Kristol says war critics would have been pro-slavery

February 12, 2007

With increased desperation comes increased recklessness. William Kristol, unable to defend the war in Iraq with any kind of substance, seems to have bought a one-way ticket to Limbaugh Land, where reason, facts, and common decency have lost all meaning.

A few weeks ago, it was Kristol rejecting the idea of dissent, insisting that critics of the war should just “be quiet for six or nine months.” Last week, Kristol lashed out at members of Congress — of both parties — for their consideration of an anti-escalation, non-binding resolution, labeling them “anti-troops.” (Kristol has never worn a uniform, many of those he attacked are decorated veterans.)

Yesterday, Kristol gave up completely on making sense.

[Saturday], Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) announced his candidacy for president in Springfield, IL, where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” address. In his speech, Obama reiterated his call to redeploy U.S. forces out of Iraq by March 2008.

[Yesterday] morning on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol attacked Obama’s Iraq policy, saying he wants to appease terrorists like pro-slavery politician Stephen Douglas tried to appease slave-owners. Kristol said, “Obama’s speech is a ‘can’t we get along’ speech — sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858.”

Stephen Douglas supported the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision of 1857, and took the pro-slavery position that each territory should decide whether or not to allow slave-owning.

It was literally breathtaking. My friend Michael J.W. Stickings’ reaction was spot-on: “This is not just disingenuous and unfair. It’s vile…. However complex his identity, [Obama] is seen as a black man not just in the U.S. but around the world. To suggest that he would have essentially supported slavery is simply outrageous and disgusting.”

I’d only add that this depraved argument, alas, is not unique to Kristol.

In September, Condoleezza Rice implicitly made the exact same argument, suggesting that opponents of the war are the moral equivalent of those who would tolerate slavery in 19th century America.

Secretary of State Rice compared the Iraq war with the American Civil War, telling a magazine that slavery might have lasted longer in this country if the North had decided to end the fight early.

“I’m sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold,” Rice said in the new issue of Essence magazine.

“I know there were people who said, ‘Why don’t we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'” Rice said.

Must of the GOP’s right-wing base likes to accuse the president’s critics of “Bush derangement syndrome,” which suggests that those of us who oppose the president are so filled with bitterness and spite, it’s driven us to madness.

Given the slavery argument advanced by Kristol and Rice, I don’t think we’re the ones who are deranged.

They just don’t like that he said:

“Most of all, let’s be the generation that never forgets what happened on that September day and confront the terrorists with everything we’ve got.”

so they’re going to try to package it as something different.

  • now if Kristol could just start writing a blog for one of the GOP candidates then we could get all outrageous and pissed off

  • It sounds like Kristol is the one who would have supported slavery. Obama’s campaign and the Congressional Black Caucus should pressure Kristol for a formal apology and a retraction; Obama’s campaign should get out the quote I cut’n’pasted above and have people e-mail it to Kristol, correcting him. They should get it out on the blogs.

  • I say we call this “Kristol’s Law” … like Goodwin, but with slavery.

    I’m still stunned this clown gets any airtime whatsoever — I guess that “meritocracy” Broder drones about is a crock.

  • I hope someone asks Bill Kristol in a public forum if we need to invade any other non-democracies, or just Iraq (and Iran?). He’s going to come across as a loonie (which he is) or a hypocrite (which he is).

    Zionist pig.

  • Moses (Re #5) –
    The fact that BRODER still gets a platform is proof that there is no meritocracy in the MSM pundit league.
    Unless by merit you mean advancing a Republic Party line.

  • Sorry, it’s the Kristols and all the other far righties who are the neo-Confederates. Their party wouldn’t exist without the support of the Old Confederacy.

    Up is down, in is out, left is right, day is night. Welcome to WingerWorld.

  • Let’s not forget that Obama, the son of a Kenyan and an American, isn’t “black enough” to begin with. Add that to his complete opposition to the Bush/Kristol debacle in Iraq and, voila, you’ve got a slavery sympathizer.

    An amazingly simple thing, this wingnut calculus. It makes the Earl of Ockham look positively turgid by comparison.

  • It is ironic, to say the least, that Kristol would admonish dissent—the literal keystone of Democracy—as being “pro-slavery.” He’d much rather have us all voluntarily put on the chains of “Massah Bush n’ Massah Cheney” and surrender Democracy itself to the ashbin of history. But it isn’t going to happen; not today, and not ever. It is, instead, the Bushes; the Cheneys; the Kristols of the land who will find themselves confronted by “a Second Emancipation,” as the slumbering giant of Democracy wakes up, throws off the lilliputian strands of neoconservativism, and reasserts its rightful might upon those pitiful few who would have us all become slaves to this “American Reich.”

