#1
As said before, iff the Euros = EU is so worried about post-Cold War, post-9-11, US-specific influence and power in the world, then what is stopping them from empowering reform in Africa, as a test of the EU's desired mettle???
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously kept a satellite photograph of the Korean Peninsula in his office at the Pentagon. The picture was taken at night and showed a brightly illuminated South Korea under a sea of darkness where the North was known to be. Only the city of Pyongyang gave off a faint glow. The photo could serve as a metaphor for the six-party nuclear-disarmament talks, which keep getting murkier when they should be opening more to world scrutiny. They adjourned Sunday without the agreement the diplomats were promising, though with a draft plan the parties are taking home to their superiors for comment and whose details remain secret.
Granted, diplomacy requires some confidentiality, but transparency and verification are crucial to disarmament, especially when dealing with a regime like Kim Jong Il's. The February 13 six-party accord called for Pyongyang to deliver a comprehensive accounting of its nuclear program and arsenal within 60 days. We're still waiting.
Transparency is all the more essential given recent news reports about likely North Korean nuclear proliferation in Syria. Washington says the main goal of the six-party talks is to prevent proliferation, and North Korea promised to cease and desist. Yet Pyongyang seems to have been caught in the act in Syria only months after making that promise. The Israelis were worried enough to risk a confrontation with Syria by bombing the site, not to mention flying over Turkish air space. Notably, the Turks didn't object.
Syrian President Bashar Assad finally got around to confirming the air raid in an interview with the BBC yesterday, claiming the Israelis hit an "unused military building." North Korea had publicly denounced the bombing even before anyone had mentioned its involvement, and its chief nuclear negotiator last week referred to those who suspect a Pyongyang-Damascus connection as "lunatics." This is protesting a little too much.
President Bush dodged three questions on the issue two weeks ago, except to warn North Korea one more time not to proliferate, which sounds suspiciously like a confirmation. Meanwhile on September 21, the Washington Post quoted government sources as saying that "Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria."
Then there's the not-so-little matter of North Korea's continuing missile proliferation. Last week the State Department's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation announced new sanctions against a North Korean company for spreading missile technology. The company--Korean Mining and Development Corp., or Komid--is a long-time offender. The U.S. Treasury last year called it "Pyongyang's premier arms dealer and main exporter of goods and weapons related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons." The new State Department finding reads: "A determination has been made that a North Korean entity has engaged in activities that require the imposition of measures pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act, as amended, and the Export Administration Act of 1979 . . ." Since little happens in North Korea without the regime knowing, this is evidence that Kim is still in the proliferation business.
The new U.S. sanctions were announced last Wednesday, the day before the six-party talks resumed in Beijing. Yet on Friday, the U.S. responded as if nothing had happened, by promising to send $25 million in fuel oil to North Korea. Beijing has pledged a similar amount, and China and South Korea have already delivered initial shipments. In return, North Korea is promising to deliver by year-end the account of its nuclear activities it was supposed to present in April.
U.S. negotiator Chris Hill says things are going great. As do the South Koreans, who issued a press release yesterday referring to the "upbeat mood" of the disarmament talks. President Roh Moo-hyun, accompanied by a 300-member entourage, heads North today for a three-day PR extravaganza with Comrade Kim, and who-knows-what goodies he will leave behind. The last time a South Korean president made the pilgrimage to Pyongyang, in 2000, it later emerged that South Korea had paid $500 million for the honor.
All of this is a far cry from the nuclear disarmament model set by Libya's Moammer Gadhafi in the wake of Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. Libya abandoned its nuclear program up front, inviting U.S. investigators to see the hardware and haul it back to Tennessee; it was rewarded only after the disarmament was verified. For North Korea, the U.S. is winking at evidence of further proliferation, while offering more diplomatic bribes--all in the cause of getting Pyongyang to repeat promises it has already failed to honor.
