4th July Independence Day Message to the US

[Derek Copeland]

A recent UK Parliamentary Committee, who are definitely
not revolutionary hotheads, concluded that the so called
'War on Terrorism', far from curing the problem, is
actually stoking up further terrorist problems, with
our own indigenous young Muslims being sufficiently
radicalised as to become suicide bombers. The London
Tube and Bus bombings last year were carried out by
just such a group. I believe that a similar plot by
young US Muslim citizens in the USA has been recently
foiled.

I am a white English Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but I
find myself appalled at the daily goings on in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Guantamano Bay. Anything Saddam Hussain
did in the past palls into almost insignificance by
comparison. Two wrongs do not make a right and the
USA's policies are bringing it into total disrepute
around the World. You have only succeeded in creating
millions of unnecessary enemies. Those of us who opposed
the unjustified and unsanctioned invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq did our best to point this out as a possible
consequence at the time!

Derek C

[Doug Hoffman]

Derek Copeland wrote:
> Anything Saddam Hussain
> did in the past palls into almost insignificance by
> comparison.

Oh please. Hussain's intent and acts of mass murderings of his own
people compare to the Allied intent and acts?

> Two wrongs do not make a right and the
> USA's policies are bringing it into total disrepute
> around the World.

So the US put a gun to Tony Blair's head and forced the Brit's to
participate? Look to yourself if you are going to point (even
misguided) fingers.

> You have only succeeded in creating
> millions of unnecessary enemies. Those of us who opposed
> the unjustified and unsanctioned invasions of Afghanistan
> and Iraq did our best to point this out as a possible
> consequence at the time!

Had Bin Laden been captured in Afghanistan, as he almost was and may
well yet be, the "popular" opinion would be quite different.

These terrorists are the worst of animals that will stop at nothing.
Yes, war is hell and there are painful consequences. But to do nothing
after Sept. 11 was not an option. You and I don't know how much more
mayhem has been *prevented* by actively seeking out these animals. My
bet is it has been a lot. It's a new world, and an unfriendly one. We
are at war. One that we did not start. Grow up and deal with it.
Directing outlandish statements at the US on this forum, especially on
our Independence Day, serves no useful purpose.

Doug Hoffman

[Vaughn Simon]

"Derek Copeland" > wrote in message
...
>A recent UK Parliamentary Committee, who are definitely
> not revolutionary hotheads,

This is a topic I find interesting and compelling, but it has no place on
ras. I have seen too many groups evaporate in a torrent of off-topic political
gassing.

Soaring is a wonderful, worldwide, sport that almost always transcends
politics. Please keep politics off of ras. There are many other groups where
this subject is completely appropriate; use them, invite us there if you wish.

Regards
Vaughn

[Derek Copeland]

Just one point and two questions for you Doug.

1) I suspect that Tony Blair was coerced into supporting
the US on this issue. Every political trick and every
bit of spin was used to force it through Parliament,
including the 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' about to
rain down on our heads within 15 minutes, 'Tony knows
best!' The Prime Minister's authority, etc, etc. The
country in general was dead against the invasion of
Iraq and it sparked the biggest demonstrations ever
seen in the UK's major cities. Somewhere between two
and three million turned out in London alone. The first
time we have ever been in agreement with the French!


Q1. Do you honestly think that capturing or killing
Bin Laden would make a scrap of difference? There are
plenty of others ready to take his place?

Q2. Do you have any proof that the Iraq or Afghanistan
Governments had anything to do with 9/11? I can think
of several more likely Middle Eastern countries. As
far as I am concerned the invasion of Iraq was a bit
like kicking the cat after a bad day. I would have
hoped that the US would have at least obeyed the rule
of law as layed down by the UN. If the most powerful
country in the World won't accept the rule of law as
laid down by an International body, why should anyone
else?

Anyway, you have got yourselves into three unwinnable
wars entirely of your own making, so I suggest that
you elect a President and a Government who are intelligent
enough to negotiate a way out next time.

On your Independence Day (from us), I hope you will
spare a thought for all those suffering in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the victims of 9/11, the Madrid and London
bombings and their families, and our respective soldiers
who have to enforce these unsanctioned policies.

Derek Copeland


At 13:48 04 July 2006, Doug Hoffman wrote:
>
>Derek Copeland wrote:
>> Anything Saddam Hussain
>> did in the past palls into almost insignificance by
>> comparison.
>
>Oh please. Hussain's intent and acts of mass murderings
>of his own
>people compare to the Allied intent and acts?
>
>> Two wrongs do not make a right and the
>> USA's policies are bringing it into total disrepute
>> around the World.
>
>So the US put a gun to Tony Blair's head and forced
>the Brit's to
>participate? Look to yourself if you are going to
>point (even
>misguided) fingers.
>
>> You have only succeeded in creating
>> millions of unnecessary enemies. Those of us who opposed
>> the unjustified and unsanctioned invasions of Afghanistan
>> and Iraq did our best to point this out as a possible
>> consequence at the time!
>
>Had Bin Laden been captured in Afghanistan, as he almost
>was and may
>well yet be, the 'popular' opinion would be quite different.
>
>These terrorists are the worst of animals that will
>stop at nothing.
>Yes, war is hell and there are painful consequences.
> But to do nothing
>after Sept. 11 was not an option. You and I don't
>know how much more
>mayhem has been *prevented* by actively seeking out
>these animals. My
>bet is it has been a lot. It's a new world, and an
>unfriendly one. We
>are at war. One that we did not start. Grow up and
>deal with it.
>Directing outlandish statements at the US on this forum,
>especially on
>our Independence Day, serves no useful purpose.
>
>Doug Hoffman
>
>

[Shawn[_1_]]

Vaughn Simon wrote:
> "Derek Copeland" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>A recent UK Parliamentary Committee, who are definitely
>>not revolutionary hotheads,
>
>
> This is a topic I find interesting and compelling, but it has no place on
> ras. I have seen too many groups evaporate in a torrent of off-topic political
> gassing.

FWIW, it seems to me that these sorts of discussions get more civil and
meaningful discussion when posted on an OT newsgroup such as this one,
rather than when posted on one of the obvious political groups, where
the lines between positions are much clearer and opinions are intractable.
I'd still rather discuss soaring (my opinions are pretty solidified on
this subject). ;-)

Shawn

[Nigel Jardine]

Derek
As stated by others this is not the place for Political Rantings=20
so for the benefit of our American Soaring Friends=20
I'll say it=20
SHUT THE F***k UP

[Derek Copeland]

One of the problems is that it is quite difficult to
get anything published in the mainstream US media that
doesn't support the 'America is wonderful' theme. I
have tried!

Anyway don't worry Shawn, as shall be going back to
kicking the PW-5 and supporting Club Class gliding
shortly.

Derek C

At 16:54 04 July 2006, Shawn wrote:
>> This is a topic I find interesting and compelling,
>>but it has no place on
>> ras. I have seen too many groups evaporate in a torrent
>>of off-topic political
>> gassing.
>
>FWIW, it seems to me that these sorts of discussions
>get more civil and
>meaningful discussion when posted on an OT newsgroup
>such as this one,
>rather than when posted on one of the obvious political
>groups, where
>the lines between positions are much clearer and opinions
>are intractable.
>I'd still rather discuss soaring (my opinions are pretty
>solidified on
>this subject). ;-)
>
>Shawn
>

[Shawn[_1_]]

Derek Copeland wrote:
> One of the problems is that it is quite difficult to
> get anything published in the mainstream US media that
> doesn't support the 'America is wonderful' theme. I
> have tried!

Oh bull****. The Denver Post, a very mainstream paper, is often
critical of the direction the US is going, as is National Public Radio,
PBS, CNN and even The Discovery Channel, to wit:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/globalwarming/about/about.html?clik=fsmain_feat4

Derek, in general I agree with you, but jingoism is definitely on the
wane in the US.


> Anyway don't worry Shawn, as shall be going back to
> kicking the PW-5 and supporting Club Class gliding
> shortly.

Yes!

Shawn

[Mal[_1_]]

From what I have read US troops are to busy shooting innocents, bashing
prisoners, raping the natives, looting, jailing innocents, playing satanic
music while shooting, blowing up the town to even have the time to find or
look for Osama Bin Laden

Hardly a positive thing or anything to celebrate.

[Brian Glick]

that is what all you LIBERALS say..
"Mal" > wrote in message
...
> From what I have read US troops are to busy shooting innocents, bashing
> prisoners, raping the natives, looting, jailing innocents, playing satanic
> music while shooting, blowing up the town to even have the time to find or
> look for Osama Bin Laden
>
> Hardly a positive thing or anything to celebrate.
>

[Shawn[_1_]]

Brian Glick wrote:
> that is what all you LIBERALS say..

No actually, we don't. Clean out your ears.

Shawn

[309]

Uh folks,

This is about soaring, right?

The glider wasn't invented in the U.S.A. -- I think the towplane might
have been, depending on which revisionist historian you believe...

I'm taking a guess here that (some of) the Brits are trying to **** on
our parade because two hundred thirty years ago, the sorely mistreated
colonials declared independence from England (yeah, I guess we should
give them credit for not doing an Abu Grahaeb back then).

A happy 4th of July to those who are liberal, conservative (or neither)
and enjoy the right to dissent -- either based on truth, folley, rumor
or misinformation -- but nonetheless, allowed to dissent without fear
of losing life, limb, family or property. The entire world should be
so fortunate, and fortunate to be as generous a nation, privately if
not publicly.

Happy Birthday, U.S.A.! Perhaps not a perfect system, but far better
than most.

Happy thermals to all -- even those that despise us, mock us and are
jealous of us, because we are generous, with a long history of
generosity that is shamefully and convienently ignored. And it sounds
as if the exception is taken to be rule, and one bad apple is used to
justify wasting the efforts of those which are very good.

....which reminds me of my soaring...couldn't thermal worth a damn last
flight, so should I sell the glider? Nah, it was born around the
fourth of July in Elmira, New York, albeit much less than 230 years
ago.

Happy Independence Day to U.S. Soaring Pilots!

-Pete

Shawn wrote:
> Brian Glick wrote:
> > that is what all you LIBERALS say..
>
> No actually, we don't. Clean out your ears.
>

[pbc76049]

Derek.
We are both gentlemen, and we both should
remember the first rule of behavior befitting gentlemen.
Gentlemen shal agree to disagree agreeably.



--
Have a great day

Scott
"Derek Copeland" > wrote in
message ...

[[email protected]]

Derek.
Take your snively winey crybaby anti war bull**** to some other forum.
I've only read your post and am ignoring the other replys. This is a
SOARING forum.
Russ

[Jim Vincent]

> jealous of us, because we are generous, with a long history of
> generosity that is shamefully and convienently ignored.

Compared to most developed countries in Europe, our "generosity" is far less
on a per capita basis. Most countries, at this point, would prefer we took
our generosity and UN veto capability and stuffed it in a very dark place.

[[email protected]]

Jim Vincent wrote:
> > jealous of us, because we are generous, with a long history of
> > generosity that is shamefully and convienently ignored.
>
> Compared to most developed countries in Europe, our "generosity" is far less
> on a per capita basis. Most countries, at this point, would prefer we took
> our generosity and UN veto capability and stuffed it in a very dark place.

Derek,

You are a moron.....and every other idiot (who is afraid of its own
shadow) is as well. Go away, leave the stupid politics, of which you
have no understanding whatsoever, to others. And don't try to bash the
PW-5....PW-5 is smarter than you.

And Mal....I am disappointed, I thought that you were a smart
individual.

This site is about soaring, be constructive or get lost. We don't need
people like you in aviation.

