Off-Topic: This post discusses what's in an already identified 'OT' thread.

Chapman billy wrote in message m...to Mark Houlsby (not me)
In article 20030528172953.01703.00000469@mb-
m05.aol.com, Mark Houlsby -remove)- says...
(snipped)

I have not seen Nick admit that he set out to deliberately provoke in the
matter of the Vincennes. We all have blind spots, he may genuinely not have
realised the reaction that would ensue; he is a welcome regular contributor
to this group and has avowed, as yet, no such ulterior motivation.

'If we go back to the beginning we shall always find that ignorance and fear
have created gods; fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit has adorned or disfigured them;
weakness worships them; credulity preserves them in life; custom regards them
and tyranny supports them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own
ends.'
--Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (1723-89)

'Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and
he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.'
--Edmund Burke (22 March 1775)

Simon,

Thanks very much for writing that I am 'a welcome regular contributor to this
group'. I appreciate your sincerity, as I hope you do mine.

When, in response to StanB's post denouncing the Ukrainians for shooting down
an Israeli airliner, I wrote my post on the 1988 American shoot-down of an
Iranian airliner, my intention was to remind people who live in glass houses
not to be too hasty in throwing stones at others; I did not expect what ensued.

When Salman Rushdie, who had grown up among Muslims, wrote 'The Satanic Verses',
he did not set out to provoke a fatwa condemning him to death. In retrospect,
his 'blind spot' loomed large. I did not grow up among extreme right-wing
jingoistic Americans. Notwithstanding any 'blind spots' of mine about them,
my post on the American shoot-down did not aim to 'provoke' anyone. And I
doubt that it *did* seriously 'provoke' many, if any, readers here beyond
a solitary extreme right-wing American politician, Tim Hanke, and his hard
core of political followers. Hanke distorted my post in order to execute a
baseless political ad hominem attack on me. Then he suddenly fell silent
when he was unable to support his accusations against me.

In this thread (1 June 2003), Louis Blair, who has reviewed all the evidence,
wrote: "As far as I could see, Timothy Hanke did *not* back up his 'fell flat'
claim when Nick complained."

I have to say that I was disappointed that you seemed to have given Tim Hanke's
baseless accusations against me more credence than they ever deserved, at least
to the extent of appearing to have been unduly influenced by his making them.

Perhaps you were unaware that Tim Hanke is held in deep disdain by many RGCM
(not to mention RGCP) readers. I have read quite a few posts expressing the
conviction (albeit sometimes in more euphemistic terms) that Tim Hanke is
a pathological liar as well as a racist or a bigot. Evidently, Tim Hanke
already had deeply offended many people and made many lasting enemies here
*before* I ever wrote anything at all here.

'It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the
public to be the most anxious for its welfare.'
--Edmund Burke (1775)

I have no desire to engage in flame wars, even if others do.
Evisceration by insult rarely has the apparently desired effect of moderating
behaviour and attitudes, I have found patient cajoling a much better approach.

'Men can resist the remonstrances that wound them, and so irritate them, better
than they can those gentle appeals that rouse no anger, but soften the whole
heart.'
--Charles Reade (Griffith Gaunt)

Do you admire the Fabian Society's historical strategy of 'permeating' local
governments in Britain, the 'inevitability of gradualness'? :-)

However, I have been called far worse things than that. I have even received
telephone calls at home delivering the same message. All for making what
turned out to be 100% accurate forecasts that were out of kilter with the
nostrums of the day.

Like Cassandra, alas, a prophet tends to proceed without honour (and honours)
in one's own country.

Abneos : Yes. We must make a war-song.
Demokos: Very proper. A war requires a war-song.
Paris : We have done without one up to now.
Hecuba : War itself sings quite loud enough.
Abneos : We have done without one because up to now we were fighting only
barbarians....
--Jean Giraudoux (La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu)
--Christopher Fry (translated into English as 'Tiger at the Gates')

In short, unless Hanke *denounces* these ignorant, offensive, racist idiots
he will, by implication, be agreeing with them... he certainly cannot deny
that StanB is one of his most ardent adherents...

