If you like vacationing in the banana republics of South
America, rejoice because, if things pan out as planned, you'll soon be living
permanently in the banana republic of North America .
Not only will the American
Republic Bolton
writes:
“Obama stressed that US forces will leave Afghanistan by
the end of 2016. If the terrorists had doubt they needed patience to regain
control of Kabul , Obama has eliminate[d] that …
Second, it is despicable for an American to equate a US service member with terrorist.
This is the worst form of moral equivalence, the mistake of equating two
radically different kinds of people.”
That was a condensed passage from Bolton 's
article which came under the title: “The high cost of Obama's reckless Taliban
swap” published on June 2, 2014 in the New York Post. To explain what is hidden
in that passage, allow me to go off on a tangent for a moment. I lived in Africa as a child, and one of the things that left an
impression on me was the fact that troops from one French colony were brought
to maintain order in another French colony. I asked my father why the French
did not maintain order in the colony using their own troops, or using troops of
the colony itself. And so he told me of a reality I never forgot.
He said the French do not have enough troops to maintain
order in all the colonies, especially that they were involved in a prolonged
war not long ago when many of their young were killed. And so they use recruits
from the colonies to maintain order in the colonies, but because they do not
trust any of the recruits to watch over their own people, they get the recruits
of one colony to watch over the population of another colony.
And then, as I matured many years later, I understood why
this policy succeeded in maintaining order in all the colonies. It dawned on
me, for example, that the Senegalese troops patrolling the streets of Djibouti –
which is of Somali ethnicity – did not patrol alone. They were led by French
captains with whom they stood shoulder to shoulder looking down at a Somali
population about which they must have felt a sense of superiority. By the same
token, the Somali troops patrolling the cities and towns of Senegal were
watching over what they must have sensed was a lesser Senegalese population,
and they too must have felt a sense of superiority. And it was this
psychological adaptation that guaranteed the two ethnic groups did not conspire
against the French who were, after all, their common oppressor.
Now, my friend, go over Bolton 's
passage again, and see if there is not an echo of that. First, he says: “If the
terrorists had doubt they needed patience to regain control of Kabul , Obama has eliminate[d] that.” Well,
these people live there, and they don't need an artificial dose of patience to
remain in their own homeland. If anything, it was the American people who lost
patience sending their children to fight in a far away war that was not ending.
So the question: What could Bolton have done to maintain a high interest at
keeping American troops in Afghanistan ?
He did it by playing on the sense of American superiority. Here it is: “Second,
it is despicable for an American to equate a US service member with terrorist.
This is the worst form of moral equivalence, the mistake of equating two
radically different kinds of people.”
The other thing that is striking about this article is that
the author did not wait a few days before writing it. He would have looked much
wiser had he waited to find out a little more about the obscure circumstances
surrounding the release of the American serviceman by the Taliban. If it turns
out that the American deserted the army or betrayed his country, Bolton 's assertion that: “we were right to exchange spies
with Soviets, like for like. But to exchange soldiers for criminals is moral
equivalence that should be rejected” – will cement the idea that he means to
say the Afghans are an inferior race.
That's what it means because even if the detainees were
criminals in the sense of the dictionary, they would not be inferior to someone
that betrayed his own country. Moreover, these people are true soldiers
fighting an invading army that happens to be the American military. Except for
one of the five that is said (but not proved) to have murdered Shiites in cold
blood, the others committed no more a crime than did Dick Cheney or Donald
Rumsfeld. They are warriors and, being held by the Americans, makes them
prisoners of war in the same way that the American held by them is a prisoner
of war.
So how did America
get on the road to becoming the Jewish banana plantation that it is today?
Well, John Bolton tells us how, and Bret Stephens explains in detail. Here is
Bolton: “it has been America 's
unwavering policy not to negotiate with terrorists, especially for the exchange
of hostages.” This means someone made it a matter of American honor not to
negotiate with what they mean are inferior people they habitually call
terrorists.
As to the Bret Stephens article, it came under the title:
“The Bergdahl Dishonor” and the subtitle: “The sergeant should request that
every file about him be published.” The Stephens piece was published in the
Wall Street Journal on June 3, 2014.” Now, given that both John Bolton and Bret
Stephens are staunch supporters of Israel because they say that entity does
everything right, you would think they will want to see America, which they say
is their country, emulate Israel – at least when it comes to a matter as
important as honor.
Well, this would be true if you mean that America can presume to be equal to Israel . But, if
in the back of your head, you hold it to be self evident that the Israelis are
created superior to the Americans, you must accept the premise that Israel can violate principles for which America would
be crucified if it violated them. Thus, Israel
can exchange more than a thousand Palestinians – said to have Israeli blood on
their hands – for one Israeli soldier, but America cannot exchange five Afghan
detainees with no American blood on their hands for one American soldier. When
you are superior, you don't say do as I do; you say do as I say – and ask no
questions.
Is this enough of a put-down to make America feel
like sh–t? Yes it is but America
must be made to feel worse than that if it is to become the moral equivalent of
a Jewish banana plantation. What to do? Well, the colonial powers had a very
effective way to make the people of the colonies feel worse than sh–t. They
would look at them in the face and accuse them of being worse than the tribe in
the next village they hate the most. And boy, that made the blood boil!
Of course, America
has no rival tribe to be compared with, but Stephens found a way to get around
that. Look what he did: “Think of what it says about the administration's
concept of honor … Consider what that says to enemies who care about honor, and
… we have none.” Ouch!