The right doesn’t care how many US soldiers die, as long as their pride is be upheld.

Your first mistake is assuming that this is about pride when it is instead about the national security interests of our country. Your second is trying to compare apples and oranges. Every soldier, sailor, Marine and airmen over the right now volunteered to place their lives at risk when called for the security of our country. The Iraqi people did not.

Even now, you consider it intolerable and evil that the ratio of US soldiers killed to Iraqi children brutalized and killed by your bungling diplomacy is approximately 1 to 157.

After all, Saddam was paying you and your fellow leftists billions of dollars — AND he was eliminating those brown-skinned Muslim undesirables that you Democrats want gone.

He is in Gaza right now, updating regularly. It is the middle of the night there now, so not much is happening. He had some gruesome examples of what was taking place. If we pull out of Iraq as our enlightened lefties and our Democratic party demand – than the atrocities of Gaza will be nothing compared to what will happen all over Iraq.

Just yesterday it was reported that two women from Gaza were caught on their way to become suicide bombers in Israel. I don’t particularly like arabs, with no Israelis to readily kill, of course they were bound to go after one another.

Leah also validates that point when she describes how as a “despised settler” in the Gaza Strip, she observed the heinous and probably misogynistic behavior of Arab neighbors towards women. Never mind that the Israelis had a legal right to settle there after the Six-Day War; the only refrain the childish Arabs could come up with was: “But we were here first!”

And Leah, you are probably correct – not only do the Arabs think that there are no gays in their countries (well, if they haven’t stoned them to death as has been fully documented), but I’m sure that they are more sexist and homophobic than the most rabid right-wingers in this country could ever be (paging Fred Phelps).

And to make my third point – the State of Israel has, by legal fiat of the UN (boy, does this make liberals cringe), a right to exist. They have had that right since 1948. Even stauch socialists like Golda Meir have documented the negotiations made with the then-Palestinian Arabs prior to the creation of Israel, outlining the offer of peaceful coexistence which the Arabs spurned.

In short, the only ones who have made life in the Middle East tenuous at best are the Palestinians and their apologists in the worldwide media. And it is them who should shoulder the blame.

Regards,
Peter H.

What is it about the MSM that they seem to see every problem as created by Western actions — why they can’t seem to understand the evil of our enemy?

The left doesn’t understand evil at all. Real evil does not exist in their world. Which is why it is so easy to blame everything on the West. If they really felt the West was truely evil – they themselves would fear the West.

But like the little children they are, if they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. So the problem is not with Islamic funadamentalism, it is with those who pull off the blinders. The ones who point out the problem and even are willing to fight against it – are the problem in the eyes of the Left. If they just went away, and ignored the issue, it wouldn’t be there.

As to Gaza, I lived there for four years, I was one of those accursed settlers. And what I saw among my arab neighbors scared me, the cruelty amonst themselves, especialy to women was unbelievable. I never heard what happened to gays, I’m sure I would have been told that such people don’t exist in the arab world.

Gee, I don’t know why those Palestinians can’t get their sh!t together, they have such an ideal geography.

Acutally, they do have an ideal geography. Besides the industries and kibbutzes that Jewish settlers abandoned, which the Palestinians subsequently destroyed, there are natural resources to exploit and there is potential for a bustling port, international airport and it could become the “Switzerland of the Middle East” in banking. All of this, however, requires peace and stability which thus far has eluded due to this civil war.

The suggestion that the West bears no responsibility for the mess in the Middle East after having meddled there for centuries is just preposterous.

You mean after centuries of Muslim meddling in Europe and other areas? Whatever responsibility the West may bear has been mitigated by the misdeeds and actions of the Palestinians themselves. They have the chance for success and have had it since 1948. Every time it is given they throw it away. Tis a shame but that’s their choice.

Good post, Dan.

The suggestion that the West bears no responsibility for the mess in the Middle East after having meddled there for centuries is just preposterous.

Ian: People make their own decisions to be f*cked up. Arab Muslims have been aggressively attacking the West for fourteen centuries (with a 2-century hiatus only when it seemed the West’s military superiority was insurmountable). There is one, and only one, part or aspect of “the West” that bears any responsibility for the present mess in the Middle East: arms dealers who sell to the wrong side.

To take Israel as a non-example: Israel has a right to exist. Israel, as a comparatively pro-gay and pro-woman democracy, is good. It can be shown through simple historical examples, including some very recent ones, that Israel has no desire to invade or harm its neighbors – except as minimally and objectively necessary in self-defense. So my comments are not directed at arms dealers selling to Israel.

