PrintApril 12, 2009
Today's Mad, Mad, World
The other day I happened to watch the original 1963 Stanley Kramer directed movie, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
46 years later, that title seems frighteningly apt when looking at what the world has become. Stanley Kramer would have been hard put to recognize how prescient his title was. But his film was essentially a comedy of errors; today the world is reduced to a tragic-comedy with a terrifying emphasis on the tragic.
The Obama juggernaut is relentlessly eroding American power in a perilous world consisting of petty tyrants, dictators, theocrats, a la the mullahs of Iran, and a United Nations that is anything but united, except in one squalid respect. The Islamic bloc, consisting of some 57 nations, holds the UN to ransom if it does not follow their lead in bashing Israel ad nauseum.
Take the grotesquely misnamed United Nations Human Rights Council. This organization epitomizes the term tragic-comedy for it ignores appalling human rights abuses in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Libya, Sri-Lanka, Saudi-Arabia, et cetera. It is a body that is hostile to the democracies and blatantly cossets the worst human rights abusers.
Most of the seats on the Council are made up of countries from Africa and Asia. The Obama Administration is still wavering on whether or not to join this nefarious and discredited body, which has spent its time delivering 26 resolutions alleging human rights violations by Israel against the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.
Of course, not once did the Council members refer to the deliberate terrorist atrocities committed against Israeli civilians by these same Palestinian Arabs. No surprise there when one considers who and what make up the Council. But tragic and not so comic when one considers that the same Council has issued 33 resolutions throughout its history. That equates to a 79% Israel bashing record.
Meanwhile the UN mendacity machine and, in particular, its so-called Human Rights Council, continues doing what it loves doing best - censoring Israel while spectacularly ignoring Arab and Islamist aggression and violations of the UN Charter.
The crescendo of Israel bashing reached breathtaking levels of hypocrisy during and after Israel finally woke up and attempted to end the incessant Palestinian Arab terror from Gaza.
Over 10,000 missiles were deliberately fired at Israeli civilian communities by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from Gaza over a period of several years, but the world remained mute and unconcerned.
Only when the Israelis tried to end the Palestinian Arab terror blitz on the Jewish state was the selective conscience of the UN's Human Rights Council stirred. It refrained from censoring the victimizer -- Palestinian Arab Hamas. Instead, and predictably, it viciously attacked the victim: Israel.
We have a tragic-comedy of epic proportions unfolding under the current Administration that boggles the mind. Scrapping future production of the 21st century F-22 fighter and the scaling back of American military power in the world is now the Pentagon's raison d'etre under Secretary Gates.
This is the man closely associated with James Baker and Brent Scowcroft of the Iraq Study Group who urged negotiations with terrorist enabling states such as Syria and Iran. Under the Obama Administration this policy is now in full throttle.
Added to this is the possible ending of the missile defense system in Europe designed to protect against Iranian aggression along with the impotent present day reaction to the scourge of Muslim piracy (I prefer the word terrorism) emanating from Somalia, aided by another Islamic state, Yemen.
By the way, I apologize for not using the current Administration parlance. I should, of course, have described this terrorism on the high seas as, "man made disasters." More tragic-comedy, I fear.
And now, we have the remarkable response by Hillary Clinton to a reporter's question about what the US will do to rescue the kidnapped American captain of the U.S. flagged ship, Maersk Alabama. Her reply was disconcerting.
Replete with much hesitation she even began giggling in the middle of her unconvincing reply. No doubt the inappropriate laughter when discussing such a serious situation was a sign of nervousness because she knew her master was going to engage only in diplomacy. But it sent the very opposite message to our enemies, be they Iran, North Korea, Arab and Islamist militant states or the benighted Venezuela of Chavez.
She made reference to America's earlier response to piracy, presumably referring to the U.S.S. Constitution sailing in 1804 to North Africa and unleashing the American marines upon the Muslim Barbary pirates. That heroic victory is enshrined in the Marine Corps hymn with the immortal words, "from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli."
Ms. Clinton however did not offer the heroic and single minded American response of President Thomas Jefferson, a Democrat by the way, who all those years ago demonstrated American power and resolve in the Mediterranean.
This time, in our mad, mad world, Ms. Clinton suggested that the nations affected join America in doing something about it. Why she even has brought in the FBI to negotiate with the Somali terrorists.
No Ms. Clinton, this is a job for the U.S. Military. If America is not to be seen as a paper tiger by all the murky despots around the globe then it is time for standing up to the Somali thugs, not sitting down and discussing the matter over cups of tea.
Our present Secretary of State forgot that Jefferson, before acting resolutely on his own, had asked for help from the European powers of the day who all refrained from assisting America. Like the owners today of hijacked ships taken by piracy off the shores of Somalia, they preferred to pay ransom.
Now insurance companies pay off the Somali pirates in today's version of ransom. Will President Obama's America smite the Muslim Somali terrorists as once President Jefferson's America did to the Muslim Barbary pirates? I have my doubts.
I guess as the piracy is committed by Muslims -- oops, I must remember not to call it piracy but "man made disasters" -- we have to tread warily because the President has decreed that America is not at war with Islam. After all, he said that Islam has made great contributions to the United States -- although he did not enumerate the contributions and would be hard put to do so.
Sadly, the Commander in Chief prefers to bow obsequiously to a prince of the Saudi royal family, an oligarchy controlling one of the world's worst human rights abusers and a country, which forbids Christians to worship within its territory, yet spends billions building mosques in America and Europe.
Our Chief Appeaser speaks somewhat loudly but carries a feather when it comes to ridding the world of the menace of North Korea's missile and nuclear ambitions. He knows full well that the North Koreans are emboldened by the impotence of America as demonstrated towards their recent missile launch of an inter-continental missile. Nor are the North Koreans inhibited from selling their missile technology to Iran, Syria and other mostly Middle Eastern Arab nations.
It seems that our President, and those who serve him, are more and more reflecting the politics of divisiveness within America while denigrating the United States overseas.
It is instructive today as we look at the affairs of state under our new president to remember how Winston Churchill lamented that Great Britain in the 1930s was descending toward a dark gulf.
Replace his mention of the British Nation six months before Munich with that of our own American Nation and his words ring uncannily true for all of us as we face the rising peril of Islamic radicalism:
I have watched this famous island descending incontinently,
fecklessly, down the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine
broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends.
A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on
still these break beneath your feet ... if mortal catastrophe should
overtake the British Nation, historians a thousand years hence will
still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs.
They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with
everything in hand, suffered itself to be brought low, and to cast
away all that had been gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute
victory - gone with the wind!
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
