Pundits Archives
August 04, 2006
Hezbollah in Lebanon
Israel’s war with Hezbollah is not about the kidnapped soldiers or Katiushas. It is about Hezbollah’s attempt to remain a state within a state, and, along with Syria, to threaten Israel with missiles while Iran completes its nuclear armament. The rest can be easily imagined. And as long as there is no strategic change in Lebanon, starting with Hezbollah’s disarming and having international forces taking the control of the Lebanese-Syrian and Lebanese-Israeli borders, the bombings may give Israel some time, but will eventually transform Lebanon into an extension of Iran.
Walid Phares, in an interview, "Tehran & Damascus Move to Lebanon," An NRO Q&A, August 2, 2006
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October 27, 2005
Canadian health care
The Continental health and welfare systems John Kerry so admires are, in fact, part of the reason those societies are dying. As for Canada, yes, under socialized health care, prescription drugs are cheaper, medical treatment's cheaper, life is cheaper. After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It's a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene -- by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don't clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don't bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That's the official number. Unofficially, if you're over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to "old age" or some such and then "lose" the relevant medical records. Quebec's health system is a lot less healthy than, for example, Iraq's.One thousand Americans are killed in 18 months in Iraq, and it's a quagmire. One thousand Quebecers are killed by insufficient hand-washing in their filthy, decrepit health care system, and kindly progressive Americans can't wait to bring it south of the border. If one has to die for a cause, bringing liberty to the Middle East is a nobler venture and a better bet than government health care.
"No Time for Kerry's Europhile Delusions," by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, October 24, 2004
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October 21, 2005
"Who does Zarkowi fear the most - France, summiteers, or Marines?"
Ask yourself this: you’re a dictator who has violated the terms of a peace treaty over and over again, and frequently shoots at the planes enforcing the treaties. Who do you fear the most? A) The magnificent concert of allies in the UN, some of whom you’ve bought off, who are desperate to prove their legitimacy by prolonging the process into the 22nd centuryB) The United States, Britain and Australia, who have several hundred thousand troops on your border and frankly are in no mood to put up your crap any longer
What would you want in this situation? The answer starts with “S” and ends, five letters later, in "T."
So, I get it. We are wrong and bad and stupid and stupidly wrong-bad. We failed to make France act as though it wasn’t, you know, France, a militarily insignificant nation that is understandably motivated by self-interest, and we haven’t convened a summit so we could be castigated for ignoring the extralegal use of Israeli helicopters to turn Hamas kingpins into indistinct red smears. You’d think we nuked Paris and converted everyone to Lutheranism.
Here’s the thing. I’d really like to live in John Kerry’s world. It seems like such a rational, sensible place, where handshakes and signatures have the power to change the face of the planet. If only the terrorists lived there as well.
Who does Zarkowi fear the most - France, summiteers, or Marines?
If the rightness of a cause is measured by the number of one’s allies, would Britain have been right if the US had stayed neutral in World War Two?
And that’s what I felt after 30 minutes of the debate. If I’d stuck around for the whole thing, I think I’d be sleeping in the tool shed tonight, chewing on the old discarded Tiki torches. Now it’s time for a scotch and some TV; see you Monday. And thanks for reading this far. God knows I wouldn’t have. I do go on, don’t I. Alas and alack.
"Two consecutive boring days," Bleat by James Lileks, October 1, 2004
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August 22, 2005
13-year-olds can get abortions without parental consent but 18-year-olds are still "children" if they want to join the military ...
Ay caramba! Mark Steyn writes:
They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as "children." If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton's Oval Office, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee "child" who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing.I get many e-mails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes like she's auditioning for a minor supporting role in ''Sex And The City.''
The infantilization of the military promoted by the left is deeply insulting to America's warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd's purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that "of course" they "support our troops," because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.
"'Peace Mom's' marriage a metaphor for Dems," by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, August 21, 2005
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July 25, 2005
"Moral Poseurdom"
European countries now have attitudes in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their acting upon them. They're like my hippy-dippy Vermont neighbours who drive around with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers. Every couple of years, they trade in the Volvo for a Subaru, and painstakingly paste a new "Free Tibet" sticker on the back.What are they doing to free Tibet? Nothing. Tibet is as unfree now as it was when they started advertising their commitment to a free Tibet. And it will be just as unfree when they buy their next car and slap on the old sticker one mo' time. If Don Rumsfeld were to say, 'Free Tibet'? That's a great idea! The Third Infantry Division goes in on Thursday', all the 'Free Tibet' crowd would be driving around with 'War is not the answer' stickers. When entire nations embrace self-congratulatory holier-than-thou moral poseurdom as a way of life, it's even less attractive. The Belgians weren't half as insufferable when they were the German army's preferred shortcut to France.
