Two Via Ut Unum Sint

Christopher Hitchens looks at the "peace" marches, and demonstrates the power of the single sentence:

.... There are not enough words in any idiom to describe the shame and the disgrace of this....

.... A more gruesome political alliance I have never seen....

.... I think I would prefer to have Vaclav Havel in my corner than the grotesque, corrupt, cynical dandy Jacques Chirac....

And Alistair Cooke recalls a lesson from history:

.... During the last fortnight a simple but startling thought occurred to me -- every single official, diplomat, president, prime minister involved in the Iraq debate was in 1938 a toddler, most of them unborn. So the dreadful scene I've just drawn will not have been remembered by most listeners. Hitler had started betraying our trust not 12 years but only two years before, when he broke the First World War peace treaty by occupying the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland. Only half his troops carried one reload of ammunition because Hitler knew that French morale was too low to confront any war just then and 10 million of 11 million British voters had signed a so-called peace ballot. It stated no conditions, elaborated no terms, it simply counted the numbers of Britons who were "for peace." The slogan of this movement was "Against war and fascism" - chanted at the time by every Labour man and Liberal and many moderate Conservatives - a slogan that now sounds as imbecilic as "against hospitals and disease." In blunter words a majority of Britons would do anything, absolutely anything, to get rid of Hitler except fight him. At that time the word preemptive had not been invented, though today it's a catchword. After all the Rhineland was what it said it was - part of Germany. So to march in and throw Hitler out would have been preemptive - wouldn't it? ....

There is other good stuff, too, at Ut Unum Sint.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 02/20/03 07:52:38 PM
Categorized as Political.