The truth hurts, sometimes.
I am one of the 535 Volusia county voters who helped tip the balance of the Florida vote to Bush. I am very proud of that.
That said, Arafat IS a terrorist.
I feel ashamed of admitting that by not labeling Arafat as a terrorist, we are lying as a country. He is a terrorist, and I, for one, would not hesitate to do the right thing, with my bare hands, if I met him.
I understand that this conflict has the potential to lead to WWIII if Arafat is killed, and for that reason, Bush must grit his teeth and not call Arafat what he obviously is. I think that If I were president, I would go ahead and let the Isrealis take him out, and hang him from a lamp post in Jerusalem, knowing it would lead to WWIII, gas shortages, depression here, nukes there, and just go down in history as the guy who had to do what he had to do.
But then again, nobody would ever vote me in to an office, let alone the Presidency.
War in the middle east will come, no doubt, eventually. You can't take a bunch of people on camels, nomadic tribes in the desert, 500 years behind in civilization, stoning women and cuttinf off each other's hands, and pour money on them (from sudden oil wealth) and expect them to behave like civilized people.
Isreal has been civilized for thousands of years. Europeans (Christians) went through the enlightenment around 500 years ago. (Before that, we were burning each other at the stake, breaking bones on the wheel, drawing and quartering, crucifying, blinding, etc., no worse than the a-rabs today).
Imagine if we gave high explosives, modern weapons, passports, access to our universities, and knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons to people of the dark ages of Europe. They would behave not much differently. They sure as heck would try to use them on us, and we would have no choice, ultimately, but to convert them to modern thinking, or eradicate them. They were just as self-righteous, just as religeous, just as scared, and just as sure they would be fighting for God.
Moses came a long time ago. Isreal had a long time to civilize. Jesus came later; Christians were enlightend later. Mohammed came later, and they haven't gone through the enlightenment thing. So we fight barbaric people who bury adulterous women up to their armpits and stone them to death.They are not going to change for at least another hundred years, and probably much longer than that.
Arafat IS a terrorist. So are most of them over there.