Friday, July 08, 2005
Appeasement?
The Wall Street Journal (free subscription required) lead editorial nails it: it is time to be united and up our attack on terrorists. One of the major liberal blog sites, the the Daily Kos seems to have hardly noticed that anyone died. In fact they are more outraged over a politically incorrect slip of the tongue by a Fox reporter than the deaths and injuries sustained by Londoners and visitors. The New Republic is almost as bad as they fret about the size of the next attack. I am not much of a Christopher Hitchens fan, but at least he got it right this time.
Then there is the Mark Steyn interview on the Hugh Hewitt show yesterday where Steyn also lambasts the idiots of the Radio Left including Franken and his goofy guest, Oliphant.
A bit of an odd homily was given by Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, who is the leader of the Achdiocese of Westminster which includes London. Generally speaking he was rignt on target with staments such as the following:
The people who carried out these monstrous acts with chilling efficiency and forethought are believed to have acted in the name of religion. If so, it is not a religion recognisable to the religious people of this world. Who is their god? It is not the God who revealed himself to Moses and Jacob; nor the God who, in Jesus Christ, walked this earth and died and rose to save humanity; nor the God worshipped by the Muslim people, who is a God Almighty and Merciful. Who is the god of the men of hate? It is a false god; one projected from the darkest recesses of the human heart.
The odd bit is as follows:
The law of history is not on the side of the terrorists. The past is littered with the burned-out husks of attempts at bringing about political change through violence. Violence, as we know, breeds violence, and violence ultimately destroys itself. If we stand firm, if we believe in peace, then terror will not succeed; it will exhaust itself in time.
Huh? "if we believe in peace" is simply not clear. I doubt that Churchill could be described as man who did not want peace, but faced with Nazi agression in Europe and against England, he acted forcefully to re-establish peace on the continent (with the Allies, of course).
I certainly hope the good Cardinal is not referring to the idiotic position of Pax Christi USA that leads its website today:
"The nonviolence we are talking about is not an acquiescence to aggression, not a passive acceptance of abuse. It is rather a firm standing up for what is true, a witnessing to the dignity of human life, an affirmation of the value of all human existence..." - Gerard Vanderhaar
I think the Pax Christi position can be summed up in this picture. It's time to recognize that appeasement does not work, even if it is hidden in tough words.
Then there is the Mark Steyn interview on the Hugh Hewitt show yesterday where Steyn also lambasts the idiots of the Radio Left including Franken and his goofy guest, Oliphant.
A bit of an odd homily was given by Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, who is the leader of the Achdiocese of Westminster which includes London. Generally speaking he was rignt on target with staments such as the following:
The people who carried out these monstrous acts with chilling efficiency and forethought are believed to have acted in the name of religion. If so, it is not a religion recognisable to the religious people of this world. Who is their god? It is not the God who revealed himself to Moses and Jacob; nor the God who, in Jesus Christ, walked this earth and died and rose to save humanity; nor the God worshipped by the Muslim people, who is a God Almighty and Merciful. Who is the god of the men of hate? It is a false god; one projected from the darkest recesses of the human heart.
The odd bit is as follows:
The law of history is not on the side of the terrorists. The past is littered with the burned-out husks of attempts at bringing about political change through violence. Violence, as we know, breeds violence, and violence ultimately destroys itself. If we stand firm, if we believe in peace, then terror will not succeed; it will exhaust itself in time.
Huh? "if we believe in peace" is simply not clear. I doubt that Churchill could be described as man who did not want peace, but faced with Nazi agression in Europe and against England, he acted forcefully to re-establish peace on the continent (with the Allies, of course).
I certainly hope the good Cardinal is not referring to the idiotic position of Pax Christi USA that leads its website today:
"The nonviolence we are talking about is not an acquiescence to aggression, not a passive acceptance of abuse. It is rather a firm standing up for what is true, a witnessing to the dignity of human life, an affirmation of the value of all human existence..." - Gerard Vanderhaar
I think the Pax Christi position can be summed up in this picture. It's time to recognize that appeasement does not work, even if it is hidden in tough words.
