1. bunuel said:

Neither the demographic shift toward Muslim immigrants nor meretricious self-interest explains Western Europe's appeasement of Islam, but rather the terrifying logic of the numbers. That is why President Bush has thrown his prestige behind the rickety prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. And that is why Islamism has only lost a battle in Iraq, but well might win the war.

Not a single Western strategist has proposed an ideological response to the religious challenge of Islam. On the contrary: the Vatican, the guardian-of-last-resort of the Western heritage, has placed itself squarely in the camp of appeasement. Except for a few born-again Christians in the United States, no Western voice is raised in criticism of Islam itself. The trouble is that Islam believes in its divine mission, while the United States has only a fuzzy recollection of what it once believed, and therefore has neither the aptitude nor the inclination for ideological warfare.
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The above is copied from my posting here of a "Spengler" piece in Asia Times. It deals with the very problematic war we are in and its reverberations on the matter enraging you (and me).

2. Tamar said:

Excellent Joseph!

As for the "audacity and dumbness of the Bush administration..", It's obvious by now that Bushki is implementing a detailed agenda that was formulated in the first heady months of his administration. Mario Puzzo put it succinctly in "The Godfather"----"It's nothin' personal, it's just business".

My country is to be sacrificed in the name of "Peace", as was Czechoslovakia in 1938. I guess G.W. didn't get to the part in his WW-2 history book about how the sell out of the Czechs only encouraged the Nazis to become ever bolder in their aggression against the free world.

Shalom,

Tamar

3. Carol Herman said:

Eric Hoffer, a wonderful American philosopher who spent his lifetime working the docks, wrote "Before the Sabbath," a compilation of diary enteries made in early 1975.

He talks about the corruption to American politics by the arabs. He goes back to WW1. He shows how diplomatically we've allowed the arabs to buy us upsdie down and backwards. We've sold our nation to them. Yes, we need oil. It is crucial to our economy. But the Saudis don't produce anything except the oil. And, we've created their society, just as we allowed the mafia to grow (wink, wink) during Prohibition.

AMerica takes terrible turns in the road.

This cancer has been with us now almost 60 years.

But I have to wonder, still, WHAT DOES SHARON WANT?

Is he just pulling Bush out into the open? Or are there real advantages on the table IF Israel can make peace with the arabs? It turns out all wars must end. Learning to make peace is a diplomatic art.

The Romans did it by putting the fear of God into local populations. After Roman conquest these places were given a choice. LIVE BY THESE TWO PRINCIPALS OR BE EXPUNGED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH. KEEP THE PEACE. PAY YOUR TAXES.

I don't want to get into Jesus' death ... but he was viewed as a trouble maker and he was killed by the Romans.

Now, we live in a society that eschew the Roman model. And, yet we fail to achieve victory every time we fight.

Don't laugh, show me how Vietnam was a failure, if we finally left a place and didn't partition it?

Separate from Israel (and I think in 1948 when Truman acknowledged Jewish statehood, he also expected the arabs to clean the Jew's clock) ... What about India? Partitioned with AMerica's blessings in the UN in 1947.

What about all the crayon marks on the Mideast map by the Brits, when they beat the crap out of the Turks after WW1?

Isn't the real problem diplomacy itself? All that oil money greasing so many wheels?

You can't find democracy taking hold unless you have a middle class population. The arabs don't quality. What are the realities out there?

Sharon doesn't want another MASADA. What do you think he wants? What do the carrots on his plate look like?

I think he's being masterful the way he is letting the Americans fix the problems they want to fix in the Mideast. I don't think Bush can turn Israel into Czecheslovakia.

What's Sharon going to do in the next 3 days while he visits Tony Blair? (What are the 14 points Israel needs added to the 'roadmap?')

How will the propaganda word games stop? Hudna's not disarmament. And, 'talking to Abu Mazen' doesn't mean Mazen holds all the Aces ... it may just mean unlike the card cheat, Arafat, Mazen is a player Sharon is allowing at the gambling table.

What if Bush fails? What if his stand, by the side of his Saudi friends, really backfires? Sure, it's summer. Sure there are forrest fires. Sure, we put out lots of fires all the time (that's why we have emergency trucks) ... BUT WHAT IF BUSH CAN'T QUITE COMPLETE HIS LONG SHOT PASSES? Why do our troops keep getting shot at in Iraq?

IF IT WERE ME, I'd be flying C-130 low and mean over any group of thugs that formed. Their stuff couldn't touch this plane (you should see the hits it can take and still get back t base) ... And, of all the sounds that scare the crap out of the Iraqis, it's this plane. Not the others that fly high and fast. THIS MEAN WARTHOG.

Why aren't we just shooting the crap out of the snipers and their nests? You think the gattling gun can't be aimed at roofs? And, through concrete buildings? You think the thugs would have a chance if we played our version of war games?

WHY DON'T WE FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE. (That's how you put out fires when they get really bad, ya know.)

What's the end game? Sharon's been around this block before. What's the choices ahead? And, what happens if the roadmap fails? Is it back to tit-for-tat ... or more serious stuff?

