[meteorite-list] COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:10:06 2004
Message-ID: <3E9524C7.DE640FF6_at_bhil.com>

rochette wrote:

> SHAME ON YOU!!!!!
> SHAME ON YOU!!!!!
> SHAME ON YOU!!!!!
>
> Pierre

Dear Pierre,

    Alright, the hunting suggestion was crass (maybe) but shameful? And
clearly, you regard that shame as coming directly from the morality or lack
of it of the U.S. actions in Iraq, like so many Europeans. Perhaps you are
among that 30% of the French populace that wished us defeat just last week.
    OK, you've convinced me.
    You have completely overwhelmed me with the force of your superior logic,
and as an American, I feel totally humbled before your demonstration of the
mature sophistication of European civilization.
    After all, when I look over the century just past, I think, how can
America complete with Europe's outstanding production of men of such
political moral stature as the eminent Hitler, the marvelous Stalin, the
admirable Mussolini, everybody's favorite: Lenin, not to mention such
delightful minor luminaries as Admiral Hrothy, Generalissimo Franco, Marshall
Petain, Heinrich Himmler, Goerbels, Quisling, even Le Pen? The list is nigh
endless.
    Especially I feel humbled when all America has to offer as practical
political moralists are such paltry figures as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther
King. We are indeed a backward people. Why, we haven't had a genocidal war in
ever so long, while Europe... Let's see, when was the last openly genocidal
war by a European state? 1999, wasn't it?
    Obviously, the United States has committed grievous errors by going
against the will of the United Nations, the superior morality of Europe, and
the wiser heads of such ancient and highly developed nations like la belle
France.
    But, like all who recognize the error of their ways, we in the U.S. must
now attempt to correct our past mistakes.
    So, as soon as we round up all the now inconveniently free Iraqi
population and hand them back over to the torturers and murderers of the
Ba'ath Party, we will shift our troops to Kosovo where they will drive out
with fire and sword the 2,000,000 Albanian Kosovars we prevented the
extermination of and remove them to the last man, women, and child.
Simultaneously, our Special Forces will rescue Slobodan Milosevich from the
dungeons of the Hague and return him to Belgrade in triumph so he can take
possession of Kosovo.
    No, wait, we will have to leave some Kosovars behind for him to
exterminate. (The remainder of the Kosovars we will disembark in the south of
France; you'll know what to do with them, non?) That should make up for our
precipitous actions in having saved the Kosovars from genocide in the first
place, and it should placate the United Nations who was so opposed to what we
did there.
    Naturally, our troops in Afghanistan will immediately escort the Taliban
back to Kabul where they can return to raising opium, oppressing their women,
denying education to their children, obliterating Buddhist art, and such
other activites as may please them. Of course, we will rebuild the Al Quaidah
training camps and construct a new headquarters for Usamah. It's the least we
can do to make up for our past mistakes.
    Thank Heavens, we listened to the United Nations and let millions be
slaughtered in Rwanda as the U.N. wished. See, we don't do everything wrong,
although we failed to encourage the Hutu killers the way that France did.
Forgive us.
    Then, we can move on to Somalia, where U.S. Forces will fan out over the
countryside, destroying every scrap of food in the land, so that the lucky
Somalis can go back to starving to death, enforcing retroactively the
judgement of the United Nations there.
    When you are a country, like the U.S., that does everything wrong, there
is so much corrective action that is required.
    I suppose we will have to go back to Iraq again so we can conquer Kuwait
and hand it over to Iraq. Then on to Panama to restore that nation to a
government of drug-runners. Then, to Genada to hand it over to Cuba.
    Will we have to hand all of Eastern Europe back over to Russia? Do you
suppose they'll mind? I guess we'll have reconstitute the Soviet to do that.
Boy, now there's another mistake of ours.
    Then, we have to force South Korea into to being ruled by North Korea.
Maybe we could just give North Korea lots of atomic bombs. Would that
suffice? Would that be penance enough?
    You know, eventually, as we work our way back through time, undoing our
mistakes, we're going to reach the point where we have to turn you, Pierre,
over to Le Boche! That's if we can find un Boche who will take you...

    On the other hand, it could merely be true that the United States, by
spending almost a half century and expending countless trillions of dollars
and 100,000 American lives in proxy wars won and lost, in order to keep the
Russians off your back and Soviet tanks from cavorting in your vinyards, by
shielding the half of Europe that they hadn't already enslaved, only created
a kind of nursery in which childish minds could grow and run free to inhabit
an illusory fantasyland in which the world is believed to be a kind and safe
place where all disagreements can be negotiated away (with long treaties en
Francais, naturellement), where madmen and tyrants are thought reasonable men
whose word can be trusted, where the United Nations is a noble institution
(instead of a con game run by diplomats from the 40% or more of the
membership whose governments are not one whit better than Saddam Hussein's,
where Mumar Gaddafi is the head of Human Rights Commission and the [former]
Iraq was scheduled to chair the next World Disarmament Conference), and where
any inconvenient demonstrations of reality like genocide, enforced
starvation, tyranny, and madness can be blithely dismissed by merely shutting
your eyes to them until they go away and the corpses stop smelling.
    I think that perhaps instead of Europe being old and wise, it is
adolescent and wise ass, like a gaggle of teenagers spoiled rotten by having
been excessively sheltered and pampered and saved from having to deal with
disagreeable reality, until they fall into the delusion that Mummy and Daddie
are just boorish dolts who know nothing and whose every act is an
embarassment, while they, having formed all their opinions by the process of
turning everything they should know upsidedown, know it all.

    I could waste time by pointing out to you that the United Nations itself
estimates that Iraq causes the deaths of 5,000 to 7,000 of its citizens every
month by refusing to use the UN Oil For Food program for food. And since the
UN set the date of Iraqi disarmament in its original resolutions as July 6,
1991, the UN could be considered to have been responsible for 700,000 to
1,000,000 Iraqi civilian deaths by refusing to take disarmament seriously in
the following 140 months. Or should we have waited through another year of
"inspections" while Saddam destroyed another 60,000 to 80,000 of "his"
civilians?
    I could ask you if you noticed that the crowds in Baghdad that burned and
looted Ba'athist regime structures, ministries, torture sites, secret police
quarters, and so on, attacked only one other building: the UN headquarters in
Baghdad. I could ask if that hints to you how the Iraqi people regard the UN?
Could it be that the Iraqis understand the reality of the UN better than the
French? Mais non!
    I could... Oh, well, forget it. I suspect this is all wasted.

    OK, List, sorry. I titled this a completely off topic rant, and it was.
Years on the List, my first completely off topic rant, and I hope, my last.
Or maybe each of us could have one free rant every five years or so? Of
course, that might cramp the style of some, and never be needed by other,
calmer souls...


Sterling K. Webb
Received on Thu 10 Apr 2003 04:01:12 AM PDT