Sean Gabb

After several years of inactivity, Tim Starr has recommenced issuing gusts of hot air.

Followers of Tim in the Libertarian Alliance Yahoo Forum may recall his endorsement of every WMD claim and and of every British Moslem terror plot going. They may also recall his frenzied endorsement of the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – even his claim that Iraq was benefiting from the explosive growth of a laissez faire economy, and that the war and occupation could be made to pay for themselves by looting the Iraqi oil reserves.

Now he is back.

As part of my welcome, let me republish two brief odes composed a few years back to my dearest Timmy. Since his own collected writings might fill a half dozen quarto pages, it is possible that these humble lines will, after a hundred years, be all the memorial that he has.

A Brief Ode on Timothy Starr,
Whose Passion for Fighting
The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
was Limited only by His Failure
to Volunteer for Service There

With lion heart and strong right arm,
Tim Starr would never flinch from harm,
But upright would his nation’s flag
In Baghdad and in Kabul wag.
But wicked lungs! Cruel to deny
Tim’s right to join and fight and die.
And so, disabled, from his bed
Must Timmy moderate instead
A distribution list that will
Prompt fitter men to bleed or kill.

An Ode to Timothy Starr,
A Libertarian Who Supported the War with Iraq

That I, unmurdered in my bed,
And Mrs Gabb, unravished,
May count forever on the care
Of Mr Bush and Tony Blair,
Let us give praise to him whose eyes
Have spied for truth among the lies.
Timothy Starr, to thee I sing –
Whose name shall through all ages ring
For statements based on evidence,
If not perhaps on common sense.
Thou from the first wast quite assured
Mesopotamia’s tyrant lord
Had — God knows how, though without right –
Weapons of vast and horrid might,
To use against us in attack,
Or hand around outside Iraq.
Yes, others doubted; others sneered;
Others maintain that none appeared.
But thou, O Timmy, didst cheer on
Those brave, brave men in Washington
To do their duty of defence
Regardless of intelligence.
So Iraq we liberated,
While Dick Cheney’s partners waited,
And children there did we compel
To arms or sorrows bid farewell.
Some their monument seek in stone:
Be thine in Baghdad blood and bone.
If it decay, as must all flesh,
There will be minds to keep it fresh.
Therefore, indebted for the care
So lavished from thine office chair,
These verses on our happy state
To thee, O Tim, I dedicate.