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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (606353)	8/20/2004 11:37:47 AM
From: Johannes Pilch	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

I'm not sure we do have a right to exist here. We took this land from the natives by force and deceit. We built up much of it with slave labor. It depends upon the moral standard you will accept. If we proceed to accept a natural, truest standard, then we certainly do not have a right to be here. But we must also apply the standard to everyone, including the natives who existed here before us. Where they are concerned we have in mind a pastoral fantasy wherein all was at peace between noble savages. It is the farthest thing from the truth. Many of the natives waged war against one other, infringing upon human rights with impunity. They also sinned against the rights of women, this, not infrequently, but as an everyday matter of culture. They cheated and did to each other what we essentially did to them. By the ultimate standard, all are guilty. We do exist on this land and we will continue to exist on this land, but do we really have the right? We have as much a right to be here as the natives have. Israel has as much a right as we have. The muslims have as much a right as Israel, since they at some point stole the land from Israel. All are guilty. If you believe the Bible stories to be literally true, Israel took her land also by brutal force. Please. This is just nonsense. If I believe the Bible stories to be literally true, I am compelled to believe that God gave Israel the land, sending her by His own Sovereign Will and Might to judge those He had cursed. And I am in no position to declare Him wrong. I must believe this because that is what the text teaches. If you go by modern archaeology, the unified kingdom of David and Solomon may well have never existed. It is a matter of where your faith lies. I do not think modern archaeology or paleontology have the power to reach back in time to definitively tell me what happened thousands and millions of years ago. They are useful, but I do not think it prudent to treat them as gospel sources. You apparently disagree, and that is fine. Make your choice, and then die with it. After WWII the Jews should've been given a homeland in Germany and the Germans should've been forced to live in the desert with no water, no oil, surrounded by people who didn't want them there. This is your view. I happen to share it. But the world community did not choose to do this. It agreed with the current arrangement, likely based upon age-old Jewish claims to Israel. Now here is the crux of the matter. The world community, for all intents and purposes, is the top authority here. Should you reject its decrees such that you begin to assault what it has established, you are obviously asserting your own authority above it. That is fine, but you cannot appeal to the laws of the community to justify your war, claiming that the community must now acknowledge your right to savage people who never savaged you. Such a thing would be ridiculous, and yet it is precisely what the arabs have done. If the muslims reject the community and wish to war against it, then this is entirely acceptable. But they need to understand that when they commit themselves to war contrary to the designs of the community, they naturally open themselves up to destruction and the potential loss of what little they have. That is what happened when they assaulted Israel. It is why Israel acquired a greater right to Middle Eastern lands. The muslims had a choice: either to reject the community and war against it, or to remain with the community and petition it according to its parameters whatever they happened to be. The muslims made their choice and they lost. They have no one to blame but themselves. I can see how the Jews had a right to Germany, but did they really have a right to Palestine? Yes. As much of a right as the muslims have to it. And with each further assault of innocents, the muslims lose their rights. Again, like us, Israel exists and will continue to exist whether or not they have a right to the land they exist upon. This is just to abandon natural morality out of convenience. It is corrupt, messy, ugly, but it is the way of this perishing world. What you suggest here now serves as the basis of our existence in this land. Putting religious claims aside, it serves also as the basis of Israel's existence. And now we come back to my original point. Neither we nor the arabs can possibly condemn Israel for existing as she does. The arabs are as guilty of destroying human rights as anyone else on the planet. The only rational response to Israel is to first insist upon peace on all sides and then use this insistence as the basis of negotiations. Everyone involved needs to recognize the guilt of everyone else and determine not to add to it. This has not yet happened, despite so-called "attempts" at peace.