← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 5117 | Posts: 15 | Started: 2003-02-20
2003-02-20 11:09 | User Profile
[url=http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/printct20030219.shtml]http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthom...t20030219.shtml[/url]
Cal Thomas (back to story)
February 19, 2003
A time for war
If ever there was a "time for war " (Ecclesiastes 3:8), surely this is it. If the United Nations is to be taken seriously, the time is now for it to act. If the United Nations - founded on the dubious premise that flawed humanity can be perfected by flawed human beings - remains a toothless, clawless tiger, whose resolutions can be defied without consequence by the butcher of Baghdad, that body will implode in a chaotic downward spiral.
When President Woodrow Wilson sent his war message to Congress on April 2, 1917, he said "the right is more precious than peace. " Wilson, who would see his precious League of Nations crumble in the face of the reality of evil, was correct. Peace is a byproduct - a benefit - when evil is vanquished. The'90s were a peaceful dividend paid to the West from the defeat of the Soviet Union. Right defeated evil because there were those who were willing to risk a false "peace " for victory and real peace. Unfortunately, this nation was inattentive to new evils that are not only in the Middle East, but in our midst, and the threats we now face may be greater than those that confronted us during the Cold War.
If we must participate in the United Nations, which so often takes positions opposed to the United States and its interests, let us do so with open eyes. If Saddam Hussein is not a fit candidate for removal from power, who is? If his crimes against humanity are not sufficient grounds to try him before the court of world opinion, what crimes would be? Fearful nations simply embolden evil.
Last weekend, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched worldwide against war with Iraq. British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a group of his fellow Labor Party members in Glasgow, Scotland, "If there are 500,000 on the march, that is less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for. If there (are) 1 million, that is still less than the number of people who died in the wars he started. " Forget the Queen. God save Tony Blair!
Do all of those demonstrating, including the Hollywood elitists, care nothing for the carnage visited on innocent women, children and men by Saddam Hussein? Where is their humanity? What is the difference between them and other morally obtuse people who pass by a crime victim lying in the street because they do not wish to be involved? As the most powerful nation on Earth, do we not have some responsibility to protect the lives of others?
For a succinct indictment of what Saddam Hussein has wrought on this planet since he murdered his way to power in 1979, I recommend a new book by Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol called The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission (Encounter Books). The authors write: "(Saddam) has imprisoned, tortured, gassed, shot and bombed thousands upon thousands of his own subjects. He has launched wars of aggression against his neighbors and still seeks to dominate the Middle East. He has expended vast resources on the development of weapons of mass destruction. He is at once a tyrant, an aggressor and, in his own avowed objectives, a threat to civilization. "
With specificity reminiscent of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's chronicling of Soviet atrocities in The Gulag Archipelago, the authors detail the murder of children, the raping of women in front of their husbands and children, torture, dismemberment and inhuman prison conditions. They profile the maniacal dictator in ways that any sane person would say qualifies him as a blot on the human race and a candidate for extinction.
They indict nations and organizations that refuse to confront evil: "The debate over war with Iraq has shown that too many opinion makers, elected officials and others who guide the fortunes of the world's sole superpower have lost their capacity to identify evil and to act against it. Even when it stares them in the face. "
When evil is opposed, it can be defeated. This is history's lesson. But if the United Nations, France, Germany and those "peace activists " among us and overseas will "see no evil, " they are doomed to have history repeat itself in a new holocaust.
The time for debate is over. The time for Iraq's liberation is upon us. The time for more resolutions by the pathetic United Nations is long past. The time for war is now.
é2003 Tribune Media Services
2003-02-20 11:32 | User Profile
Il Ragno,
It is a coin toss to decide just who is more simpering and obsequious to the chosenites-- Sean Hannity or Cal Thomas. Perhaps one day they will move to Israel where they can serve their masters. After the Palestinians are expelled, someone will be needed to pick the fruit from the orchards.
