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[zenith-nadir]

Maybe we can call them klingons next week just for some variety?

It seems you take issue with characterizing the people involved in the semi-civil war - Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades vs the PA - as "Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax". I am curious why you are defending their "honor"? The members of the PA, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades are the ones who have turned Gaza and the West Bank into a battlezone. They are responsible for the killings, kidnappings, lawlessness and anarchy. They are the ones killing Palestinians...that is when they are not killing Israelis. I just don't understand why you take exception with calling them "Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax".

Everyone knows not all Palestinians are "Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax"...for not all Palestinians are combatants or members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades. Those Palestinians are hostage to the whims of the PA and the "Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax". Hell...Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades are as close to "Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax" as one can get without actually being a "Silastic Armorfiend of Striterax".

I mean think about it.., they are killing each other for the right to take control in order to continue killing Israelis...(that is the goal of Hamas and Islamic Jihad - to destroy Israel)...and the Palestinian Authority excuse for not being able to control the situation is it doesn't have enough w-e-a-p-o-n-s? Huh? Aren't they all suppose to be on the same side? Aren't they all Palestinian? So you have to admit that all those parties are acting exactly like the "Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax".

 

[BPSCG]

Because you want to have a stake in the outcome.

What, so whichever thug comes out on top likes me? News flash: We've (unfortunately) supported lots of thugs, and none of them ever let their affection for us get in the way of pursuing whatever they perceived to be in their best personal interests.

I know you've been told this time and again, but I'll say it again: Read Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy. You've castigated the US for supporting thugocracies; you may be surprised to find that you and Sharansky agree on that score.

Now, explain why it's okay for the US to support one thug or the other in Palestine, but nowhere else in the world.

The rathole has indeed had american money poured into it. Where do you think it has gone

If I knew that, Mrs. Arafat would pay me a king's ransom for the information.

As for my alleged "bigotry", please tell me how this description of the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax doesn't sound like the various Palestinian factions:What part of our world does that sound like to you? Sweden? Italy?
Australia?

Maybe we can call them klingons next week just for some variety?

No, that's not a good comparison. Ther Klingons are (were? will be?) brutal, but they know how to build things as well as destroy them, and they don't (didn't? won't?) kill each other and destroy their own property.

Can we take this back to basics maybe? Do you support the separation of Church and state?

Huh?

Are you competing in the Wildest Derail of the Month contest?

 

[LeFevre]

From Orwell's (or Ex Lion Tamer or whoever the poster is) sig I think it would be hard for someone to tell when he is being serious or when he is trolling.

If I was dumb enough, I would actually try to engage you in a constructive debate.

But I have lurked long enough on this board to know that that would be a pointless exercise.

So I'll just keep on being annoying.

 

[zenith-nadir]

It needs more support than Hamas if you want it to come out on top of Hamas...do you? Or don't you care as long as turmoil continues to help you make continued Israeli occupation look like the best answer.

Allow me to provide you with an example of how the PA fights terrorism today.

Mideast Knot: One Map, Many Paths - October 14, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/14/international/middleeast/14mideast.html

JERUSALEM, Oct. 13 - At their first summit meeting last February, at Sharm el Sheik, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon complained loudly to Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian president, about the Palestinian Authority's self-defeating lassitude about terrorism.

Mr. Sharon described the case of Hasan al-Madhoun, a Gazan and former member of the Palestinian preventive security forces who was responsible, the Israelis said, for organizing a suicide bombing at Ashdod in March 2004. Mr. Sharon asked Mr. Abbas to "at least make a start," and provided Mr. Madhoun's Gaza address. Mr. Abbas promised to arrest him within 48 hours, Israeli officials said.

More than 48 days later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, pressed by Mr. Sharon, again raised the case of Mr. Madhoun to Mr. Abbas. Again, he promised an arrest. This time, Mr. Madhoun was called into a police station and spent the evening using his cellphone. He left the next day.

Then, in June, the Israelis say, Mr. Madhoun recruited a Gazan woman receiving burn treatment at Soroka hospital to blow it up as a suicide bomber. The woman was caught trying to leave Gaza, with a permit to visit the hospital and explosives attached to her underclothes.

The story, confirmed by Palestinian officials, may seem self-serving for the Israelis to tell. But it is a serious factor in the loss of confidence that both Israel and the United States have in the ability of Mr. Abbas to show strong leadership in the face of threats to his own rule.

