Public apologies for things being in vogue these days--like the seemingly never-ending apologies for slavery that continue to be made by people who never owned a slave to people who have never been slaves--I would like to apologize to to sovereign nation-state of Israel for the hooliganism of another one of our spoiled trust-fund kids, Tristan Anderson.
Tristan, for those not paying attention to the current wailings of the left-wing liberal bloc, is (was?) a 38 year old "professional protester" who basically roamed around the world bothering people in the name of leftist causes, until his chickens came home to roost in the form of a 40mm tear gas grenade to the head, fired by Israeli soldiers in response to rocks being thrown by members of Tristan's "peace" group.
Tristan and his pals had apparently decided that the Israelis don't have any right to protect themselves from Palestinian suicide bombers so they were in Israel trying to interfere with the construction of a wall intended to keep those bombers out. Sorry, but I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for Tristan. He chose to be a "useful idiot" for an evil people and he paid a price that he could have avoided simply by staying out of it.
Even lessening my sympathy more is the disclosure that Tristan was one of those idiotic tree-sitters who obstructed construction of new buildings at the University of California, Berkeley last year (He reportedly spent 21 months--almost two years--just sitting in a tree!) in addition to writing for Indymedia, the notorious cop-hating, America-bashing, openly socialist website. This is a guy who apparently did everything in his life except work for a living and mind his own business, and while I can sympathize with his family for their loss, I have to say that I'm not going to miss a guy who didn't produce anything and devoted his life to obstructing the productivity of everyone else around him.
Karma can be a bitch sometimes, but it does eventually come around.
Now of course his parents are demanding "justice", probably in the form of a big bag of cash. They are mad at the Israeli government, even though Tristan put himself into that situation on purpose and despite his conduct and intent, it was the Israelis who picked him up and gave him state-of-the-art medical care. I have to point out that he's in an Israeli hospital now, not a Palestinian one. Wonder why that is?
Oh yeah. He's no longer useful to the Palestinians and they can't afford to waste money on him. They need that money to buy rockets that they can fire at the hospital in Israel that's trying to save Tristan's life despite his criminal acts. But then only one side of that conflict in the Holy Land is humanistic and respectful of life, and that would be the nation-state of Israel, the people that Tristan was trying to prevent from protecting themselves.
So to my Israeli friends, I apologize on behalf of America for Tristan. Our overly-permissive culture created him and his wealthy, overly-permissive parents funded him and enabled him to travel to your country to cause trouble and ultimately interfere with the flight path of that tear gas grenade that had to be fired because of Tristan's group's conduct. Please forgive us, and if you should happen to accidentally whack a couple more spoiled American kids like him, no problem. We'll get over it so don't worry about holding back on our account. Do what you have to do, because we've still got a lot more Tristans or Rachel Corries than we need.
We need more individuals that think along your lines ,
ReplyDeleteand the US could go back to being a far better place.
We need to stop trying to be so politically correct with BS and go back to telling it like it is...like YOU do. Your blog rocks....and your little Lagniappe does too.
Damn it- you just made me realize I missed my St. Pancake's Day celebration by a week. Last Monday was the sixth anniversary!
ReplyDeleteWell, I'll have to cook a nice flapjack breakfast in her belated honor tomorrow.
I have pepper foamed a few Tristan's in my time on the road and I expect I have a few more to go before I retire :)
ReplyDeleteWon't post my comment, huh? Too accurate for your taste I suppose. The Palestinians send a tree hugger, Israel sends genocide squads that take out 400 kids. Seems fair to you I guess.
ReplyDeleteSean, I'd have probably posted it had it been anything other than a collection of links. We don't go in for intellectual laziness here. If you have a thought, express it--don't give us someone else's work.
