One of the memes going around on the left since the election has been to refer to themselves as “members of the reality-based community,” which I presume is supposed to be a take-off on Bush’s mention of “faith-based” initiatives and programs. (Although I happen to share many of the left’s religious disbeliefs, I don’t go so far into outright hostility to Christianity or any other particularly strong faith as they do.) Apparently a few readers of Wizbang are “based” in reality, but have wandered quite a bit away from base.
First up, we have the inestimable “Mr. Teacup,” who opines:
Kofi Annan heads the largest humanitarian organization in the world – his compassionate credentials are fairly well-established by now. The US has no intention of withdrawing from the UN. It is an organization that is the crowning achievement of one of America’s most beloved presidents and its charter was written by our own State Department. It is a towering monument of enormous historical importance that America led the world in creating. Of course, everyone knows this, which is why everyone also knows that the current anti-UN, anti-Annan talk is merely retaliation towards certain UN officials who took a pro-Kerry stance during the election, and in particular, political missteps by Annan when he publicly opposed the Fallujah offensive.
It’s like a giant buffet of stupidity, and somebody just handed me a plate the size of a trash-can lid and a garden trowel. I have absolutely no idea where to begin with this, and there’s no way I can properly do it justice.
]]>< 
Piece of cake, Jay:
Darfur
Srebrenica
Rwanda
Somalia
Oil for Food scandal
Rape & kiddie prostitution by UN workers in the Congo.
Oh, wait . . . you want examples of good things. Never mine. 🙂
It’s not hard, first shred it all then burn it. Doing it from either end will serve it’s purpose.
Cindy
It’s not hard, first shred it all then burn it. Doing it from either end will serve it’s purpose.
Cindy
For one, the UN isn’t supposed to be a humanitarian organization. It “evolved” that way because the 3rd world countries who currently “head” the different committees in the UN have their own special interests that they direct the UN towards.
Obtained from Shots across the bow
by the way, this is the origin of the “reality based community”:
Excerpt:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
It is annoying how they all come up with the identical talking points at the same time. They must all get the same letter and/or email with instructions.
Our talking points come straight from Chairman Rove.
If you’re not getting the memo, you aren’t needed, so kindly shut up, you Liberal poser.
Julie, it’s because while your side claims to be “based” in reality, we actually LIVE there. Or did it occur to you that we all mentioned the same things might because they’re all TRUE?
That actually should make things easier for you, julie. You could simply answer them once, and shut up all of us. It’s very economical. Why don’t you do just that?
Come on, Julie. Give us all the big smackdown in one swell foop. Rip apart the examples we cited. Show us all for the pitiful, pathetic, hateful morons you consider us to be.
I’m strapping on the great big “KICK ME” sign and bending over, Julie. Let me have it.
J.
Actually, Darfur is in Sudan, not Somalia. Anyway, UN might be a giant bureaucratic mamooth that doesn’t accomplish that much, but saying it’s downright useless is a superficial comment. It does accomplish some peacekeeping missions where, while the quality is lacking, no one else can, since neither nato nor usa forces can enter because of hostility towards the troops/countries. The information gathering of UN statistics groups are not bad. And they do participate in various important humanitarian works throught the world (not JUST because third world countries are pushing the agenda, this is a oversimplified statement of internationak relations). But the main reason the UN’s existance is important is subtle and it mainly works in the symbolic level of international legitimacy and international conflict solving, through discussions, of course. Not that the UN works properly or does actually what it was meant to be. Unfortunately, most of the important world power lies in the IMF, the WB, a great deal of economic powers (whether they are countries and/or private institutions) and most unfortunately, Bush.
Sorry, the third world countries comment was from a guy called henry
“Reality based community” is not a take-off on Bush’s faith based community it refers to this comment from an article by Ronald Suskind in the New York Times Magazine.
As noted by Henry, earlier.
Jay,
Nice rant, but a little more research would have made it even better (why give your oponents a reason to dismiss your case by making silly errors about the location of Darfur and Kofi Annan’s home country–Ghana, not Somalia?).
