If I had a nickel for every wingnut who’s ever written something stupid or sleazy about me I’d be a rich man. The infinite variety of the abuse, lies and invective is a remarkable testament to the inventiveness of the human race. It’s also a testament to the human ability to waste its time and energy in copious amounts.
The latest example of this is someone who calls himself ‘John Rohan’ and blogs at Shield of Achilles (no, I’m not going to do anything to boost this shmendrik’s site traffic by providing a link). After an endless stream of logorrheic comments here and being called by him a self-hating Jew (Rohan isn’t Jewish of course, which certainly makes him the best judge on matters like this), “fraud,” and other choice epithets, I banned ‘Rohan’ (or whatever his name is).
What’s interesting about this fellow if he tells the truth on his blog (which with wingnuts is, of course, always in doubt) is that his blog claims he is a military intelligence officer serving in Wiesbaden, Germany. If he does serve in the U.S. armed forces it means that your and my tax dollars are supporting military wingnuts in smearing their fellow citizens online. Don’t know about you–but I find this disturbing. Not to mention that the vitriol he spouts puts him at odds with U.S. military and foreign policy. In comments at my blog and private e-mails, he attacks erstwhile U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia by name and denounces Palestinians as a people as little short of terrorist murderers. I’d have thought that the military would want to protect itself from being associated with wingnut rage like this.
If this guy is genuine is it any wonder that our military effort in Iraq has failed so miserably (where he claims to have served training the Iraqi police, God help us–and them)? Is it any wonder that our armed forces and government as a whole have absolutely no idea how to relate to the Arab world when this is the best our military can come up with?
Just in case there’s any truth to his claims about his occupation, I’ve written to the base commander at Wiesbaden to report on “Rohan’s” activity. If I don’t receive any reply my next step will be contacing my Congressional representative.
If Rohan is lying and he is not a military intelligence officer then we’ll have yet one more example of wingnuts posing as macho wannabe gung ho types. He’ll be little more than a poor, raging fool seeking to create a life for himself based on fantasy. Given that Rohan has publicly attacked me on his own blog I’d guess he’s either a fraud claiming to be a military intelligence officer or a supremely self-confident soldier-fool who thinks he can get away with just about anything. And if he’s fake, I’d think the army would not look kindly on bloggers falsely assuming the identity of military personnel.
I have a reader who serves in the Israeli army and often disagrees with my views and tells me so. But unlike Rohan, the former won’t blog publicly about his political views or comment at my blog both because the army doesn’t want him to and because he doesn’t want his own views to reflect in any way on the army. I can respect that. “Rohan” has no such humility or modesty.
After I banned Rohan, he began sending me unsolicited e-mails. When I told him to stop writing, all of a sudden I started getting e mails making virtually the same false claims about me from someone named ‘Michael Villano.’ I don’t know whether the e-mails are from Rohan or a wingnut co-conspirator (their IP addresses appear to be different). I don’t even know if their author really is named Michael Villano–michaelvillano@att.net.
Rohan has taken the despicable step of publishing my e mail address at his blog, thereby allowing spammers to harvest it. Since one egregious violation of personal privacy deserves another, I’ll feature his here and let the spammers have at him as well: johnrohan@hotmail.com.
Richard, I took a look at his site. Maybe I am still a bit mystified occasionally how your net fights develop.
But strictly this guy, as one would expect, has a German segment. Now of course this could be done from the US but why should he?
I followed one of his links and yo and behold found myself on the site of my fellow German (more precisely my fellow German Jewish/Israeli – axis-of-the-good-member – stout Anti-anti-American or “we-are-all-Americans-now” ideologue) Hendrik M. Broder.
http://anti-anti-americanism.com/blog/
With Broder I have a strong love – hate relationship. As far as Israel is concerned or maybe culture generally I like his articles, he can be very, very funny, whenever he writes about politics he drives me up nuts.
Could it be this was the essence in your clash too?
Actual US Army officers are almost universally polite and respectful. They also are assigned Email addresses in the following format: John.Doe.@US.Army.Mil
S/
US Army Officer’s Dad
Chuck: Sad to say but this person appears fr. what I can tell to really be what he claims to be (at least in terms of being in the service, though not in terms of being the super patriot he believes himself to be). At any rate, I’ve complained to the Wiesbaden base & given them enough that they can identity him & they’ve replied that they will investigate. This “Rohan” certainly, if he is U.S. Army, is betraying the spirit of the service in his treatment of me. I’d like nothing more than to discover that he’s a fraud & not a serving officer at all.
Also, he uses a hotmail e mail address. He has enough “guile” to understand that if he used his real Army e mail address he’d be in even more trouble than he may get to be if anyone there does really follow up on this. And of course, it’d be terribly easy to identify him if he used such an address.