Why does Mr. Mubarak lecture us to become intimately engaged in the Middle East Peace process, when Mr. Clinton, who was very recently intimately engaged, got the intifada for his efforts?

Umm, is this a sexual reference?

And why does Mr. Mubarak seek to advise us about our proper diplomatic role, rather than explain to us why an Egyptian masterminded the deaths of 3,000 of our citizens and others of his countrymen are top lieutenants of Mr. Bin Laden and are now killing Americans in Afghanistan?

Does this need an explanation? Wasn't there a US citizen amongst the Taliban?

And why, instead of warning about rising anti-Americanism in his country \ufffd itself the dividend of the virulent propaganda of his own state-run presses \ufffd does he not ponder another recent poll, one showing that 76 percent of Americans themselves have an unfavorable view of the Arab world?

Because we're dropping bombs over there. I will presume that the average person over there can tell the feelings with which a bomb is delivered.

Why do Middle Easterners become excited and haughty as they gloat to you that Americans are unpopular in their countries, but suddenly grow shocked, silent, and hurt when you politely and calmly explain why the feeling is becoming \ufffd and perhaps should be \ufffd mutual?

I wasn't aware that they did. The ones I know don't gloat that the US is hated there.

Why do so many from the Middle East come here to find freedom, security, and safety \ufffd and then criticize the country that they would never leave as they praise the country that they would never return to?

I'm sure you can find some who will do that. I haven't.

Did you ever wonder why so many Klansmen feel that they should elect a black woman as Grand Dragon?

Is there a word for profiling or irrationally hating Americans? Americanophobia? Misamericany?

"Nationalism". For some specific examples of it, check out "Bugs nips the Nips" from WWII in which Bugs Bunny triumphs over buck-toothed gooks while we send Japanese-Americans to holding camps.

Why did we incur only anger from Eastern Europeans and Orthodox Christians for saving the Muslims of the former Yugoslavia from Milosevic, but no praise at all from the Islamic world itself?

Some people are angry at you and you wonder why other people don't praise you? Sorry, the world isn't that binary.

If the West Bank is the linchpin of the current Middle East crisis, what were wars #1, #2, and #3 there about, when it was entirely in Arab hands?

Because wars are fought over land and resources and various other reasons. Sometimes a war can have many reasons for starting.

Is there a difference between Palestinians preferring to kill Israeli civilians rather than soldiers, and Israelis preferring to kill Palestinian fighters rather than civilians?

Yes. One prefers to kill civilians and the other prefers to kill soldiers.

Why are the EU and international agencies vocal about well-fed and humanely treated prisoners in Cuba, and yet said nothing when depraved comrades of these detainees recently executed an American soldier upon capture in Afghanistan, and murdered Danny Pearl?

Because we're supposed to be better than they are. We are the example of humanity and civility and so on.

Would the world be angry if a Jewish terrorist forced a captured Muslim to admit to his race and faith as he executed and beheaded him on film?

Yes.

Is it really true, as we were warned for most of January, that prayer-mats, lamb stew, Korans, and humane treatment in Cuba ensured that al Qaeda in turn would not execute captured Americans?

Ummm, no. Who told you that?

Why do not Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, who overtly and stealthily war along side the Palestinians, simply all join with the former to gang up and declare war openly on Israel and then settle the issue on the battlefield?

The enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend.

If we remove the fascist regime in Iraq and help institute consensual government there, why would we need troops any longer next door in Saudi Arabia? What and from whom would we then be there to protect?

Why do we still have troops in Germany?

If we could not have normal relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, who both allowed neither freedom nor democracy, why and how can we maintain normal relations with the Islamic world?

Define "normal". Did we trade with the USSR the same way we traded with Briton?

If America forced Israel to give back every inch of the West Bank, if America withdrew all its troops from all Arab countries, if America increased its aid to Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan, if America sought to placate Saddam Hussein, remove all U.N. sanctions, and normalize relations with the Iraqi dictatorship, and if America sought to restore full relations with Iran without conditions, would the Muslim world really like the United States?

