Sigmund, Carl and Alfred

Convoluted logic.

France defended on Thursday its decision to send fighter jets to attack rebel forces in the Central African Republic, saying it was helping to maintain stability but its forces there had only a supporting role.

French Mirage F1 jets have repeatedly intervened in the past two weeks as government forces struggled to repel rebels they say entered the northeast from Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.

“Yes we are preoccupied by stability in the region. Yes we want to ensure that those who seek to destabilise the region cannot achieve their objectives,” defence ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said when asked about the attacks.

“If we did nothing, the Darfur crisis would spread to the whole region,” he told a weekly news conference.

France has about 300 troops stationed in the CAR to provide logistical and intelligence support, and to help plan and conduct operations without taking part in any fighting.

France also has troops stationed in neighbouring Chad, which also borders Darfur.

“We have made commitments to Chad and Central African Republic, and it is clear that we will not shirk our commitments,” Bureau said.

Asked whether the French jets had used bombs rather than guns against the rebel forces, armed forces spokesman Christophe Prazuck simply said they had that option.

“The Mirage F1s that support the Central African Republic armed forces can be equipped with guns or bombs, and they use the instruments that are at their disposal depending on the situation,” he told reporters.

“If we did nothing, the Darfur crisis would spread to the whole region…”

That is exactly the logic employed by the Israelis as they face down terror in the face of Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.

Suppose for a moment that the 9/11 attack in NY and the 7/11 attack in London were terror attacks that employed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Suppose that after those attacks, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair took to the airwaves and told everyone to go on with their lives and their daily routines. Go to the supermarket, go to the movies and go to the malls. Never mind the gas, biological or nuclear attacks- go on with your lives as if nothing happened. Don’t let the terrorists win.

Of course, that notion is absurd, right? No President or Prime Minister would address their respective nation’s with such inappropriate remarks. Any address to the nation would be far more direct and would elicit a promise to protect the nation from further attacks, at all costs. That would be the appropriate and expected response from our leaders.

That response never came, because rather than deal with the truth, that if given the chance, our adversaries would happily use chemical. biological or radiation weapons without any hesitation. Instead, we were told to ‘get on with our lives.‘ Don’t let the events of 9/11 or 7/11 change the way we see the world.

Suppose someone was attacked with a knife. Suppose the perpetrator made it clear that his intent was to kill. Should our response be, “Well, he couldn’t get hold of a gun, so let’s cut him a break”?

That is exactly what happened on 9/11 and 7/11.

The terror events in New York, Madrid and London proved one thing. There are radical Islamists who are committed to killing as many kaffirs as they can. Those same terror events proved something else. For some reason it is we, and not the terrorists, that differentiates between the terror methods. We seem to measure the technology used in the terror and killings, as a measurement of the seriousness of the threat.

That is a kind of denial. It is like saying a homicidal maniac with a knife who kills his wife and kids is a lesser threat than the homicidal maniac across the street who first managed to get hold of a machine gun- and used it to kill his wife and kids.

We are in effect saying that 9/11 and 7/11 weren’t so terrible because chemical, biological or nuclear weapons weren’t involved. We seem to be saying that using less sophisticated weapons is somehow less evil.

Well, that is a problem- a very big problem.

To add insult to injury, even as we fight our ‘war on terror,‘ choreographed so as to be as PC as possible, we seem to need to apologize in advance, in case our motives (the preservation of democracy) are ‘misunderstood.’ We seem to have the need to explain that freedom trumps totalitarianism, bigotry and racism- as if that were really necessary. On the other hand, we prop up and support corrupt regimes, out of necessity- and we pretend that those regimes are morally equivalent to our own.

We are put in a defensive position, having to explain to much of the Arab world that we are not responsible for their degradations and that we are not responsible for the hundreds of billions squandered and stolen by their leaders. We have to explain that neither we, nor Israel, are responsible for their abject poverty, failed economies and medieval educational systems. We have been put in this untenable position because we are seen as ambiguous when it comes to evil. It is because of that silence that we are asked to sit down with leaders of some of the most dysfunctional and corrupt nations in the history of mankind. We are expected to pretend that their blatant racism, bigotry and hatred are acceptable. We are asked to sit down with leaders of regimes that are comfortable with media, education and religious outlets that demand their citizens ‘finish the job Hitler started.’

We are told that UN votes excoriating us or Israel, or in direct opposition to our values and to what we believe, are the barometer of how wrong and disliked we are. Many of these votes are cast by representatives of regimes that have never extended the privilege of fair and unimpeded voting to their own nations. That the UN has deprived millions upon million of people of help, because of UN greed and corruption, is nothing more than ‘business as usual.’

So as to prove our worth, we tell our adversaries- those who condone, fund and support terror- that we will give them $50 billion dollars in aid, to prove our honorable intentions.

If we sit down with the Iranians and Syrians, we will have become like the Saudis, trying to buy our way out becoming a terror target- a policy that will insure blackmail for generations to come.

Sitting down with the Iranians and Syrians, or even negotiating a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, has nothing to do with eliminating terror or American standing and credibility in the Middle East.

Expecting an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord to restore Arab dignity is like expecting a new pair of pants to bestow a medical degree on the wearer.

We have noted

Terror has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with ideologies. It is true that the terrorists will use the terms ‘economic disadvantages’ as part of their justification for their outrage, but that is all for show. If they really cared about the economically disadvantaged, they would build businesses and fund opportunities. They would not build bombs and fund terror.

If the Arab world really wanted to solve it’s own problems- and salvage their ‘honor’ in the process- they need to look not to Israel or the terrorists adopting a religious mantle, but rather, they need look into their own backyards.

As we have noted elsewhere, there are other truths that must be reckoned with, not the least of which is that dealing with the Iranians and Syrians when comes to the situation in Iraq is irrelevant when it comes to terror.

Why is that? Because in truth, terror is not brought on by poverty… Hostages are not taken and held, to be traded for economic aid. Planes aren’t flown into buildings in response to GDP of the free markets of the western world versus the GDP of the many tyrannies of the Muslim world. In fact, the terrorists aims are deliberately misrepresented by the much of the left. The terrorists don’t want to see western values and successes brought into the Muslim world. Indeed, that is what they are fighting against… Radical Islamist….ideology demands the murder of those whose behavior they find offensive- usually administred in a cruel and brutal fashion…

If the terrorists, their supporters and apologists really wanted to better the lives of their own, they would use America and the west as a model for success. They would not seek to destroy those countries. They would not seek to destroy the freedoms that brought that success.

We have no need to apologize for who we are and the freedoms we represent, simply because this time, those who attacked us did not resort to using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Their intent was clear on the day they attacked us here in the US, in Madrid and in London. Their intentions are no different than those terrorists who attack Israeli civilians.

If we want to defeat terror, we must fight against it- with words and weapons. Make no mistake- the Homeland is as much on the front line as are the battlegrounds in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More later on what all this has to do with The Baker-Hamilton Report.

Looking for a change? A while back we posted on the Heart Attack Grill (”Food worth dying for”).

At the request of the Times of London food editor, SC&A have embarked on year long trek to uncover America’s finest eateries, those that are off the beaten path and a breath of fresh culinary air.

If the humdrum Tex-Mex has become a bore, consider the Czech-Tex Steakhouse- BBQ-Bakery!

If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, make your way to the home of chicken fried bacon and the 2 lb breakfast steak.