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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: stockman_scott who wrote (25170)4/14/2002 8:33:17 PM
From: JohnM  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 281500
 
SHARON'S CONTRIBUTION
By William F. Buckley Jr.
Sat Apr 13, 9:01 PM ET


Something is really wrong with the universe when I agree with this much of a Bill Buckley column and an earlier column by Pat Buchanan.

I agree with an earlier comment by Doc Bones that the left-right political stuff does not work so well right now.



To: stockman_scott who wrote (25170)4/14/2002 8:43:54 PM
From: Win Smith  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 281500
 
There's this phrase that seems to bring up a large number Israeli associations from google. google.com , Allegedly, the Geneva Convention had something to say about this.



To: stockman_scott who wrote (25170)4/14/2002 10:09:37 PM
From: Ilaine  Respond to of 281500
 
Thank you, Scott, thank you. And thank you, Chairman Bill. Thank you once more time, thank you again, more than you will ever know.

Many years ago, when I was an eighteen year old confused young hippy chick wandering in the wilderness of moral relativity, I sat in on a lecture by William F. Buckley, and understood, for the first time in my life, what a truly moral argument consisted of. (Prolly helps, or maybe no accident, that I spent years in Catholic school.) Not sure what Chairman Bill thinks about ending a sentence with a preposition, but I'd bet it's a lesser offence.

William F. Buckley is, in my own experience, the voice of moral clarity.

If Chairman Bill's agin it, I'm agin it. End of message.



To: stockman_scott who wrote (25170)4/15/2002 12:27:29 AM
From: Bilow  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 281500
 
Hi stockman_scott; Great column by Buckley. I can't believe how long he's been writing. I have his collected essays, and they started in the 50s.

His analysis of the futility of trying to reduce terrorism with a military response is dead on:

There is no way to be entirely discriminating in a military offensive designed to find something that can't be found, namely the fuse box that causes an 18-year-old Palestinian girl to arm herself with a bomb and detonate it in an Israeli mall. There aren't, sitting about, neat paramilitary kiosks with explosives and rosters of willing terrorists. The search for these was bound to be fruitless, rather like looking for the infrastructure of lechery in Gomorrah.

General Sharon might have sent in a platoon, pulled out Arafat and his 100 lieutenants and executed them on the entirely reasonable grounds that they embodied the terrorist movement in the West Bank. A bullet into the heart of Arafat is not a wayward contribution to the search for the infrastructure of the evil and genocidal war against Israel. So Palestine would be left leaderless? Such a problem would be that of the Palestinians who have tolerated Arafat for so many years.


Israel is not executing an effective anti-guerilla action. As is described in US military field manuals, the correct form of anti-guerilla activity has to have a strong "win their hearts and minds" component. The Israelis are ignoring this, and are consequently making no progress.

I'm sort of relieved to see myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Buckley. (Buchanan I don't have much respect for.) I took that test to determine where you belong on the authoritarian / libertarian, left / right axes and came out only 2 tics right of the very center. Since Buckley is practically the definition of US conservatism, I am relieved to find myself in total agreement with his essay.

By the way, this essay may mark the beginning of the very slow conversion of the US right to the abandonment of Israel.

-- Carl



To: stockman_scott who wrote (25170)4/15/2002 9:42:22 AM
From: carranza2  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 281500
 
Alzheimer's must be setting in on Buckley. He completely forgets Sharon's pledge to the US not to kill Arafat. Should he break it, the damage to US/Israeli relations would be staggering:

General Sharon might have sent in a platoon, pulled out Arafat and his 100 lieutenants and executed them on the entirely reasonable grounds that they embodied the terrorist movement in the West Bank. A bullet into the heart of Arafat is not a wayward contribution to the search for the infrastructure of the evil and genocidal war against Israel.

So Palestine would be left leaderless? Such a problem would be that of the Palestinians who have tolerated Arafat for so many years.