To: Dayuhan who wrote (101877 ) 6/18/2003 6:14:49 AM From: frankw1900 Read Replies (1) | Respond to Hello Steven, you left an interesting series of posts hereWhat often strikes me is the degree to which this philosophy is combined with an absolutely stunning disregard for the rest of the world. I can?t remember a set of leaders that knew or cared to know less of other places and people. Knowledge seems have become something actively suspect, and the opinion of anybody who has actually bothered to study the history and culture of a foreign place is often regarded as inherently questionable. The war is still not over, and there is a whole lot that can go wrong. We are actually still entering the most difficult phase, something many here don?t seem to realize. They just need to say that currently available information indicates that a large quantity of low-grade material was destroyed before the war, equipment was buried, smaller amounts of high-grade material may have been hidden in Iraq, retained with Saddam, or smuggled to Syria, and we are investigating those possibilities. That sounds possible and credible, and is hard for doubters to argue with, though at some point evidence would have to be produced. The early Zionists were racists and imperialists. They could hardly have been anything else: you could have gone over late 19th century Europe with a fine-toothed comb and not found anyone who wasn?t. The bleeding heart liberals of the day were racists and imperialists; they just thought the lesser peoples should be cultivated, not exploited. If it was possible to remove the existential concerns both sides have, then it might be possible to move to some reasonable arrangement. The way this has sometimes been done is to exchange hostages, and as the Israeli-Palestinians are already effectively taking each other hostage, perhaps this could be formalized in some useful way. Gaza for the Settlements? The Wall for the Mosque? A miniature version of MAD?