No. We are a junkie addicted to their oil. Dealers do not "like" junkies. They will treat us the same way any dealer treats his junkies.

Has any American in any live broadcast on television ever asked a Saudi prince, the king of Jordan, the President of Egypt, or the royalty of Kuwait, whether they plan on allowing a free press or democratic government? If not, why not?

No idea if they have or have not. If they have not, it's probably because it doesn't seem like much of an issue to them.

If 19 Americans incinerated 3,000 Muslims in Mecca or Medina, and blew up 20 acres in either of those cities with a two-kiloton explosion, would the Saudis or the Egyptians a few weeks later politely listen to admonitions from the American government about their incorrect Islamic policies in the Middle East?

Are you talking about a sanctioned, US attack? Or are you talking about a criminal action my international terrorists?

If the Eiffel Tower had been wrecked by an al Qaeda hijacked airliner, would the French have gone into Afghanistan after the terrorists? And if so, how and why? And would they have asked our help? And would we have given it?

Ummm, pure speculation on each of those points.

Why in the last decade have we seen a succession of Israeli prime ministers and opposition figures but only Mr. Arafat alone?

Term limits.

What would the world think if Mr. Sharon displayed a revolver and then attempted to strike one of his ministers at a Cabinet meeting?

That he was dangerously unbalanced.

Why do Palestinians shoot machine-guns up into the air at funerals and Israelis do not?

It's a cultural issue. Why do they have wakes in Ireland but not in the England?

Why do supporters of Israel in America rarely castigate their country for giving money to Egypt, Jordan, and Mr. Arafat, while supporters of the Palestinian authority here always damn the United States for giving commensurate aid to Israel?

I thought they did.

Why do Middle Easterners become far more enraged at Israelis for shooting hundreds of Muslims than at Iranians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Syrians, Indians, Algerians, Russians, Somalis, and Serbians for liquidating tens of thousands?

I think they were pissed at the Russians. Once the main enemy is taken care of, you'll see a change.

Why did the US get so upset when 3,000 people were killed in a terrorist attack when more people die in cars and from tobacco?

If nearly two-thirds of the Arabic world believe that Arabs were not involved in September 11, why should any American believe anything that two out of three people from that region say?

You don't. But you use the prevailing mood as a barometer for what actions are possible.

Will Palestinians cheer when Saddam Hussein launches chemical-laden missiles against Israel when we invade his country?

Some will. Some won't.

Why after half a century has the Saudi government suddenly now decided to enter the negotiations about Palestine?

Politics.

If Iran launched missiles of mass destruction against Israel, would the EU do anything?

"missles of mass destruction"? Like chemical weapons? I guess that would depend upon how Israel retalitated. Remember, Israel has nukes.

If North Korea attacked South Korea, would the EU do anything?

Probably. But not anything useful.

If someone blew up another 3,000 Americans, would the EU do anything?

Statements of sympathy and such.

Has anyone made an inventory of the all the goods, services, and equipment that France has sold to Iraq since 1991?

That wasn't my job.

If Johnny Walker Lindh is not charged with betraying his country, what precisely does an American have to do to commit treason?

Look in your history book for B. Arnold.

Has anyone heard a Muslim in the United States condemn September 11 without employing the word "but?"

Yes.

Why do spokesmen for groups that have the words "ethical", "humane", "amnesty", "fair" and other such words of kindness appear so unkind in public interviews?

Because you're filtering their message.

Why are most of the talking heads on television who are ex-military men direct, honest, polite, and rarely self-absorbed, while the academic pundits usually stutter, lose their cool, and say inane things "one could imagine\ufffd" and "as it were"?

I'm ex-military. I am not polite.

How can training someone for four years to lead men into battle make one a more effective speaker and thinker than someone prepped for five years in graduate school to teach in the university and write?

'Cause when you've spent 4 years talking to the idiots they send you, you keep your message short and clear. You do not address complicated issues.