**Do all of those demonstrating, including the Hollywood elitists, care nothing for the carnage visited on innocent women, children and men by Saddam Hussein? Where is their humanity? What is the difference between them and other morally obtuse people who pass by a crime victim lying in the street because they do not wish to be involved? **
Nope. I couldn`t care less about any of this, save preventing my own government from doing the same things here.
As the most powerful nation on Earth, do we not have some responsibility to protect the lives of others?
Once again, nope. Just because Cal is a guilt ridden shabbos goy who frets to himself that the U.S. didnt do enough to stop the "holocaust" by invading Germany in 1933 doesnt mean that I am. He sounds like one of those "blame America" crowd that he and his Neo-con buddies are always braying about.
**With specificity reminiscent of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's chronicling of Soviet atrocities in The Gulag Archipelago, the authors detail the murder of children, the raping of women in front of their husbands and children, torture, dismemberment and inhuman prison conditions. They profile the maniacal dictator in ways that any sane person would say qualifies him as a blot on the human race and a candidate for extinction. **
Yep, that sounds just like the I.D.F. and its allies in Lebanon under Sharon.
2003-02-20 11:49 | User Profile
Thomas - like his Jew masters - fails to grasp the simplest of truths. Which is surprising since I was always told psychology was a Jewish science.
Said truth being: the more rhetorical overkill you use to denigrate an opponent the more sympathy you engender for him. The way they go on and on and ON with their talk of the "monster", the "maniac", the "new Hitler", the "baby raper", the "Kurd gasser"......please. One more word and I'm starting the Saddam Hussein Fan Club, complete with an ID card, a snazzy patch, lick-em decals for your ten-speed bike and a parchment-paper certificate, suitable for framing.
Earth to Zion: when we say these things about [u]you[/u] - with documented proof 'n' footnotes even! - you guys bum rush your media platforms to laugh us off as psychologically-disturbed, cognitively-dissonant haters...and toothless sister-climbers consumed with jealousy of our Jewish betters besides.
So WHY on God's earth do you suppose we're gonna hear you use the same exact rhetoric about someone besides yourselves....nod sagely...and remark, "You know, Martha...these Jews and theur shabbas goyim make good sense!" It might've worked way back when but nobody can drink out of a bone-dry well...not even you guys.
Just do us all a favor and keep it up. Talk...talk....talk your way into the same cattle car and sulfur pit you always do. If there's one thing you can trust a Jew on, it's to always overplay his hand right off the cliff's edge. Please don't let us down now, fellas.
2003-02-20 16:35 | User Profile
Which is surprising since I was always told psychology was a Jewish science.
That would be psychoanalysis.
**Earth to Zion: when we say these things about you - with documented proof 'n' footnotes even! - you guys bum rush your media platforms to laugh us off as psychologically-disturbed, cognitively-dissonant haters...and toothless sister-climbers consumed with jealousy of our Jewish betters besides.
So WHY on God's earth do you suppose we're gonna hear you use the same exact rhetoric about someone besides yourselves....nod sagely...and remark, "You know, Martha...these Jews and theur shabbas goyim make good sense!" **
We have a regional disconnect here. In the South, there is no comprehension that Jews play a role in anything. Large numbers of college-educated Southerners believe every last word of the propaganda.
2003-02-20 18:28 | User Profile
Blessed Are the Warmakers? by Christopher Manion
I asked Cal Thomas a few months ago why so many Christians were so enthusiastic about war with Iraq, if the Pope was so resolutely against it.
He answered, "I have no idea."
You can say that again.
Mr. Thomas, normally a sensible man writing from an evangelical Christian point of view, has just announced that the biblical "Time for War" is at hand.
Invoking Woodrow Wilson, that most peaceable, honest, Christian creature, Thomas explains that "Peace is a byproduct - a benefit - when evil is vanquished."
Mr. Thomas is probably the most widely-syndicated Christian columnist in America. So he merits our attention. He is sounding a clarion call to those who regard him as their authority on political questions. He has now told them that evil can be vanquished, that it will only take one little war, and that, when it is over, we can have peace.
Now, Karl Marx believed that, but Jesus Christ didnââ¬â¢t, Augustine of Hippo didnââ¬â¢t, and certainly Pope John Paul II does not.
