Posted on 09/25/2001 8:04:00 PM PDT by ppaul
Just as America must fight a "new kind of war," so it must deal with a new kind of peace movement, one that blames American foreign policy for the recent terrorist attack. Blame the hateful mass murderers seeking martyrdom in their radical holy war against America? Not the new peace movement -- it's a part of a global war against America.
Those who opposed U.S. military action in the past questioned the right of America to protect its interests in other countries. That questioning centered on two issues: the definition of American interests and our right to impose our interests on others. These have always been reasonable questions, whatever one's view in particular cases.
The new peace movement has nothing to do with reasonable questions. "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" So asks Susan Sontag in The New Yorker.
Never before have so many Americans been killed on American soil. But the new self-proclaimed peaceniks are anti-American cultural warriors willing to sink to unimaginable moral equivalencies.
Whereas the old peace movement questioned America's right to kill people in other countries when no attack on American soil had occurred, the new peace movement defends the brutal killing of thousands of Americans on the grounds that America got what it had coming.
The new peace movement doubtless recalls the old. The latter began with communist sympathizers who excused the Soviet Union its innumerable crimes against humanity, seeing capitalism as the world's great evil. Having adjusted to the end of the Cold War, the new peace movement hates America for being the world's sole remaining superpower. And it wants that power eviscerated.
Unmoved to anger against the perpetrators of the atrocious violence of September 11th, the new peaceniks merely heat up their longstanding anger against America.
Deplorably, they turn the death of thousands of innocent lives into an opportunity to point a cold ideological finger at America.
In its extremism, the new peace movement has something in common with Jerry Falwell: the refusal to blame those responsible for the September 11th atrocity, choosing instead to blame America.
Falwell blames America for harboring heretics. The peaceniks blame America for harboring Americans. Put the two together and you get the holy war of Osama bin Laden, the jihad declared against the U.S. by the Taliban.
So far the percentage of Americans who blame America is small. But those who do blame America congregate in places that shape the future of American culture: our nation's college and university campuses.
Anyone who thought that the loss of more than 6,000 lives on American soil might have led to unanimous patriotic compassion even at America's campuses was too hopeful. The Sontag sentiment is highly audible on campus.
The day after the September 11th attack, one of my Columbia students voiced this representative reaction: "I hope it will cause America to examine its foreign policy decisions."
Like the old one, the new peace movement is rooted in our universities. Thus, it is ruled by political correctness, which, after expunging America's virtues and exaggerating its crimes, credits America's most vicious enemies with political and moral validity.
As part of its anti-American campaign, political correctness teaches young Americans to identify their country as a global oppressor and to regard the rest of the world as blameless victims.
It not only urges identification with such victims but also encourages students to see themselves as victims too.
Thus they can simultaneously identify with the victims of the September 11th attack and blame the oppressive U.S.
Off campus, Americans are united, and their present unity is a beauty to behold. A New York Times/CBS poll shows 85 percent supporting military action against whoever is responsible for the recent attacks.
But once America starts fighting, opposition will grow. The same poll shows there is already less support for a protracted war than for a short one. And this "new kind of war" is likely to be a very long one.
If we are to win this long war against terrorism, the next generation will have to be another great generation. Lines at recruitment offices for America's armed forces suggest it just might be exactly that.
But courageous, patriotic young Americans will find their peers using the cloak of a new "peace" movement to make a war against them.
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Well, if France was threatening to topple the Vatican government and kill the Pope, and had previously indicated the seriousness of their intentions by invading Italy, and Saudi Arabia had a legal treaty with the Vatican under which they were pledged to the Vatican's defense, then I have no doubt the Catholic Church would think, "thank God for our courageous Muslim defenders."
I am afraid that is what these people are thinking about us. That they are angry because our troops are occupying their Holy land in Saudi Arabia.
I will credit you with ignorance rather than venality in buying into this fanatic-islamic-fundy lie. While there are passages in the Koran which could be interpreted as discouraging interaction with infidels, there is absolutely nothing which prohibits treaties, agreements, defense pacts, etc, with Christian or Jewish nations (Christians and Jews being "people of the book" and NOT infidels.) The claim that it is a religious outrage for Christians to be in Saudi Arabia has been manufactured by the fundies out of whole cloth. There is only one place in the entire world where non-Muslims are prohibited by the Islamic religion, that being the "house of Allah" (the big black thing) in Mecca.
