Una girfriend experence per febo

Nello spirito di solidarietà e simpatia che unisce noi IPIers, e che supera barriere politiche, religiose, etniche e gastronomiche, lancio una sottoscrizione tra tutti i frequentatori e lurker di questo niusgruppo.

Ho dotato il fondo "una girlfriend experience per febo" di un capitale di partenza di € 5,00. Versate con paypal all'indirizzo tonibaruch@gmail.com usando come causale il nome del fondo. Potete versare con carta di credito anche se non avete un conto paypal o usando l'attivo del vostro conto paypal (se ne possedete uno).

Anche una piccola somma può fare un grande bene. Ma una grande ne farà ancora di più.

E' ora che si discolpi Golia

venerdì 20 gennaio 2006, Il Foglio
http://www.informazionecorretta.it/main.php?mediaId=&sez=60&id=15148

Da qualche tempo provo l’impulso a rigurgitare ricordi. Mi si perdoni il verbo volgare, ma è proprio quello che descrive perfettamente la situazione. Ad esempio, mi è successo recentemente, a proposito di un dibattito sulla rivista “Primato”. Ho visto giustificare con supponenza una marmaglia di opportunisti che, dopo essersi sporcata con le peggiori compromissioni nella politica razziale fascista, era stata lavata alla candeggina dall’amnistia togliattiana, quindi assurta a gotha dell’intellettualità e di nuovo oggi esaltata come crema della cultura italiana. E mi è tornata in mente la memoria di tante persone di ben altra levatura intellettuale massacrate da quei personaggi e dal cinismo con cui è stata traghettata la classe dirigente di questo paese. I ricordi possono stare fermi sul fondo in nome del sano desiderio di vivere nel presente e per il futuro. Ma se qualcuno ti ripropone una menzogna che, per giunta, offende di nuovo gli offesi, allora i ricordi rigurgitano. Così mi è tornato in mente il caso di un illustre professore intellettuale antifascista e comunista che non trovò di meglio che assolvere l’ex Capo dell’Ufficio Razza del Minculpop col dire che era tanto bravo a trovar soldi.
Quello era un piccolo campione di ricordi assopiti. Ne usciranno fuori altri? Dopo aver letto l’intervento di Clara Sereni su L’Unità – “La colpa di essere Ebrea” – temo proprio che non soltanto ciò possa accadere, ma che ciò debba accadere, per una sorta di dovere civile ed etico.
Ho molta simpatia per Clara Sereni, anche se non la conosco di persona. Ci accomunano non soltanto la generazione e il tipo di esperienze, ma ricordi comuni. Mio padre era grande amico di Enrico Sereni, suo zio, e della sua famiglia che frequentava assiduamente da giovane, e tante tante volte ho sentito racconti da lui al riguardo. Ricordo, ad esempio, quando mi raccontava di Emilio Sereni che, da molto giovane e prima di diventare fervente comunista, era non soltanto sionista ma credente, girava per casa con la kippà e il libro di preghiere in mano. Evoco questo ricordo perché porta al tema che è al centro dell’intervento di Clara Sereni: la difficoltà di conciliare un’identità ebraica con una militanza comunista. È un problema che hanno vissuto tutti i dirigenti comunisti che non hanno accettato di sopprimere totalmente ogni legame con la loro identità ebraica, come fu il caso di Umberto Terracini. Nella mia modesta esperienza l’ho vissuto anch’io per lunghi anni ed è chiaro che Clara Sereni lo vive ancora e con tormento.
Nel suo intervento Clara Sereni denuncia due episodi che l’hanno ferita – e quanto duramente è facile capire da come ne parla! – l’uno pubblico e l’altro privato: essere stata presentata a una tavola rotonda della CGIL come “ebrea e scrittrice” e l’aver dovuto ascoltare, durante un pranzo di compleanno di amici di sinistra, espressioni di vero e proprio pregiudizio antiebraico.
Capisco il suo turbamento e le esprimo la mia solidarietà. Ma mi chiedo: delle due l’una, o il livello di pregiudizio antiebraico ha raggiunto nella sinistra livelli esplosivi, oppure Clara Sereni è in stato di catalessi da qualche decennio. Precisamente dal 1967, da quasi quarant’anni.
Non dico che già prima non vi fossero aspetti a dir poco equivoci nell’atteggiamento del movimento comunista nei confronti della questione ebraica. Al contrario, tutto nasce di lì. Valga per tutti il silenzio attorno alle politiche razziali fasciste, attorno alla “congiura dei medici ebrei” inventata da Stalin o la complicità nel caso Slansky. Anzi, il recente dibattito sull’amnistia togliattiana mi induce a ritenere che vi sia un terreno ancora tutto da scavare. Ma è innegabile che, fino al 1967 – alla Guerra dei Sei Giorni e alla rottura totale dell’URSS nei confronti di Israele – aveva prevalso un linguaggio, a suo modo, “politically correct”. Quando, nel 1967, inviammo in molti a L’Unità una lettera di protesta per la scelta israeliana, la risposta privata del direttore Maurizio Ferrara fu dura e negativa, e tuttavia, anche oggi, non mi è dato leggervi una sbavatura fuori dal terreno prettamente politico.
Da quel momento le cose iniziarono a prendere una piega sempre più brutta. Lasciamo perdere l’analisi storico-politica e consentiamoci un piccolo rigurgito, il ricordo di un episodio analogo a quello narrato da Clara Sereni. Era la fine degli anni settanta, ed ero in vacanza nel paesino di Ginostra (isola di Stromboli), che ero fra i primissimi ad aver scoperto, portandovi gruppi di amici di sinistra, che poi si ampliarono esponenzialmente fino a trasformarlo in un affollato luogo di vacanza militante. Scenario: una cena di una ventina di ragazzi sessantottini sul terrazzo di una tipica casetta cubica bianca, nel buio illuminato da qualche lampada a petrolio. A un certo punto, tra una chiacchiera e l’altra, un “compagno” toscano prorompe in un’invettiva violentissima contro gli ebrei: capitalisti, sanguisughe, imperialisti, assassini del proletariato, e chi più ne ha più ne metta. Reagisco indignato, definendo il suo linguaggio come fascista e razzista, certo di trovare ampia solidarietà, e… sorpresa… mi trovo nell’isolamento più assoluto. Nessuno mi difende, nemmeno i più cari amici. Anzi, la mia reazione viene condannata come spropositata. Alla fine, scornato e umiliato, abbandono polemicamente la compagnia e vado via da solo, sul sentiero buio con la torcia, seguito soltanto dalla mia fidanzata, verso la nostra casetta, dove più tardi vengo raggiunto dagli amici. Costoro non trovano di meglio che sottopormi a un processo tra la psicanalisi e la politica, mettendo sotto accusa il mio attaccamento “morboso” alle radici ebraiche che non mi permette di assumere il necessario “distacco”, e di ammettere con “oggettiva serenità” le colpe che gli ebrei indiscutibilmente hanno sullo scenario del mondo. Cerco disperatamente la solidarietà di un giovane “compagno” tedesco che risponde freddamente: «Noi tedeschi abbiamo fatto cose troppo brutte agli ebrei perché io possa dire liberamente quel che penso». Coro trionfale: «Hai visto!».
Potrei raccontare tanti altri episodi del genere, pranzi e cene come quelle di Clara Sereni, a suon di «Come mai voi ebrei siete quasi tutti commercianti?». Sarà per un’altra volta. Per ora mi limito a dire che l’episodio di cui sopra mi servì a capire una volta per tutte una cosa: che potevo scegliere di restare nella sinistra comunista o uscirne ma, qualsiasi cosa avessi fatto, ai razzisti e agli antisemiti occorreva rispondere soltanto con un calcio – ovviamente verbale – nei denti e, se non basta, nel sedere. È l’unica pedagogia che può svegliare la coscienza di coloro che sono in buona fede. Ed è l’unico modo di salvare la propria dignità e integrità, la verità e la giustizia. Quel che certamente avevo appreso è che non è possibile lasciarsi colpevolizzare, subire la richiesta inaudita di dover fare un atto di discolpa. L’ha capito questo Clara Sereni? Non pare, visto che dice: «come tante altre volte, ho dovuto, come ebrea, fare il mio “Radames, discolpati”». “Tante” altre volte? L’ha fatto tante altre volte, e l’ha rifatto ancora questa volta senza trovare innaturale assoggettarsi a un simile infame ricatto?