#4
TOPIX/WORLDNEWS > NORTH KOREA says there must be visible = measurable progress and benefit from its admissions per its nucprogs, OR ITS BACK TO SQUARE ONE.
HT Instapundit. IBD gets it!
Media And War: Ever since the Sept. 10 testimony of Gen. David Petraeus, we've heard less and less from the mainstream media about the war in Iraq. The old adage "no news is good news" has never been truer.
That the media are no longer much interested in Iraq is a sure sign things are going well there. Instead, they're talking about the presidential campaign, or Burma, or global warming, or . . . whatever.
Why? Simply put, the news from Iraq has been quite positive, as Petraeus related in his report to Congress. Consider:
On Monday came news that U.S. military deaths in Iraq fell to 64 in September, the fourth straight drop since peaking at 121 in May and driving the toll to a 14-month low.
Civilian deaths also have plunged, dropping by more than half from August to 884. Remember just six months ago all the talk of an Iraqi "civil war"? That seems to be fading.
The just-ended holy month of Ramadan in Iraq was accompanied by a 40% drop in violence, even though al-Qaida had vowed to step up attacks.
Speaking of al-Qaida, the terrorist group appears to be on the run, and possibly on the verge of collapse despite making Iraq the center of its war for global hegemony and a new world order based on precepts of fundamentalist Islam.
Military officials say U.S. troops have killed Abu Usama al-Tunisi, a Tunisian senior leader of al-Qaida in Iraq who was responsible for bringing foreign fighters into the country. Not surprisingly, the pace of foreign fighters entering Iraq has been more than halved from the average of 60 to 80 a month.
Last month, 1,200 Iraqis waited patiently in line in Iraq's searing heat to sign up to fight al-Qaida. They will join an estimated 30,000 volunteers in the past six months a clear sign the tide has turned in the battle for average Iraqis' hearts and minds.
Finally, and lest you think it's all death and destruction, there's this: Five million Iraqi children returned to school last week, largely without incident, following their summer vacations.
None of this, of course, is accidental. The surge of 28,500 new troops announced by President Bush last February, and put in place in mid-June by Gen. Petraeus, seems to have worked extraordinarily well. Al-Qaida, though still a potent foe capable of committing mass atrocities, has been backpedaling furiously.
"They are very broken up, very unable to mass, and conducting very isolated operations" is how Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson described al-Qaida's situation in comments this week.
Things have gone so well, in fact, that leading Democratic contenders have stopped calling for a "timetable" for withdrawal and can't even promise they'll remove all the troops by 2013.
In short, the U.S. is yes, we'll use the word winning the war against al-Qaida. And not just in Iraq. In fact, the only way we won't win is if we do something very stupid such as letting the overwhelmingly negative media convince us we can't do what we clearly are doing. something very stupid = Democrat's foreign policy strategy
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/02/2007 10:52 ||
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#1
This must be another war they're talking about altogether, cause we lost the last one already this summer.
So, I decided to visit Democrats.Senate.gov and have a look at the letter Harry Reid used in a weak grand standing ploy today.
Our troops are fighting and dying to bring to others the freedoms that many take for granted.
Freedom from whom, or what, Senator Reid? And, as you've now admitted our troops are indeed freedom fighters on behalf of the oppressed, what is it about Iraqis that causes you to be of the opinion that they are not entitled to the same freedoms which you believe Americans take for granted? Is it their religion, or perhaps the color of their skin? Or is it OK if your country's enemies triumph as long as your party wins the next election?
You've been trying to pull the carpet out from under our brave freedom fighters in Iraq for almost two years at the same time many of them have re-enlisted knowing they'd immediately rejoin the fight. What do you have to say to those brave Americans, Senator Reid? You've said nothing positive to them ever, so far as I can recall. Would you prefer Armed Forces Radio carry your pronouncement that their valiant effort has already failed? Tell me, how is that supporting our troops?
