Posted on 08/15/2006 12:03:13 PM PDT by NYer
ROME (CNS) -- Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired archbishop of Washington, arrived in Lebanon in early August, visiting Catholic aid projects, church and government leaders and getting what he described as "a lesson in frustration."
His Aug. 10 meeting with two Muslim leaders in Beirut was canceled after Israeli planes dropped leaflets on the city warning of new bombardments.
"It scares the heck out of people," he said of the leaflet drops. "And if they don't leave, they can be killed. But it's awful; they get word to leave their homes because they are going to bomb in the next hours."
In an Aug. 10 telephone interview from Beirut, the cardinal said his visit was meant to be a sign of solidarity with the suffering people of Lebanon, the same kind of visit he has made in the past to Israel in the wake of terrorist attacks.
"I have concerns for the poor people of Lebanon. I'm not making any judgments on what political things are happening, but I know that even now there are people in some villages that are totally blocked off by the war and they have no bread, they have no water and they have no medicine. And that has been going on for almost two weeks," the cardinal told Catholic News Service.
"If that continues, it will be a disaster. We will be starving people," he said.
"I am not a politician, not a statesman and not a general. I can't blame anybody, but I want to say, 'Here is what I find,' and the world must do something," he said.
Cardinal McCarrick arrived in Beirut from Amman, Jordan, Aug. 9 aboard a Jordanian transport plane carrying humanitarian aid. He expected to leave Lebanon the same way Aug. 13.
The cardinal met Aug. 10 with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and other government officials. He said they were courteous, explained the situation in the country and expressed their hopes for a cease-fire.
"They feel they have done what everybody has asked them to do. They are willing to send 15,000 Lebanese soldiers" into southern Lebanon, where the Hezbollah militia are deployed, firing rockets and mortars into Israel.
"But apparently, that is not enough," he said.
A U.N. resolution on an immediate cease-fire faced delays as Security Council members disagreed over when Israeli troops should be asked to withdraw from southern Lebanon and when an international peacekeeping force should be deployed.
"You come here and get a lesson in frustration," the cardinal said.
Cardinal McCarrick visited several schools Aug. 9, meeting with the displaced people being sheltered in them and with the staff and volunteers of Caritas Lebanon, which is running the shelters and providing food, clothing, blankets and medical assistance.
The Salma Sayyegh public school, which he visited, has been turned into a shelter for 360 Muslims -- mostly women and children -- who have fled the fighting and bombardment of their homes in southern Lebanon.
Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency, is supporting the work of Caritas Lebanon at Salma Sayyegh and throughout the country.
In addition to financial support, CRS has sent staff members experienced in the logistical side of emergency relief to assist with security, warehousing, medical care and media relations, among other things.
"Everything is difficult to get here because the bridges have been knocked down and many of the roads have been bombed so trucks can't travel, so the whole food distribution system is in peril," Cardinal McCarrick said.
Most people in Lebanon, he said, "are becoming more and more anti-Israeli," including the Christians, who also have been forced to flee. "It's a very desperate situation."
"Lebanon has the largest Christian population in the Middle East and we're losing that," he said. "The people are going to leave because they cannot work. There is no gas for the cars; there isn't food to eat. We don't know how they are going to open the schools.
"It's frustration that one feels here. They say to me, 'Thank you for coming,' but my visit is not much more than saying, 'We love you and we are praying for you and we understand your suffering,'" the cardinal said.
Cardinal McCarrick said he also wanted to let the Lebanese people know "that together with the Holy Father, we Catholics in the United States are calling for an immediate cease-fire and for corridors of safety so humanitarian goods like food and water can be delivered."
I hear he too has interesting ideas on Israel's right to exist
"You consider this to be the actions of a civilized people?"
Yes.
I consider the damage to be exactly, and directly the the result of and caused by the Hezbolla attacks on Israel, a very "civilized people".
Everyone in Lebanon knew that Hezbolla was getting missiles from Syria and Iran and intendend to use them against Israel.
Every village with a Hezbolla presence in Southern Lebanon knew they were creating concrete reinforced bukers 12o feet and more below ground, in preparation for war.