Why do I feel like I’ve entered the Twilight Zone?
doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo…
Me too, julie…
Hey, Jay, julie usually *agrees* with this blog. Right? I think you might have meant to go off on minnie…she’s the troll!
Or did I miss something?
I agree entirely. My whole Your UN Contribution at Work” series has been dedicated to highlighting the fact that the US has everything to gain and nothing to lose by withdrawing from the UN and booting them from our shores.
Darfur
Srebrenica
Rwanda
Somalia
Oil for Food scandal
Rape & kiddie prostitution by UN workers in the Congo.
Odd, ain’t it, that nowhere have I seen a lefty address these issues. Not once.
If the UN is so wonderful, you’d expect there to be ample evidence out there to refute the critics.
Er… Julie, I was presuming your “talking points” remark was directed towards me and those who had also pointed out UN failures. I appear to have been mistaken; I apologize, but also thank you for giving me a “straw man” to smack other critics.
Jem, er… umm… I deliberately made the Annan mistake to prove an earlier point I made: while blogs don’t have editors per se, we do have thousands of ombudsmen who will fact-check our asses to oblivion and beyond.
Alternately, you could think I wrote this in the middle of the night and recalled some kind of scandal linking Annan’s homeland and some UN scandal. I guess I was thinking of the French “peacekeepers” and their firing on civilians in the Ivory Coast, Ghana’s next-door neighbor.
And as far as minnie goes, I’m 75% convinced it’s a bot and therefore unworthy of attention.
J.
“Well, dear friends, we’re now into the tenth day of the tsunami crisis and in this battered corner of Asia, the UN is nowhere to be seen — unless you count at meetings, in five-star hotels, and holding press conferences.”
From the “Diplomad” blog–State Dept. employee on the ground there.
OT – Note to Suzy and Julie – yayyy! The Comments are coming back on line again. Kev is rebuilding it.
I’m no fan of the UN, but I believe there’s one sub-org of the UN that actually does good work: the World Health Organization. From what I remember, they did a good job with the SARS outbreak, and generally are good in responding to epidemics.
Some of the problems in WHO are bolstered by the U.S. (I’m thinking of not using DDT for malaria prevention in Africa, which the U.S. has nixed for quite some time…), but in general, I think they don’t suffer or perpetrate the abuses the other UN agencies do.
I would have thought that some UN partisan would have brought up this point, especially as the WHO is part of that whole “humanitarian mission” thing.
Google World Health Organization Planned Parenthood Eugenics, and there’s your answer.
First, a few corrections:
Somalia is not Anna’s mother country. Ghana is.
As Charles Duelfer and David Kay’s exhaustive reports will attest, the Iraq sanctions worked. Their goal was to prevent Saddam from starting up his WMD programs again. As we all know now, he didn’t. And the Oil for Food scandal is still under investigation; Paul Volker has not yet released his findings in the case, so let’s not jump to conclusions about the role (if any) that Kofi played.
Five examples? The UN is responsible for the establishment of Israel. The first Gulf War was carried out with UN cooperation. The IJC (Int’l Court of Justice) has ruled on many legal disputes like fishing boundaries between Great Britain and Norway. The UN has helped to establish procedures for the prosecution of Khmer Rouge members in Cambodia. And the Hague is currently putting a genocidal maniac, Milosevic, on trial.
One of the problems in taking Jay’s challenge is that his mindset already suggests that no concrete examples I might suggest would alter his conclusion. I could argue, for example, that since UN agencies usually arrive in troubled areas after much destruction has already occurred and get thrown into situations where conflict still continues (e.g., The Congo, Sudan, Iraq), making the UN’s task more difficult. His reply would no doubt be that the UN failed to prevent the problem in the first place. The assumption here is that all world problems can be prevented/should be prevented by a world body. This presupposes that all world problems are easily forseeable. Would Jay argue that the Iraqi insurgency was easily foreseeable? Certainly the neocons did not foresee it.
