I knew all about this years ago. The little rat-faced Arab scoundrel was the one who ordered the murder of the american diplomats in Khartoum. Maybe some of you who are more understanding about Arabs than I am should have taken the trouble to find out.
Arnold, the news that I see here is that State had such conclusive evidence and chose to ignore it. The "realists" at State are no better than Eason Jordan.
Arnold: I simply don't generalize about Arabs like you do. Indeed, I find Arafat's status as a KGB stooge far more relevant than his status as an Arab.
Martin: Well, we might consider that these murders were in the early 1970s, at the height of the Cold War, and that publishing the news at the time would have been considered "red baiting." The Cold War was a real war and often involved not publishing everything we knew as soon as we knew it.
Fast forward to the mid-to-late 1990s, and by then Arafat was such an entrenched reality in Palestine that he was the only person who could credibly be negotiated with. And, he was no longer at that point a Soviet puppet because there was no more Soviet Union. Thus the calculation at the time was probably different.
A lot of things like this are easier to understand if you consider the context in which the initial decisions were made. Hindsight appears to be 20/20 but it really isn't.
Dean, I try not to generalize about Arabs to the degree I once would have done. And I can tell you for a fact that any Arab who makes his way to our country and sees to it that he or she and their family adopt the standard culture of the majority of the people in the United States, is as much an American to me as anyone else.
That's the same as I demand from anybody else around here if they want me to classify them as Americans without one of Theodore Roosevelt's "hyphens".
Even more so if that American becomes a member of the armed services of the United States. That doesn't mean he has to become another General Abizaid or anything on that level. Just to have sworn an oath to our colors and served them in uniform.
As for the Hamastinians in general, and their leadership above all, I regard them as nothing more than a pack of two-legged cockroaches whom I sincerely hope the Israeli leadership shall simply expel to a remotely safe distance from Israel's borders.
I know for a fact there will never be any peace with that, and not being a lying hypocrite, I freely admit that I'm glad of that. Because I truly want to see them expelled.
Why? Because the Hamastinians under the best of circumstances can never and shall never be anything more than Israel's Mexicans, or like the Turks and various balkan folks are to the Germans. In other words, hewers of wood, drawers of water, cleanup crews in the toilets and dressing rooms of everybody's physical fitness centers. And when they practice their incessant cross-border terrorism, the Israelis respond by terminating their right to cross the border and earn money working for the Jews, which is mostly the only way any of these bastards seem to be able to earn a living to support the endless number of children they purport to raise.
The Hamastinians have wierd notions of adding a second Hamastinian state to the one they already across the river in Jordan. Will the Hashemite monarchy that presides over that entity one day be deposed and replaced by a hamastinian government? You can all but bet your ass on that.
I've been reading bullshit from all across the country for more than 50 years now about building peace between the Jews and Arabs. And that's all that I see in this. Just bullshit.
You want real peace? Either find some way to remove all the Jews from Hamastine, or expel the Hamastinians as I suggested above and encourage the Jews to finish their expansion of the natural defensive borders, back to the Suez isthmus on the west and the Jordan river on the east.
Otherwise, what the Arabs in general and the Hamastinians in particular will see is what they think is a weakened Israel they are free to attack whenever even a handful of them want to prove their macho reputation in whatever stininking, dirty rathole of a village or squalid urban qasbah they crawl out of to start trouble for the world on what seems like every damned day.
I'm told that the rest of the Arabs all but despise these Hamastinians. Even so, all these other Arabs publicly howl to the world about the need to avenge their nakhba (catastrophe?) that the Jews caused them. But the Hamastinians will in fact be living in a permanent nakhba unless and until they are resettled elsewhere.
I'm less cynical than you about the future, if only because of the many Israeli Arabs who exist, and the fact that very few of them are dedicated to Israel's destruction.
I understand that you think culture the most important matter in human affairs, Arnold. I respectfully dissent. I think that the "Hamastinians," as you call them, will be much more amenable to sensible negotiations once their Soviet, Iranian, Syrian, and other nutjob sponsors stop messing with their heads.
