Paying Homage to the Fox and the Hedgehog of Cabaret
By WILL FRIEDWALD
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This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
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COP KILLERS FOR KERRY Well, maybe not quite for Senator Kerry, but against President Bush anyway. Mumia Abu-Jamal, the murderer of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner and a hero of the extreme left and the French, has an article in Workers World, the newspaper of the eponymous “independent Marxist” party, in which he declares that “President Bush’s cowboy-style diplomacy, and the slick way he promised to govern one way only to actually govern another, has grated on people, until many just want to see him quietly pass into retirement.” But Abu-Jamal is skeptical of Mr. Kerry’s central foreign-policy argument: One of Kerry’s selling points is his plan to appeal to Europe to give a hand to the American colonial project in Iraq, instead of the cold shoulder which the Bush regime has received since the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But plans are one thing; obstacles, another. Nations don’t deal with other nations because they like or dislike a nation’s leader. They deal with others based on the guiding light of self-interest. As the British Viscount Palmerston (H.J.Temple, 1784-1865) intoned in the British House of Commons in 1848: “We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and these interests, it is our duty to follow.” When, or if, a President Kerry speaks softly and perhaps in French, to Europeans, seeking an infusion of European troops into the rolling ruins of a burning Iraq, he will hear a polite yet firm response: “Pardon! Monsieur Kerry – mais non!” (“Sorry, Mr. Kerry – but no!”) Saying so makes us feel somewhat unclean, but Abu-Jamal is on to something. Of course his sympathies lie with those who oppose America; sounding like Patrick Buchanan, he says, “What the nation needs is not a new face, but a new policy – an anti-imperialist policy.” We, on the other hand, would like to see America pursue its own interests and ideals – with allies if possible, without them if necessary. That’s why we’re uneasy about Mr. Kerry: When the so-called allies say mais non, we’re not sure we trust him to do the right thing despite them.
By WILL FRIEDWALD
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By SEBASTIAN DOGGART
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By THE NEW YORK SUN
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By THE NEW YORK SUN
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By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
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By JENNIFER DOHERTY
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By A.R. HOFFMAN
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By BENNY AVNI
|COP KILLERS FOR KERRY Well, maybe not quite for Senator Kerry, but against President Bush anyway. Mumia Abu-Jamal, the murderer of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner and a hero of the extreme left and the French, has an article in Workers World, the newspaper of the eponymous “independent Marxist” party, in which he declares that “President Bush’s cowboy-style diplomacy, and the slick way he promised to govern one way only to actually govern another, has grated on people, until many just want to see him quietly pass into retirement.” But Abu-Jamal is skeptical of Mr. Kerry’s central foreign-policy argument: One of Kerry’s selling points is his plan to appeal to Europe to give a hand to the American colonial project in Iraq, instead of the cold shoulder which the Bush regime has received since the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But plans are one thing; obstacles, another. Nations don’t deal with other nations because they like or dislike a nation’s leader. They deal with others based on the guiding light of self-interest. As the British Viscount Palmerston (H.J.Temple, 1784-1865) intoned in the British House of Commons in 1848: “We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and these interests, it is our duty to follow.” When, or if, a President Kerry speaks softly and perhaps in French, to Europeans, seeking an infusion of European troops into the rolling ruins of a burning Iraq, he will hear a polite yet firm response: “Pardon! Monsieur Kerry – mais non!” (“Sorry, Mr. Kerry – but no!”) Saying so makes us feel somewhat unclean, but Abu-Jamal is on to something. Of course his sympathies lie with those who oppose America; sounding like Patrick Buchanan, he says, “What the nation needs is not a new face, but a new policy – an anti-imperialist policy.” We, on the other hand, would like to see America pursue its own interests and ideals – with allies if possible, without them if necessary. That’s why we’re uneasy about Mr. Kerry: When the so-called allies say mais non, we’re not sure we trust him to do the right thing despite them.
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