If the UN is so bad at handling dictators, the US is no better, when it goes it alone. Iraq is the best but not the only example.
As Winston Churchill said, “The United Nations was not set up to get us to heaven, but only to save us from hell.” The U.N. is far from perfect, but it’s the best hope we have for improving conditions on an international scale we have at present. Should it be reformed? yes.
J.T. : No, it was in support of the first 9 or so words of your post, since the most current meme going around is he delayed after 911 and he delayed after the tsunami. Both, of course, are lies.
p.s. — Your offer of ‘bend over and kick me’ is still good, isn’t it?
The alleged basis of the UN’s creation is a fallacy:
“Peace through unity.” (I.e. world govt)
Peace is not dependent upon unity.
Peace depends on sanity.
Excerpt from:
LifeSite Daily News
Thursday January 30, 2003
“NEW WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION CHIEF INVOLVED IN POPULATION CONTROL VACCINE SCANDAL
GENEVA, January 30, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Dr. Jong Wook Lee, a relatively unknown World Health Organization (WHO) insider beat out high profile competitors to become the head of the World Health Organization Tuesday. Other candidates for the post included Dr. Julio Frenk Mora – currently Mexico’s Minister of Health and Dr. Pascoal Mocumbi – the Prime Minister of Mozambique.
However, Lee’s work with WHO included being in charge of and weathering one of the most scandalous accusations to be brought against the organization. Lee, a vaccine expert was in 1994 placed in charge of the WHO Global Programme for Vaccines and Immunizations. In 1995 the BBC aired an investigative documentary verified by the Philippine Department of Health and the Philippine Medical Association that tetanus vaccines from the WHO were combined with a chemical known as beta Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, an anti-pregnancy agent.
The BBC Horizon program entitled “The Human Laboratory”, which was never aired in the United States, noted that Philippino women of child-bearing age were administered the tainted vaccine and many miscarriages ensued. Dr. Reynaldo Echavez of the Philippine Medical Association stated that the presence of the HCG in the tetanus shot would cause the women to develop HCG antibodies, which will then cause spontaneous abortion if the women become pregnant.
WHO denied the accusation and claimed to have found negligible amounts of HCG ‘independent’ in the vaccines. However, the BBC report said that “There are several research programmes around the world testing the contraceptive vaccine linked to tetanus, which creates an immune response.” Moreover pr-life leaders in the Philippines were alerted that a similar program of surreptitiously sterilizing tetanus vaccines had been perpetrated in Mexico.”
The UNs work with refugees is generally considered praiseworthy (but not the separate beaurocracy maintained for the Palestinians). This discussion in general is a perennial, but I think over the years more of the public has been catching on. Does anyone remember the New World Information Order scheme the UN floated in the 70s or early 80s? It was a plan to control journalists in order to redress the negative portrayal of the third world in the world press. And how about the “Rights of the Child” treaty? This kind of stuff went into remission when Reagan put Jean Kirkpatrick in as UN amabassador, Sen. Jesse Helms kept the heat on in Congress, and (mainly) the US held back its payments. At least since I was a kid in the 60s, the UN defenders haven’t changed their arguments or their plodding “good government” tone. Nobbody in the US believes this anymore. Now if only the public in rest of the world would catch on.
Uh, yeah. You might want to bite your lip on the UN Oil for Food Scandal. This is a popular meme of the Right, but has not be substantiated with a single shred of evidence.
The only person claiming to have evidence for a “scandal” that I am aware of is Ahmed Chalabi and he has refused (for some unknown reason) to turn over any evidence to the UN, the US, or *anyone*.
Let’s not forget that it was Chalabi who claimed to personally *know* where stockpiles of weapons were in Iraq. Whenever we searched and failed to find them, he pointed to another spot.
He gave us every reason that we wanted to hear to invade Iraq. “They’ve got weapons. I’ve seen them.” or “Don’t listen to the UN. Saddam’s corrupted them. I can prove it.” All so he could get a shot at running for political office in Iraq. Guess what? He is. Surprise, surprise.
