03.20.09
The kick-me sign’s lettering gets a fresh coat of bold-color paint
TCM sends Iran a video offering a “fresh start.”
This is terrifying. We have a president who actually hates what this country has been for 233 years. He hates the fact that we offer humankind the possibility of freedom.
UPDATE: And the mullahs oblige him with a nice kick, very similar to the ones that Russia has administered since TCM has hung the sign – the kind of kick that conveys the message: “Sorry, but you’re not sweetening the deal enough for the privilege of being our bitch.”
Two huge problems with TCM’s latest idiotic move: It legitimizes the terror-master, West-hating regime in Iran (part of TCM’s videotaped message involved taking regime change off the table), thereby dispiriting the good people of that country yearning for freedom, and it makes us look like utter fools – that “kick-me” sign.
MR. Dings said,
March 20, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Hyperbole here? Since when is reaching out in friendship a bad thing? If it doesn’t work, well, back to business as usual.
kinsley said,
March 21, 2009 at 12:14 am
Let’s think about how the United States Government has conducted itself in the middle east since the end of WWII.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 21, 2009 at 1:36 am
Here’s how it’s a bad thing. When you reach out in friendship to a regime that has been utterly hostile to you since it came to power thirty years ago, starting with holding your embasy staff hostage for over a year, and that is a theocracy based on the most radical type of Shiite Islam on Earth, that has as its current president a person who has called for the destruction of Israel, has supported more teror activity than any other nation or indeed entity, and has, just since the current US administration has been in power, has already responded to the “unclenched fist” gesture with basically a middle finger, and is singlemindedly pursuing a nuclear arsenal, you’re doing a bad thing.
You pose these questions to be silly, right?
Yes. let’s think about how the US government has conducted itself in the MWE since WWII. We’ve bent over backwards to accomodate a basically hostile regime in Saudi Arabia, basocally because we wanted to do oil business with it (which, it’s now clear, we wouldn’t have to do) and we spearheaded the formation of the United Nations, and pushed, as one of its first projects, the formation of a modern-day Jewish state situated in that people’s historical and God-given homeland, and then exhibited patience beyond all believability as that UN turned readical and adopted hate-Israel, pro-jihad policies.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 21, 2009 at 1:42 am
Oh, and there was the CIA complicity in getting the Shah in power in Ira in 1953 – a good thing. It was important at that juncture to be sure such a strategically important country was kept out of the Soviet camp. Same reason the CIA also helped oust Jacobo Arbenz in Guratemala a year later. he was a bad actor. Had to go.
MR. Dings said,
March 21, 2009 at 3:20 am
No I pose these questions to be sensible. Just as you think the trashed economy is being used as an excuse to implement (even more) socialism, the trashed diplomatic agenda is a perfect opportunity to strike out in new directions. Then I recall that you are a Christian Zionist. The door is not closed to diplomacy.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 21, 2009 at 11:42 am
I know the trashed economy is being used to implement socialism. The FHers make that plain all day every day.
You are absolutely correct that I am a Christian Zionist.
As for closing the door to diplomacy, see update number two to this post. If you invite your enemies to make you look like a fool long enough, one of them will get the confidence to truly play you for one.
MR. Dings said,
March 21, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Haven’t you ever given an enemy enough rope to hang themselves, i.e., extended a hand in friendship knowing would most likely be bitten off, whereupon you could marshall your full force of retribution against them. It’s actually kind of an evil thing to do, but, take heart, oh Christian Zionists (and I consider Zionists to be evil in their exclusiveness and insistent stubborness in the face of overwhelming reality, nay, some questionable (isn’t it always?) spirituality), the Ayatollah has rebuffed our efforts. Now we really will be stupid to kiss his and their ass. Perhaps you’ll get your bombs bursting in air yet.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 21, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Explain this “Exclusiveness and insistent stubornness” business to me.
MR. Dings said,
March 22, 2009 at 3:26 pm
There is a strong vein, now ascendant again, in Israel towards exclusiveness and insistent stubborness, as delineated in this NYT article appearing in today’s edition@ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22BRONNER.html?pagewanted=2&hp
The religious left argues that the right has made a fetish of the land of Israel instead of letting life take precedence, he said. The religious left also rejects the messianic nature of the right’s Zionist discourse, and it argues that Jewish tradition values all life, not primarily Jewish life.
“The right tends to make an equation between authenticity and brutality, as if the idea of humanism were a Western and alien implant to Judaism,” he said. “They seem not to know that nationalism and fascism are also Western ideas and that hypernationalism is not Jewish at all.”
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 22, 2009 at 6:30 pm
The article as a whole brings up some very basic questions: What does it mean to be Jewish? What does it mean for the nation-state of Israel to be Jewish?
Israel suffers from the same thing as the United States and indeed most Western nations – moral relativism and forgetfulness about the source of its greatness. They got a mush-head for a prime minister (Olmert) jsut as we got one for a president (W).
Where this leads is the inability to see clear enemies right in front of one’s face directly threatening one’s existence.
Here you have these leftist / secularist / observant-but-politically-liberal military people and rabbis ministering to the military worried about whether their nation was too ferocious in its response to Hamas when Hamas – and its terror masters back in Teheran – exist precisely to end the whole idea of an Israel.
The question of whether Arabs and / or Muslims ought to have a natin-state on some of the land now claimed by Israel hinges on whether those Arabs / Muslims will come right out and unequivocally state that Israel – as a Jewish representative democracy with a free-market economy – has a right to exist, with Jerusalem as its capital. So far, no negotiating partner like that exists – not Fatah, nor Hamas.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
March 22, 2009 at 6:33 pm
A Jew either does or does not take seriously the promises – and stern admonitions – made to his people through Moses, David and the prophets. If not, it seems to me pointless for him to call himself a Jew.