Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The World According to a Guy Named Newt


In an editorial in today's far right Washington Times, Newt Gingrich says what America needs now is not less Bush but more, much more.

"...the lessons of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, New Jersey, the JFK plot, the Algerian bombings, the Iranian nuclear program, the conflict in Lebanon and now the defeat in Gaza all point to the need for a war policy that is substantially bigger and more robust than Mr. Bush.

"As the forces of modernity are being ground up by terrorism, our political process is not producing a Churchill or Roosevelt to rally the democracies but instead embracing advocates of surrender withdrawal and defeat. As women are being oppressed, we remain silent. Faced with the weakness, vacillation and inarticulateness of the leaders of Israel and America, the people see the violence as senseless, the bloodshed as repugnant and the current strategies as too flawed to continue to invest in them."

Newt, predictably, has the solution. He begins by claiming that Hamas and Hezbollah must be utterly destroyed but notes that America will need a new strategy, doctrine and "techniques" to do it.

Second, he says, "... the indirect strategies of propping up corrupt dictatorships have to give way to direct people-to-people help, securing private-property rights and direct financial assistance so we can improve their families' lives and they can be empowered to defend their neighborhoods from evil men."

Next, Gingrich proposes scrapping the United Nations, "...the U.N. camp system of socialism with unearned anti-humanitarian charity has to be replaced with a totally new system of earned income and earned property rights to restore dignity and hope to every Palestinian."

Gingrich goes on to call for completely new schools for Palestinian children "dedicated to genuine education and to teaching human rights rather than jihad and hatred," and a general cleansing of mosques, along the lines of the de-Nazification programme in Germany in 1945. "The haters have to be defeated, disarmed and detained if the forces of peace and freedom are to win."

Newt warns that these steps are "only the beginning" but doesn't explain what would follow in the Gingrichian World Order. First, however, he'd better start tracking down those folks who don't find "bloodshed repugnant."

In case you're tempted to dismiss Newt Gingrich as yesterday's news, understand that he's waiting on the sidelines and watching to see if he should seek the Republican presidential nomination. This guy is serious.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your favourite candidate for the Republicans. I don't think anybody takes him seriously, especially the so-cons, due to his infidelities.

He may as well campaign on this:

a) attack Iran with mini-nukes
b) develop an emergency plan in case the US gets attacked by a dirty bomb
c) carpet bomb the Middle East and sprinkle salt to ensure that Islamofascism will never rise again
d) internment of all Arab Americans

Hey, Pearl Harbour will happen by 2010 according to Newt. The dirty bomb attack is inevitable.

Never take this third rate historian seriously. Given that he was actually an academic.