Jacek

[Marc Ramsey]

Jack wrote:
> Happy 4th of July... OK... 1 day late, but.... It marks the day that we
> told the Dereks of the world to "BITE THE BIG ONE". Please remember
> that it was once said the sun never sets on the British Empire. Look to
> your own history and quit ****ing on ours. Post about soaring and stop
> politicizing American Holidays. What a moron.

Yeah, what he says:

http://www.janpeters.net/pics/stuff/get_a_brain.jpg

What kind of moron would politicize the 4th of July?

http://www.historyisaweapon.org/defcon1/douglassjuly4.html

[Derek Copeland]

Well at least we generally ran the British Empire in
a reasonably civilised manner, although I admit there
were a few blips in India. Most of our former colonies,
with the exception of yourselves, have remained voluntarily
in an organisation called the 'British Commonwealth'
and accept our Queen as nominal Head of State. These
include Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several
of the West Indian islands. I would suggest that these
are amongst the most civilised countries in the World.


The Gents below have only confirmed our view of Americans
as being loud, arrogant and rude! OK, I know most of
you are very nice.

On the subject of the PW-5, I am sure that it is very
nicely designed within the parameters set down. I haven't
flown one, but I have flown the rival 'World Class'
contender, the Russian ME7 and that was quite nice
and easy to fly, and at least it looked like a mini
sailplane. The performance was about K6E, but with
a greater efficient speed range. I am not sure that
I would be that encouraged to fly either type cross-country,
at least not in UK conditions. The World Class is a
good idea, but needs a higher performance design.

The politics are starting to impinge on my flying,
as UK taxation has been significantly increased by
stealth (standard 'New Labour' tactic) to pay for armies
of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of
petrol and hence travel has also increased to record
levels. Wasn't one of the objectives of the Iraq War
to stop this happening?

Derek Copeland

At 22:30 05 July 2006, Jack wrote:
>Happy 4th of July... OK... 1 day late, but.... It marks
>the day that we
>told the Dereks of the world to 'BITE THE BIG ONE'.
>Please remember
>that it was once said the sun never sets on the British
>Empire. Look to
>your own history and quit ****ing on ours. Post about
>soaring and stop
>politicizing American Holidays. What a moron.
>
>Jack Womack
>
wrote:
>> Jim Vincent wrote:
>> > > jealous of us, because we are generous, with a long
>>>>history of
>> > > generosity that is shamefully and convienently ignored.
>> >
>> > Compared to most developed countries in Europe, our
>>>'generosity' is far less
>> > on a per capita basis. Most countries, at this point,
>>>would prefer we took
>> > our generosity and UN veto capability and stuffed
>>>it in a very dark place.
>>
>> Derek,
>>
>> You are a moron.....and every other idiot (who is
>>afraid of its own
>> shadow) is as well. Go away, leave the stupid politics,
>>of which you
>> have no understanding whatsoever, to others. And don't
>>try to bash the
>> PW-5....PW-5 is smarter than you.
>>
>> And Mal....I am disappointed, I thought that you were
>>a smart
>> individual.
>>
>> This site is about soaring, be constructive or get
>>lost. We don't need
>> people like you in aviation.
>>
>> Jacek
>
>

[Jack[_4_]]

Golly Gee! If they tax you out of flying, maybe you'll lose interest
here and not bother us anymore... there's something to aspire to... You
can clean up your version of history all you want, but emperialism is
emperialism, and it doesn't come about without the blood of innocents.
What an arrogant ass you are. What's more rude than to kick someone in
the middle of a celebration. Thankfully, we got out of the "British
Commonwealth" business a long time ago.

Jack Womack
Derek Copeland wrote:
> Well at least we generally ran the British Empire in
> a reasonably civilised manner, although I admit there
> were a few blips in India. Most of our former colonies,
> with the exception of yourselves, have remained voluntarily
> in an organisation called the 'British Commonwealth'
> and accept our Queen as nominal Head of State. These
> include Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several
> of the West Indian islands. I would suggest that these
> are amongst the most civilised countries in the World.
>
>
> The Gents below have only confirmed our view of Americans
> as being loud, arrogant and rude! OK, I know most of
> you are very nice.
>
> On the subject of the PW-5, I am sure that it is very
> nicely designed within the parameters set down. I haven't
> flown one, but I have flown the rival 'World Class'
> contender, the Russian ME7 and that was quite nice
> and easy to fly, and at least it looked like a mini
> sailplane. The performance was about K6E, but with
> a greater efficient speed range. I am not sure that
> I would be that encouraged to fly either type cross-country,
> at least not in UK conditions. The World Class is a
> good idea, but needs a higher performance design.
>
> The politics are starting to impinge on my flying,
> as UK taxation has been significantly increased by
> stealth (standard 'New Labour' tactic) to pay for armies
> of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of
> petrol and hence travel has also increased to record
> levels. Wasn't one of the objectives of the Iraq War
> to stop this happening?
>
> Derek Copeland
>
> At 22:30 05 July 2006, Jack wrote:
> >Happy 4th of July... OK... 1 day late, but.... It marks
> >the day that we
> >told the Dereks of the world to 'BITE THE BIG ONE'.
> >Please remember
> >that it was once said the sun never sets on the British
> >Empire. Look to
> >your own history and quit ****ing on ours. Post about
> >soaring and stop
> >politicizing American Holidays. What a moron.
> >
> >Jack Womack
> >
> wrote:
> >> Jim Vincent wrote:
> >> > > jealous of us, because we are generous, with a long
> >>>>history of
> >> > > generosity that is shamefully and convienently ignored.
> >> >
> >> > Compared to most developed countries in Europe, our
> >>>'generosity' is far less
> >> > on a per capita basis. Most countries, at this point,
> >>>would prefer we took
> >> > our generosity and UN veto capability and stuffed
> >>>it in a very dark place.
> >>
> >> Derek,
> >>
> >> You are a moron.....and every other idiot (who is
> >>afraid of its own
> >> shadow) is as well. Go away, leave the stupid politics,
> >>of which you
> >> have no understanding whatsoever, to others. And don't
> >>try to bash the
> >> PW-5....PW-5 is smarter than you.
> >>
> >> And Mal....I am disappointed, I thought that you were
> >>a smart
> >> individual.
> >>
> >> This site is about soaring, be constructive or get
> >>lost. We don't need
> >> people like you in aviation.
> >>
> >> Jacek
> >
> >

[Welsh Druid]

"Derek Copeland" > wrote in
message ...

SNIP
.. The performance was about K6E, but with
> a greater efficient speed range. I am not sure that
> I would be that encouraged to fly either type cross-country,
> at least not in UK conditions.
SNIP

Why ? - are you that poor a pilot that you need more performance to do cross
countries ? Lots of us flew K6's, Dart 17's etc with that sort of
performance and got all our diamonds - and in the UK !

DB

[309]

Even a 1-26 pilot like myself has to have respect for THAT!

Good for you, DB! Airmanship uber L/D!

Happy, well, whatever day to you...sorry I missed the party at Stone
Henge.

Can you winch launch there??? ;-)

-Pete

Welsh Druid wrote:
> SNIP
>
> Why ? - are you that poor a pilot that you need more performance to do cross
> countries ? Lots of us flew K6's, Dart 17's etc with that sort of
> performance and got all our diamonds - and in the UK !
>
> DB

[Derek Copeland]

Dear Mr Druid,

Just for the record, I have flown a 210km O/R in a
Slingsby Swallow (much lower performance than even
a PW-5) and many flights over 200km in an Olympia 463
in the UK, but I never quite managed to do a 300km
in the latter. All my attempts at the 300 in it ended
up meeting nice, or sometimes not so nice, farmers!
I eventually did complete my 300 in a Standard Cirrus
and the 500 in a Nimbus 2. I have also since completed
a 500k in the Standard Cirrus.

The problem with the PW-5, in my opinion, is that you
can get much more performance for less cost by buying
a second hand 'Club Class' glider. In the UK, the ability
to glide across large dead patches of spreadout is
paramount. It is also nice to own something that doesn't
look like a baby buggie with little wings attached!

Del Copeland


At 16:30 06 July 2006, Welsh Druid wrote:
>
>'Derek Copeland' wrote >
>SNIP
>.. The performance was about K6E, but with
>> a greater efficient speed range. I am not sure that
>> I would be that encouraged to fly either type cross-country,
>> at least not in UK conditions.
>SNIP
>
>Why ? - are you that poor a pilot that you need more
>performance to do cross
>countries ? Lots of us flew K6's, Dart 17's etc with
>that sort of
>performance and got all our diamonds - and in the UK
>!
>
>DB

[Hammermill]

June 5, 2006
Endless Summer?
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services

The European countryside is as beautiful as ever. Hotels in the cities
are as packed as they are high-priced. Tourists fill Rome. The same
bustle is evident from Lisbon to Frankfurt. Everywhere European
stewards welcome in millions of sightseers to enjoy the treasures of
Western civilization. Never has life seemed so good.

Despite a public anti-Americanism, individual Europeans extend the old
warmth and friendship to American visitors. Yet beneath the veneer of
the good life, there is also a detectable air of uncertainty in Europe
this summer, one perhaps similar to that of 1914 or the late 1930s.

The unease is apparent in newspapers and conversations on the streets
that echo the view that voters and politicians want nothing to do with
the European Union constitution. Perhaps the general European
discomfort could be summed up best as the following: Why hasn't the
good life turned out the way we wanted it to?

England, France and Germany are upping their retirement ages and/or
planning pension cuts. They have given up the dream that workers in the
future can quit at 55 - or even 65!

The Iranians irk Europe. European governments sold them precision tools
necessary for nuclear reactors. Many Europeans assured Tehran that
dialogue, not rowdy Americans, alone can solve the "misunderstanding"
over nuclear proliferation. But as thanks, Iran's pesky president talks
down to these postmodern Europeans as if they were George Bush.
Meanwhile, Iran presses ahead - hoping to top off with nukes
three-stage rockets that could reach the Vatican, the Eiffel Tower or
the Brandenburg Gate.

Frontline Spain clamors impatiently for the European Union to clamp
down on illegal immigrants streaming across the Mediterranean. The
utopian vision of a continent with porous borders is, for the time
being, on hold - at least as it pertains to Africa.

The Dutch, the French and the Danes are petrified about unassimilated
Muslim radicals in their countries who have killed or threatened the
most liberal of Europeans. Churches are almost empty. Mosques are being
built; Italians wrangle over plans for one of the largest in Italy -
to be plopped amid the vineyards and olive groves of Tuscany.

A majority of polled Germans now believe that the pacifist Europeans
are in a "clash of civilizations" with the Islamic world.

What is going on?

Good intentions that have gone sour.

The enemies of Europe's past - responsible for everything from Verdun
and Dresden to a constant threat of mutually assured destruction -
were identified as nationalism and militarism. Meanwhile, at home,
Europeans cited cutthroat competition and unbridled individualism as
additional contributory causes of the prior strife and unhappiness.

So in response to the errors of the past, Europeans systematically
expanded the welfare state. They welcomed in immigrants. Politicians
slashed defense spending, lowered the retirement age and cut the
workweek. Voters demanded trade barriers to protect the public from the
ravages of globalization. Either to enjoy the good life or to save the
planet, couples forswore children.

But instead of utopia, unintended consequences ensued. Unemployment
soared. Dismal economic growth, shrinking populations and a scarier
world outside their borders followed.

Abroad, even the much-heralded "soft power" of a disarmed Europe could
only bring attention to, not stop, the killing in Darfur. Meanwhile,
China and India are no longer inefficient socialists but breakneck
capitalist competitors. Indeed, they have thrown down the gauntlet to
the Europeans: "Beware! Workers of the world who labor harder, longer
and smarter deserve the greater material rewards!" In this new
heartless global arena, apparently few will abide by the niceties of
the European Union.

