1984 In 2007
We must be entering another age of global irrationality. A dark time. An age of mass psychotic gullibility where people believe any politician who says s/he can make water run uphill and drive the Bible-thumping trolls into the woods and chase the neocon dragons beyond the mountains. An era of revived blind public faith in the power of government to legislate prosperity equally, run every last industry down to the minutest detail with perfect efficiency, enshrine rationing as a source of everything from unlimited energy to free health care to perpetual motion machines, and pacify the entire planet with the shining example of its supreme moral purity and the irresistable persuasiveness of its superior intellectual magnanimity and unparalleled diplomatic skill.
Three cases in point:
***David Miliband, the new British Foreign Minister under Old Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown, used the occasion of his first visit to Pakistan to praise Pervez Musharraf - not for sending his army into Waziristan to drive al Qaeda out of the privileged sanctuary he foolishly gave them a year ago, but for giving them that sanctuary in the first place. In quintessential liberalspeak, Miliband added that, "a purely military solution to violence in Pakistan’s tribal areas would not alone quash the insurgency. ..." Which sure sounds like an endorsement of negotiating with terrorists to me, since there's no such thing as a diplomatic "squashing".
This Old Labor mindset was reflected in the way British NATO commanders were running their areas of the Afghan theater of the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism. They negotiated a series of "truces" with the Taliban insurgency that allowed the Islamists to reconquer every Afghan community in the British operational area. It got so bad that we had to relieve the Brits, resume the actual war, and re-liberate the surrendered communities. You might even say we "quashed" their asses - and without a pair of striped pants in sight.
***With that abject lesson in front of them, what was the riposte of Pakistani officials to Miliband's morony?
***Read this USA Today quote and see if you can pick out the anamoly:
Maybe I'm starting to get O-L-D, but it doesn't seem that long ago to me that Israeli withdrawal to those indefensible 1967 borders - whose indefensibility forty years ago was precisely the reason Israel struck first in the Six Day War before their Arab enemies could overrun them - was not considered an option, either by the Israelis or by the United States. Even the limited autonomy granted the Pals in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under the infamous Oslo "peace plan" has been a disaster, producing two intifadas, a two-front war against Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas a year ago, and now has consigned Gaza to Iranian-sponsored terrorist rule - a fact that has evidently taught us the diametrically wrong lesson as we are now embracing Fatah in the West Bank, whose only difference from Hamas is that Mahmoud Abbas is not a theocrat.
With the lesson of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza two years ago etched indellibly in stone - retreat from terrorists and they'll follow right on your heels and continue their attacks closer to home - now the Arab League comes to the Israelis with the exact same old song & dance - territorial retreat in exchange for empty promises of "peace" - and what had once been out of the question, a complete non-starter, is now veritable conventional "wisdom".
Admiral Ed's rationalization of this insanity is particularly dense, amounting to "moderate" Arab autocracies attempting to buy off their populaces from Islamist influence by getting a bigger, better "deal" for the Palestinians than Oslo or the "Roadmap" or whatever the hell else the slow-motion Second Holocaust is called. For them there is no problem in the Middle East - which is to say, no threat to their continued dictatorial rule - that isn't soluable by buggering the Jews on behalf of the perpetual regional MacGuffin, the fictional ethnic nationality on whose behalf so much is promised by Arab regimes and jack bleep is actually done.
If anything, Morrissey has it backwards - the "moderate" Arab regimes may tell the West this horsepucky about "peace," but what they'll tell their people if the Israelis go along with this latest national suicide pact - and to Ehud Olmert, whose latest bright idea is to re-open negotiations with Syria for the evacatuation of the Golan Heights, there's no concession that resides "out of the question" - is that they, and not the jihadis, have - via diplomacy! - made Israel more conquerable than the Islamists ever did.
THAT is how Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia, et al seek to "marginalize" the Islamists in their midst - by putting themselves over as the "strong horse" against the Jews - and, ultimately, the West. THAT is the competition in the Arab/Muslim world, a culture for which "peace" is defined the same as Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad define it: Islamic domination of the entire planet. The so-called "moderates" are betting that after a decade or more of overt "holy" war, their old-fashioned hudna guile can succeed where the berserkers have failed.
Or maybe it's just the old one-two punch - the terrorists wear down Western and Israeli will and common sense, the "moderates" strike lopsided deals that never would have been possible before, and then both move in for the kill.
Perhaps Prime Minister Olmert's own words best sum up this cowardly new Bizarro world:
Our allies in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism are already as good as defeated. And from the looks of what's going on in Congress these days, we're not far behind.
I hope the appeaseniks have laid in a huge supply of red slippers, because they're going to be doing an awful lot of heel-clicking to turn this fantasy into reality.
UPDATE: It just continues. Now France's newly elected "conservative" president, Nicholas Sarkozy, is urging us to let Muamar Khaddafy have his nukes back, and is preparing to sell him a fresh nuclear reactor to boot.
Seeing as how we were the ones (along with Tony Blair) who "persuaded" Khaddafy to disarm in the first place, could this fresh chapter of French perfidy not be interpreted as, at the very least, a hostile act? Certainly if I were running the Bush Administration, I'd be rattling Paris' rafters over it. What the bleep are these people thinking?
Three cases in point:
***David Miliband, the new British Foreign Minister under Old Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown, used the occasion of his first visit to Pakistan to praise Pervez Musharraf - not for sending his army into Waziristan to drive al Qaeda out of the privileged sanctuary he foolishly gave them a year ago, but for giving them that sanctuary in the first place. In quintessential liberalspeak, Miliband added that, "a purely military solution to violence in Pakistan’s tribal areas would not alone quash the insurgency. ..." Which sure sounds like an endorsement of negotiating with terrorists to me, since there's no such thing as a diplomatic "squashing".
