Posted on 08/25/2006 9:31:05 AM PDT by unionblue83
Athens, Greece -- While changing planes here in this ancient capital, I arranged to meet with an old friend who has long experience in the Middle East. Fluent in many Mediterranean and Persian Gulf languages and intimately familiar with the long, sad history of enmity in the region, he worked quietly with Americans for decades. I first met him in the 1980s during sensitive -- but ultimately fruitless -- efforts to elicit help from Arab governments in obtaining the release of American hostages being held in Lebanon. Throughout his personal triumphs and failures, successes and frustrations, I've always found him optimistic, his affection and admiration for the United States undimmed. But not this time; now he is nearly despondent about the current course of events and prospects for the future.
"Does anyone in the United States understand what's happening today?" he asked as we sat down over cups of strong coffee. "Look at this," he said, gesturing to headlines in the stack of newspapers he had placed on the table. "The world is at the brink of a cataclysm with radical Islam, and no one in the U.S. government seems to know it. Washington is stunningly naive."
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
ping.
Stunningly naive describes most on the left. I fear that Bush may not take appropriate action to deny Iran nukes because he will not likely have support from the UN Security Council and most of our allies, much less Russia and China. Also, the MSM doesn't seem to see the threat posed by Radical Islam and Iran's leaders.
Correction.... "The Western world Washington is stunningly naive!"
His real point, apparently, is buried down at the bottom -- basically, "don't elect cut-and-runners" in November. And he's right about that.
But he misses the point rather badly. The "cut-and-runners'" problem is far more pernicious than mere naivete. It's a single-minded will to power that borders on insanity.
Dar-al-Islam under the Dhimmicrats. Coming to a neighborhood near you if they are elected.
They see it, they just choose not to report it.
Stunningly naive and/or stunningly afraid (of the media) to take a stand anymore. It's bi-partisan in Washington.
More like, no one wants to know it...or at least no one wants to admit it. That wouldn't be politically correct, and everyone knows that political correctness is more important than national, or even global, security. < /sarcasm > Not to mention, if they admitted it, they'd have to back it up and you could lay every "leader" in Washington side by side and still not have a backbone between them.
Ihave wondered from the first time I heard that Hezbollah is distributing counterfeit dollars obtained from North Korea.
It was bad enough when the left and msm attacked him constantly, but when the right wet their pants, took their eye off the ball and ran whining down the field, they left him completely powerless.
Watching the self-obsessed far right and the approval-seeking rino faction abandon the President on this issue has been one of the greatest disappointments of my lifetime.
Ollie North nails it!
"The world is at the brink of a cataclysm with radical Islam, and no one in the U.S. government seems to know it. Washington is stunningly naive."
When all our leaders parrot the PC mantra of "Islam is a religion of Peace", to state that Washington is "stunningly naive" is sort of like stating that the flag is red, white and blue. It's pretty obvious.
The government knows exactly what our world is facing in the fanatical Islamic regimes. Why do you think we went into Iraq? Sadam is gone and we now have a toe-hold in the middle east right next door to Iran. Our fighting men and women are right between Iran and Israel. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld et. al. know what they are doing!
The real question is do the American people know what we are facing? I don't think most do and most are just not ready to hear it.
Here's the other side of the abuse of language in this debate: describing the current phase of what's certainly going to be a long-term policy of containment toward medieval Islamic obscurism as a "cataclysm".
Conveniently, the nature of this cataclysm is unstated, it's just darkly implied that the speaker knows what it must be, and what we ought to be doing to avoid it.
IMO this is all too often the nature of the apocalyptic predictions I'm seeing thrown about - assertions that we are in the throes "of World War III" or a titanic struggle with "Islamofascism", without any description of what this really means or any realistic policy prescription for what we ought to do about it.
In fact it appears to me that the current upsurge of the Islamic fervor in the Middle East is just the latest example of an attempt by societies poorly adapted to the modern world to find an "ism" (see: "pan Arab nationalism", "Arab socialism") which somehow squares Theocratic truth and guidance and tribal and clan organization with the need to function in a wider world which has largely transcended both.
And that really there is very little we can do about this other than reduce our financial contribution to the project, set limits on its behavior toward other cultures and societies, try whenever possible to non-confrontationally offer alternatives, and await its inevitable evolution toward a more humane and pragmatic set of arrangements.
And frankly, I doubt that there's anything "cataclysmic" we can do about it, other than to suppose that an effort to enforce our opinions and preferences in the matter by force can have much direct and lasting effect on the beliefs and attitudes of a quarter billion people on the other side of the planet.
It's even closer. The Pres works for the Senate. If the Senate wants to do this then the Pres will proceed. But the Senate does not want to do this, so he can't very well go ahead on his own. He is the Pres, not the Dictator.
INTREP
I deeply fear we will not truly respons to Islam until one or more US cites is taken out with atomic bombs. I fear it will happen.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.