As the Jews win what happens when the Europeans boycott? What happens when Bush gets mean? (Will this all get worse if Bush wins election in 2004?)

4. quark2 said:

Bush is a man, I have no trust in men who are in positions of trust and power. The games that are being played are at the cost of lives. Someone on one side or the other needs to get serious, and slay the hell out of their enemies. Sharon needs to tell everyone yanking his chain to back off, and if they don't, stop dealing with them absolutely. I think it's time for Israel to understand the cold hard facts, they have NO friends in this world, they are standing alone.
When the United States allows a lawyer like Jeanne Butterfield to publically admit she's a front for the palestinian terrorists, and not haul her butt into court for treason, what the leader of this country is about to do is no surprise.
This woman is desirous of seeing Israel destroyed completely and the palestinians to take everything they [Israelis] have developed for their own use with no effort, other than killing.
It sickens me, to know that my money that is sucked up by the government as taxes is going into the maw of that filthy old grunge Arafat.
Where's my barf bag, I feel a hurl coming on.

5. Lucile said:

When you're right, you're right.

6. Carol Herman said:

OKay. There's hurling going on.

BUt aren't we all better off with seeing Bush's cards falling on the table? Even if you try to march to the tunes of history, Bush is as well off here, today, with photo-ops, as Jimmah Carter was with Begin?

Or watching Bush #41, after Gulf War #1, taking a cowboy approach to Shamir, and making that little man dance high off his feet ... while bullets resonated around his toes?

Isn't it possible that Sharon knows where the Israeli carrots are? And, he doesn't need to just throw up his arms at pieces of paper called 'roadmaps?'

All the time, Wars come to an end! Then, for all time (until the next war), you have diplomacy. People who have governmental levers in their hands ... and like comedians they travel round and round. While they talk it's usual for bullets not to fly.

Yes, Arafat is a trouble-maker. But how can this BEST be cured. Saving all the hurling and throwing these package bombs at his door?

WHAT DO YOU THINK SHARON KNOWS? Because he seems in control of his steps. And, he's dancing as beautifully on this stage as if the fat guy was Fred Astaire.

I don't see Bush gaining an advantage.

I don't even see a need to hurl (yet).

That life's not perfect? Well, why would anyone expect perfect? Logic dicates that life, itself, is far from perfect.

BUT WHAT IF IN THE END OF THIS SOAP OPERA IT IS SHARON'S NEEDS THAT GET MET? What if the arabs were foolish enough to believe they'd win by flying planes into the WTC? We're supposed to fear crazy stuff?

If crazy stuff worked you wouldn't need to train your military. You'd be able to make movies instead of war. You'd be able to write fiction (which, according to Mark Twain is more difficult than journalism) ... because your plots have to make sense.

To those who need to hurl, once you're bellies are empty I suspect you will eat again. Chew. Digest. And, wonder at the power of it all.

7. Thomas said:

The question remains, why is Ariel Sharon, of all people -- the General, the brilliant military guy, the lifelong fighter for Israel -- going along with the roadmap?

One can only hope that he knows something we don't -- say, that the US will take out Syria and/or Iran before year's end.

Otherwise, it's either foolish, or plain suicidal.

8. Carol Herman said:

Short answer: Sharon is like Churchill. Do you know how hard it was to get America involved in WW2 before December 7, 1941?

Churchill wrote in his diary that he was a better mistress to FDR than any woman would have been.

So, today, I see Sharon in that roll to George W. Bush.

No, it's not pretty. (But it works.)

Don't judge Sharon by what you hear.

He's well versed in State Department/White House duplicity. And, he knows the smell of Israeli carcasses from Foad's to Barak's.

I think Israelis trust Sharon because in the complications of battles, even when things turn into killing fields, he has managed to bring Israel to victories unimagined.

I think within Sharon's behaviors today are scenes that have played out before. Most people haven't got his courage.

And, I think, too, that Bush turned away from his June 24th speech, and pulled out his dad's Gulf #1 playbook, because Americans have a tough time finding victory! We come almost to END GAME and then lose to players who are more cunning.

Sharon KNOWS cunning. He will give Israel security and peace. Arafat can't last forever. And, there are more plans you don't see than there are ones you think go from here into the future.

Know the future? How's that? We don't use the Greek Oracles anymore. ANd, fortune tellers are frauds. The future prognosticators, if they could really do it, would spend more time on the outcomes of lotteries and grow rich. (Meanwhile, your number choices are false. You won't win. Because you don't have math on your side.) And, the Arabs may not win because cunning isn't enough in these waters.

9. Carol Herman said:

What's the chance, as Sharon heads to Washington, soon, that Bush gives him Pollard to take home?

Do you ever wonder what such news would do to move the ball forward? Why did Clinton reject freeing Pollard?

WHAT A SOAP OPERA. WHAT STRANGE TURNS ARE UP AHEAD AS THE PLOT DEVELOPS. NOW THAT PLOTTING IS THE REAL ROAD MAP ... who makes the decisions? Whose writing the script?