Friday, October 08, 2004

 
Argghh...did GWB just say "more facile"? Reminds one of the Dad of Jean Shepard's now classic movie "Christmas Story" reading "FRAGILE" on the crate containing his "major award" as "Frah...gee...lay," and then exclaiming that it "must be Italian!"
More importantly Kerry described the war against terror as something which must be "handled." And I believe he used the word "job" referring to the ongoing battle in Iraq. As was the case with respect to Vietnam, Kerry seems to put the ultimate blame for violence on the U.S.; not our enemies there or in Iraq. This is different than say, Lincoln replacing generals who had failed on the battlefield. We can hold our Presidents and generals accountable without "taking our eye" off the moral responsibilty and reprehensibility of our enemies. VDH is almost certainly correct that many Muslims(if not most Muslims, and for that matter most *people*) are "reptilian" in their choosing of whichever side seems likely to prevail and that therefore we should place more emphasis on destroying the enemy than worrying about protests over civilian casualities.
Be that as it may, one should not lose sight of the fact that our enemies, *are* in truth, human; not entirely reptilian. As argued earlier, we *should* in some cases, care enough and respect enough the opinions of our enemies *to kill them*.
Kerry is wrong to suggest(and Bush is wrong to believe, to the extent he might)that war is a "job" or something which can be "handled." This condescending attitude coexists quite comfortably with an often craven desire to be loved by the "world." And to measure our self-worth by what we are thought of by the "Arab street", Iraqis, vietnamese peasants, frenchmen, germans and the like.
A condescending attitude hardly works to mollify. Kerry is no "Neo" of the "Matrix Reloaded" (that analogy works better for the U.S. which doesn't seem to fully realize that it has a massive nuclear arsenal)but hey, go with me on this one....It didn't matter that the francophile sentient program, the "Merovingian" took it as an insult when Neo told his comrades, when speaking of the Merovingian and his primitive but "hard to kill" killer-app guys, "Don't worry; I'll handle them." The arrogant and vain Merovingian, perhaps thinking that Neo's "song" was "about you, all about you," took this as an insult, saying, "You'll *'andle* us?!?"
It may very well be that most of the world's Muslim believe that their faith requires them to Islamisize the world, and that furthermore a separation of (their) church and state and civil liberties as we know them are incompatible with that faith. Muslims should know, however, that we recognize them as human beings, not something to be "handled" and that while we grant their right to *believe* as they do, we do not grant their right to *exist* if they threaten *our* freedom or existence.
VDH's piece today, was as usual well written and argued, and builds upon, and qualifies(no flip-flopper he-situations change and one can't cover everything in a single article) some of his sentiments in his "See Ya, Iraq' column. -not that it's likely that he plowed through my previous verbiage:
"Our people should forgive Bush for his resemblance to the better angels of Neville Chamberlain, and reserve their rage for the betrayal of his hopes for those who betrayed them. One hopes that the Islamofascists, who may make up a majority of Muslims worldwide, will taste a fury like that of hell, if and when decent men such as VDH and our troops who have been risking their lives in part, to bring freedom to Muslims, decide that they have been scorned by those who deserve little mercy."