Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so. In an interview in Bellevue this morning Gingrich said Bush should call a joint session of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in much starker terms than have been heard from the president.
"We need to have the militancy that says 'We're not going to lose a city,' " Gingrich said. He talks about the need to recognize World War III as important for military strategy and political strategy.
Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republicans facing fall elections and says the party must have the "nerve" to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush's record. [...]
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away...
-- The Seattle Times, July 15, 2006
It is too fucking hot, here; a hundred and ten. Some fool across the planet lit a match, and the atmosphere is ablaze, and I no longer know how to write.
There is a very obvious and fundamental rule of human psychology that the better angels among us will forever pretend at not seeing, because one of the central tenets of liberalism is that people are essentially good, or if not good, at least trainable. The rule is simple: humans like war.
Humans like war.
There is a heart of violence in us all. A kernel that feels satisfaction in cruelty, if the cruelty is inflicted upon those we hate, or are at least momentarily irritated with. A seed that needs only the slightest offense to grow, if the surrounding climate is otherwise agreeable. It is a heartweed, a hidden genetic thistle, capable of spreading its bitter offspring far and wide, perhaps the genetic Pandora's Box prepared by nature itself in all its creatures, lest any one of them get too big for their britches.
World War III, when it comes (and that is when, not if, not by any possible definition if) will be brought about by those who want the war. Those who seek it; those who crave it. It will be a bloody wrapper covering the presumptive gift of power that they seek for themselves, the Legitimacy of the Movement divided into bullet casings or launched inside rockets. In order to understand the central premise of World War III, you must understand it as its courtesans see it.
It is a monkey's paw.
Know how to state your heart's desires, and war will grant them. The devil will perform a miracle, if you have sufficient will to control him, and the fact that the devil has never once performed one before does not matter.
I think we ought to execute some air strikes against Syria, against the instruments of power of that state, against the airport, which is the place where the weapons shuttle through from Iran to Hezbollah and Hamas. I think both Syria and Iran think that we're cowards. [...] The last thing we ought to do now is to start talking about cease-fires and the rest.
-- James Woolsey, Former CIA Director
We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.
-- Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard
The one thing we want to avoid is stopping Israel before it gets a chance to do what it is trying to do to Hezbollah. So here's hoping that Rice's visit to the region "at some point in the future" comes later rather than sooner.
-- Rich Lowry, National Review Online
The answer lies in delivering an unequivocal blow to Syrian ground forces deployed near the Lebanese border. [...] Of course, Syria could respond with missile attacks against Israeli cities, but given the dilapidated state of Syria's army, the chances are greater that Assad will simply internalize the message.
-- Michael Oren, The New Republic
Here's what I do know about World War III and the impending apocalypse. One, we can't coexist with people who want to blow up trains and subways and bring down buildings. If somebody has a death wish, not really the best negotiating partner. [...]
And it's not just us. It's the whole Western way of life that is in trouble. That's why we need to get on that World War III bandwagon.
-- Glenn Beck, CNN Headline News
- kill'em all. let God sort'em out.
- GOOD.
- To quote Tom Quick, Avenger of the Delaware, following dashing the head of an Indian baby on a rock, "From nits come lice".
- boo friggin hoo. just eliminating future terrorists IMO.
-- Quotes from Free Republic posters upon hearing of the deaths of eleven Lebanese children when a car and minibus were hit by Israeli missiles, compiled by Jesus' General
That's why I think this is a gift to the world, folks. This is an opportunity finally to do something about Iran. Iran is the elephant in the room in all of this, and if we sit here and say it's Hezbollah or it's Assad or it's Syria or it's Hamas, we are blaming the tentacles and not the brain, and Iran is the center and the focus of this, and that's why this is a gift.
-- Rush Limbaugh
I wonder if we, as humans, will ever understand ourselves. I wonder if we will ever come close to the point where we can admit, as a species, that we are no more noble or godworthy then the purr of a cat.
Humans, as a species, like war. The slow moving river of history has bloodshed on every bank; we cannot expect it to be different now. We build shinier and more permanent buildings, we grow our crops on larger and larger fields, we sail across the planet in bigger ships and part the atmosphere in faster planes, we move the hills and fill the valleys to make the streets straighter, and we harness the primal forces of physics, and we mistake it all for evolution. It is not evolution, it is merely progress. We have not ourselves evolved all that far. Progress is what we do; evolution is who we are. And the genetic core of us is not, at least not as of yet, on human terms. We are still primates. We are still tribal, and little else.
But even on the hottest days -- and it is too fucking hot, right now -- we have evolved a little, perhaps. We have done it societally, not genetically. We may still be little more than very bright monkeys -- the monkeys with a mandate from God -- but we have taught ourselves to wear hats, and that is a start. We now treat murder as wrong, unless the right paperwork is drafted first, and the paperwork is at least a start. We now generally do not regard each other as property, except in narrow circumstances in which we each are, and as the caveats to the people are not property rule slowly are dropped one by one, we can presume it is a start. We now, aside from a small but ever-crowing collection of true brutes, are beginning to understand that torturing people is wrong, and this societal discovery has been shaped by the sharp knives of past lessons learned, and perhaps on better days by the one remaining genetic difference between us and common ants worth noting: an overdeveloped sense of empathy.
Power and Revenge, as it turns out, are the two biggest and widest boats on history's river. Those who say they are not affected by the hypnotic sight of their dark, silhouetted forms -- they are liars. We may all sip our tea and gaze over the water, pretending not to notice it as they sail slowly onward, but secretly we are entranced, and secretly we can fill entire nights or entire years obsessing over the sight, and wondering if there will ever be a point at which we too will toss our cups aside, declare the shoreline a damned and contemptible place, and swim for one or the other.
There are those on all sides -- fundamentalists of all stripes, and conservatives of all nations, mostly, those being the two groups most prone to projecting the thoughts of their inner eye onto whatever landscape they see, and the least likely to notice a body or five or twelve lying in their way -- that salivate over the monkey's paw they call World War III. It is a tantalizing glimpse of power, seen through acrid smoke, and it is always so close, to those that seek it.
But World War III will not come today, not unless it is willed into being with people with decidedly more power than the armchair warriors riding keyboards and television cameras into self-satisfied mock battles. It is just an ordinary war, and those that are dead and will be dead are just the ordinary kind of dead, and we can be sure God approves of it because both sides asked him first and besides, the other side started it.
It is evening now, and it is too fucking hot. And I have forgotten how to write, and there is nothing worth writing down anyway.