Posted by: Mike ||
10/02/2007 08:08 ||
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#2
Ilisten to Rush and he was clearly talking about Jesse "Killer" MacBeth when he referred to "Phony Soldier". Since Harry twisted words to fit his agenda I will go on record as calling Reid a "Phony Patriot". BTW do the Donks really think that nobody remembers the CLEAR hits on the military by Reid, Kennedy, Murtha, Pelosi, et al? Do they want to go down this road? I also want to point out that when Reid runs for re-election he will be defeated by a very large margin.
#3
I don't know CS. My contacts in Nevada, particularly the ballooning Vegas metro area are reporting a massive inflow of Californians, escaping the social/economic cesspool they help create, are unrepentant and looks like they will continue their behavior by backing Reid.
#6
Harry Reid is the poster boy of how incompetent you have to be in order to get elected to the Senate. If I was a Nevadan I would be embarrassed and humiliated by the fact that our state IQ is so low we had to elect him to represent us. My God, does this man have no shame or even common sense? He calls our troops "incompetent" and the war "lost" then trys to use remark, that he takes out of context and reality, to show some kind of super support. Little does he know, that Rush is carried on AFN and that it is carried by them because the troops requested it. He and his ilk continue to do more damage to the Dems on National security and defense than even Rush can do. Keep talking Harry, you continue to show your absolute idiocy.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/02/2007 12:35 Comments ||
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#7
'Our troops are fighting and dying to bring to others the freedoms that many take for granted.'
Yeah, very true. But there are plenty of people who appreciate their efforts who are unfortunately mixed in with those very same liberals . . . .
#8
In defense of Nevadans, Harry has kept a low profile til this last year, seeming congenial by Donk stds, and only mildly corrupt by Clinton standards. It's the Peter Principle writ large, with the spotlight, "to know him is to despise him". I'd guess that, with his incompetence, he's not that popular among the nutroots either
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/02/2007 19:59 Comments ||
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#9
I'll go with Cyber Sarge on this one,
Dim-Harry-Reid-the-Grim never has won an election by a large margin, in fact everyone has been outright slim IIIC.
I think since his Las Vegas property corruption scandal broke, and his disgraceful positions attacking our men and women serving and the fight with talk radio host, RUSH, that he chose to start will do him in.
LOL, I can't wait to see the Tee Wee clips of him skulking off for good!
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
10/02/2007 20:24 Comments ||
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I recently attended a showing of "Superman 3" here at LSA Anaconda.
We have a large auditorium we use for movies as well as memorial services and other large gatherings.
As is the custom back in the States, we stood and snapped to attention when the National Anthem began before the main feature. All was going as planned until about three-quarters of the way through the National Anthem the music stopped.
Now, what would happen if this occurred with 1,000 18-22 year-olds back in the States? I imagine there would be hoots, catcalls, laughter, a few rude comments, and everyone would sit down and call for a movie. Of course, that is, if they had stood for the National Anthem in the first place.
Here, the 1,000 soldiers continued to stand at attention, eyes fixed forward. The music started again.
The soldiers continued to quietly stand at attention. And again, at the same point, the music stopped.
What would you expect to happen? Even here I would imagine laughter as everyone sat down and expected the movie to start.
Here, you could have heard a pin drop. Every soldier stood at attention.
Suddenly there was a lone voice, then a dozen, and quickly the room was filled with the voices of a thousand soldiers "And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
It was the most inspiring moment I have had here in Iraq.
I wanted you to know what kind of Soldiers are serving you here.
Written by Chaplain Jim Higgins on 5/14/07. LSA Anaconda is at the Balad Airport in Iraq, north of Baghdad.
#1
At my son's graduation last year at Santana High (site of shootings six year ago when my daughter attended) in Santee, CA, the singer broke down during the Anthem... the crowd immediately took it up and carried loudly to the end. Just another example of the "fruits and nuts" in CA some like to disparage
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/02/2007 20:09 Comments ||
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#2
Some??? Sheeit, count me in as one of those! Yalls gotta figure out a way to get Frisco out of yer state then all that fruit and nut stuff can go away.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
10/02/2007 20:49 Comments ||
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#3
well, in my condo complex, we have Marines a plenty, due to proximity to Miramar MCAS. I'll ask them to help, but no promises....
