print“The concept of a society is based on the quality of its mercy, of its sense of fair play, its sense of justice.” So Billy Hayes told his inhuman and inhumane Turkish jailers in “Midnight Express” (a film that surely represents Hollywood’s heyday).
Hayes’s (essentially Christian) protest against a merciless authority now, sadly, applies to the US (“NATO”) and its adopted surrogates around the world.
Once again the US is supervising, and/or lending imprimatur, to a French-Revolution like upheaval in a Muslim country.
(The blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious French Revolution, of course, bore no philosophical resemblance to the American Revolution.) Repulsive (deeply silly) Western journalists are darting about cheering like groupies for the amorphous entity the same “tards” have termed “Rebels.” America helped kill-off the extended family of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, who is on the lam, small children included. Now we’re whooping it up for those who want to do the same to Qaddafi.
Naturally, our enlightened “leaders” said not a word about the quality of justice former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak is receiving in another court that is masquerading as a court of law, but seeks to oblige the masses. This set-up (down to the caged defendant) also more closely resembles the French Revolutionary Tribunal, meting justice mercilessly by popular demand.
Under American auspices a stoic Saddam Hussein, noose about his neck, was hung (and heckled by a hooded Shiite executioner). Even more repugnant than that hasty hanging were the US-sponsored legal proceedings that preceded it. (All the obligatory denunciations of Hussein obtain here, naturally. Bad man. Bad man. Bad man.) That Tribunal, which was branded “made-in-America,” also had more in common with the French Revolutionary Assembly’s methods.
As Hayes said in that memorable scene, asking mercy from the merciless is “like asking a bear to sh-t in a toilet.”
UPDATE I: In answer to TL on Facebook: Would you feel you’d gotten due process sitting in a cage in court, being tried by the Muslim Brotherhood? Why the trials? Why not just begin your democracy with a pardon? I’m not the Christian; you guys are. What did i quote in the beginning of the post? If these new, Middle-East regimes are so magnificent, why not be munificent? Forgive and spend your money on building your society, not prosecuting crimes for which evidence in a court of law is impossible to muster.
UPDATE II: Compassionate Fascist: Yes, why haven’t anti-Semites like yourself (and others who bayed about the Jews having brought about an invasion of Iraq) pointed toward the Arab neoconservatives pushing lies about Libya in the media?
Fouad The Awful Ajami is not the only Arab agitating for ever more intervention.
UPDATE III (Sept. 5): “Crimes Against Libya – Redux.”
“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.” – Thomas Jefferson
In the 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandra, we see the Romanov family degraded and finally killed by Bolsheviks. My take-away from that movie, and many books and other movies like it, has left me with a feeling of pity and outrage whenever I see it happen again. Obviously, I am in the minority.
For Ilana, the real issue is this: all these “Arab Spring” successor regimes are going to be even less friendly to that “light of western civilization in the Middle East” (Israel) than the preceding Autarchs.
There are over 100,000 Christians in Libya that enjoyed protection under Qaddafi – they will soon face the same persecution of their Iraqi brethren. Syria is next, with a 10% Christian population. That should be a real bloodbath after we get rid of Assad. I hope misguided fools like TL enjoy the show, and may Christ show more mercy on him than he would show his brothers in faith. Enjoyed the new book, BTW.
No good can come of interference in the middle east by bumblers like the Americans. When it all shakes out over there in the not to distant future we are going to have a solid block of radical muslim, shariah compliant countries who hate us and, to the chagrin of the over educated western fools in media, government and academia, will spit on Obama too. Why we think we can enter seventh century cultures who behead people in the street and treat them like little Americans is beyond me.
It seems that the following may add much to this discussion:
1. THE ART OF WAR / Sun Tzu
2. THE PRINCE / Niccolo Machiavelli
3. MIGHT IS RIGHT or SURVIVAL OF
THE FITTEST / Ragnar Redbeard
( http://www.amazon.com/Might-Survival-Fittest-Ragnar-Redbeard/dp/0972823301 )
It seems to me that all humans are spread across a Bell Curve with 10% amoral on the left-side slope tail and 10% highly-moral on the right-side slope tail. The rest of humanity is distributed along the upward left and downward right slopes of the “bell”…and not necessarily in equilibrium.
In Egypt, Libya, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc, are we seeing one group “asking for mercy from the merciless” no matter which group finally becomes the power group?
Which warring group is the most moral and how and by whom is the morality defined? Is it simply a matter of degree with the least amount of difference designating the more moral side or does it allow the winner to define the morally correct value?
What is the essence of civilization and can it be objectively identified?
ps: Jamie, I am afraid you are correct in your statement and I suspect it will be worse than most people could imagine.
A “rebel” force so undisciplined as to be unable to control ransacking and the uncontrolled firing off of weapons, including RPG’s, should not be expected to be any better than the other regime that previously held power in the country. Governance born though the use of force, by nature, will continue to use force to enforce its control.
Excellent article Ms. Mercer. The Libyan campaign has only cost us a cool billion compared to 1.2 trillion for Iraq. It is true there were some Jews cheering for Iraq but it was alleged Christians such as Bush and Cheney who initiated and lead the campaign that has ended in the destruction of ancient Christian communities in Iraq dating back to the Apostles.
The injustice in these dirty little wars is so obvious that Jew and Gentile alike,using either the old or new law, should blush with shame. You pay a heck of a price to speak these type of truths today, but for this feeble Christian, I admire you all the more for it.
The only reason I feel some compassion to Qaddafi is because the rebels were crying for American intervention and because we intervened. Without doubt, he was an odious murderer and is entitled to his fate.
Mubarak was a relatively benign power-hungry hack whose “dictatorship” was probably better for Egypt than the Moslem brotherhood.
But most importantly, these countries can be as mishuggah (dopey in Yiddush)
as they want – it is just NOT our business. If greasing up the guillotine gets people to forget their self-imposed
misery – so be it.