Civilization's Hit Man

Darn that Marc Schulman. Not only does he live in paradise, he has the leisure time to read far more in a day than I do. How else to explain how he consistently uncovers gems like this column from Saul Singer, editorial-page editor of the Jerusalem Post, about the shabby triangulation of Europe, Israel and pre-nuclear Iran::

What a perfect arrangement: The only country that every country has a right to condemn can be relied upon to do the world’s dirty work. This is the underlying mindset as the West contemplates a nuclear Iran. When push comes to shove, the Israeli air force will take care of the problem, so the world can go into spasms of righteous indignation while enjoying the fireworks.

[ . . . ] why is little Israel being left to fight the world’s war? The answer is not just that life’s unfair. The real answer is that the enlightened post-modern European refusal to lift a finger — let alone a gun — to defend itself is consigning us all to a dark age of terrorism and war.

The irony here is that it is precisely those who claim to believe most in a borderless world ruled by international law who are ushering in a new Hobbesian era. How is one to explain Europe’s obsession with the United Nations on the one hand, and its emasculation of the principles on which that organization was founded?

If Europe, through the U.N. and in partnership with the U.S., simply followed the U.N. Charter, we would be living in a very different world today. That charter (Ch. 1, Art. 1, Para. 1, first sentence) states the U.N.’s purpose: “To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace…” (emphasis added).