Newsmax.com
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 5:04 PM
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman
Increasing numbers of Chrysler dealers are disputing the bankrupt automaker’s claim that it selected dealerships for closure on purely economic grounds, and they have filed a suit against the automaker in U.S. bankruptcy court.
"My business is being stolen from me under the guise of the bankruptcy laws [and] given to another dealer down the street," Jim Anderer, owner of Island Jeep in Lindenhurst, N.Y., told Reuters.
Like many of the 789 Chrysler dealerships slated for closure, Anderer claims his retail outlet was
profitable. Many of the closed dealers were also major donors to Republican candidates and political action committees, a review of campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission shows.
This has led to accusations, which Rush Limbaugh aired last week, that President Obama's auto task force has been playing political favorites, first by forcing Chrysler into bankruptcy, and then by targeting dealerships for closure that funded the president’s political enemies.
An attorney representing some of the dealers, Leonard Bellavia, came close to supporting those
allegations himself after deposing Chrysler President Jim Press on Tuesday. “It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers," Bellavia said. "It really wasn't Chrysler's decision. They are under enormous pressure from the president's automotive task force."
Among the most prominent Republicans who stands to lose his business as a result of the Chrysler bankruptcy is Vernon G. Buchanan, owner of Venice Dodge in Venice, Fla.
Buchanan gave $2,300 to John McCain in last year’s election, and has given a whopping $5.3 million to Republicans since the 2000 election cycle, according to FEC records Newsmax examined. He spent nearly $4.5 million of that amount to get himself elected to Congress in 2006 in the 13th District of Florida, where incumbent Republican Katherine Harris resigned that year to run unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate.
Buchanan won the 2006 election with just 50 percent of the vote but came back in 2008 and won a more comfortable victory with 56 percent of the vote, and voted against Obama’s budget this year. But he has crossed aisles occasionally, notably voting in favor of an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program that President Bush vetoed in 2007.
Other prominent Republican donors whose successful Chrysler dealerships will be shut down include Russ Darrow, owner of Darrow Chrysler Jeep of Menomenee Falls, Wis. Darrow spent $2.7 million of his own money to finance an unsuccessful challenge to incumbent Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin in 2004.
Many dealers, however, gave to both political parties; some, such as Alan Spitzer, owner of Spitzer Dodge in Elyria, Ohio, gave only to Democrats.
Blogger Doug Ross (Directorblue.blogspot.com) has begun posting lists of Republican donors whose Chrysler dealerships have been targeted for closure. The most complete list of Republican victims of the Chrysler bankruptcy was compiled by an anonymous blogger at scribd.com/doc/15760333/Chrysler-Report, which identified 165 Republican donors out of 595 examined, or just over 27.7 percent.
One blogger, who claimed to work for one of the soon-to-be closed dealerships, reported on the blog Cars.com that his dealership was “in the top 125 out of the 3,500 dealerships nationwide . . . yet we are on the list. We are not small nor are we rural. We are in a large major metropolitan area. Our new vehicle inventory alone is well over $4 million.”
In addition, “Chrysler is already 'shopping' for dealers to take over the open 'points' (another name for franchise) left by closed dealership,” he added. “This is so much more than 'just business.' This is about control and power by our present administration in Washington.”
Auto-dealers as an industry tend to give more to Republican causes than to Democrats, according to an analysis done by Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit organization that compiles FEC data and operates the Open Secrets Web site.
During the 2008 election cycle, the center found that auto dealers and their associated political action committees made a total of $9 million in campaign contributions, giving by a 3-to-1 margin to Republicans. The automobile industry as a whole made $18.5 million in donations in 2008, also breaking roughly 3-to-1 in favor of Republican candidates and causes. But it ranked way behind lawyers, civil servants, hedge fund managers, teacher’s unions, and the entertainment industry, which were large Democrat donors.
One company that stands to benefit in a major way from the Chrysler restructuring is called RLJMcLarty-Landers, a start-up owned by Democratic Party insiders that operates six Chrysler dealerships throughout the South. Co-owners Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, and Mack McLarty, chief of staff to president Bill Clinton, provided capital and political clout to the partnership, which they formed in September 2007.
Johnson is a major donor to Democrat party causes but sharply criticized Obama during the primaries for his admitted drug use as a young man. He later apologized to Obama for the personal attack.
According to another blog, RLJ-McCarty-Landers will retain all of its six dealerships, while “eight competing dealerships [will be] totally eliminated from three of their markets.”
