Holiday Despair

This holiday season has been marred by the news that the United States (and Brits) have embraced Libya and its rehabilitated leader, Muammar Gaddafi. We have a notorious lack of memory in the United States.

The Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden have called for "death to America" in clear and unequivocal terms but we did not take them seriously. They have financed, masterminded, and fomented terrorist attacks around the globe, all aimed at destroying western democracies. Iran held our people hostage in the American Embassy for over a year in 1979. Terrorists blew up a planeload of Americans over Lockerbie in 1988. The U.S. military base in Bharan, Saudi Arabia was bombed in 1996. U.S. Marines barracks were blown up in Beirut and Saudi Arabia. Two American embassies were blown up in Africa in 1998. The USS Cole was attacked as it sat off Yemen's coast just last year. And don't forget, this is not the first attack on the World Trade Center: it was attacked eight years ago. For two decades we have approached these events as criminal acts and spoken about bringing the perpetrators to justice. That is the language of denial, a denial of reality. These are not criminals. These are terrorists, supported by foreign governments whose stated intent and purpose is to destroy western civilization.

To call Muammar Gaddafi a statesman would be akin to calling Mae West a nun. The sole reason for Gaddafi's move to renounce WMD is to recoup—via trade with the West—the $multi-billion settlement made with the Lockerbie families. The hypocrisy of deposing Saddam and embracing Gaddafi is rivaled only by the 10-Year Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1941. There is no honor among rogues.

If this be (fair & balanced) despair, so be it.