Posted on 04/20/2002 11:05:09 AM PDT by scratchgolfer
Only idiots can "understand" the "palestinian" justification for mayhem and murder.
If Mexicans were coming across the border to San Diego and going into crowded places and murdering people via explosive garments – I would think that our government would take aggressive action to stop it. It appears to me that this is more than a simile of what is happening in Israel.
I am embarrassed that we (America) haven’t been more united in our support of Israel doing whatever it has to do to gain “homeland security.”
--Eccl. 10:2
After all they have also performed crimes against humanity.
Let's see some evidence for your blood libel. Your goose is cooked!
P.S. You forgot to charge that the Jews kill gentile children, and use their blood in the baking of Passover matzos. I guess you were saving that one for another post.
Whenever people throw Washington's Farewell Address in your face, just remind them that he was talking about countries two months away from the U.S. No sensible American politician, at any point in our nation's history, has ever suggested that we ignore events taking place within a day of our borders—but thanks to modern transportation, that now encompasses the whole globe. Washington was a great and wise man, but he didn't foresee jet aircraft, ballistic missiles or nuclear submarines. That "foreign entanglements" quote is a great argument for remaining neutral with respect to warring tribes of Martians or Venusians, but events here on Earth have passed it by.
I will relate a little history instead. The first president I was old enough to vote for was Ronald Reagan. The country was a basket case, run into the ground by a hapless president. Gas lines were miles long. Oil was soaring to $40 a barrel. The country was humiliated for over a year by insane kidnappers in Teheran. A late military attempt to rescue them ended in fiasco. The Iranians displayed wreckage and body parts on international television. Meanwhile, Irsael was being condemned by the chattering classes for bombing a nuclear reactor in Iraq.
A few years later, Israel had enough of the PLO and went into Lebanon. When the US tried to broker a cease fire and Israeli withdrawl, and put our own men in harm's way to protect the Palestinians, Islamic radicals blew up 250 of them. They captured our pilots and held them hostage. Numerous American civilians were held hostage in Lebanon on one pretext or another.
In all of this, the clear impression was that very nasty people were out for our blood, and only the Israelis had the guts to stand up to them. Reagan was better than Carter, but still tread softly with the Arabs. Later we had to fight Saddam, and everyone told us it would be the end of the world if we tried. But he didn't have nukes, because somebody had the foresight to destroy his facilities long ago. He attacked Israel, which obeyed our demands to sit there and take it.
The attacks last fall were not the opening rounds in the current war. They were just the first time our enemies hit something here at home, hard enough that everybody really noticed. But some of us have been watching this war for 20 years, for the whole of our adult lives. Some of us were first seriously politicized by the Iran hostage crisis and the seeming inability of our government to do a darn thing about it. It was the symbol of the pathetic defeatism of the whole 1970s. Reagan and renewed American patriotism was a reaction against all that.
The enemies of Israel have been the enemies of America - and of the right in particular - for decades. The right has stood for standing up to such enemies, when the left has over and over again caved and appeased and wrung its hands. This is not new. It is not divorced from the issues of the present war, which did not just begin out of nowhere.
It is not a matter of personalities, identity politics, or recondite theological speculations. It is our direct political experience. The enemies of Israel have declared themselves our enemies, and they demand our submission. They have recently proven themselves rather dangerous. Which has simply brought more of the American middle over to views many of us on the right have held for 20 years.
Islamic radicalism declared war on us in 1979, when they first came to power in Iran, and there has never been any peace in that war. It has simply been burning hotter or colder, now and then, in this or that manifestation. That war is as much a part of the political consciousness of my generation, as the rise of communism was to earlier ones. Teheran was our October Revolution, and we drew up sides then and there.
Do not overlook that many of us have served in the meantime, or have had friends who have. When members of an international ideology want to kill you and your friends and your countrymen, it frees the mind of media cant. So yes, it is 9-11. It is also much older than 9-11. The right needs no urging to dislike Islamic radicals.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.