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Nader: McAuliffe Offered Me Money to Pull Out in 04
From Newsmax.com
Thursday, May 28, 2009 10:26 PM
Consumer activist Ralph Nader accused Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe Thursday of trying to buy him off from running in the 2004 election.
Nader said McAuliffe, who was then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, orchestrated an elaborate effort to keep him off the ballot. McAuliffe offered him an unspecified amount of money to campaign in 31 states if Nader would agree to pull his campaign in 19 battleground states, Nader said.
"When you get a call like that, first of all it's inappropriate,'' Nader said in an interview. "The other thing is if you don't immediately say no, it's like taffy, you get stuck with it."
McAuliffe, in a hotly-contested three-way Democratic primary for governor, is facing several charges about his colorful past as a political fixer. And he isn’t denying this latest charge, according to The Washington Post.
His spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith said in a statement McAuliffe "was concerned that Ralph Nader would cost John Kerry the election as he did Al Gore in 2000 and give us another four years of George W. Bush," according to the Post.
"It looks like Ralph Nader misses seeing his name in the press,'' Smith said. "Terry's focused on talking with Virginians about jobs, not feeding Ralph Nader's ego."
The accusations are outlined in a new book, Grand Illusion, The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, by Theresa Amato, Nader's national campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, who writes about the barriers to third-party candidates.
"This seemed to be a very undemocratic kind of thing to do,'' Amato said. "The head of the Democratic party was telling Ralph where he could or not could run."
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Thursday, May 28, 2009 10:26 PM
Consumer activist Ralph Nader accused Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe Thursday of trying to buy him off from running in the 2004 election.
Nader said McAuliffe, who was then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, orchestrated an elaborate effort to keep him off the ballot. McAuliffe offered him an unspecified amount of money to campaign in 31 states if Nader would agree to pull his campaign in 19 battleground states, Nader said.
"When you get a call like that, first of all it's inappropriate,'' Nader said in an interview. "The other thing is if you don't immediately say no, it's like taffy, you get stuck with it."
McAuliffe, in a hotly-contested three-way Democratic primary for governor, is facing several charges about his colorful past as a political fixer. And he isn’t denying this latest charge, according to The Washington Post.
His spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith said in a statement McAuliffe "was concerned that Ralph Nader would cost John Kerry the election as he did Al Gore in 2000 and give us another four years of George W. Bush," according to the Post.
"It looks like Ralph Nader misses seeing his name in the press,'' Smith said. "Terry's focused on talking with Virginians about jobs, not feeding Ralph Nader's ego."
The accusations are outlined in a new book, Grand Illusion, The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, by Theresa Amato, Nader's national campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, who writes about the barriers to third-party candidates.
"This seemed to be a very undemocratic kind of thing to do,'' Amato said. "The head of the Democratic party was telling Ralph where he could or not could run."
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Failed 2-State Solution
Israel: Yaalon: Israel Must Free Itself from Failed '2-State' Paradigm by Maayana Miskin
Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe (Boogie) Yaalon believes that the time has come for Israel to “free itself from the failed paradigm” of the “two-state solution.”
Yaalon spoke Tuesday at a meeting of MKs dedicated to finding an alternative to the creation of a Palestinian Authority-led Arab state.
While the creation of a PA-led state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is perceived as a necessity both in Israel and worldwide, such a state would not solve the Israel-PA conflict, said Yaalon. In fact, he said, it is doubtful that the possibility of creating such a state exists, due to Arab and Muslim reluctance to take any step that would imply recognition of Israel or compromise on Arab claims to the entire Land of Israel.
Israel's Mistakes Israel's mistake lies in accepting a-symmetrical talks with the PA, Yaalon said. From the beginning of talks, he explained, Israel has accepted the idea of a Palestinian national movement with the PA as its representative, while the PA has resolutely refused to accept the Jewish national movement of Zionism or the idea of a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel.
Furthermore, while the PA demands that Arabs and Muslims be allowed to live in Israel, Israel accepts that a PA state would not have Jewish citizens, he said. And while Israel gives in on crucial issues such as the status of Jerusalem or the borders of a PA state, the PA refuses to bend in the slightest.
Israel has also been mistaken in assuming that the Israeli presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is the cause of Israel-Arab tension, he said. Arab attacks on Israel began well before the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel gained control of those areas, he said, and the Arab world's real goal is not a state in those areas, but rather, on the ruins of the State of Israel.