Which is another way of saying, "Hogwash!"
Since this disputed assumption about the nature of evil and peace constitutes the defective ingredient at the foundation of Mr. Thomasââ¬â¢s case, it begs a bit of belaboring.
Marx taught that the revolution (Lenin called it the "permanent revolution") would end with a version of heaven on earth, but only after the dictatorship of the proletariat, the last stage of history and Marxââ¬â¢s materialist counterpart of the Second Coming of Christ and the ensuing establishment of a new heaven and a new earth.
For Marx, "peace" would prevail after the emergence of "truly socialist man." Marx explains in his German Ideology that, in post-revolutionary society, there would be no exchange ââ¬â no longer would that original sin of the division of labor haunt us. We would all be "like Robinson Crusoe." And there would be peace. Evil (for Marx, the past) would be vanquished and the tension of history would be resolved.
Christ told us otherwise: Good men and bad men would cohabit the earth until the end times. The wheat and the tares would never be separated out from one another. There would be wars and rumors of wars. And Christ cautioned his apostles even further, in a warning fraught with political implications: "In the world you will have trouble, but be brave, for I have conquered the world." (John 16: )
Please note, for the record, that Christ said that He had already conquered the world, and still warned His apostles that they (and we) would have trouble in it. This might prove to be somewhat troubling indeed, to those who were hoping, with Mr. Thomas, to enjoy true peace if only we would embark on this one manageable little world war in the Middle East first.
Mr. Thomas dismisses that knotty problem, however, with his discovery of two new godlings who redefine evil in a nice, manageable, human sort of way, and, en passant, rearrange human nature altogether. Embracing their treatise that redefines good and evil, Mr. Thomas announces: "Listen Up, Christians! Evil can be conquered, even without the United Nations!"
It comes as no surprise, alas, that these sources of the new definitions of good and evil are Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol. I refer to them as godlings to be consistent with the words of temptation in Genesis, "You shall be as gods, knowing the difference between good and evil." In their new ordering of good and evil, Mr. Thomas finds sufficient justification (note: I did not say "argument") to condemn entire nations, dehumanize millions of people, elevate to semi-divinity those who agree with him, and reject out of hand any rational discourse, all in 800 words.
Quite a feat, to be sure.
For Mr. Thomas, "peace" is the good to be sought here. And it is fair to say that his argument implies that peace is the absence of Saddam. Like Thomas Hobbes, Mr. Thomas has, for this occasion, set aside the pursuit of the summum bonum, the traditional goal of a thoughtful, spiritual life within western civilization, and replaced it with the pursuit of the elimination of a summum malum, which (for the moment) is Saddam.
How evil is evil? "(Saddam) has imprisoned, tortured, gassed, shot and bombed thousands upon thousands of his own subjects. He has launched wars of aggression against his neighbors and still seeks to dominate the Middle East. He has expended vast resources on the development of weapons of mass destruction. He is at once a tyrant, an aggressor and, in his own avowed objectives, a threat to civilization."
Now a quick look back on the history of the past hundred years might find dozens of tyrants who meet these criteria. Some of those tyrants have been our allies (Stalin). Some of them we have embraced as "strategic counterweights" to our enemies (Mao). Some of them Madeline Albright has danced for (Kim Jong Il). And dozens of them have gone on killing and raping without the United States lifting a finger to stop them.
But what specific difference have the godlings found that makes Saddam the unique crucible of evil whose defeat will bring on that post-eschatological peace?
Well, Mr. Thomas doesnââ¬â¢t say.
Instead, he smears anyone who would disagree.
Mr. Thomas has declared for war. Fine. But he doesnââ¬â¢t stop there. He has given this war a power that is not only historic, but transcendental. While Christ cautioned us that true salvation and peace were possible only in the afterlife, Mr. Thomas now unites himself with the authority of the godlings on the nature of good and evil. Prophetically proclaiming that now is the "Time for War" of Ecclesiastes 3:8, he bypasses the New Testament and embraces the worldview of the godlings instead.