Per parte mia, il decennio abbondante di militanza comunista che seguì all’episodio ginostriano – e che fu tutt’altro che facile – terminò proprio quando venne l’epoca delle richieste pubbliche di discolpa. Se ne ricorda, Clara Sereni? Fu l’epoca della guerra del Libano, nel 1982, quando a sinistra si chiedeva e richiedeva a gran voce agli ebrei di tutto il mondo di dissociarsi da Israele e di ottenere un salvacondotto di rispettabilità attraverso una condanna del governo Begin. Rosellina Balbi denunciò con forza questa intollerabile pretesa in un memorabile articolo su La Repubblica: “Davide discolpati”. Altro che Radames… Fu un periodo cupo. Le umilianti giaculatorie di un certo numero di ebrei di sinistra non servivano a placare le arroganti richieste di dissociazione. E a forza di fomentare l’odio venne l’evento nefando: nel corso di un corteo dei tre sindacati confederali venne deposta una bara davanti al Tempio maggiore di Roma. E, infine, in questo clima di sordida ostilità, il terrorismo palestinese prese il coraggio di compiere l’assalto armato al Tempio che vide l’uccisione del piccolo Stefano Taché.
A ventiquattro anni di distanza ancora Clara Sereni non ha assimilato quella lezione e accetta di sottoporsi alla pratica umiliante della “discolpa”? Occorre forse rispiegare perché non dovrebbe? Non discuto il suo legittimo diritto di continuare ad essere comunista e di difendere l’attualità di Marx (il che mi fa venire in mente quanto diceva nel 1989 il mio amico scrittore Alberto Lecco: «Il comunismo è finito? Vedrete… Comincia adesso…). Non discuto la legittimità dei suoi giudizi su Israele e sulla questione palestinese. Siamo su posizioni diversissime, ma questo è irrilevante. Appunto: che c’entra? Perché mai, per conquistarmi il diritto a non essere afflitto da tirate antisemite, debbo fare una fede di professione comunista, antisionista, filopalestinese e dimostrare di essere un “ebreo buono”? Insomma, perché, per non essere colpito dal razzismo, debbo legittimare il razzismo? Non si rende conto Clara Sereni che questo è esattamente l’atteggiamento umiliato e umiliante che assunsero gli ebrei “camerati” del gruppo torinese de La Nostra Bandiera negli anni trenta, che, con le loro sviscerate professioni di fede fascista (peraltro perfettamente sincere!) speravano di esorcizzare il montante antisemitismo del regime e persino le leggi razziali? Perché Clara Sereni si sottopone a questi avvilenti ricatti tipici di ogni forma di totalitarismo? Non si rende conto che, se c’è ancora gente che non si vergogna di chiedere queste discolpe, e non si avvilisce a vederle fare, aveva ben ragione Alberto Lecco: il comunismo, quello stalinista cattivo, è vivo ed è fra di noi.
A ventiquattro anni dalla campagna “Davide, discolpati”, Clara Sereni, invece di continuare a sottoporsi al ricatto, a “giustificarsi di essere ebrea”, a lasciarsi brutalizzare neanche più nelle vesti di David ma in quelle di Radames, dovrebbe intimare ai Golia razzisti: discolpatevi voi della vostra infamia, e vergognatevi, se ne siete capaci.
Tutto il suo intervento è intriso di patetiche illusioni. Si può davvero credere di ammorbidire i cattivi ripetendo la solita giaculatoria anti-sharoniana (“la politica del governo Berlusconi ha spiaccicato ebrei e Italia sulla politica di Sharon”). Che senso ha, mentre mezzo mondo ha fatto ammenda dei luoghi comuni su Sharon, continuare con la tiritera su Sharon boia? E perché mai la mossa di apertura verso Israele del ministro degli esteri Fini sarebbe stata efficace ma “scorrettissima”? Dove sta la scorrettezza? Nel non essere rimasto fedele a un’ortodossia fascista? Perché bisogna dire delle cose senza senso per non lasciar dubbi sulla propria ortodossia di sinistra?
Infine, forse l’illusione più patetica è tentare di convincere la sinistra a voler bene agli ebrei, per non regalarli alla destra e perdere le elezioni. Gli ebrei sono quattro gatti, ammette Clara Sereni, ma le elezioni si vinceranno per pochi voti, e quelli ebraici potrebbero essere decisivi. Ora, posto che su 30.000 ebrei non sono pochi quelli che voteranno per il centro-destra, quale sarebbe lo spostamento possibile:1000 o 1500 voti? E la sinistra, se non ci sta a voler bene agli ebrei per intima convinzione, dovrebbe mostrarsi benevola per l’opportunità di non perdere quel migliaio di voti? Me le immagino le sghignazzate dei commensali antisemiti di Clara Sereni… Peraltro, dopo aver fatto ricorso a un simile argomento, l’unica risorsa disponibile sarebbe mettersi in ginocchio e supplicare piangendo.
Capisco perfettamente l’ansia di Clara Sereni di perdere il rapporto con la sinistra, il suo attaccamento alla sua identità progressista. Ma la domanda è: qual è il modo più costruttivo e dignitoso per mantenere un rapporto autentico e realmente proficuo con quel mondo?
Per rispondere vorrei tornare a quel lontano 1982. Dopo la deposizione della bara davanti al Tempio maggiore di Roma, lo scandalo che ne seguì fu aggravato dalla reticenza delle dirigenze sindacali e, in particolare, dall’atteggiamento a dir poco ambiguo dell’allora segretario della CGIL Luciano Lama. Per me e per tanti altri fu la goccia che fece traboccare il vaso. Scrissi una lettera di sette pagine contro Lama che, in tutto o in parte, fu pubblicata da parecchi giornali e, con altri, promossi un appello che fu pubblicato su Repubblica col titolo “Lama e gli ebrei”. Ciò mi costò l’ostracismo di tanti ex-compagni. L’avviso venne da alto loco e fu perentorio: se non si ritira la lettera e l’appello la rottura è totale. Ancor oggi c’è gente che attraversa la strada se mi vede arrivare sullo stesso marciapiede. E appena qualche anno fa, quando raccontai queste vicende nel libro “La questione ebraica oggi”, venne fuori qualche maggiordomo della memoria di Lama a sostenere che quel che dicevo era falso, che Lama si era al contrario adoperato a condannare l’atto della deposizione della bara, che non aveva mai detto nulla di lontanamente equivoco. Insomma, ero io il fazioso, il rissoso e il calunniatore e il povero Lama era il crociato in difesa degli ebrei. Da non potersi credere. Riandai a leggermi l’appello pubblicato su La Repubblica pensando di essere ormai in preda all’Alzheimer. Diceva una cosa durissima: che il commento di Lama era «reticente e tale da offrire copertura [sic!] a quanti si sono resi responsabili di quegli atti», che erano definiti senza mezzi termini «neonazisti» e non accidentali bensì «pensati e organizzati». E sapete quali firme c’erano in calce a quell’appello? Fra le altre, quelle di noti proto-berlusconiani come Massimo Cacciari, Aniello Coppola, Giacomo Marramao, Claudio Pavone, Mario Pirani, Beniamino Placido, Luigi Spaventa. Eppure, nel 2002, ero diventato io l’unico cattivo e fazioso. Una tecnica arcinota e collaudata, quella della demonizzazione e dell’isolamento del reprobo, codificata dall’immortale maestro Josif Vissarionovic Dugasvili.
Ciò detto, ho forse perso qualcosa agendo in questo modo? Non credo proprio. Che perdita è mai quella della finta amicizia di gente di quella fatta? Era meglio non perdere il saluto dell’allora segretario della sezione universitaria del PCI (che ancora fa finta di non conoscermi) oppure sentirsi riconoscere pubblicamente da Piero Fassino che la mia “furia iconoclasta” è servita a stimolare riflessioni utili e costruttive? Era meglio tenersi buoni gli intellettuali che parlano di razza ebraica, o stabilire un dialogo fertile e costruttivo con persone come Giuseppe Caldarola e Umberto Ranieri? Esiste e cresce una sinistra aperta, attenta e senza pregiudizi sulla questione israeliana e sulla questione ebraica. Con questa bisogna parlare e non amareggiarsi i pranzi con la gentaglia: esistono pur sempre le porte per andarsene e ottimi ristoranti. Cara Clara Sereni, chi cova i pregiudizi di cui lei racconta non è certamente una persona “per bene” e, se è “di sinistra”, non cambia nulla: a destra e a sinistra i razzisti sono la stessa pasta di mascalzoni.
So bene quanto certi percorsi siano difficili e tortuosi. Sono l’ultimo a pretendere di giudicare, tanto meno di condannare. Ma ogni percorso nel deserto deve prima o poi finire nella terra promessa. Che è quella in cui si vive con una coscienza libera e, tra il partito-che-rappresenta-il-destino-storico e la verità, si sceglie la verità.

