, no matter how well-reasoned, and who counts on the reluctance or unwillingness of his opponents to stand up to the taunts of an obviously ignorant bully.

As your hollow and offensive tactics increasingly reveal themselves to be almost entirely devoid of thought, of any kind of historical grounding, and of any basis in principle, I think more and more people will call your bluff -- and finally shame you into silence. You are anti-American in every important sense: you have no understanding of individual freedom or how it is maintained, you have no appreciation of the dynamics of foreign affairs, and you have no grasp of how ideas or a culture of freedom are spread.

So, as I have said before and with a deeply grateful nod to a genuinely great American whose greatness is lost on you, and with regard to your uninformed, incorrect and disgustingly ignorant charges of anti-Americanism and disloyalty, I repeat yet again:

If this be treason, make the most of it.