18 December 2003

Ok, so it's not the career that's the root cause

Everyone seems to be linking to this interview with John Rhys-Davies, who plays Gimli in the movie trilogy Lord of the Rings. The reason is thatMr. Rhys Davies comes off as having a working brain and a good awareness of reality, unlike so many of his fellow thespians. I’ve been trying to avoid paying attention to celebreties because the fault is not that they’re stupid but that others pretend their words have significance. However, Mr. Rhys-Davies gets beyond the “it’s not that the pig sings well, but that it sings” stage so I will cite him as well.

I mean… the abolition of slavery comes from Western democracy. True Democracy comes form our Greco-Judeo-Christian-Western experience. If we lose these things, then this is a catastrophe for the world. […] There is a change happening in the very complexion of Western civilization in Europe that we should think about at least and argue about. If it just means the replacement of one genetic stock with another genetic stock, that doesn’t matter too much. But if it involves the replacement of Western civilization with a different civilization with different cultural values, then it is something we really ought to discuss […]

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That was then, this is now

[source]

Saddam Hussein has long been an obsession for the world, and particularly the United States. Yet Iraq was so cut off from the outside that it was impossible for anyone — including, it seems, American intelligence officials — to get a clear picture of who he really was… George W. Bush’s Saddam Hussein was both vicious and efficient — a combination that made him a clear and imminent threat to international security. He not only had the will to harm his neighbors and the United States, he had the means. He was rapidly expanding an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons while steadily moving closer to becoming a nuclear power. He was so clever and well organized that he might surprise the world with nuclear weapons at any time. And although his regime was a secular one, it was so single-minded in its anti-Americanism that it was undoubtedly working with the radical Islamist terrorists of Al Qaeda.

New York Times editorial, December 17, 2003.

Mr. Bush’s blunt assessment of the Iraqi threat and the need for a firm, united response by the United Nations were well put. Iraq, with its storehouses of biological toxins, its advanced nuclear weapons program, its defiance of international sanctions and its ambitiously malignant dictator, is precisely the kind of threat that the United Nations was established to deal with. Betting on the good faith of Saddam Hussein or trusting that the problem will fade away is unrealistic. As Mr. Bush said, after a decade of Iraqi defiance the U.N. faces a defining moment and a test of its purpose and resolve.

New York Times editorial, September 13, 2002.

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