Since Mark Houlsby wrote that, it has become evident that Tim Hanke does align
himself with the racist statements of his friends, StanB and Briarroot.
Please read their comments about my alleged 'eating pygmy' (cannibalism), as
quoted in my earlier post in this thread, or as they were originally written
in the ancestral thread, 'A new enemy of Lev Khariton'.

Your conclusion does not follow from your premise. If it were otherwise then
you are asserting that the "silent majority" support what has been written,
which I, for one, do not accept.

'Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a
full nest.'
--George Eliot (Felix Holt the Radical)

'Qui tacet consentit' (Who remains silent gives consent) is the maxim in law.
In many cases, however, I am disinclined to make any definite inference on
what the 'silent majority' believes.

'There are cases in which silence implies other things than consent.'
--Walter Scott (Redgauntlet)

My two cents: the reasons *not* to give the present administration the
benefit of the doubt about *anything at all* are too numerous to list here,
but some of the main ones a
1) it was not democratically elected.

Suppose by some legal manoeuvre that Gore had forced a rerun of the election,
how can you be so certain that there would not have been a Winchester effect?

Now there's the rub: no one today can be *certain* of what should have been
the outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election *if* everyone were
able to agree that its procedures had been observed fairly and fully.

You seem to imply that since Bush *might* have won a rerun of the disputed
election, he *should* have won (or been declared the official winner of, as
he was) the original election.

In my view, any democracy has suffered a major (perhaps sometimes approaching
a fatal) loss of public confidence whenever perhaps about half of its citizens
believe that their national leader was not elected fairly.

Here's the recent opinion of one United States citizen:

"...During the Korean War, I was with the 1st Marine Division in North Korea
at the Chosin Resevoir, where we were surrounded by Chinese troops, who General
MacArthur had assured us would not enter the war.

I wonder how a nation whose federal government is not democratic can manage to
accomplish 'the spread of democracy'. If the United States were a democracy,
then George Bush would not be president, we would not be fighting in Iraq, and
most of the world would not hate us. Rather than spreading democracy around
the world, let us repair things at home."

--Charles H. Anderson (letter to Harper's magazine, June 2003)

And here's an article, 'Give us back our democracy', by an eminent American
scholar, Edward Said, in 'The Observer' (20 April 2003):

http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/st...940123,00.html

'Nevertheless, Americans have been cheated, Iraqis have suffered impossibly, and
Bush looks like a cowboy. On matters of the gravest importance, constitutional
principles have been violated and the electorate lied to. We are the ones
who must have our democracy back.'
--Edward Said (20 April 2003, The Observer)

2) the president may have an IQ lower than any of his predecessors, and is
at least arguably *worse* than Warren Harding, who was the previous holder
of the distinction "worst ever US president"

Bush hasn't been in power long enough to assess his presidency.

Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, agrees substantially
with Mark Houlsby about President George W. Bush.

"Eighty-two years old, Helen Thomas has been covering White House briefings
and presidential press conferences since the heady days of President Kennedy.
For nearly 40 years, Thomas was White House correspondent for U.P.I....her
persistent, frank questioning has made her a pest to presidents and their
minders....None, however, has expressed his annoyance more nakedly than Bush
the Son....

Thomas committed a greater act of blasphemy when she told an interviewer that
*George Bush was the worst president in American history*, a remark she
partially recanted, saying it was too early to render a complete verdict since
there's always the hope of 'redemption'. It was too little, too late; her
anti-Bush quote had been duly noted in the building, put on her permanent
record, and filed with the principal....The president's petty snub was followed
by an ugly pile-on whose purpose was to kick Thomas to the curb permanently
as if she were a bag lady who had slipped past security."

--James Wolcott ("Round up the Cattle!", from "Vanity Fair", June 2003)

Has Bush really 'been in power long enough to assess his presidency'?

