Fractionals

Here we have two people talking right past each other (Drabble's original article is here). Amiel is an idiot, of course, if she really thinks that there is pervasive leftism in Europe; the relatively uncontroversial nature of Livingston's comments is because everyone (including most conseratives, if you get them off the record), think the man is an idiot. And nowhere in Drabble's article did she say that she somehow preferred Saddam's regime to America. One of the fallacies both sides tend to fall into when discussing this sort of thing is that if someone, say Drabble, doesn't like one country, say the US, they must be rooting for the opposing one, say Iraq under Saddam. Never mind that Drabble was probably, just as with myself, glad to see Saddam go. That doesn't mean we do or should support Bush. And Amiel (who is, as I say, an idiot, and we've been putting up with her up here for long enough to me to be certain about this) never addresses Drabble's most damning charge, that of the 'illegal combatants', who have been detained without due process.