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/02/2007 21:31 Comments ||
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#4
sorry for the snark back. We in San Diego (along with other So Cal and inland entral and northern counties) are painted with the extremist brush that aptly applies to SF, Oakland, Marin, West LA, etc. In a state this large, with so many areas/economies/geographies, you will see a wide variuety of opinions, and I defy anyone to find a city/county like San Diego that has been more supportive and reliant on the military, and continues to this day. My congressman, Duncan Hunter, will not be President. That much is clear. He will, however, be an awesome Sec. of Defense in a Rep Administration, or VP...
/rant, just tired of defending California for the extremist fringe
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/02/2007 21:36 Comments ||
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#5
Even here in Contra Costa County the precentage of Che teeshirt wearing lame brains is overestimated. But demonstrably the majority of Californians think that Jerry Brown is an acceptable AG.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
10/02/2007 21:47 Comments ||
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#6
Funny, after the first "music stopped.", I knew how it would end.
As the director of an Iraq and Afghanistan veterans organization, I follow the headlines from Iraq very closely. So, its always news to me when there is little news from Iraq at least from the mainstream media.
Over the last few weeks, with the exception of the unfortunate Blackwater story, headlines from Iraq have been few and far between. Why is this the case? There must be a reason. And I believe the reason is rooted both in what has happened and what has not. Two weeks ago, at the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, al Qaeda declared that it would escalate attacks and specifically target leaders who were cooperating with Iraqi security forces. (This strategy, in and of itself, is a sign that al Qaeda fears the growing strength of Sunni tribal cooperation).
But instead of escalating attacks, the U.S. military reports that violence across Iraq during Ramadan dropped by 40 percent compared to last year. In addition, mass-casualty producing, spectacular attacks -- long a hallmark of al Qaeda -- have occurred with far less frequency.
This is not to say they cannot still deliver such attacks, but the new U.S. strategy has crippled them. Dont just take my word for it; listen to the latest al Qaeda martyr, Abu Osama al-Tunisi. In a handwritten note found at the site of his death, the al Qaeda in Iraq No. 2 wrote, I have been surrounded for two and a half months because the road has been closed by the Apostate, and there is no other way, he added, We are so desperate for your help. The words of this high-ranking al Qaeda member speak volumes, and underscore the now undeniable counter-narrative happening in Iraq.
While the mainstream media reports on roadside bombs and missed benchmarks, American soldiers -- along with Iraqi security forces -- continue to make great security gains (which are the necessary pre-condition for real political progress).
As for what has not happened, there is a number that may or may not make headlines tomorrow: 62. This is the number of American combat deaths in September, and happens to be the lowest since August of last year. And while this number is still too high, it is nonetheless relevant. Despite a counter-insurgency strategy that makes U.S. troops more vulnerable, American deaths have dropped. American troops have moved off of large, secure bases and into small security stations throughout the country -- yet American deaths, after a spike from April to June, have begun to drop.
Why? Because when Americans protect the population from al Qaeda attacks and Iranian-baked militias -- and hunt down those responsible for sectarian violence -- they gain the trust of locals and thereby gain access to intelligence. And this intelligence -- as any soldier or Marine infantryman will tell you -- is the crown jewel of counter-insurgency. Intelligence, and the ability to decipher between civilians and combatants, allows Americans and Iraqi security forces to go on the offensive. So, while seemingly more exposed, they are actually empowered and protected.
This is good news -- and the kind of news that everyone following the Iraq war debate should know. But Im satisfied with silence, because the sounds of silent progress in Iraq will eventually overcome the steady drumbeat of defeat here at home.
