TACITUS ROUNDUP….Tacitus on the pro-war wing of the blogosphere:
On the subject of the bombing of the UN compound, let me also say that a great deal of the rhetoric coming from the blogospheric right — mostly from self-described “anti-idiotarians,” which is a self-nullifying label if there ever was one — was a pathetic disgrace. If your first reaction was to crow about it, or to whip up a monologue on the irony of it all, you have my pity. I spent part of my day yesterday drafting condolence letters to the families of the dead; let me assure you that whatever the glaring flaws of the United Nations, those folks there were doing more for a free Iraq than you and I hunched behind our terminals stuffing our faces with Cheetos. So quit with that crap.
Well said. And Tacitus again on the likely Israeli reaction to the Jerusalem bus bombing:
On the one hand, you want to give the PA, and Abu Mazen in particular, a chance to show it can effectively govern. On the other hand, why should Israel suffer for someone else’s learning curve?….We know where this is going to end — Israel is going to hit back, and hard, and the PA will use it as an excuse to do nothing, again — but I confess it would be interesting if Sharon simply held back and dared Mazen to make good.
Yep. After all, several decades of hitting back hard hasn’t really worked, has it?
I completely sympathize with the horrors that Israel endures with every Palestinian suicide bomber, honest I do, but after 30+ years they’ve finally managed to (sort of) sideline Yasser Arafat and now have a PA leader who at least seems to genuinely agree that the violence needs to stop, even if he doesn’t yet have the power to stop it himself. But surely no one thought he’d be able to dismantle Hamas and Islamic Jihad within a few months, did they?
The extremists on both sides have always had the power to derail any steps toward peace. Isn’t it time to stop acknowledging that power by giving them exactly the reaction they want?
