So GLAD you brought that up . . .
RETRO: Bill O'Reilly Rips Kofi Annan - Stupidity & Selfishness... (Nobel Should Go To U.S. Forces)
Posted on 04/02/2003 11:57:21 PM PST by Asher
Apr. 2, 2003
The most hated man on earth, By Shmuley Boteach
By SHMULEY BOTEACH
One day last week I awoke to discover that George W. Bush had replaced Ariel Sharon as the most hated man on earth. In Indonesia thousands marched with the banner: "Bush The World's Greatest Terrorist." European capitals declared him a "Baby Killer," and at the Academy Awards a filmmaker intoned: Shame on you, Mr. Bush. You fictitious president."
As I contemplated how the most powerful man on earth has become more vilified than the mass murderer he seeks to topple, it dawned on me that in life there are three levels of goodness: doing the right thing and being hailed as hero for it; doing the right thing and having nobody find out; and, the third and highest, doing the right thing and being hated for it.
Our political world, run as it is on focus groups and intensive polling, has lost a taste for pursuing virtuous ends that risk public excoriation. But greatness is found when uprightness and rectitude are upheld even at great personal sacrifice.
To be sure, everyone ascribes the most selfish motivation to the American war effort in Iraq. The most common refrain is that America wants Iraqi oil a particularly inane argument, as it overlooks the fact that even if the United States took all the profits from the sale of all Iraqi oil over the next decade, it would hardly recoup the estimated $300 billion that the war, reconstruction, and peacekeeping in Iraq will cost. Moreover, if the Americans wanted oil, they would presumably conquer a far weaker Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, where they already have a formidable military presence. But why be logical, when hating America is so much more gratifying?
A hassidic story tells of the impoverished Reb Zusya, who having no money to marry off his daughter, approached his teacher, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, who ran a fund for poor brides. The Magid gave Zusya 500 rubles.
As Zusya made his way back home he came across a marketplace where a poor peddler had fainted. The peddler had been traveling the countryside for a whole year selling trinkets in order to earn enough money to feed his family. He had returned with the small fortune of 500 rubles, but stopped in the marketplace to buy some presents, he was robbed.
Deciding that his daughter would have to settle for a wedding comprising only the most modest necessities, Zusya took 50 rubles out of his own bag, put them in his pocket, held up the remaining sum and announced that he had found the peddler's money.
He was lionized as a hero that is, until he was searched and the rest of the money found. Then he was quickly accused of having stolen the bag of cash in the first place and thrown in jail. When, a few days later, the Magid came to secure his disciple's release and heard from Zusya what had really happened, he asked Zusya why he had not told the people the truth. Zusya responded: "For once in my life I wanted to do the right thing, even if I was pilloried for it."
HISTORY IS replete with stories of great men who were prepared to be hated for fighting for what was right. During the US Civil War, no man in the North or South was as loathed as Abraham Lincoln. His own commander, Gen. George McClellan, called him "The Gorilla" and "nothing more than a well-meaning baboon." Justice Benjamin R. Curtis reported general agreement on "the utter incompetence of the president."
Murat Halstead, editor of the influential Cincinnati Commercial, thought the president "an awful, woeful ass." As late as August 1864, leading Republicans like Horace Greeley concluded that "it was useless and inexpedient to attempt to run Mr. Lincoln" in that year's presidential race. Lincoln himself, understanding the depth of animosity toward him, wrote to a friend in that same month, "You think I don't know I am going to be beaten, but I do, and unless some great change takes place, badly beaten."
But never did Lincoln waver from his commitment to what he knew in his heart to be justified: the preservation of the Union and, by 1862, the emancipation of the slaves.
"I'll hold McClellan's horse if he'll only bring us success," was typical of his preparedness to be brought low just so long as his cause triumphed. Winston Churchill has been described as the "last truly great man of the Western world." As Peter Graves notes, "His record of wartime heroism and peacetime leadership may never be equaled." Yet prior to becoming prime minister in 1940, Churchill was almost universally loathed as a washed-up crank and a warmonger because of his unwavering opposition to Nazism.
