During the weeks leading up to the U.S. presidential election in 2004, a columnist by the name of Charlie Brooker, who wrote for the British newspaper the Guardian Unlimited, voiced two lamentations in one of his columns. First, he lamented that Bush would probably win despite the prayers of “the entire civilized world.” And second, he lamented, in a manner of speaking, when he asked the question: “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald and John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”
Such a clever but not-so-subtle way of saying that he’d like to see the American cowboy president get offed rather than for the world to have to “endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed.” The Guardian later apologized for Brooker’s “flippant and tasteless” comments which were intended as “an ironic joke, not as a call to action.”
On the other hand, back in 1989 when Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a death warrant on Salman Rushdie for alleged blasphemy in his novel “The Satanic Verses,” it was indeed a call to action and definitely not an ironic joke. When those guys talk about offing someone, they’re not kidding around. Which is why “the entire civilized world” that was referenced in Charlie Brooker’s aforementioned column might want to take seriously the words of current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is on record saying that Israel needs to be wiped off the map.
The easiest way to do the wiping would be with a nuclear weapon and gosh darn it if Iran isn’t frantically working to gain such a weapon even as it insists to the world that all it wants is peaceful nuclear energy. Yeah, right. In one of the most oil rich nations on earth. If they can just get electricity that is generated by nuclear power, then everything in that Islamic dictatorship will be hunky-dory.
In reality, of course, nuclear-generated electricity would not be the key ingredient to Iranian hunky-doriness. For insight into the real key, one need only consider a recent speech by Ahmadgenocide (gee, did I misspell his name?) in which he said that “the basic problem in the Islamic world is the existence of the Zionist regime.” It would appear to be pretty obvious that removing the thorn of Israel from the Islamic world’s side is the primary focus of the mad hatters running Iran, which brings us back to the issue of it seeking nuclear weapons.
Article comments
1 - Arch Conservative
I can't even begin to account the statements you made that would be considered blasphemous by today's American left Greg.
Kudos to you!
I'm glad that i;m not the only one capable of seeing just how useless the current UN is.
2 - Uselessness and Decency
Quite a nonsensical post, really ... but, I suppose, one that is at least consistent with the worldview to which you have grown accustomed. Before you write me off and dismiss the remainder of my response, please know that I honestly mean this post as a warning that I believe you do not truly understand the state of the world as it exists outside of US borders. As a result, we are all in danger.
If you honestly believe in justice and humanity, you should at least know that you (i.e. the citizens of the USA) are being given one last chance to take responsibility for your government. The world is angry at your county because of the acts of its leaders. At the same time, the ruinous economic decisions of those same leaders have left the US financially and socially vulnerable to the whims of those outside its borders. Your best chance to avoid extreme social turbulence is to learn to get along with the rest of the world, but you have only few months to implement the electoral decisions and beging the legal process that will quell the world's anger.
The charade is over, fellas. The US has been found a paper tiger, yet again, and you can bray all you want but the UN is America's best chance at self-preservation as its own relative power declines. They are, after all, your rules: if you can't live within them, you ought not to have made them.
Your country cannot suspend its disbelief in reality for much longer; the world has awakened and your denial will no longer halt its progress. The greed and mismanagement of your leadership will bear its fruit in the coming years. The question is, just exactly how bitter (or radioactive) will that fruit be?
The people of the world are increasingly impatient to achieve their own freedom, and it looks less and less likely that their version of freedom will be consistent with American hegemony.
As for more pre-emptive war: aside from any question of its morality (the lack of which is beyond doubt), your military is now painted into a corner by unfavourable conditions (i.e. no U.S. draft) and unfavourable tactics (i.e. guerilla warfare against an inexhaustible supply of fighters). Now, the only chance of "victory" against your declared enemies (e.g. in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Iraq, as well as Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba ... you get the point) is Dick Cheney's unthinkable "nuclear option".
Your conventional warmaking ability is vast but outmoded, like the proverbial knife-at-a-gunfight. (As an aside, I believe the immorality factor would mean that ANY future pre-emptive attack would invite an exponential increase in the locus, variety and profile of self-declared "enemies of America".)
In short, your shortsightedness and arrogance have eliminated your capacity to wage war other than by cowardly and genocidal annhilation of the enemy, just as your hubris has, thus far, needlessly prevented you from strategic retreat.
Despite the rhetoric of chickenhawks, not even the vastly ignorant American public would support a government that launched a nuclear strike on Iran or anywhere else, and any offensive falling short of such annihilation would mean endless war. We can all only hope that the armageddon wing of the chickenhawk party isn't already well-roosted around the big red button.
So ... by all means enjoy your delusions of comfort and superiority for a while longer, but know that you are doing so in the face of warnings, like this one, that the world will hold you (i.e. the citizens of the US) responsible if you again fail to adquately supervise the acts of your elected representatives.
Wake up and smell the sulfur, and then bury these dangerous fascists in ballots, subpeonas and indictments (in any order that pleases You and removes Them). Contrary to the world's usual outrage on the subject, I am quite sure there would be neither hue nor cry if you were to excercise the death penalty for the crimes of this administration.
3 - Greg Strange
#2 Uselessness and Decency:
Your post reads like an ominous manifesto. Could you possibly be Adam Gadahn, the American al-Qaeda?
4 - Uselessness and Decency
Greg - Ominous yes, but more observation than manifesto. I personally don't have any ability to effect the sort of change I foresee, but I foresee it nonetheless.
Keep your head buried in the sand; it may be as effective as anything else.
5 - Baronius
Greg - we used to have such an organization, NATO. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was held together by a very specific threat. I don't look to the UN for guidance (because I'm sane), and I don't think NATO has the will or the right membership to play the same role in the new cold war.
It's an interesting pattern of history that when nations get tired of being bullied, they usually find each other. It's a slow process. Old friendships can fail, and new alliances can be awkward. But oh, when the army of Good takes the field of battle.
U&D probably doesn't recognize which side is doing the bullying. We've got a long way to go.