Giorgio Israel

Podhoretz: the panic over Iraq

January 2006

COMMENTARY January 2006 The Panic Over Iraq Norman Podhoretz Like, I am sure, many other believers in what this country has been trying to do in the Middle East and particularly in Iraq, I have found my thoughts returning in the past year to something that Tom Paine, writing at an especially dark moment of the American Revolution, said about such times. They are, he memorably wrote, “the times that try men’s souls,” the times in which “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot” become so disheartened that they “shrink from the service of [their] country.” But Paine did not limit his anguished derision to former supporters of the American War of Independence whose courage was failing because things had not been going as well on the battlefield as they had expected or hoped. In a less famous passage, he also let loose on another group: ’Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. . . . Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses . . . . [T]heir peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain for ever undiscovered. Thus, he explained, “Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head,” emboldened by the circumstances of the moment to reveal an opposition to the break with Britain that it had previously seemed prudent to conceal. The similarities to our situation today are uncanny. We, too, are in the midst of a rapidly spreading panic. We, too, have our sunshine patriots and summer soldiers, in the form of people who initially supported the invasion of Iraq—and the Bush Doctrine from which it followed—but who are now abandoning what they have decided is a sinking ship. And we, too, are seeing formerly disguised opponents of the war coming more and more out into the open, and in ever greater numbers. Yet in spite of these similarities, there is also a very curious difference between the American panic of 1776-7 and the American panic of 2005-6. To put it in the simplest and starkest terms: in that early stage of the Revolutionary War, there was sound reason to fear that the British would succeed in routing Washington’s forces. In Iraq today, however, and in the Middle East as a whole, a successful outcome is staring us in the face. Clearly, then, the panic over Iraq—which expresses itself in increasingly frenzied calls for the withdrawal of our forces—cannot have been caused by the prospect of defeat. On the contrary, my twofold guess is that the real fear behind it is not that we are losing but that we are winning, and that what has catalyzed this fear into a genuine panic is the realization that the chances of pulling off the proverbial feat of snatching an American defeat from the jaws of victory are rapidly running out. Of course, to anyone who relies entirely or largely on the mainstream media for information, it will come as a great surprise to hear that we are winning in Iraq. Winning? Militarily? How can we be winning militarily when, day after day, the only thing of any importance going on in that country is suicide bombings and car bombings? When neither our own troops nor the Iraqi forces we have been training are able to stop the “insurgents” from scoring higher and higher body counts? When every serious military move we make against the strongholds of these dedicated and ruthless adversaries is met with “fierce resistance”? When, for every one of them we manage to kill, two more seem to pop up? Winning? Politically? How can we be winning politically when the very purpose for which we allegedly invaded Iraq has been unmasked as a chimera? When every step we force the Iraqis to take toward democratization is accompanied by angry sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis and between each of them and the Kurds? When our clumsy efforts to bring the Sunnis into the political process have hardly made a dent in their support for the insurgency? When the end result is less likely to be the stable democratic regime we supposedly went there to establish than a civil war followed by the breakup of Iraq into three separate countries? There has been one great exception to this relentless drumbeat of bad news: it occurred in January 2005, in the coverage of the first election in liberated Iraq. To the astonishment of practically everyone in the world, more than 8 million Iraqis came out to vote on election day even though the Islamofascist terrorists had threatened to slaughter them if they did. This very astonishment was a measure of how false an impression had been created of the state of affairs in Iraq. No one fed by the mainstream media could have had the slightest inkling that these 8 million people were actually there, so invisible had they been to reporters who spent all their time interviewing the discontented Iraqi Man in the Street and to cameras seemingly incapable of focusing on anything but carnage and rubble. But the mainstream media soon recovered from the shock. By October, on the morning after a second ballot in which the new Iraqi constitution was ratified by fully 79 percent of the electorate, the Washington Post ran its announcement of these inspiring results on page 13. As for the paper’s front page, the columnist Jeff Jacoby would note that it was dominated by a photograph, stretched across four columns, of three daughters at the funeral of their father, . . . who had died from injuries suffered during a September 26 bombing in Baghdad. Two accompanying stories, both above the fold, were headlined “Military Has Lost 2,000 in Iraq” and “Bigger, Stronger, Homemade Bombs Now to Blame for Half of U.S. Deaths.” A nearby graphic—“The Toll”—divided the 2,000 deaths by type of military service. In sum, in the words of the Australian blogger Arthur Chrenkoff: Death, violence, terrorism, precarious political situation, problems with reconstruction, and public frustration (both in Iraq and America) dominate, if not overwhelm, the mainstream media coverage and commentary on Iraq. About a year ago, concerned that he might have been exaggerating when he made this assertion on the basis of his “gut feeling,” Chrenkoff decided to check it out more scientifically. So he did “a little tally” of the stories published or broadcast all over the world on a single average day (which happened to be January 21, 2005). Here are some of the numbers that, with the help of the Google News Index, he was able to report from that one day: 2,642 stories about Condoleezza Rice’s confirmation hearings, in the context of grilling she has received over the administration’s Iraq policy. 1,992 stories about suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks. 887 stories about prisoner abuse by British soldiers. 216 stories about hostages currently being held in Iraq. 761 stories reporting on activities and public statements of insurgents. 357 stories about the antiwar movement and the dropping public support for involvement in Iraq. 182 stories about American servicemen killed and wounded in operations. 217 stories about concerns for fairness and validity of Iraqi election (low security, low turnout, etc.). 107 stories about civilian deaths in Iraq. 123 stories noting Vice President Cheney’s admission that he had underestimated the task of reconstruction. 118 stories about complicated and strained relations between the U.S. and Europe. 121 stories discussing the possibility of an American pullout. 27 stories about sabotage of Iraqi oil infrastructure. As against all this, the good news made a pathetic showing: 16 stories about security successes in the fight against insurgents. 7 stories about positive developments relating to elections. 73 stories about the return to Iraq of stolen antiquities.1 Obviously, then, the reporters and their editors in the mainstream media have been working overtime to show how badly things have been going for us in Iraq. Meanwhile, the op-ed pundits, the academic theorists, and the armchair generals have chimed in with analyses blaming it all on the incompetence of the President and his appointees. By now, the proposition that the aftermath of the invasion has been marked by one disastrous blunder after another is accepted without question or qualification by just about everyone: open opponents of the Bush Doctrine eager to prove that they were right to denounce the invasion; Democrats whose main objective is to discredit the Bush administration; and erstwhile supporters who have lost heart and are looking for a way to justify their desertion. But the charge of incompetence has also been hurled by strong supporters of the Bush Doctrine in general and of the invasion of Iraq in particular, whose purpose is to prod the people running the operation into doing a better job. The most authoritative such supporter, Eliot A. Cohen of Johns Hopkins, has expressed a desire—barely controlled—to slap the highly educated fool who, having no soldier friends or family, once explained to me that mistakes happen in all wars, and that the casualties are not really all that high, and that I really shouldn’t get exercised about them. Now, this person may well have deserved a slap for being presumptuous toward a distinguished military historian, or for insensitivity in downplaying casualties when speaking to the father of an infantry officer on his way to Iraq. But at the risk of exposing myself as another highly educated fool, I must confess that I too think we need to be reminded that mistakes happen in all wars, and that the casualties in this one are very low by any historical standard. Before measuring Iraq in these two respects, I want to look more closely at some of the actions taken by the Bush administration that are universally accepted as mistakes, and to begin by pointing out that the main one is based on an outright falsification of the facts. This is the accusation that no thought was given to what would happen once we got to Baghdad and no plans were therefore made for dealing with the aftermath of the combat phase. Yet the plain truth is that much thought was given to, and many plans were made for dealing with, horrors that everyone expected to happen and then, mercifully, did not. Among these were: house-to-house fighting to take Baghdad; the flight of a million or more refugees; the setting of the oil fields afire; and the outbreak of a major civil war. As for the insurgency, even if its dimensions had accurately been foreseen, it would still have been impossible to eliminate it in short order. To cite Eliot Cohen himself: If the insurgencies in Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Sri Lanka, and Kashmir continue, what reason do we have to expect this one to end so soon? A related group of alleged “mistakes” turn out on closer inspection to be judgment calls, concerning which it is possible for reasonable men to differ. The most widely circulated of these—especially among supporters of the war on the Right—is that there were too few American “boots on the ground” to mount an effective campaign against the insurgency. Perhaps. And yet the key factor in fighting a terrorist insurgency is not the number of troops deployed against it but rather the amount and quality of the intelligence that can be obtained from infiltrating its ranks and from questioning prisoners (a task made all the more difficult for us by the campaign here at home to define torture down to the point where it would become illegal to subject even a captured terrorist to generally accepted methods of interrogation). Finally, there are “mistakes” that were actually choices between two evils—choices that had to be made when it was by no means obvious which was the lesser of the two. The best example here is the policy of “de-Baathification.” This led to a disbanding of the Iraqi army, whose embittered Sunni members were then putatively left with nothing to do but volunteer their services to the insurgency. Yet allowing Saddam Hussein’s thugs to continue controlling the army would have embittered the Shiites and the Kurds instead, both of whom had suffered greatly at the hands of the Sunni minority. Is it self-evident that this would have been better for us or for Iraq? However, even if I were to concede for the sake of argument that every one of these accusations was justified, I would still contend that they amounted to chump change when stacked up against the mistakes that were made in World War II—a war conducted by acknowledged giants like Roosevelt and Churchill.2 And I would still say, as I have said before, that the number of American casualties in Iraq is minimal as compared with the losses suffered in past wars.3 Similarly, the mistakes—again assuming they were mistakes rather than debatable judgment calls—committed in the first year after the fall of Saddam were relatively inconsequential when measured against those made in the aftermath of the Allied victories over Germany and Japan. Several Iraqi bloggers, and many letters written by American soldiers in the field that have found their way onto the Internet, paint a very different picture. Like Arthur Chrenkoff, these close-range observers do not overlook the persistence of major problems, and they do not deny that we still have a long way to go before Iraq becomes secure, stable, and democratic. But they document with great detail the amazing progress that has been made, even under the gun of Islamofascist terrorism, in building—from scratch—the political morale of a country ravaged by “post-totalitarian stress disorder,” in setting up the institutional foundations of a federal republic, in getting the economy moving, and in reconstructing the physical infrastructure. The columnist Max Boot, who has himself been free with charges of incompetence, and who takes the position that we should have put more troops into Iraq, can (like Eliot Cohen) see clearly through his own reservations to provide a good summary of the situation as it now stands: For starters, one can point to two successful elections . . . , on January 30 and October 15 [2005], in which the majority of Iraqis braved insurgent threats to vote. The constitutional referendum in October was particularly significant because it marked the first wholesale engagement of Sunnis in the political process. . . . This is big news. The most disaffected group in Iraq is starting to realize that it must achieve its objectives through ballots, not bullets.4 Moving on to the economy, Boot (relying on a Brookings Institution report) tells us that “for all the insurgents’ attempts to sabotage the Iraqi economy,” per-capita income has doubled since 2003 and is now 30-percent higher than it was before the war; that the Iraqi economy is projected to grow at a whopping 16.8 percent in 2006; and that there are five times more cars on the streets than in Saddam Hussein’s day, five times more telephone subscribers, and 32 times more Internet users. Finally, Boot points out that whereas not a single independent media outlet existed in Iraq before 2003, there are now 44 commercial TV stations, 72 radio stations, and more than 100 newspapers. To all of this we can add the 3,404 public schools, 304 water and sewage projects, 257 fire and police stations, and 149 public-health facilities that had been built as of September 2005, with another 921 such projects currently under construction. As for the military front, a November 2005 report by the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) cites an example of what is being accomplished by American troops: In the recent Operation Steel Curtain on the Syrian border, our troops detained more than 1,000 suspected insurgents. One hundred weapons caches were found and cleared. Since January, 116 of Zarqawi’s lieutenants have been killed or captured. The CPD report also notes the steady strengthening of the Iraqi armed forces, and the increasing degree of responsibility they are assuming in the fight against the insurgency: [Since July] Iraq’s armed forces . . . have added 22 new battalions, and 5,500 police-service personnel have been trained and equipped (as have some 2,000 special-police commanders). Coalition senior officers report that 80 Iraqi battalions now are able to fight alongside our troops and 36 are “generally able to conduct independent operations.” More than 20 of the coalition’s forward-operating bases have been turned over to the Iraqi army. The CPD supports the campaign in Iraq. Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies is (to put it mildly) unfriendly to the Bush Doctrine and all its works. But Cordesman concurs with the CPD assessment. Citing slightly different statistics, he notes continued increase in the number of Iraqi units able to take the lead in combat operations against the insurgency . . . [p]rogress of Iraqi units in assuming responsibility for the battle space . . . [and] continued increase in the number of units and individuals trained, equipped, and formed into operational status. What this means in concrete terms is laid out by Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, also no great admirer of how the Bush administration has conducted the Iraq campaign: For two years, when reporters would ask how it was possible that the mightiest military in history could not secure a five-kilometer stretch of road, the military responded with long, jargon-filled lectures. . . . Then one day this summer the military was ordered to secure the road. . . . Presto. Using Iraqi forces, the road was secured. Similar strategies have made cities like Najaf, Mosul, Tal Afar, and even Falluja much safer today than they were a year ago. Why is there so little public awareness of these things? One young reporter, who proudly proclaims his membership in the mainstream media, has been only too happy to provide an explanation: As long as American soldiers are getting killed nearly every day, we’re not going to be giving much coverage to the opening of multimillion dollar sewage projects. American lives are worth more than Iraqi shit. Observe, in this clever and brutal formulation, the professed concern with American casualties. From it, one might imagine that the statement is worlds away from the hostility to American military power—and to America in general—that pervaded the radical Left in the 1960’s and that in a milder liberal mutation came to be known as the “post-Vietnam syndrome.” And it is certainly true that the antiwar movement spawned by Vietnam rarely had a tear to shed for the American lives that were being lost there. But the newfound tenderness toward our troops in Iraq does not in the least reflect a change in attitude toward the use of force by the United States. To the contrary, the relentless harping on American casualties by the mainstream media is part of an increasingly desperate effort to portray Iraq as another Vietnam: a foolish and futile (if not immoral and illegal) resort to military power in pursuit of a worthless (if not unworthy) goal. Mark Twain once famously said that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. So it was, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with the post-Vietnam syndrome. During those early weeks, a number of commentators were quick to proclaim the birth of an entirely new era in American history. What December 7, 1941 had done to the isolationism of old, they announced, September 11, 2001 had done to the Vietnam syndrome. Politically speaking, it was dead, and the fallout from the Vietnam war—namely, the hostility to America and especially to American military power—would follow it into the grave. As is evident from the coverage of Iraq in the mainstream media, such pronouncements were more than a little premature: the Vietnam syndrome is still alive and well. But equally apparent is that the reporters and editors to whom it is a veritable religion understand very clearly that success in Iraq could deal the Vietnam syndrome a mortal blow. Little wonder, then, that they have so resolutely tried to ignore any and all signs of progress—or, when that becomes impossible, to dismiss them as so much “shit.” This, however, is at least a kind of tribute to our progress, if a perverse one. The same cannot be said of the opponents of the Bush Doctrine in the universities and think tanks, who are unwilling even to acknowledge that more and better things are happening in Iraq and the broader Middle East than are dreamed of in their philosophy. Take, for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who left the academy to serve as Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser and is now a professor again. In a recently published piece entitled “American Debacle,” Brzezinski began by accusing George W. Bush of “suicidal statecraft,” went on to pronounce the intervention in Iraq (along with everything else this President has done) a total disaster, and ended by urging that we withdraw from that country “perhaps even as early as next year”—i.e., 2006. Unlike the late Senator Aiken of Vermont, who once proposed that we declare victory in Vietnam and then get out, Brzezinski wants to declare defeat in Iraq and then get out. This, he mysteriously assures us, will help restore “the legitimacy of America’s global role.” Now I have to admit that I find it a little rich that George W. Bush should be accused of “suicidal statecraft” by, of all people, the man who in the late 1970’s helped shape a foreign policy that emboldened the Iranians to seize and hold American hostages while his boss in the Oval Office stood impotently by for more than six months before finally authorizing a rescue operation so inept that it only compounded our national humiliation. And where was Brzezinski—famed at the time for his anti-Communism—when the President he served congratulated us on having overcome our “inordinate fear of Communism”? Where was Brzezinski—known far and wide for his hard-line determination to resist Soviet expansionism—when Cyrus Vance, the then Secretary of State, declared that the Soviet Union and the United States had “similar dreams and aspirations,” and when Carter himself complacently informed us that containment was no longer necessary? And how was it that, despite daily meetings with Brzezinski, Carter remained so blind to the nature of the Soviet regime that the invasion of Afghanistan, as he himself would admit, taught him more in a week about the nature of that regime than he had managed to learn in an entire lifetime? Had the cat gotten Brzezinski’s tongue in the three years leading up to that invasion—the same tongue he now wags with such confidence at George W. Bush?5 But even if Brzezinski’s record over the past 30 years did not disqualify him from dispensing advice on how to conduct American foreign policy, this diatribe against Bush would by itself be enough. For here he looks over the Middle East, and what does he see? He sees the United States being “stamped as the imperialistic successor to Britain and as a partner of Israel in the military repression of the Arabs.” This may not be fair, he covers himself by adding; but not a single word does he say to indicate that the British created the very despotisms the United States is now trying to replace with democratic regimes, or that George W. Bush is the first American President to have come out openly for a Palestinian state. Again Brzezinski looks over the Middle East, and what does he see? He sees the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and by extension Guantanamo, causing the loss of America’s “moral standing” as a “country that has stood tall” against “political repression, torture, and other violations of human rights.” And that is all he sees—quite as though we never liberated Afghanistan from the theocratic tyranny of the Taliban, or Iraq from the fascist despotism of Saddam Hussein. But how, after all, when it comes to standing tall against “political repression, torture, and other violations of human rights,” can such achievements compare with a sanctimonious lecture by Jimmy Carter followed by the embrace of one third-world dictator after another? Then for a third time Brzezinski looks over the Middle East, and what does he see? He sees more and more sympathy for terrorism, and more and more hatred of America, being generated throughout the region by our actions in Iraq; and in this context, too, that is all he sees. About the momentous encouragement that our actions have given to the forces of reform that never dared act or even speak up before, he is completely silent—though it is a phenomenon that even so inveterate a hater of America as the Lebanese dissident Walid Jumblatt has found himself compelled to recognize. Thus, only a few months after declaring that “the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory,” Jumblatt suddenly woke up to what those U.S. soldiers had actually been doing for the world in which he lived: It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting [in January 2005], 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The columnist Michael Barone has listed some of the developments that bear out Jumblatt’s judgment: [The] progress toward democracy in Iraq is leading Middle Easterners to concentrate on the question of how to build decent governments and decent societies. We can see the results—the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the first seriously contested elections in Egypt, Libya’s giving up WMD’s, the Jordanian protests against Abu Musab Zarqawi’s recent suicide attacks, and even a bit of reform in Saudi Arabia. Even in Syria, reports the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, people talk politics . . . with a passion I haven’t heard since the 1980’s in Eastern Europe. They’re writing manifestos, dreaming of new political parties, trying to rehabilitate old ones from the 1950’s. And not only in Syria. As the democratic activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim who, like Jumblatt, originally opposed the invasion of Iraq, told Ignatius’s colleague Jim Hoagland: Those [in the Middle East] who believe in democracy and civil society are finally actors . . . [because the invasion of Iraq] has unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon’s 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against us. Look, neither Napoleon nor President Bush could impregnate the region with political change. But they were able to be midwives. Nor are such changes confined to the political sphere alone. According to a report in the Economist, a revulsion against terrorism has begun to spread among Muslim clerics, including some who, like the secular Jumblatt, were only recently applauding its use against Americans: Moderate Muslim clerics have grown increasingly concerned at the abuse of religion to justify killing. In Saudi Arabia, numerous preachers once famed for their fighting words now advise tolerance and restraint. Even so rigid a defender of suicide attacks against Israel . . . as Yusuf Qaradawi, the star preacher of the popular al-Jazeera satellite channel, denounces bombings elsewhere and calls on the perpetrators to repent. Zbigniew Brzezinski may be wrongheaded, but he is neither blind nor stupid. Why, then, his willful silence in the face of all these signs of progress? I can only interpret it as the product of a rising panic. No less than the denizens of the mainstream media, he is desperately struggling to salvage a worldview that, like theirs, should have been but was not killed off by 9/11 and that, like theirs, may well suffer a truly mortal blow if the Bush Doctrine passes through the great test of fire it is undergoing in Iraq. Brzezinski’s worldview is a syncretistic mix of foreign-policy realism (with its emphasis on stability and the sanctity of national borders) and liberal internationalism (with its unshakable faith in compromise, consensus, and international institutions). In this he differs somewhat from another former National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, a Republican who occupied the office under George W. Bush’s father and whose own commitment to the realist perspective is pure and unadulterated. In spite of this difference, the two men are at one in regarding the war in Iraq as a disastrous distraction from the really important business to which we should be attending in the Middle East—namely, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In an article published some months before the invasion and entitled “Don’t Attack Saddam,” Scowcroft wrote: Possibly the most dire consequence [of attacking Saddam] would be the effect in the region. The shared view in the region is that Iraq is principally an obsession of the U.S. The obsession of the region, however, is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If we were seen to