This Old Labor mindset was reflected in the way British NATO commanders were running their areas of the Afghan theater of the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism. They negotiated a series of "truces" with the Taliban insurgency that allowed the Islamists to reconquer every Afghan community in the British operational area. It got so bad that we had to relieve the Brits, resume the actual war, and re-liberate the surrendered communities. You might even say we "quashed" their asses - and without a pair of striped pants in sight.
***With that abject lesson in front of them, what was the riposte of Pakistani officials to Miliband's morony?
The Pakistani foreign office liked the British approach better. Their representative said that “Even if [the Waziristan "Accord"] failed it bought peace for a period.”Sure. Just like the Munich "Accord" bought peace "for a period" - before igniting a six-year global war that slaughtered over sixty million people. That period was not used by the Allies to launch a crash re-armament program, but that's certainly the purpose to which the Nazis put it - not unlike their Islamist proteges in Waziristan. A dismal folly that we may have cause to bitterly regret if al Qaeda lands a new mass-casualty attack on our soil.
***Read this USA Today quote and see if you can pick out the anamoly:
Okay, so I gave it away. It's late, I wanna go to bed, and I'm too beat to be coy.Arab League envoys paid a historic visit to Israel on Wednesday to present a plan calling for a comprehensive regional settlement, saying they were extending "a hand of peace" on behalf of the Arab world.
The one-day visit by the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan marked the first time the 22-member group has sent representatives to Israel. The Arab League peace plan envisions full recognition of Israel in return for an Israeli withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war.The visit highlights a dramatic change of direction for the Arab body, which actively pursued Israel's destruction after the Jewish state was created in 1948. The league refused to recognize Israel for decades afterward and suspended Egypt in 1979 for a decade after it become the first Arab state to make peace.
Maybe I'm starting to get O-L-D, but it doesn't seem that long ago to me that Israeli withdrawal to those indefensible 1967 borders - whose indefensibility forty years ago was precisely the reason Israel struck first in the Six Day War before their Arab enemies could overrun them - was not considered an option, either by the Israelis or by the United States. Even the limited autonomy granted the Pals in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under the infamous Oslo "peace plan" has been a disaster, producing two intifadas, a two-front war against Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas a year ago, and now has consigned Gaza to Iranian-sponsored terrorist rule - a fact that has evidently taught us the diametrically wrong lesson as we are now embracing Fatah in the West Bank, whose only difference from Hamas is that Mahmoud Abbas is not a theocrat.
With the lesson of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza two years ago etched indellibly in stone - retreat from terrorists and they'll follow right on your heels and continue their attacks closer to home - now the Arab League comes to the Israelis with the exact same old song & dance - territorial retreat in exchange for empty promises of "peace" - and what had once been out of the question, a complete non-starter, is now veritable conventional "wisdom".
Admiral Ed's rationalization of this insanity is particularly dense, amounting to "moderate" Arab autocracies attempting to buy off their populaces from Islamist influence by getting a bigger, better "deal" for the Palestinians than Oslo or the "Roadmap" or whatever the hell else the slow-motion Second Holocaust is called. For them there is no problem in the Middle East - which is to say, no threat to their continued dictatorial rule - that isn't soluable by buggering the Jews on behalf of the perpetual regional MacGuffin, the fictional ethnic nationality on whose behalf so much is promised by Arab regimes and jack bleep is actually done.
If anything, Morrissey has it backwards - the "moderate" Arab regimes may tell the West this horsepucky about "peace," but what they'll tell their people if the Israelis go along with this latest national suicide pact - and to Ehud Olmert, whose latest bright idea is to re-open negotiations with Syria for the evacatuation of the Golan Heights, there's no concession that resides "out of the question" - is that they, and not the jihadis, have - via diplomacy! - made Israel more conquerable than the Islamists ever did.
THAT is how Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia, et al seek to "marginalize" the Islamists in their midst - by putting themselves over as the "strong horse" against the Jews - and, ultimately, the West. THAT is the competition in the Arab/Muslim world, a culture for which "peace" is defined the same as Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad define it: Islamic domination of the entire planet. The so-called "moderates" are betting that after a decade or more of overt "holy" war, their old-fashioned hudna guile can succeed where the berserkers have failed.
Or maybe it's just the old one-two punch - the terrorists wear down Western and Israeli will and common sense, the "moderates" strike lopsided deals that never would have been possible before, and then both move in for the kill.
Perhaps Prime Minister Olmert's own words best sum up this cowardly new Bizarro world:
We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors.Sorry, Mr. Prime Minister. In the real world, up is not down, black is not white, enemies are not friends, surrender is not peace, and absolutist wishful thinking has a lethal price tag.
Our allies in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism are already as good as defeated. And from the looks of what's going on in Congress these days, we're not far behind.
I hope the appeaseniks have laid in a huge supply of red slippers, because they're going to be doing an awful lot of heel-clicking to turn this fantasy into reality.
UPDATE: It just continues. Now France's newly elected "conservative" president, Nicholas Sarkozy, is urging us to let Muamar Khaddafy have his nukes back, and is preparing to sell him a fresh nuclear reactor to boot.
Seeing as how we were the ones (along with Tony Blair) who "persuaded" Khaddafy to disarm in the first place, could this fresh chapter of French perfidy not be interpreted as, at the very least, a hostile act? Certainly if I were running the Bush Administration, I'd be rattling Paris' rafters over it. What the bleep are these people thinking?
posted by JASmius at 10:29 PM
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