While rational persons might conclude that Saddam is like a lot of other bad guys, past and present, the godlings reject such an approach, for fear, perhaps, that it will impose the normal, civilized limits of human conduct on what must be an unlimited effort. The concept of such limits can be found as far back as Aristotle, but emerge as a central theme in in Augustine and in the Founding Fathers. The ideological campaign to eradicate the summum malum, on the other hand, has no limits because the Manichaean evil itself is unlimited, and must be met on its own ground.
Our constitutional order imposes limits on the warmaking power of the president. Those limits have been ignored. The doctrine of just war imposes limits on the warmaking power of civilized rulers. Those limits have been dismissed in a breathtaking exercise of "situation ethics" by those in the philosophical community one would least expect to do so.
When such limits are broken, those who break them know better than to appeal to the authority of the constitution, or the doctrine, they are breaking. Instead, they humbly claim the authority of Divine Providence, whose power is unlimited, and who conveniently confers upon the self-designated recipient a generous dollop of power that is normally the province of the Almighty, the exercise of which by mere men is normally illegal and immoral but not in this case because God is smiling upon us and upon our efforts.
Care to disagree? Be careful. The back of the hand of Mr. Thomas is coming your way, and right behind it is the tide of history.
Mr. Thomas praises the godlings for their wholesale condemnation, including dehumanization, of anyone who disagrees with them: "They indict nations and organizations that refuse to confront evil," he cheers. He applauds their attempt to reduce those who disagree to the level of barbarian vermin: "The debate over war with Iraq has shown that too many opinion makers, elected officials and others who guide the fortunes of the worldââ¬â¢s sole superpower have lost their capacity to identify evil and to act against it. Even when it stares them in the face," they announce, and Mr. Thomas nods.
After dehumanizing Saddam, the godlings find it convenient to dehumanize everyone else who disagrees with them. Uncivilized, to be sure, but effective.
Note what is happening here: the gnostic assumption of a power that God Himself does not exercise (the removing of the rational intellect from his creatures), at odds with the Gospel and claiming a superiority to it, blithely relegates anyone who disagrees with them to the realm of the subhuman. The standard of the godlings is so perfect that it need not even be subject to rational discussion or to reflection in the light of Scripture. In fact, to subject it to such discussion would be a perverse indulgence in consorting with barbarians who have no capacity to perceive evil, recognize it for what it is, or to act upon it. Mr. Thomas, his anchor now long gone, glides effortlessly far to the left of the most extreme of the liberation theologians ââ¬â and Iââ¬â¢m sure, if discussion were permitted, it would come to him as quite a surprise.
Donââ¬â¢t bother. Mr. Thomas is busily cheering the death of rational discourse. Being a good Christian, he does not want actively to endorse the dehumanization of large parts of the human race, he just wants to embrace its consequences. "The time for debate is overââ¬Â¦ The time for war is now!" Enquote.
But Mr. Thomas ignores the truth that is staring him in his face: The language he applauds here is clearly non-Christian; in fact, it is Hegelian. Not only does it claim to be the new source of good and evil, it even endows the godlings with the authority to dispense justice, as they gaily "indict" entire countries, organizations, and even public officials because it appears these barbarians disagree with them. The gnostic conceit is palpable: if you disagree with us, you have "lost your capacity to identify evil and to act against it." First the verdict, then the trial. We godlings are above it all. Bombs away.
This approach nicely dehumanizes the entire array of opposition to the war on Iraq, and the beauty of it ââ¬â and its neo-Marxist character ââ¬â is that it does so without any allowance for rational discussion! So, in asserting that they and those who agree with them are the only truly human actors left, they contemptuously deny reason, rational discussion, and civilized discourse to the rest of what used to be humanity. Talk about the end of history!
Karl Marx, in his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, declared that "heretofore philosophy has only interpreted the world. The point is, to change it." I can find no indication that Mr. Thomas and the godlings have any problem with Marx in this regard.