be turning our backs on that bitter conflict, there would be an explosion of outrage against us. Evidently he still holds to this view. So does Brzezinski, who attacks “the Bush team” for having transformed “a manageable, though serious, challenge of largely regional origin into an international debacle,” and who urges us to get out of Iraq, the sooner the better, so that we can shift our focus back to where it really belongs—“the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” Well, whether the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is truly “the obsession of the region” or, rather, a screen for other things, it certainly is the obsession of Brzezinski and Scowcroft, as it is of almost everyone else who looks at the Middle East from the so-called realist perspective and to whom stability is the great desideratum. Even from that perspective, however, the non-stop preoccupation with Israel would seem to be warranted only if the conflict with the Palestinians were the main cause of instability throughout the region. This is indeed what Brzezinski, Scowcroft, and most other members of the realist school believe.6 Yet the realities to which they are so deferential in the abstract make utter nonsense of this idea. Since the birth of Israel in 1948, there have been something like two dozen wars in the Middle East (variously involving Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq) that have had nothing whatever to do with the Jewish state, or with the Palestinians. In one of these alone—the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88—more lives were lost than in all the wars involving Israel put together. The obsessive animus against Israel goes hand in hand with the overall strategy for dealing with the Middle East that prevailed before 9/11, and to which Brzezinski and Scowcroft are still married, heart and soul and mind. The best and most succinct description of that strategy was given by President Bush himself in explaining why 9/11 had driven him to reject it in favor of a radically different approach: For decades free nations tolerated oppression in the Middle East for the sake of stability. In practice, this approach brought little stability and much oppression, so I have changed this policy. And again: In the past, . . . longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold. We learn from Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker that, when Condoleezza Rice quoted these words to Scowcroft (her former mentor), he responded that the policy Bush was rejecting had actually brought us “50 years of peace.”7 In addition to remaining convinced that the old way of doing things was right, Scowcroft is utterly disdainful of the new approach being followed by George W. Bush, which (as I like to describe it) is to make the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy. “I believe,” he told Jeffrey Goldberg, “that you cannot with one sweep of the hand or the mind cast off thousands of years of history.” But the despotisms in the Middle East are not thousands of years old, and they were not created by Allah or the Prophet Muhammad. All of them were established after World War I—that is, less than a century ago—by the British and the French. This being the case, there is nothing “utopian” about the idea that such regimes—planted with shallow roots by two Western powers—could be uprooted with the help of a third Western power, and that a better political system could be put in their place. And, in fact, this is exactly what has been happening before our very eyes in Iraq. In the span of three short years, Iraq, liberated by the United States from the totalitarian tyranny of Saddam Hussein, has taken one giant step after another toward democratization. Yet Scowcroft can still assure us that “you’re not going to democratize Iraq,” and certainly not “in any reasonable time frame.” As with Brzezinski, so again it seems that nothing else but panic can explain so astonishing a degree of denial. Like the mainstream media and the theorists in the academy and the think tanks, the Democratic party—fearing that it might be frozen out of power for a very long time to come—is also in a panic over the signs that George W. Bush’s new approach to the greater Middle East is on the verge of passing the test of Iraq. Hence the veritable hysteria with which the Democrats have recently tried to delegitimize the war: first by claiming (three years after the fact!) that it had begun with a lie, and then by declaring that it was ending in a defeat. Leaning heavily on the turn in public opinion largely brought about by reports in the mainstream media and the lucubrations of the theorists, the Democrats now joined in by clamoring openly for a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.8 A goodly number of these Democrats (Howard Dean and Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, to name only two) are the “Tories” of today, in the sense of having from the very beginning stood openly and unambiguously against the revolution in foreign policy represented by the Bush Doctrine and now being put to the test in Iraq. But a much larger number of Democrats fit more smoothly into Tom Paine’s category of “disguised” Tories. These are the Congressmen and Senators who in their heart of hearts were against the resolution authorizing the President to use force against Saddam Hussein, but who—given the state of public opinion at the time—feared being punished at the polls unless they voted for it. Now, however, with public opinion moving in the other direction, they have been emboldened to “show their heads.” Finally, we have a certain number of Democrats who correspond to “the summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots” of the American Revolution.9 One of them is Congressman John Murtha, who backed the invasion of Iraq because (to give him the benefit of the doubt) he really thought it was the right thing to do, but who has now bought entirely into the view that all is lost and that the only sensible course is to turn tail: The war in Iraq is . . . a flawed policy wrapped in illusion . . . our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people, or the Persian-Gulf region. . . . Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists, and foreign jihadists. . . . Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home. It seems never to have occurred to Murtha that talk of this kind could only confuse and demoralize the troops for whose welfare, and for whose sufferings, he expresses such concern. By all accounts, those troops are very proud of what they are accomplishing in Iraq. How then could they not be confounded when a respected Congressman—a former Marine, no less—declares that they have been fighting for nothing, nothing whatsoever, and when for saying so he gets a standing ovation from his fellow Democrats? How could they not be demoralized to be told that there is no point in going on because their very presence in Iraq is making things worse for everyone concerned?10 And how, by the same token, could talk of this kind fail to give new heart to the Islamofascist terrorists—just when they are on the run? How could they not be delighted to see the elected representatives of the American people carrying on a heated debate in which the only questions at issue are how quickly to bug out of Iraq, and whether to fix a timetable and a deadline? How could they not feel vindicated when, after being surprised by the fierce reaction of the Americans to 9/11, they now behold fresh evidence for believing that Osama bin Laden was right after all when he called us a paper tiger? On the other hand, if (as the President intended all along, as he reiterated in his great speech of November 30 at Annapolis, and as is prescribed in the recently declassified “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq”) American forces are drawn down only at the rate and to the extent that they can be replaced with similar numbers of Iraqi soldiers and policemen fully capable of taking over, the joy now being felt by the Islamofascists will commensurately be replaced by dread. For no one knows better than they that, once up to snuff and on their own, the new Iraqi forces will be less inhibited than the Americans by moral considerations and accordingly much more ruthless in the way they fight. Tom Paine grew so disgusted with “the mean principles that are held by the Tories,” with the hypocrisy of the disguised Tories, and with the shrinking from hardship of the summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots of 1776-7 that he finally gave up trying to persuade them: I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world to either their folly or their baseness. And so, “quitting this class of men . . . who see not the full extent of the evil that threatens them,” Paine turned “to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the matter out,” and rested his hopes on them. These hopes, we know and thank God for it, were not disappointed. And neither will be the hopes of those today who likewise see “the full extent of the evil that threatens” us; who understand the necessity of the war that our country has been waging against it; who recognize the moral, political, and intellectual boldness of how George W. Bush has chosen to fight this war; and who take pride in the nobility of what the United States, at whose birth Tom Paine assisted, is now, more than 200 years later, battling to achieve in Iraq and, in the fullness of time, in the entire region of which Iraq is so crucial a part. —December 6, 2005 NORMAN PODHORETZ is the editor-at-large of COMMENTARY and the author of ten books. The present article is a sequel to his “Who Is Lying About Iraq?,” which appears in the December issue and which can be found, along with other essays by him on the Bush Doctrine and Iraq, at www.commentarymagazine.com. 1 Chrenkoff adds: “[M]any stories are ‘duplicates’ of wire reports from AP, Reuters, and others, but that’s precisely the point: if a negative story from the AP is picked up by hundreds of newspapers around the world, then the story’s penetration of the global news market is much greater than another story published in just one local newspaper. This, by the way, cuts both ways: if a wire service writes a positive story, that [too] gets syndicated worldwide (in fact most of the 73 positive stories above about the return of stolen treasures are such duplicates)—except that it’s quite rare for a news wire service to have a good-news story.” 2 Tim Cavanaugh, in a posting on the website of Reason magazine that I have quoted in the past, has offered a partial list of such blunders and the lives that were lost because of them: “American Marines were slaughtered at Tarawa because the pre-invasion bombardment of the island was woefully deficient. Hundreds of American paratroopers were killed by American anti-aircraft fire during landings in Italy—for that matter the entire campaign up the Italian boot was an obvious waste of time, resources, and lives that prevented the western Allies from getting seriously into the war until the middle of 1944. . . . In late 1944, Allied commanders failed to anticipate that the Germans would attack through Belgium despite their having done so in 1914 and 1940.” In brief, Cavanaugh concludes, “On any given week, World War II offered more [foul-ups] and catastrophes than anything that has been seen in postwar Iraq.” 3 In World War II, 405,399; in Korea, 36,574; in Vietnam, 58,209. 4 As I write, it looks very much as though the same trend will continue into the election scheduled for December 15, when a new parliament empowered to form a four-year government will be chosen. 5 As Thomas Joscelyn reminds us, Brzezinski also wagged it at Ronald Reagan: “If present trends continue,” he wrote in 1981, “American foreign policy is likely to be in a state of general crisis by the spring of 1982 . . . causing the global position of the United States to be placed in jeopardy.” 6 But not Henry Kissinger, the leading realist of them all. Even though he is skeptical about the possibility of democratizing the Middle East, Kissinger favored the invasion of Iraq and thinks that victory there is essential. Nor does he believe that the war between the Palestinians and Israel is the most important problem in the world, or even in the Middle East. 7 What, asked James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, “do you call someone” who can describe the many wars that have been fought in the Middle East in the past five decades as “50 years of peace”? Taranto’s sardonic answer: “A ‘realist.’” 8 An honorable exception is Senator Joseph Lieberman, who writes: “What a colossal mistake it would be for America’s bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.” I should also mention that there are Republicans who, as Lieberman rightly says, “are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November’s elections than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.” 9 So do liberal intellectuals like David Rieff and Michael Ignatieff, whose support was based on humanitarian grounds. By now, however, they have decided that they were mistaken to think that Bush was either serious enough or sufficiently competent to fulfill the idealistic goals he had enunciated. 10 The Democrats indignantly deny that they are hurting the morale of our troops, but they have not succeeded in persuading the public. Thus, in a poll taken by RT Strategies, a whopping 70 percent say that Democratic criticism of the war “hurts troop morale—with 44 percent saying morale is hurt ‘a lot.’” Even among self-identified Democrats, 55 percent say that criticism hurts morale as against 21 percent who say that it helps. Furthermore, only three out of ten of the people surveyed accept the Democrats’ claim that their criticisms are intended to help the war effort, while a majority believe that the motive is to “gain a partisan political advantage.” Commentary America's premier monthly journal of ideas. Subscribe now. Take advantage of our SPECIAL OFFER: with a one-year subscription to COMMENTARY, you will receive free, unlimited access to the last six years of the magazine in the COMMENTARY Digital Archive—that’s every article from every issue since 1999! The total value of this package is close to $100. Save up to 80%. Act Now.