For this reason, he said, the PA is actually uninterested in a “two-state solution.” Former PA Chairman Yasser Arafat waged war on Israel in order to avoid the creation of a PA state, he argued.
"There are those who will argue that the PA wanted to establish a state in the 1967 borders but was unable to do so,” he said. “I say the problem was not one of ability, but of desire.”
If the PA does not desire an independent state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and will not accept such a state as the fulfillment of its national goals, the “two-state solution” has no chance to bring peace, he concluded.
The Solution Israel must give up on seeking to fully solve its conflict with the PA and the Arab world as a whole, Yaalon said. “I believe we should not approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the phrase 'solution' in the foreseeable future,” he told his audience. “Instead, we should seek 'crisis management' or long-term coping strategies.”
Israel should still seek a solution in the long term, he added. However, the process of seeking a solution should be “bottom-up,” and not “top-down.” Instead of hoping that a diplomatic agreement with the PA will lead to peace and security, the PA should prove that it is capable of self-rule prior to the signing of a diplomatic agreement, he argued.
Yaalon presented five crucial elements of the “bottom-up” process:
Educational Reform: The PA currently teaches Arab children that the entirety of Israel is an illegal colonialist entity, Yaalon said, and denies any historic Jewish connection to the Land of Israel. In addition, the PA teaches Jihad (holy war) against Israel and honors suicide bombers.
Changing the PA school system to teach the value of life, not of death, and to accurately portray Jewish history is crucial, he said.
Economic Reform: In order to create a viable economy, the PA must strengthen small businesses and create a stable middle class, Yaalon said. Attempts to create a PA economy through international aid have failed due to a corrupt PA leadership that misappropriates funds, and terrorist groups that attempt to keep PA Arabs living in poverty, he said. To avoid the problems posed by corrupt leadership, the world should focus on PA businessmen and support their initiatives.
Political Reform: Beyond creating a political entity, the PA must allow for freedom of expression, freedom of the press and protect human rights. Yaalon referred to “the American mistake” of supporting strong dictators over true democratic activists. Activists who seek true democracy and freedom should win encouragement from the West, he said.
Legal Reform: The goal should be “One authority, one law, one weapon,” Yaalon said, referring to the disarming of rogue terrorist groups and the enforcement of law throughout the PA territories.
Security Reform: The PA must begin to truly fight terrorism, Yaalon said. Among other things, the PA must rid itself of the “revolving door” by which terrorists serve only light sentences, and the sentencing of terrorists who murdered Israelis for “harming the public interest” instead of “murder.” These things encourage terrorism, he said.
The PA must be able to fight terrorism properly on multiple levels, he said, from gathering intelligence information to putting terrorists on trial.
No Guarantees: There is no guarantee that the “bottom-up” proposal can be put into effect, Yaalon said, because it relies on the Palestinian Authority to take the necessary action. In order to increase the chances that the PA will do what is necessary, Israel must make it clear that the PA has no chance of defeating Israel, he said, or of forcing further Israeli concessions and withdrawals without making concessions of its own.
"The Palestinians' extreme violence does not stem from despair over their situation, as the West tends to assume, but rather from hope – hope that the State of Israel will disappear,” he said. “Destroying the hope of defeating Israel will encourage new ideas.”
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The High Ground
By Robert Clark
*The High Ground*
P.O. Box 457 Neillsville, WI 54456
A couple of years ago someone asked me if I still thought about Vietnam. I nearly laughed in their face. How do you stop thinking about it?
Every day for the last twenty-four years, I wake up with it, and go to bed with it. But this is what I said. "Yea, I think about it. I can't quit thinking about it. I never will. But, I've also learned to live with it.
I'm comfortable with the memories. I've learned to stop trying to forget and learned instead to embrace it. It just doesn't scare me anymore."
A psychologist once told me that NOT being affected by the experience over there would be abnormal. When he told me that, it was like he'd just given me a pardon. It was as if he said, "Go ahead and feel something about the place, Bob. It ain't going nowhere. You're gonna wear it for the rest of your life. Might as well get to know it."A lot of my "brothers" haven't been so lucky. For them the memories are too painful, their sense of loss too great. My sister told me of a friend she has whose husband was in the Nam She asks this guy when he was there. Here's what he said, "Just last night." It took my sister a while to figure out what he was talking about. JUST LAST NIGHT.
