Mark Steyn: Terrorism Is a Beast to be Killed, Not Fed

A new term for the lexicon.
Equivalist Pap.

Thank you Mr. Steyn.

Bttt.

The rest of it...

"The halt to the vicious campaign of hatred and lies propagated in the US against Saudi Arabia. Administration officials starting with President Bush himself must spare no occasion to praise Saudi Arabia and inform the American people how lucky they are to have us as allies.

"The release of all Saudis detained in the US or in Guantanamo Bay into Saudi custody."

Really. While you're at it, why not demand every freed Saudi gets a couple of "dainty starlets" of his choice for the plane ride home?

But once in a while, even those in the most hermetically sealed alternative universes enjoy a day-trip to reality. On September 11, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, happened to be in New York, a couple of blocks from the World Trade Centre. Made no difference.

To Dr Williams, the Americans' liberation of Afghanistan was "morally tainted", an "embarrassment", and an example of the moral equivalence between the USAF and the suicide bomber, both of whom "can only see from a distance: the sort of distance from which you can't see a face, meet the eyes of someone, hear who they are, imagine who and what they love. All violence works with that sort of distance.

" Last month, the archbishop happened to be in Istanbul and was a guest at the home of the British Consul, Roger Short. Within a few hours of his departure, Mr Short was dead, vaporised in the wreckage of an almighty bombing. Dr Williams sounded momentarily shaken, expressing "shock and grief" at the death of his host, and condemning "these vicious and senseless attacks. These acts of violence achieve nothing."

In fact, "these acts of violence" achieve quite a bit. Why, only a month earlier similar acts of violence had led the Archbishop to make a speech at the Royal Institute for International Affairs at which he'd argued that terrorism can "have serious moral goals".

"It is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that is intelligible or desirable," he said. By ignoring this, America "loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a selfreferential morality." Perhaps Dr Williams would like to explain what precisely is the "serious moral goal" of the men who killed his host.

One reason why George W Bush comes on a bit strong about "evildoers" and the like is that the Archbishop of Canterbury and any number of the great and the good have rendered less primal language meaningless in this sphere: when Dr Williams condemns terrorism as "vicious and senseless", that's just the mood music of the evening news. When he says "these acts of violence achieve nothing", what he means is that his "shock" stops at the end of the soundbite; whether or not the terrorists "achieve nothing", he intends to do so.

We got used to these muzak formulations in Ulster for 30 years: Paddy Ashdown and others liked to turn it into a Danny Kaye routine about how we mustn't let the bomb and the bullet win out over the ballot and the bollocks, or whatever it was. It was just words. In last week's Northern Ireland elections and the obliteration of moderate nationalism, we saw the logical consequence of enhancing the prestige of terrorists. It's the same in the Palestinian Authority.

Will the archbishop's recent run-ins with reality shake him from his equivalist pap? Islamic terrorism is a beast that has to be killed, not patted and fed. The Palestinians use children as human shields and as human bombs. Would it be too much to expect the archbishop, instead of bleating about "serious moral goals", to dust off, say,

Matthew 18:6 and offer up something about how it would be better if these fellows shoving their kids into the suicide bomber belts hung the old millstone round their necks and drowned in the sea? Or will we have to wait for such Bushesque "self-referential morality" till His Grace is brushing the plaster from his cassock after his next close shave?

Steyn vs The Archbishop of Canterbury.

My money is on Steyn.

t will remain an article of faith for decades that the President made the troops get out of bed at 6am so he could shovel pumpkin pie down them.

The author has evidently never been in the military. In the service, you get your meal when ordered, any other time is a pure gift.

"Our military men and women," he insisted, "were downing turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic beer at a time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries and toast."

Even a non-military type should grasp the common sense notion that the military doesn't stop playing war around two in the afternoon, break out the beer, and enjoy a leisurely Thanksgiving day feast all at the same time. Shifts have to be rotated through chow, and done in a way that won't leave you vulnerable to attack at a certain time of day. Just because some civilian reporter is just getting up does'nt mean that the night shift that's been guarding him has been sleeping all night as well (hopefully).

I'm sure these guys couldn't care less if they got their turkey first thing in the morning, at noon, or right before midnight. They're not working 9 to 5, and I'll bet money they're just glad they got it at all.

We got used to these muzak formulations in Ulster for 30 years: Paddy Ashdown and others liked to turn it into a Danny Kaye routine about how we mustn't let the bomb and the bullet win out over the ballot and the bollocks, or whatever it was.

The vessel with the pestle has the potion with the poison. The flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true. I broke the vessel with the pestle. The chalice from the palace has the potion with the poison.

Or whatever it was...

-PJ

I thought that Bush was in Iraq at 11 AM Eastern Time, if so that would be about 6 or 7 PM Baghdad time!!

A Stopped Clock Is Right Twice a Day

On Friday we wondered what the Angry Left was going to say about President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad. On the kooky Counterpunch.org site, Wayne Madsen offers an unusual take:

I may be a bit naive, and it has been a while since I served on active duty, but I can't recall ever sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner at 6:00 AM. Air Force One touched down at Baghdad International Airport, under cover of darkness, at 5:20 AM Baghdad time. Bush was on the ground for two and a half hours, his plane departing Baghdad at around 7:50 AM. Considering that it likely took some 30 minutes for Bush to disembark from Air Force One and travel by a heavily secured motorcade to the hangar where the troops were assembled, that means our military men and women were downing turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic beer at a time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries, and toast… .
And the abysmal and sycophantic Washington and New York press corps seems to have completely missed the Thanksgiving "breakfast dinner." Chalk that up to the fact that most people in the media never saw a military chow line or experienced reveille in their lives. So it would certainly go over their heads that troops would be ordered out of bed to eat turkey and stuffing before the crack of dawn.

