US infantry Co remembers 9-11 shot from air

A declining Europe
George Will

April 11, 2003

WASHINGTON--The task of reconstructing Iraq--more its civil society
than its physical infrastructure--is entangled with the less urgent
task of reweaving the frayed relations between America and France and
Germany, and with the optional task of rehabilitating the United
Nations.

The U.N. has proved itself unsuitable as an instrument of collective
security. It is a stew of starkly conflicting political cultures, and
incompatible assessments of the world's dangers and what to do about
them. Hence it cannot function as a policy-making body. It can,
however, be invited to help with certain brief relief and civil
administration chores. This invitation should be extended for the same
reason France was made a permanent member of the Security Council in
1945--as psychotherapy for a crisis of self-esteem brought on by bad
behavior.

Note the verb ``invited.'' There is no entitlement for France,
Germany, Russia and the U.N. They did all in their power to keep
Saddam Hussein in power, which makes them accessories to tyranny and
war crimes. All Iraq's debts incurred to Russia, France, Germany--U.S.
officials at the U.N. say Germany was even more troublesome than
France ``in the corridors,'' meaning in the prewar politics outside
the Security Council--during Saddam's regime should be canceled.

Some European militaries, like Canada's, can barely be considered real
military--meaning war-fighting--forces. The New York Times reports
that more than half of Germany's defense budget of just $27 billion
goes to salaries and benefits for personnel--a third of them civilians
who, after 15 years, are guaranteed lifetime employment. Germany had
to lease Ukrainian aircraft to get its peacekeeping forces to
Afghanistan.

Still, such militaries can perhaps earn their keep by maintaining
order in an Iraq where tribalism is reasserting itself and civil war
might now fester. Besides, there is a danger that peacekeeping will
diminish the U.S. military services' aptitude for their real purpose,
which is war-fighting. Furthermore, the services are stretched
perilously thin, and were being exhausted by the tempo of operations
even before the war began.

The crisis with Iraq, which became an overdue crisis of U.S. relations
with the U.N. and portions of Old Europe, arrived as the U.N. was
publishing ``State of the World Population 2002.'' To the extent that
demography is destiny, Europe's collective destiny, for decades, will
be beyond the choice of its governments, and will be a continuing
decrescendo.

Today Europe's population is 725 million. The populations of 14
European nations are declining, and the declines are driven by
powerful social values and trends that would be difficult for
governments to reverse, were they inclined to try, which they do not
seem to be. The growth rates of the populations of the other European
nations are at or near zero. So the European population is projected
to be 600 million in 2050.

In developed countries, a birthrate of 2.1 children per woman is a
replacement rate, producing population stability. Only Albania has
that rate. Catholic Ireland's rate is 2.0, but the rates of the
Catholic nations of Southern Europe are among Europe's lowest--1.2.
The estimated European average is 1.34.

Stein Ringen, an Oxford sociologist, writes that ``without emigration
or immigration and with a stable birthrate of 1.5, a population would
be reduced to about half in 100 years, and with a birthrate of 1.2 to
about 25 percent.'' On those assumptions, Germany's population would
shrink from 82 million to fewer than 40 million by the end of the
century, and Italy's 57 million to fewer than 20 million.

Ringen acknowledges that population trends can change rapidly and
unpredictably. But with the exception of the post-1945 baby
boom--before working mothers became the norm--Europe's birthrates were
low for most of the last century, and higher rates are unlikely
because the ``modern conventions for family life are built around the
now firm idea, and economic necessity, of both parents working and
earning.''

Economic anemia and further military impotence are probable
consequences of Europe's population collapse. Which will trouble some
Americans with peculiar political sensibilities.

Americans who are apt to argue that U.S. foreign policy needs constant
infusions of legitimacy from the approbation of European governments
are also apt to deplore, in the domestic culture wars, Eurocentrism in
academic curricula. Such Americans resist the cultural products of
Europe's centuries of vitality, but defer to the politics of Europe in
its decadence.

Why? Perhaps because yesterday's European culture helped make America
what it is, and today's European politics expresses resentment and
distrust of what America is. Both sensibilities arise from the
distaste of some Americans for America.

Bert Willing wrote:

Any way how that crap could relay to soaring?

Yes. It reminds you that when you're flying near another glider, you
should never assume that the other pilot will act reasonably but rather
be prepared for everything, because he might be an asshole.

Stefan

"Bert Willing" wrote in message ...
Any way how that crap could relay to soaring?
Bert Willing
ASW20 "TW"
************************************************** ********************************
It doesn't relate, but then there were already eight messages in this
thread before I jumped in. How about this. Most of this comes from
Townhall.com.