Yeah I was in the Nam. When? JUST LAST NIGHT. During sex with my wife. And on my way to work this morning. Over my lunch hour. Yeah, I was there.
My sister says I'm not the same brother that went to Vietnam. My wife says I won't let people get close to me, not even her. They are probably both right.
Ask a vet about making friends in Nam. It was risky. Why? Because we were in the business of death, and death was with us all the time. It wasn't the death of, "If I die before I wake." This was the real thing. The kind where boys scream for their mothers. The kind that lingers in your mind and becomes more real each time you cheat it. You don't want to make a lot of friends when the possibility of dying is that real, that close. When you do, friends become a liability.
A guy named Bob Flanigan was my friend. Bob Flanigan is dead. I put him in a body bag one sunny day, April 29, 1969. We'd been talking, only a few minutes before he was shot, about what we were going to do when we got back in the world. Now, this was a guy who had come in country the same time as myself. A guy who was loveable and generous. He had blue eyes and sandy blond hair. When he talked, it was with a soft drawl. Flanigan was a hick and he knew it. That was part of his charm. He didn't care. Man, I loved this guy like the brother I never had. But, I screwed up. I got too close to him. Maybe I didn't know any better. But I broke one of the unwritten rules of war. DON'T GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO DIE. Sometimes youcan't help it.
You hear vets use the term "buddy" when they refer to a guy they spent the war with. Me and this buddy a mine . . ""Friend" sounds too intimate, doesn't it. "Friend" calls up images of being close. If he's a friend, then you are going to be hurt if he dies, and war hurts enough without adding to the pain. Get close; get hurt. It's as simple as that.In war you learn to keep people at that distance my wife talks about. You become so good at it, that twenty years after the war, you still do it without thinking. You won't allow yourself to be vulnerable again.
My wife knows two people who can get into the soft spots inside me. My daughters I know it probably bothers her that they can do this. It's not that I don't love my wife, I do. She's put up with a lot from me. She'll tell you that when she signed on for better or worse she had no idea there was going to be so much of the latter. But with my daughters it's different.
My girls are mine. They'll always be my kids. Not marriage, not distance, not even death can change that. They are something on this earth that can never be taken away from me. I belong to them. Nothing can change that. I can have an ex-wife; but my girls can never have an ex-father. There's the difference.I can still see the faces, though they all seem to have the same eyes. When I think of us I always see a line of "dirty grunts" sitting on a paddy dike. We're caught in the first gray silver between darkness and light. That first moment when we know we've survived another night, and the business of staying alive for one more day is about to begin.
There was so much hope in that brief space of time. It's what we used to pray for. "One more day, God. One more day."And I can hear our conversatioins as if they'd only just been spoken I still hear the way we sounded, the hard cynical jokes, our morbid senses of humor. We were scared to death of dying, and trying our best not to show it.
I recall the smells, too. Like the way cordite hangs on the air after a fire-fight. Or the pungent odor of rice paddy mud. So different from the black dirt of Iowa. The mud of Nam smells ancient, somehow. Like it's always been there.
And I'll never forget the way blood smells, stick and drying on my hands. I spent a long night that way once. That memory isn't going anywhere.I remember how the night jungle appears almost dream like as the pilot of a Cessna buzzes overhead, dropping parachute flares until morning. That artifical sun would flicker and make shadows run through the jungle. It was worse than not being able to see what was out there sometimes.
I remember once looking at the man next to me as a flare floated overhead. The shadows around his eyes were so deep that it looked like his eyes were gone. I reached over and touched him on the arm; without looking at me he touched my hand. "I know man. I know." That's what he said. It was a human moment. Two guys a long way from home and scared sh"tless. “I know man" And at that moment he did.
God I loved those guys. I hurt every time one of them died. We all did. Despite our posturing. Despite our desire to stay disconnected, we couldn't help ourselves. I know why Tim O'Brien writes his stories. I know what gives Bruce Weigle the words to create poems so honest I cry at their horrible beauty. It's love. Love for those guys we shared the experience with.
We did our jobs like good soldiers, and we tried our best not to become as hard as our surroundings. We touched each other and said, "I know." Like a mother holding a child in the middle of a nightmare, "It's going to be all right." We tried not to lose touch with our humanity. We tried to walk that line. To be the good boys our parents had raised and not to give into that unnamed thing we knew was inside us all.