Just one problem: Madsen's entire rant is based on a factual error. The dinner was around 6 p.m., not a.m. News of the visit was embargoed until just after Air Force One tookoff from Baghdad, and the Associated Press moved its first alert about the trip at 12:12 p.m. Eastern Time, which is 8:12 p.m. in Baghdad. When the president and the troops tucked into their turkey, it was dinnertime in Iraq, even if it was morning in America.

Amazingly, Madsen at first stood behind his story. Blogger Brian O'Connell e-mailed him to point out the error, and Madsen wrote back citing a Washingon Post report that erroneously describes the plane coming in for landing "a little after 5 a.m. Baghdad time." This is clearly an error, since the same report has the plane leaving Washington just before 11 p.m. Eastern, which is 7 a.m. in Baghdad.

Today Madsen has a new column in which he acknowledges that the 5 a.m. time was an error — and he blames the mistake on the Bush administration:

The fact that the Post's editors were cut out from the secret trip to Baghdad practically guaranteed that an erroneous 5:20 am Baghdad time account would have crept into the Post's early morning edition. A number of people who read the Post print edition Friday morning were also given the impression that there was an early morning landing and that Bush was serving Thanksgiving dinner to the troops in the morning. And they would stay confused. Outrageously, by Sunday, November 30, the Post still had not corrected its error.

Huh? Clearly someone messed up at the Post, but what difference does it make when the editors found out about the trip? The Post ought to run a correction, but Madsen's outrage would be more credible if he acknowledged his own error.

(James Taranto [The Best of the Web Today] in The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal, December 1, 2003)
To Read This Article Click Here

Dubya can wake me up at 6:00am to give me pumpkin pie anytime his li'l ol heart desires. So there.

But he'd better have that pie. Don't show up empty-handed, dude.

Hey guys! Over here! Bwahaha!

Wayne Madsen got his time zones mixed. It was 6pm Baghdad time and not 6am. Madsen was informed of his error and refused to make a retraction.

We've been monitoring Wayne Madsen's deteriorating mental condition all weekend...

"I thought that Bush was in Iraq at 11 AM Eastern Time, if so that would be about 6 or 7 PM Baghdad time!!"

You are correct. Air Force One touched down at BIA at 5:20 PM local. Thanksgiving dinner was served at six.

This Madson jerk-off, however, saw a report that mistakenly cited the arrival as 5:20 AM local. Whereupon, he went about hanging an entire 750 word rant on this single datum -- which was totally erroneous.

And, apparently, like any good liberal, he refuses to admit his error.

Lefties are funny when they're made (and out of power)...

Yes, this Mr. Madsen is a character. He is now, finally, acknowledging the typo, but says that it is the Bush administration's fault that the typo appeared and not his own.

For the latest on our detailed analysis of Mr. Madsen's evolving explanations, join us on this thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1030832/posts

You know, they say that no publicity is bad publicity.

But in this case, I'm willing to make an exception.

Madsen is officially now (but we knew it all along) a barking moonbat laughingstock.

Not Steyn's best effort. The Archbishop's error is more interesting than Steyn's take on it. I mean the part about violence only being made possible by distance. As though if it were all just up close and personal enough, physical squeemishness would save us from evildoers. It is a thoroughly false notion but it can't be an uncommon one.

The corrective is to cite facts, ancient and modern. In the era when men fought with nothing but hand weapons, casual cruelty was the leading spectator sport. In the age of F-16s with satellite guided bombs, leading military powers go to great lengths to avoid hitting hospitals.

Nor is it a matter of eras; it is a matter of moral differences. Someone should explain the archbishop's theory to the family of Daniel Pearl, whose slow murder was recorded close up on video as an aid to recruitment by Muslim terrorists.

What it comes down to is the archbishop, without knowing anything of the matter himself or having given it two minutes thought, likes to think that he himself is too squeemish to kill anybody he is looking at. And hopes others share the sentiment. Some no doubt do. Some don't. And he hasn't the slightest idea what to do about the latter category.

Would it be too much to expect the archbishop, instead of bleating about "serious moral goals", to dust off, say, ... Matthew 18:6 and offer up something about how it would be better if these fellows shoving their kids into the suicide bomber belts hung the old millstone round their necks and drowned in the sea? Or will we have to wait for such Bushesque "self-referential morality" till His Grace is brushing the plaster from his cassock after his next close shave?

Religion has long since ceased to have anything to do with religion.

Am I the only one who remembers a time in history when the Archbishop was the chief defender of the Christian faith in England? How backslidden have the Anglican leaders become?

Sad. Pathetic. Blind leading the blind. And they choose to be blind.

Let me back that up. My younger brother SMsg Steven M. Colman was there. In his e-mail he told me that Bush arrived at about 6PM. And, by the way, he said that he and all the soldiers in the room were ecstatic - they love the guy.