Don’t be Chalabi’s stooge. Probably the only reason we haven’t named him America’s Most Wanted is because we’d have to admit we were conned.
First, a few corrections:
Somalia is not Anna’s mother country. Ghana is.
Oh, yeah? And his name is Annan, not Anna.
As Charles Duelfer and David Kay’s exhaustive reports will attest, the Iraq sanctions worked.
Your conclusion, not Duelfer’s.
Their goal was to prevent Saddam from starting up his WMD programs again. As we all know now, he didn’t.
He was amassing money in order to fund his program. He was keeping the scientists on a short leash. He had every intent to start up again once sanctions were lifted.
And the Oil for Food scandal is still under investigation; Paul Volker has not yet released his findings in the case,
It’s UN procedures that are delaying the investigation.
so let’s not jump to conclusions about the role (if any) that Kofi played.
Oh, let’s!
Five examples? The UN is responsible for the establishment of Israel.
And has done everything to undermine its existance ever since.
The first Gulf War was carried out with UN cooperation.
Big deal.
The IJC (Int’l Court of Justice) has ruled on many legal disputes like fishing boundaries between Great Britain and Norway.
I will pass on the fish rights, but the Intern’l Criminal Court is a joke.
The UN has helped to establish procedures for the prosecution of Khmer Rouge members in Cambodia. And the Hague is currently putting a genocidal maniac, Milosevic, on trial.
Give me a break! It took them 6 years to come up with a draft of the proposed procedures. Has anyone been brought to justice? Or are they just allowed to die of old age while waiting prosecution. And the Milosevic trial has been going on for what, three years? And, still no end in sight. He, too, will die of old age before it’s finished.
But, hey, thanks for bringing to our attention more UN failures to add to the growing and long list.
Hi, Julie! (Did you see, Kev has restored the 2004 comments.)
Re UN establishing Israel – I’m sure there are experts on that subject, but I thought it started with a letter from Balfour in the British Parliament which became known as the Balfour Declaration. Something to do with political machinations re the creation of Suez Canal.
Hi, Julie! (Did you see, Kev has restored the 2004 comments.)
No, and I really should be working! But, thanks.
Actually, a Bush Administration official is responsible for the term:
“The aide (a senior adviser to President Bush) said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” – Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004.
I’d second what Brad wrote and add that as of November of 2004 there were at least 17 UN sponsored peacekeeping missions around the world involving close to 64,000 international troops and observers from 103 countries. Of that number the US has contributed 343. (http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/faq/q8.htm)
What to make of these statistics? First, the US has other priorities right now with Iraq and second, let’s not overestimate the UNs dependence on the US. Add to this the fact that as of November last year the US was not the largets contributor to the UN budget, it was the nation with the largest outstanding dues: $530 million. Almost half of the total UN debt.
Echoing Brad’s comment, does the UN need to be reformed? Yes. Could the UN react faster and more efficiently to international crises? Yes. So the question now is what is the best way to bring about reform? Continue to withhold funds and manpower or instead take an active role from within?
And speaking of active roles:
Interestingly enough the countries singly most responsible for overseeing the oil-for-food program were the US and the UK. These two countries had to approve every single transaction made over the course of the program. Quite simply, the US and UK did nothing to stop the kickbacks having approved every one of the contracts in which suspicious pricing was involved.
UN’s PLANS FOR A WORLD RELIGION:
Excerpt from here.
*****
“If you are one of those who don’t have time to worry about the matters of spirit, not to worry, the U.N. is working to take care of that for you. Living up to its charter – to be an agency of the world – it has assigned Donald Keys, President of Planetary Citizens.. to fade individual worship out and to replace it with one religion for everyone.
My Keys explains that for all mankind. “The United Nations is the chosen instrument of God. Because of this fact, the world must come to treasure the soul of the UN. For it is a soul that is all-loving, all-nourishing and all fulfilling.”
