Drunk on the word freedom and not asking what it means in that part of the world.
I noticed that defacing pictures of Qadaffi means drawing devil horns and stars of david on him.
I wasn’t expecting this from the Daily Beast’s take over of Newsweek.
That has had me stymied for the last couple weeks.I did see some interesting posters supposedly out of Lybia(?)A poster of Quaddafi,with the words in English:Hopeless.Printed poster no less,not homemade.Where do you think that came from?
Some community agitators on the loose in Lybia?
I’m cheering in the hope they end up slaughtering each other by the millions.
Remember that the Nazis essentially took power in a revolution.
“Revolution” is a misleading term. The American Revolution is very different from most every other revolution in political history.
America was founded in a war for independence, not a social revolution. We weren’t throwing off our domestic political leaders; they were fighting alongside their fellow Americans. The revolution was the replacement of a distant monarchy with the republican form of government that the colonists had largely already created.
The Arab revolutionary wave has more in common with the Russian and French revolutions. It’s a war against their own social and political elites. The arabs don’t have any established form of self government or any tradition of electing one. Throw in Islam and you have a real witches brew.
The notable exception to this rule is the American revolution. The American Founding Fathers based their principles and conception of liberty on Judeo Christian beliefs, and held that God and God alone in the author of our liberties. Notice the outcome was much different. :-)
Any revolution that attempts to obtain true liberty without God in the picture is doomed to failure.
This thing is going to go sideways . . . All the way.
You don’t have this happening in this many countries.
The Muslim Brotherhood is involved in every one of these uprisings and when it get to Pakistan, it will be all too evident what the real risks are.
Libya will soon be a sort of Sudan on the Mediterranean. With lots of oil.
I think the U.S. and Israel chose wisely in choosing not to send troops into Egypt, and nothing else would have made a difference.
Rank, suicidal ignorance.
Most people don't know what to think of the revolutions. Obama's statement that Kaddafy has to go was put out by the press as an indication of his power, but the comment was made to the German chancellor in a phone call. To me, it sounds more like two girls whispering to each other that the head cheerleader is a slut.
For those of us who don't have loved ones over there, the primary concern is the price of oil. We don't know these people, and a million deaths of people we don't know is an abstraction.
The author makes a couple of valid points, and some of the better projections I've seen. There will probably be a significant period of unrest, resulting in tribal wars. There is the possibility of a new Islamic regime coming out, and entering into a period of colonialism. It is a mistake to assume that the leaders of these revolutions have a love of freedom. Most of them just want to be the biggest crocodile in the river.
It would be interesting to know when Jefferson wrote those words--the early stages of the French Revolution were much less violent than the latter stages. In September 1792 there were massacres in Paris, over 1000 people killed, and then it progressed to the Reign of Terror. A lot of Americans and others approved of the earlier period and then were repulsed by the bloodshed--but Jefferson and his friends continued to make excuses. Thomas Paine was even elected to the Convention--but voted to spare Louis XVI's life and was later nearly a victim of the Terror himself.
John Reed was already a radical before he went to Russia. I suppose his book has some value for someone studying the Bolshevik takeover because it offers an eyewitness view of what was happening day by day in Petrograd. Curiously, the Russian translation wasn't published until after Stalin's death (Stalin is barely mentioned in his account).
Funny, I never hear Chris Hitchens mention Jefferson being a fan of the French revolution. I wonder why? He gushes over his “atheism” but conveniently forgets his support of the terror.
“Why are Americans cheering on the Arab revolutionary wave? “
Because they think that we can have a revolution here, as well.
The only revolution that the TPTB will permit will be a commie one.
Time will tell which is right.
a. In at least some cases, the enemy of our enemy is our friend.
b. Time, energy and treasure spent in internal conflict is time, energy and treasure not being spent on attacking us.
Yes, strange public affairs work, isn’t it. Sponsors of our media seem to have changed their choices in assets. My speculation: maybe efforts to keep freight fuel prices lower (imports, shipping, you know).