Sore winners

Got a note from one David Appell, a writer living in Portland, Oregon:

So, according to your NPR essay, your beliefs about Bush and the war are coming into question.

This must be very difficult for you.

Of course, not nearly as difficult as all the suffering that has occurred in this war -- suffering you implicitedly supported. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died in this war -- innocent men, innocent women, even small children. Infants, even.

I want to know what you are going to say to these people. What?

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It was clear all along -- to anyone who knew anything whatsoever about the history of warfare -- that hundreds of thousands of innocent people were going to be killed and maimed in this war.

You clearly did not care. You had other priorities.

You didn't even offer to serve in the very war you supported. That makes you a coward.

You fell for obvious lies and what were clearly corrupt decisions. Tens of millions of Americans knew these were lies and that there was no justificable reason for war. For that, they suffered only ridicule from people like you.

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And you like to pretend that you're a Christian. What a [profanity] joke. You clearly don't understand the first thing about what Jesus taught.

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I don't believe in God. I almost wish I did. You support for this war has been extremely, profoundly immoral. It was thoughtlessly stupid, terribly bad, and so consequential that you deserve to suffer for it. I almost wish there were a God so you could burn in hell.

Maybe then you'd see what the suffering you have caused is like.

David Appell
Portland, OR

Somehow, I think I'll be able to sleep well knowing that David Appell of Portland, Ore., wishes that I would suffer hellfire for eternity. I rather suspect that living with such rage, which doesn't touch me, is poisoning him, poor guy. But it's worth pointing out that this is exactly the sort of crazy-mad person that kept reasonable people on the Right from listening to the liberal critique of the war before we went to war. (It's also the case that the anti-Semitism of some on the Right who were critical of the war we were headed into in 2002 enabled many of us to dismiss all of their arguments).

Can you imagine being the sort of person who, when your enemy admits that he had been wrong and you had been right about something of great importance, responds with, "F--- you, you should have been here all along, I hope you die"? Yeah, that'll win people over to your side. That'll change things for the better.