That depends on one's perspective and purpose. It's too early for a historian
to write a definitive political biography. But President Bush already has
'been in power long enough' to have begun his campaign for reelection in 2004.
Why would you suppose that it's still premature for Americans to 'assess his
presidency' when soon they will be expected to decide whether or not to vote
for him?

Calling someone *stupid* isn't an argument;

I agree that just "*calling* someone stupid isn't an argument" in the absence
of evidence. But enough evidence can be found (though the orthodox American
media tends to ignore or downplay it) of President Bush's lack of intelligence.
Even his political supporters tend to concede that Bush is not particularly
intelligent, yet they argue that should be acceptable because he can depend on
more intelligent advisers, presuming that he will respect and listen to them.
According to many American political observers, however, President Bush is much
too arrogant and sure of himself to listen long, if at all, to anyone who dares
to disagree with him.

"'If Bush has doubts, they're not visible', 'Newsweek' intoned on March 31, and
a front-page profile in 'USA Today' soon after let us know that Bush doesn't
want any doubting Thomases or weak Willies around him: 'He has a special epithet
for members of his own staff who worry aloud. He calls them 'handwringers'.
Jesus on the cross gave way to doubt, but Bush and his prayer circle are made
of sterner stuff."
--James Wolcott ("Round up the Cattle!" from "Vanity Fair", June 2003)

"Tirelessly curious about all things great and small, the inventors of the
American idea pursued what they took to be the proper study of mankind in as
many spheres of reference as they could crowd into a Philadephia library
company or a Boston philosophical society, always with the hope of constructing
a government on the blueprint of universal reason despite, again in Voltaire's
words, 'all the passions which struggle against it; despite the tyrants who
wish to drown it in blood; despite the imposters who would employ superstition
to bring it to naught'.

President Bush speaks for an earlier period in American history, from a pulpit
in the Puritan forest before it received the gift of books. If his biographers
can be trusted, we now have in the White House a president so secure in his
belief that the course of human events rests in 'the hand of just and faithful
God' that he counts his ignorance as a virtue and regards his lack of curiosity
as a sign of moral strength. A similarly primitive way of thinking (fearful,
intolerant, fond of magic) darkens the mind of the shamans drawing up the
Pentagon's plans for the conquest of evil and accounts for the punitive reign
of virtue currently being imposed upon the American body politic by the Justice
Department, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. The collective retreat into
the mist of a simplified past speaks to the exhaustion of the mentality that
framed the Constitution and for two centuries carried forward the American
experiment with freedom. Our Washington geopoliticians like to imagine their
war on terrorism was 'a clash of civilizations'. They flatter themselves with
the high-toned noun; what they have incompetently in hand is a clash of
superstitions, and when I listen to them talk I hear the rattle of feathered
drums and the echo of bronze and braying horns."

--Lewis Lapham (Harper's, May 2003; Mr. Lapham is the editor of Harper's.)

besides, I'd rather have a lucky general than a good one.

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.
--James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (1612-50) was a great but unlucky general.

Your rhetorical dichotomy between being lucky and being good is artificial.
President Bush has been lucky so far, yet why do you suppose that his run of
luck will continue? Do you presume that Fortuna has singled him out as her
favourite son for perpetuity? What will Bush do whenever his luck runs out?

With enough luck and superior material resources, however, Bernard Montgomery,
a good British general, was able to defeat Erwin Rommel, a greater German
general, in the North African desert campaign during the Second World War.

Here's a British military historian (once a senior British general) on Rommel:

"He was a natural, albeit a reasoning, taker of risks in war. He reckoned
that war is so uncertain a business, so dependent on the concatenation of
unpredictable chances, that boldness, a touch of optimism and above all speed
can and generally should do better than attempts at exact calculation. Rommel
did not believe in deferring battle until the odds assured victory. Had he done
so there would, for better or worse, have been no North African campaign.

