Arid Uka’s Gratitude (Multiculturalism says he’s as German as Helmut and Franz. Except..)

National Review ^ | March 5, 2011 | Mark Steyn

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Multiculturalism says he’s as German as Helmut and Franz. Except he’s not.

According to Bismarck’s best-known maxim on Europe’s most troublesome region, the Balkans are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Americans could be forgiven for harboring similar sentiments after the murder of two U.S. airmen in Germany by a Kosovar Muslim.

Remember Kosovo? Me neither. But it was big at the time, launched by Bill Clinton in the wake of his Monica difficulties: Make war, not love, as the boomers advise. So Clinton did — and without any pesky U.N. resolutions, or even the pretense of seeking them. Instead, he and Tony Blair and even Jacques Chirac just cried “Bombs away!” and got on with it. And the Left didn’t mind at all — because, for a modern Western nation, war is only legitimate if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever war you’re waging. Unlike Iraq and all its supposed “blood for oil,” in Kosovo no one remembers why we went in, what the hell the point of it was, or which side were the good guys. (Answer: Neither.) The principal rationale advanced by Clinton and Blair was that there was no rationale. This was what they called “liberal interventionism,” which boils down to: The fact that we have no reason to get into it justifies our getting into it.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Arid Uka, suspected slayer of U.S. airmen in Germany (held job at airport).

[Uncle Ike]

” As any Homeland Security official can tell you, “Allahu akbar” is Arabic for “Nothing to see here.” “

Once again, Steyn boils it all down to one wryly devastating observation....

[Stepan12]

We help his fellows -- Albanian Muslims -- in Kosavar and this is our reward: two dead soldiers with more wounded.

For all this talk about multiculturalism, the lib/commie elite doesn't really bone up on other cultures such as the Arabic/Islamic one. If they did do any research on Islamic culture, they would realize that favors such as the one Klinton did for them in terror bombing Serbia (our ally in two world wars) does not inspire gratitude among the Muslims but contempt.

It is hard for us Occidentals to grasp this concept, but even harder for the multiculturalists who claim to be sensitive to other cultures.

[Kenny Bunk]

Almost every problem facing the Western world, from self-detonating jihadists to America’s own suicide bomb — the multi-trillion-dollar debt — has at its root a remorseless demographic arithmetic. In the U.S., the baby boomers did not have enough children to maintain their mid-20th-century social programs.

Steyn nails it.

[Nepeta]

Almost every problem facing the Western world, from self-detonating jihadists to America’s own suicide bomb — the multi-trillion-dollar debt — has at its root a remorseless demographic arithmetic. In the U.S., the baby boomers did not have enough children to maintain their mid-20th-century social programs.

I love Mark Steyn's work, but the truth is that the LBJ programs were put in place when nearly all baby boomers were too young to vote in the legislators who set up these vile institutions.

I could not vote until 1972.

[miss marmelstein]

I’m amazed at how Steyn can make me burst out laughing in the middle of a horror story. He’s brilliant. Here’s hoping he becomes Rush’s permanent guest host.

[marktwain]

Not only was there no UN mandate, the intervention was directly in opposition to the NATO charter. I was against it from the begining, but my liberal collegues didn't seem to mind. I recall a tape from a fighter pilot questioning his orders to hit a convoy of refugees. He clearly said “I don't see anything but tractors” referring to the column of tractors and farm wagons moving people down the road. He was told “there is no one but Serbs in that area” and replied that he would follow orders to attack the convoy.

I kept thinking that this was a serious war crime, and congress should call for investigations, but it was the Clinton administration. Everyone knows that democrat administrations cannot commit war crimes, just like black people cannot be racists.

I have never forgotten those mental images of farmers and their families slaughtered by US air-power, in order to prop up a corrupt Clinton administration.

[RoadTest]

“the lib/commie elite doesn’t really bone up on other cultures such as the Arabic/Islamic one. “

They are told by their peer group leaders that Muzzies are their allies: they both want to tear down America.

[Kenny Bunk]

So, Nep, you are blaming this on "old people?"

Probably a valid point of view in that we neglected to knock some sense into our offspring in the 1950s.

[miss marmelstein]

You’re absolutely right. It was our parents’ generation - the “greatest” generation - and alot of folks even older than that - who instituted all these social programs. Our generation, of course, helped sustain them with our money.

Ya just can’t blame us for EVERYTHING, lol!

[Nepeta]

So, Nep, you are blaming this on "old people?" Probably a valid point of view in that we neglected to knock some sense into our offspring in the 1950s.

Recall that the voting age was 21 in the 1960s.

I sure didn't vote in any of the people responsible for The Great Society programs, and I registered as a Conservative the first time was able to vote, in NY state.