*****
And elsewhere in that article:
“One religious organization which enjoys the UN’s imprimatur is Share International, a UN-affiliated non-governmental organization whose monthly journal is published with the assistance of the UN Department of Public Information. Share International is headed by Benjamin Creme, a British theosophist who claims to speak on behalf of “Lord Maitreya,” a member of the “Spiritual Hierarchy of Ascended Masters Creme insists that Maitreya is the Christ” and is working with other members of the “Spiritual Hierarchy to bring about the consummation of human evolution.
The December 1994 issue of Share International reports that Maitreya an his associates are rapidly construction ‘the One Church and the New World Religion [which] will gradually emerge as a mutual tie to unite men with closer bonds.'”
*****
Ha – let’s all become one! One big, sticky mass of Gaia!
Faith is a wonderful thing, but it used to mean believing in God despite lack of evidence. For the modern right, it means believing in matters of policy and science despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The higher the evidence piles up, the louder you seek to overcome it by singing hosannahs.
And that, sir, is why we hold you in contempt.
Hey Julie —
Your “dissection” of Brad’s post is hilarious.
My favorite well-substanitated, well-reasoned responses:
“Oh, let’s.”
“Big deal.”
“I will pass on the fish rights, but the Intern’l Criminal Court is a joke.”
But seriously, this is the best:
“Has anyone been brought to justice? Or are they just allowed to die of old age while waiting prosecution.”
Isn’t this exactly our plan with the enemy combatants being held in Gitmo? Indeed, how many successful terrorist convictions have Bush/Ashcroft achieved? What is it? Zero?
Brad – Yes, let’s all wait till the “world body” investigates itself before we are “shocked..SHOCKED!”…to find that it pronounces itself clean and pure.
We are all reassured that the IJC is slapping around some elderly Cambodian monster…approcimately 30 years after they started their genocidal rampage. I personally sleep better knowing that my kippers and cod are caught by the proper skippers. I hope to live long enough (perhaps another 70 years ought to do it) to see the IJC convict Milosovic of “perhaps giving the appearance of behaving in a publicly uncivil manner.”
If you hold to your “forseeability” argument, then surely you must think that George Bush has precognitive abilities. Hours before UN mouth-organ was calling the US “cheap” we had ships on the seas, planes in the air, and hope on its way. To date the UN’s biggest roll in providing relief has amounted to hand-wringing.
You slander the US record on removing tyrants and you have the temerity to then quote Winston Churchill…a quote from a time before the bloom of what the UN was hoped to be rotted. Are you so young that you’ve never heard the names Hitler and Mussolini? If so, then we need not go into any discussion of our ancestors removing the heel of King George from their own throats. Are you so perverse in your thinking that you think Saddam should not have been deposed? If we fail to erase tyrany in Iraq, it won’t be for a lack of trying. It will because we are too weak…weakened by “let someone else do it” losers, by “it’s too hard” pessimists, and by “hate America First” pansies who care more about their personal politics than they do their fellow man.
Got it? It ain’t over till it’s over, Yogi. How easily you slander the US in the shadow of men who died so that you had the right to do so freely. I am humbled by the depth of your ingratitude.
Odd, ain’t it, that nowhere have I seen a lefty address these issues. Not once.
If the UN is so wonderful, you’d expect there to be ample evidence out there to refute the critics.
There’s no question that the UN has big problems that need to be addressed post-haste. However, the only people that claim the UN is the answer to every problem are anti-UN’ers in their scarecrows.
Those without an ideological axe to grind, or without insane eschatological fears of apocalypse, generally agree that the UN needs to be reformed; however, as an international forum it can be quite useful.
Brad,
To address a few of your points:
1) The UN is responsible for the establishment of Israel.
The UN is also responsible for the perpetuation of the poverty of the Palestinian Arabs driven out of neighboring Arab countries by their fellow “brothers” after the creation of Israel. Israel has had to defend herself in four major wars (1948, 1957, 1967, 1973) without the help of the UN. The West Bank was under Arab conrol from 1948 to 1967 and the UN never lifted a finger to pressure Syria or Jordan to establish a permanent Palestinian homeland there. The UN also never lifted a finger to pressure Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and other neighboring nations to repatriate the Palestinians that they continually expelled.