Unless Congress surrenders first
Posted by: Fred ||
10/02/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
"Unless Congress surrenders first" > wel-l-l now, lessirree, where to begin. VERMONT > Local radical Pol calls for state to formally secede from USA; + NOAM CHOMSKY > THE UNITED STATES: IS REVOLUTION POSSIBLE series. Chomsky argues that at present, INTERNAL REVOLUTION AGZ WASHINGTON IS DE FACTO SEETHING BELOW THE SURFACE, as many US Citizens feel the USG no longer represents their interests or America's; + NEWSVINE > JOE BIDEN - LETS PARTITION THE USA; + TOPIX > AMERICAN INSURGENCY: THE DEMAND FOR [Global]PEACE + THE US REVOLUTION. REDDIT > WHY CAN'T WE GET ALL OUR NEEDS FROM THE GOVERNMENT [British ANTI-SOCIALISM] Also from TOPIX > WHEN BUSH BECAME SADDAM. * D *** NG IT, when will the World stop America from being America! * NEWSMAX > RUSSIAN BOMBERS TRAINED OFF ALASKAN COAST. Seven times since the summer, 2-6 mostly BEAR Bombers at a time and just beyond the US 12-mile limit.
Burma is often characterized as a pariah state in the Western media, with its reclusive regime holding few friends or allies.
In reality, that's fiction. Burma remains a fine upstanding member of the United Nations while a real Asian democracy, Taiwan, is shut out. Burma is also a full member of the region's Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Burma has China as a patron, doing $2 billion in two-way trade each year and supporting it diplomatically. Burma has relations with North Korea, and other odious states, too. Total, the French oil company, announced a new investment last week. Southeast Asian banks hold cash accounts for the regime's elite. Though Burma's regime has isolated itself from the blossoming prosperity of its Asian neighbors, there's little evidence that it's a pariah state. . . .
Now Burma has become a charnel house, its phone lines dead, its Web connections gone, its voices silenced, its entrance closed to the media, with only satellite photographs passively recording fragmentary signs of bloody massacres occurring. Bodies of saffron-clad monks have been photographed floating in rivers.
Defector Hla Win, a former Burmese military intelligence official, reports that thousands of Burmese democracy monks have been massacred under the canopy of jungles where satellites are unable to record them. But there is enough evidence to believe him.
Velvet revolutions are thought to be the logical end to such regimes when they go rotten, holding neither moral authority nor the capacity to economically sustain themselves. Taken from the name of the bloodless coup that ended communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Burma should have had one as thousands of monks majestically marched through the streets of the capital last week in the name of democracy.
A high-tech revolution had spread ideas of freedom across the Web. Migrant laborers returned home with tales of glimpsing freer societies. The economy had tanked, with fuel prices doubling and public tolerance of the morally bankrupt regime hitting an all-time low. There didn't seem to be a way this regime could last.
There is an exception, however: The brute force of a violent military regime that cares little what the world thinks. It's a message real tyrants send with a soggy U.N. establishment doing nothing. They expect to get away with it. They're counting on a few visits from U.N. officials, a few statements of condemnation, a few expressions of "concern" and then another 20 years of tyranny.
After all, they've looked at the opprobrium America drew from this global consensus when it sent in troops to overturn a comparable tyranny in Iraq. That verdict from the global establishment that calls itself "the world" the Nobel committees, the U.N., regional alliances certainly did get the word out to regimes such as Burma's that the only real criminal regime out there is U.S.
The depth and extent of the crimes committed are not known yet, but their message is clear:
Tyrants and democracies that oppress to cling to power, no matter how little legitimacy they have, can sink deep indeed with no need to worry about more than words. For regimes such as those in China, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Bolivia, Burma serves as a useful benchmark as how low a tyranny can go with little action from a toothless world community.