You want to know what frightening is? It's a nineteen-year-old-boy who's had a sip of that power over life and death that war gives you. It's a boy who, despite all the things he's been taught, knows that he likes it.
It's a nineteen-year-old who's just lost a friend, and is angry and scared and, determined that, "Some *@#*s gonna pay" To this day, the thought of that boy can wake me from a sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling.
As I write this, I have a picture in from of me. It's of two young men. On their laps are tablets. One is smoking a cigarette. Both stare without expression at the camera. They're writing letters. Staying in touch with places they would rather be. Places and eople they hope to see again.
The picture shares space in a frame with one of my wife. She doesn't mind. She knows she's been included in special company. She knows I'll always love those guys who shared thatr part of my life, a part she never can. And she understands how I feel about the ones I know are out there yet. The ones who still answer the question, "When were you in Vietnam?"
"Hey, man. I was there just last night."
*The High Ground*
P.O. Box 457 Neillsville, WI 54456
A couple of years ago someone asked me if I still thought about Vietnam. I nearly laughed in their face. How do you stop thinking about it?
Every day for the last twenty-four years, I wake up with it, and go to bed with it. But this is what I said. "Yea, I think about it. I can't quit thinking about it. I never will. But, I've also learned to live with it.
I'm comfortable with the memories. I've learned to stop trying to forget and learned instead to embrace it. It just doesn't scare me anymore."
A psychologist once told me that NOT being affected by the experience over there would be abnormal. When he told me that, it was like he'd just given me a pardon. It was as if he said, "Go ahead and feel something about the place, Bob. It ain't going nowhere. You're gonna wear it for the rest of your life. Might as well get to know it."A lot of my "brothers" haven't been so lucky. For them the memories are too painful, their sense of loss too great. My sister told me of a friend she has whose husband was in the Nam She asks this guy when he was there. Here's what he said, "Just last night." It took my sister a while to figure out what he was talking about. JUST LAST NIGHT.
Yeah I was in the Nam. When? JUST LAST NIGHT. During sex with my wife. And on my way to work this morning. Over my lunch hour. Yeah, I was there.
My sister says I'm not the same brother that went to Vietnam. My wife says I won't let people get close to me, not even her. They are probably both right.
Ask a vet about making friends in Nam. It was risky. Why? Because we were in the business of death, and death was with us all the time. It wasn't the death of, "If I die before I wake." This was the real thing. The kind where boys scream for their mothers. The kind that lingers in your mind and becomes more real each time you cheat it. You don't want to make a lot of friends when the possibility of dying is that real, that close. When you do, friends become a liability.
A guy named Bob Flanigan was my friend. Bob Flanigan is dead. I put him in a body bag one sunny day, April 29, 1969. We'd been talking, only a few minutes before he was shot, about what we were going to do when we got back in the world. Now, this was a guy who had come in country the same time as myself. A guy who was loveable and generous. He had blue eyes and sandy blond hair. When he talked, it was with a soft drawl. Flanigan was a hick and he knew it. That was part of his charm. He didn't care. Man, I loved this guy like the brother I never had. But, I screwed up. I got too close to him. Maybe I didn't know any better. But I broke one of the unwritten rules of war. DON'T GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO DIE. Sometimes youcan't help it.
You hear vets use the term "buddy" when they refer to a guy they spent the war with. Me and this buddy a mine . . ""Friend" sounds too intimate, doesn't it. "Friend" calls up images of being close. If he's a friend, then you are going to be hurt if he dies, and war hurts enough without adding to the pain. Get close; get hurt. It's as simple as that.In war you learn to keep people at that distance my wife talks about. You become so good at it, that twenty years after the war, you still do it without thinking. You won't allow yourself to be vulnerable again.
My wife knows two people who can get into the soft spots inside me. My daughters I know it probably bothers her that they can do this. It's not that I don't love my wife, I do. She's put up with a lot from me. She'll tell you that when she signed on for better or worse she had no idea there was going to be so much of the latter. But with my daughters it's different.
My girls are mine. They'll always be my kids. Not marriage, not distance, not even death can change that. They are something on this earth that can never be taken away from me. I belong to them. Nothing can change that. I can have an ex-wife; but my girls can never have an ex-father. There's the difference.I can still see the faces, though they all seem to have the same eyes. When I think of us I always see a line of "dirty grunts" sitting on a paddy dike. We're caught in the first gray silver between darkness and light. That first moment when we know we've survived another night, and the business of staying alive for one more day is about to begin.
