Posted on 11/06/2003 8:31:53 AM PST by quidnunc
Here’s a round-up of recent items from the world’s press you may have missed: Item 1: In the last two weeks, two Toronto-bound El Al flights had to be diverted to other airports after credible terrorist threats were made about using surface-to-air missiles against them. The Canadian transport minister, David Collenette, responded by suggesting that the Israeli airline’s service to Pearson International Airport might be ended.
Item 2: The Baghdad hotel in which Paul Wolfowitz was staying was blown up. Several people were killed, though the US deputy defence secretary emerged unscathed. Much of the death and destruction was caused by French 68mm missiles ‘in pristine condition’, according to one US officer who inspected the rocket tubes and assembly. In other words, they’re not rusty leftovers Saddam had lying around from the 1980s. The Baathist dictatorship had acquired these missiles from the French rather more recently.
Item 3: According to Le Nouvel Observateur, ‘D’après un questionnaire de la Commission Européenne, 59% des Européens pensent qu’Israël est le pays le plus menaçant pour la paix dans le monde.’
Item 4: In the Guardian, Tariq Ali ended this week’s column on the mounting American (and NGO) death toll in Iraq thus: ‘Iraqis have one thing of which they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an opposition’.
On 11 September 2001, I wrote that one of the casualties of the day’s events would be the Western alliance: ‘The US taxpayer’s willingness to pay for the defence of Canada and Europe has contributed to the decay of America’s so-called “allies”, freeing them to disband their armed forces, flirt with dictators and gangster states, and essentially convert themselves to semi-non-aligned.’ ‘The West’ was an obsolete concept, because, as I put it later that month, for everyone but America ‘the free world is mostly a free ride’.
Two years on, most governments, at least officially, and most commentators, at least in the mainstream press, still don’t believe the relationship between America and its ‘allies’ is in a terminal state. But the above quartet of stories — and you can find equivalent items any week — illustrates why it can’t be put back together.
One: Mr Collenette’s response to terrorists is to take it out on their targets. Terrorists are threatening to use SAMs against El Al? No problem, we’ll get rid of El Al. That’s a great message to send. How soon before similar threats are phoned in to similarly jelly-spined jurisdictions in Europe? Pretty soon El Al won’t be flying anywhere. But no matter: Air Canada and Air France and Lufthansa will still be flying to Tel Aviv — at least until a couple of anonymous phone calls are made hinting at fresh targets.
The threats against El Al came via phone calls from the Toronto area from terrorists claiming to have heat-seeking missiles. Police subsequently found a cache of weapons including a German-made shoulder rocket launcher that was smuggled into Canada through the ingenious method of dropping it in the mail and letting the Post Office deliver it. So there are two approaches to this problem: you can crack down on Toronto-based terrorist cells and try to get government agencies not to deliver their rocket launchers; or you can ban El Al. Mr Collenette inclines to the latter. This is a man, by the way, who marked the first anniversary of 11 September by publicly regretting the fall of the Soviet Union because now there is nobody to check America’s ‘bullying’.
Lesson: In the war on terror, the United States believes in pre-emption; Canada, like many other ‘allies’, believes in pre-emptive surrender. These two strategies are incompatible.
Two: Just suppose that one of those French rockets had killed Paul Wolfowitz. One of the greatest fictions of the interminable debate on Euro-American differences over Iraq is that it’s an argument about the means, not the end. If only Bush had been a little less Texan, less arrogant, less bullying, if only he’d been less impatient and willing to put in the hours, he could have brought the French and Germans round. After all, everyone agrees Saddam Hussein is a very bad man.
Not the French and Germans. There’s too much evidence suggesting the main reason they were unable to join the Bush side in this war is that they’d already signed on to the other team and they’d decided, in the sort of ghastly vernacular the cretinous Yanks would use, to dance with them what brung you. They’re being admirably consistent about this: at the recent Madrid conference France and Germany both refused to pony up one single euro to Iraqi reconstruction. It was never about the means, only the end.
Lesson: America and ‘Old Europe’ have different objectives in Iraq, and those objectives are incompatible.
Three: 59 per cent of Europeans think Israel is the biggest threat to world peace. Only 59 per cent? What’s wrong with the rest of you? But, hey, don’t worry. In Britain, it’s 60 per cent; Germany, 65 per cent; Austria, 69 per cent; the Netherlands, 74 per cent. The good news is that Israel won’t be a threat to world peace much longer, at least not if Iran’s nuclear programme carries on running rings around the International Atomic Energy Agency and the ayatollahs fulfil their pledge to solve the problem of the Zionist Entity once and for all.
Let us leave for another day the question of whether Israel is actually a bigger global menace than North Korea, which has hung a big shingle on the street saying ‘Nukes? We Got ’Em! And You Won’t Believe Our Prices!’ The fact is that 11 September bound America to Israel in ways that oblige Washington to regard European distaste for Jews as more than a mere social faux pas. Given the rate of Islamic immigration to Europe, those anti-Israeli numbers are heading in only one direction. At present demographic rates, by 2020 the majority of children in Holland — i.e., the population under 18 — will be Muslim. What do you figure that 74 per cent will be up to by then? Eighty-five per cent? Ninety-six per cent? If Americans think it’s difficult getting the Continentals on side now, wait another decade. In that sense, the Israelis are the canaries in the coalmine.
Lesson: America’s and Europe’s world views have diverged significantly, and those world views are now incompatible.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
The reports I've heard
all say it will not include
"Scouring of the Shire."
So, even though called,
"The Return of the King," it
doesn't include the
real "return" of the
"king," only the return of
Aragorn... That's film,
everything's surface,
and "poetry" -- real meaning --
gets thrown to the orcs...
Translation: Expect the collapse of "Olde Europe" to be extremely violent.
Horse players use the racing form to determine horses' past performance under varying conditions.
To bet on form is to bet on horses which past statistics show will perform well in present circumstances (ie according to length of race, track conditions, etc.)
What Steyn is saying that based on past performance Old Europe will expire meekly with barely a whimper of protest.
Time to wake and realize that Canada is not our friend. Time to wake up and realize that Canada poses a real threat...
Yes, and we need to secure our border with Canada as weel as Mexico.
I have been reading Steyn for a long time and I don't ever recall him saying that he believes parliamentary monarchy is the best form of government. I have often heard him speak approvingly of a constitutional republic, however.
Are you calling him a monarchist simply because he may have given good press to the Windsors or because he thinks, in a form of British exceptionalism, that Britain's institutions function best when configured around the British monarchy? Or do you have specific evidence to show that he is an out-and-out monarchist?
Absolutely. Canada is in decline, imo, and quite a threat with their creeping socialism and "tolerance" of terrorism and terrorists in general.
I disagree. I think he's saying that if one goes by centuries of European "form" one should expect violence.
It was posted earlier with a different headline which didn't show up when I did a search.
A few weeks ago, a FReeper wrote to me that the Jews are the canaries in the coal mine. Do you know who first used that phrase in relation to the Jews, and when?
I think any nation that made that fatal mistake would find the US mobilize on a level not seen since WWII. I also doubt our people would care about the "rules of war."
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