The ultimate lesson of Burma is that it's not the active countries out there that create an environment for mass murdering regimes to flourish, it's the passive ones that prefer the decorum of international institutions. There needs to be a strong response or communities such as the U.N. and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will forfeit all their moral authority.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/02/2007 12:04 ||
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The Democratic Party's presidential hopefuls spent a fair bit of time Wednesday night debating what to do about Iran, without once mentioning Ahmadinejad's peculiar world view. These are the same debaters who in August went before a gay audience to denounce Bush administration policies as "demeaning" and "degrading" toward gays. In the Nation -- a magazine that excoriated Ronald Reagan upon his passing for his "inaction and bigotry against gays" -- editor Katrina vanden Heuvel has nothing to say about the subject either. Instead, she devotes her latest column to denouncing last week's symbolic Senate vote to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization.
In the Guardian, another crusading voice from the left on gay rights, foreign-affairs columnist Martin Woollacott lambastes Columbia's president Lee Bollinger for his "mean-spirited" remarks to the Iranian president, which he takes as an indication that "it is still difficult to suggest that Iran has arguments and interests worth considering on their merits." But again, no mention of Mr. Ahmadinejad's attitude toward gays, much less its "merits." And on "progressive" Web sites like Democratic Underground, there are earnest debates about exactly what Mr. Ahmadinejad meant by the word "like," as if he were merely making an academic cultural comparison rather than denying the existence of an entire category of his own citizens.
#1
For the 'gay' activists [not to be confused with those wishing to live and let live], recognized and promoted by the MSM, its never really been about tolerance or equality, it's aways been about POWER. That is why the silence against the treatment of gays in these countries and the carrying of the leftest water in their own BDS induced bigotry. Remember these are the 'leaders' who obstructed the blood testing of all Americans in the early to mid 80s. As a consequence of avoiding the obvious, they insured the deaths of hundreds of thousands within their own community. Causalities greater than anything murderous homophobics had every reaped upon 'their' community in America. Why should they be concerned about others? Expect nothing from these same leaders and groups when it comes to dealing with real threats. Their energies are focused upon indoctrinating your children in elementary school before the children are even sentient. It's POWER.
#2
It's a sin. It's not a sin to let another man sin if he wants to, but it's a sin to participate.
I assume we are not required to protect one's right to sin. You're on your own, gay dudes, so stay in the closet.
I wouldn't say it's power as a goal, like a politician or even a businessman could want, rather, it's a tool to achieve something larger, IE radicaly changing society and even Man; so, it's only one more mask of the cultural communists, neo-marxists, freudo-marxists, neocomms, neo-leftists,... whatever you might call them.
#4
The left-wing in the west has come to a point where it hates democracy, Judeo-Christian values and self-preservation that it has decided to join at the hip such political and terror pariahs as Iran, AQ and the Taliban. This is full circle principle where you go so far to the left you end up on the far extreme of the right.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/02/2007 12:42 Comments ||
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#6
It's a sin. It's not a sin to let another man sin if he wants to, but it's a sin to participate. I assume we are not required to protect one's right to sin. You're on your own, gay dudes, so stay in the closet.
Wow, wxjames. Do you hear yourself?
I'm against homosexuality. I'm against the whole modern-day gay rights movement. I'm against everything they stand for. But we DO have an obligation to protect ALL our citizens, even those whose lifestyle and choices we find abhorrent. By saying "you're on your own", are you implying that if someone wanted to slaughter gays in the US, we should just sit idly by? I cannot believe you would imply that, so you must have meant something else.
The Palestinian Arab refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared in northern Lebanon that was destroyed during four months of fighting between Palestinian jihadists and the Lebanese army would cost $385 million to rebuild. Alternatively, beginning to reinstitute the rights of a much-abused Lebanon would cost nothing.
Instead of rebuilding the house these Palestinians destroyed as the United Nations is already agitating to do another choice is to raze what's left to the ground, return the land to its rightful Lebanese owners as compensation, and, most important, begin rolling back an appalling transgression on the sovereignty of Lebanon that, with the conniving of the world community, has gone on far too long.
