by George McFarlane
In her article, Bernard Goldberg was Right, Ms. Carol A. Taber writes:
“Recently, conservative writer and former National Review Online contributor W. Thomas Smith, Jr., was attacked in the blogosphere and media for his NRO blogging while he was in Lebanon. The attacks against him were not only baseless, but because the reaction to them was so appalling and shameful to our business, almost in too many ways to elaborate fully here, I'm moved to comment on the whole grisly affair.”
Some might ask who is W. Thomas Smith, Jr.; and why the “baseless, appalling, shameful” attacks against him and his character because of two or three blog posts that in the beginning only a few unknown Leftwing freelancers, a New Republic writer wanting “payback”, and some Hezballah apologists didn't approve of? Why were those attacks picked up by the Leftwing blogs and some of the biggest newspapers in the nation? Why did nearly all of Mr. Smith's attackers refuse to contact him for his side of the story?
Read On...
Why were his attackers so willing to lie about or distort what he said and call him so many terrible and untrue names? And how did they get away with it?
It's very simple for anyone who would take the time as Ms. Taber did and look at this with, as she says, a “critical eye”.
Mr. Smith posed a clear and present danger to the Left. He was a man who the Left felt had to be destroyed; and who the Right felt wasn't yet famous enough to risk defending...though he certainly is now.
Mr. Smith is a threat to the Left because he's a conservative writer who's not afraid to fight, and who is known to have defeated his enemies in the past by fighting fair when they did not. He's a compassionate person, a hard man with a soft soul, and a gentleman of the old school who is not ashamed of his faith in God: All the qualities snubbed or misunderstood by the Left.
Readers like myself who have been following Mr. Smith's writing over the years or recently at NRO's The Tank, recognize that his politics are always fair to the other side (sometimes too fair), but his willingness to fight for a good cause and see a fight through to the end is nothing less than Churchillian.
A former U.S. Marine infantryman who became a war correspondent, Mr. Smith is also a threat to the enemies of the United States: A “cowboy” is one thing his critics have called him, a moniker which he has accepted with a measure of grace.
Mr. Smith is not only a threat to the Left, but he is a threat to Al Qaida and other terrorist groups because he understands them, refuses to coddle them, and is not afraid to go after them.
He was a threat to the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina during the 1990's, and after infiltrating the KKK (something other journalists would not have the chutzpah to do), he testified against them in a major civil trial that aired on Court TV, and resulted in a multi-million dollar judgment against the organization and the virtual elimination of the KKK in South Carolina.
Today, Smith is a particular threat to the terrorist group Hezballah (which Mr. Smith calls a “terrorist army”) because he has not only exposed the often-underreported extent to which they are developing and operating in Lebanon, but he has reported – and attempted to report – the level at which Hezballah (and its backers Iran and Syria) have penetrated the Lebanese army and the Lebanese and international media.
So you see, the Left and the terrorists have a common enemy.
The Left believes they have to destroy Mr. Smith before he becomes more widely read than he already is.
The terrorists believe they have to destroy Mr. Smith for the same reason.
My money is on Mr. Smith.
Neither the Left nor the terrorists will stop him from writing and speaking. They would have to kill him first, and I bet that would be almost impossible.
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