Publicly, Europe's frustrations are fobbed off on "crass Americans" -
and particularly George Bush. The Iraq war has poisoned the alliance,
the Europeans insist. They contend that America's greedy consumers warm
the planet, siphon off its oil and trample foreign cultures.

But in private, some Europeans will confess that the problem lies with
Europeans, not us. Some brave soul soon is going to have to inform the
European public: Work much harder and longer for less money; defend the
continent on your own; move out of mama's house and start changing
diapers - and from now on expect far less from the state.

Who knows what the reaction will be to that splash of cold water? In
response, what European populist will soon appear on the streets in
Rome, Berlin or Madrid once again to deceive the public that it was
someone else who caused these disappointments?

We in America should take note of the looming end of this once
seemingly endless summer. We've been there, done that with this beloved
continent all too many times before.

©2006 Tribune Media Services

[Hammermill]

Derek Copeland wrote:
> Q1. Do you honestly think that capturing or killing
> Bin Laden would make a scrap of difference? There are
> plenty of others ready to take his place?
>
> Q2. Do you have any proof that the Iraq or Afghanistan
> Governments had anything to do with 9/11? I can think
> of several more likely Middle Eastern countries. As
> far as I am concerned the invasion of Iraq was a bit
> like kicking the cat after a bad day. I would have
> hoped that the US would have at least obeyed the rule
> of law as layed down by the UN. If the most powerful
> country in the World won't accept the rule of law as
> laid down by an International body, why should anyone
> else?
> June 16, 2006

Betting on Defeat?
It's far from a safe bet.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

Lately, it has become popular to recant on Iraq. When 2,500 Americans
are lost, and when the improvised explosive device monopolizes the war
coverage, it is easy to see why - especially with elections coming up
in November, and presidential primaries not long after.

Pundits now daily equivocate in their understandable exasperation at
the apparent lack of quantifiable progress. The ranks of public
supporters have thinned as final victory seems elusive. It is hard to
find any consistent public advocates of the American effort in Iraq
other than the editors and writers here at National Review, the Wall
Street Journal, Christopher Hitchens, Charles Krauthammer, Mark Steyn,
Norman Podhoretz, and a very few principled others.

But for all the despair, note all the problems for those who have
triangulated throughout this war.

First, those who undergo the opportune conversion often fall prey to
disingenuousness. Take John Kerry's recent repudiation of his earlier
vote for the war in Iraq. To cheers of Democratic activists, he now
laments, "We were misled."

Misled?

Putting aside the question of weapons of mass destruction and the use
of the royal "we," was the senator suggesting that Iraq did not
violate the 1991 armistice accords?

Or that Saddam Hussein did not really gas and murder his own people?

Perhaps he was "misled" into thinking Iraqi agents did not really
plan to murder former President George Bush?

Or postfacto have we learned that Saddam did not really shield
terrorists?

Apparently the Iraqi regime neither violated U.N. accords nor shot at
American planes in the no-fly zones.

Senator Kerry, at least if I remember correctly, voted for the joint
congressional resolution of October 11, 2002, authorizing a war against
Iraq, on the basis of all these and several other causus belli, well
apart from fear of WMDs.

Second, those with a shifting position on the war sometimes cannot keep
up with a war that is shifting itself, where things change hourly. And
when one has no consistent or principled position, the 24-hour
battlefield usually proves a fickle barometer by which to exude
military wisdom.

Even as critics were equating Haditha with My Lai, al-Zarqawi, the al
Qaeda mass murderer in Iraq, was caught and killed. And what was the
reaction of the stunned antiwar pundit or politician? Either we heard
that there was impropriety involved in killing such a demon, or the
former fugitive who was once supposedly proof of our ineptness suddenly
was reinvented as having been irrelevant all along.

The Iraqi army - well over 250,000 strong - is growing, and the
much smaller American force (about 130,000) is shrinking. How do you
call for a deadline for withdrawal when Iraqization was always
predicated on withdrawal only after there was no Iraqi dependence on a
large, static American force?

After lamenting that the Iraqi government is a mess, we now see a tough
prime minister and the selection of his cabinet completed. So it is not
easy to offer somber platitudes of defeat when 400,000 coalition and
Iraqi troops are daily fighting on the center stage of the war against
Islamic terrorism. Someone from Mars might wonder what exactly were the
conditions under which a quarter-million Muslim Arabs in Iraq alone
went to war against Islamic radicalism.

Third, there is a fine line to be drawn between legitimate criticism of
a war that is supposedly not worth American blood and treasure, and
general slander of the United States and its military. Yet much of the
Left's rhetoric was not merely anti-Bush, but in its pessimism
devolved into de facto anti-Americanism.

Senator Durbin compared Guantanamo Bay to the worst excesses of the
Nazis. Senator Kennedy suggested that Abu Ghraib, where thousands
perished under Saddam Hussein, had simply "reopened under new
management: U.S. management." Democratic-party chairman Howard Dean
confidently asserted that the Iraq war was not winnable. John Kerry in
his youth alleged that Americans were like Genghis Khan in their
savagery; in his golden years, he once again insists that we are
"terrorizing" Iraqi civilians. With friends like these, what war
critic needs enemies? Americans can take disapproval that we are not
fighting "smart," but they resent the notion that we are somehow
downright evil.

Fourth, the mainstream media is now discredited on Iraq, and their
drumbeat of doom and gloom is starting to rile more than pleases the
public. Aside from the bias that counts always our losses and rarely
our successes, we are sick and tired of manipulations like the lies
about flushed Korans, forged memos, and the rush to judgment on
Haditha. Most weary Americans want at least a moment to savor the death
of a mass-murdering Zarqawi, without having to lament that he might
have been saved by quicker medical intervention.

Fifth, the historical assessment of Iraq is still undetermined, despite
the pontification of former supporters who think they gain greater
absolution the more vehemently they trash a war they once advocated.

The three-week effort to remove Saddam Hussein was a landmark success.
The subsequent three-year occupation in his place has been messy,
costly, and unpopular. But the result of the third and final stage that
Iraq has evolved into - an existential fight between Iraqi democracy
and al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism - is still uncertain. If we
draw the terrorists out, defeat them in the heart of the ancient
caliphate, and win the allegiance of enough democratic Iraqis to crush
the Islamicists, then our military has won a far greater victory than
the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Sixth, note how critics now rarely offer alternative scenarios. All the
old gripes such as the paucity of body armor or thin-skinned humvees
have withered away. The Iraqi elected government is sympathetic and
earnest, so demonizing them ultimately translates into something like
"Cut these guys lose; they weren't worth the effort." Yes, the
American people want out of Iraq, but on terms that preserve the
democracy that we paid so dearly to foster.

Even the one legitimate criticism that we were too slow in turning over
control to the Iraqis, and that the Bremmer interregnum had too high a
public profile, is now largely moot, as Ambassador Khalilzad and Gen.
Casey are in the shadows, giving all the credit to the very public
Iraqis and taking most of the blame for the bad news.

So we are nearing the denouement of the Iraq war, where we wanted to be
all along: in support of a full-fledged and democratically elected
government that will either win or lose its own struggle.

Seventh, the old twin charges - no link between al Qaeda and Saddam,
no WMDs - are also becoming largely irrelevant or proving untrue. It
must have been difficult for Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times, in
their coverage of the death of Zarqawi, to admit that he had been
active in Iraq well before the end of Saddam Hussein, along with a
mishmash of old killers from Abu Nidal to Abdul Rahman Yasin, the Iraqi
American who helped plan the first World Trade Center bombing.

In addition, most abroad were convinced before the war that the CIA was
right in its pre-war assessments. The publication of the Iraqi archives
points to a real, not a phantom and former, WMD capability - in line
with efforts elsewhere in the Islamic world, from Iran to Libya, to
reclaim something akin to the old Soviet deterrent.

The costs in Iraq have been high and the losses tragic. But nothing in
the past three years has convinced me otherwise than that:

1. in a post-September-11 world Saddam had to be removed on ethical and
strategic grounds;

2. the insurgency, though unexpected in its intensity, could be put
down by a U.S. military that would react and evolve more quickly than
the terrorists to changing conditions on the ground;

3. our mistakes, though several and undeniable, are tragically the
stuff of war, and so far have not proved to be irreversible or beyond
what we experienced in any of our past efforts;

4. the maligned secretary of Defense was right about troop levels and
the plan for Iraqization - although demonized for trying to transform
the very nature of the American military in the midst of a war;

5. we are engaged in the great humanitarian effort of the age, as
"one person, one vote" has brought to the perennially downtrodden
Arab Shiites a real chance at equality;

6. the best method of winning this global struggle against fascistic
Islamic terrorism remains fostering in the Middle East a third
democratic alternative between autocracy and theocracy that alone can
deal with the modern world.

Once a democratically elected Iraqi government emerged, and a national
army was trained, the only way we could lose this war was to forfeit it
at home, through the influence of an adroit, loud minority of critics
that for either base or misguided reasons really does wish us to lose.
They really do.

©2006 Victor Davis Hanson

> Anyway, you have got yourselves into three unwinnable
> wars entirely of your own making, so I suggest that
> you elect a President and a Government who are intelligent
> enough to negotiate a way out next time.
>
> On your Independence Day (from us), I hope you will
> spare a thought for all those suffering in Iraq and
> Afghanistan, the victims of 9/11, the Madrid and London
> bombings and their families, and our respective soldiers
> who have to enforce these unsanctioned policies.
>
> Derek Copeland

[Derek Copeland]

Dear Hammermill,

The fact that there are terrorists in a country does
not necessarily signify that its Government is supporting
them. We have suspected terrorists living in the UK
and so does the US and many other countries around
the World.

Saddam Hussain was not a very nice leader, but the
USA supported him as the 'Good Guy' during the Iraq
- Iran war against the more Muslim fundamentalist Iranians
(The Bad Guys?).

Just before the latest invasion of Iraq, the US weapons
inspectors were doing their jobs in that country. Had
Saddam thrown them out again, or been found to be in
significant violation of UN resolutions, then there
would have been some justification for that invasion.
All the US had to do in the meantime was keep some
troops in the area, sitting safe and sound and out
of harms way. I think what must of us in Europe objected
to was that you went in anyway, without any proof of
wrongdoing and without the UN sanctioning the action.
What a civilized country does has to be seen as fair
and reasonable, which this was not.

Now can we please stop this right wing, redneck, American
rhetoric and get back to gliding?

