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AFGHANISTAN: Bellicose commentators (Ronald Hilton, USA, 09/22/01 12:59 am)

In commenting on the letter from Marga Jann, I said the spirit of Curtis Lemay was dead. Bill Cortes shows that I was mistaken:

"For sheer bombast, it doesn't get any wilder than in Howard Kurtz's column in last Thursday's Washington Post, "Commentators are Quick to Beat Their Pens into Swords". Most of the really silly ideas you can imagine: bombs and more bombs. But he also reminds us of the footage of exuberantly celebrating Palestinians from last week, footage that Mrs. Ashwari denied represented the feelings of Palestinians and was unfair coverage. [See my posting on this topic] He notes that a Mr. Ibrahim Hooper of something called the Council on American-Islamic Relations is quoted as replying "If you don't want negative things to show up in the media, don't do negative things." Maybe they need more people like Mr. Hooper in the Palestinian Authority.

But even sensible people like Ann Coulter, eulogizing her friend Barbara Olson in Thursday's National Review Online, are calling for actions difficult to comprehend: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." And here's David Gelernter: "If you don't (hand Bin Laden over), we'll declare war and systematically destroy everything you own, every building and field, every shop and sheep in Afghanistan, one by one, until you hand the man over or there's nothing left."

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