06/19/03:

DER LONG-PROMISED RANT AUF KLAUS. My response to an antiwar diatribe addressed to us some time ago by an acquaintance. Did you know, for example, that George W. Bush is a... a mean man?

Read on.

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While we mobilized the most powerful war machine in human history to go after this pathetic despot, the Israelis continued to terrorize Palestinians on and within their country's borders.

Oh, I see. It’s the anti-Semitic vein running through the "left" that you have bought into.

It’s called "jihad" when Palestinians blow up and/or machine gun innocent school children but it’s "terror" when the Israelis respond in their own defense. The so called "occupied territories" were captured by Israeli forces in operations of SELF DEFENSE against Arab attacks. Israel has been under attack by Arabs literally from the DAY the state of Israel was created by the UN on May 14, 1948.

Gee, why don’t the Palestinians’ Arab brethren provide them with a homeland?

Our unconditional support

Our support is not "unconditional." But The US is Israel’s SOLE support without which the Arabs would have SLAUGHTERED every last Israeli 55 years ago.

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for their unethical treatment

Self defense is unethical? Are Palestinian homicide bombers exhibiting unethical treatment of the Israelis?

coupled with our readiness to go to war against a regime that was not threatening us in any way

And by similar logic, you’d say that al Qaeda was no threat on September 10^th?

has many people around the world wondering how we could be so shortsighted and self-righteous.

It remains the antiwar left, both domestic AND European, which is myopic; the present administration with the big picture and the long term goal of global security and liberalization. But, it remains the blind hatred of George Bush by the left which blinds them also to the intelligence and leadership of this administration. Too bad you’re going to miss it all.

I believe we are led by a vindictive insecure man who has finally found something to swagger about

Again, many people used to believe that the Earth was flat. Their belief didn’t make it so.

, so yes, I

will sing kumbaya, and I would sing any damn thing if it would give him pause, and make him consider the possibility that others' perspectives might be as valid as his.

Perhaps YOU should consider the possibility that his perspective is more valid than yours.

It is the antiwar left who lives in their own shrunken narrow insular world of fictions, factoids and paranoid conspiracy theories, devoid of hope, devoid of optimism for the future. And their perspective might NOT be as valid in the empirical, pragmatic REAL WORLD. That one can HAVE an alternate perspective does not mean that the REAL WORLD will change shape to conform to it.

Surely the Bush Administration has examined many, many scenarios to deal with the crises we now face.

Bush has exploited 9-11, and our dread of a repeat of that horror, to advance his desire to smash and bully. I don't have a problem with going to war against bad people, but I do if we are lying to ourselves and/or being lied to as to the reasons why.

Your implicit assumption here is that Operation Iraqi Freedom was conceived purely to satisfy the President’s desire to "smash and bully." Do you actually believe that 2/3 of Congress (remember, that vote was held BEFORE midterm elections) would have voted to approve the use of force against the Hussein regime, that the US would have drawn together a coalition of some 49 countries, that Tony Blair, a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT would be our strongest ally, if this was just so George Bush would have the opportunity to "smash and bully."

What evidence do you have to support this extreme hypothesis?

If the reason is to stop a potential aggressor, then we damn well better be ready to fight many other Arab nations and Korea and some African ones too,

We are ready.

because heck, who knows, someday they may want to use their weapons -- many of which are sold to them by US arms companies (the US provides 40% of the world's weapons).

Can you substantiate these claims? Have we been recently selling arms to Iran, Syria or North Korea?

Exactly what do mean by saying that the US "provides" 40% of the world’s weapons?

In terms of what? 40% of the cash value of weapons? 40% of the quantity of weapons?

Which type of weapons? Sold to whom and to what consequence? Should no weapons be developed or produced in the United States?

If the war was to deal with nations with weapons of mass destruction, then why don't we just stop our companies from selling them

EXCUSE ME?!

What US companies are selling weapons of mass destruction to what countries?!

, and why do we not sign the international treaties that Bush walked away from that would have slowed their spread?

Which treaties would have slowed the spread of WMD?

If the war was to stop someone who might attack another nation, can't we see that would include we ourselves?

Oh yeah, right – moral equivalence between the United States and the Hussein regime.

Do you actually not see the absurdity of that argument? These arguments are nothing more than ridiculous logical brain teasers. Self defense is a legitimate causus belli. We cannot wait for someone to throw the first punch when that punch could incinerate a large city.

Facts? Who needs them in the ethereal world of the self-described intellectual elite who exist in some kind of divine rarified realm of thought and polemics for their own sake? Certainly meritocrats can THINK of a solution to every problem such as another Albrightian "Agreed Framework" which is proving, as I write, its utter, abject failure. This "constituency of the mind" loved Clinton; he was one of them – Rhodes Scholar and all. He spent two terms disgracing himself, the United States and emboldening bin laden’s ilk to continue attacking the US and other western targets with impunity.

I am glad we fought against the Nazis and proud that my father served, was caught as a POW, escaped, was caught again, and escaped and made his way to Prague when Patton liberated it.

And the spineless French appeaseniks would have turned him into the Nazis.

Your father certainly proved his mettle. I am comforted to know that fully half of your genome came from him.

But that war was different in profound ways from this one.

That’s right; everyone waited for the threat to mature. How many times have you heard: "If only someone would have gotten rid of Hitler earlier."

This one has been motivated by the fear of what-if,

I disagree. The motivation is more like "when."

Therefore, by this logic, we should only act in self defense AFTER we have been attacked. And by this same logic, even if we KNEW that al qaeda was about to attack the WTC, we still should have waited until they actually DID attack.

A smoking gun has already been fired.

and

in causing this war we have now made peoples around the world afraid as

we are afraid.

