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Jewish World Review Nov. 26, 2010 / 19 Kislev, 5771 The World's Crazy Aunt Is at It Again By Paul Greenberg
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Reporter: Will that include the atomic bomb?
--Presidential press conference, Just in time for the The world's crazy aunt has started playing with guns again. This time she wasn't just screaming and banging her broomstick on the floor. That's nothing new. The world's used to it. This time she was lobbing artillery shells at her neighbor to the south. With deadly results. Once again refugees were fleeing to Now both Koreas are making bellicose sounds again. The South has gone on military alert, its president held an emergency meeting in his underground bunker, and you can almost hear the martial drumbeats in the background. Scrolling the Internet, I came across a dispatch out of Incheon. It's been a long time since we've seen a story datelined INCHEON, Considering that this country still has some 28,000 troops on the Korean peninsula, a full-scale war between these two cousins could pull this country into yet another violent conflict. On top of the couple we're already engaged in on the other side of How did the Early on Tuesday morning, as the Koreans were collecting their dead, the president's press secretary, His statement brings to mind a quote from that great American poet, Dispatches from Can you imagine a You may remember that another president -- this one known to one and all as Ike -- was pretty good at keeping the Cold War cold. Mainly by making it clear he wouldn't hesitate to make things hot indeed for those who threatened the peace of the world. The man had a natural knack for confusing all with his syntax, but now and then he would oh-so-casually let a comment slip that gave America's enemies clear warning: "In any combat when these things (nuclear weapons) can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I can see no reason why they shouldn't be used just exactly as you would a bullet or anything else." -- His critics called such statements crazy. Crazy like a fox. They preserved the peace. To quote the judgment of one historian: "In retrospect, it appears that Eisenhower's may have been the best mind available, for he understood better than his advisers what war is really like. None of them, after all, had organized the first successful invasion across the English Channel since 1688, or had led the armies that had liberated "That is why Eisenhower -- the ultimate Clausewitzian -- insisted on planning only for total war. His purpose was to make sure that no war at all would take place."-- As I write these lines, the current occupant of the
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. David Barham, editorial writer there, contributed to this column. Send your comments by clicking here.
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