Menachem Begin became one of the most reviled leaders on earth when, on June 7, 1981 he gave the order to destroy Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak. Even the pro-Israel Reagan administration joined the United Nations' chorus of condemnation. "Armed attack in such circumstances cannot be justified; it represents a grave breach of international law," scolded Britain's Margaret Thatcher.
"Israel's sneak attack... was an act of inexcusable and shortsighted aggression," snarled a New York Times editorial. How fitting that Begin lived long enough to witness his historic decision vindicated by the first Gulf War in 1991.
IN OCTOBER of that year I played host to then Israeli housing minister Ariel Sharon, who lectured at the Oxford Union. At the very moment Sharon was speaking, prime minister Yitzhak Shamir announced that he would travel to the Madrid Peace Conference, where he would sit with Palestinian representatives for the very first time in talks that would indirectly result in the Oslo Accords. Sharon assailed Madrid: "It is not a peace conference, but a war conference."
I walked alongside him as he was jeered by hundreds of Oxford students, who called him a murderer. He strutted past them confidently, holding the hand of his beloved wife, Lily. It would take the death of hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians to prove the truth of his prescient prediction.
Now, in a long tradition of great men who have suffered for resisting evil, it is the turn of President Bush to be hated by the world for standing up to tyranny. Today's shallow generation sees goodness as indulging people's whims, always showing them acceptance, tolerance, and love rather than resisting their excesses.
We know how to love the stranger, but never how to stop the evildoer. Goodness entails getting along, but never offering a rebuke. To be popular one may offer praise, but never pass judgment.
In 1994, as head of the UN's peacekeeping forces, Kofi Annan was approached by Maj.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, who urgently pleaded for permission to disarm the Hutus so as to prevent the genocide of the Tutsis. Annan refused to act, or even inform his superiors of the request. Such armed confrontation was not part of his world view. The result was the slaughter of 800,000 men, women, and children. Seven years later Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Abraham, the first Jew, was known as Avraham Ha'Ivri, he who dwelled across the river. But there is a second interpretation of the word ivri: He who drew a line in the sand and declared: "No further."
Abraham was the first to proclaim to the world that morality involves restraint, and that decent men have to know how to oppose wicked ones.
The Kofi Annans of this world may get the prizes and the popularity. But the George Bushes get to see the warm smiles of innocent children whose lives they have saved.
The writer, a rabbi and best-selling author, hosts a daily radio show syndicated across the United States on the Talk America radio network.
"The Kofi Annans of this world may get the prizes and the popularity. But the George Bushes get to see the warm smiles of innocent children whose lives they have saved."
Some telling lines:
"In 1994, as head of the UN's peacekeeping forces, Kofi Annan was approached by Maj.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, who urgently pleaded for permission to disarm the Hutus so as to prevent the genocide of the Tutsis. Annan refused to act, or even inform his superiors of the request. Such armed confrontation was not part of his world view. The result was the slaughter of 800,000 men, women, and children. Seven years later Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."
Remember when George was a "Uniter, not a Divider?"
God has caught him up in the nexus of history and His will.
No Az, they hate b/c they're ignorant and/or opposed to freedom and those who support it!
;)
So GLAD you brought that up . . .
RETRO: Bill O'Reilly Rips Kofi Annan - Stupidity & Selfishness... (Nobel Should Go To U.S. Forces)
The biggest problem leftists have with Bush is that he is a religious man. That's why they're always making fun of his faith, and attacking it as though it were some kind of aberration. They hate Bush because they hate God, plain and simple. And they love Clinton because when they look at him, they see Satan, whom Clinton mimicks perfectly.
"And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved."
Matthew 10:22
"If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you."
John 15:18-19
A true child of God wears the hatred of the leftists and socialists as a badge of honor. And those who are so adored by the world, such as Hollywood celebrities, are among the most cursed of people on earth, no matter how materially blessed they may be.
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