Mark Steyn: Bush pulls it off again

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 07/13/2002 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

Ping for the MSPL.

[Miss Marple]

Once again, Steyn hits it out of the park. I hope those Europeans climb out of the heffalump pits! HA!

[Shryke]

Best editorial I've read in months. I need to praise it twice. Excellent.

[demlosers]

A good read!

[bray]

The Europissants must be wringing their silk hankies over this!

Pray for GW and the Truth

[stylin_geek]

Thanks for the post, excellent article.

[DB]

Wow, that was blunt.

Thanks for the post.

A little light in the vast darkness...

[forsnax5]

Dang! Steyn just gets better every time!

[Carolinamom]

Steyn sees these tired pacifists clearly. It's about time we joined him and lobbed a few rocks THEIR way.

[Brian Allen]

United States of America's President and Armed Forces Commander in Chief, George Walker Bush has a Good and True supporter in Mr Steyn.

And in 76% or so of Our Beloved FRee Republic's Good and FRee Men.

Including me.

[SouthernFreebird]

A Standing Ovation for an excellent article.

[Little Bill]

That was one of the better ones, benieth the humor and sarcasm the man does have real good observations. He better take the oath and become Yanktified and Sanctified, as my Canadian relitives say, before the Rats yank his green card.

[MeekOneGOP]

Mark Steyn: Bush pulls it off again

Excerpt:

For Bush, it’s a win–win situation. If the Palestinians elect the Hamas crowd, he can say, ‘Fine, I respect your choice. Call me back when you decide to put self-government before self-detonation.’ If they opt for plausible state and municipal legislators, Bush will have re-established an important principle: that when the Americans sign on to nation-building they do so only to bring into being functioning democratic, civilised states — as they did with postwar Germany and Japan. Who’s to say it couldn’t work in Palestine? Not being a colonial power, the Americans don’t have that win-a-few-lose-a-few attitude — here a Canada, there a Zimbabwe — that the British have. So the Bush plan is perfect: heads we win, tails you lose. That’s also how some of these other international questions are being framed: heads, the International Criminal Court will be modified to our satisfaction; tails, we won’t have to do any more lousy UN peacekeeping.

The question Matthew Parris might like to ask as he weeds his borders is why could no European leader make a speech like that? How did it come about that the entire EU reflexively stuck with an aging terrorist who cancelled the last scheduled elections? Which bear is really the one with the little brain? The one who in under three weeks has changed the dynamic of the Palestinian question? Or the one whose gags are as stale as his world view?

Europeans expend an awful lot of energy explaining why nothing can change: it’s ‘absurdly ignorant’ even to suggest getting rid of Arafat; it’s preposterous to pursue ‘crackpot’ (John Simpson) plans for missile defence because it would ‘humiliate’ the Russians. But Bush went ahead, and the Russians are fine about it, and Yasser’s packing, and, behind the scenes, the Aussies and Canucks and not a few others are relieved that the unilateralist cowboy has killed Kyoto. Bush tosses a pebble in the water and the ripples spread across the lake; the EU drops a huge rock of conventional wisdom and it sinks without trace. I’ve said before that, if America is Coke, the world could use a Pepsi. If the EU doesn’t have the will to fulfil that role militarily, it could at least try to do it intellectually, with a bit of fresh creative thinking about some of these issues. But instead it clings to 1970s terrorists, 1970s missile treaties and 1970s environmental doom-mongering. Poor old Europe: never mind walking the walk, it can’t even talk the talk.

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Let me know if you want OFF or ON my ping list!

[wimpycat]

Over on the Guardian messageboards, the only thing they can think of to dismiss Mark Steyn is to call him a Jew. Go to www.guardian.co.uk, then click on "talk", then click on "unlimited talk", then click on "international". There's a thread there talking about his last column.

[Notforprophet]

Pokey78 thanks for the Ping. Another awesome Steyn article!

[SeeRushToldU_So]

That was a good read.

[Tomalak]

Politically, a fantastic piece. Despite never sacrificing his moral principles, Steyn seems to focus on the realpolitik of the issue admirably.

But one thing I never understood about Steyn is why he has to blame the countries of individual idiots rather than the idiots themselves. This sort of column could have been written throughout 1992-2000 or 1976-1980 in attacking the US. Was that because America was bad? No - it just had a terrible government in those years.

[Tacis]

Does this mean that the Eurocrats won't get their cut of the cash sent to the Palestinians from Europe this month? August vacations are coming and the cost of having fun in the sun in Europe is skyrocketing. One would have hoped that Mr. Bush would have waited for a less sensetive moment before beggering some many European civil servants.

[maica]

Yasser Arafat isn’t just toast, he’s buttered, covered in Marmite and being dipped in the soft-boiled egg of history. Bush knows it, Israel knows it, the Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians and Syrians know it, Hamas knows it, Arafat’s cronies know it, and ol’ man Yasser knows it. The only folks who haven’t figured it out are senior British civil servants, European foreign ministers and, alas, readers of The Spectator, who, responding to an online poll asking ‘Is President Bush right to call for the removal of Yasser Arafat?’, voted six to one against.

Thanks, Mark Steyn, thanks, Pokey. I really needed that laugh. Arafat covered in marmite going headfirst into the eggyolk.! LOL!P>This whole essay goes way beyond home run! It should be required reading for everyone. I wonder how many Europeans actually do read his work?