Derek Copeland


At 22:18 10 July 2006, Hammermill wrote:
>> June 16, 2006
>
>Betting on Defeat?
>It's far from a safe bet.
>by Victor Davis Hanson
>National Review Online
>
>Lately, it has become popular to recant on Iraq. When
>2,500 Americans
>are lost, and when the improvised explosive device
>monopolizes the war
>coverage, it is easy to see why - especially with elections
>coming up
>in November, and presidential primaries not long after.
>
>Pundits now daily equivocate in their understandable
>exasperation at
>the apparent lack of quantifiable progress. The ranks
>of public
>supporters have thinned as final victory seems elusive.
>It is hard to
>find any consistent public advocates of the American
>effort in Iraq
>other than the editors and writers here at National
>Review, the Wall
>Street Journal, Christopher Hitchens, Charles Krauthammer,
>Mark Steyn,
>Norman Podhoretz, and a very few principled others.
>
>But for all the despair, note all the problems for
>those who have
>triangulated throughout this war.
>
>First, those who undergo the opportune conversion often
>fall prey to
>disingenuousness. Take John Kerry's recent repudiation
>of his earlier
>vote for the war in Iraq. To cheers of Democratic activists,
>he now
>laments, 'We were misled.'
>
>Misled?
>
>Putting aside the question of weapons of mass destruction
>and the use
>of the royal 'we,' was the senator suggesting that
>Iraq did not
>violate the 1991 armistice accords?
>
>Or that Saddam Hussein did not really gas and murder
>his own people?
>
>Perhaps he was 'misled' into thinking Iraqi agents
>did not really
>plan to murder former President George Bush?
>
>Or postfacto have we learned that Saddam did not really
>shield
>terrorists?
>
>Apparently the Iraqi regime neither violated U.N. accords
>nor shot at
>American planes in the no-fly zones.
>
>Senator Kerry, at least if I remember correctly, voted
>for the joint
>congressional resolution of October 11, 2002, authorizing
>a war against
>Iraq, on the basis of all these and several other causus
>belli, well
>apart from fear of WMDs.
>
>Second, those with a shifting position on the war sometimes
>cannot keep
>up with a war that is shifting itself, where things
>change hourly. And
>when one has no consistent or principled position,
>the 24-hour
>battlefield usually proves a fickle barometer by which
>to exude
>military wisdom.
>
>Even as critics were equating Haditha with My Lai,
>al-Zarqawi, the al
>Qaeda mass murderer in Iraq, was caught and killed.
>And what was the
>reaction of the stunned antiwar pundit or politician?
>Either we heard
>that there was impropriety involved in killing such
>a demon, or the
>former fugitive who was once supposedly proof of our
>ineptness suddenly
>was reinvented as having been irrelevant all along.
>
>The Iraqi army - well over 250,000 strong - is growing,
>and the
>much smaller American force (about 130,000) is shrinking.
>How do you
>call for a deadline for withdrawal when Iraqization
>was always
>predicated on withdrawal only after there was no Iraqi
>dependence on a
>large, static American force?
>
>After lamenting that the Iraqi government is a mess,
>we now see a tough
>prime minister and the selection of his cabinet completed.
>So it is not
>easy to offer somber platitudes of defeat when 400,000
>coalition and
>Iraqi troops are daily fighting on the center stage
>of the war against
>Islamic terrorism. Someone from Mars might wonder what
>exactly were the
>conditions under which a quarter-million Muslim Arabs
>in Iraq alone
>went to war against Islamic radicalism.
>
>Third, there is a fine line to be drawn between legitimate
>criticism of
>a war that is supposedly not worth American blood and
>treasure, and
>general slander of the United States and its military.
>Yet much of the
>Left's rhetoric was not merely anti-Bush, but in its
>pessimism
>devolved into de facto anti-Americanism.
>
>Senator Durbin compared Guantanamo Bay to the worst
>excesses of the
>Nazis. Senator Kennedy suggested that Abu Ghraib, where
>thousands
>perished under Saddam Hussein, had simply 'reopened
>under new
>management: U.S. management.' Democratic-party chairman
>Howard Dean
>confidently asserted that the Iraq war was not winnable.
>John Kerry in
>his youth alleged that Americans were like Genghis
>Khan in their
>savagery; in his golden years, he once again insists
>that we are
>'terrorizing' Iraqi civilians. With friends like these,
>what war
>critic needs enemies? Americans can take disapproval
>that we are not
>fighting 'smart,' but they resent the notion that we
>are somehow
>downright evil.
>
>Fourth, the mainstream media is now discredited on
>Iraq, and their
>drumbeat of doom and gloom is starting to rile more
>than pleases the
>public. Aside from the bias that counts always our
>losses and rarely
>our successes, we are sick and tired of manipulations
>like the lies
>about flushed Korans, forged memos, and the rush to
>judgment on
>Haditha. Most weary Americans want at least a moment
>to savor the death
>of a mass-murdering Zarqawi, without having to lament
>that he might
>have been saved by quicker medical intervention.
>
>Fifth, the historical assessment of Iraq is still undetermined,
>despite
>the pontification of former supporters who think they
>gain greater
>absolution the more vehemently they trash a war they
>once advocated.
>
>The three-week effort to remove Saddam Hussein was
>a landmark success.
>The subsequent three-year occupation in his place has
>been messy,
>costly, and unpopular. But the result of the third
>and final stage that
>Iraq has evolved into - an existential fight between
>Iraqi democracy
>and al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism - is still
>uncertain. If we
>draw the terrorists out, defeat them in the heart of
>the ancient
>caliphate, and win the allegiance of enough democratic
>Iraqis to crush
>the Islamicists, then our military has won a far greater
>victory than
>the removal of Saddam Hussein.
>
>Sixth, note how critics now rarely offer alternative
>scenarios. All the
>old gripes such as the paucity of body armor or thin-skinned
>humvees
>have withered away. The Iraqi elected government is
>sympathetic and
>earnest, so demonizing them ultimately translates into
>something like
>'Cut these guys lose; they weren't worth the effort.'
>Yes, the
>American people want out of Iraq, but on terms that
>preserve the
>democracy that we paid so dearly to foster.
>
>Even the one legitimate criticism that we were too
>slow in turning over
>control to the Iraqis, and that the Bremmer interregnum
>had too high a
>public profile, is now largely moot, as Ambassador
>Khalilzad and Gen.
>Casey are in the shadows, giving all the credit to
>the very public
>Iraqis and taking most of the blame for the bad news.
>
>So we are nearing the denouement of the Iraq war, where
>we wanted to be
>all along: in support of a full-fledged and democratically
>elected
>government that will either win or lose its own struggle.
>
>Seventh, the old twin charges - no link between al
>Qaeda and Saddam,
>no WMDs - are also becoming largely irrelevant or proving
>untrue. It
>must have been difficult for Time, Newsweek, and the
>New York Times, in
>their coverage of the death of Zarqawi, to admit that
>he had been
>active in Iraq well before the end of Saddam Hussein,
>along with a
>mishmash of old killers from Abu Nidal to Abdul Rahman
>Yasin, the Iraqi
>American who helped plan the first World Trade Center
>bombing.
>
>In addition, most abroad were convinced before the
>war that the CIA was
>right in its pre-war assessments. The publication of
>the Iraqi archives
>points to a real, not a phantom and former, WMD capability
>- in line
>with efforts elsewhere in the Islamic world, from Iran
>to Libya, to
>reclaim something akin to the old Soviet deterrent.
>
>The costs in Iraq have been high and the losses tragic.
>But nothing in
>the past three years has convinced me otherwise than
>that:
>
>1=2E in a post-September-11 world Saddam had to be
>removed on ethical and
>strategic grounds;
>
>2=2E the insurgency, though unexpected in its intensity,
>could be put
>down by a U.S. military that would react and evolve
>more quickly than
>the terrorists to changing conditions on the ground;
>
>3=2E our mistakes, though several and undeniable, are
>tragically the
>stuff of war, and so far have not proved to be irreversible
>or beyond
>what we experienced in any of our past efforts;
>
>4=2E the maligned secretary of Defense was right about
>troop levels and
>the plan for Iraqization - although demonized for trying
>to transform
>the very nature of the American military in the midst
>of a war;
>
>5=2E we are engaged in the great humanitarian effort
>of the age, as
>'one person, one vote' has brought to the perennially
>downtrodden
>Arab Shiites a real chance at equality;
>
>6=2E the best method of winning this global struggle
>against fascistic
>Islamic terrorism remains fostering in the Middle East
>a third
>democratic alternative between autocracy and theocracy
>that alone can
>deal with the modern world.
>
>Once a democratically elected Iraqi government emerged,
>and a national
>army was trained, the only way we could lose this war
>was to forfeit it
>at home, through the influence of an adroit, loud minority
>of critics
>that for either base or misguided reasons really does
>wish us to lose.
>They really do.
>
>=A92006 Victor Davis Hanson
>
>> Anyway, you have got yourselves into three unwinnable
>> wars entirely of your own making, so I suggest that
>> you elect a President and a Government who are intelligent
>> enough to negotiate a way out next time.
>>
>> On your Independence Day (from us), I hope you will
>> spare a thought for all those suffering in Iraq and
>> Afghanistan, the victims of 9/11, the Madrid and London
>> bombings and their families, and our respective soldiers
>> who have to enforce these unsanctioned policies.
>>=20
>> Derek Copeland
>
>

[Derek Copeland]

Sorry, meant to say 'UN Weapons Inspectors'

Derek C

[Hammermill]

June 23, 2006
Despair and Hope
The short and long wars against radical Islam
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

In the short-term, the ongoing war with Islamic fascists from
Afghanistan to Iraq , and in peripheral areas from Canada and Manhattan
to Madrid , Bali, and London , seems surreal.

Not to mention frustrating: almost every day the press highlights
another furious outburst from some entertainers or intellectuals who
are just enough on the fringes of American popular culture to warrant
momentary coverage of their lunacy. Neil Young is worried about the
reception of his new album? He hypes George Bush's malignancies. The
Dixie Chicks and Madonna are bothered about being pegged abroad as part
of George Bush's empire? Presto, they call Iraq the real problem. The
dropout Sean Penn can't quite shake his off-screen image of Jeff
Spicoli? He seeks acceptance from the Western Left as a serious critic
of U.S Middle-Eastern policy.

The largest American aid program since the Marshall Plan has become the
receptacle for all the conflicting personal frustrations, unhappiness,
and thwarted idealism of Western elites, a sort of scapegoat or totem
through which the ennui and angst of contemporary sensitive man can be
momentarily excised.

The terrorists in Iraq know this and thus trust that our press corps
will harp on the last minutes, rather than the last four years, of the
wretched life of the mass-murdering al Zarqawi - did he receive
proper medical attention? Was he roughed up by us? Did he die
immediately or suffer?

Indeed, the more our own troops are tortured and exploded, the more our
own media will rush to judgment on Haditha to assure the world, before
an inquiry has even finished, that the U.S. Marine Corps murdered
innocents. The more non-uniformed Islamists behead civilians and
torture innocents, the more international "rights" organizations
will accuse the United States of humanitarian violations in Guantanamo
Bay - at least up until the point of calling for the return of such
killers to their native countries.

In such an asymmetrical war of perceptions, the gruesome death of a
single American does more harm to our cause than does the image of a
martyred Zarqawi in sensual Paradise with his virgins. For Westerners,
death ruins the precious good life; for the topsy-turvy Islamists,
death salvages the bad life.

Our rules of engagement are aimed at winning "hearts and minds."
That precludes the age-old formula for such postwar rebuilding:
reconstruct only after the enemy has been humiliated and defeated. A
Curtis LeMay would have advised leveling Fallujah in April to save the
war; we shrug that doing so would surely lose it. Somewhere the ghost
of a Thucydides or Hobbes or Churchill might adjudicate our debate in
ways that we might not like.

All this the enemy knows and manipulates to its advantage.

The terrorists also understand that their overtly fascistic ideology
- intolerance for other religions, execution of the apostate,
subjugation of women, killing of gays, and theocracy - will never
earn the proper Western revulsion once reserved for a similar
reactionary Nazism, since it butts up against the pillar of
multicultural tolerance; no non-Western people can be any worse than
the present-day West.

Al Qaeda and its followers can't manufacture a machine gun or design
an RPG. No problem - they realize there are enough
petroleum-generated dollars floating around in the region, and enough
eager arms merchants, to get what they need.

Politically, the Islamists accept that the world detests them -
perhaps even the Chinese and Russians. But they also have discovered
that much of the world finds them useful. For the Arab Street , macabre
resistance to the West offers a vicarious sense of pride, especially if
it is cost-free and does not completely forfeit access to Europe or the
United States . Aspiring hegemons like the Chinese, or those in decline
like the Europeans and Russians, enjoy it when America bloodies its
nose, if for no other reason than envy and spite - and the hope that
in the future they are given more consultation, befitting their prior
status.