Saddam, and 9/11
Mona Charen

September 19, 2003

National Public Radio and the major television networks can scarcely
contain their excitement. In what they obviously regard as a huge
concession, President Bush noted the other day that "No, we've had no
evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the
eleventh." Along with most of the Democratic candidates for president,
many in the press have been arguing for months that the Bush
administration misled the American people by implying a link that did
not exist. Put that together with the failure to find weapons of mass
destruction, they say, and you've got a real indictment.

According to the Democrats' bill of particulars, the Bush
administration -- knowing full well that Saddam was not involved in
9/11 -- nonetheless encouraged Americans to believe he was in order to
fulfill some Dr. Strangeloveish neocon battle plan for Iraq. The
administration further lied when it offered the existence of weapons
of mass destruction as a rationale for war. If what the Democrats say
is true, we are dealing with one of the most dishonest and corrupt
administrations in history.

But there are a few problems with their analysis. In the first place,
no one in the administration ever claimed that Saddam was responsible
for 9/11. The president pinned blame for that attack firmly on Al
Qaeda. But the president and his administration also clearly stated
that the war on terror was not limited to Al Qaeda, that it was a
global war that would be fought on many fronts. The Axis of Evil
included (in addition to Iraq) North Korea and Iran, neither of whom
bears direct responsibility for 9/11 either. And the administration
has dispatched troops to the Philippines as well as Afghanistan and
Iraq.

Democrats point to polls showing that large numbers of Americans
believe there was a link between Saddam and the attacks on 9/11. Now,
how could people come to that belief? Perhaps because they've heard
the uncontradicted reports that Saddam did have ties with Al Qaeda. Or
perhaps they were thinking of the fact that he permitted Baghdad to
become a haven for terrorists like Abu Nidal and others who lived out
a comfortable retirement on his generosity. Or perhaps they were
considering that Saddam Hussein paid the family of each suicide bomber
who killed innocent Israelis the handsome sum of $25,000. Or maybe
they had heard about the 707 Saddam maintained at Salman Pak for
terrorists to practice hijackings on?

Saddam the Baathist (Baathism is a kind of socialism) had in his later
years seen how the wind was blowing in the Arab world and begun to
adorn his terror state with certain Islamic trappings. Cozy relations
with Islamic terrorists suited his purposes. They had the same enemies
-- Israel and the United States. But, like other Arab leaders, Saddam
was aware of the Islamist threat. While the Islamists were at war with
the West, they were also casting covetous glances at the secular
states in the Arab world. Saddam followed the Sun Tzu logic to keep
your friends close but your enemies closer.

The failure to find WMDs by this point is certainly puzzling. But the
Democrats and the press -- most egregiously the BBC -- have adopted an
interpretation that is simply childish. In Britain and the United
States, liberals are charging that the governments of Blair and Bush
purposely lied. In Britain at least, Blair's chief accuser at the BBC,
Andrew Gilligan, has himself been revealed to be a liar. But do the
U.S. accusers really believe that Bush made it all up? If that were
true, why did all of the intelligence services in the world as well as
the U.N. Security Council conclude that Iraq did have those weapons?
If it were true, why didn't Hussein invite the U.N. inspectors into
Iraq and prove that he had no weapons? Why throw the inspectors out
altogether in 1998? Why risk and lose his kingdom for weapons he never
had? It doesn't make sense.

But even if (and it's a big if) the weapons are never found, are we to
conclude that the Bush administration took the nation into an
aggressive war for oil or glory or some other goal? The Saddam regime
was one of the most ghastly and horrific on the planet. On those
grounds alone, the world should be thanking us for being willing to
risk the lives of our soldiers to free the country. The regime was
also a friend to every enemy of peace in the world. If Saddam had
remained in power, gained nuclear weapons, and lived to menace the
entire region and the world, President Bush would be condemned by
history for failing to act before it was too late. For showing
fortitude and good sense, he is condemned only by the small-minded.

Slingsby,

you should dump your intestines in the toilet, not here.

--
Bert Willing

ASW20 "TW"


"Slingsby" a écrit dans le message de
om...
Owain Walters wrote in
message ...
Slingsby,

Your ignorance scares me. Surely you dont really think
that bombing Arabs will bring an end to 'International
Terrorism'?

Why are you so vehement in your ideas? Becuase they
killed your citizens? Well, they will feel the same.
The lack of experience in dealing with these matters
is showing and the arrogance of saying that all other
countries are cowards is why the US foreign policy,
and the puppy-dog following of the UK, is so dangerous
to both you and I. In gliding we take advice from more
experienced people. If they think something we at least
sit back and analyse what they are saying/doing. Why
should this be any different?

