“We have met the enemy and it is US”
Bookworm on Mar 16 2011 at 8:27 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
The two competing news stories — Japan’s nuclear reactor and the unstable narrative in the Middle East — provides the best illustration I’ve ever seen of the fears that move Progressives and conservatives.
Progressives fear us: Westerners. They fear our technology and our values. The nuclear reactors, while currently just a dreadful problem, are imminently apocalyptic to them. They have visions of Neville Shute’s On the Beach
On the other hand, I (and, I believe, conservatives generally) fear them: the Easterners, appearing before us in the form of Jihadist Islam. Even as Mr. Bookworm, the liberal, is mesmerized by Japan, I’m terrified by what’s happening in the Middle East. The most radical Islamic tyrannies are hanging gamely onto power; the slightly more moderate tyrannies have fallen, leaving a vacuum for Islamists to fill; and the people with bombs (nuclear and otherwise), oil, natural gas, and deep hostilities to Israel and America, are lining up aggressively, facing off against each other and, of course, against us.
Perhaps the fact that those zany Islamic Middle Eastern aggressors have us in their cross-hairs explains Obama’s eerie passivity. After all, he, being a good Progressive, fears us more than them. At bottom, “they” are his allies, not “us” at all.
Related posts:
- Middle East Open Thread
- The enemy of my enemy is my friend *UPDATED*
- The face of the enemy shows even when he tries to hide it
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8 Responses to ““We have met the enemy and it is US””
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I wish I could say that I’ve been laughing watching the buffoonery of the Obama administration, but truth be told, my reactions have been running the gamut from low-pitched moan to high-pitched scream.
Very good post. A defining characteristic of today’s “progressives” is their fear of and contempt for the great majority of the American people, and their disrespect for the achievements of our civilization.
Indeed, as I pointed out in comments to this post, the newly-virulent forms of anti-Zionism and outright anti-Semitism are importantly different from the older forms….whether the older anti-Semite disliked Jews because they were “too different” from his overall society, the modern “progressive” anti-Zionist despises Israel *specifically because* it exemplifies so many of the strengths and values of Western civilization.
A couple of years ago, Neptunus Lex noted that “The innate character flaw of the political right, with its thrumming appeals to the logic of blood and soil, is its lamentable tendency to go in search of enemies abroad. The left, on the other hand, with its own appeals to the politics of envy and class warfare, is content to find mortal enemies closer to hand.” We certainly see this in the case of Obama and his core supporters, and it has indeed been a characteristic of earlier Leftist regimes. How many Russian lives were lost unnecessarily because Stalin was too worried about (often totally imaginary) internal enemies, and not worried enough about the German military threat?
David, good point about Stalin. Your mention made me recall how surprised I was when I first saw the statistic of Russian deaths in WWII broken down. I’d always assumed the figure—30 million—was primarily at the hands of the Germans. But I later learned that an estimated 10 to 13 million Soviet subjects died from internal purges ordered by Stalin.
Even many of the deaths that were at the hands of the Germans were really attributable to Stalin…execution of officers who could have provided good leadership, failure to believe intelligence reports about the imminence of German attack, etc. I’ve also read that in the first days after the attack, Stalin was pretty much in shock and nearly useless as a decision-maker.
Lessons from Libya for Dictators in Distress
1. If you want to remain in power, you need to do more than send a man on a camel into crowds. Declare war on your people; hire other people to help out.
2. Do not worry if the U.S. president says you must “step down” and “leave.” It is only his personal opinion.
3. To ensure that the president does not focus unduly on your war, schedule it while he is preoccupied with other matters: a Motown concert, a conference on bullying, his golf game, and finalizing his Final Four picks.
4. Declare that the opposition is not “organic.” The president will not assist a non-organic revolution. If the revolution is organic, do not worry: an organic revolution is by definition one he does not need to assist. Either way, you’re fine.
5. Recognize that your membership on the UN Human Rights Council will be suspended — the president will send his secretary of state there to ensure that. Do not start a war against your people if you are not prepared for this.
6. Do not worry about a “no-fly zone” or some other U.S. military response. The president will consider it only if the world speaks with one voice. The world includes Russia, China, and Turkey.
7. Remember when the president adopted his Afghanistan policy after an extensive “review;” selected his own general to implement it; got the general’s recommendations; and then held endless meetings before finally reluctantly approving them? That was about a war he was already in. He will need many more meetings than that before he considers any new action against you.
8. You may eventually be subject to sanctions, so check to see if they’ve worked yet with Cuba, North Korea, or Iran.
9. Consider restarting your nuclear program, since the conditions that caused you to suspend it are gone. At most, the president will form a committee of several nations to talk to you; he will consider more sanctions if the world speaks as one. You need not worry about his “deadlines.”
10. There is basically only one thing you do need to worry about: do not, under any circumstances, approve any future Jewish housing in Jerusalem. The president will go ballistic if you do.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/03/16/lessons-from-libya-for-dictators-in-distress/
Spot on, SADIE. I don’t think the savages that own Iran, China, Syria or North Korea could have asked for a lamer, more compliant, more helplessly craven U.S. president. Maybe there is a dark force as the Zoroastrians believe, as powerful as God, and it sent Obama to us.
Or to rephrase, we have met the enemy and it is the Left.
[...] Bookworm Room » “We have met the enemy and it is US”. Even as Mr. Bookworm, the liberal, is mesmerized by Japan, I’m terrified by what’s happening in the Middle East. The most radical Islamic tyrannies are hanging gamely onto power; the slightly more moderate tyrannies have fallen, leaving a vacuum for Islamists to fill; and the people with bombs (nuclear and otherwise), oil, natural gas, and deep hostilities to Israel and America, are lining up aggressively, facing off against each other and, of course, against us. [...]