Montgomery claimed that his own achievements derived from the fact that he never
fought an unsuccessful battle, and for Montgomery this was both an accurate
statement and a wise policy. It was, however, a policy only available to one
with both time and resources. Rommel, more often than not, had insufficent of
either. Nor was he ever in a position to wait until his situation and the odds
had improved. He fought at a numerical disadvantage again and again, and his
exploits can only be measured against that fact. He relied on skill to offset
quantitative inferiority. The bitter exclamation, already quoted, comes always
to mind: 'If one considers what the German Marshal could have achieved with the
superiority enjoyed by his opponents.' War is usually an option of difficulties.
Again and again Rommel could choose inactivity or take a calculated risk. He
believed that inactivity is seldom forgiven a general by fate.

Of course Rommel, ultimately, was beaten. He lost. But, although what must
matter in war is to win, that truism cannot provide the sole criterion for
judgement of military talent. War may be considered as a business, open to
audit, but its conduct also is an art. Ultimately Napoleon was beaten. So was
Montrose. So was Lee. Few could deny their genius. With all his imperfections,
as a leader of men in battle Erwin Rommel stands in their company."

--David Fraser (Knight's Cross: a Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, p. 562)

By the way, no military historian today should agree that Field Marshal
Montgomery's Operation Market Garden ('a bridge too far') was a 'successful
battle' for the Allies.

I have my doubts about the recent programme of tax cuts, but, surely, you
can't be comparing today's world with the 1930s? For starters the modus
operandi of the Federal Reserve is quite different now.

My American friends tend to believe that the United States is becoming more of
a plutocracy, wherein the elites make government policies, corporate interests
dominate the media, and the increasingly disempowered public is summoned away
from their diet of 'bread and circuses' only to ratify those decisions.

'The millionocracy is not an affair of persons and families, but a perpetual
fact of money with a variable human element.'
--Oliver Wendell Holmes (Elsie Venner)

You will have to go back a long way to find a time when the US did not
"interfere" in the Near East. How do you imagine the Saudi princes came to
power in the peninsular?

I hope that you are not implying that American imperialism in the Middle East
must be acceptable because it follows a long tradition. American slavery
also followed a long tradition. The legal subordination of women in Saudi
Arabia follows a long tradition. Surely, you disapprove of those practices.

'Tyrant custom adds a sanction to practices neither justifiable on principles
of nature, reason, or religion.'
--from Adventures of a Kidnapped Orphan, 1747)

A democratic government in the Arabian peninsular can only be better than
what they have, it is hard to imagine anyone else presiding over such a
catastrophic slide in GNP since the 1970s as the Saudi princes have managed.

You seem to be consistently more impressed by American rhetoric about fostering
democracy abroad than by the bloody historical record of American opposition to
democracies in many societies.

Why do you suppose that the United States intends to allow the risk of having
a truly democratic government in Saudi Arabia, which should represent the
interests of its own people ahead of those of the American oil companies or
the United States military (with its imperialist need for strategic bases)?

On the contrary, in that region the United States consistently has preferred
to support conservative autocratic client regimes (such as the Shah in Iran).
The watchwords of United States policy in the Middle East tend to be 'our
vital interests' and 'our need for stability', not 'freedom' and 'democracy'.
Moreover, for instance, if Egypt became truly democratic, then there's some
chance that an avowedly Islamic government could be elected there in the future.
I doubt that Israel or the United States would tolerate that contigency.

"Al Qaeda" has become a euphamism for "the ongoing war against terrorism"
which has as much to do with the erosion of human rights *everywhere*

Most people have more rights in Eastern Europe now than they did under
communism.

Yes, but there's also been increased ethnic persecution and violence.
The Roma people (Gypsies) have become particularly afflicted.

For further reading:
'The Pariah Syndrome: an Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution'
by Ian Hancock (a scholar and the UN representative of the Roma)

'The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.'
--Edmund Burke

--Nick