    The giant is waking up—slowly, to be certain—but it is waking up. Willie Kristol! Be afraid. Be very afraid….

  • I’d just like to point out Obama’s strong response to some ungentlemanly remarks by the Australian PM, John Howard, recently. With people acting like Obama, we should be confident we’ll see a conservative defeat again in the elections come November. The John Howard remarks were just as delirious as Kristol’s.

  • you would think that before kristol said this kind of thing he would at least have the basic historical knowledge to know that if lincoln could have avoided civil war by leaving slavery in place, he would have, and that he didn’t declare the emancipation proclamation until 1863.

    what a fuckhead.

  • as a follow-up to what was posted by swan @#12, this is from msnbc…..

    Obama, in Iowa a day after formally announcing his candidacy, responded to Howard’s initial comments by saying he was flattered that one of Bush’s close allies had chosen to single him out for attack.

    He then challenged Howard on his commitment to the Iraq conflict, noting the United States has nearly 140,000 troops in Iraq compared with Australia’s about 1,400 forces in the region.

    “So if he is ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq,” Obama said. “Otherwise it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric.”

    Nice response. i like this guy…….

  • The Publican strategery is to take anything reprehensible and hang it around the Democratic neck. Emotional impact is all that’s important; facts are for sissies. Communism, fascism, terrorism, girly men and manly women, slavery … it’s all just shit waiting to be slung by the GOP, with the hope it’ll stick. I’d have included child molestation, too, but Mark Foley’s taken that epithet out of the arsenal for foreseeable news cycles.

    It’s no surprise that there are people low enough to behave like Kristol and Kondi: “Who knows what evil lurks in hearts of men?” What is surprising is the degree to which we’ve allowed major “news” media to pass such gunk along unchallenged by anyone except the liberal (i.e., fact-checking) blogs.

  • Ah, yes, and Kristol, with his embrace of Bush’s idea of preemptive/preventive war, his taste for absolutist moral rhetoric, his demonization of religious minorities, his lust for ever-expanding war, his indifference to the moral views of anyone who disagrees with him, and his self-importance, would have been a member of the White Fucking Rose Society in 1940’s Germany.

    (/sarcasm)

  • Conservatives supported slavery the way they support everything that’s against progress. They have this idea that the world went to hell after the Dark Ages and if we could just get the peasants back in their damn huts everything would be great.

  • Is this the first time for Kristol to accuse someone with whom he opposes as being someone who would support slavery? I seem to remember something a couple years ago where he did something similar. But I cannot find it on the internets. Maybe just false memory.

  • Kristol and his buddies keep escalating the importance of this war as some great struggle for all humankind. Bullsh*t. This war is all about a lie. Lincoln didn’t lie, Bush did.

    But this might be fun to play against Kristol’s analogy. If the South is the Republican’s last stronghold, why not use Bill’s and Condi’s analogies to rip open old wounds. Question why they are comparing Islamic fundamentalist terrorism to the Confederacy. Call Moqtada al Sadr as the Robert E. Lee of Iraq and question if we will only bring peace to Iraq if we charge through Iraq like Sherman through Georgia. If we burn down Bagdad can we say we won? The analogy is sublimely foolish, but it should be used against them.

  • Just once, I’d like for someone on the right to deal with opponents of the war on the basis of the war, instead of changing the subject, attacking the messenger, knocking down straw men, etc., etc.

  • Kristol makes the mistake common to so many Bush supporters – assuming that if you oppose the war or the way it has been conducted then you must think Saddam Hussein was an all right guy and you must have approved of his tyrannical actions. They can’t seem to grasp the possibility that there were ways to oppose Saddam by improved international cooperation and the strengthening of the sanctions that were already keeping him in check to some extent. Of course, this administration and its allies seem to think only in terms of military force. They seem to have no clue as to how to engage in a constructive manner with the rest of the world.

  • I did oppose the war, but then Bush lost it, so that became a moot point.

    Now, I’m opposed to leaving US troops in the middle of a civil war.

  • Goes to show how much that pinworm knows about American History. Stephen Douglas was a proponent of popular sovereignty. Let the pople of the state/terriority determine if they wanted slavery or not. Dougles did not try to appease slave holders; he broke with the Buchannan Administration over the LeCompton constitution. He did so because of the Missouri pro slavery forces crossing into Kansas to vote for LeCompton.

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