Posted on 04/11/2002 9:08:06 PM PDT by Pokey78
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:04:22 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
It's easier to fight than to pray. So let's pray.
We can all remember when the Mideast was not a crisis but rather an unanswered question: How will they find peace? It was a place that in our lifetimes had not achieved amity and accord but was not always at war, at least not always in full, hot war.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
This is the kernal of essential truth in this entire piece. We still live in a world of random and evil - not everything is programmed and predictable.
Just because a question is asked doesn't mean there must be an answer. How vain of us to think otherwise.
I think I see Bush wanting to turn this around and how it works out is yet to be seen.
There is an answer but it is not one that a civilized socity is eager to embrace. And it is not lying down quietly so the other side can cut your throat more easily.
Psalm 83 sounds about right.
a. cricket
They must fight until one side loses. Too bad no one thought of that before nukes became common.
That report out today about Israel giving alot more then what was at Camp David and Yasser saying no will be back on the table and they will go without Arafrat - you watch !
Ms. Noonan does a great job with these sentences of setting up her main idea. While I wouldn't want people to take this article to say that we shouldn't fight at the appropriate time, her main idea that peole must turn to God is very sound. I think one reason that people are so stressed about the fighting in the Middle East is that they believe that they are gods in their own right. They worship a wide variety of technological messiahs, and they expect those technological messiahs to solve every problem and deliver them from every danger. Even without the danger, the Middle East is frustrating to them because none of their technological messiahs will solve the problem. They have to realize that they aren't God and can't be responsible for every situation. That realization is a tremendous blow to people who see themselves as the ultimate product of millenia of evolution and not as humble creatures made in their Creator's image.
WFTR
Bill
Psalm 83 sounds about right.From The Bible Gateway:a. cricket
Psalm 83 - New International Version (NIV-IBS)
A song. A psalm of Asaph.
1 O God, do not keep silent;
be not quiet, O God, be not still.
2 See how your enemies are astir,
how your foes rear their heads.
3 With cunning they conspire against your people;
they plot against those you cherish.
4 "Come," they say, "let us destroy them as a nation,
that the name of Israel be remembered no more."
5 With one mind they plot together;
they form an alliance against you-
6 the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
of Moab and the Hagrites,
7 Gebal, [1] Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia, with the people of Tyre.
8 Even Assyria has joined them
to lend strength to the descendants of Lot.
Selah
9 Do to them as you did to Midian,
as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,
10 who perished at Endor
and became like refuse on the ground.
11 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
12 who said, "Let us take possession
of the pasturelands of God."
13 Make them like tumbleweed, O my God,
like chaff before the wind.
14 As fire consumes the forest
or a flame sets the mountains ablaze,
15 so pursue them with your tempest
and terrify them with your storm.
16 Cover their faces with shame
so that men will seek your name, O Lord .
17 May they ever be ashamed and dismayed;
may they perish in disgrace.
18 Let them know that you, whose name is the Lord -
that you alone are the Most High over all the earth.
He teacheth my hands to war, so that bow of steel is broken by mine arms.
a. cricket
And everything you know of life and history tells you that Israel will not surrender; and that, as the writer Ron Rosenbaum, who normally speaks with a voice that is more cerebral than visceral, said this week in the New York Observer, "This is the way it is likely to happen: Sooner or later a nuclear weapon is detonated in Tel Aviv, and sooner, not later, there is nuclear retaliation--Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, perhaps all three. . . . The unspoken corollary of the slogan 'Never again' is: 'And if again, not us alone.' "See http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=5715:
This column ran on page 1 in the 4/15/02 edition of The New York Observer.‘Second Holocaust,’ Roth’s Invention, Isn’t Novelistic
by Ron Rosenbaum
"The Second Holocaust. It’s a phrase we may have to begin thinking about. A possibility we may have to contemplate. A reality we may have to witness. Somebody has to think about the unthinkable, about the unbearable, and the way it looks now, it’s at least as likely to happen as not. One can imagine several ways it will happen: the current, terrible situation devolves from slow-motion mutual slaughter into instantaneous conflagration, nuclear, chemical or biological. Scenarios that remain regional. Scenarios that go global.What is harder to imagine are ways in which it won’t happen. A peace process? Goodwill among men? An end to suicidal fanaticism? In your dreams.
Instead we must begin to examine the variety of nightmare scenarios...
...As a secular Jew, I’ve always been more of a diasporist than a Zionist. I’ve supported the Jewish state, but thought that it was a necessary but not ideal solution with a pronounced dark side: The concentration of so many Jews in one place—and I use the word "concentration" advisedly—gives the world a chance to kill the Jews en masse again. And I also thought that Jews flourished best where they were no longer under the thumb of Orthodox rabbis and could bring to the whole world—indeed, the whole universe—the exegetical skills that are the glory of the people: reading the universe as the Torah, as Einstein and Spinoza did, rather than the Torah as the universe, as the Orthodox do.
But the implacable hatred of Arab fundamentalism makes no distinction between Jewish fundamentalists and Jewish secularists, just as Hitler didn’t. It’s not just the settlements they want to extirpate, it’s the Jewish state, the Jewish people.
This is the way it is likely to happen: Sooner or later, a nuclear weapon is detonated in Tel Aviv, and sooner, not later, there is nuclear retaliation—Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, perhaps all three. Someone once said that while Jesus called on Christians to "turn the other cheek," it’s the Jews who have been the only ones who have actually practiced that. Not this time. The unspoken corollary of the slogan "Never again" is: "And if again, not us alone."
So the time has come to think about the Second Holocaust. It’s coming sooner or later; it’s not "whether," but when. I hope I don’t live to see it. It will be unbearable for those who do. That is, for all but the Europeans—whose consciences, as always, will be clear and untroubled."
It has the ring of truth, because that is what world leaders do in a maelstrom. Churchill's writings of his times in the early 40's are very appropriate now. He spent a great deal of effort just trying to buy time -- time to build his forces and find allies.
Bush is undoubtedly hoping that time will bring new events that will provide a more favorable environment for an outcome that is something less than Armageddon. He has always wanted to keep a lid on things (not just in this locality, but everywhere) in order to pick off enemies one by one. A major conflagration was almost certainly never in his plan, though now it looks inevitable and it will take some time (there it is again) to be prepared fully to deal with that.
Ms. Noonan is close to the administration, so what she writes here is probably closer to the truth of events, as viewed in the White House, than most any others we see daily in the press. He is probably trying to buy time. I sure hope that he is using the time bought to place irresistable force in the region to better control events should they be of the explosive type, as now appears likely.
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