"Do you want to sing Waterloo or fight it?" by Mark Steyn, August 17, 2004
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July 09, 2005
defense welfare
Like any other form of welfare, defence welfare is a hard habit to break and profoundly damaging to the recipient. The peculiarly obnoxious character of modern Europe is a logical consequence of Washington's willingness to absolve it of responsibility for its own security. Our Defence Editor, John Keegan, once wrote that "without armed forces a state does not exist".That's true in a certain sense. But, in another, for wealthy nations who've found a sugar daddy, it's marvelously liberating. You're able to preen and pose on the world stage secure in the knowledge that nobody expects you to do anything about it. Bret Stephens, the editor of the Jerusalem Post, opened his mail the other day and found a copy of something called "Conclusions of the European Council", a summary of the work done during the six months of the Irish Euro-presidency. He made the mistake of reading it.
"Do you want to sing Waterloo or fight it?" by Mark Steyn, August 17, 2004
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May 15, 2005
"The great Continental fatalistic shrug...."
Just over a year ago, in one of those wretched Security Council performances before the Gulf War, the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, turned to Colin Powell and offered the umpteenth variation of the familiar argument that, if we Europeans are resistant to ze idea of war, it is because we have seen so much of ze horrors of ze war. The reality is the other way round: the reason they’ve seen so much of the horrors of war is because they’re so resistant to the idea of it - until it’s too late and conflagration is all that’s left.If one had to cast the great Continental fatalistic shrug in a less jaded light, one would do it this way: the Second Republics and Third Empires, Fascists and Communists and European Unions come and go; they’re mere political forces. The ancient buildings, the old vineyards, the big stinky unpasteurised cheese your village has made for centuries and which the wimps at that Yankee Federal agency responsible for regulating all the taste out of American food won’t even let into the country: this is the essence of a man’s identity; the political fashions of the day come and go, but underneath you endure. By contrast, an American’s sense of himself as an American is much more explicitly political – it’s about First and Second Amendments, or, according to taste, a “woman’s right to choose”. The United States is a political project in a way that Spain – imperial, Fascist, monarchist, republican, pacifist, Euro-federalist, your-ideology-here-ist – isn’t.
They’re right in a way. For most Communist or Nazi foot-soldiers, the label was a flag of convenience. But that’s not true of the jihadi. And the tragedy for the Continent is that this time it’s their core identity that’s at stake. If you think that Spanish election result is a disgrace, look down the road two or three years, to the next election cycle, in France, Belgium, the Netherlands. In the US, psephologists speculate on the impact of Ralph Nader’s two or three per cent. Think about an election where 20% of the voters are a culturally unassimilated Muslim bloc. If Washington has a hard time getting any useful contribution to the war from Europe now, you do the math five years hence. The incompatible buddy-cop routine works in Starsky & Hutch, but America and Europe have stretched the formula way beyond breaking point. It can’t be put back together.
"Starsky and Putsch," by Mark Steyn, National Review, March 29, 2004
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May 09, 2005
"A rational sensible kindly peaceable world where evil can be regulated by pieces of paper and General Assembly votes."
Again, to repeat the point I’ve made in the last 3 years again and again: it’s not the dissent. It’s the thin, meretricious, self-satisfied quality of the dissent. This is like Tom Selleck giving an interview and saying, “Well, Americans are too stupid to see Clinton for what he is, and they can’t find Bosnia on a map, and the ones who can are all gay atheists, you know.” He'd be held up as a parochial idiot, but Maher's drivel resonates, because he is vibrating on the moonbat frequency. He's one step removed from the people who would see a mushroom cloud over Manhattan and blame it on Abu Ghraib. Ah well. These people will either have to prosper and live unmolested in a world they hate, or get the world they keenly seek. A rational sensible kindly peaceable world where evil can be regulated by pieces of paper and General Assembly votes. A world where "hope is on the way!" means that Kofi Annan has entered his private elevator.
The Bleat, by James Lileks, October 25, 2004
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