2) The first Gulf War was carried out with UN cooperation.
…and fought with US commanders, troops, and military hardware making up 90%+ of the invasion force. This was a US Military operation that the UN takes credit for.
3) The IJC (Int’l Court of Justice) has ruled on many legal disputes like fishing boundaries between Great Britain and Norway.
…and I’m sure that the world is a better place because the Britons are not fishing in Norwegian waters. The IJC has also repeatedly tried to get Israel to dismantle its security fence because it isn’t “fair”. The decrease in terrorist activity since the fence went up shows the necessity of the fence, and shows that the IJC is more interested in placating Palestinian terrorists and feigning political correctness than protecting the lives of Israeli citizens.
4) The UN has helped to establish procedures for the prosecution of Khmer Rouge members in Cambodia.
Pol Pot never paid for his crimes against humanity. He deserved to be stripped naked, pushed into a pit, and buried alive – the same type of fate he meted out to 2 million of his fellow human beings. Instead, he rotted in a prison cell awaiting a “trial”- another luxury he never accorded to his victims. The way the UN has coddled genocidal dictators makes me want to vomit.
5) And the Hague is currently putting a genocidal maniac, Milosevic, on trial.
And what will happen to him? He will make a mockery out of the court proceedings and probably end up living the rest of his life in a luxury hotel in Paris (while the UN *ahem* actually the US) foots the bill. Will we ever see actual death sentences for war criminals and genocidal dictators (like in the Neuremburg trials)? Don’t count on it. Actually, these guys should simply be turned over to mobs of citizens in their own nations, to face their own people and their own native brand of “justice.” Hey, it worked for Ceaucescu!
Interestingly, no one has mentioned the mother of all beaurocratic f*ck-ups caused by the UN, which was the loss of the flight recorder from the airliner crash that killed Rwanda’s president and precipitated the Rwandan genocide.
Earlier this year, the UN admitted that they found the flight recorder in an old filing cabinet. Evidence from the flight recorded would have proven that the airliner was not shot down, and probably would have prevented the Rwandan genocide. This had shades of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, where the demolition plans for Arthur Dent’s house were on display “in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused toilet with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.”
Here’s a link to a news story (liberal-safe source, CBS NEWS): http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/12/world/main605540.shtml
Mike
“How easily you slander the US in the shadow of men who died so that you had the right to do so freely. I am humbled by the depth of your ingratitude.”
Pat —
What in the heck are you talking about? To even suggest that things might have gone better in Iraq is to slander the US and the memory of brave soldiers? This is exactly the kind of rant that curtails any kind of civil discourse. The same goes for anyone out there who believes the UN aims to establish a single religion. Not only is it absurb on its face, but c’mon, isn’t the aim of every religion with an evangelical mission to create one religion?
It’s one thing to argue that the UN needs to be reformed but its quite another to suggest its a monstrous conpsiracy to destroy our way of life.
Given Pat’s POV is it not slander to suggest that the US is so vulnerable to insidious UN influence?
“Indeed, how many successful terrorist convictions have Bush/Ashcroft achieved? What is it? Zero?”
Absolutely. Yes. Quite true.
But they’ve been responsible for the killingof hundreds- if not thousands- of the murdering scum who shoot and rape schoolchildren and saw the heads off innocent civilians.
I’ll take that over a conviction any day.
“I’d second what Brad wrote and add that as of November of 2004 there were at least 17 UN sponsored peacekeeping missions around the world involving close to 64,000 international troops and observers from 103 countries.”
Well, that sounds like a hell of a lot blue helmets, just to stand by and watch massacres and to trade food for child sex.
Why is everyone here so quick to dismiss the UNs role in creating Israel or adjudicating fishing disputes?
Why has no one yet addressed the 15-17 peacekeeping missions currently underway all over the world in places like Haiti, Burundi, East Timor and Cyprus et al.
