Raffarin laments, "Geez, haven't you embarrassed us enough?"
Posted on 02/18/2003 4:54:49 AM PST by BigWaveBetty
Raffarin laments, "Geez, haven't you embarrassed us enough?"
By Stephen Pollard
timesonline.co.uk
I am a warmonger. I am bloodthirsty. I am rabid. My friends want only peace and harmony, but I want to wreak destruction and killing. I want to see British soldiers doing the Texan moron’s [Well that was uncalled for.] dirty work for him.
Almost alone among my friends, I did not go on The March. My absence was not due to ambivalence, but because I considered the march to be contemptible. I think the marchers are not only wrong but dangerously, wilfully, shamefully wrong.
Since this is, literally, a matter of life and death, I have been prepared to tell them precisely why I think that they are so in error. Their response has been to tell me what they think of me.
In all my 38 years, I have never before felt such a sense of personal shock. I am shocked that so many of my friends would rather a brutal dictator remained in power — for that would be the direct consequence if their views won out — than support military action by the United States. I am ashamed that they would rather believe the words of President Saddam Hussein than those of their own Prime Minister. I am nauseated that they would rather give succour to evil than think through the implications of their gut feelings.
It is a shocking experience to realise that your friends are either mindless, deluded or malevolent.
I used to think that 9/11 was the most important day of my life. It was indeed a day which transformed the world; its influence will be felt for decades, if not centuries. But however foul the “America had it coming” refrain, that came mainly from the usual suspects. This is different. This time the words come from friends.
I have many friends with whom I disagree politically; it would be a small-minded person who could not say that. But this goes beyond mere politics. This is about fundamentals. And what makes it truly shocking is how many normal, apolitical, otherwise decent people are so deeply wrong, so stridently misguided.
I have tried to point out that saying you are in favour of “peace” is meaningless. Which sane person is not? The question is: peace on whose, and what, terms? If it is peace on the terms of brutal dictators, secured by allowing them to build up whatever weapons arsenals they wish, then that is not peace. It is suicide.
Aha, but it is the UN which should decide this, not the US. Tell them it has, through 17 resolutions, and they tell you that Iraq should not be singled out for action, or that we need to give the arms inspectors “more time” — as if 12 years were not enough. And what should we do when they have had more time? “You are just looking for an excuse for war.”
Most of my friends on The March could not place Iraq on a map, let alone describe the contents of Resolution 1441, which finds that “Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations” and imposes a deadline “not later than 30 days from the date of this resolution” for Iraq to supply “a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration” — a date which fell on December 9. Tell them this, and they say that it’s critical to stick by the UN, without being able to grasp the contradiction.
How can I use the word “friend” to describe such people? It is not that they are wrong, but that our moral frameworks are so entirely different. They wallow in their sense of superiority, but what they wish to protest against, I thank God for. What they consider an affront, I salute. What they regard as a moral outrage, I regard as the only safe way to conduct world affairs. What they stand for, I feel sickened by.
This is not about Left versus Right. It is about freedom: those who are willing to protect it, and those who take it for granted.
Uh-oh! The French have PO'd Cindy...
France only leads world in arrogance FRIG the frogs.
Screw-ay les Francais.
Up the French.
France, a countrylet forever famous for immortal boons to civilization like shoemaker Christian Leboutin, dressmaker Christian LaCroix, stylemaker Christian Dior, is dissing the United States?
Mes enfants, vous can take votre French toast and shove it up your cafe au lait.More
A CHILD protection agency in Britain has called for a boycott of Roman Polanski's Oscar-nominated movie "The Pianist," because the fugitive director was convicted of statutory rape once and may try it again. Blasting Polanski's nomination, Phoenix Survivors spokesperson Shy Keenan declared, "To those who have turned a blind eye, who are you to forgive? Would you if it was your child? . . . They may forgive the crime, even if they were not the victim of it, but unless you treat the sickness the crime will happen again." The L.A. district attorney has said Polanski will be arrested if he tries to attend the Academy Awards next month. [I think I would have kept that quiet and let him show up.] PageSix
Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that if Ann was gay with 14 personalities this play would've never been written?
IN her memoir "Call Me Crazy," formerly gay actress Anne Heche claimed she had multiple personalities. She got to see 14 of them in the flesh last week. Heche stopped by the Hudson Avenue Theater in Los Angeles to catch a performance of "Call Us Crazy: The Anne Heche Monologues," a well-reviewed - and unauthorized - take on Heche's book which features 14 actresses "performing" passages from the autobiography. Included in the show are monologues based on Heche's breakup with Ellen DeGeneres and the time she roamed the California desert on ecstasy, claiming she was from outer space and had to take the drug in order to board her spaceship. Heche and hubby Coley Laffoon decided to check out the play after seeing a sign advertising it, but left early. According to L.A. gossip site Filth2go.com, the Laffoons "exited the theater in horror" as Heche exclaimed, "This is sick." PageSix
We hear.... (bill clinton's a frog lover)
THAT Heidi Klum, Eve, Jennifer Aniston and Bill Clinton have been getting supplies of Ciroc, the chic new starchless vodka distilled from French grapes . . . PageSix Hmmm, bill and Heidi get their vodka at the same place? What a cowinkiedink.
On their front page:
The ultimate, irrelevant, weekly gossip column for gay people and their friends.
Another must read: Decent, honorable men can disagree From a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Walt Harrington. Get past the first two paragraphs and you'll be pleasantly surprized.
Two letter writers in the past week have suggested that, if I don't like it here, I should move to France.
Oh please, massa, don't throw me in that briar patch.
Imagine: condemned to eat amazing produce and linger over fine coffee in a bistro or a boite. Banished to the twisty streets of Montmartre or the sun- washed fields of Arles. Just me and the other craven hypocrites, eating at long tables in the apple orchard and singing Gypsy songs by firelight. And to think, I could have been back home buying duct tape and plastic sheeting. full column
"Girly-man" ex-President Carter has joined with the "Not in Our Name" anti-warAmerica campaign.
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