What then, should America have done in response to the horrors of Sept. 11?
Should the Taliban still rule Afghanistan? Should Osama bin Laden be free to
build bigger and better bombs with which to kill non-muslims? Is not Saddam
Hussein himself a warmonger of the worst ilk? What is the pacifist response
to men willing to use unlimited aggression to maintain their ironfisted
rules?

We may not agree with President Bush, but he was elected to his office.
There was no military coup. Ballots were cast and they were counted to the
best of our ability. And if Bush's actions displease the voters, another
will take his place. So he cannot be equated with the likes of bin Laden,
Hussein and Kim Jong Il.

Furthermore, the disarmament of Iraq is not the will of the United States
alone. It is a repeated resolution of the United Nations, which is as close
to global government as we have presently. Yet, as has happened other times
in our history, only America is willing and able to take up the challenge.
How ironic that France and Germany protest and stall. There were warning
signs from Hitler, you know, before he invaded Poland. Sadly, the world
waited too long and millions and millions had to die for history to teach
its lesson.

With great power comes great responsibility. America cannot simply turn a
blind eye to the vipers in the grass. Nor can it turn its cheek and accept
the bites of tyrants. Our freedom is bought with blood. We could not even
have a similar discussion in Iraq. To openly criticize Saddam is to lie down
in a pine box.

Of course oil is involved in the present confrontation. It is in the world's
interest to have a stable Middle East. It serves no nation to have a
threatening dictator smack in the middle of the world's energy reserve. We
cannot even imagine a modern civilization without asphalt roads, combustion
engines, plastics and computers. The time will come when the oil will run
out, but for now, it's all we have.

Are we willing to give up our way of life?

>From: Tom White <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>    <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: laureates against the war
>Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 21:42:16 -0600
>
>My response to the below post takes off from Ezra Pound's flat-out
>detestation of war, which has been attested to on this list just recently
>with a posting of relevant verses from the Cantos, and which was what
>attracted me to him in 1950 and has kept me convinced ever since that the
>warfomenters in the West are the real betrayers. That our true Western
>(certainly American) instinct as to "les autres" is to live and let live.
>It
>is enough to see to one's own conduct. To take a God-like stance and
>presume
>to know how history is to be managed and what "must" be done violently to
>save the day, is as near madness as I care to come. 1600 years ago
>Augustine
>wrote about the two cities, man's and God's, and the hallmark of man's is
>the desire to dominate, libido dominandi, the lust for, the thrust to,
>power
>and wealth. We now are at the end of the Nietzsche anti-Christ craziness
>which puts madmens' drive for control in place of any reverence for the way
>or the Tao or the truth. We have given up principle for gross economic
>expediency and are giving up liberty for God alone knows what, and the
>probable payoff in blood and ruin is beyond imagining. Presumably the
>juggernaut is unstoppable, but if Pound had been listened to in the 1940s
>and 1050s or at any point since, we would not be in the present mess.
>Anti-semitism is the biggest red herring in the whole business. Forget
>that,
>and concentrate on war makers, war mongers, munitions makers, and usurers.
>No doubt vastly more nominal Christians, or at least goys, in that lot than
>nominal Jews, which I rather think is all that Perlman is. I would give
>much
>(if I had it) to stop the present rush to war. If we turn out the Western
>light of reason and charity and faith and hope and humility, what
>conscience
>could we be said to have left? Tom White
>
> > From: bob scheetz <[log in to unmask]>
> > Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> > <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 22:14:34 -0500
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: laureates against the war
> >
> > Daniel Pearlman writes:
> > Gentlemen,
> >> moral issues take a back seat here.  We are witnessing a life and death
> >> struggle for the survival of the Western way of life against an
>absolutely
> >> relentless militant Islam ...
> >
> > Dan Pearlman is right.  Saddam/WOMD' s are just a convenient bogey for
>the
> > pavlovian masses.  The elite think tank'rs (Richard Perle's group) see a
> > malthusian oil supply situation in the next 25 yrs with no possibility
>of
> > averting it with new tech.  Central asia and the middle east are the
> > strategic real estate and long before 9/11 the bush team had determined
>upon
> > the need to create a new world order that would see the re-colonization
>of
> > that area.  So the question you have to answer is, Are you willing to
>pay
> > for your good conscience with turning out the light of Western History?
> > ...are you will to accept it is our turn to be the fellaheen civ?

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