On 15 Jan 2003 at 19:59, Robert Seeberger wrote: > John le Carr� > > > > America has entered one of its periods of historical > madness, > but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse > than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous > than the Vietnam War.
I'd compare it, actually, to the era of prohibition. America...is looking inwards. I felt that it would happen under Bush, but 9/11 has caused it to to be more extreme and sudden than I was expecting. The idea...of an iron wall in cyberspace between America and most of the rest of the world is no longer so laughable a notion. Quite a few sites now have pages which you have to clickthrough "I am not American" to get to, to cover them against American laws and the American courts. > have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the > freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being > systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and *snorts* I never quite saw the "freedoms", but I agree civil liberties are being erroded. > The religious cant that will send American troops into > battle is > perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has > an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. It's because - IMO - you have a supposedly clean split between government and religion. The topic *CAN'T* become a mainstream issue "because there's a split". It's admitedly not so much an issue in the UK, but in Israel's it is perhaps *the* issue. Perhaps moreso than the Palestians, but that's another story. > In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the > ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating > them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that "somebody" was > Saddam. Hence Bush Jr's cry: "That man tried to kill my Daddy." But > it's still not personal, this war. It's still necessary. It's still > God's work. It's still about bringing freedom and democracy to > oppressed Iraqi people. Yes, and Yonnie Netenyaho (sp) was killed at Entebee, and world opinion is currently casting Benjamin Netenyaho - his brother - as a potential peacemaker in the current political enviroment if he becomes Prime Minister of Israel again. The press are like that. > Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its > neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass I'm not even gonna TOUCH this. With a bargepole. > The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair's part in > all > this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. > He can't. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. > Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can't > get out. He's a weasel. Allways has been. > It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has > talked > himself against the ropes, neither of Britain's opposition leaders can > lay a glove on him. But that's Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: Actually, the lib dems ARE knocking chunks out the Labout vote. The conversatives showing is, admitedly, pathetic. > Blair's worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he > will > drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had > ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more > democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. > By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and > the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke > unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos > in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign > policy. Welcome to "cleaning up the mess which America created in the first place when they backed Saddam versus Iran". Deal with it. > There is a middle way, but it's a tough one: Bush dives in > without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the > special relationship. I'd be PERFECTLY happy with that, frankly. > I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head > prefect's > sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties > about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can't explain is how > he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault > on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf Yes, we'd be better off hitting Syria to hurt terrorism. I agree. *shrugs* You can't give a madman a gun and expect him not to use it. We should NEVER have stopped before Bagdad in the Gulf War. Andy Dawn Falcon _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