Yes the Soviets are now mostly gone, but the other forces remain.
Yet you'll have to work hard to convince me that the average Arab living in the West Bank or Gaza really has "the destruction of Israel, the Jews, and democratic values" as his central conern. Most of them want a good job and a decent shot at security for their women and children, and not much more. Too bad we have all these external forces making it more complicated.
12.29.2006 8:43pm
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Martin: Well, we might consider that these murders were in the early 1970s, at the height of the Cold War, and that publishing the news at the time would have been considered "red baiting." The Cold War was a real war and often involved not publishing everything we knew as soon as we knew it.
Fast forward to the mid-to-late 1990s, and by then Arafat was such an entrenched reality in Palestine that he was the only person who could credibly be negotiated with. And, he was no longer at that point a Soviet puppet because there was no more Soviet Union. Thus the calculation at the time was probably different.
A lot of things like this are easier to understand if you consider the context in which the initial decisions were made. Hindsight appears to be 20/20 but it really isn't.
That's the same as I demand from anybody else around here if they want me to classify them as Americans without one of Theodore Roosevelt's "hyphens".
Even more so if that American becomes a member of the armed services of the United States. That doesn't mean he has to become another General Abizaid or anything on that level. Just to have sworn an oath to our colors and served them in uniform.
As for the Hamastinians in general, and their leadership above all, I regard them as nothing more than a pack of two-legged cockroaches whom I sincerely hope the Israeli leadership shall simply expel to a remotely safe distance from Israel's borders.
I know for a fact there will never be any peace with that, and not being a lying hypocrite, I freely admit that I'm glad of that. Because I truly want to see them expelled.
Why? Because the Hamastinians under the best of circumstances can never and shall never be anything more than Israel's Mexicans, or like the Turks and various balkan folks are to the Germans. In other words, hewers of wood, drawers of water, cleanup crews in the toilets and dressing rooms of everybody's physical fitness centers. And when they practice their incessant cross-border terrorism, the Israelis respond by terminating their right to cross the border and earn money working for the Jews, which is mostly the only way any of these bastards seem to be able to earn a living to support the endless number of children they purport to raise.
The Hamastinians have wierd notions of adding a second Hamastinian state to the one they already across the river in Jordan. Will the Hashemite monarchy that presides over that entity one day be deposed and replaced by a hamastinian government? You can all but bet your ass on that.
I've been reading bullshit from all across the country for more than 50 years now about building peace between the Jews and Arabs. And that's all that I see in this. Just bullshit.
You want real peace? Either find some way to remove all the Jews from Hamastine, or expel the Hamastinians as I suggested above and encourage the Jews to finish their expansion of the natural defensive borders, back to the Suez isthmus on the west and the Jordan river on the east.
Otherwise, what the Arabs in general and the Hamastinians in particular will see is what they think is a weakened Israel they are free to attack whenever even a handful of them want to prove their macho reputation in whatever stininking, dirty rathole of a village or squalid urban qasbah they crawl out of to start trouble for the world on what seems like every damned day.
I'm told that the rest of the Arabs all but despise these Hamastinians. Even so, all these other Arabs publicly howl to the world about the need to avenge their nakhba (catastrophe?) that the Jews caused them. But the Hamastinians will in fact be living in a permanent nakhba unless and until they are resettled elsewhere.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I understand that you think culture the most important matter in human affairs, Arnold. I respectfully dissent. I think that the "Hamastinians," as you call them, will be much more amenable to sensible negotiations once their Soviet, Iranian, Syrian, and other nutjob sponsors stop messing with their heads.
Yes the Soviets are now mostly gone, but the other forces remain.
Yet you'll have to work hard to convince me that the average Arab living in the West Bank or Gaza really has "the destruction of Israel, the Jews, and democratic values" as his central conern. Most of them want a good job and a decent shot at security for their women and children, and not much more. Too bad we have all these external forces making it more complicated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.