Shadow of Anti-Semitism over Ukraine's Disputed Election

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Shadow of Anti-Semitism over Ukraine's Disputed Election
The British Helsinki Human Rights Group ^ | 24 November 2004

Posted on 11/25/2004 8:56:53 AM PST by DTA

Shadow of Anti-Semitism over Ukraine's Disputed Election

Western television viewers and newspaper readers are being fed on a diet of propaganda about the current crisis in Ukraine. The orange flags and uniforms of the opposition fill our screens and decorate the front pages. “People power” and Western-orientated democrats are on the march against evil ex-communist oligarchs. Good is battling against evil for the soul of Ukraine.

Sadly it is not so simple. Western media and governments may have edited out the manifestations of extreme nationalism and anti-Semitism which disfigure the Ukrainian opposition’s rabble-rousing but history will record that in the run up to the disputed presidential elections, key opposition leaders, including Viktor Yushchenko, Julia Timoshenko and Alexander Moroz, defended anti-Semitic publications and accepted the backing of neo-Nazi groups as well as US and EU and so-called “civic society” NGOs. Nor were the anti-Semtic apologetics of the Ukrainian opposition unknown to key OSCE observers and EU parliamentarians who nonetheless ignored the dark shadow across Yushchenko’s campaign preferring instead to abuse his rival.

A key media outlet which has backed Viktor Yushchenko’s long march on the Ukrainian presidency published an extraordinary anti-Semitic rant in 2003 which claimed that 400,000 Jews fought alongside Hitler’s invading army in 1941!

Inserted as an advertising feature, “Jews in Ukraine Today: Reality Without Myths," appeared in Silski visti (Village News). The newspaper was one of the largest in Ukraine with a circulation of around 500,000. It was a prominent backer of Viktor Yushchenko and his Our Ukraine party.

In late 2003, Alexander Shlayen, the head of the Ukrainian Anti-Fascist Committee and a prominent member of the post-Holocaust Jewish community in Ukraine, initiated a prosecution of the newspaper, Silski visti for promoting inter-ethnic discord in the country which was the site of the infamous Babi Yar massacre along with countless other Nazi atrocities against Jews.

On 28th January, 2004, the court ordered the closing of the newspaper but it defied the ruling with the vocal backing of the opposition Our Ukraine party and its allies. In August, 2004, Alexander Shlaven died suddenly and unexpectedly.

In an interview with JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) , the paper's editor, Vasily Gruzin, defended the newspaper's decision to publish the piece:

"Although we published the Yaremenko article as a paid advertisement and not as a position we ourselves endorsed, I happen to believe the figure of 400,000 Jews taking part in the German invasion of the Ukraine is not far from the truth," he said.
"I personally have nothing against common Jews, but rather against a small group of Jewish oligarchs who control Ukraine both economically and politically. I believe the point of Zionism today is Jewish control of the world, and we see this process at work in Ukraine today."

Shortly after this anti-Semitic diatribe by Yaremenko, Victor Yuschenko – who our media always apostrophises as “the pro-Western presidential candidate” and who enjoys the open support of the Bush administration -- and another prominent opposition leader, energy oligarch Yulia Timoshenko and Alexander Moroz of the Socialist Party issued a statement headed "Hands Off Silski Visti”! [http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/092104JTA_Ukraine.shtml]

Mr Moroz has been a prominent figure on the opposition in tribune in Kiev and as recently as 21st September, 2004, he insisted,

“"I have defended Silski Visti and will continue to do so," Moroz said. "I personally think the argument of the author of the article, Vasily Yaremenko, citing 400,000 Jews in the S.S. is incorrect, but I am not in a position to know all the facts." [http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/092104JTA_Ukraine.shtml ]

What kind of ally of the West needs to learn more about the Nazis to refute Yaremenko’s claims about a Jewish-Nazi alliance? Yet this is the sort of politician who gets unconditional backing in Washington and Brussels.

One of the so-called “independent” election observers whose denunciation of the Yanukovich camp for fraud has been a central part of the propaganda battle is the British Conservative MEP, Charles Tannock, who has appeared in recent days on opposition platforms egging on the protestors. Before the elections Mr Tannock wrote several articles openly backing Viktor Yushchenko’s candidacy, but Mr Tannock’s best known intervention in Ukrainian politics before the disputed presidential election was his criticism of the courts for banning the anti-Semitic newspaper, Silski visti.

Like Viktor Yushchenko and Julia Timoshenko, MEP Tannock condemned the ban saying in an interview in the Our Ukraine party newspaper on 12th March, 2004: “the closure of the newspaper went a step far too far” according to Mr Tannock’s own web-page. He goes on to admit that as a backer of Our Ukraine “I don’t think it does your party any good to be associated with extreme [emphasis added] anti-Semitic articles”! [http://www.charlestannock.com/pressarticle.asp?ID=360 ]

Sadly the Silski visti affair was not unique.

In western Ukraine in particular (as in Britain and North America) there is an aging cohort of elderly veterans of the Waffen SS’s Galician division. They are anxious to revise their country’s history and re-habilitate their wartime service on behalf of the Third Reich. In Ukraine these old Nazis parade protesting their patriotism and demanding equal rights with Red Army veterans. A younger more aggressive and openly racist and neo-Nazi cohort of historical revisionists has also appeared. They have their “intellectual” spokesmen whose anti-Semitic and white supremacist writings have produced scandal in Kiev not only in Silski visti.

In western Ukrainian towns like Ivano-Frankivsk, the uniformed bully-boys of the UNSO movement, so-called Ukrainian Self-Defence forces, act as enforcers for Our Ukraine in effect. Mr Yushchenko scored well over 90% in western regions like Ivano-Frankivsk – results at least as improbable as any for Mr Yanukevich in the east of the country. How much does Mr Yushchenko’s near unanimous support in western towns depend on the storm troopers of the Ukrainian new right?

It is shocking that any link could exist between such neo-Nazi muscle men and their propagandists and politicians usually presented in the Anglo-American media as the harbingers of Western democracy and universal humanitarian values in Ukraine. Even more bizarre than the defence of the right of an anti-Semite to disseminate his wares by “pro-Western” Ukrainian politicians like Yushchenko, Julia Timoshenko and Aleksandr Moroz is the fact that Mr. Yushchenko’s candidacy for president of Ukraine is openly backed by the famous American billionaire philanthropist, George Soros, himself a survivor of the Holocaust.

Although ten years ago in 1994, Mr. Soros put his influence and money behind Leonid Kuchma, the democracy-promoting philanthropist has since turned against the outgoing Ukrainian President and his preferred successor as candidate for president, Viktor Yanukevich. As far back as 1st March, 2001, the American billionaire had written an editorial page piece in the Financial Times making his support for Yushchenko clear when he demanded , “If Mr Kuchma cares about Ukraine’s survival as an independent democratic state, he must take responsibility for his actions and hand over duties to the prime minister, [i.e. Yushchenko] the constitutionally designated successor, pending the results of the investigation. The West must take a clear position, denouncing Mr Kuchma’s behavior and his actions. There is no way for the international community to continue to do business with Mr Kuchma until an impartial investigation [into the Gongadze murder case] has been completed and those responsible are held to account.”

Mr. Soros’s concern for human rights and due process does him credit, but his tone does not suggest the assumption of innocence! Moreover at precisely the same time in early, 2001, his own local Ukrainian foundation was supporting media which were the antithesis of democratic decency. In Germany, Neue Solidarität’s Roman Bessonov reported from the western Ukrainian city of Lvov on 4th April, 2001, that a Soros-funded “Renaissance” foundation was backing the nationalist monthly, “Derzhanist” ((“Independent Statehood”) commenting “Whoever reads it would conclude that Kiev is the Fourth Rome and that Babi Yar wasn’t where umpteen thousands of Jews were murdered by the Nazi SS but rather where the Chekists murdered Ukrainian patriots.” [See http://www.bueso.de/nrw/Aktuelles/ukraine.htm ]

In Ukraine, in the presidential elections, Soros’s people back Yushchenko but he is also supported by Andrei Shkil’s ultra-nationalist UNSO. Vyacheslav Likhachev of the European-Asian Jewish Congress noted the unsettling links between Mr Soros’s preferred candidate for Ukrainian president, Yuschchenko, and the neo-Nazis there after the 2002 parliamentary elections

“the former leader of the UNA-UNSD Andry Shkil was elected to the parliament in a single-ticket election in the Lviv region, with the support of Our Ukraine, led by Viktor Yuschenko (Victor Yuschenko is a former prime minister and one of the quite probable presidential candidates). At the time elections were held, the leader of the nationalists had been in jail for a year, accused of organizing mass anti-government riots. Having been elected, Andry Shkil was granted immunity to criminal prosecution. Thus, the moderate national-democrats form unions with the radicals.”

[See Vyacheslav Likhachev, “Anti-Semtism in Ukraine” @ http://www.eajc.org/program_art_e.php?id=10 ]

Some idea of Mr Shkil’s pro-Western reform-minded ideas is available on his web-page: ““Inside, an article appeared, entitled “Nationalism in the World: Past, Present, Future,” written by Andriy Shkil’, editor-in-chief of Natsionalist, chairman of the Dontsov Supporters’ Club, and head of the Lviv branch of UNA. Mostly devoted to the New Right, it also mentioned their precursors, including Gobineau, and “his worthy student Walter Darre, who developed the idea of artificial selection [eugenics] to improve the human race.” Mein Kampf and its author (whose name is not given) are praised for “re-examining these ideas on the highest level.” Several of Darre’s ideas are applied to the Ukrainian situation: Christianity’s mistaken view of the equality of human beings, the necessity for the revival of paganism as an essential spiritual feature of the nation and as a precondition for the creation of a new national elite, with eugenics as a means of cleansing and renewing the people.Thus, the UNA values the experience of the European Right, and other radical regardless of their political orientation.”

