Nobody Says It Better Than You, Wretchard

Here’s another take, this one by Wretchard in a post titled, Thanks for Nothing, on the butchery of American soldiers by Allah’s mujahideen. W has a suggestion for what Amnesty International can do with its transparently half-hearted condolences and condemnations:

My own testament, for the record, [is] that if I should ever be tortured, have my throat slit, beheaded, mutilated and then have booby traps planted round my corpse so that they might kill any relatives and friends -- should any of this ever happen to me -- that Amnesty International kindly refrain from extending its “sincerest condolences” and weasely condemnations and offering its insulting and gratuitous advice. I don’t want them. I would much rather lie forgotten in some open field than have one of Amnesty International’s sick letters on my casket...

To which one of Belmont Club’s commenters, Wu Wei, responds:

Amnesty International is just a few liberal British attorneys who formed an organization to further their views. At least that’s how they started out, though perhaps they employ more people now. It always amazes me that just because of the name “Amnesty International” the world accepts them as independent experts. This is like if three conservatives started calling themselves “International Law Consulting”, and then started appearing on talk shows offering opinions.

He’s right, of course. It would just take three guys in a room somewhere to dream up a good name. The problem is the mandarin press: it gives access only to the America-haters. Thus, any reasonable group could try to disguise themselves as, say, the League of Peace and Justice, but the seven second delay in broadcast communications would have them off the air in three sentences. And when the imperial Senator from Arizona gets finished mangling the First Amendment they’ll probably be in legal trouble of some sort anyway.

So as attractive as is Wu Wei’s notion of an ex nihilo conservative version of Nasty International, there’s not much hope for any practical application. The very notion is itself defeated by conservatism’s first principles, one of which is that the end does not justify the means.


NOTE: I have read in a few places (which I now don’t recall) that there is some move to have a number of national memorial services for these two soldiers. If any of our readers know of such, please send the information to be included in either an update or a new post. You guys get around more than I do…