Mark Steyn : This Is One Armchair Warmonger Still Fighting

The Telegraph ^ | May 30, 2004 | Mark Steyn

[quidnunc]

After a couple of weeks away, I return to spend a lonely evening talking to myself at the eerily deserted Armchair Warmongers Club (Fleet Street Branch). Where'd everybody go?

A year ago, Anatole Kaletsky was buoyant and sunny: "The vast majority of Iraqis will soon find themselves incomparably freer and better off than at any time in the past 50 years." Now he's sunk in his own columnar quagmire: "Iraq will indeed now replace Vietnam as the byword for America's military humiliation, its strategic incompetence, its wayward moral compass," etc, etc.

His Times colleague Mary Ann Sieghart has flounced off, too: "That's it! I've had enough. I'm fed up with justifying the war in Iraq to sceptical friends, family and acquaintances." The standard rap against us armchair warriors is that we can't stand the heat of real war, but poor Mary Ann can't stand the heat of real armchairs. The chap on the sofa at that dinner party was just too beastly and sceptical.

Tony Parsons, hitherto the token non-anti-American at the Daily Mirror, feels cheap and used. "Tony Blair fooled me," he says bitterly. "I see now it was all a pack of lies."

-snip-

[GladesGuru]

Now don't go bad mouthing cockroachs - after all, it is the State Bird of the Sheeples Republic of FloriDUH.

[lainde]

---The US may be forced to suffer the perception of defeat, but it is Europe that will live with the consequences. Be careful what you wish for-----

Bears repeating!!! Steyn bump!

[Experiment 6-2-6]

It seems only truly gifted writers can use comedy when discussing bananas in unique positions...

[Brimack34]

He should talk to O'Reilly and his experts. He was beating Ann over the head with his experts saying the war lost.

[Tribune7]

ping

[knighthawk]

Ping

[DonaldDuke]

So I've moved on. I am already looking for new regimes to topple.

Yes! France has admitted that it was trying to supply nuclear weapons to Saddam Hussein, and that its policy is to supply the islamics with nukes.

A regime change (if not outright burn-and-salt-the-ground) is strongly indicated.

Just toss two or three nukes at the ayatollahs capital and nuclear installations, and use the big stuff on France.

[tioga]

I'm a relatively relaxed hawk. --- ditto

[maica]

But, that innovation aside, the aberrations of war have nothing to do with the only question that matters: despite what will happen along the way, is it worth doing?

I say yes. It is already worth it for Iraq. There are more than 8,000 towns and villages in the country. If the much predicted civil war had erupted in any of 'em, you'd see it. Not from the Western press corps holed up with its Ba'ath Party translators at the Palestine Hotel, but from Arab television networks eager to show the country going to hell. They cannot show it you because it isn't happening. The Sunni Triangle is a little under-policed, but even that's not aflame. Moqtada al-Sadr, the Khomeini-Of-The-Week in mid-April, is al-Sadr al-Wiser these days, down to his last two 12-year-old insurgents and unable even to get to the mosque on Friday to deliver his weekly widely-ignored call to arms.

>>>>

There are so many gems in a single Steyn article, that some stay almost completely hidden.

For example: ... the Western press corps holed up with its Ba'ath Party translators at the Palestine Hotel,...

******

I hadn't thought about the sentiments of those who have gone into the translator business, but many of them could be rooting for the anti-Americans to win.

[Defiant]

Thanks for the post!

[Pokey78]

Ignore the original post. You know who excerpted it.

[Lady Jag]

Ignore the original post. You know who excerpted it.

Thanks.

[MEG33]

My tagline is from Steyn...nobody does it better than Steyn....The hawks turned chickens are vying for more dinner party invites...

[alwaysconservative]

Thanks for the ping to another of Mark Steyn's zingers!

[MeekOneGOP]

Good one ! Thanks for the ping and the FULL TEXT post, Gritty !!!!

[MeekOneGOP]

bump !

[secretagent]

Yes! France has admitted that it was trying to supply nuclear weapons to Saddam Hussein, and that its policy is to supply the islamics with nukes.

Source?

[DonaldDuke]

Source?

What Europe wants

Couteax declared that Europe should supply the Arab world with nuclear weapons. In his words, "I have no hesitation in saying that we must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force, to persuade Israel that it cannot simply do whatever it wants. That is the policy my country [France] pursued in the 1970s when it gave Iraq a nuclear force."

[secretagent]

Wow. Thanks!

By nuclear force, I presume Corteaux meant France contributed nuclear reactor technology, not bombs, in the 1970's.

But he clearly wants the Arab world to have nuclear bombs. Wack.

[DonaldDuke]

By nuclear force, I presume Corteaux meant France contributed nuclear reactor technology, not bombs, in the 1970's.

Osirak, probably - but the reactor use was clearly for bombs, not for energy. There may of course have been a straight bomb deal in the works, but the froggies probably got a bit of a scare when the Israelis hit the Iraqis. After all, if Israel decided to favor France with a hundred megatons or so of prime boom-boom, there is (and was) precious little France can do about it.

So now, the crapweasels are trying to push the "EU" out in front.