Elders in the village of Qana knew that the building that collapsed there had been built intentionally by Hezbolla on top of an ammunition storage depot.
Everyone in Beruit knew: (1)Hezbolla built its military infrastructure in among the civilian population, (2)Hezbolla mounted its offensive operations from those civilian locations and (3)Hezbolla hid behind the women, children, homes, schools, Mosques in the civilian population, requiring that civilian deaths would be necessary in order to attack Hezbolla.
Everyone in Lebanon knew that before and during the Hezbolla attacks that Syria and Iran needed the roads, bridges and airports of Lebanon to continue shipping the missiles to Hezbolla.
Hezbolla initiated aggression against Israel. Hezbolla used Lebanon and the Lebanese people, intentionally seeking the deaths of Lebanese civilians as "martyrs" to its cause.
Hezbolla is led by gouls and when it attacked a civilized people those people responded to Hezbolla's attacks in a manner that corresponded to how Hezbolla operated, which all Lebanese people understood.
The victims in Lebanon are ALL victims of Hezbolla and its decision to make war.
Paleos.
Just as with the left, the paleo right believes it does not need the luxury of outlining concrete positions apart from a vague wish that the followers of Pat Buchanan can join with those of Ralph Nader to effect a united coalition. But one can deduce what paleos believe by reading its magazine, The American Conservative. The latest issue (July 31) starts off cheering the Supreme Court for ruling against the Bush administration to try Guantanamo detainees (as does the left)…It then supports the fact that Hamas now wants “a two-state solution,” mourning that “millions of Palestinians have no electricity, no services, no government,” ignoring all the excesses of Hamas that have blocked negotiations in the past (as does the left)…Then it is depressed by the defeat of immigration hard-liner John Jacobs in the Utah Republican primary to Congressman Chris Cannon, ignoring the statement by Jacobs that Satan is involved with Jacobs’ opposition…
…A column by Buchanan recommends we get out of Korea now (“The way to Guam and home lies open”) which is also supported by the left…Economist Paul Craig Roberts, a paleo new recruit, worries about the looming deficit but was caught blind-sided after publication with the announcement that the deficit has dropped from $423 billion to $296 billion, largely due to the Bush tax cuts which Roberts in his former incarnation used to celebrate. No mention of the tax cuts in his pessimistic piece which apes the left…It minimizes any information turned up by the NSA that has been data-mining telephone, fax and e-mail transactions (as does the left)…It pronounces the Afghanistan effort as “a model only for disaster” (as does the left)…It defends The New York Times in publishing the facts of the Terrorist Finance Tracking program, saying that “today’s conservatives are eager to trade freedom for security” warning that the Bush administration cannot be trusted to defend our freedoms (as does the left).
…It publishes approvingly an article by liberal Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) attacking Wal-Mart’s low prices that have come from free trade, warning that these prices come at “a high economic cost” and declaring that “corporate greed is selling out America” in small towns where Mom and Pop stores cannot compete with the giant and hence are closing, the recommendation being that Wal-Mart must be stopped and prices hiked…
…The same issue of the magazine reviews a book Where Did the Party Go? . It’s a book that bashes Hubert Humphrey for being too anti-Communist. The reviewer, Bill Kaufman, says Humphrey “hated pacifists, isolationist and radical American dissenters and purged them with the fervor of Tailgunner Joe.” As one who knows something about Humphrey and knew him, I would say that’s correct-and not a derogation, although Kaufman insists it is. He says Humphrey persecuted drove harmless populist Farmer-Laborites out of his Democratic party and what a shame that was. The only ones who say this now are the few radical leftists still alive in Minnesota who rue the day the followers of pro-Communist governor Elmer Benson were shown the gate by Humphrey. As I knew who they were and Kaufman doesn’t, I can congratulate him on buying the old Commie jargon that Humphrey was a conservative in sheep’s clothing. You will find that same estimate in the favorite organ of the left, The Nation…
…Finally, as a final piece, a snide put-down of conservative scholar and intellectual Paul Johnson for his book The Creators. So in one issue just about the entire panoply of issues favored by the left is glowingly presented (one exception: it is pro-life). The attack on Humphrey particularly appalls me: “Humphrey never was found on the populist side of an issue.” As one who covered him, particularly on the farm issue, I was so mis-led I didn’t recognize it? “He red-baited ferociously in the late `40s and sponsored legislation to outlaw the Communist party USA.” That’s a criticism now in Pat Buchanan’s magazine as it most assuredly would be in any leftist publication. “He opposed the traditional Farmer-Labor party in the mid-`40s.” That group was supporting Henry A. Wallace against Harry Truman. [He opposed] “the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party in the mid-1960s, the New Left and counter-culture in the late 1960s…” Guilty as charged. Then the reviewer projects a hope for realignment between the paleos and the Green Party on the left. There would be trouble fusing it together because of social policy, he says, but then brightly recommends the fusion anyhow. “Let San Francisco be San Francisco and let Utah be Utah. Mind your own damn place.”
