I was rewriting history, while walking along some cold lakeshore the other day. My thought was: if Churchill had only come to power in 1937, Chamberlain would have been installed to replace him in 1940.
Had Churchill been in power, and refused to sign Munich, he would have been blamed for the outbreak of war.
I can just hear the prattle in an English pub, circa 1950. “He pushed Hitler to it! Had it not been for Churchill, Hitler would have been satisfied with the Sudetenland, and England would never have had to surrender. Everything was Churchill’s fault!”
I was rewriting history, while walking along some cold lakeshore the other day. My thought was: if Churchill had only come to power in 1937, Chamberlain would have been installed to replace him in 1940.
Had Churchill been in power, and refused to sign Munich, he would have been blamed for the outbreak of war.
I can just hear the prattle in an English pub, circa 1950. “He pushed Hitler to it! Had it not been for Churchill, Hitler would have been satisfied with the Sudetenland, and England would never have had to surrender. Everything was Churchill’s fault!”
In fact, US Air should not only not settle, they should countersue against these people for (probably deliberately, based on most accounts) terrorizing the passengers and disrupting service. I’d be happy to even contribute to a legal fund for it. In fact, it would be a good idea to set up a fund and get all the airlines to contribute to it, because US Air is waging this battle for the whole industry.
In fact, US Air should not only not settle, they should countersue against these people for (probably deliberately, based on most accounts) terrorizing the passengers and disrupting service. I’d be happy to even contribute to a legal fund for it. In fact, it would be a good idea to set up a fund and get all the airlines to contribute to it, because US Air is waging this battle for the whole industry.
In fact, US Air should not only not settle, they should countersue against these people for (probably deliberately, based on most accounts) terrorizing the passengers and disrupting service. I’d be happy to even contribute to a legal fund for it. In fact, it would be a good idea to set up a fund and get all the airlines to contribute to it, because US Air is waging this battle for the whole industry.
I’ve been fearful, ever since September 11, that our government, as currently constituted, is not up to the task of fighting this war. Things like this do nothing to assuage that fear.
But then, I guess it could be worse. Senator Patty Murray thinks that Al Qaeda is a day-care provider.
You know, when the Washington Post tells the Baker Commission they’re out to lunch on their policy recommendations, you know they have to be out there:
…to embrace the group’s proposed “New Diplomatic Offensive” would be to suppose a Middle East very different from what’s on the ground.
Start with the supposition that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is somehow central to ending the chaos in Iraq. In fact, even if the two-state solution sought by the Bush administration were achieved, it’s difficult to imagine how or why that would cause Sunnis and Shiites to cease their sectarian war in Baghdad or the Baathist-al Qaeda insurgency to stand down. It’s no doubt true, as study group chairmen James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton have said, that every Arab leader they met told them that an Israeli-Arab settlement must be the first priority. But the princes and dictators of Riyadh, Cairo and Amman have been delivering that tired line to American envoys for decades: It is their favorite excuse for failing to support U.S. initiatives and for refusing to reform their own moribund autocracies.
Baker is living in the past, and in an alternate reality.
Oh, but lest you think there are no minimum admission criteria to James Baker’s “Support Group,” relax, it’s a very restricted membership: Arabs, Persians, Chinese commies, French obstructionists, Russian assassination squads. But no Jews. Even though Israel is the only country to be required to make specific concessions — return the Golan Heights, etc. Indeed, insofar as this document has any novelty value, it’s in the Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman sense of a boffo convergence of hit franchises: a Vietnam bug-out, but with the Jews as the designated fall guys. Wow. That’s what Hollywood would call “high concept.”
Why would anyone — even a short-sighted incompetent political fixer whose brilliant advice includes telling the first Bush that no one would care if he abandoned the “Read my lips” pledge — why would even he think it a smart move to mortgage Iraq’s future to anything as intractable as the Palestinian “right of return”? And, incidentally, how did that phrase — “the right of return” — get so carelessly inserted into a document signed by two former secretaries of state, two former senators, a former attorney general, Supreme Court judge, defense secretary, congressman, etc. These are by far the most prominent Americans ever to legitimize a concept whose very purpose is to render any Zionist entity impossible. I’m not one of those who assumes that just because much of James Baker’s post-government career has been so lavishly endowed by the Saudis that he must necessarily be a wholly owned subsidiary of King Abdullah, but it’s striking how this document frames all the issues within the pathologies of the enemy.
I’ve never been a big fan of most of the people on the ISG (though Alan Simpson had his moments), but my esteem for Baker and Lee Hamilton has hit a new low.
I’m not very happy with Bush (and I never actually have been) but I’m glad that, in contrast to the wishes of the Democrats and the “bipartisan” ISG of Jim Baker et al, he refuses to surrender to the enemy.
Does anyone really believe that Syria and Iran, at least in the short-term, abhor chaos in Iraq? Iran fought a long war with Iraq, and fears deeply American scrutiny of its nuclear program. Only a perceived mess in Iraq keeps the attention of the United States and, indeed, the world community away from Teheran. Ditto Syria that does not want more Cedar Revolutions on its borders, given that democracies or the efforts at such in Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey now surround this dictatorship.
There were three wars fought to destroy Israel before the Golan Heights were taken. The withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza did not lead to commensurate moderation on the part of the Islamists or dictators. And if the Study Group believes that Israeli concessions will result in Syria and Iran