Peter Hitchens On US Interventionism

This just posted by Mr. Hitchens, and is well worth the time taken to read.

A most cogent portion states:

Personally, it fits very well with my own experience of the true nature of the Anglo-American Unspecial Relationship, which I have discussed here in the past, in the light of Bill Clinton’s decision to back the provisional IRA against the British government. Un unwise official from the West Wing told me, without meaning to, that the White House regarded Britain as fundamentally no different from Serbia.

This is why I shudder at US behaviour in Syria. It is, once you have stripped away the rhetoric,  interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. And if, one day, our sovereign nation, Britain,  asserted its independence, might we, too find ourselves under attack first from international interventionist TV stations telling lies about us,  then from a rabble of ‘activists’ who had mysteriously acquired arms and whose faults would be ignored or overlooked, then from ‘NATO’ airpower and special forces, intervening to ‘protect’ these ‘activists’ from the ‘repression’ of our government, which would be referred to by everyone as a ‘regime’? A ’No Fly Zone’ over East Anglia, to protect pro-EU ‘activists’ , anyone?

In a way it has already happened in miniature in Northern Ireland. Most Americans (and many continental Europeans)  believed propaganda lies about what was happening there. The USA gave its backing to the ‘activists’ of the IRA. And we surrendered to pressure, stopped ‘killing our own people’ , as the British Army’s actions against the IRA would no doubt nowadays be described. Then we withdrew from the disputed territory (though most people haven’t yet realised that this is what has happened).  In a way we were lucky that 24-hour TV and liberal interventionism were in their infancy in the 1980s, or NATO might have bombed London in support of the IRA. We would also never have been able to retake the Falklands.

The Vilified Peter Hitchens Once Again Speaks With Moral Clarity

Perhaps moral clarity is what makes him a target?


In any case, a good example from today's column:

To avoid false accusations of ‘racism’ from the Thought Police, I have to make the following statement of the blindingly obvious: I think Liam Stacey, who made nasty comments about the collapse of a footballer, is a callous, foul-mouthed, drink-sodden moron. Is that clear?
Can I now go on to say that I don’t think much of a criminal justice system that sends him to prison for expressing his ‘views’ on the internet. The same system repeatedly leaves at liberty violent thieves and louts.

For example, Kazeem Kolawole, one of the gang who ruined the life of Thusha Kamaleswaran – the six-year-old girl shot in a shop in London – was free to do this evil only because he had been spared prison after  beating up a schoolgirl, and was on bail (of course) for carrying a knife. Now, if only Kolawole had made a racist remark he would have been safely locked up.

How many different things are wrong with  a country in which a little girl’s happy life is transformed in an instant into misery by a bullet flying through a suburban shop? How many of them are we even allowed to discuss in public without being howled down? Thusha’s ordeal has only just begun. As long as we have the sort of Government we now have, there will be more of these horrors.

Hitchens refuses to act the partisan, this party or that, because he knows that the issue before the West is not some disagreement on approach regarding governance of free society, but the survival of the idea of free society. He correctly sees that many in positions of leadership in the culture are morally blind and historically ignorant. He knows what awaits us, should we continue this course.

The quote taken from his column today is found at the very end. The truly sobering words precede it, as he makes his observations about Peter Cruddas' charming practice of selling access to power for cold hard cash.

Creepy Charlie Gilmour Gets Out Of Jail Free, Four Months Of Sixteen Served

Peter Hitchens tells the sad tale in his Sunday article--all of which, as always, is well worth reading.

Peter Hitchens Provides The Quote Of The Day

Is there any point in public debate, in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?

The rest of his thoughts are here.

Omar Bin-Laden And His Brothers Lecture The US About The Rule Of Law

The statement is here.

Three of the four, by implication, agreed with Dear Old Dad, that wholesale killing of the innocent is perfectly OK, as long as it's 'Us' doing it to 'You'.

However, if 'You' decide to go after 'Us', your only option is to send in the sheriff to arrest us, give us a team of lawyers for free, and make certain we can post bond and live comfortably in the USA whilst awaiting trial.

And, by the way, we don't think Dad's dead.

We're gonna sue.

The always acerbic Peter Hitchens has his own take on the whole affair. OS is not certain how strongly he agrees with the gent, but this is well worth the time to read.

Peter Hitchens Speaks To Our Present Day: The Rage Against God

OldSouth, when he does pass over Jordan to his promised rest, has a short list of saints and heroes he wishes to look up, assuming of course, it's OK with The Owner Of The Establishment. There's a grandfather he never met, a grandmother who died in OS's infancy, another grandfather he remembers only slightly (but is the proud owner of the Shaker-style desk he worked from, and a Bible the old gent bought for him, with a prayer lovingly inscribed in his shaky hand). Bach (probably a long line outside his mansion), Handel (ditto), Luther, the Wesley Brothers, the Penitent Thief, Henry Ward Beecher (So, did he sleep with his best friend's adoring wife or no?); and near the top of the list, Malcolm Muggeridge, 1903-1990. When the old sage passed to his glorious reward, OS keenly felt that a hole had been left behind, that perhaps no one would fill those shoes, or ever again bring that keen wit and utter command of language to the defense of Christendom.

But, as an old mountain Presbyterian preacher once reminded his flock, 'God never leaves Himself without a witness'. As Muggeridge was passing, Peter Hitchens was well on his pilgrimage from atheism and Marxism to lively Christian faith. And, like Muggeridge, a close encounter with the life of despair in the Soviet Union propelled him on his way, shaping and illuminating both his conscience and considerable craft as a writer. He even shares, like Muggeridge, kinship with a luminary of the Atheist Left, his brother Christopher, which make his work all that more poignant.

OS just spent his weekend off reading The Rage Against God, and rejoiced to find that, indeed, Muggeridge's witness carries forward.

OS urges his readers to read it for themselves. The stakes for the culture have never been higher in our generation, and Peter Hitchens gives voice and shape to the challenges Christendom now faces. It is not a pleasant read, but it is vitally important.

Only one reliable force stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. Only one reliable force forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law. Only one reliable force restrains the hand of the man of power. And, in an age of power-worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power.

Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God, p. 113

OldSouth Is Speechless, So He'll Let Peter Hitchens Speak

Words fail. OS keeps attempting to string some words together to relate what he is thinking and feeling about recent events. He just splutters and stutters and begins to curse, and his writing is bad enough as it is...

People like OS are why God created real writers, like Peter Hitchens.

Our British cousins have the same problem we have--a chief executive who decided to start a war without consulting Parliament, just because he concluded that the Libyan dictator is a VeryBadMan (which indeed, he is), and the UN sez it's ok.

Hitchens has it nailed for us all, on both sides of the pond.

Here's just a bit of it:

My test is this: If you are so keen to set Libya to rights, establish an International Brigade of like-minded persons, all so truly concerned about that country's fate, and so sure of which side is in the right, that you are prepared to be maimed or rendered limbless and disfigured in that cause, Off you go. Fly to Egypt, slip across the border and offer your services to the heroes of Benghazi.

I won't stop you. But I pay for armed forces to defend me, not to go off on righteous adventures, and soldiers likewise sign up to defend their own country, not mess around with other people's.

My case is that 'democracies' whatever they are, have enough to do at home keeping the weak from being robbed and attacked by the strong. And that war is so wicked that the only real justification for it is to defend yourself against those who would destroy, rob or subjugate you.

In the meantime, OS gets some face-time tomorrow night with his House member. He hopes he'll have his thoughts in order by that time, so he can calmly take it up with the one person locally who can actually do something about this tragic blow to Constitutional government.

The US is making war on Libya. Obama is making war on the Constitution.