So please the fool, the "we don't have enough weapons" or "we don't have enough support" or "we don't have enough fill-in-the-blank-here" are the same excuses we've heard out of the Palestinian Authority for years. Here is a clear-cut case - confirmed by Palestinian officials - where everyone knew that Hasan al-Madhoun - a terrorist - should have been arrested by the PA. Abbas knew, Rice knew and Sharon knew. The difference is you buy the PA's farcical and endess excuses while I do not.

 

[a_unique_person]

No, that's not a good comparison. Ther Klingons are (were? will be?) brutal, but they know how to build things as well as destroy them, and they don't (didn't? won't?) kill each other and destroy their own property.
Huh?

This from the country with one of the bloodiest civil wars in history.

 

[BPSCG]

This from the country with one of the bloodiest civil wars in history.

Just when I think there might be hope for you (in the thread about writing perfect laws), you write something as silly as this.

Yeah, for four years of our history, we killed each other, in a large part over the issue of whether it was proper for light-skinned men to own dark-skinned ones as property. We died, in terrible numbers, so that other men might be free.

The other 225 years have been spent building schools, factories, roads, cities...

Your comment makes as much sense as comparing a horse chesnut with a chesnut horse.

 

[a_unique_person]

Just when I think there might be hope for you (in the thread about writing perfect laws), you write something as silly as this.

Yeah, for four years of our history, we killed each other, in a large part over the issue of whether it was proper for light-skinned men to own dark-skinned ones as property. We died, in terrible numbers, so that other men might be free.

The other 225 years have been spent building schools, factories, roads, cities...

Your comment makes as much sense as comparing a horse chesnut with a chesnut horse.

Killed a lot of people, and the reverbrations were still being felt a hundred years later.

No, it's not directly comparable, but it appears to me that all the faults they have (and they have a few, don't they), are not unique to them.

 

[Melendwyr]

Yeah, for four years of our history, we killed each other, in a large part over the issue of whether it was proper for light-skinned men to own dark-skinned ones as property. We died, in terrible numbers, so that other men might be free.

Actually, the appropriateness of slavery was only a minor factor, and mostly one introduced late in the war and after it. The Civil War was more about the rights of states vs. the federal authorities, the economics of factories vs. resource agriculture, and a cultural divide.

If we are to honor the cause of emancipation because men died for that cause, why do we not honor the cause of enslavement because men died for that cause? If the sacrifice of countless lives sanctifies one cause, why not the other?

 

[BPSCG]

Actually, the appropriateness of slavery was only a minor factor, and mostly one introduced late in the war and after it. The Civil War was more about the rights of states vs. the federal authorities, the economics of factories vs. resource agriculture, and a cultural divide.

The Civil War had a great many causes, some of which you've touched on. But to say that slavery "was only a minor factor" is ridiculous. Many of the issues you mention - state rights vs. federal authority, cultural divisions - still exist today, but somehow we're not shooting at each other. The idea of secession was never seriously considered until the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought about the end of the Missouri Compromise - both acts which dealt with the issue of slavery. Southerners reacted with horror at John Brown's raid, convinced that northerners would, forcibly, if necessary, take away their slaves, and most historians mark Brown's 1859 raid as the event that made secession inevitable. Lincoln became a national figure in 1858 when he ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Illinois's US senate seat; he lost, but his forceful stand against the expansion of slavery into the territories (he never demanded its abolition, hoping that it would somehow wither and die through economic forces) made him anathema in the south, where he wasn't even on the ballot in the 1860 presidential election. The southern states seceded, in large part because of the fear that their "peculiar institution" would sooner or later be legislated out of existence by the more populous northern states. Yes, there were other causes, but it's ridiculous to claim that slavery was only a minor issue.

To be sure, that wasn't the primary reason for fighting, from the north's perspective, at the beginning of the war; the stated purpose was to save the union. Lincoln knew that a lot of northerners would not support a war "to free the n!ggers." But there's no doubt that ending slavery became one of its primary purposes before the war ended. It happened on January 1, 1863.

If we are to honor the cause of emancipation because men died for that cause, why do we not honor the cause of enslavement because men died for that cause? If the sacrifice of countless lives sanctifies one cause, why not the other?

Because the cause of enslaving men is utterly opposed to the principles on which this country is established. You are positing a false premise in claiming that the sacrifice of countless lives sanctifies a cause; it's the justice of a cause that sanctifies it - not how many men died for it.

This is a major derail and I'm not going to discuss it further here. If you want to discuss it in the history forum, please take it there. I probably won't join you, as I've already discussed this to death with others and own more books about The Late Unpleasantness than most people own about everything, but you'll certainly find others willing to discuss it. Ask for Hutch when you get there - tell him I sent you.