[See http://www.una-unso.org/av/mainview.asp?TT_id=17&TX_id=402]

Belatedly in the run-up to October’s presidential elections, Mr Yuschchenko tried to distance himself from radical nationalists like Shkil _ at least in the English-language version of his web-page. [ See “Yushchenko advises «fascist thugs» to support Yanukovych” 15:25, 2 July 2004 @ http://www.yuschenko.com.ua/eng/present/News/838/] But they were not prepared to denounce him: “It was reported that last Saturday in Kyiv there was a «parade» of the «UNA-UNSO» party that has nothing in common with the «UNA-UNSO» organization headed by Andriy Shkil, YTB member. During this meeting Kovalenko’s «UNA-UNSO» declared the support of Yushchenko with the fascist signs, «SSS» symbols and gestures in Hitlerite manner.”! [See http://www.una-unso.org/av/mainview.asp?TT_id=17&TX_id=402 ]

With friends like these Mr Yushchenko may feel he has all the People Power he needs to seize the presidency, but should OSCE observers, European parliamentarians, Colin Powell and George W. Bush be undiluted in endorsing a candidate with backing from neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers? What kind of West is being created if the Euro-Atlantic elite openly endorses a president of Ukraine whose domestic supporters at senior levels as well as at street level don’t know who invaded the country in 1941 and defend publications which say Jews were the culprits?
TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: ANTISEMITISM; HOLOCAUST; SOROS; UKRAINE; WAFFENSS; YUSHCHENKO
background info MSM chose to ignore
1 posted on 11/25/2004 8:56:53 AM PST by DTA
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To: SJackson; dennisw; Alouette

major anti-semitism ping

2 posted on 11/25/2004 8:57:34 AM PST by DTA (proud pajamista)
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To: cornelis; Destro; MarMema; FairOpinion; cicero's_son; Steel Wolf; joan; Jane_N; Doctor13; ...

SOROS ping

3 posted on 11/25/2004 9:02:39 AM PST by DTA (proud pajamista)
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To: DTA

I was hoping someone would eventually bring to light the anti-semitism of the Luschenko party. I fear for the Jews in Ukraine after he barges his way into power.

4 posted on 11/25/2004 9:05:07 AM PST by MarMema
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To: DTA; 1bigdictator; 1st-P-In-The-Pod; 2sheep; 7.62 x 51mm; A Jovial Cad; ...
Ukraine's Jews split in vote

Kiev

Ukrainian Jews mirrored the rest of the country in this week's presidential elections – both in how they voted and in their strong reactions to the controversial results.

Many Jews, pleased with the status quo, supported Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, who was backed by the government in Sunday's runoff vote.

"I voted for stability in Ukrainian society," said Pyotr Rashkovsky, head of the Association of Jewish Communities of Small Towns of Ukraine, which unites Jewish groups in a dozen former shtetls in the central part of the country. "I know that most Jews in my region also supported Yanukovich."

But others echoed the sentiments of the estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Ukrainian voters who took to the streets of Kiev on Monday after Yanukovich was declared the winner over the liberal opposition candidate, Viktor Yuschenko.

"After the total falsification of the results of the presidential elections, the people demand to announce Yuschenko the next president," said Eduard Gurvitz, a Jewish member of Parliament and former mayor of Odessa who supported Yuschenko.

The choice of the new president may prove crucial for Western and Russian strategic interests in Eastern Europe.

According to the Central Elections Commission, Yanukovich won about 49.4 percent of the vote and Yuschenko received 46.7 percent. In the first round of voting on October 31, Yuschenko led Yanukovich by less than 1 percentage point, according to the official results.

Many Jews are believed to have voted for Yuschenko and generally followed the nationwide pattern, with the younger, urban and better-educated voters favoring the opposition.

But with no valid data in existence, some observers believe probably as many, if not the majority, of Jews still backed Yanukovich – partly because they feared the rising Ukrainian nationalist sentiment.

Many Jews were afraid of speaking openly about their choice even after casting their vote, as were many Ukrainians. Up to 40 percent of respondents refused to talk to those conducting exit polls, local media reported.

"People are afraid of the authorities," one Jewish voter in Kiev said. "And many Jews may have found themselves even in a more difficult situation knowing that many wealthy Jews sponsoring Jewish community programs support the authorities and particularly Yanukovich."

Indeed, some of the leading domestic sponsors of Jewish life in the region backed Yanukovich, reflecting the fact that many Jewish big business owners have played a prominent role in Ukraine's economy during the current regime.

For many of Ukraine's Jews, estimated at between 250,000 and 500,000, the election was a difficult choice between the liberal Yuschenko, who in the past has allied himself with politicians openly expressing anti-Semitic views, and Yanukovich, who has displayed authoritarian traits but has promised stability, which appeals to Jews in a region where instability has historically led to anti-Semitism.

Some Jews said they believed Yanukovich would be better at fighting anti-Semitism and xenophobia – partly because of his past statements on Jews and Israel, and partly because of Yuschenko's mixed record on Jewish issues.

"I'm sure that Yanukovich is able to prevent" radical nationalism from developing in Ukraine, said Aleksandr Naiman, a leader of the Ukrainian Anti-Defamation League, a group not related to ADL.

At the end of September, Yanukovich visited Israel. He met with President Moshe Katsav and members of the Ukrainian community to discuss the issues of dual citizenship and payment of pensions to Jewish pensioners from Ukraine now living in Israel.

Only 3,106 out of nearly 40,000 eligible Ukrainian voters in Israel cast their ballots.
5 posted on 11/25/2004 9:07:46 AM PST by Alouette (9 children, 12 grandchildren, 0 abortions.)
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To: DTA

just who is george soros?

6 posted on 11/25/2004 9:08:02 AM PST by ken21 (against the democrat plantation.)
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To: ken21

The forerunner to the antichrist. Do an FR search for Soros to learn a lot. He is a billionaire from Hungary who likes to manipulate markets to make money, and then he spends his money supporting abortion and euthanasia all over the world.

7 posted on 11/25/2004 9:10:39 AM PST by MarMema
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To: DTA
How many Jews now live in the Ukraine and what is the situation for them now? How antisemitic is their world?

And is Yushchenko antisemitic, or does he just accept money from strange bedfellows?
8 posted on 11/25/2004 9:11:32 AM PST by Yaelle
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To: ken21
Set aside a day or two for reading
9 posted on 11/25/2004 9:12:13 AM PST by MarMema
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To: DTA

"Western television viewers and newspaper readers are being fed on a diet of propaganda about the current crisis in Ukraine. The orange flags and uniforms of the opposition fill our screens and decorate the front pages. “People power” and Western-orientated democrats are on the march against evil ex-communist oligarchs. Good is battling against evil for the soul of Ukraine.

Sadly it is not so simple. "

Thanks for the ping.

That is exactly the point, that things aren't so simple, in fact are very complex, and the media is not giving us all the information.

They want Yushchenko elected, just as much as they wanted Kerry elected. That should make people stop and think.

The media is also letting people believe that virtually all Ukrainians are supporting the opposition, and Yanukovich is forced on them. I only saw a couple of articles which mentioned that there actually have been years of strife between the Eastern and Western half of Ukraine, where Yanukovich is supported mostly in the East, and Yushchenko by the Western half.

"Borys says simply that it is "not clear what Yushchenko might bring to the country" and adds that the economy has been doing well under the current prime minister's stewardship.

"It is insulting for me that they consider me to be a silly animal. I wholeheartedly support Viktor Fiodorovych Yanukovych. To begin with, I know him. He is very decent, good, powerful -- a man with strong will power. I feel insulted when they say that nobody voted for him. I am from Kyiv. I voted for him, my family did, my children did, grandchildren did, and my mother did. Why they are insulting me?" Svitlana says.

"Me, as a human being, as a woman feel that Yushchenko is not a leader. And Yanukovych is the leader of our country," Svitlana says. "

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1288359/posts

10 posted on 11/25/2004 9:14:20 AM PST by FairOpinion (Happy Thanksgiving!)
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To: MarMema

thanks.

ask, + you shall receive!

11 posted on 11/25/2004 9:14:47 AM PST by ken21 (against the democrat plantation.)
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To: Yaelle; cicero's_son
Anti-Semitism in Ukrainian media is up, and its acceptance is worrying Jews
12 posted on 11/25/2004 9:16:08 AM PST by MarMema
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To: FairOpinion
That should make people stop and think.

Same tactics too. Remember the calls for riots if Bush won?
13 posted on 11/25/2004 9:18:07 AM PST by MarMema
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To: malakhi

ping

14 posted on 11/25/2004 9:18:47 AM PST by MarMema
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To: DTA

Helsinki Human Rights Group ?

I'm sure they claim that Bush is a fascist.

15 posted on 11/25/2004 9:20:06 AM PST by Grzegorz 246
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To: GOP_1900AD; TapTheSource

Let's hear from you.

16 posted on 11/25/2004 9:20:31 AM PST by MarMema
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To: Grzegorz 246
I'm sure they claim that Bush is a fascist.

Guess again
17 posted on 11/25/2004 9:23:47 AM PST by MarMema
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To: FairOpinion

In war things are topsy turvy and one can best only trust a spy to be a spy. One clue that should give pause is the consent for the popular dispute by Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel as well as the dissent of the U.S. and Canadian governments against the corruption in the elections. Soros is a bogeymen who may buy votes, but I really don't think that this is what these campers are about.

18 posted on 11/25/2004 9:24:23 AM PST by cornelis
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To: DTA

Screw Yushchenko and screw Soros.

19 posted on 11/25/2004 9:26:44 AM PST by Rome2000 (Democrats are perverted socialist crooks)
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To: Rome2000; nw_arizona_granny

Best post of the day.

20 posted on 11/25/2004 9:27:46 AM PST by MarMema
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To: MarMema
Thanks for the ping. I've been reading some of these threads, but I've refrained from comment because there is so much propaganda it's hard to tell what's really going on. The impression I have formed is that neither side is particularly savory. Ultimately, I'd like the outcome to truly reflect the wishes of the Ukrainian majority. Right now, it is impossible for me to determine what that really is.
21 posted on 11/25/2004 9:37:21 AM PST by malakhi
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To: malakhi

Walesa coming to meditate stand-off Nov 24, 19:49

WARSAW (AP) - Lech Walesa, the founder of Poland's Solidarity movement, will travel to Ukraine to act as a mediator in the standoff over the disputed presidential elections there, his son said Nov. 24.