Oil is their best ally, or so the Islamists trust. The Iranians, even
if shackled, boast that, Samson-like, they can pull down our entire
petroleum temple upon all of us anytime they wish. The terrorists know
that billions will always filter down from autocracies as bribe money
into their coffers. And no gas-hungry American wants his Labor Day
Winnebago parked dry on his pad because some nut let off a bomb in the
Middle East .

But in the longer-term war, the Islamists have real problems. Their
acquisition of weapons is always parasitical and can't quite keep up
with constant Western innovation, whether in the form of drones that
take out terrorists sitting in front of their TVs, or anti-ballistic
missile systems that might nullify Ahmadinejad's nuclear blackmail.

The Islamists are also in a dilemma about escalation. They have a
deep-seated suspicion that another 9/11 might unleash an unpredictable
Western response that would pollute the favorable Middle East waters in
which they swim. Behead a Canadian prime minister; blow up the Eiffel
Tower or the Vatican; take out the Empire State Building - and
Western bombs may be dropped first, beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, and
questions asked later. So for now, jihadists accept that their best
strategy is not to upset too much the multifarious forces that conspire
to restrain Western power.

Even more depressing for the Islamists is that their enemy is not the
American or European West per se, but a far more insidious Westernism,
something that has infected diverse peoples from South Korea and China
to Central America and enclaves in the Middle East like Beirut and
Dubai . Westernization - whether we define that as a C-SPAN televised
gripe session on Palestinian rights at a Western university or
navigating through 7,000 tunes on an iPod or flipping on the CD, air
conditioning, and power seats in a Honda Accord or watching assorted
bare navels on MTV - is insidiously seductive and ultimately
subversive to the patriarchal world of the eighth century.

How do you arrange a marriage, insist on a beheading for adultery,
conduct a proper honor killing of your daughter, or calmly call Jews
"pigs and apes" when the wider Westernizing world broadcast into
your living room, car, and workplace thinks you are some groveling
zombie? Can an Airbus or Compaq be constructed according to the
principles of Sharia? How can you demand amoxicillin as your
birthright, but hate the system of free thinking and rationalism that
created it? Does the Islamist despise equally Chinese internet
pornography; does he issue fatwas against South Korean video games;
does he ostracize Latin American evangelical Protestants, or burn down
Bollywood? In the short-term maybe; in the long-term it is not so easy.

The Middle Easterner is also starting to realize that his once romantic
jihadist has turned even approving bystanders into international
pariahs. You doubt that? Try getting on an international flight with a
Saudi or Egyptian and watch the passengers' reaction; or wear a veil
in Paris or Rome , and see how many smiles you receive. That radical
change in attitudes toward radical Islam and its appeasers, the
jihadist - and those in the Middle East who tolerated him - begot.
How they finally wore down the Western therapeutic mind from Amsterdam
to Copenhagen , I don't know, but somehow they have nearly
accomplished that once impossible feat.

So there is no guarantee that the multiculturalism, utopianism,
cultural relativism, and moral equivalence that infect Western capitals
today will necessarily always predominate, being as they are a
fashionable relish in times of calm and plenty. The more the Islamist
insults his benefactors, the more he gradually tries their patience.

A Cindy Sheehan or Noam Chomsky still resonates with a minority of the
public because he can; thanks to Western capitalism and freedom, both
jet at will around the globe, live comfortably, and count on the
tolerance of the Western bourgeoisie society that they so roundly
condemn. But should the Islamist endanger that comfortable embryo -
as they almost did on 9/11 - then folks like these would be as
quickly forgotten as were Neville Chamberlain and Charles Lindbergh by
1941.

As for Iraq , while the post-Saddam reconstruction may not have started
out as the new ground zero in the war against Islamist terrorism, it
has surely devolved into that, as the Islamists themselves concede. In
the short term, because they understand that the juggernaut of Western
capitalism, freedom, and choice will spell their death knell, the
jihadists have imported and adopted as their own every conventional
Western munition, repackaged every Western self-critique, manipulated
every Western media outlet, and tried to boomerang every Western
liberal virtue and humanitarian protocol back at its creators. And, if
the polls on Iraq are any indication, such a strategy has worked, for a
time, brilliantly.

But these are ultimately not acts of confidence, but of desperation. As
an al Zarqawi knew, the world is evolving; if for the present we can
keep our heads, then for eternity the Islamists will eventually lose
theirs.

©2006 Victor Davis Hanson

[Jim Vincent]

I hope you fly better than you think.


"Hammermill" > wrote in message
ups.com...
June 23, 2006
Despair and Hope
The short and long wars against radical Islam
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

In the short-term, the ongoing war with Islamic fascists from
Afghanistan to Iraq , and in peripheral areas from Canada and Manhattan
to Madrid , Bali, and London , seems surreal.

Not to mention frustrating: almost every day the press highlights
another furious outburst from some entertainers or intellectuals who
are just enough on the fringes of American popular culture to warrant
momentary coverage of their lunacy. Neil Young is worried about the
reception of his new album? He hypes George Bush's malignancies. The
Dixie Chicks and Madonna are bothered about being pegged abroad as part
of George Bush's empire? Presto, they call Iraq the real problem. The
dropout Sean Penn can't quite shake his off-screen image of Jeff
Spicoli? He seeks acceptance from the Western Left as a serious critic
of U.S Middle-Eastern policy.

The largest American aid program since the Marshall Plan has become the
receptacle for all the conflicting personal frustrations, unhappiness,
and thwarted idealism of Western elites, a sort of scapegoat or totem
through which the ennui and angst of contemporary sensitive man can be
momentarily excised.

The terrorists in Iraq know this and thus trust that our press corps
will harp on the last minutes, rather than the last four years, of the
wretched life of the mass-murdering al Zarqawi - did he receive
proper medical attention? Was he roughed up by us? Did he die
immediately or suffer?

Indeed, the more our own troops are tortured and exploded, the more our
own media will rush to judgment on Haditha to assure the world, before
an inquiry has even finished, that the U.S. Marine Corps murdered
innocents. The more non-uniformed Islamists behead civilians and
torture innocents, the more international "rights" organizations
will accuse the United States of humanitarian violations in Guantanamo
Bay - at least up until the point of calling for the return of such
killers to their native countries.

In such an asymmetrical war of perceptions, the gruesome death of a
single American does more harm to our cause than does the image of a
martyred Zarqawi in sensual Paradise with his virgins. For Westerners,
death ruins the precious good life; for the topsy-turvy Islamists,
death salvages the bad life.

Our rules of engagement are aimed at winning "hearts and minds."
That precludes the age-old formula for such postwar rebuilding:
reconstruct only after the enemy has been humiliated and defeated. A
Curtis LeMay would have advised leveling Fallujah in April to save the
war; we shrug that doing so would surely lose it. Somewhere the ghost
of a Thucydides or Hobbes or Churchill might adjudicate our debate in
ways that we might not like.

All this the enemy knows and manipulates to its advantage.

The terrorists also understand that their overtly fascistic ideology
- intolerance for other religions, execution of the apostate,
subjugation of women, killing of gays, and theocracy - will never
earn the proper Western revulsion once reserved for a similar
reactionary Nazism, since it butts up against the pillar of
multicultural tolerance; no non-Western people can be any worse than
the present-day West.

Al Qaeda and its followers can't manufacture a machine gun or design
an RPG. No problem - they realize there are enough
petroleum-generated dollars floating around in the region, and enough
eager arms merchants, to get what they need.

Politically, the Islamists accept that the world detests them -
perhaps even the Chinese and Russians. But they also have discovered
that much of the world finds them useful. For the Arab Street , macabre
resistance to the West offers a vicarious sense of pride, especially if
it is cost-free and does not completely forfeit access to Europe or the
United States . Aspiring hegemons like the Chinese, or those in decline
like the Europeans and Russians, enjoy it when America bloodies its
nose, if for no other reason than envy and spite - and the hope that
in the future they are given more consultation, befitting their prior
status.

Oil is their best ally, or so the Islamists trust. The Iranians, even
if shackled, boast that, Samson-like, they can pull down our entire
petroleum temple upon all of us anytime they wish. The terrorists know
that billions will always filter down from autocracies as bribe money
into their coffers. And no gas-hungry American wants his Labor Day
Winnebago parked dry on his pad because some nut let off a bomb in the
Middle East .

But in the longer-term war, the Islamists have real problems. Their
acquisition of weapons is always parasitical and can't quite keep up
with constant Western innovation, whether in the form of drones that
take out terrorists sitting in front of their TVs, or anti-ballistic
missile systems that might nullify Ahmadinejad's nuclear blackmail.

The Islamists are also in a dilemma about escalation. They have a
deep-seated suspicion that another 9/11 might unleash an unpredictable
Western response that would pollute the favorable Middle East waters in
which they swim. Behead a Canadian prime minister; blow up the Eiffel
Tower or the Vatican; take out the Empire State Building - and
Western bombs may be dropped first, beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, and
questions asked later. So for now, jihadists accept that their best
strategy is not to upset too much the multifarious forces that conspire
to restrain Western power.

Even more depressing for the Islamists is that their enemy is not the
American or European West per se, but a far more insidious Westernism,
something that has infected diverse peoples from South Korea and China
to Central America and enclaves in the Middle East like Beirut and
Dubai . Westernization - whether we define that as a C-SPAN televised
gripe session on Palestinian rights at a Western university or
navigating through 7,000 tunes on an iPod or flipping on the CD, air
conditioning, and power seats in a Honda Accord or watching assorted
bare navels on MTV - is insidiously seductive and ultimately
subversive to the patriarchal world of the eighth century.

How do you arrange a marriage, insist on a beheading for adultery,
conduct a proper honor killing of your daughter, or calmly call Jews
"pigs and apes" when the wider Westernizing world broadcast into
your living room, car, and workplace thinks you are some groveling
zombie? Can an Airbus or Compaq be constructed according to the
principles of Sharia? How can you demand amoxicillin as your
birthright, but hate the system of free thinking and rationalism that
created it? Does the Islamist despise equally Chinese internet
pornography; does he issue fatwas against South Korean video games;
does he ostracize Latin American evangelical Protestants, or burn down
Bollywood? In the short-term maybe; in the long-term it is not so easy.

The Middle Easterner is also starting to realize that his once romantic
jihadist has turned even approving bystanders into international
pariahs. You doubt that? Try getting on an international flight with a
Saudi or Egyptian and watch the passengers' reaction; or wear a veil
in Paris or Rome , and see how many smiles you receive. That radical
change in attitudes toward radical Islam and its appeasers, the
jihadist - and those in the Middle East who tolerated him - begot.
How they finally wore down the Western therapeutic mind from Amsterdam
to Copenhagen , I don't know, but somehow they have nearly
accomplished that once impossible feat.

So there is no guarantee that the multiculturalism, utopianism,
cultural relativism, and moral equivalence that infect Western capitals
today will necessarily always predominate, being as they are a
fashionable relish in times of calm and plenty. The more the Islamist
insults his benefactors, the more he gradually tries their patience.

A Cindy Sheehan or Noam Chomsky still resonates with a minority of the
public because he can; thanks to Western capitalism and freedom, both
jet at will around the globe, live comfortably, and count on the
tolerance of the Western bourgeoisie society that they so roundly
condemn. But should the Islamist endanger that comfortable embryo -
as they almost did on 9/11 - then folks like these would be as
quickly forgotten as were Neville Chamberlain and Charles Lindbergh by
1941.

As for Iraq , while the post-Saddam reconstruction may not have started
out as the new ground zero in the war against Islamist terrorism, it
has surely devolved into that, as the Islamists themselves concede. In
the short term, because they understand that the juggernaut of Western
capitalism, freedom, and choice will spell their death knell, the
jihadists have imported and adopted as their own every conventional
Western munition, repackaged every Western self-critique, manipulated
every Western media outlet, and tried to boomerang every Western
liberal virtue and humanitarian protocol back at its creators. And, if
the polls on Iraq are any indication, such a strategy has worked, for a
time, brilliantly.

