[Rhodes22-list] Special Cartoon for David Bradley... (Big Al Delete!)

[Brad Haslett]

Ed,

The Chocolate Baby Jesus from Chicago can't even celebrate the 60th birthday
of Israel without thinking the world spins around him.

Brad

-----------------------------

Saturday, May 17, 2008
Mark Steyn: Obama an appeaser? How dare you By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist

<http://www.ocregister.com/articles/president-obama-words-2044703-bush-talking#slComments>

"That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me."

That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting
the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in
"adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called
it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's
quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of
America's closest allies.

President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset.
Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British
officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling
rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to
the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was
a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and
the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No
Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his
recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.

Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really
about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as
he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough.
That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the
soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe
Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable,
unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential
behavior.

Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here's what the president
said:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and
radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been
wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks
crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could
only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an
obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which
has been repeatedly discredited by history."

It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a
generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the
Dems assume: Hey, they're talking about me. Actually, he wasn't – or, to be
more precise, he wasn't talking *only*about you.

Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our
enemies, and a few Republicans, too – President Bush's pal James Baker,
whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria
and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of
Tony Blair's former Cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by
the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and by a whole bunch of bigshot
Europeans. It's not a Democrat election policy, it's an entire worldview.
Even Barack Obama can't be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of
enemy here]concept is an original idea.

Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one
thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel
powers, talks *are*the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized
nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and
crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing
dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's
easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the
talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.

And, as the Iranians understand, talks provide a splendid cover for getting
on with anything you want to do. If, say, you want to get on with your
nuclear program relatively undisturbed, the easiest way to do it is to enter
years of endless talks with the Europeans over said nuclear program. That's
why that Hamas honcho endorsed Obama: They know he's their best shot at
getting a European foreign minister installed as president of the United
States.

Mo Mowlam was Britain's Northern Ireland secretary and oversaw the process
by which the IRA's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness became ministers of a
Crown they decline to recognize. By 2004, she was calling for Osama bin
Laden to be invited to "the negotiating table," having concluded he was no
different from Adams: Stern fellow, lots of blood on his hands, but no sense
getting on your high horse about all that; let's find out what he wants and
give him part of it.

In his 2002 letter to the United States, bin Laden has a lot of grievances,
from America's refusal to implement Sharia law to Jew-controlled usury to
the lack of punishment for "President Clinton's immoral acts." Like Barack
Obama's pastor, bin Laden shares the view that AIDS is a "Satanic American
invention." Obviously, there are items on the agenda that the free world can
never concede on – "President Clinton's immoral acts" – but who's to say
most of the rest isn't worth chewing over?

This will be the fault line in the post-Bush war debate over the next few
years. Are the political ambitions of the broader jihad totalitarian,
genocidal, millenarian – in a word, nuts? Or are they negotiable? President
Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took
umbrage at, he said:

"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these
men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly
wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to
take these words seriously."

Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah:

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to
eliminate you."

Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So, too, are
those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.

President Reagan talked with the Soviets while pushing ahead with the
deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. He spoke softly –
after getting himself a bigger stick. Sen. Obama is proposing to reward a
man who pledges to wipe Israel off the map with a presidential photo-op to
which he will bring not even a twig. No wonder he's so twitchy about it.
(c)*MARK STEYN*

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Tootle <ekroposki at charter.net> wrote:

>
> Special cartoon of a German parade for David Bradley, see:
>
> http://www.nabble.com/file/p17291288/World%2BWatching%2BGerman%2BParade.JPG
> World+Watching+German+Parade.JPG
>
> Ed K
> Greenville, SC, USA
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://www.nabble.com/Special-Cartoon-for-David-Bradley...--%28Big-Al-Delete%21%29-tp17291288p17291288.html
> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>