Under a bizarre agreement worked out by the League of Arab States, for nearly three decades hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arab refugees have lived in camps inside Lebanon where, by law, neither the Lebanese army nor the Lebanese state have jurisdiction of any kind. These "guests of Lebanon," as Arabs so fondly call them, are free to come and go with weapons, to train as guerrillas, and to use their dwellings as sanctuary for legal or illegal acts no questions asked.
No other Arab country has ever agreed to such terms of shelter. Certainly not Jordan, which has nearly 1 million Palestinian Arab refugees, nor Syria, which is harboring tens of thousands. The secret police mandate runs wide and deep for Palestinian Arab encampments in those two countries. Indeed, back in September 1970, the late King Hussein of Jordan spent nearly a year disarming the camps in his country by burning them down and won universal Arab applause for doing so.
The late, unlamented Yasser Arafat was undeterred when he fled to Lebanon, from which he once used the camps to stock arms, indoctrinate his people in terrorism, and, eventually, wage war on Lebanon and Israel until he was kicked out and forced to move to Tunisia. Yet in the face of such Palestinian Arab irresponsibility and of a 15-year Lebanese civil war largely provoked by its Palestinians the rest of the Arab world has insisted that Lebanon remains an exception to the rule of sovereignty.
The mayhem at Nahr el-Bared (which translates into "Cold River"), which cost the lives of more than 250 innocent civilians and Lebanese soldiers, as well as paralyzing a thriving tourist industry and the economy of the northern city of Tripoli, was only the best known of many episodes. It was also a replay of the same sense of entitlement. One would think it would be enough, as far as exploiting Lebanon goes.
What seems to make more sense is taking away the Palestinian Arabs' "toys" their weapons and ability to run indoctrination centers in Lebanon and simply have one camp fewer. The camp's land should be turned over to Tripoli's merchant and tourist industries, both of which lost tens of millions of dollars while the Palestinians were having their shooting party.
But there's more to the Cold River episode that speaks to its exploitation by fellow Arabs. During this bloody chapter, the camp was taken over by jihadists who included, among others, Saudis, Iraqis, Syrians, and Jordanians, in addition to Palestinian Arabs. It was left to Lebanon to clean up the mess and pay the price for petty internecine Arab skirmishing on other people's lands. According to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the camp, which is situated 10 miles north of Tripoli near the coastal road, had a population of 31,023 that since 1950 was largely provided for by the United Nations, primarily its members from the West. These residents have now been resettled in other camps.
Clearly none of the mayhem perpetrated at Cold River advanced any legitimate progress toward an independent and peaceful Palestinian Arab state, or the welfare or the good of those dwelling inside those camps. The nearly $400 million in new Western funds now being called for to rebuild and return to the previous status quo should be diverted into an effort that includes disarming all the Palestinian Arab camps of Lebanon, putting police patrols in them, and introducing intensive training on the civil rights due the Lebanese on their lands.
Especially from those they are kindly hosting.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/02/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
About time someone told the truth about the Palestinians. And it is still nicer the author is a Muslim (ie Lebanese are fed up of them even Muslims).
But it needs to go fatheer. Stop any aid to Plestionins. Not a pen,ny more. In fdact they shoumld refund the aid received since 1048. This way they will be too buy earning their bread to fire Kassams into Israel ( a thing for which theu never lack money). Oh, and they wiill have to teach their childen marketable skills instead of making future genociders from them
#1
When you punish success in order to fund and reward irresponsibility it's not surprising that the results are less success and more irresponsibility!
#3
Yeah, pro, but with the added factor of the law of unintended consequences thrown in. If it's good, and the government subsidises it, it goes away. If it's bad, a government subsidy will insure there's more of it all the time...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/02/2007 8:44 Comments ||
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#4
> The more the government subsidizes something, the more you get of it.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Freedom from whom, or what, Senator Reid? And, as you've now admitted our troops are indeed freedom fighters on behalf of the oppressed, what is it about Iraqis that causes you to be of the opinion that they are not entitled to the same freedoms which you believe Americans take for granted? Is it their religion, or perhaps the color of their skin?