There was so much hope in that brief space of time. It's what we used to pray for. "One more day, God. One more day."And I can hear our conversatioins as if they'd only just been spoken I still hear the way we sounded, the hard cynical jokes, our morbid senses of humor. We were scared to death of dying, and trying our best not to show it.
I recall the smells, too. Like the way cordite hangs on the air after a fire-fight. Or the pungent odor of rice paddy mud. So different from the black dirt of Iowa. The mud of Nam smells ancient, somehow. Like it's always been there.
And I'll never forget the way blood smells, stick and drying on my hands. I spent a long night that way once. That memory isn't going anywhere.I remember how the night jungle appears almost dream like as the pilot of a Cessna buzzes overhead, dropping parachute flares until morning. That artifical sun would flicker and make shadows run through the jungle. It was worse than not being able to see what was out there sometimes.
I remember once looking at the man next to me as a flare floated overhead. The shadows around his eyes were so deep that it looked like his eyes were gone. I reached over and touched him on the arm; without looking at me he touched my hand. "I know man. I know." That's what he said. It was a human moment. Two guys a long way from home and scared sh"tless. “I know man" And at that moment he did.
God I loved those guys. I hurt every time one of them died. We all did. Despite our posturing. Despite our desire to stay disconnected, we couldn't help ourselves. I know why Tim O'Brien writes his stories. I know what gives Bruce Weigle the words to create poems so honest I cry at their horrible beauty. It's love. Love for those guys we shared the experience with.
We did our jobs like good soldiers, and we tried our best not to become as hard as our surroundings. We touched each other and said, "I know." Like a mother holding a child in the middle of a nightmare, "It's going to be all right." We tried not to lose touch with our humanity. We tried to walk that line. To be the good boys our parents had raised and not to give into that unnamed thing we knew was inside us all.
You want to know what frightening is? It's a nineteen-year-old-boy who's had a sip of that power over life and death that war gives you. It's a boy who, despite all the things he's been taught, knows that he likes it.
It's a nineteen-year-old who's just lost a friend, and is angry and scared and, determined that, "Some *@#*s gonna pay" To this day, the thought of that boy can wake me from a sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling.
As I write this, I have a picture in from of me. It's of two young men. On their laps are tablets. One is smoking a cigarette. Both stare without expression at the camera. They're writing letters. Staying in touch with places they would rather be. Places and eople they hope to see again.
The picture shares space in a frame with one of my wife. She doesn't mind. She knows she's been included in special company. She knows I'll always love those guys who shared thatr part of my life, a part she never can. And she understands how I feel about the ones I know are out there yet. The ones who still answer the question, "When were you in Vietnam?"
"Hey, man. I was there just last night."
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Moral Clarity in Gaza
Moral Clarity in Gaza
by Charles Krauthammer
Hamas has only one grievance: Israel's very existence.
Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the
Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons. --
Associated Press, Dec. 27
Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a
moral clarity not only rare but excruciating. Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis -- 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years -- deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.
This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures
civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis
have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that
inevitable collateral damage -- or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb -- will kill large
numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.
For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians. The religion of
Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous. And deeply perverse, such as the Hamas TV
children's program in which an adorable live-action Palestinian Mickey Mouse is beaten to
death by an Israeli (then replaced by his more militant cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who vows to
continue on Mickey's path to martyrdom).
At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and
suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed to saving as many lives as possible
-- also on both sides. It's a recurring theme. Israel gave similar warnings to Southern Lebanese
villagers before attacking Hezbollah in the Lebanon war of 2006. The Israelis did this knowing
it would lose for them the element of surprise and cost the lives of their own soldiers.
That is the asymmetry of means between Hamas and Israel. But there is equal clarity
regarding the asymmetry of ends. Israel has but a single objective in Gaza -- peace: the calm,
open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it withdrew in 2005. Doing something never done
by the Turkish, British, Egyptian and Jordanian rulers of Palestine, the Israelis gave the
Palestinians their first sovereign territory ever in Gaza.
What ensued? This is not ancient history. Did the Palestinians begin building the state that is
supposedly their great national aim? No. No roads, no industry, no courts, no civil society at
all. The flourishing greenhouses that Israel left behind for the Palestinians were destroyed and
abandoned.
Instead, Gaza's Iranian-sponsored rulers have devoted all their resources to turning it into a terror base -- importing weapons, training terrorists, building tunnels with which
to kidnap Israelis on the other side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly.