But arms dealers who sell to f*cked-up religious supremacists and/or nihilists like Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Iran, and Saddam’s Iraq? OK. Show me them, and I’ll show you those Westerners who do bear some degree of the responsibility for worsening (though still not causing) the mess in the Middle East.

A claim often heard from lefties is that the United States was such an arms dealer, in selling to Saddam’s Iraq. That claim ignores the fact that Saddam’s Iraq was a Soviet client (and later, a French / Russian client). But whatever – let’s accept it, for sake of argument. You’d think lefties would be happy, in that case, that the United States “repented” and decided it had to get rid of Saddam and clean up after him. Are lefties happy about that? Check yourself.

Comment by Ian S — June 14, 2007 @ 12:39 am – June 14, 2007

No Ian, that is pretty much THE problem. Had they not had the extremist sect of islam encouraging and feeding the impulse of indescriminate violent against civilians, or ANYONE, including other Palestinians, who did not agree with those violent tennates, we wouldn’t be seeing this bloodshed. And had Arrafat not taken the sweetheart deal he was offered under Oslo, we wouldn’t be seeing this bloodshed. Of coarse, in the end, that may not have mattered anyway. We could still have ended up where we are regardless.

Does Isreal and the West have clean hands. No. Certainly not. They have blundered on several occasions. But there comes a point at which it becomes clear that no matter what the West tries or does, except maybe blow itself up and cease to exists, the Islamic radicals will never stop the violence against all who do not share their beliefs.

Who is our enemy? Shia or Sunni? Or, as some imply, are all Muslims the enemy?

How about anybody that shoots at and/or blows up our soldiers or anybody that threatens our interests?

Time for somebody to demand a refund for their “edumacation”.

What is it about the MSM that they seem to see every problem as created by Western actions…

The liberals and their media ho’s hate America because we won’t let them establish their Socialist “Utopia”. Americans don’t dig purveyors of doom, gloom and pessimism either.

It seems you mention the permanent U.S. bases and the largest U.S. embassy to justify the insurgency. The point of this post is that Western actions do not cause Islamic radicalism.

With that reference, you seem to be assuming that if we just leave, they’d stop fighting. And in the post, I note what has happened in Gaza — when a Western nation leaves an Arab nation without there being a stable government in place — to show that will not happen. The Islamicists did not pack their bags when the Israelis packed theirs. And they wouldn’t pack up their bags and leave if we did as the Israelis have done.

What is it offensive to suggest that the Democrats might lose another election if they don’t understand the nature of our enemy?

It’s sad that you’ve reduced that understanding to fear and stereotypes, a cheap slogan used repeatedly by those on the left. I make clear in this post that I don’t stereotype all Muslims as Islamicists or terrorists, indeed show sympathy for the plight of Muslims forced to live under such regimes. And you reply by name-calling — as you do when you denounced the column of one of the smartest conservative columnists as “moronic” without addressing any of his points — except to suggest that one is at odds with something I didn’t say in my post.

But, at least your comment does do one thing — provides an example of the attitude I’m critiquing in the post.

…one cannot get around what Jefferson heard when he went with John Adams to wait upon Tripoli’s ambassador to London in March 1785. When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremost envoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” (It is worth noting that the United States played no part in the Crusades, or in the Catholic reconquista of Andalusia.)

1) Islamic radicalism is a 14-century project. Islam is, in fact, unique among religions in having been spread almost entirely by the sword, from its inception. By contrast, it took Christianity a good 300+ years even to gain control of a major government (much less make war with it).

2) Offensive Islamic radicalism against the United States is at least 2 centuries old. Not coincidentally, it began about the time the United States was born. Our first foreign war wasn’t the War of 1812. It was Thomas Jefferson’s war against the so-called Barbary Pirates, who, in fact, were Islamic supremacists who wanted to levy tribute on the United States and punish it for not submitting to Islam.

You denounce an imaginary foe who does not allow access to the web – and then refer to Hanson; a guy who is really upset that the enemy has too much access to the web. Hanson’s article is ,in fact, quite moronic.

Who is our enemy? Shia or Sunni? Or, as some imply, are all Muslims the enemy?

The “Western actions” which you think so innocent involve several permanent bases, and the largest US embassy on earth: If it was your country, would you look so favorably upon it?

Your comments about Democrat’s losing “another presidential election” are extraordinarily offensive. If all the Republicans have is fear and stereotypes, we’re in really sad shape.