In contrast to Mr. Thomasââ¬â¢s succumbing to "The Closing of the American Mind," a most unexpected invitation to rational discourse appeared on the same day as Mr. Thomasââ¬â¢s denial of rationality. While many of his fellow evangelicals see Israelââ¬â¢s role in the conflict as their ticket for a front-row seat at Armageddon, Mr .Thomas avoids even the mention of Israel in his call for war. But former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski defies Mr. Thomasââ¬â¢s prohibition of rational discourse, and invites a closer look at the role of Israel. In fact, he calls for more discussion all around, and insists that it focus on (of all things) the questions that Mr. Thomas and the godlings and many other fervent supporters of the war have gone to such great lengths to avoid:
"In addition, the manner in which the United States defined its "war on terrorism" has struck many abroad as excessively theological ("evildoers who hate freedom") and unrelated to any political context. The evident reluctance to see a connection between Middle Eastern terrorists and the political problems of the Middle East fueled suspicions that the United States was exploiting the campaign against terrorism largely for political and regional ends. Moreover, the increasingly shrill but unsubstantiated efforts to connect Iraq with al Qaeda have also given rise to the question of whether that alleged (or emerging) linkage is the reason for U.S. policy or, increasingly, the result of it.
Matters have not been helped by the evident, if unstated, endorsement by President Bush of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharonââ¬â¢s notions of how to deal with both the Palestinians and the region as a whole. The European press has commented more widely than the U.S. press on the striking similarity between current U.S. policies in the Middle East and the recommendations prepared in 1996 by several American admirers of Israelââ¬â¢s Likud Party for the then-prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
That these admirers are now occupying positions of influence in the administration is seen as the reason the United States is so eager to wage war against Iraq, so willing to accept the scuttling of the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and so abrupt in rejecting European urgings for joint U.S.-European initiatives to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians."
So many unsubstantiated efforts, so many striking similarities, so many troublesome questions.
But donââ¬â¢t bother Mr. Thomas with such nettlesome distractions. Itââ¬â¢s time for the war!
February 20, 2003
Christopher Manion [send him mail] writes from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. He avoids Marlyland whenever possible.
Copyright é 2003 LewRockwell.com
[url=http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/manion14.html]http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/manion14.html[/url]
2003-02-20 18:30 | User Profile
Originally posted by Sertorius@Feb 20 2003, 06:32 ** It is a coin toss to decide just who is more simpering and obsequious to the chosenites-- Sean Hannity or Cal Thomas. **
Sert, I'd have to add the Jezebel Ann Coulter to that distinguished list of mindless Talmudist shriekers.
2003-02-20 18:50 | User Profile
Thanks IR for the heapin,' helpin' dose of nausea this piece gave me right at lunchtime. [img]http://forum.originaldissent.com/style_images/1/icon8.gif[/img]
2003-02-20 21:46 | User Profile
Cal Thomas like so many of his kind ducked and ran from his opportunity to display his hostility to godless communism. Be assured, he is more than willing to have others do the necessary dirty work and die if necessary. No wonder Jews like him.
Among the defenders of Dan Quayle in the press was the columnist, Cal Thomas. Thomas, who had worked for the evangelist Jerry Falwell, thought that Quayle may have had the same doubts about the war in 1969 that Thomas had in 1965. Thomas called Quayle's decision to serve in the National Guard morally understandable and defensible. Some time later in 1992 when commenting on Bill Clinton's decision to evade the draft, Mr. Thomas wrote that some children of '60s who said they were morally opposed to the Vietnam War were "no doubt cowards masquerading as men of principle". Mr. Thomas remembered blacks, poor mountain men from West Virginia and backwoodsmen from Arkansas who went through basic training in the army with him and thought these young men did not want to fight and possibly die. Yet, these men had guts, and they trained and went. This appeal to patriotic impulses must be balanced by something Mr. Thomas had revealed about himself. [color=blue]Mr. Thomas during his army service had received orders to Vietnam, but rather than accept them as a good patriot should, Mr. Thomas pulled strings and saw an officer who pulled him off orders to Vietnam. [/color] One felt entitled to wonder if Mr. Thomas should not have felt any pangs of conscience or desire to blurt unpopular truths especially after exposure to Jerry Falwell.