Why do six billion people in the world conclude that the US military is the most deadly and effective armed force in the history of civilization when the American media who covers it does not?

WTF? Who says that we can't go anywhere in the world and destroy any piece of real estate? In less than 24 hours? We can destroy the entire world, multiple times.

How much annual income and time off does one have to garner to oppose automatically almost everything the United States has done since September 11?

What was the question again?

I know that there are properly nuanced answers to these questions that touch on issues of pragmatism, national security, statecraft, requisite education, and other such abstract considerations. But millions of us Americans, I think, wonder about them nevertheless \ufffd and just maybe we are not so crazy after all.

Translation: "I'm going for jingo and emotions. I know that the world is a complicated place, but I still wish that it wasn't and whatever the kid with the biggest stick did was always right."

Leftist opposition to the war in Afghanistan faded in November and December of last year, not only because of the
success of the war but also because of the enthusiasm with which so many Afghanis greeted that success. The
pictures of women showing their smiling faces to the world, of men shaving their beards, of girls in school, of boys
playing soccer in shorts: all this was no doubt a slap in the face to leftist theories of American imperialism, but also
politically disarming.

Hmmm, so, the oppressed people of a totalitarian regime are happy to be freed?

And this is news to anyone?

But the world is a bit more complicated than that.

Earlier, we were willing to deal with the Taliban as long as oil was the subject.

Why didn't we care about their actions then?

There was (and is) still a lot to worry about: refugees, hunger, minimal law and order.

Like I said, the world is a very complicated place.

But it was suddenly clear, even to many opponents of the war, that the Taliban regime had been the biggest obstacle to any serious effort to address the looming humanitarian crisis, and it was the American war that removed the obstacle.

Please note that it was also the US that supported the Taliban in the first place.

History is so much simpler if you skip it.

It looked (almost) like a war of liberation, a humanitarian intervention.

Yep. Almost. As long as you skiped history.

But the war was primarily neither of these things; it was a preventive war, designed to make it impossible to train terrorists in Afghanistan and to plan and organize attacks like that of September 11.

No. It was a "feel good" war. A war to show that we're tougher than those terrorists. A war to show that we can bring the battle to them.

Except that they weren't there anymore.

We let them escape.

So we re-phrased our "war" on "terror" to a "war" to "free Afghanistan from the evil Taliban".

And that war was never really accepted, in wide sections of the left, as either just or necessary.

How long have we been fighting? How much money have we spent? And we >STILL< don't have ObL? Wasn't ObL the primary target of the "war"? But when we lost him, we decided to fight what we could "win".

Recall the standard arguments against it: that we should have turned to the UN, that we had to prove the guilt of al-Qaeda and the Taliban and then organize international trials, and that the war, if it was fought at all, had to be fought without endangering civilians.

Instead, we have a war that is killing innocents without proof of their guilt. That's something to be proud of.

The last point was intended to make fighting impossible.

Nope. But if they kill civilians and we kill civilians, what is the difference between us?

Oh, the civilians >WE< kill die for a "good" cause?

I haven\ufffdt come across any arguments that seriously tried to describe how this (or any) war could be fought without putting civilians at risk, or to ask what degree of risk might be permissible, or to specify the risks that American soldiers should accept in order to reduce the risk of civilian deaths.

Killing innocent civilians is what the terrorists did. So, how are we different from them?

The truth is that most leftists were not committed to having a coherent view about things like that; they were committed to opposinf the war, and they were prepared to oppose it without regard to its causes or character and without any visible concern about preventing future terrorist attacks.

Let's break that down, shall we?

"...without regard to its causes..." - ORIGINALLY, we were going in to get ObL. We didn't get him and the focus of the "war" changed. Now, you don't hear ANYTHING about ObL. He doesn't seem like much of a target. The "cause" of the "war" is "cause we're bigger than you". Anyone claiming anything else needs to explain why we were willing to support and deal with the Taliban BEFORE the attack.

"...without regard to its ... character..." - Again, ORIGINALLY, the "war" was about something else. Now it has changed to meet what we can accomplish. That is "character"?

