AND NOW WE'RE IN YEAR FOUR

Just thinking about the third anniversary of the Iraq war. Weren't we told that the "war on terror" was a "different kind of war?" Why yes we were, by the Commander-in-Chief-of-screwing-things-up, on August 22, 2005:

Like the great struggles of the 20th century, the war on terror demands every element of our national power. Yet this is a different kind of war. Our enemies are not organized into battalions, or commanded by governments. They hide in shadowy networks and retreat after they strike. After September the 11th, 2001, I made a pledge, America will not be -- will not wait to be attacked again. We will go on the offense and we will defend our freedom. (Applause.)

This thought just crossed my mind again recently--if this war is so different, why are we fighting it like every other war we've ever fought?

The Lobby

You've got to at least browse Raimondo's column today. It's a good and informative summary of the so-called "Israel Lobby" and how U.S. fealty to Israel is detrimental to our foreign policy. If you have the time and energy, you might want to read the synopsis from the authors themselves here. Here are a couple of paragraphs that stood out to me, precisely because this is a side of Israel you don't often hear about:

Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’

Good Night and Good Luck

Finally watched it tonight. Just substitute "terrorism" every time they say "Communism" and it reflects today's media/political climate so perfectly it's palpable.

And here's my latest letter to the editor:

Bush should be impeached


Let's say, just for argument's sake, that the United States had a president that had done all of the following:

1. Held office at the time of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

2. Admitted to a program of spying on American citizens without warrants, in clear violation of U.S. law.

3. Began a war of aggression against a country that had never attacked us, in violation of all international laws and norms.

4. Detained American citizens without charge or representation, in violation of U.S. law.

5. Sanctioned torture of prisoners in violation of international laws and norms.

6. Began his first term in office having lost the popular vote and then been installed by a one-vote difference in the Supreme Court.

7. Created the biggest deficit in the history of the country.

8. Oversaw an increase in poverty every year he was in office.

If we had such a president, any rational person would conclude that that president would need to be impeached and removed because he was a danger to the continued existence of America as a constitutional republic, regardless of his party affiliation, family name or professed belief in God and freedom. As it happens, we do have a president that has done these things, and his name happens to be George W. Bush.

Calling for the impeachment and removal of George W. Bush is not "Bush-bashing" or "hating Bush." It is the proper response to any president - Democrat or Republican - who abuses power, ignores the Constitution and wages unjust war.

Clinton Kirby,

Hattiesburg