1) Democrats worry too much, Republicans don't think enough. Each side should be encouraged to worry less, think more.
2) Partisans can be identified by those people who want to go the opposite direction, ie encouraging Democrats to inaction, and Republicans to more jumping to conclusions.
3) Also, this business of pointless labels and crap about shit that is long since water over the dam is BS. People who complain about Fatso Kennedy leaving perfectly good pussy to drown are beating a dead horse instead of chasing live ones. Everybody stipulates to those facts - what's your point?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. - George Santayana (1863 - 1952)
From Frederick Forsyth, author, this article was published in the British Daily Express on 8/11/06:
It must surely be true that the level of lies and hypocrisy that a society can tolerate is in direct proportion to the degeneration of that culture. Personally I am not particularly pro or anti Israel, pro or anti Arab or pro or anti Islam. But I do have a dislike of myth, hypocrisy and lies as opposed to reality, fairness and truth.
Watching the bombing of Lebanon it is impossible not to feel horror and pity for the innocent civilians killed, wounded or rendered homeless. But certain of our politicians, seeking easy populism and the cheapest round of applause in modern history, have called the Israeli response "disproportionate". Among these politicos are Jack Straw and that master of EU negotiations William Hague.
That accusation can only mean: "disproportionate to the aggression levelled against them". Really? Why did the accusers not mention Serbia? What has Serbia got to do with it? Let's refresh our memories.
In 1999 five Nato air forces – US, British, French, Italian and German – began to plaster Yugoslavia, effectively the tiny and defenceless province of Serbia. We were not at war with the Serbs, we had no reason to hate them, they had not attacked us and no Serbian rockets were falling on us.
But we practically bombed them back to the Stone Age. We took out every bridge we could see. We trashed their TV station, army barracks, airfields and motorways.
We were not fighting for our lives and no terrorists were skulking among the civilian population but we hit apartment blocks and factories anyway. There were civilian casualties. We did not do it for 25 days but for 73. We bombed this little country economically back 30 years by converting its infrastructure into rubble. Why?
We were trying to persuade one dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, to pull his troops out of Kosovo, which happened to be (and still is) a Yugoslav province. The dictator finally cracked; shortly afterwards he was toppled but it was his fellow Serbs who did that, not Nato.
Before the destruction of Serbia, Kosovo was a nightmare of ethnic hatred. It still is. If we wanted to liberate the Kosovans why did we not just invade? Why blow Serbian civilians to bits?
Here is my point. In all those 73 days of bombing Serbia I never heard one British moralist use the word "disproportionate".
The entire point of Hezbollah is not to resolve some border dispute with Israel; its aim is to wipe Israel off the map, as expressed by Hezbollah's master, the crazed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. That aim includes the eradication of every Israeli Jew; i.e. genocide.
Serbia never once threatened to wipe the UK off the map or slaughter our citizens; yet Straw, in office in 1999, and Hague (then leader of the Conservative Party) never objected to Serbia being bombed.
As an ex-RAF officer I am persuaded the Israelis fighter pilots are hitting civilian-free targets with 95% of their strikes. These are the hits no TV network bothers to cover. It is the 5% that causes the coverage and the horror: wrong target, unseen civilians in the cellar, misfire, unavoidable collateral casualties. Unavoidable?
Israel has said in effect, "If you seek to wipe us out we will defend ourselves to the death. You offer us no quarter, so we will offer none to you. But if you choose intentionally, inadvertently, or through the stupidity of your government to protect and shelter the killers amongst yourselves then with the deepest regret, we cannot guarantee your exemption."
Yesterday we Brits learned that certain elements in our society had tried to organise a mass slaughter of citizens flying out of our airports. We will have to take draconian measures against these enemies in our midst. Will Messrs Hague and Straw complain our methods are disproportionate? Not a chance. Now that, dear readers, is blatant hypocrisy."
Well, what about Iraq? Substitue Iraq for Serbia in Forsyth's essay, and it still works out pretty well. But not a word about that, because he's got more important fish to fry politically.
My cynical guess -- Iraq was thought to present a threat to Israel's interests, hence the US/UK/Coalition of the Willing and the invasion, overthrow of Saddam, and ocupation. All, of course, has worked out JUST GREAT and was acomplished with absolutely NO LOSS of innocent civvie life and no collateral damage. Let Forsyth be consisent and cast a gimlet eye in that direction.
Serbia presents no threat to Israel, so Israel's spokesmen will find it more than a little convienent [spelling?] to try to use it as a strawman, comparatively speaking, in a tedious yet predctable effort to minimize the costs of Israel's actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon, [and to try to create a moral equivalence between US actions in 1999 and Israelisactions in 2006. I mean, how obvious does this get?] Which, in fact, had more than a little justification to them however much we decry the means the Israelis resorted to in their efforts.
[Personally, i find the verbal histionics and hysterics of Israel's most fervant and die-hard evangels in the USA way more offensive than the actions of the IDF, say what you want about the cause they have to support, they are not their enemies.]
Forsyth, good try, your AIPAC DEFENDER MEDAL is no doubt winging it;s way to you via overnight int'l mail.
Perhaps stick to fiction? Day of the Jackal, Odessa File, great work. THAT'S where your talents lie.
I can't remember the lib/left pitching a fit when their boy Bill got us involved with that action.
and that's too bad.
I've come to wonder if EVERYTHING since the end of The Gulf War in 1991 done by the US re Iraq hasn't been a total mistake. As well as pretty ineffective politically.
Maybe if whiny liberals had pretested Clinton's pigheaded adherence to a BS policy toward Iraq during his presidency, things might, just might, be a little different today. But he didn't and they're not.
Now that you mention it, we might also consider the cost to the Iraq civvie population of the US sponsored sanctions regime. [12 years versus 3 months of bombing Serbia?] Of course exaccerbated by Saddam's own meglomania. Why does Forsyth not worry about this? I mean, starved Iraqi kids are presumably as innocent and as dead as starved Serbian kids [and in both cases, another human tragedy brought to us by war].
1) Democrats worry too much, Republicans don't think enough. Each side should be encouraged to worry less, think more.
2) Partisans can be identified by those people who want to go the opposite direction, ie encouraging Democrats to inaction, and Republicans to more jumping to conclusions.
3) Also, this business of pointless labels and crap about shit that is long since water over the dam is BS. People who complain about Fatso Kennedy leaving perfectly good pussy to drown are beating a dead horse instead of chasing live ones. Everybody stipulates to those facts - what's your point?
Hairy?
I made my point.
opposition and even hypocrisy among political parties and divorcing couples.
OTOH, that rarely excuses addressing whatever the present issue is.
But I have to say the Republicans are the uncontested champions here. And as I have noted, it's a sad day for America when the Democrats are the party of responsibility.
If the punishment on Serbia seems disproportionate, the weight of what the Serbs did in Bosnia and Croatia puts it back into proportion. The Americans and Europeans were fed up with the Serbs. Moreover, America and Europe were shamed by their inaction in the face of Serbia's criminality.
As for arguing that Kosovo is a "part" of Serbia, if the State of Yugoslavia reconsituted by the Soviets was illegitimate, as the tragic break-up assumed, then the internal boundaries of those states were equally questionable. The Yugoslavians should have considered that before they decided to split. Just as the Serbs should have considered that before they rallied behind Slobadon Monsterivic.
They deserve to be in the stone-age.