But these are ultimately not acts of confidence, but of desperation. As
an al Zarqawi knew, the world is evolving; if for the present we can
keep our heads, then for eternity the Islamists will eventually lose
theirs.

©2006 Victor Davis Hanson

[Bert Willing]

Would you please proceed with your "intellectual" masturbation in private.

"Hammermill" > wrote in message
ups.com...
June 23, 2006
Despair and Hope
The short and long wars against radical Islam
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

In the short-term, the ongoing war with Islamic fascists from
Afghanistan to Iraq , and in peripheral areas from Canada and Manhattan
to Madrid , Bali, and London , seems surreal.

Not to mention frustrating: almost every day the press highlights
another furious outburst from some entertainers or intellectuals who
are just enough on the fringes of American popular culture to warrant
momentary coverage of their lunacy. Neil Young is worried about the
reception of his new album? He hypes George Bush's malignancies. The
Dixie Chicks and Madonna are bothered about being pegged abroad as part
of George Bush's empire? Presto, they call Iraq the real problem. The
dropout Sean Penn can't quite shake his off-screen image of Jeff
Spicoli? He seeks acceptance from the Western Left as a serious critic
of U.S Middle-Eastern policy.

The largest American aid program since the Marshall Plan has become the
receptacle for all the conflicting personal frustrations, unhappiness,
and thwarted idealism of Western elites, a sort of scapegoat or totem
through which the ennui and angst of contemporary sensitive man can be
momentarily excised.

The terrorists in Iraq know this and thus trust that our press corps
will harp on the last minutes, rather than the last four years, of the
wretched life of the mass-murdering al Zarqawi - did he receive
proper medical attention? Was he roughed up by us? Did he die
immediately or suffer?

Indeed, the more our own troops are tortured and exploded, the more our
own media will rush to judgment on Haditha to assure the world, before
an inquiry has even finished, that the U.S. Marine Corps murdered
innocents. The more non-uniformed Islamists behead civilians and
torture innocents, the more international "rights" organizations
will accuse the United States of humanitarian violations in Guantanamo
Bay - at least up until the point of calling for the return of such
killers to their native countries.

In such an asymmetrical war of perceptions, the gruesome death of a
single American does more harm to our cause than does the image of a
martyred Zarqawi in sensual Paradise with his virgins. For Westerners,
death ruins the precious good life; for the topsy-turvy Islamists,
death salvages the bad life.

Our rules of engagement are aimed at winning "hearts and minds."
That precludes the age-old formula for such postwar rebuilding:
reconstruct only after the enemy has been humiliated and defeated. A
Curtis LeMay would have advised leveling Fallujah in April to save the
war; we shrug that doing so would surely lose it. Somewhere the ghost
of a Thucydides or Hobbes or Churchill might adjudicate our debate in
ways that we might not like.

All this the enemy knows and manipulates to its advantage.

The terrorists also understand that their overtly fascistic ideology
- intolerance for other religions, execution of the apostate,
subjugation of women, killing of gays, and theocracy - will never
earn the proper Western revulsion once reserved for a similar
reactionary Nazism, since it butts up against the pillar of
multicultural tolerance; no non-Western people can be any worse than
the present-day West.

Al Qaeda and its followers can't manufacture a machine gun or design
an RPG. No problem - they realize there are enough
petroleum-generated dollars floating around in the region, and enough
eager arms merchants, to get what they need.

Politically, the Islamists accept that the world detests them -
perhaps even the Chinese and Russians. But they also have discovered
that much of the world finds them useful. For the Arab Street , macabre
resistance to the West offers a vicarious sense of pride, especially if
it is cost-free and does not completely forfeit access to Europe or the
United States . Aspiring hegemons like the Chinese, or those in decline
like the Europeans and Russians, enjoy it when America bloodies its
nose, if for no other reason than envy and spite - and the hope that
in the future they are given more consultation, befitting their prior
status.

Oil is their best ally, or so the Islamists trust. The Iranians, even
if shackled, boast that, Samson-like, they can pull down our entire
petroleum temple upon all of us anytime they wish. The terrorists know
that billions will always filter down from autocracies as bribe money
into their coffers. And no gas-hungry American wants his Labor Day
Winnebago parked dry on his pad because some nut let off a bomb in the
Middle East .

But in the longer-term war, the Islamists have real problems. Their
acquisition of weapons is always parasitical and can't quite keep up
with constant Western innovation, whether in the form of drones that
take out terrorists sitting in front of their TVs, or anti-ballistic
missile systems that might nullify Ahmadinejad's nuclear blackmail.

The Islamists are also in a dilemma about escalation. They have a
deep-seated suspicion that another 9/11 might unleash an unpredictable
Western response that would pollute the favorable Middle East waters in
which they swim. Behead a Canadian prime minister; blow up the Eiffel
Tower or the Vatican; take out the Empire State Building - and
Western bombs may be dropped first, beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, and
questions asked later. So for now, jihadists accept that their best
strategy is not to upset too much the multifarious forces that conspire
to restrain Western power.

Even more depressing for the Islamists is that their enemy is not the
American or European West per se, but a far more insidious Westernism,
something that has infected diverse peoples from South Korea and China
to Central America and enclaves in the Middle East like Beirut and
Dubai . Westernization - whether we define that as a C-SPAN televised
gripe session on Palestinian rights at a Western university or
navigating through 7,000 tunes on an iPod or flipping on the CD, air
conditioning, and power seats in a Honda Accord or watching assorted
bare navels on MTV - is insidiously seductive and ultimately
subversive to the patriarchal world of the eighth century.

How do you arrange a marriage, insist on a beheading for adultery,
conduct a proper honor killing of your daughter, or calmly call Jews
"pigs and apes" when the wider Westernizing world broadcast into
your living room, car, and workplace thinks you are some groveling
zombie? Can an Airbus or Compaq be constructed according to the
principles of Sharia? How can you demand amoxicillin as your
birthright, but hate the system of free thinking and rationalism that
created it? Does the Islamist despise equally Chinese internet
pornography; does he issue fatwas against South Korean video games;
does he ostracize Latin American evangelical Protestants, or burn down
Bollywood? In the short-term maybe; in the long-term it is not so easy.

The Middle Easterner is also starting to realize that his once romantic
jihadist has turned even approving bystanders into international
pariahs. You doubt that? Try getting on an international flight with a
Saudi or Egyptian and watch the passengers' reaction; or wear a veil
in Paris or Rome , and see how many smiles you receive. That radical
change in attitudes toward radical Islam and its appeasers, the
jihadist - and those in the Middle East who tolerated him - begot.
How they finally wore down the Western therapeutic mind from Amsterdam
to Copenhagen , I don't know, but somehow they have nearly
accomplished that once impossible feat.

So there is no guarantee that the multiculturalism, utopianism,
cultural relativism, and moral equivalence that infect Western capitals
today will necessarily always predominate, being as they are a
fashionable relish in times of calm and plenty. The more the Islamist
insults his benefactors, the more he gradually tries their patience.

A Cindy Sheehan or Noam Chomsky still resonates with a minority of the
public because he can; thanks to Western capitalism and freedom, both
jet at will around the globe, live comfortably, and count on the
tolerance of the Western bourgeoisie society that they so roundly
condemn. But should the Islamist endanger that comfortable embryo -
as they almost did on 9/11 - then folks like these would be as
quickly forgotten as were Neville Chamberlain and Charles Lindbergh by
1941.

As for Iraq , while the post-Saddam reconstruction may not have started
out as the new ground zero in the war against Islamist terrorism, it
has surely devolved into that, as the Islamists themselves concede. In
the short term, because they understand that the juggernaut of Western
capitalism, freedom, and choice will spell their death knell, the
jihadists have imported and adopted as their own every conventional
Western munition, repackaged every Western self-critique, manipulated
every Western media outlet, and tried to boomerang every Western
liberal virtue and humanitarian protocol back at its creators. And, if
the polls on Iraq are any indication, such a strategy has worked, for a
time, brilliantly.

But these are ultimately not acts of confidence, but of desperation. As
an al Zarqawi knew, the world is evolving; if for the present we can
keep our heads, then for eternity the Islamists will eventually lose
theirs.

©2006 Victor Davis Hanson

[Hammermill]

Derek Copeland wrote:
> Well at least we generally ran the British Empire in
> a reasonably civilised manner, although I admit there
> were a few blips in India. Most of our former colonies,
> with the exception of yourselves, have remained voluntarily
> in an organisation called the 'British Commonwealth'
> and accept our Queen as nominal Head of State. These
> include Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several
> of the West Indian islands. I would suggest that these
> are amongst the most civilised countries in the World.
>
>
> The Gents below have only confirmed our view of Americans
> as being loud, arrogant and rude! OK, I know most of
> you are very nice.
> The politics are starting to impinge on my flying,
> as UK taxation has been significantly increased by
> stealth (standard 'New Labour' tactic) to pay for armies
> of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of
> petrol and hence travel has also increased to record
> levels. Wasn't one of the objectives of the Iraq War
> to stop this happening?
>
> Derek Copeland

WASHINGTON -- In the Australian House of Representatives last month,
opposition member Julia Gillard interrupted a speech by the minister of
health thusly: ``I move that that sniveling grub over there be not
further heard.''

For that, the good woman was ordered removed from the House, if only
for a day. She might have escaped that little time-out if she had
responded to the speaker's demand for an apology with something other
than ``If I have offended grubs, I withdraw unconditionally.''

God, I love Australia. Where else do you have a shadow health minister
with such, er, starch? Of course I'm prejudiced, having married an
Australian, but how not to like a country, in this age of sniveling
grubs worldwide, whose treasurer suggests to any person who ``wants to
live under sharia law'' to try Saudi Arabia and Iran, ``but not
Australia.'' He was elaborating on an earlier suggestion that ``people
who ... don't want to live by Australian values and understand them,
well then they can basically clear off.'' Contrast this with Canada,
historically and culturally Australia's commonwealth twin, where last
year Ontario actually gave serious consideration to allowing its
Muslims to live under sharia law.

Such things don't happen in Australia. This is a place where, when the
remains of a fallen soldier are accidentally switched with those of a
Bosnian, the enraged widow picks up the phone late at night, calls the
prime minister at home in bed and delivers a furious unedited rant --
which he publicly and graciously accepts as fully deserved. Where
Americans today sue, Australians slash and skewer.

For Americans, Australia engenders nostalgia for our own past, which we
gauzily remember as infused with John Wayne plain-spokenness and vigor.
Australia evokes an echo of our own frontier, which is why Australia is
the only place you can unironically still shoot a Western.

It is surely the only place where you hear officials speaking plainly
in defense of action. What other foreign minister but Australia's would
see through ``multilateralism,'' the fetish of every sniveling foreign
policy grub from the Quai d'Orsay to Foggy Bottom, calling it correctly
``a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving
internationalism of the lowest common denominator''?

And with action comes bravery, from the transcendent courage of the
doomed at Gallipoli to the playful insanity of Australian-rules
football. How can you not like a country whose trademark sport has
Attila-the-Hun rules, short pants and no padding -- a national passion
that makes American football look positively pastoral?

That bravery breeds affection in America for another reason as well.
Australia is the only country that has fought with the United States in
every one of its major conflicts since 1914, the good and the bad, the
winning and the losing.

Why? Because Australia's geographic and historical isolation has bred a
wisdom about the structure of peace -- a wisdom that eludes most other
countries. Australia has no illusions about the ``international
community'' and its feckless institutions. An island of tranquility in
a roiling region, Australia understands that peace and prosperity do
not come with the air we breathe, but are maintained by power -- once
the power of the British Empire, now the power of the United States.