The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in
September 2005. There's only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel's very
existence.
Nor does Hamas conceal its strategy. Provoke conflict. Wait for the inevitable civilian
casualties. Bring down the world's opprobrium on Israel. Force it into an untenable cease-fire --
exactly as happened in Lebanon. Then, as in Lebanon, rearm, rebuild and mobilize for the next
round. Perpetual war. Since its raison d'etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two
possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.
Israel's only response is to try to do what it failed to do after the Gaza withdrawal. The
unpardonable strategic error of its architect, Ariel Sharon, was not the withdrawal itself but the
failure to immediately establish a deterrence regime under which no violence would be
tolerated after the removal of any and all Israeli presence -- the ostensible justification for
previous Palestinian attacks. Instead, Israel allowed unceasing rocket fire, implicitly
acquiescing to a state of active war and indiscriminate terror.
Hamas's rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire (during which the
rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave Israel a rare opportunity to establish the
norm it should have insisted upon three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping,
no acts of war. As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring ceasefire.
If this fighting ends with anything less than that, Israel will have lost yet another war. The
question is whether Israel still retains the nerve -- and the moral self-assurance -- to win.
This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.
This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/Moral_Clarity_in_Gaza.asp
Copyright © 1995 - 2009 Aish.com - http://www.aish.com
Lakewood, NJ 08701
by Charles Krauthammer
Hamas has only one grievance: Israel's very existence.
Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the
Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons. --
Associated Press, Dec. 27
Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a
moral clarity not only rare but excruciating. Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis -- 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years -- deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.
This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures
civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis
have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that
inevitable collateral damage -- or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb -- will kill large
numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.
For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians. The religion of
Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous. And deeply perverse, such as the Hamas TV
children's program in which an adorable live-action Palestinian Mickey Mouse is beaten to
death by an Israeli (then replaced by his more militant cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who vows to
continue on Mickey's path to martyrdom).
At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and
suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed to saving as many lives as possible
-- also on both sides. It's a recurring theme. Israel gave similar warnings to Southern Lebanese
villagers before attacking Hezbollah in the Lebanon war of 2006. The Israelis did this knowing
it would lose for them the element of surprise and cost the lives of their own soldiers.
That is the asymmetry of means between Hamas and Israel. But there is equal clarity
regarding the asymmetry of ends. Israel has but a single objective in Gaza -- peace: the calm,
open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it withdrew in 2005. Doing something never done
by the Turkish, British, Egyptian and Jordanian rulers of Palestine, the Israelis gave the
Palestinians their first sovereign territory ever in Gaza.
What ensued? This is not ancient history. Did the Palestinians begin building the state that is
supposedly their great national aim? No. No roads, no industry, no courts, no civil society at
all. The flourishing greenhouses that Israel left behind for the Palestinians were destroyed and
abandoned.
Instead, Gaza's Iranian-sponsored rulers have devoted all their resources to turning it into a terror base -- importing weapons, training terrorists, building tunnels with which
to kidnap Israelis on the other side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly.
The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in
September 2005. There's only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel's very
existence.
Nor does Hamas conceal its strategy. Provoke conflict. Wait for the inevitable civilian
casualties. Bring down the world's opprobrium on Israel. Force it into an untenable cease-fire --
exactly as happened in Lebanon. Then, as in Lebanon, rearm, rebuild and mobilize for the next
round. Perpetual war. Since its raison d'etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two
possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.
Israel's only response is to try to do what it failed to do after the Gaza withdrawal. The
unpardonable strategic error of its architect, Ariel Sharon, was not the withdrawal itself but the
failure to immediately establish a deterrence regime under which no violence would be
tolerated after the removal of any and all Israeli presence -- the ostensible justification for
previous Palestinian attacks. Instead, Israel allowed unceasing rocket fire, implicitly
acquiescing to a state of active war and indiscriminate terror.
Hamas's rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire (during which the
rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave Israel a rare opportunity to establish the
norm it should have insisted upon three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping,
no acts of war. As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring ceasefire.
If this fighting ends with anything less than that, Israel will have lost yet another war. The
question is whether Israel still retains the nerve -- and the moral self-assurance -- to win.
This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.
This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/Moral_Clarity_in_Gaza.asp
Copyright © 1995 - 2009 Aish.com - http://www.aish.com
Lakewood, NJ 08701
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