Walesa, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had said Nov. 23 that he received a letter from Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko seeking his help in negotiating a resolution to the crisis.

Jaroslaw Walesa told The Associated Press that Walesa would leave for Kyiv early Nov. 25 for a one-day visit.

Lech Walesa told Polish news agency PAP that he wanted to meet outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and election rivals Yushchenko and Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

"I would like to meet each of them" and tell them "I don't want to interfere with your affairs, but as a neighbor I would like to help as much as I can," Walesa told PAP.

He said he wanted to avoid a situation similar to Poland's 1981 martial law crackdown against the Solidarity labor movement, which he called a "crime on the Polish nation" that "divided the nation, killed determination and drove many people from the country."

Walesa launched the Solidarity movement in 1980, rallying workers as part of eastern Europe's first free labor union. He presided over round-table talks in 1989 that led to the peaceful end of communism in Poland, and was elected president the following year.

kyivpost.com
22 posted on 11/25/2004 9:41:17 AM PST by cornelis
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To: Calpernia; Velveeta

Ping

23 posted on 11/25/2004 9:44:55 AM PST by nw_arizona_granny (Today, please pray for God's miracle, we are not going to make it without him.)
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To: MarMema

Very interesting, especially the picture of Soviet "Pioneers".

24 posted on 11/25/2004 10:01:06 AM PST by Grzegorz 246
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To: GarySpFc

ping

25 posted on 11/25/2004 10:18:49 AM PST by MarMema
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To: DTA

Jews in Ukraines have suffered horribly a lot under Communism. They were among the 7 million killed in the famine in the 1930s. Nikita Khruschev had almost every synangogue shut down and some were allowed to operated under constant surveillance. Now, they are victims again.

26 posted on 11/25/2004 10:20:27 AM PST by Ptarmigan (Proud rabbit hater and killer)
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To: Grzegorz 246
PLEASE NOTE that the so called British Helsinki Group is NOT affiliated with the IHF

The BHHRG is merely a group of old Europe leftists who are trading on the legitimacy of the actual Helsinki Federation groups.

The fact that they also go under the name "OSCE Watch", is something of a dead giveaway as to where their actual agenda lies.

Contrary to the condemnations issued by the team of professional politicians and diplomats deployed by the OSCE mainly from NATO and EU states, the BHHRG observers did not see evidence of government-organized fraud nor of suppression of opposition media.
...
In spite of concerns, BHHRG finds no reason to believe that the final result of the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine was not generally representative of genuine popular will.

Bunch o' f'n morons.
27 posted on 11/25/2004 10:55:46 AM PST by Hoplite
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To: ken21

Is Soros a Neo-Nazi?

28 posted on 11/25/2004 10:56:37 AM PST by MonitorMaid (Promise Keeper)
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To: MonitorMaid
>>>>>>Is Soros a Neo-Nazi?<<<<<

No. Soros is Old Nazi. In 1944 he was a member of the Hungarian Nazi "Arrow Crosses". It was at the time when hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being exterminated. Soros confirmed this himself in a book written by his father Tivador.
29 posted on 11/25/2004 11:06:50 AM PST by DTA (proud pajamista)
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To: MonitorMaid

being jewish, i hope soros is not a nazi.

i've wondered if he isn't one world goverment man.

if so, he's got problems. many in the world hate him.

the indonesians don't like him.

30 posted on 11/25/2004 11:07:19 AM PST by ken21 (against the democrat plantation.)
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To: Hoplite
>>>>>>Bunch o' f'n morons.<<<<<

Seems you got quite upset they exposed anti-semitism of your Nazi pals. Get over it. Nazism was defeated in 1945.
31 posted on 11/25/2004 11:13:43 AM PST by DTA (proud pajamista)
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To: ken21
"being jewish, i hope soros is not a nazi."

Soros is a Moscow puppet. He is busy destabilizing Western democracies in the interests of long-range Sino-Soviet strategy.
32 posted on 11/25/2004 11:30:04 AM PST by TapTheSource
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To: ken21; DTA

Thanks for the reply. I've heard the Soros name tossed around a bit during the election but was unsure of his agenda or group affiliation. I had figured him for either a commie or neo-nazi. I'm surprised to find out he is Jewish. He sounds like a troublemaker, whatever he is. sheesh.

33 posted on 11/25/2004 11:31:44 AM PST by MonitorMaid (Promise Keeper)
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To: MonitorMaid

Soros is a bugbear.

34 posted on 11/25/2004 11:32:08 AM PST by cornelis
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To: DTA
Check yourself, DTA.

Soros is a Hungarian Jew.

By the by, I hear that OTPOR is helping the Ukrainian opposition - so are they Nazis now too?

Lol.
35 posted on 11/25/2004 11:32:40 AM PST by Hoplite
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To: DTA; Alouette
This is one of those situations that it's almost impossible to comment on or know what is really happening. I don't doubt that there are extremely sinister and unsavory individuals and movements on both sides.

Since I define Nazism by its opposition to HaShem's people and Communism by its opposition to belief in HaShem, I am not one of those people who thinks one is "preferable" to the other. Anti-Semitism isn't an ethnic prejudice but a theological heresy that rejects the True G-d and His Chosen People.

May Mashiach HaMelekh be revealed to our troubled world soon, speedily, and in our day!
36 posted on 11/25/2004 11:34:41 AM PST by Zionist Conspirator (G-D'S TORAH defines conservatism.)
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To: Hoplite
Soros is a Hungarian Jew.

His name is Yiddish for "trouble" (tsuros)
37 posted on 11/25/2004 11:37:11 AM PST by Alouette (9 children, 12 grandchildren, 0 abortions.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator
This is one of those situations that it's almost impossible to comment on or know what is really happening.

No, what's happened is election fraud.
38 posted on 11/25/2004 11:41:14 AM PST by cornelis
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To: Alouette
Hence the kvetching?
39 posted on 11/25/2004 11:47:27 AM PST by Hoplite
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To: Zionist Conspirator

The only choice - if such a thing were possible - is a "Sophie's Choice" type scenario - Nazis will kill you outright for being Jewish - even if not a religous Jew - they are after eradicating the "blood". The Communists just may leave you alive if your are not religous and are not cought up in a purge of some sort.

40 posted on 11/25/2004 12:35:12 PM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting johnathangaltfilms.com and jihadwatch.org)
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To: Destro

All too true.

41 posted on 11/25/2004 12:36:16 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator (G-D'S TORAH defines conservatism.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator
This "Sophie's Choice" applies to other groups as well. The Nazis of course would go after you if you were of any of what they considered sub-human "races" - some selected for outright extermination and others for perpetual slavery. The Communists at least paid lips service to the equality of all - while they starved and overworked millions to death.
42 posted on 11/25/2004 12:39:58 PM PST by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting johnathangaltfilms.com and jihadwatch.org)
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To: Alouette

Just picked up a copy of the book BABI YAR, by Anatoly Kuznetsov at our library for 25 cents. They always seem to be getting rid of the best history books, and the timing is interesting.

43 posted on 11/25/2004 1:55:26 PM PST by Esther Ruth
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To: Esther Ruth; Alouette
>>>> They always seem to be getting rid of the best history books, and the timing is interesting.<<<<

Michael Moore deliberatelly chose the title Fahrenheit 911 to draw attention away from Truffaut's massterpiece interpretation of Ray Bradburry's Fahrenheit 451

Liberals DO destroy books. Many exist in print only, without any electronic reference. In 10 years from now, the knowledge of paper version will be equivalent to oral copy.

We have to start making lists of recommended books and making electronic references to them.

Thank you for mentioning this one.
44 posted on 11/25/2004 6:24:05 PM PST by DTA (proud pajamista)
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To: Alouette

BTT!!!

45 posted on 11/26/2004 1:46:03 AM PST by Robert Drobot (God, family, country. All else is meaningless.)
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To: DTA
We have to start making lists of recommended books and making electronic references to them.

I'm currently working on a project scanning and digitizing microfilm of 19th-century publications.

The Occident and American Jewish Advocate
46 posted on 11/26/2004 1:46:06 AM PST by Alouette (9 children, 12 grandchildren, 0 abortions.)
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To: MarMema

Anti Semitism has reared its ugly head across a broad swath of Eurasia. When we hung the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg, the message was mostly felt in the US and in Western Europe. The further east (and south) one goes, the less the message is part of people's psyche. That is why there is a resurgence of both the fradulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Middle East and Mein Kampf through out the non Western World. Of note, some of the worst anti Semitism I have observed is in pan Sinic groups. But Islamists and Arab Pan Nationalists are in stiff competition with them in this regard. Finally, another very dangerous group is the National Bolsheviks, a resurgence of an older concept developed by people who had been Communists around 1900 but later gravitated toward the Nazi way of thinking. Whereas, the early 1900s version of it was mostly found in France, Germany and the Benelux countries, the current version appears to be focused in the former Soviet Union and Germany. The National Bolsheviks, notably, have ties with Spartacus in Canada and nearly every neo Nazi and major anarchist group in the US and UK. And some folks thought I was kidding when I wrote, a few months ago, that I am a Nazi hunter. :=)

47 posted on 11/30/2004 12:22:08 PM PST by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: Hoplite

That bears repeating:

PLEASE NOTE that the so called British Helsinki Group is NOT affiliated with the IHF
The BHHRG is merely a group of old Europe leftists who are trading on the legitimacy of the actual Helsinki Federation groups.

The fact that they also go under the name "OSCE Watch", is something of a dead giveaway as to where their actual agenda lies.

Contrary to the condemnations issued by the team of professional politicians and diplomats deployed by the OSCE mainly from NATO and EU states, the BHHRG observers did not see evidence of government-organized fraud nor of suppression of opposition media.
...
In spite of concerns, BHHRG finds no reason to believe that the final result of the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine was not generally representative of genuine popular will.

48 posted on 11/30/2004 12:27:34 PM PST by Agog
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