Australia joined the faraway wars of early-20th-century Europe not out
of imperial nostalgia, but out of a deep understanding that its fate
and the fate of liberty were intimately bound with that of the British
Empire as principal underwriter of the international system. Today the
underwriter is America, and Australia understands that an American
retreat or defeat -- a chastening consummation devoutly, if secretly,
wished by many a Western ally -- would be catastrophic for Australia
and for the world.

When Australian ambassadors in Washington express support for the U.S.,
it is heartfelt and unalloyed, never the ``yes, but'' of the other
allies, perfunctory support followed by a list of complaints, slights
and sage finger-wagging. Australia understands America's role and is
sympathetic to its predicament as reluctant hegemon. That understanding
has led it to share foxholes with Americans from Korea to Kabul. They
fought with us at Tet and now in Baghdad. Not every engagement has
ended well. But every one was strenuous, and many quite friendless.
Which is why America has such affection for a country whose prime
minister said after 9/11, ``This is no time to be an 80 percent ally,''
and actually meant it. Charles Krauthammer

[Jack[_4_]]

>>Derek wrote: Now can we please stop this right wing, redneck, American
>>rhetoric and get back to gliding?

Hey dip****, who started this whole thing? Wake the hell up! You need a
good old-fashioned, right-wing, redneck boot up your @$$!

Practice what you preach, commie boy. Stick to soaring.

Again... What a moron.

Jack Womack
Hammermill wrote:
> Derek Copeland wrote:
> > Well at least we generally ran the British Empire in
> > a reasonably civilised manner, although I admit there
> > were a few blips in India. Most of our former colonies,
> > with the exception of yourselves, have remained voluntarily
> > in an organisation called the 'British Commonwealth'
> > and accept our Queen as nominal Head of State. These
> > include Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several
> > of the West Indian islands. I would suggest that these
> > are amongst the most civilised countries in the World.
> >
> >
> > The Gents below have only confirmed our view of Americans
> > as being loud, arrogant and rude! OK, I know most of
> > you are very nice.
> > The politics are starting to impinge on my flying,
> > as UK taxation has been significantly increased by
> > stealth (standard 'New Labour' tactic) to pay for armies
> > of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of
> > petrol and hence travel has also increased to record
> > levels. Wasn't one of the objectives of the Iraq War
> > to stop this happening?
> >
> > Derek Copeland
>
> WASHINGTON -- In the Australian House of Representatives last month,
> opposition member Julia Gillard interrupted a speech by the minister of
> health thusly: ``I move that that sniveling grub over there be not
> further heard.''
>
> For that, the good woman was ordered removed from the House, if only
> for a day. She might have escaped that little time-out if she had
> responded to the speaker's demand for an apology with something other
> than ``If I have offended grubs, I withdraw unconditionally.''
>
> God, I love Australia. Where else do you have a shadow health minister
> with such, er, starch? Of course I'm prejudiced, having married an
> Australian, but how not to like a country, in this age of sniveling
> grubs worldwide, whose treasurer suggests to any person who ``wants to
> live under sharia law'' to try Saudi Arabia and Iran, ``but not
> Australia.'' He was elaborating on an earlier suggestion that ``people
> who ... don't want to live by Australian values and understand them,
> well then they can basically clear off.'' Contrast this with Canada,
> historically and culturally Australia's commonwealth twin, where last
> year Ontario actually gave serious consideration to allowing its
> Muslims to live under sharia law.
>
> Such things don't happen in Australia. This is a place where, when the
> remains of a fallen soldier are accidentally switched with those of a
> Bosnian, the enraged widow picks up the phone late at night, calls the
> prime minister at home in bed and delivers a furious unedited rant --
> which he publicly and graciously accepts as fully deserved. Where
> Americans today sue, Australians slash and skewer.
>
> For Americans, Australia engenders nostalgia for our own past, which we
> gauzily remember as infused with John Wayne plain-spokenness and vigor.
> Australia evokes an echo of our own frontier, which is why Australia is
> the only place you can unironically still shoot a Western.
>
> It is surely the only place where you hear officials speaking plainly
> in defense of action. What other foreign minister but Australia's would
> see through ``multilateralism,'' the fetish of every sniveling foreign
> policy grub from the Quai d'Orsay to Foggy Bottom, calling it correctly
> ``a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving
> internationalism of the lowest common denominator''?
>
> And with action comes bravery, from the transcendent courage of the
> doomed at Gallipoli to the playful insanity of Australian-rules
> football. How can you not like a country whose trademark sport has
> Attila-the-Hun rules, short pants and no padding -- a national passion
> that makes American football look positively pastoral?
>
> That bravery breeds affection in America for another reason as well.
> Australia is the only country that has fought with the United States in
> every one of its major conflicts since 1914, the good and the bad, the
> winning and the losing.
>
> Why? Because Australia's geographic and historical isolation has bred a
> wisdom about the structure of peace -- a wisdom that eludes most other
> countries. Australia has no illusions about the ``international
> community'' and its feckless institutions. An island of tranquility in
> a roiling region, Australia understands that peace and prosperity do
> not come with the air we breathe, but are maintained by power -- once
> the power of the British Empire, now the power of the United States.
>
> Australia joined the faraway wars of early-20th-century Europe not out
> of imperial nostalgia, but out of a deep understanding that its fate
> and the fate of liberty were intimately bound with that of the British
> Empire as principal underwriter of the international system. Today the
> underwriter is America, and Australia understands that an American
> retreat or defeat -- a chastening consummation devoutly, if secretly,
> wished by many a Western ally -- would be catastrophic for Australia
> and for the world.
>
> When Australian ambassadors in Washington express support for the U.S.,
> it is heartfelt and unalloyed, never the ``yes, but'' of the other
> allies, perfunctory support followed by a list of complaints, slights
> and sage finger-wagging. Australia understands America's role and is
> sympathetic to its predicament as reluctant hegemon. That understanding
> has led it to share foxholes with Americans from Korea to Kabul. They
> fought with us at Tet and now in Baghdad. Not every engagement has
> ended well. But every one was strenuous, and many quite friendless.
> Which is why America has such affection for a country whose prime
> minister said after 9/11, ``This is no time to be an 80 percent ally,''
> and actually meant it. Charles Krauthammer

[Derek Copeland]

Jack,
You might like to know that I have received quite a
few supportive private e-mails from US citizens who
are as appalled as I am with recent US policies. Every
Yank I have met in Europe over the last two years has
apologised unreservedly for your President and Defence
Secretary.

It's your sort of 'Screw you, the USA is the best Goddam
country in the World' and 'Lets kick the 4rses of anyone
who disagrees with us' approach that gets the USA a
bad name.

I am neither a dipstick (my car engine has one though),
a moron, a pinko commie, nor a boy (being 60 years
old). Might I suggest that you learn some manners and
some humility!

Derek Copeland

P.S. I am coming to the conclusion that the UK is already
the 51st poodle State of American. We have just had
3 British employees of the NatWest bank, who have allegedly
committed a fraud entirely within the UK, extradited
to the US as part of the Enron proceedings. It is quite
likely that they will be imprisoned or required to
remain in the US on bail for some considerable period
of time, away from their homes and families, until
their case comes up. The extradition was carried out
under legislation intended for Terrorism offences!
I can't somehow imagine the US allowing their city
gents to be treated in this way! Some thanks for being
your allies.


At 00:42 14 July 2006, Jack wrote:
>
>Hey dip****, who started this whole thing? Wake the
>hell up! You need a
>good old-fashioned, right-wing, redneck boot up your
>@$$!
>
>Practice what you preach, commie boy. Stick to soaring.
>
>Again... What a moron.
>
>Jack Womack

[bumper]

Derek,

Why don't you put all your political drivel to bed? If you have something to
say about gliders, fine, otherwise please shut up.

thank you for your kind consideration,

bumper
"Derek Copeland" > wrote in
message ...
> Jack,
> You might like to know that I have received quite a
> few supportive private e-mails from US citizens who
> are as appalled as I am with recent US policies. Every
> Yank I have met in Europe over the last two years has
> apologised unreservedly for your President and Defence
> Secretary.
>
> It's your sort of 'Screw you, the USA is the best Goddam
> country in the World' and 'Lets kick the 4rses of anyone
> who disagrees with us' approach that gets the USA a
> bad name.
>
> I am neither a dipstick (my car engine has one though),
> a moron, a pinko commie, nor a boy (being 60 years
> old). Might I suggest that you learn some manners and
> some humility!
>
> Derek Copeland
>
> P.S. I am coming to the conclusion that the UK is already
> the 51st poodle State of American. We have just had
> 3 British employees of the NatWest bank, who have allegedly
> committed a fraud entirely within the UK, extradited
> to the US as part of the Enron proceedings. It is quite
> likely that they will be imprisoned or required to
> remain in the US on bail for some considerable period
> of time, away from their homes and families, until
> their case comes up. The extradition was carried out
> under legislation intended for Terrorism offences!
> I can't somehow imagine the US allowing their city
> gents to be treated in this way! Some thanks for being
> your allies.
>
>
> At 00:42 14 July 2006, Jack wrote:
>>
>>Hey dip****, who started this whole thing? Wake the
>>hell up! You need a
>>good old-fashioned, right-wing, redneck boot up your
>>@$$!
>>
>>Practice what you preach, commie boy. Stick to soaring.
>>
>>Again... What a moron.
>>
>>Jack Womack
>
>
>
>

[Hammermill]

Derek Copeland wrote:
> Jack,
> You might like to know that I have received quite a
> few supportive private e-mails from US citizens who
> are as appalled as I am with recent US policies. Every
> Yank I have met in Europe over the last two years has
> apologised unreservedly for your President and Defence
> Secretary.
>
> It's your sort of 'Screw you, the USA is the best Goddam
> country in the World' and 'Lets kick the 4rses of anyone
> who disagrees with us' approach that gets the USA a
> bad name.
>
Derek Copeland
>
> P.S. I am coming to the conclusion that the UK is already
> the 51st poodle State of American. Arf, Arf.
We have just had
> 3 British employees of the NatWest bank, who have allegedly
> committed a fraud entirely within the UK, extradited
> to the US as part of the Enron proceedings. It is quite
> likely that they will be imprisoned or required to
> remain in the US on bail for some considerable period
> of time, away from their homes and families, until
> their case comes up. The extradition was carried out
> under legislation intended for Terrorism offences!
> I can't somehow imagine the US allowing their city
> gents to be treated in this way! Some thanks for being
> your allies.

July 14, 2006
Has Bush or the World Changed?
About "Cowboy Diplomacy."
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

There is as much relief from realists as there is disappointment from
neo-Wilsonians over a perceived change in U.S. foreign policy - what
Time magazine clumsily dubbed "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy." It is
true that there is now a regrettable new quietism about promoting
democracy in the Middle East . And the United States also insists on
multiparty talks with the ghoulish regimes in North Korea and Iran , in
a fashion that purportedly seems much different from the go-it-alone
caricature of 2001/2.

But think hard: Has George Bush, or the world itself, changed in the
last five years?

One obvious difference from the first administration is the added
nuclear component to the most recent pressing crises. Taking out the
Taliban and Saddam Hussein did not involve an immediate threat of
nuclear retaliation. Preempting against North Korea does run such risk
- and perhaps very soon Iran will too. That requires a different
strategy.

The second change from the immediate past is oil. For most of the first
administration, the price of petroleum was around $20-$30 a barrel. We
are now well into the era of $60-$70, and the threat of constant
shortages.

This energy frailty has had two pernicious effects on U.S. foreign
policy. Our allies in Europe and Japan now view almost any American
initiative with Russia , the Middle East, or Latin America in terms of
the potential fallout on their own energy costs and supplies.