Wonderful. Elect the paleos and the Greens and let `er rip. To those who occasionally write here in defense of paleo-conservatism (and you’re welcome) what do you have to say about that? All that’s missing is an article by Kevin Phillips denouncing our theocracy-but he was in last month’s issue.
++++end of quote++++++++++++
*BTW, Ol' Pat is in favor of giving foreign aid to Hamas
Nonetheless, he was our pope and NOT our foreign minister.
Nonetheless, the Vatican is a nation of its own with interests of its own. It has a foreign policy of its own. That foreign policy includes resisting abortion in international forums. John Paul the Great was very effective at getting the support of Islamic Nations for the Vatican's pro-life initiatives. Vatican coalition building with Muslim nations and generally poor Third World nations has thus far staved off many pro-abort efforts by the usual gang of Arkansas Antichrists, International Planned Barrenhood, ZPG and other usual suspects to establish the slaughter of the unborn as some sort of "basic human right."
That does not mean that we do not notice such atrocities as repeated instances of Islamolunatics strapping on the old bombs and teaching Chassidic Orthodox Jewish grammar school children by the schoolbus load a lesson as to just how uncontrollably rabid and insane the, ummmmm, cutting edge of Islamolunacy has truly become.
There are no perfect answers here. I know of no American or Israeli strategy that will protect Lebanese Christians from becoming collateral damage IF they insist on being in bed with Islamofascisti by living among them and providing agitprop cover (look at the poor dead Christians!!!!) for them. Diployak is NOT a strategy for anything but surrender on the installment plan to benefit Hezbollah lunatics determined to fight to the death. Kumbaya is NOT a strategy. Fecklessness is NOT a strategy. Empowering butchers who kill the innocent not as collateral damage but by homicide bombing of Chassidic grammar school kids by the busload is NOT a strategy.
If you get the impression that this Catholic who was also pro-Israel for decades has been permanently radicalized by the slaughter of Chassidic Orthodox grammar school kids, you may be onto something. What is the point of being pro-life if we tolerate such atrocities, tolerate those who peretrate them, tolerate those who are behind them, tolerate those who sympathize and cover for them? They wanted our attention. They have succeeded in getting it. Now our job is to exterminate the vermin who are the Islamofanatics until they are only a memory, a bad memory, like their predecessors in evil: Hitler, Stalin, Tojo.
If the Islamofascisti want us to listen more closely to John Paul the Great on foreign policy matters such as Lebanon and thereby cut the Islamos some slack with an eye toward better relations, they should build on the pro-life connection and show their good faith in that respect, remembering that they have the Vatican as their one and only legitimate connection with the West.
Personally, I don't care one bit about the attitude of "the Arab street," but "the Arab street" would be well-advised to be concerned about American attitudes and particularly the attitudes of those Americans who are in charge of our nuclear missile submarine fleet which can easily render "the Arab street" just another bad memory.
We need on-site inspection and excavation of the Bekaa Valley and every cubic inch of Syria until WMDs are found.
I am not interested in flimsy rationalizations as to why the Lebanese themselves are not responsible for harboring the Hezbollah criminals, allowing them to receive rockets with which to attack Israel, persistent in living WITH the Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and therefore deserving of what they have received.
