[MD] One for Platt & Ham

[Ham Priday]

Ant, Arlo, Khaled, Ron, Platt --


Come, come now, gentlemen.  Intelligent people shouldn't have to resort to
acrimony and insults to get their point across.  And haven't we had enough
"packaged propaganda" from the politicans over the last few weeks?   I can
assure you that Platt is not an anti-semite, Khaled, and there are  no
bigots to my knowledge in this forum, although we sure have a preponderance
of anti-conservatives.   If we can't deal civilly with different viewpoints
here, how in the world can we expect the secular factions in the Middle East
to agree to a united Iraq?

Khaled mentioned Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World" in which he "talks
about the dumbing down of this country and how people are told not to
think."  I agree that there is a "dumbing down of this country"; but most of
it comes from apathy and narrow-minded thinking.

Look, we suffered a direct attack on our homeland in 2001, and there was no
historical precedent but to retaliate against the attackers and their
supporters.  We couldn't find Bin Laden, so we did the next best thing.  We
toppled the Hussein regime which had harbored terrorists, thown out the UN
inspectors, and murdered thousands of its people.  Despite the fact that we
found no "active" WMDs, we had every reason to believe Saddam was producing
them.  We provided support and opportunity for an oppressed Muslim
population to take control of its insurgents and form a free Iraq.  Their
inability to do this is their shame, not ours.

Okay, so we underestimated the viciousness and intolerance of the tribal
morality, and have paid dearly for this mistake in terms of mounting
casualties and lost prestige.  Does that warrant the wrath of the free world
we were defending?  Would it have been been wiser to do nothing while the
extremists carried out their jihad to annex Europe and the U.S. under a new
Islamic caliphate?  Even now, Europe and the U.K. are finding it
increasingly difficult to contain the Muslim invasion and are without a clue
as to how to assimilate them or prevent the "Islamification" of their
national cultures.

Considering Arlo's litany of arms and missiles supplied to underdeveloped
nations, I happen to be strongly opposed to the U.S. trading arms for
hostages -- or for any other reason -- including the defense of Israel.  It
has seemed to me that the monitoring of arms across national borders, and
perhaps even military intervention to control it, is a function that the UN
is well positioned to perform.  That would of course necessitate an
international arms agreement.  Until we have the insight and gumption to
illegalize the international sale of arms, we're going to be confronted by
enemies carrying weapons tagged "Made in USA" or "Made in China".  This is
adding insult to injury, and we are long overdue for a position statement on
the arms issue.

Maintaining peaceful relations in the international community is a sticky
wicket these days.  The introduction of nuclear weapons hasn't made it any
easier.  We have the choice of sucking our thumbs in the hope that we can
negotiate productively with the enemy, or taking pre-emptive action, which
is usually a matter of bungling it through until the conflict has been
"stabilized".  Yes, war is barbaric and immoral, but I believe Western
Civilization is worth defending at the cost of sacrificing lives -- even
mine or my son's if it comes to that.  I would like to think that I speak
for the majority of my fellow citizens.  After all, what would we be today
if the American Colonialists or the doughboys of WWI&II had not been willing
to lay down their lives for their country?

Cheers,
Ham