"...without any visible concern about preventing future terrorist attacks." - The terrorists were SAUDI ARABIANS! Killing Afghanistans won't stop Saudi's from attacking us.

At the moment, most of the numbers are propaganda; there is no reliable accounting.

Strange, isn't it? How we just can't seem to figure out how many civilians we've killed. Even plus or minus a hundred.

But the claim that the numbers matter in just this way, that the 3120th death determines the injustice of the war, is in any case wrong.

They kill civilians, we kill civilians. What's the difference?

It denies one of the most basic and best understood moral distinctions: between premeditated murder and unintended killing.

WRONG!!! Putting a bomb into an occupied building is in NO FUCKING WAY OR SHAPE "unintended killing".

And the denial isn\ufffdt accidental, as if the people making it just forgot about, or didn\ufffdt know about, the everyday moral world.

Ah, now we get to the "moral" positions. Well, everyone already knows that I'm a moral relativists so.....

The denial is willful: unintended killing by Americans in Afghanistan counts as murder.

YOU FUCKING PUT A BOMB IN AN OCCUPIED BUILDING!!!!! How "unintended" can THAT be?!?

Once again, filtering. Make the words work for what you WANT them to believe.

This can\ufffdt be true anywhere else, for anybody else.

A man opens fire at a school recess. Shooting into a crowd of children. Unintended?

A man opens fire at work. Unintended?

A gang-member opens fire at a school in a drive-by. Unintended?

The radical failure of the left\ufffds response to the events of last fall raises a disturbing question: can there be a decent left in a superpower?

"Failure"? Failure in what? How?

Maybe the guilt produced by living in such a country and enjoying its privileges makes it impossible to sustain a decent (intelligent, responsible, morally nuanced) politics.

Maybe.

Or, maybe the old saw about power corrupting is true? When no one can strike back at you, your "morality" is automatically superior to their's.

The logic of the bully.

Maybe festering resentment, ingrown anger, and self-hate are the inevitable result of the long years spent in fruitless opposition to the global reach of American power.

Maybe.

Or maybe it is an attempt to show just what America (shouldn't that be "The US"? "America also contains Canada and South America) is accomplishing with its power. Supporting dictatorships around the world. Then killing their citizens in "just" wars (sounds sort of like "holy" wars, doesn't it?) when that regime doesn't match our goals.

Certainly, all those emotions were plain to see in the left=s reaction to September 11, in the failure to register the horror of the attack or to acknowledge the human pain it caused, in the schadenfreude of so many of the first responses, the barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved.

Hmmmm, ever wonder why so many klansmen wanted to elect a black woman as grand dragon? Please try to stick to facts.

Many people on the left recovered their moral balance in the weeks that followed; there is at least the beginning of what should be a long process of self-examination. But many more have still not brought themselves to think about what really happened.

And I'm sure that >YOU< are the one who KNOWS what the "right" "moral balance" should be.

We might begin to worry about this question by looking at oppositional politics in older imperial states. I can\ufffdt do that in any sustained way (historians take note), only very sketchily.

Really? Let me help you.

Vietnam

Korea

For wasn\ufffdt France the birthplace of enlightenment, universal values, and human rights?

Huh?!?

Why shouldn\ufffdt the American story be like these two, with long years of healthy oppositionist politics, and only episodic resentment?

In a word, "education". We know see the atrocities we ACTIVELY support.

Wasn\ufffdt America a beacon of light to the old world, a city on a hill, an unprecedented experiment in democratic politics?

One of the last nations to give up slavery? Where women were not allowed to vote until when? When blacks were not allowed to vote until WHEN? Segregation? Or, more recently, where you could legaly be fired for being gay?

I grew up with the Americanism of the popular front in the 1930s and 1940s; I look back on it now and think that the Communist Party=s effort to create a leftist pop culture, in an instant, as the party line turned, was kitchy and manipulative--and also politically very smart.

So, "leftist" == Commy stooge?

I think I should end this rant on that note.