"The U.N. should declare a Palestinian state, and, with an international mandate, we should secure Israel and Palestine."

Sir, how exactly would you "secure" Israel and Palestine? By force? How un-euro of you! Oh, I forgot the transnationalist/euro/green crowd deplores violence/war/harsh words; unless of course it benefits them. Then it's OK.

That isn't even the best qoute of the article.

"That’s life. But recently, your government has been behaving like the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution."

"...Because you are Americans, you have the biggest army in the world—you can do anything you want. This is revolutionary hubris."

The leader of the Euro Parliments Green Party comparing the U.S. to the Bolsheviks and then accuses us of hubris?!?

Now, I am but a provincal, unsophisticated American from one of the Midwestern "flyover" states, but does this strike anyone else as almost a self-parody.

The saddest thing is that this gentleman seems to be in earnest and is therfore even more clueless than I initially thought.

SJ

Sorry it took so long to read the dialogue. To em, this illustrates part of the problem:

"Cohn-Bendit: With Iraq, you are talking about nation building. Yet we have not finished our job in Afghanistan. We see a backlash against women and deteriorating security. We have barely secured the capital, Kabul. It is my biggest fear that Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar will take over Kabul while you are fighting in Iraq."

Dear M. Cohn-Bendit - please note that the problems you mention in Afghanistan as worsening were improving while we were in control. The deteriation has occurred since we made the mistake of allowing the UE and UN to assure us they could handle things and insisted we hand over to them. Had the US remained in charge, then when Germany threatened to pull out its peace keepers for fear they might actually get shot at - something that any police force faces - we would have told them they could either leave the country or agree to patrol the capitol and beyond. If the US had accepted bids for road improvements and building, when the companies involved pulled out they would have been fined and new bids accepted - we would not just have shrugged and said "c'est la vie" and done nothing. If the US had retained direct political interfacing with, and support of, the government the problem of armed insurrections in the North would not be dismissed as "a local problem, no proper concern of the central government."

You, sir, are a fraud and dissembler and withholder of truth. The only respect I give you is that at least you are not a chameleon and fair-weather-friend, you may mis-represent but seldom lie outright.

It's not enough. After Lebanon, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, your proposed methodologies stand exposed as not merely flawed but actively opposed to allowing people to be free, have laws of their own and enforce them instead of having laws imposed upon them by the people with guns who stand inside what polling places are allowed. dissenting with speech rather than Molotov cocktails and AK47's....

It is my fondest hope that the US fas finally realised that it can dissent from the majority and act without universal approval. Not as a "rogue state" never engaging in dialogue, but as one willing to listen to differing views and then make up its own mind. Not "Pax Americana", but "Pax Humana".

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