Dec 11, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Good news comes from the Washington Post on December 11. "Preemptive Strikes Part of Strategy, Official Say 'All Options' Open for Countering Unconventional Arms":A Bush administration strategy announced yesterday calls for the preemptive use of military and covert force before an enemy unleashes weapons of mass destruction, and underscores the United States's willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons for chemical or biological attacks on U.S. soil or against American troops overseas.The strategy introduces a more aggressive approach to combating weapons of mass destruction, and it comes as the nation prepares for a possible war with Iraq.A version of the strategy that was released by the White House said the United States will "respond with overwhelming force," including "all options," to the use of biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapons on the nation, its troops or its allies.However, a classified version of the strategy goes even further: It breaks with 50 years of U.S. counterproliferation efforts by authorizing preemptive strikes on states and terrorist groups that are close to acquiring weapons of mass destruction or the long-range missiles capable of delivering them. The policy aims to prevent the transfer of weapons components or to destroy them before they can be assembled.
Dec 11, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
"Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter warns that war only leads to more war," reports the Associated Press:"For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventative war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences," he said.
Carter cited another American Nobel peace laureate, Ralph Bunche, winner of the 1950 prize.
"To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering...."
In his Nobel address, Carter urged respect for the United Nations as an international forum for solving disputes.
Why the respect for statements that are so clearly intellectually deficient? Because Carter rationalizes the desire to avoid the responsibility of passing moral judgment and of standing behind that judgment. Hence the blanket condemnation of preventive war--even in the face of a real, objective threat--the treatment of all parties as morally equal, the call to abdicate judgment in favor of the UN. Meanwhile...
A group of exiled Iranians ... shouted "Shame on the Nobel Committee" and "Shame on Carter" as they demonstrated outside Norway's National Theater. The theater is located near the Oslo City Hall, where Carter was awarded the Peace Prize in a traditional annual ceremony.
The demonstrators claimed that both the US and Jimmy Carter, as a former US president, share responsibility for the revolution in Iran in 1979 that unseated the shah and allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to seize power. [Aftenposten]
Every American ought to have joined them in denouncing Carter.
Dec 11, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
According to former President Jimmy Carter, on accepting the so-called Nobel Peace Prize: "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good."First of all, there are no necessary evils. If something is truly evil, there's no way it can be necessary. And if it is truly necessary to the well-being of a rational man's life -- then it's not evil, but good. Secondly, there is such a thing as a good war. A war against Adolph Hitler was good. A war to decimate the likes of Osama bin Laden and others of his ilk is equally necessary and good.
Given the premise that evil exists, and that certain people will act in an evil and violent manner, a rational and just war is synonymous with self-defense. Self-defense is good. Only someone like Jimmy Carter -- whose policies nearly lost the Cold War against the Soviet Union and contributed to the establishment of the number one sponsor of terror in the world today (Iran) -- could utter such a statement. To honor him with this prize shows that the true motives of the award are neither noble nor peaceful.
Dec 10, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Jimmy Carter is the most culpable U.S. official with regard to terrorism. He did nothing when the Ayatollah took power and kidnapped Americans in Tehran. Iran immediately became the premier sponsor of terrorism against the U.S. and set the tone that America is afraid to defend itself. If anyone event caused 9/11 this is it.That being said today President Carter accepted the blood-soaked Nobel Peace Prize and his acceptance speech was typical of him:Citizens of the 10 wealthiest countries are now 75 times richer than those who live in the 10 poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them. The results of this disparity are root causes of most of the world's unresolved problems, including starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS.
The existence of such a disparity causes nothing of the sort. What does cause problems are bad ideologies such as collectivism, socialism, and theocratic and other forms of dictatorships: they cause poverty, ignorance, and war. Individualist, free, secular, wealthy countries are not to blame for other countries being backward--indeed they are often victimized by them.Then Carter said,But tragically, in the industrialized world there is a terrible absence of understanding or concern about those who are enduring lives of despair and hopelessness. We have not yet made the commitment to share with others an appreciable part of our excessive wealth. This is a potentially rewarding burden that we should all be willing to assume.
After enduring the twentieth century and the deaths of literally hundreds of millions--if not billions--of people as the direct result of socialist wealth redistribution policies (the USSR, Red China, and Nazi Germany as the big examples); a forty-year "war on poverty" in America that has redistributed hundreds of billions of dollars for naught; probably a trillion dollars of US taxpayer money expropriated and given to "developing countries" that despise America, some being fountainheads of terrorism, and seeing without exception how socialist schemes fail 100% of the time they are tried, how dare President Carter dig up this rot.Not only is Carter blameworthy of laying the ground on which terrorism spawned, to this day he is prescribing the same poison that made so much of the work sick in the first place, and he calls it a cure. He deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because it's become a symbol of death--especially since Arafat won it.Dec 10, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
Newport Beach, California--As the health care reform debate gains renewed focus in Washington, Americans for Free Choice in Medicine (AFCM), a non-profit patient education organization, has designated a new executive director. AFCM, founded in 1993, is America's only grass-roots educational organization based on individual rights, personal responsibility and free market ideas in medicine.AFCM has named Richard E. Ralston its executive director. Ralston, who served on active duty in the United States Army for 7 years, has a comprehensive background in media. Mr. Ralston, a supporter since AFCM was founded in 1994, was editor of books published in 1991, Communism: Its Rise and Fall in the 20th Century, and in 1999, Why Businessmen Need Philosophy.
"Every day physicians and their patients continue to be confronted with constraints on their ability to make free decisions about medicine," Ralston said. "I think the time has come to take a stand against the heavy hand of government in the medical profession."
"We must give voice to the rights of the individual patient and of each physician to make his or her own decisions regarding their health or medical practice," he said.
Dec 9, 2002 | Dollars & Crosses
In Canada's National Post, "The UN's foray into Saddamasochism," a very amusing article making fun the U.N. weapons inspector who was "outted" for his sadomasochistic diversions:Indeed, in their kinky UNphilia and Kofi Annanism, the West's liberal elites have come up with the weirdest masochistic fetish of all, demanding that the role of global dominatrix be given to an organization that can't wait to prostrate itself. On Saturday, Mr. Blix's team admitted that the Iraqis had in fact been given advance warning of what are supposed to be "surprise" site inspections. One should never underestimate the UN's capacity to abase and degrade itself before the strongman's even had a chance to get his bullwhip out.
