[Pokey78]

Pinging the Steyn list.

[arkfreepdom]

"The idea that it doesn’t count unless it’s the Somme is most peculiar."

That may be one of the best/funniest lines I've ever read.

[Free State Four]

The real phenomenon of the last year is not Europe’s anti-Americanism, which has always existed, but a deep, pervasive and wholly new American weariness with Europe.

Oh, how I hope it is so. fsf

[daviddennis]

Great column! I laughed out loud a few times.

If you visit my Freep Video (QuickTime required), you'll find the anti-war protesters last weekend didn't even have enough people to hold up their sign (a scene about 3/4 through).

If you liked this column, it should give you a laugh :-).

D

[Paradox]

the cost would divert valuable resources from social programmes and might mean they’d have to cut back on welfare payments to Islamic terrorists.

So many good quotes per column. Typical Mark Steyn.

[Damocles]

It could tell the UN to go fu## itself, but it’s not that impolite.

Gee Mark, tell us what you really think! Har!!

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

There followed the usual flurry of huffy emails insisting this proved absolutely nothing as the cowardly Yanks hadn’t had the ‘guts’ to send in ground troops.

So there is still a segment of the British population who thinks the best way to fight is to send men in formation and let everyone line up and shoot at each other? I think I'll take Francis "The Swamp Fox" Marion's approach over there way.

[Aggie Mama]

Yet another Steyn to send to all of my friends--especially the 2 liberal ones. =)

[1bigdictator]

Not one major network would dare air this perspective regarding the apathy in the international community toward Arab world domination and its consequences for free countries. Unfortunately, pluralistic democracies such as ours are an endangered species and will eventually become extinct. One-world socialist institutions like the UN and EU are predators for which we lack any real defenses. Where is PETA and WWF when you realy need them.

[rudypoot]

You're da goods pokey, thanks.

[aculeus]

The real phenomenon of the last year is not Europe’s anti-Americanism, which has always existed, but a deep, pervasive and wholly new American weariness with Europe.

Got that, Fritz?

[Smedley]

The real phenomenon of the last year is not Europe’s anti-Americanism, which has always existed, but a deep, pervasive and wholly new American weariness with Europe.

I love this line, but I think that the good author has underestimated MY weariness with the EuroTrash.

No offense to the Brits -- I don't consider them Europeans and most of my Brit friends agree.

[1bigdictator]

A must read Ping

[PLK]

We can only guess at the new toys the Great Satan will have in five years’ time, but, whatever they are, I’ll bet my in-tray is still getting sneering missives: ‘So now the bloody Yank poofters are using flying nuclear cheeseburgers launched from the Diego Garcia Burger King. Not exactly the Bengal Lancers, is it?’

I am holding my sides laughing! Flying nuclear cheeseburgers? OMG!!!!! Steyn is awesome - again. Thanks.

[texasbluebell]

Well, Mr Mandela’s country has been busy selling aluminium tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges to Saddam.

Ah, yes, those aluminum tubes that Scott Ritter said were for something else.

[dead]

England’s clergy have redefined the Christian concept of a just war to mean only one blessed by the Security Council, which is to say the governments of France, Russia and China: it will be left to two atheists and a lapsed Catholic to determine whether this is a war Christians can support.

Always DOZENS of highlights in a Steyn column (even more than usual with this one) but this quote actually gave me belly laughs.

Sums up the utter depravity of the “UN must approve” idiocy. The UN is composed of thugs, dictators, and theives. They can kiss our ass.

[Billthedrill]

You’ll recall Louis Michel, the Belgian foreign minister, insisting late last year that the European Rapid Reaction Force ‘must declare itself operational without such a declaration being based on any true capability’. As the Washington Post remarked, ‘Apparently in Europe this works.’

I'm gonna have to stop reading Steyn at work. My medical benefits don't cover laughter sprains.

[Dan Day]

Structurally, the UN is a creature of the Cold War. It formalised the stalemate of East and West: it was designed to prevent rather than enable action; it tended towards inertia, which was no bad thing given the potentially catastrophic consequences of the alternative. But we no longer have a bipolar world, and so the vetoes only work one way — to restrain the sole surviving superpower.

Absolutely brilliant analysis.

[Dan Day]

When Saddam switches on CNN and sees Adam Nicolson standing in Downing Street pre-emptively chanting ‘Shame! Shame!’ over the mere possibility of a ludicrously antiquated vision of a prolonged siege of Baghdad, he might reasonably question how serious Nicolson would be about nuking the joint. The wily old monster might wonder, if he were to lob a small nuke at, say, Tel Aviv, whether the shame set would really have the stomach for full-blown retaliation with massive civilian casualties, or whether they’d be back in the streets chanting that ‘violence only breeds more violence’. He might conclude that a system of deterrence between a gangster and a ladies’ luncheon club will deter the latter and leave him free to do pretty much what he wants.

"A ladies' luncheon club". That'd be hilariously funny if it weren't so depressingly true.

[Dan Day]

Another excellent Steyn essay on the same topic: Mark Steyn- Message from America: we're independent

Excerpt:

Conversely, the Europeans speak ever more shrilly because their twig is even tinier than Osama bin Laden's notoriously small penis. If they wanted to, they could make the twig bigger, by spending more on defence. But they've made a conscious decision decided not to: as Paavo Lipponen, the Finnish Prime Minister, said in a recent speech in London, "the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests". Perhaps it lost something in translation, but, if he means what he says, the EU has embarked on a unique scheme for world domination dependent on hectoring the rest of the planet into submission. If Mr Bush is allowed to go his own way, this strategy of noisy impotence - all mouth and no trousers - will be exposed as a sham.