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The rule of whose law ?Reader comment on item: Anarchy, the New Threat Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Feb 9, 2012 at 02:00 M. Tovey , I spent some time in Sweden in the vicinity of the Norwegian frontier and no doubt I haven't had a more exciting and fruitful time in all my life. I have seen and talked to open-minded, friendly and peaceful people who highly appreciated people looking and feeling like them, first of all other Scandinavians be they Finns or Norsemen. With a mindset like that you will never go to war against your Scandinavian neighbors and friends. And this is all I mean. Now what you quote as allegedly proving the opposite doesn't come from the Scandinavian background. What do a Tamil terrorist or those Moslem hordes (called contemptuously "svartskallar) that make life in Scandinavian cities and schools a nightmare " have to do with Scandinavia's history and mentality? They are an alien and hostile body in Scandinavia and who in his senses will call these criminals and parasites "Swedes", "Norwegians" or "Finns"?And a fortiori the Oslo accords have even less to do with what Scandinavians stand for. You could have signed these so called accords on the South Pole and then could blame the ice for all the havoc they wrought. > To be sure, the United States is hardly in a peacetime mindset either, after going toe to toe with the Soviets last millennium and now facing the Islamic revolution in this.< Not "facing", dear friend, but fomenting and actively and consistently promoting jihad since the 1980-ies which makes things look a bit different from what you say. And incidentally, could enumerate all the wars and military intervention the US and its subservient tool called "NATO" have been instrumental or involved in since the demise of the USSR ? > But the deeper sense of history showing 'peace in our time' in actuality accuses humanity of not really knowing what true peace is all about, not even in Scandinavia.< Sorry, unlike you I know what Scandinavian peace means.In short it means that no Swede,Dane, Norseman or Finn will ever wage war against one another. > Just because there is cessation of open hostilities and political stability is achieved for some brief period does not truly deserve a peaceful connotation.< You are expecting and promising too much. Millions of people who have perished since 1991 would have preferred what you call as not deserving "a peaceful connotation" to your "truly peaceful connotation" that has been seen nowhere except perhaps in Biblical psalms. And the reason is that absence of hostilities would have meant millions of saved lives. But you don't seem to care much about saved life, do you ? > Just ask any 'Palestinian' living in Jordan-supposedly at peace with Israel. Just ask any person of Chinese ethnicity living in Taiwan. Or how about any South Korean who has living relations in North Korea they hardly ever see?< And what are you implying they will answer to my question ? That a good war is better than an imperfect peace ? Do you know what Tacitus said about situations like this? What is better is the worst enemy of what is good. You dismiss what is good and has been historically tested and propose instead in earnest to replace it with something apparently better but which has never been seen in this imperfect world of ours. And am I to subscribe to it ? In the late 1980-ies some superpower promised peace and prosperity in Yugoslavia on condition the bad oppressive communist regime must fall and liberty must prevail. Within a few years more people were slaughtered in Yugoslavia than during all of Tito's rule.I udnerstand though that under Tito's peace the US would have no military base in Kosovo. > Internal peace - that of a power of rule in any national setting - is that enforced to the consent of the people or under the duress of impositions of restrictions and loss of liberty ? How are the Chinese doing after Tiananmen Square - the Tibetans - the Kurds in Turkey - the Lebanese in Lebanon? Actually, we can dismiss most of the Middle East after the Arab Upheavals-still going on.< Sorry, but you will have to elaborate your definition of "internal peace" as it is obscure to me. "National settling" and "the consent of the people " are what and to what degree? And the Chinese are doing excellently after the Tiananmen Square financing your broke capitalist homeland and assuring your high living standards by accepting inflationary US dollars in exchange for real goods made in China. And since America is to all intents and purposes Turkey's godfather I wonder how you can doubt your country's virtue? You won't mind US arms being used by your faithful NATO ally to level Kurdish villages or Orthodox churches in Northern Cyprus , will you ? > In North America-is the balance of power between the United States and Canada better than Mexico and why? Which is in category 2 and which is in the 3rd?< I am not an expert on Acanada and Mexico but I guess that any conflict between the US and Canad and Mexico would end with the annihilation of the latter two countries, so the balance of power is excluded. If I am not mistaken the US has a larger military budged than the rest of the world. > The truly sad thing about our age is that after all the history lessons we are not getting better, but worse.< "We" that is who? Those who promote regress and decay of nation-states and jihad in the Balkans and North Africa because they know that under free competition they would lose their hegemony in the world ? > Mankind continues to demonstrate a Hebrew Biblical truth-but we all know about that, do we not? And thus, the argument-anarchy is nothing new-nor in this epoch will ever be out of vogue when the rule of law is dismissed for a utopian mindset of living without restrictions.< I have no comments on any Hebrew Biblical truth.But I wonder about the rule of whose law you are talking about ? I hope not the Mosaic law which is not the law even in Israel. > Do not look at the Scandinavians for a peace model; for they have only achieved a sense of temporary relief from the rest of the world's insecurities.< I have a strange impression that your counter-proposal will be peace of the grave which is definitely the ultimate relief from the rest of the world's insecurities. But I don't find it a very attractive alternative and I must say that probably most people don't either. > Some of them have in fact sown to the wind; their whirlwind is, in matter of fact, in the offing. Norway was only the tip of the iceberg.< Is a prophecy ? Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Reader comments (29) on this item
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