Possumblog

Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

REDIRECT ALERT! (Scroll down past this mess if you're trying to read an archived post. Thanks. No, really, thanks.)

Due to my inability to control my temper and complacently accept continued silliness with not-quite-as-reliable-as-it-ought-to-be Blogger/Blogspot, your beloved Possumblog will now waddle across the Information Dirt Road and park its prehensile tail at http://possumblog.mu.nu.

This site will remain in place as a backup in case Munuvia gets hit by a bus or something, but I don't think they have as much trouble with this as some places do. ::cough::blogspot::cough:: So click here and adjust your links. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it's one of those things.

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Lileks' Bupkis
From this morning's Bleat, a response to Andrew Sullivan's worrisome words:
[...] Of course no one in the region wants Saddam deposed, for the obvious reasons - if he goes, the nation might go, fractured like hard toffee rapped with a hammer. If an elected regime replaces Saddam, it will make everyone else look like the autocrats, which of course they are. And it might provide a region-wide example of an alternative to foamy-mouthed religious fanaticism: democracy. The leaders of the Arab world fear this more than fundamentalism. Islamicist irrationalism is useful; democracy is not. Ranting mullahs channel the steam of the dispossessed, and gives it a handy target: those blood-sucking Jews and the whorish cabal of infidels in America. Sure, you may have no job, and live in a stinking flat made of crumbling concrete, but at least your government tolerates a certain amount of useful hate. A Bahrain prince put it succinctly: no one is dying in the streets because of Saddam, but Palestinians are dying in the street because of Israel.

The Arab leaders don’t give a rotten fig for the Palestinians. It is rich to be lectured by the Kuwaitis on the matter, when the invasion of their country was endorsed by Arafat, and the Kuwaitis themselves expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians upon the liberation of their country. (And where did they go, exactly?) The Arab leaders don’t really care about the Iraqi people, either. They want stability, which means money and power. They want no public indication that self-determination is even a possibility.

And it is an unfortunate thing, but Thomas Jefferson was right--"From time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." Conflict is not something that gives a free people great joy. But it keeps us free.

posted by Terry at 8:20:00 AM

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