 

[Melendwyr]

The Civil War had a great many causes, some of which you've touched on. But to say that slavery "was only a minor factor" is ridiculous. Many of the issues you mention - state rights vs. federal authority, cultural divisions - still exist today, but somehow we're not shooting at each other.

In an age of mass communications, transcontinental shipping, mass transit, and similar developments, it's virtually impossible for a region of the country to develop sufficient cultural differences and divisions of loyalty for it to attempt splitting off.

The North did not fight the war for the purpose of freeing the slaves, although that proved to be an effective rallying idea during the later war. The South did not fight the war because they loved the idea of slavery, although I'm sure many poor whites couldn't stand the idea that blacks would no longer be in a socially inferior position to them, but because their agrarian economic structure and cultural institutions could not survive without it. The North could afford to abolish slavery due to its heavy industrialization and rail networks. In addition, regional autonomy was much more popular in the South than the city-rich, crowded North.

If we don't understand what forces created the turmoil a hundred and forty years ago, we won't be able to grasp the forces behind today's conflicts, either.

 

[webfusion]

 

[davefoc]

My apologies for a brief digression to this thread but I believe this after the fact notion that somehow the principle issue of the American civil war was something other than slavery is a great slander. It is something dreamed up by pseudo intellectuals to try to figure out how a great moral cause was some sort of commerce oriented sleaze.

This is not something where the evidence is close and reasonable people can disagree. The evidence is overwhelming that slavery was the principle issue leading to the civil war. The union had narrowly survived more than once as compromises were found at the last moment that kept it together. It was a key issue right at the beginning that threatened to prevent the adoption of the constitution. When the civil war began look at what the various confederate governors said in their justifications. Most if not all considered property rights (meaning the right to own slaves) the key issue. Further read some of Lincoln's statements on slavery. It is no accident that he is often listed as one of the most outstanding American presidents. Lincoln's elequent speeches were leading the nation in the direction of a consensus that slavery was a great moral wrong.

Of course there were other issues, but even lumped together it is unlikely they would have led to the civil war.

 

[davefoc]

My apologies, webfusion. This will be my last derail. I wanted to disagree with those who earlier in the thread had accused ZN of being a troll or at least engaging in troll like behavior. This accusation is always tricky because the word means something different to each person that uses it, but IMHO, ZN is not a troll by any reasonable definition.

ZN makes a lot of posts about the violence endemic with the Palestinians and he makes a lot of posts about the difficulties they are having with self government.

I believe he does that in support of his view that those of us who are critical of Israel's policies don't understand that if Israel abandoned its expansionist policies that peace, happiness and democracy would not all of a sudden spring up in the Palestinian areas.

I think for the most part this is based on a misunderstanding of the views of those of us who have opposed the Israeli expansionist policies and the American subsidy thereof. I for one would be very suprised (but pleasantly so) if all of a sudden Palestinian self governed areas achieved peace and stability. Violent terrorist organizations that are formed for whatever reason don't tend to just fade quietly into the night. At best something can happen like what seems to have happened in Northern Ireland where they just lose their ability to attract violent young male recruits to the cause and the old guys just decide to hang it up.

 

[CapelDodger]

Violent terrorist organizations that are formed for whatever reason don't tend to just fade quietly into the night. At best something can happen like what seems to have happened in Northern Ireland where they just lose their ability to attract violent young male recruits to the cause and the old guys just decide to hang it up.

Couldn't agree more. Young males are tinder to old males' incendiarism. Give them a potential future to expend their energy on and they'll concentrate less on the past.

That requires an end to Israeli expansion, obviously, otherwise the future is just increasingly constrained. It will require an Israeli definition of its border. There are major pointers that this is going to happen over the next few years. Withdrawal from Lebanon, withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and the building of the Wall. Within Israel, a majority desire to be in a normal country, not a work-in-progress. And Sharon's ambitions for immortality, as mortality is surely on the fat f***'s mind at his age.

 

[Atlas]

On Oct 10 Powerline commented on a story from the Jerusalem post.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011916.php

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1127746244186&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The story was about al Queda moving in and setting up a base of operations in southern Gaza. Among the several disturbing thoughts expressed was this...

According to [Gaza resident] Nizar, some areas in the southern Gaza Strip are already beginning to resemble Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban. "This is very disturbing," he remarked. "You see more and more women covering their faces and in the mosques you hear extremely radical sermons. The people there are behaving as if they were members of a tribe in Afghanistan."

​

About the only thing worse than the disorganized hate and violence of the Palestinians fighting one another in Gaza is to have a Nazi Taliban come in and organize it.