We have made tyrants afraid and I’m FOR IT!

Now we see Assad behaving himself. We see Korea Kim starting to wobble.

AND, the citizens see that THEY are not the targets, their oppressors are.

I am powerless as one citizen to do anything to slow the spread of madness/fear -- the only way we will be more secure is to act more ethically ourselves.

You assume that the threats we face to our security are the direct result of "unethical actions" by the United States. Therefore it would logically follow that you think that 9/11 was justified, that another WMD attack on the US would be justified and that the vitriolic hatred of the US promulgated by Islamic madrassas is correct. This all argues for appeasement (read: surrender), which has already proven its total inefficacy.

If not for the United States, the whole world would be like the Epcot Center – NOT!

We are more secure today than we were two years ago. Is it unethical, as in Afghanistan, to liberate a brutally repressed people from a medieval tyranny in which women’s rights are non-existent, men are beaten for having too-short of beards, where listening to music gets one beaten? Is it unethical for a the United States to defend itself, while going to extreme measures to minimize civilian casualties, against an enemy which attacked US civilians, killing almost 4,000 Americans on US soil?

Is it unethical, in Iraq, to forcefully depose, in an operation which successfully went to historically unprecedented lengths to avoid civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, a totalitarian dictator who is responsible for the deaths of some 1,500,000 Iraqi citizens, who is an active sponsor of terrorist organizations who target innocent civilians, who violates UN sanctions requiring him to provide his civilians with the basic needs for survival, who violates UN resolutions (passed unanimously by the Security Council) requiring his disarmament of WMD?

Check the following link to Human Rights Watch to study Saddam’s reign of terror against Iraqis.

Human Rights Watch

The power of ethics and dignity and compassion that Gandhi showed is not wimpy.

Above (sec 41) you imply that the United States (that’s you too) was in the wrong and thus deservedly attacked. Here you imply that the US is right and should employ some fashion of righteous stoicism toward militant, ultraviolent Islamofascists.

So, which is it?

Do you actually believe that this would achieve anything other than to facilitate their efforts to kill as many "infidels" as possible? Man, what kind of dream world are you living in?

That image from "War of the Worlds" comes to mind wherein the Priest, Bible in hand and reciting the Lord’s Prayer, approaches one of the alien ships only to be vaporized by their disintegrating ray.

That's the kind of guts I wish Bush would show, not the kind of "courage" that is because his guns are bigger than theirs.

And just WHAT would you have George do, treat them to flatbread while sitting crosslegged in homespun on the floor of the Oval Office?

Fact:

Gandhi was not facing the treat of NUCLEAR WEAPONS in the hands of terrorists and rogue states.

Gandhi also knew, and exploited, the fact that British forces in India ultimately had to be accountable to popular opinion back home – a democracy governed by the rule of law. News of British forces firing upon Indian civilians did not play well back home and led eventually to British withdrawal and court marshals for the commanders.

Islamists, to the contrary, are regarded as heroes back home for the killing of "Infidels" and do not answer to nations governed by the rule of law. Passive resistance to these Islamo-Kamakazis is suicide.

Who would the antiwar left volunteer for passive resistance duty against Islamists?

So I'm gonna sing kumbaya and hope like hell he doesn't take us to war with anyone else now. I hope we do a helluva lot better job of "rebuilding" Iraq than we did in Afghanistan.

Rebuilding a nation takes time--why does everyone expect that we should be able to repair in a year what 22 years of civil war have wrought? We have not abandoned Afghanistan. Totally to the contrary. We also continue to deploy some 11,500 forces there to clean out remnants of al qaeda and Taliban. Exploring the following link will show you that we are working, in concert with other coalition members AND the UN to revive Afghanistan and bring that nation into the 21^st century. It is important to hold opinions based on facts.

http://www.export.gov/afghanistan/index.html

We broke our promise there

NOT!

Based upon what EVIDENCE?

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, just as we did to the Shiites and Kurds in 1991 when we promised to help them if they revolted against Saddam. We walked away and let them get slaughtered,

I agree. That was a grievous mistake. The fact that we have learned from that mistake is evidenced by our performance in both Afghanistan and Iraq this time.

The left reminds me of a bad wife who harps upon her husbands rare past errors in spite of his overwhelming generosity and success.

and now we're back only because Bush has used tortured "logic" to show that somehow by killing Saddam we're going to stop Bin Laden -- huh?

Nonsense! The President has made NO SUCH CLAIM. Your assumption here has no basis in fact.

We're back in war against Iraq because Bush is still pissed that someone tried to kill his daddy 12 years ago and he never forgets an enemy,

I really am shocked that you have bought into this ridiculously specious theory.

It evidences the utter desperation of the left.

Have you any credible EVIDENCE to support this claim?

I didn’t think so.

we're not there because Iraq was a hotbed of radicalism against the US.

I have yet to hear that reason proposed by ANYONE in the administration.

Where do you get this idea to begin with?

Hell, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan and Pakistan are much better candidates if that's our real target. What the hell does Iraq have to do with radical Islam????? Iraq was a dictatorship that was not at all involved in radical Islam.

While Iraq per se is not generally regarded as a prolific breeding ground for militant Islamic fundamentalism (control is everything in a Stalinist state such as Hussein’s Iraq), it was clearly a strongly anti-American regime. With its direct support of Islamist terrorist organizations (Hezbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad), connections to al qaeda and development of WMD, coupled with Hussein’s ambitions to dominate the entire Arab region, the threat this represents to the United States and our allies in particular and to Western civilization generally cannot be tolerated or permitted to foment. Hussein was involved with radical Islamist organizations.

Continued Tomorrow

posted by Klaus (mit mein vicious Hund, Helmut) 06/19/03