Friday, August 04, 2006

John Podhoretz On Sucking Up To Terrorists

"The most blatant example of...sucking-up came the other day, when the second-ranking official at the United Nations sounded offended at the idea that Israel had gone to war with a terrorist group. "It's not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism," said Mark Malloch Brown, a Briton. "Hezbollah employs terrorist tactics; it is an organization . . . [that] draws on a strong political well of support in southern Lebanon and after the events of the last few weeks more deeply."

So it's not helpful to dub a group that crosses a border and kidnaps three Israeli soldiers as a key element in "international terrorism." Why? Because it has 'a strong political well of support.'"

The strong political support means that those "innocent" civilians, children nowithstanding but such is war, are aiders and abeters of the Hezzies, and in the same manner that Japanese and German civilians were fair game during WWII, are legitimate targets. This notion of surgical bombing is a new one, created, sadly enough, by our very own military in the attempt to placate the whinging left, and is for the most part absolute nonsense.

"Malloch Brown doesn't just want us to treat Hezbollah as a power player. It appears he wants the world to force Israel to cede a group of farms on the Golan Heights - the Shaaba Farms - to Hezbollah so that it can claim it got something in exchange for a cease-fire.

here's a disturbing historical parallel here. Once before at a time of military crisis in modern history did the international community decide to cede a swath of territory belonging to another country to an irredentist actor on the world stage in hopes of civilizing and demilitarizing that actor. The year was 1938. The place was the Sudetenland, a recognized part of Czechoslovakia with a substantial population of Germans.

Adolf Hitler claimed the Sudetenland for the Third Reich. This was as manifestly illegal an act as Europe had ever seen. And yet, at an infamous meeting in Munich, the French and the British signed off on Hitler's claim - with no representative of the Czechoslovak government present. After that meeting, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned home to England and notoriously informed the world that he had brought it "peace for our time" through the application of a judicious policy of appeasement - a foreign-policy term that was not then a pejorative but would forever after become one.

In a matter of months, Hitler had seized the rest of Czechoslovakia and, in less than a year's time, Poland.

And yet here we are again, with an unmitigatedly evil world force blatantly violating the sovereignty of two nations - Lebanon and Israel - being thought a good candidate for the cessation of land to which it has no conceivable claim.

Amazingly enough, Mark Malloch Brown didn't make the most offensive series of statements about Hezbollah this week. He came in a distant second to Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago. In a New York Times piece yesterday, Pape actually compared Hezbollah to "the multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the 1960s."

Yes, and we've had the time to draw enough conclusions about the civil-rights movement of the '60's. Was it necessary? Sadly, yes. It took over 60 years for America to make good on "all men are created equal", and another 100 to fine-tune it. Problem was the damage had been done. A group of people who as a whole would never contribute to society had been a'born'd, and when they're not looting and murdering are standing in long lines awaiting a handout. This placating the criminal element because at one time or another they had a legitimate beef with the world is dangerous, and has never, ever, worked. Go far enough back in time and EVERY race color and creed has a genuine history of getting the royal shaft, but in the real world the here and now is what's important as we ask ALL peoples of good will to act something akin to civilized beings.

If Hezzbolla would today declare a total ceasefire the world would join together to assist in turning Lebanon into a prosperous, peaceful nation, and the aid would begin flowing at a record pace, but that's not what they want.

They want it ALL. They want what's OWED them. They want everything their mystical pact with their deity has promised.

And that is what makes them even more dangerous to live with than those effected by the civil-rights movements of the 1960's. Harsh but accurate remains the fact that most of those folks simply want a free lunch. These guys want the universe.

No comments: