We can cry, "Peace, Peace," but there will be none.

Roger Simon's post on the shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle is somber and full of weltschmertz. Maybe that's just how I feel. I had hopes yesterday that Israel was really going to follow through to eliminate Hezbollah, but they seem to think that this is sufficient to make their point. Or maybe it's just too hard to keep attacking criminals who use civilians as shields.

It appears that the West, even Israel, lacks the determination to do what really must be done to solve this problem. More and more, I'm thinking of the prophecies in the Bible.

Can the melting pot work?

Michael Barone's new book sounds commonsensical, but unless we manage to get rid of the influence of the academic elite, media pundits, european-wannabes and liberal bien-pensants, it'll never be adopted. The whole liberal establishment, especially its grip on the Democrats, needs to be relegated to the same fringe as the Communists and the Libertarian Party. Small L libertarians, however, are likely to be the next major opposition to conservatives, because they will support causes that liberals support, except gun control, but which mainstream conservatives are not ready to embrace, such as gay marriage, legalizing drugs, and such. We may be in for multiple parties, but I doubt it. Either way, though, I think it would be better for the future of the melting pot than the current nanny party establishment. The real trick is going to be downsizing the bureaucracies that drive things like multiculturalism, minority privileges (as distinguished from civil rights), and the academic resentment of cultural disappearances. In short, I think a rebirth of Jacksonian values is needed.

Good Neologism

Nutroots. I like it.

What's not to like?

Reading this, about the U of Wisconsin's Professor Barrett, I'm led to wonder why we never see any positive stories about Muslims in the media. I mean, they're being treated unfairly, right? So why aren't we hearing about outreaches to other faiths, charitable projects, peace protests, etc.? It's a puzzlement.

Muslim women are definitely modest. I approve of that. They pray five times a day. They don't drink alcohol. Neither do I, but I don't smoke, chew or drink coffee either, but I do eat pork sometimes. From what I've seen of the ordinary people in Iraq, they seem to be people I'd have no trouble learning to like.

Maybe it's the pre-Muslim Arab tribal culture that has never really died out. The ideas of vengeance, honor killings, tribal loyalties, imperialism, etc, strike me as having been moderated somewhat by Islam, but the remnants of earlier ethnic cultural values and practices seem to be resurgent and explosive. As far as I can see, Islam properly applied, should produce a peaceful society, but the Arabs and other Asian peoples have been fighting and killing each other for thousands of years. I assume that if they were all Christians, they'd be killing each other in greater numbers than the Catholics and Protestants.

Surprise!

Hezbollah is surprised that, after they committed more acts of war at a time when Israel was being assaulted with homemade rockets from Gaza, Israel reacted strongly. Did they think they had some natural right to violate a nation's borders and launch rockets at them and kidnap and kill their citizens?

I'm all for giving these idiots more surprises. They really need to learn what superpower really means. Nobody in the U.S. or Israel wants to kill the innocent civilians, but when terrorists use them as shields, it has to be viewed as when healthy tissue is cut out remove a cancer. The people of Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza and the West Bank need to learn that tolerating terrorists in their midst is a good way to get your own family killed collaterally, and that these people are poison, and that they have targets on their backs. Anybody standing too close to them will be incinerated with them. We should be distributing photos of the site where Zarqawi died with the reminder that those who were there with him died in the same manner as he did.

War is a terrible thing. But when you start one, you should not be allowed to just call for a ceasefire when things get too painful. That's what General Sherman knew, and what we all need to understand and be committed to.

I want Lebanon to be free, peaceful and prosperous, but that won't happen as long as Hezbollah, Syria and the Iranians are allowed to use that country as a base from which to conduct warfare on Lebanon's neighbors and constituent groups. These people don't learn without shock and awe. If it worries you that our image will suffer with other nations, remember that they don't like us much anyway. Criticism is inevitable. In foreign policy, I would rather be feared than seen as a peacemaker of U.N. stripe.

Richard Cohen, of all people, seems to agree:

These calls for proportionality rankle. They fall on my ears not as genteel expressions of fairness, some ditsy Marquess of Queensberry idea of war, but as ugly sentiments pregnant with antipathy toward the only state in the Middle East that is a democracy. After the Holocaust, after 1,000 years of mayhem and murder, the only proportionality that counts is zero for zero. If Israel's enemies want that, they can have it in a moment.

Well said!

These folks seem to think that wars are supposed to be fair fights. And they claim that George W. Bush doesn't understand history!

PC or Not PC?

I thought this would be a big deal, until I remembered all the photos of Palestinian toddlers dressed up in imitation suicide bomber belts. If I were Israeli, I don't think I'd be too concerned that my children might grow up with a will to fight.