ReplyDeleteBut getting to your argument, There is only one aggressor in that situation and it's the murderers from the territories which the "Palestinians" (really displaced Jordanians but that can call themselves whatever they like) occupy. They're the ones the continue to launch unprovoked attack after unprovoked attack against Israeli civilians, with preferred targets being school buses, day care centers, senior citizen centers, banquet halls where weddings are held, and hospitals. They are savages who target noncombatants all while Israel is willing to sustain them with welfare and even give them a voice in the Israeli Parliament. So yes, when Israel does respond to the attacks and a few of the bomb-makers, snipers and rock throwers or their supporters get their butts handed to them, I don't cry. I cheer because life just got a bit safer for decent Israeli citizens. You seem to forget that Israel is out ally and the Palestinians, particularly those led by Hamas, want us all dead too. And if the Palestinians don't like the way that things are for them, they should probably elect leaders that well accept Israeli peace offerings, or better yet, depart the territories once and for all and just move back to Jordan or anyplace else that will have them. It doesn't have to be the way that it is there, but it is because a few thousand twelfth-century throwbacks won't have it any other way. And if that means that eventually Israel just needs to flatten all of Gaza and kick everybody out, I'm not only good with that, I'm willing to go over and help.
Your apology is accepted. Now how about an apology from Lagniappe himself, for failing to stay in wait for Tristan at the base of the trees at Berkeley?
ReplyDeleteOn the second thought, never mind Lagniappe! They should have sent Travis the Chimpanzee! He could have actually climbed the trees!
To Israel I say keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteTo Sean G,Get back on your medication and off the computer.
Sean G - are you serious? These are people who strap explosives to themselves and blow themselves up in malls, schools and buses! The Paleswinians don't SEND tree huggers. The idiot tree huggers insinuate themselves into a situation they obviously know nothing about - VOLUNTARILY!
ReplyDeleteMuch like you, obviously.
Let us imagine for one moment that our neighbors to the south, Mexico, saw the rise of a movement seeking reunification of Mexico with "American occupied Mexican territory" began acting out over the El Paso, Texas border. Five or ten rockets began to land in Texas daily. What would be our national posture be to such attacks, especially if the Mexican government was either unable or unwilling to stop the attacks?
ReplyDeleteFYI, the current activities of the Mexican drug cartels are even more horrifying. Ultimately, we will need to militarize this border and establish a military fort there. When this happens, we will share some of Israel's pain. We will be set upon by the phony peaceniks screaming racist.
Unfortunately, while drug legalization may be an option in El Paso, Hamas and Hezbollah seek the cleansing of Isreal's non-Islamic population as an option they seek to be legalized. Forgive us ignorant Jews for not allowing ourselves to be marched into the sea. Folk singers and poets love to remember the six million who perished in Europe; How dare we defend ourselves and seek to survive this time around.
Congratulations to Lagnlappe's Lair for providing an island of sanity in a world of pro-Jihad rantings.
I agree with the basic thrust of the comments here, though I do have a lot of sympathy for the parents who are concerned for their child. And I feel bad when anyone gets hurt. But, speaking of Karma, I don't suppose Mr. Anderson thought about the fact that policemen can get injured and/or killed by rock throwing and other activities done during riots. Modern tools of riot dispersal are very humane, at least as practiced by countries such as the USA and Israel (try to throw some rocks at Russian soldiers and see what happens). But sometimes a person or two does get hit or burned by a tear gas cannister or struck by a rubber bullet. There is a big difference between deliberately trying to hurt other people, such as rock throwing rioters and their supporters do, and inadvertently hurting someone as you defend yourself, as the Israelis and American troops do.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Anderson thought he was in the right. But I personally find it easier to forgive the Palestinian Arabs for not realizing that they are being exploited by Islamic imperialists than I do affluent and well educated Americans who subscribe to the lies and half truths promulgated by the Islamists and other totalitarians. Prior to 9/11 I was pretty foggy myself about the Middle Eastern situation and the Islamist threat to the world. When people talked about Islamic terrorists I sort of thought such people were prejudiced against another religion. I woke up after 9/11, not to hatred for Muslims. I don't hate them. Some Muslims are my friends. But I think there is overwhelming evidence that our free democratic (with a small d) republican (with a small r) institutions are under attack by an expansive Islamist imperialist movement, fueled in part by oil revenues. Israel is in no way the inciting reason for that. Oh, it's a big irritant to the Islamists that their billion plus population with all their oil money can't squash tiny little Israel. But if they do squash it, they will just move on all the faster to enslave the rest of us.
I hope and pray that Mr. Anderson recovers and realizes some day that he was doing wrong so that he can attempt to make amends for it.