Not a Joke
March 25th, 2004 - 1:25 pm
Two years ago — or even just a few months ago — you would never have expected to read this headline: Blair invites Libya to join war on terror.
Well, except maybe in The Onion.
Two years ago — or even just a few months ago — you would never have expected to read this headline: Blair invites Libya to join war on terror.
Well, except maybe in The Onion.
Amazing.
No, I would never have expected to see that, either.
http://www.proteinwisdom.com/archives/002705.html
“Kerry Helps Struggling Longshoreman Load Heavy Fish Crates” and other unlikely headlines. File under: Another failure in our ill-advised war on terror. Uh huh. [via Vodkapundit]….
Hey, they couldn’t be worse allies than the French…
Beltway Traffic Jam
Network access didn’t materialize, so the Traffic Jam is a bit late. Fortunately, I was able to escape the worst of it but, unfortunately, there’s…
Well, we lost the French, the Germans, now the Spanish, but at least we gained Libya. Considering the rhetorics and actions of Chirac, Schroeder, and this new dumb on the block, Zapatero, it might not be such a bad deal…
Seriously. We might not like Lybia. I definitely don’t like Kadhafi. But we have to give them a way to switch to our side, and we definitely must follow up on our promises. We offered him a carrot and a stick. He chose the carrot. Now we absolutely have to give him the carrot. We cannot realistically expect any bad guy just to give up if nothing is offered in return.
By not giving Kadhafi a way out wouldn’t help us. Would it be better if he, instead of coming “clean” and help our case, if in nothing else than in words, he would actually meaningfully help the terrorists? Consider it as something like when the Allies allied with the Soviet Union to defeat Hitler which was a bigger (or at least at that time) threat.
Politics, especially in such ugly times, do require compromises, sometimes very disgusting compromises. It doesn’t mean that we like Kadhafi. It doesn’t mean that we approve him. All we are doing is trying to weaken the dark forces by turning one guy who was potentially in bed with them to our side, or at least we turn him to be neutral. It is an ugly business, but the alternative, having him on the other side, would be definitely worse.
The families of the Lockerbie tragedy, the families of the US servicemen killed in Berlin, have every right to outrage. I am outraged, too. but again, what is the alternative? We have to give the bad guys a way out to avoid one more confrontation. My heart says that this is a horrible deal. My brain says that we do not have much of a choice, or the choice would be to let the bad guys have one more powerful backers.
Vilmos
Perhaps if it were JAYSON Blair.