Don't believe the hype that ALL of us were at Woodstock, or we were ALL in Haight Asbury, or that ALL of us were hippies, or that ALL of us were shirkers without work ethics. Some of us had enough sense to see through the stupidity of mass pop culture.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Don't believe the hype that ALL of us were at Woodstock, or we were ALL in Haight Asbury, or that ALL of us were hippies, or that ALL of us were shirkers without work ethics. Some of us had enough sense to see through the stupidity of mass pop culture.

Dittos!

But unfortunately the "Woodstock" crowd went into education, journalism and government.

[philoctetes]

(”without any pesky U.N. resolutions, or even the pretense of seeking them.”)
It was a sop to Muslim sensibilities, to deflect criticism post 9-11 that our rapine foreign policy was anti-Muslim. Equally incongruous is how quickly military action is taken by NATO(North Atlantic Treaty Organization [!]),regardless of what part of the the world, when no U.N. mandate exists.

[PGalt]

Very good article by Mark...shifting gears in the curve, then then ramping back up going to the finish line.

[Kenny Bunk]

Some of us had enough sense to see through the stupidity of mass pop culture.

Bravo and welcome aboard! Unfortunately right now, bright young things such as yourself, and bright elderly curmudgeons such as myself, are together in a distinct minority.

If we could get another 5% of the vote in key states, we just might have time to save the country.

[TopQuark]

Steyn: In the U.S., the baby boomers did not have enough children to maintain their mid-20th-century social programs.

Nupeta: too young to vote in the legislators who set up these vile institutions.

Seem like you and Steyn are talking about different things. He does not suggest that institutions were not vile. He says that, vile they may be, they were at least sustainable for while --- as long as there were enough young people to support the old, and that the old people failed to produce and raise enough of those young people.

The responsibility goes much futher back, it seems. The country was thousand times more socialist under Roosevelt than even today. How could Americans agree with that New Deal, who raised that generation? The generation of Wilson --- that same Wilson that was salivating about the world government that would obviate the need for "all wars." So who has raised the generation that could elect this "Progressive?"

Seems as if roughly the same couple of generations that became enamored with socialism -- that of Marx and Engels, and the next --- did so in both Europe and this country. Here socialism exhibited some diferent forms and took a different name (Progressivism starting with c. 1890s), but the same generations got seduced here as in Europe.

WW II shook people up a bit showing them two faces of socialism --Russian Communists and German Nazis --- but socialists in this country started to take over our schools, universities and the courts (it was the Warren Court, I think, that proclaimed that the guilt for a murder lies with our system that drove the murdered to commit the crime). It breaks my heart, but they seem to be accelerating that march.

[Kenny Bunk]

He does not suggest that institutions were not vile. He says that, vile they may be, they were at least sustainable for while --- as long as there were enough young people to support the old, and that the old people failed to produce and raise enough of those young people.

A startling and appreciated aperçu. Our European cousins have discovered this in their addiction to "Christian Socialism." I.E., a bad idea that carries within itself the germ of its own destruction. In order to keep their socialist party going, at "0" population growth and ever-escalating benefits, hordes of non-Western immigrants are needed to (a) do the work for which there are no longer enough ... and enough willing ... Europeans, and (b) pay the taxes from which the benefits are drawn.

Problem is, at some point the hordes of low-wage non-Europeans cannot (a) contribute enough to sustain the Europeans at a high level. (b)Then at another all-too-soon-reached point, they start to soak up more benefits than they contribute, as they swamp welfare, schools, hospitals, police, and housing.

I have an uncle who is a retired municipal worker in Toulon in the south of France. In his apartment block there is a welfare family from Morocco that has 4 apartments, one for each wife and 1 for the head of household and his consort for the evening. Between them they have over 20 children. They receive the froggie equivalent of Section 8 for each of the 4 apartments. None of the adults works. Each mother receives the frog equivalent of ADC, food stamps, health care, and a basic stipend. The police are there frequently, which is a break for my ancient uncle, because in other parts of Toulon, the police are afraid to answer calls!

Naturally, the normal residents of the building, who own their apartments, have seen the value of their homes plummet, while these Muslim freeloaders soak up well over 1/2 million Euros a year in cash and kind! PS: There is a French equivalent of "Affirmative Action!"

[gaijin]

The really amazing thing is that at the time, the US MSM bent-over-backwards to say the “ethnic Albanians” were the “new Jews”.

I mean they are muzzie gangsters, ok? And their one tradition is BLOOD FEUDS.

24/7 CNN was showing clips of harmless, crying, portly babushkas in kerchiefs, “the NEW Jews...the NEW Jews...”

TOTALLY RIDICULOUS.