I admire the passion you have for this subject but
I am positive that an uncompromising stance on all
this will do nothing but inflame matters.

Quite frankley your attitude has inflamed me so I am
not going to write any more on this subject.

Owain

A lesson from Hitler's hideaway
Suzanne Fields

September 25, 2003

The fights over copyright infringements, particularly on the Internet,
are getting ever more petty. Now a British magazine is crying
infringement because a British blogger dredged up a 65-year-old
article describing Hitler as a gentleman squire living in stylish
surroundings in the Bavarian Alps. This one is worth your attention
even if you don't blog.

Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing for the Guardian
Newspapers, found a glossy three-page spread in a back number of
"Homes & Gardens" magazine describing a visit to Hitler's mountain
retreat in November 1938. That was the month of Kristallnacht, the
night of broken glass, the beginning of Hitler's pogrom against Jews.
Waldman posted it on his Web site for its historical interest.

The editor of Homes & Gardens magazine, more from mortification than
from a desire to protect his magazine's commercial interests, cried
"copyright infringement" and demanded that the pages be removed from
the Net. The Guardian, bereft of the press freedoms we take for
granted here, reluctantly complied, noting that "they should be widely
available for as many people as possible to learn from them."

That may be what Homes & Gardens was afraid of, because the pages
expose the way fashion and style can be manipulated to make a
political point. Hitler was depicted as a glamorous figure who
"delights in the society of brilliant foreigners, especially painters,
singers and musicians." The bloke with the ridiculous mustache was
depicted strolling with guests through wood and dale, a kindly, rustic
old gentleman innocently enjoying time away from the city at his
"bright and airy chalet."

Fashion holds up a mirror to its times and sometimes these mirrors are
as distorted as those in an amusement-park fun house. They can be
playful and innocent or dreadfully obtuse. Some of us can hear echoes
of the editor's obtuseness in the way some people are oblivious today
to the terrorist's threat to the West.

Readers of that musty long-past day learned that Hitler was able to
replace a humble shack because "his famous book, 'Mein Kampf' ('My
Struggle') became a best-seller of astonishing power (4,500,000 copies
of it have sold)."

There was no recognition of the book's astonishing muck and hate, with
descriptions of the Jewish people as "the spider (that) was beginning
to suck the blood out of the people's pores." Nor does it tell how
Hitler wrote that the state "must not let itself be confused by the
drivel about so-called 'freedom of the press'"

Homes & Gardens was all but overcome by how swell it all was: "There
is nothing pretentious about the Fuhrer's little estate. It is one
that any merchant of Munich or Nuremberg might possess in these lovely
hills." Any merchant, that is, who wasn't Jewish, gypsy, gay, crippled
or who might have expressed devotion to democratic ideals.

The kindly old Nazi squire chose the site so he could be near the
Austrian border, "barely ten miles from Mozart's own medieval
Salzburg." No mention that the Nazis, marching to strident martial
music, had already taken over Austria.

There was no hint of the dawning recognition that England might be
next. Only two months before the article appeared, Neville Chamberlain
had visited Hitler in "Haus Wachenfeld," where he agreed that the
Fuhrer could annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, and returned to
London with his famous assurance that he had guaranteed "peace in our
time."

Many of the British had turned their backs on Winston Churchill, the
prophet without honor, who was always going on about the gathering
Nazi storm. Many English aristocrats were flattered by the attentions
of Hitler, who entertained them royally before the war.

They were, as columnist Mark Styne said of Diana Mosley, "turned on by
totalitarianism." Fascism was fashion friendly to the beautiful Diana,
who wore a diamond broach in the shape of the swastika. The Duke and
Duchess of Windsor, stylishly vapid but without a throne between them,
enjoyed Hitler's hospitality in 1937.

Churchill was enraged by the aristocratic attitudes borne of stylish
appeasement by those who couldn't, or wouldn't, see the evil of the
"Little Dictator" and face the truth that the Nazis, the fanatical
terrorists of their time, were building a war machine to use against
civilization.

Fortunately for all of us, he got the last word in his call to arms:
"The terrible military machine which we and the rest of the civilized
world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi
gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing-this machine
cannot stand idle, lest it rust or fall to pieces."

It wasn't the fashionable, after all, who made Britain's finest hour.

In article , "Bert Willing"
writes:


Slingsby,

you should dump your intestines in the toilet, not here.

--
Bert Willing

Those aren't his intestines, he's just copying and pasting someone else's.
Makes you wonder about his.....

Steve