Powerline commented:

It is certainly not good news that al Qaeda is extending its influence into Gaza. On the other hand, this development may expose and finally bring to a head a fundamental contradiction in American foreign policy. It is a basic strategic goal of American policy, as emphasized just a few days ago in President Bush's speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, to prevent al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups from taking over a failed nation-state, as they did in Afghanistan. Consistent with this policy, it is hard to imagine that the Bush administration can permit al Qaeda to use Gaza or the West Bank as a base for international terrorism.
At the same time, American policy toward Israel and its Palestinian neighbors has been more or less even-handed, with the administration now having endorsed Palestinian statehood. Successive American administrations have pressured Israel to disengage from the Palestinian territories, while viewing the terrorism that would inevitably result as Israel's problem.
But with al Qaeda present, it isn't just Israel's problem anymore. And it will no longer be possible to sustain the logical inconsistency of considering terrorism against Israel to be somehow different from terrorism directed against everyone else.

 

[The Fool]

Allow me to provide you with an example of how the PA fights terrorism today.

So please the fool, the "we don't have enough weapons" or "we don't have enough support" or "we don't have enough fill-in-the-blank-here" are the same excuses we've heard out of the Palestinian Authority for years. Here is a clear-cut case - confirmed by Palestinian officials - where everyone knew that Hasan al-Madhoun - a terrorist - should have been arrested by the PA. Abbas knew, Rice knew and Sharon knew. The difference is you buy the PA's farcical and endess excuses while I do not.

What are the IDF's farcical and endless excuses for not putting an end to Hamas...Maybe the Pa could borrow them for a while?

 

[Atlas]

TF,

That really was a straight up example. You can usually tell it straight yourself. If Abbas isn't going to arrest the guy he shouldn't say he will. And the fake arrest to hold someone overnight with no plans to take any action truly undermines Abbas' claims that he is trying to get things under control. Don't you agree?

 

[The Fool]

TF,

That really was a straight up example. You can usually tell it straight yourself. If Abbas isn't going to arrest the guy he shouldn't say he will. And the fake arrest to hold someone overnight with no plans to take any action truly undermines Abbas' claims that he is trying to get things under control. Don't you agree?

Some people just simply don't realise the position the PA are in, others do and simply ignore it.

Abbas and the PA could be liquidated by Hamas in a very short time. They are much more powerfull and heavier armed.

The Israeli apologists simply want to see an ongoing civil war between palestinians that will justify thier claims that Israeli colonialism is the only sensible option for these untermenchen...or "silastic armorfiends" or whatever biggotted term they are using at the moment.

If they were interested in secular rule over fundamentalist rule, If they were remotely interested in Democracy in a future Palestinian state they would also be interested in a PA that is not the weakling of the pack...

If you want the PA to stand up to Hamas then allow them to make the confrontation a little more than suicidal eh?

 

[Atlas]

I agree. Abbas is in a terrible spot. I don't think he has people around him he can trust. That is, I agree that Hamas could assassinate him with relative ease.

So what's the solution?

I put up the al Queda infiltration into southern Gaza as a possible scenario to the only solution I can see. Gaza has to be disarmed and it ain't gonna be unless the world decides to go in and do it. I don't think Bush can do it without a little world support. But al Queda is the only reason that would give him cover if the Palestinians are destroyed from factions within Gaza.

Do you see any way out for Palestinians if left to their own device? I can't. If that mess is to be cleaned up, someone else has to do it... someone other than Israel. It'd be great if the Arabs themselves could muster some influence but there is too much distrust.

As a start, Gaza must be completely disarmed.

 

[webfusion]

No fight

If you want the PA to stand up to Hamas then allow them to make the confrontation a little more than suicidal eh?

Not the right way to look at it.

The entire Gaza Strip needs to be totally de-militarized and ALL the arms collected/confiscated. The rocket-launchers, the mortars, the RPG's, the entire gamut of weapons of every description.

Israel has been trying for years to stop the smuggling of Katyusha's and GRAIL AA missiles. Israel stopped the KARINE-A from off-loading tons of armaments at Gaza. Israel will not, under any circumstances, allow the Gaza Strip to become a base of ops for Syrian/Iranian-backed proxies of Hezbollah or AlQueda or Islamic Jihad or Hamas. Fuggeddaboudit.

I agree with Atlas --- the object is not to bolster the PA with better and more powerful forces, the object is to get everyone in the Gaza Strip down to a level where just sidearms (revolvers and automatics) remain in the possession of the PA Police.

If it takes a United States Marines operation to do this, then so be it.