I am not interested in nuances, rationalizations, diployak concessions, cultural sensitivity, "scholarly" fecklessness or outright dishonesty, political correctness, "even-handed" abandonment of Israel, neutral brokerhood, or other excuses for failure or inaction. I am interested in seeing that our enemies are killed as spectacularly and totally and memorably as possible and their things broken and not spending two cents to repair what needed destroying. Dump their remains in vats of pig blood unburied until they rot away. If this means a new, ummmmm, crusade, so be it and let's call that Crusade a Crusade.
Ahhhhh, but how do I REALLY feel?
GG: Peace comes AFTER we kill the enemy. If the Islamofascisti also say that, then remember that there is absolutely no moral equivalency between the Islamofascisti and their Jewish and American victims. The Islamos want this war. They have it. We have the weapons to finish them and we ought to stop pussyfooting around.
Dear BlackElk,
It is really politically incorrect of you to suggest that we should kill the bad guys rather than invite them over to tea. What is wrong with you? Don't you realize that Israel should be inviting the Hezbollah folks over for a Sunday morning brunch rather than targeting them with missiles?
Of course, pay no attention to the fact that these Islamic vermin will bring knives with them, and not to slice the cheese and bread, but rather to slice the throats of their hosts.
This is the way of Islamic hospitality.
But don't you understand, it's all ISRAEL'S fault! It's ISRAEL'S fault that she EXISTS (which is kinda true, in a way - Israel deserves great credit for managing to survive among several hundred million murderous savages in a rather bad neighborhood of the world)!
See, here's the thing. It's all relative! Israel, as part of the West, is held to Western standards of civility and decency. Of course, since they're all a bunch of damned Jews, of course, they're held to these standards to the nth degree, because we know that the dirty Jews can't otherwise be trusted.
As for the Muslims, well, it's all relative! They're held to ISLAMIC standards, which clearly permit killing infidels in large numbers in cold blood. With rusty knives. Or hijacked airliners. So what's a bunch of dead Chassidic Jewish schoolchildren? So what's the big deal about a Muslim chasing down a five year-old Jewish schoolgirl, and killing her as she hid underneath her bed.
So what's your beef? These folks are following ISLAMIC standards! Don't be so parochial, so... provincial! The pro-murdering-Muslim posters here are just expressing the universally-accepted mantra of the secular world: IT'S ALL RELATIVE (and if all the Jews get murdered, we won't have to have them in our country clubs, anymore)!!
sitetest
"It is also a nation in arms, because it is surrounded by enemies who wish to destroy it."
Yeah, any minute now it's going to be wiped into the sea. Nevermide the fact that Israel has kicked its neighbors' asses in EVERY fight it has EVER had with them. And I mean kicked them but good. In 1967, they destroyed the armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan IN SIX DAYS!!!!
Did Israel's past victories mean that Hizbullah and Hamas arefigments of my imagination?
The desire still exists.And Israel's enemies are now using asymmetric warfare.
They are not going to be driven into the sea by anyone. They are armed to the teeth with US missiles and tanks and F16s and Apache helicopters. They can go on being a bully to anyone in the region who pisses them off. And everyone in the region knows it and is afraid of them.
You do know that the US gives military aid to Egypt and Jordan and sells weapons to almost every other Arab nation.
And everyone in the region knows it and is afraid of them. Everyone except Syria and Iran because they know that Israel won't invade their countries because they're not bordering them.
Yep, you are ignorant.
Syria and Israel share a border. Get a map.
Why do you think the Jordanians and the Egyptians were willing to sign peace agreements with Israel? It wasn't because they suddenly fell in love with them. It was a matter of self preservation.
They lost 3 wars against Israel and realized that if they attacked Israel again and lost, their regimes would be overthrown?
Why do you think the Jordanians and the Egyptians were willing to sign peace agreements with Israel? It wasn't because they suddenly fell in love with them. It was a matter of self preservation
Neither is deluding oneself by ignoring the open statements of ones enemies.
On the front page of the Aug, 10 Wanderer, Likoudis suggests , well he essentially drinks from the toilet of conspiracy theories generated by the Brookings Institute and spits it back at us through his teeth.
