For some students at the New School, in Manhattan, their institution and conservative politicians go together as well as Swiss cheese and peanut butter.
Bob Kerrey, the institution’s president and a former Democratic governor and senator from Nebraska, announced this spring that U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and past and possibly future presidential candidate, would be the commencement speaker at the New School. Kerrey said the senator’s acceptance “is a big honor for our graduates and their families.”
But hundreds of students, staff and faculty members at the institution of about 9,000 students have signed paper and online petitions that seek to revoke the invitation…
Harper Keenan, a sophomore, has helped organize the dissent. “In all of our classes we’re taught the value of inclusion of all people.”
It is the complete lack of self-awareness that never fails to amaze me.
An effort by the American military to discredit the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by showing video outtakes of him fumbling with a machine gun —- suggesting that he lacks real fighting skill —- was questioned yesterday by retired and active American military officers.
The video clips, released on Thursday to news organizations in Baghdad, show the terrorist leader confused about how to handle an M-249 squad automatic weapon, known as an S.A.W., which is part of the American inventory of infantry weapons.
The American military, which said it captured the videotapes in a recent raid, released selected outtakes in an effort to undermine Mr. Zarqawi’s image as leader of the Council of Holy Warriors, formerly Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and suggested that his fighting talents and experience were less than his propaganda portrays. But several veterans of wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, as well as active-duty officers, said in telephone interviews yesterday that the clips of Mr. Zarqawi’s supposed martial incompetence were unconvincing.
The weapon in question is complicated to master, and American soldiers and marines undergo many days of training to achieve the most basic competence with it. Moreover, the weapon in Mr. Zarqawi’s hands was an older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising. The veterans said Mr. Zarqawi, who had spent his years as a terrorist surrounded by simpler weapons of Soviet design, could hardly have been expected to know how to handle it.
Note that there is a plausible (if, IMHO, wrong) case to be made that such mockery was counter-productive. But to describe as basically unfair as the NY Times does is to cross from loyal opposition to being a propaganda outlet for an enemy of the USA and civilization in general. But what else should I expect from apologists for Soviet Russia?