2003-02-20 21:53 | User Profile
Originally posted by edward gibbon@Feb 20 2003, 21:46 ** [color=blue]Mr. Thomas during his army service had received orders to Vietnam, but rather than accept them as a good patriot should, Mr. Thomas pulled strings and saw an officer who pulled him off orders to Vietnam.ÃÂ [/color] **
Thanks EG; Thomas spoke in our town (and is due back next month) and gave everyone the impression he was a combat vet.
The late great Mike Royko coined the term "War Wimps" for men like this; those who shirked their own chance at duty but are only too happy to goad other men into doing what they did not.
2003-02-20 22:38 | User Profile
When President Woodrow Wilson sent his war message to Congress on April 2, 1917, he said "the right is more precious than peace. " Wilson, who would see his precious League of Nations crumble in the face of the reality of evil, was correct. Peace is a byproduct - a benefit - when evil is vanquished.
I remain astounded that someone who self-identifies as a conservative would favorably quote Wilson and endorse his crusading idealism. There is truly no meaningful difference anymore between "mainstream" cons and liberals when it comes to foreign policy.
I'm so sick of these Cal Thomas types who think the United States is the chosen instrument of God to forcibly impose its will on the world, in the name of something as nebulous as eradicating "evil" (an impossible task, as xmetalhead's post suggests).
Sadly, for all Americans, it seems this lesson will not be learned beforehand at the intellectual level, but at the physical and practical level in the International School of Hard Knocks. Americans are just thick these days, and that won't be cured until they get enough slaps upside the head. 9/11 apparently wasn't a hard enough slap, so more instructive lessons are no doubt coming. One day, maybe soon, the U.S. will overreach and get its rear-end kicked. I'll be one of the ones honest enough to say to them, "I told you so," even though the kosher patriots out there will no doubt think it's in "bad taste" to do so in the face of such a tragic event.
2003-02-21 04:41 | User Profile
Originally posted by wintermute@Feb 20 2003, 22:34 **And remember: Don't let THEM immanentize the eschaton.
**
2003-02-23 19:01 | User Profile
Originally posted by xmetalhead@Feb 20 2003, 12:30 ** > Originally posted by Sertorius@Feb 20 2003, 06:32 ...Sert, I'd have to add the Jezebel Ann Coulter to that distinguished list of mindless Talmudist shriekers. **
Sert, you're on the money when it comes to Coulters knee bending to the matzoh lobby. Very disappointing in that I have admired her for some time and agree with almost everything she says - her latest book, "Slander" is a great read. I suspect that her views on israel, etc. may be a bit more in line with ours, but she dare not utter them too loudly lest Meyer forever ban her from the airwaves that he own and controls. Even the angels must tread softly at times.
2003-02-23 19:28 | User Profile
I am not so sure that Coulter should be let off the hook so easily, OPERA. Granted, her support for Israel and her general neo-con warhawking may be the dues one has to pay, but, then again, several of her columns were gratuitous and a specific case in point is her shrill and hysterical piece "Bomb France". No, she didn't mean it literally, but the creepy freepers and their ideological compatriots certainly pounced on it with adoration.
2003-02-23 21:34 | User Profile
Originally posted by Phillip Augustus@Feb 23 2003, 14:28 ** .....a specific case in point is her shrill and hysterical piece "Bomb France".ÃÂ No, she didn't mean it literally, but the creepy freepers and their ideological compatriots certainly pounced on it with adoration. **
Phillip, I believe Coulter and all other neocons are now tres serieux about bombing France. Coulter's shrill "Bomb France" article, which we though was some kind of sarcastic joke months and months ago, was in fact an attempt to warm up the sheeple to what was to become a Franco-bashing-festival only the neocons could dream up. Je pense que oui! When a lemminghood majority in the USA renames French fries and French toast as "freedom fries" and "egg on bread", the Coulterites seem to have achieved their sick goal. C'est degoutant!
2003-02-24 04:50 | User Profile
Coulter is only sticking up for her tribe, unlike Thomas who sells his people out.