I’d also like to point out that the very reason so many on the right hate the UN is also the very reason why its often so slow to respond or seemingly inefficient: national sovereignty. You guys are afraid, on the one hand, that the UN is a serious threat to US sovereignty but then complain when it’s slow to interfere in the soveirgnty of other nations, like says, Iraq. What gives? Where’s the logical consistency?
Keith —
Those are hardly constructive comments.
“Actually, these guys should simply be turned over to mobs of citizens in their own nations, to face their own people and their own native brand of “justice.” Hey, it worked for Ceaucescu!”
“ut they’ve been responsible for the killingof hundreds- if not thousands- of the murdering scum who shoot and rape schoolchildren and saw the heads off innocent civilians.
I’ll take that over a conviction any day.”
In and of themselves these two comments are reason enough to support the UN and international law. Goodness I hope you two are just joking or blowing off steam. You guys aren’t advocating justice, you’re advocating for mob rule and anarchy.
You misunderstand the origins of the “Reality based community” meme.
It sprang from the NYT article by Susskind where Bartlett was getting efussive about how Bush doesn’t pay attention to little things, like “evidence” or “What is actually happening” (scare quotes, not actual quotations), and instead hoves to a belief that, ” he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.”
the actual term “reality based community” came from a quote further down in the article where a ‘winger was bleating about how god-like Bush and all Republicans are and that his opponents “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” His implication was that this is a bad thing (it’s not).
Anyway, don’t take my word for it. Actually read the article. However, you might simply want to ignore the reality of the article and continue with your highly constructive Liberal-bashing.
–
“Indeed, how many successful terrorist convictions have Bush/Ashcroft achieved? What is it? Zero?”
A lie started by Paul Krugman and perpetuated by Weisburg and Mills in Slate magazine.
Michelle Malkin responded with:
“Oh? What about shoebomber Richard Reid? What about Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh? What about Yahya Goba, Shafal Mosed, Yasein Taher, Taysal Galab, Mukhtar al-Bakri and Sahim Alwan of Lackawanna, New York? What about Jeffrey Battle, Patrice Ford, Ahmed Bilal, Muhammad Bilal, and October Lewis of Portland, Oregon? And Mike Hawash? How about Masoud Ahmad Khan, Seifullah Chapman, Yong Ki Kwon, Donald Surratt, and Hammad Abdur-Raheem from the Washington DC area? What about James Ujaama? And Iyman Faris?”
Ain’t it a bitch when the facts aren’t on your side?
Michelle Malkin shreds Krugman here:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000033.htm
and then proceeds to shred Slate here:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000736.htm
Here’s the Slate article:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2108766
And of course, we are fighting a WAR on terror and happily, we have sent tens of thousands of terrorists to their grave on the battlefield – a far more deserving fate than a trial by the IJC or the American courts.
By the way, how many terrorists has the UN/IJC arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned? Just curious …
Mike
Frameone, the peacekeeping in East Timor was and is an Australian and New Zealand affair. Not a blue helmet in sight.
That constructive enough?
Killing terrorists IS justice. frameone, you may prefer to see them waste millions in taxpayer dollars in a lawyer’s feeding frenzy and then perhaps end up in a jail learning woodwork and being counselled for anger management, but me, I just want ’em at room temperature.
Mike —
Malkin’s posts actually overlook just how bad the situation actually is. The statistic I’m referring to is that the DOJ hasn’t gotten a single jury conviction whenever its brought a terrorist case to trial. Which is probably why our strategy now is to detain hundreds of detainees indefinitely without trial or tribunal. Any way you slice it, holding people without charge or trial indefinitely is unAmerican.
Also, you and Malkin missed the correction on the Slate article:
“The authors originally stated that there has been no domestic terror conviction since 9/11. This was an overstatement, since there have been some convictions under a questionable new law prohibiting Americans from offering “material support” to foreign based terrorists. However, there has not been a single conviction for an act of domestic terrorism itself, including Richard Reid—who was convicted for an attack on a trans-Atlantic flight originating outside the United States.”
Keith —
Not nearly constructive enough.
http://www.unmiset.org/