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Jewish World Review Feb 28, 2012/ 5 Adar, 5772 Words, words, words ... more statements, less meaning By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | There are some phrases that come to mean the opposite of what they say. For example, Never Again! That vow is uttered after every genocidal campaign makes the news. It was heard after Srebrenica in the Balkans, after what happened in Never Again! That refrain goes back at least to the Armenian Massacres at the beginning of the 20th century and the Holocaust in the middle of it. Ours may not have been the nuclear century or the internetted century so much as the genocidal century. Now another city is being reduced to a charnel house -- Homs in At There is much talk out of Western capitals, little else. While the innocents are slaughtered. In ever increasing numbers. Statesmen gather to negotiate carefully balanced statements that are supposed to address the problem but don't -- as if they believed that words speak louder than actions. As always, they don't. Which is why the phrase Never Again! has acquired such an ironic sound. Here's another term now used to mean its opposite: Unacceptable. Again and again this administration -- indeed, all the West -- has said letting Time is running out for those who say, but only say, they would not accept a nuclear-armed But that would be "unacceptable," according to our president. By which, it becomes clearer with each passing day, he means acceptable. Economic sanctions are voted at the UN. So? The mullahs know their 20th century history. They know Western democracies find it easier to temporize, to put off a growing danger, to decry the threat rather than face it. European leaders have a well-established, and well-deserved, reputation for appeasing dictators. And now America is expected to follow their example. The decline of the West can be measured in the crises it declines to recognize. Till it's too late, or almost so. Till a rogue state like
The pattern is familiar. It goes back to the 1930s, when the raving demagogue was a German. It took forever for European statesmen to realize that the funny little man with a moustache would not be appeased despite their best efforts. They may have read his book, in which he laid out his pet hatreds and dreams of world domination beyond question, but it was hard to take him seriously. Surely, he would prove only a passing fancy in a highly civilized nation, the land of Goethe and Schiller, In their naivete, the leaders of the West's democracies had no idea whom they were dealing with in Herr Hitler. And he had an all too accurate understanding of whom he was dealing with. The more of his demands were met, the more demanding he became. The more concessions the Chamberlains and Daladiers made, the more aggressive he became. Each of Herr Hitler's territorial demands was to be the last -- before the next one. And war came. For there are certain things that eventually have to be faced in this world. Like evil.
Now the same pattern is being played out again. Another team of UN inspectors has been dispatched to In 1938, a little country like Czechoslovakia could be sacrificed readily enough for a brief and ersatz Peace in Our Time. But in 2012, a little country like In The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is not as coy. After meeting with Israeli officials, Gen. Is it time for an international conference at the very top level to reach a comprehensive agreement and break this impasse? They say
In the unlikely event Or maybe The other day, another temporizer was heard from -- Indeed, the only thing more dangerous than launching a pre-emptive strike against
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