Remove our troops from the region and bring them home to protect America not the oil routes through the Middle East.
Screw our allies, eh? Hope you didn't have your heart set on a career in foreign policy.
I've noticed (with surprise) that most reporters/journalists/talking head types have been pretty much on our side on this. Maybe it's because they have seen it in person and understand the whole story.
Oh, it is! It is! Why, the only reason that other countries buy arms is because they're intimidated by us! So if we just unilaterally disarm, there will no longer be fear of us, and they will then willingly disarm too!
And while I'm on the subject, why do we need jails and policeman and courts and judges and all that kind of crap? Why not just throw all of those things away, and JUST TRUST PEOPLE!!! JUST GIVE THEM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, for pity's sake!! If you do, they will return your trust and good will and we'll never again have the need for jails!
It's so SAD that none of you others have the deep, profound understanding of human nature that I have! If only you too would go and experience the joys of a Liberal Arts education from a reputable American University, you could talk and think just the same as enlightened people like me. I don't know about you, but *I* certainly intend to live Happily Ever After! Right here in my own mind.
Yeah. And it sounds like the whole shebang at the top is suckin' up to every scum in the world.
They changed the name of our operation from "OPERATION INFINITE JUSTICE" to
"OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM." What a crock! We have freedom. We want JUSTICE!
Any illusions that political correctness had died with the 9-11 attack were premature.
PC is alive and well!
I'm sick of this nonsense. It is the stuff of illogic and bad poetry. Nothing more.
Violence "solves" violence each and every day. When a police officer uses violence to reclaim a purse from a mugger that was taken by violence, violence has indeed "solved" that violence, and righted a wrong. When a sharphooter kills a crazed gunman who is about to claim another victim, violence has again "solved" violence. People who spout this inane mantra are only avoiding making a series of difficult moral and practical judgements. When applied reflexively, it approaches a form of cowardice - and betrays a failure in discerning the difference between physical equivalence and moral equivalence.
Gandhi was successful in most ways, but invoking his methods in support of a "nonviolent approach" implies that his opponents, with whom these methods found success, were exactly the same as our opponents are today.
They are not.
Adolf Hitler would have crushed Gandhi without a second thought. Had Gandhi been a Jew during the Holocaust, his methods would have earned not even an asterisk in the pages of history. We'd likely never even have known his name.
Similarly, the men we deal with now have demonstrated with horrific clarity their thirst for the blood of innocents. If any pacifist thinks that our making flowery overtures to the "better natures" of these men will do anything but invite more American suffering and death, he'd might as well be smoking crack. At least then he'd have an excuse for taking such dizzying license with reality.
And the terrorists' grievances (the American "guilt" we are treated to) are relevant in shaping our violence against them only if one is willing to legitimize the position that our 7,000 dead were not, in fact, innocent lives lost. Any calculus that even considers the those "grievances" is invalid without a necessary assignment of guilt to our dead. Anyone who argues otherwise is simply being dishonest, and attempting to straddle sympathy and blame, innocence and guilt. The deliberate taking of a life is either justified or it is not. It cannot be half-justified, if the idea of innocence is to retain any useful meaning.
We are now, as a nation, that sharpshooter atop the tower, training our sights on the crazed gunman who has already murdered many below. I have no doubt we will take the best aim possible, and avoid hitting innocent bystanders. But if we never shoot, he will kill again.
And pacifism demands we put down our rifle.
No thanks.
In the meantime, us peaceniks will march and get arrested for disturbing the PEACE like they did in New Mexico the other day. I have this feeling that this delusion is for the world to adhere to, but I bet they get nasty one on one.
Sounds good. However, there's more to why the "American Experiment" was, and is, so blessed. You can't just give folks our set of laws and framework for a constitution and expect it to work if their hearts do not change. Here's some reasons why:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . .Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. --John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798, Address to the military
Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants. --William Penn
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. --George Washington
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. --Benjamin Franklin
Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow. --Elias Boudinot, president of the Continental Congress
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Benjamin Franklin
We have staked the future of American civilization, not upon the power of the government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments. --James Madison
The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected, in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. --John Quincy Adams
It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here." --Patrick Henry
We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God. --James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution
The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evil men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible." --Noah Webster
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson
No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government. --Thomas Jefferson
We ignore their advice at our peril.</font color>
hopefully, when he's eliminated he'll end up with 72 homo deviates!
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