[meteorite-list] COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC

From: gle_at_bellatlantic.net <gle_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:10:07 2004
Message-ID: <3E960580.C6D9B6BF_at_bellatlantic.net>

Thankyou Sterling for putting into words all that I feel-
GRANT ELLIOTT

Sterling K. Webb wrote:
>
> 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
>
> ______________________________________________
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
> http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Received on Thu 10 Apr 2003 08:00:00 PM PDT