Bush has declared an open-ended war on trees. According to General Musharif of Pakistan, fighting terrorism is like fighting a tree. When you arrest a terrorist you’ve taken a leaf off the tree. If you defeat an organization, like Al Queda, you’ve broken a branch. Pruning will make it healthier.

The General questioned the wisdom of the Bush approach: “This is due to the perception that symptoms rather than root causes of terror and extremism are being addressed, and that unjust situations in which Muslim peoples are victims of state terror are being ignored.”

Music to the ears of the Department of Defense and Michael Ledeen.

It isn’t clear whether Musharaff made these points directly to Bush at the Camp David diversion. He mentioned that he didn’t get into much detail with the President.

The US has asked Pakistan to send troops to Iraq: not to the border zone with Afghanistan to hunt for bin Laden. India has also been asked to contribute troops. But the Indians have a problem. If they send soldiers to Iraq they are effectively aiding an occupying power operating without UN mandate. They become the occupying power.

Peacemakers, not Peacekeepers.

Visceral pre-emption is spawning tadpoles. Australia, threatened by lawlessness in the Solomon Islands, has stated that sovereignty is less important than acting for the benefit of mankind. Multilateralism (UN) is pandering to the lowest common denominator. A “coalition of the willing” is all you need. Might is right.

So simple. So do it. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Italy is thinking about dispatching troops to Libya (a former colony) to help the locals patrol their borders and prevent desperate migrants from fleeing to the EU. (The Libyans deny all knowledge of this.) There are urgent calls from Liberia for US intervention. (Pentagon post-war planners should agree to outsourcing.)

Pariah UN. Taking the "coalition of the willing" as the embryo, the US should invite like-minded democracies to form the UDN (United Democratic Nations) to defend and spread Freedom, Democracy and Equality worldwide.

The UN performs many valuable functions which it would continue to do but Democracies can’t be bound by, or associated with, decisions taken in part by dictatorships, monarchies and theocracies.

Unintentionally, the UN gives political legitimacy to rogue regimes, demoralizing indigenous opponents and delaying change.

Kofi Annan is dizzy. Unilateral foreign intervention, for good or ill, is on the agenda. Even for minnows.

For the times they are a-changing. Legalized gay marriage in Canada. Legalized prostitution in New Zealand. Legalized homosexuality throughout America. A significant blow has been struck by the conservative-liberal Supreme Court for the rights of Americans to privacy.

In defeat, Justice Scalia, culture warmonger, couldn’t leave well enough alone. Some people thrive on wars. He issued a call to arms when he referred to the Law Profession culture which has signed on to the “homosexual agenda,” which is, “to eliminate the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”

Scalia disparages the notion of “emerging awareness” saying it does not amount to a “fundamental right,” completely ignoring the fact that all fundamental rights had to emerge at some stage.

The morose Justice sees two Americas. Red and Blue. Two very different visions of America’s future. And he thinks the court has now taken sides in the culture war.

A legacy of the sixties, the culture war is the moral war. Legal renderings versus morality and vice versa. The Supreme Court took the view that the popular notion of morality can no longer be used to discriminate against a particular group. Might is wrong.

Ralph Reed must be wondering what planet he’s on.

In the end, liberty and equal protection under the law (Amendment 14) triumphed. So did common sense, Matthew Sheppard, Will & Grace and Ellen DeGeneres.  

       

 

11:04:07 AM