Now, the genitive fallacy aside, since WHEN do American Catholics take as reliable BROOKINGS?
Good grief.
Likoudis even positively quotes Arundhati Roy, whom even Commie Lib Tod Gitlin knows she is an anti-american. What gives?
Something stinks. Big time.
Why is it, that the "real story," behind the events occuring before our eyes, is attributable to Jewish Conspiracies?
Oh yeah, well we tried to kill Japanese and the Japanese tried to kill American so that makes us just the same, so there
Consider...writing in the increasingly antiamerica, antiisraeli, "The Wanderer", AMERICA is responsible for the deaths of innocents in Cana, according to PaleoPope Pat Buchanan. So there....
Lebanon is forever fated to be a tool and stomping ground for the surrounding nations. Unless a strongman manages to unite all of the factions (Shiites, Maronites, Druze, etc.) around an authoritarian welfare state (see Syria), it is forever (expletive).
Well, you ARE part of a bunch of sub-human nutbars.
For nutbars think that they can kill and kidnap Israel soldiers in Israeli territory without repercussion.
For nutbars think that they can hide their command centers, weapon depots, and barracks in civilian homes and not have them destroyed.
For nutbars think that the Israeli military consists of such superhuman paragons of virtue that... they would never, ever hit a wrong target (bad intel) or just simply miss the target (d'oh!).
And nutbars also think that, while the Israeli military is a bunch of saintly superhumans that never make a mistake, they are also a bunch of devil-spawn barbarian scum that deserve whatever hell the 'righteous and holy' Hizbollah can deliberately inflict upon their wives and children.
Therefore, since you think the same, you are a NUTBAR!
:-)
*Can you believe this BS?
It appears The Wanderer has forgotten that 450 years before Pope Urban called the First Crusade, Islam was warring against peaceful Arabian Pagans, peaceful Jews and Peaceful Christians
America wasn't around then. Nor was Isrrael. Yet, no doubt anticipating our arrival on the scene centuries before we eventuated, Islam STILL managed to cultivate terrorists.
Good Lord. Just how dumb is the West? It sickens me how the Wanderer has not only succumbed to intellectual dhimmitude it has actively begun campaigning against America.
They will, sadly, lead many other American Christians into dhimmitude
Don't forget Dubya and the US who are also at fault for everything. He and Israel and the US just don't get out of the way of the establishment of a worldwide caliphate applying the prophet's (may vats of pig blood be heaped upon his remains) Sharia Law. I've heard that Israel, the US and Dubya actually concocted the Black Plague of the Middle Ages and implemented it using the super secret White House time machine and the work of the Centers for Disease Control. I know it may seem farfetched but it is believed by 40% of C-SPAN's Washington Journal (Commie Moonbats in the Morning). Themesong should be: Let Me Call You Comrade, I'm in League with You!!!!
You know that Dubya and the US and the GOP invented cancer as a scheme to enrich Halliburton and Dick Cheney but, not to worry, cancer is gone in 9 years. Ben Cardin says so and why would he lie just because he is running for the Senate?????
Typical call on Commies in the Morning starts: "I am a disabled veteran of the Battle of Bull Run and a lifelong Republican but I will NEVER vote for those fascist Nazi racist Republican ENEMIES of taxpaid casino trips, single payer medical care, tax cuts for the poor and peacecreepism NOW!!!! again because Bush.....(drones on with fantasies for ten minutes)....
God bless you and yours, my Brother Knight.
It was Dubya's time machine. It's all a conspiracy!!!!
Of course, he is just echoing the Washington Post and Vanity Fair etc etc, you know, the Paleo Press....
The interview was taped a week or so ago.
So,C-SPAN invites some Islamic Liar to come onto the show and he and Lammykins review outakes of the interview and the Islamic Liar gets to "respond" to Mr. Spencer while he isn't there.
Of course, this means the Islamic Liar gets to distort the questions and issue non sequiturs and Lammykins sits there and puts up with this BS
YOUR tax dollars are work, brothers.
C-SPAN, which stands for Chickens - Showing Pathetic Attributes of Nescience
I am petitioning by Bishop for a special dispensation so I can hate these bastards. Pray for me :)
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