In addition, the consuming nations are now providing a windfall of
several hundred billion in extra profits to the likes of the House of
Saud, the Iranian theocrats, the Gulf Sheikdoms, Hugo Chavez, and
Vladimir Putin. Not only are some of these billions recycled in
nefarious ways in arms purchases and terrorist subsidies, but also the
intrinsic failures of theocracy, autocracy, and neo-Communism are
masked by such accidental largess.

Worse still, there is now a growing new relativist standard of
international behavior for roguish regimes: The degree to which a
non-democratic nation has either oil or nukes - or preferably both
- determines its perceived legitimacy. Any individual action the
United States now undertakes may spike oil prices, and thus endanger
the livelihood of its allies or neutrals while further subsidizing our
enemies.

A third difference is the fading memory of September 11 as we reach the
fifth anniversary of that mass murder. As the anger of the American
people subsides, weariness with the counter-response grows, and the
very human desire not to rock the boat permeates national life -
especially when we have not had, as predicted, another 9/11. It is hard
to keep reminding the American people for five years that we alone must
lead the world against the terrorists and their state sponsors.

So part of Mr. Bush's dilemma derives also from his very success. The
audacious removal of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban - coupled with
the killing of thousands of Islamic terrorists abroad, together with a
revolution in security procedures at home - have combined to prevent
another jihadist attack. Now in our complacence, we think our recent
safety was almost a natural occurrence rather than the result of
national sacrifice and an ordeal that must continue. And, again, such a
return to normalcy makes the lonely task of prompting reform in the
Middle East seem rather unnecessary, if not irrelevant.

Fourth, the rock has already been thrown into the Middle East pond, and
the ripples are still on the water. One can argue about the effects of
the Iraqi democracy on the larger Middle East - the Syrian withdrawal
from Lebanon, the about-face in Libya, democratic peeps in the Gulf, or
the end of the career of Dr. Khan - but the worst two governments are
now gone, and the Middle East is in flux dealing with the detritus of
these fallen regimes. Iraq is messy, but its chaos is no longer novel.
And for all the violence, its democratic government just keeps chugging
along, its enemies so far unable to derail it.

Fifth, the old lie that American bellicosity incited the Islamists has
been shattered by a series of events that have had nothing to with Iraq
.. The French riots, the threats to Danish and Dutch artists, the plot
to behead a Canadian prime minister, the Indian bombings, and on and
on, have combined to educate the world. The violence reminds everyone
that billions of Christians, Jews, Hindus, secularists, atheists, and
modernists are hated for reasons that have almost nothing to do with
U.S. efforts in Iraq . Therefore, allies are starting to renew their
cooperation with us, realizing that their studied distance from America
has brought them no reprieve. Moreover, the daily griping,
victimization, scapegoating, and violence of the Islamic Arab world,
whether directed against us in Iraq, or the Indians, Europeans, and
Russians, for many has had the aggregate effect of tiring people,
perhaps best characterized as a feeling like: "Forget them - they
are hopeless and not worth another American soldier, dollar, or
thought."

All these considerations apparently allow - or sometimes force -
the Bush administration to assume a supposedly less visible, more
multilateral profile. There is one important caveat, however.

What progress we have made since 9/11 - thousands of terrorists
killed, al Qaeda scattered, Europe galvanized about Islamism and
sobered about the consequences of its cheap U.S. rhetoric, Iran's
nuclear antics revealed, democracy birthed in the Middle East,
Palestinian radicals exposed for their fraud, the United Nations under
overdue scrutiny, America much better defended at home - all that
came as a result of an often unilateralist posture that risked global
alienation by challenging the easy appeasement of the rest of the
world. Nothing there to apologize for or change - but much
accomplished to be proud of.

Of course, it is possible, and perhaps even understandable, to coast
for a while and advisable to cool the rhetoric about bringing
democratic change through "smoking out" and hunting down terrorists
"dead or alive." But we shouldn't forget that the global village
gets back to normal only after a Shane or Marshall Will Cane is willing
to take on the outlaws alone and save those who can't or won't save
themselves. So, remember, when, to everyone's relief, such mavericks
put down their six-shooters and ride off into the sunset, the killers
often creep back into town.

©2006 Victor Davis Hanson

[Jack[_4_]]

Derek,

Please be so kind as to notice that I did not call you a dipstick,
rather, a DIP****. Please have the MANNERS to stop politicizing the
USA's holidays. I have not come across with your stated message of
"Screw you...etc." but since charged...SCREW YOU! All I have done is to
try to call attention to your MORONIC behavior. YOU started this
attack. YOU started this political BULL****! I am so glad that some
Americans have written their sympathies to you. That means they are
still free to do so without being censored. With that same freedom, let
me assure that you are quite happily on the ease side of the pond.
Please stay there and have the MANNERS to stop gouging verbally at the
United States on the soaring page. For your information, it is in fact
the best country, apparently not damned, but blessed by God, country in
th eworld.

Jack Womack
Hammermill wrote:
> Derek Copeland wrote:
> > Jack,
> > You might like to know that I have received quite a
> > few supportive private e-mails from US citizens who
> > are as appalled as I am with recent US policies. Every
> > Yank I have met in Europe over the last two years has
> > apologised unreservedly for your President and Defence
> > Secretary.
> >
> > It's your sort of 'Screw you, the USA is the best Goddam
> > country in the World' and 'Lets kick the 4rses of anyone
> > who disagrees with us' approach that gets the USA a
> > bad name.
> >
> Derek Copeland
> >
> > P.S. I am coming to the conclusion that the UK is already
> > the 51st poodle State of American. Arf, Arf.
> We have just had
> > 3 British employees of the NatWest bank, who have allegedly
> > committed a fraud entirely within the UK, extradited
> > to the US as part of the Enron proceedings. It is quite
> > likely that they will be imprisoned or required to
> > remain in the US on bail for some considerable period
> > of time, away from their homes and families, until
> > their case comes up. The extradition was carried out
> > under legislation intended for Terrorism offences!
> > I can't somehow imagine the US allowing their city
> > gents to be treated in this way! Some thanks for being
> > your allies.
>
> July 14, 2006
> Has Bush or the World Changed?
> About "Cowboy Diplomacy."
> by Victor Davis Hanson
> National Review Online
>
> There is as much relief from realists as there is disappointment from
> neo-Wilsonians over a perceived change in U.S. foreign policy - what
> Time magazine clumsily dubbed "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy." It is
> true that there is now a regrettable new quietism about promoting
> democracy in the Middle East . And the United States also insists on
> multiparty talks with the ghoulish regimes in North Korea and Iran , in
> a fashion that purportedly seems much different from the go-it-alone
> caricature of 2001/2.
>
> But think hard: Has George Bush, or the world itself, changed in the
> last five years?
>
> One obvious difference from the first administration is the added
> nuclear component to the most recent pressing crises. Taking out the
> Taliban and Saddam Hussein did not involve an immediate threat of
> nuclear retaliation. Preempting against North Korea does run such risk
> - and perhaps very soon Iran will too. That requires a different
> strategy.
>
> The second change from the immediate past is oil. For most of the first
> administration, the price of petroleum was around $20-$30 a barrel. We
> are now well into the era of $60-$70, and the threat of constant
> shortages.
>
> This energy frailty has had two pernicious effects on U.S. foreign
> policy. Our allies in Europe and Japan now view almost any American
> initiative with Russia , the Middle East, or Latin America in terms of
> the potential fallout on their own energy costs and supplies.
>
> In addition, the consuming nations are now providing a windfall of
> several hundred billion in extra profits to the likes of the House of
> Saud, the Iranian theocrats, the Gulf Sheikdoms, Hugo Chavez, and
> Vladimir Putin. Not only are some of these billions recycled in
> nefarious ways in arms purchases and terrorist subsidies, but also the
> intrinsic failures of theocracy, autocracy, and neo-Communism are
> masked by such accidental largess.
>
> Worse still, there is now a growing new relativist standard of
> international behavior for roguish regimes: The degree to which a
> non-democratic nation has either oil or nukes - or preferably both
> - determines its perceived legitimacy. Any individual action the
> United States now undertakes may spike oil prices, and thus endanger
> the livelihood of its allies or neutrals while further subsidizing our
> enemies.
>
> A third difference is the fading memory of September 11 as we reach the
> fifth anniversary of that mass murder. As the anger of the American
> people subsides, weariness with the counter-response grows, and the
> very human desire not to rock the boat permeates national life -
> especially when we have not had, as predicted, another 9/11. It is hard
> to keep reminding the American people for five years that we alone must
> lead the world against the terrorists and their state sponsors.
>
> So part of Mr. Bush's dilemma derives also from his very success. The
> audacious removal of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban - coupled with
> the killing of thousands of Islamic terrorists abroad, together with a
> revolution in security procedures at home - have combined to prevent
> another jihadist attack. Now in our complacence, we think our recent
> safety was almost a natural occurrence rather than the result of
> national sacrifice and an ordeal that must continue. And, again, such a
> return to normalcy makes the lonely task of prompting reform in the
> Middle East seem rather unnecessary, if not irrelevant.
>
> Fourth, the rock has already been thrown into the Middle East pond, and
> the ripples are still on the water. One can argue about the effects of
> the Iraqi democracy on the larger Middle East - the Syrian withdrawal
> from Lebanon, the about-face in Libya, democratic peeps in the Gulf, or
> the end of the career of Dr. Khan - but the worst two governments are
> now gone, and the Middle East is in flux dealing with the detritus of
> these fallen regimes. Iraq is messy, but its chaos is no longer novel.
> And for all the violence, its democratic government just keeps chugging
> along, its enemies so far unable to derail it.
>
> Fifth, the old lie that American bellicosity incited the Islamists has
> been shattered by a series of events that have had nothing to with Iraq
> . The French riots, the threats to Danish and Dutch artists, the plot
> to behead a Canadian prime minister, the Indian bombings, and on and
> on, have combined to educate the world. The violence reminds everyone
> that billions of Christians, Jews, Hindus, secularists, atheists, and
> modernists are hated for reasons that have almost nothing to do with
> U.S. efforts in Iraq . Therefore, allies are starting to renew their
> cooperation with us, realizing that their studied distance from America
> has brought them no reprieve. Moreover, the daily griping,
> victimization, scapegoating, and violence of the Islamic Arab world,
> whether directed against us in Iraq, or the Indians, Europeans, and
> Russians, for many has had the aggregate effect of tiring people,
> perhaps best characterized as a feeling like: "Forget them - they
> are hopeless and not worth another American soldier, dollar, or
> thought."
>
> All these considerations apparently allow - or sometimes force -
> the Bush administration to assume a supposedly less visible, more
> multilateral profile. There is one important caveat, however.
>
> What progress we have made since 9/11 - thousands of terrorists
> killed, al Qaeda scattered, Europe galvanized about Islamism and
> sobered about the consequences of its cheap U.S. rhetoric, Iran's
> nuclear antics revealed, democracy birthed in the Middle East,
> Palestinian radicals exposed for their fraud, the United Nations under
> overdue scrutiny, America much better defended at home - all that
> came as a result of an often unilateralist posture that risked global
> alienation by challenging the easy appeasement of the rest of the
> world. Nothing there to apologize for or change - but much
> accomplished to be proud of.
>
> Of course, it is possible, and perhaps even understandable, to coast
> for a while and advisable to cool the rhetoric about bringing
> democratic change through "smoking out" and hunting down terrorists
> "dead or alive." But we shouldn't forget that the global village
> gets back to normal only after a Shane or Marshall Will Cane is willing
> to take on the outlaws alone and save those who can't or won't save
> themselves. So, remember, when, to everyone's relief, such mavericks
> put down their six-shooters and ride off into the sunset, the killers
> often creep back into town.
>
> ©2006 Victor Davis Hanson