War is Hell, Not Latte by Jack Engelhard Dec 20, '04
My guess is that if General George S. Patton were still around, he'd be up the road swapping yarns with those crusty characters gathered along the counter at the local Dunkin' Donuts. Imagine someone asking "Old Blood and Guts" how he likes his latte over at Starbucks.
No Cappuccino, either, for General Anthony McAuliffe. He said a bad word when he and his men of the 101st Airborne were surrounded at Bastogne.
"Nuts." That's what he said when the Germans demanded his surrender.
Imagine this today, here or in Israel. Actually, there is nothing to imagine. All over these yuppie salons, they're still sobbing into their Frappuccinos at what that Marine did in Iraq when he came across a terrorist who may or may not have been booby-trapped. Do not praise the Lord, but pass the croissants.
It is quite a stretch between civilians who have to guess between "with or without sugar," and soldiers who have to guess about a terrorist with or without explosives.
We also saw Abu Ghraib, where so many of our espresso-sipping journalists and politicians insisted that we weren't playing fair, weren't playing by the rules, against an enemy that has no rules - except for how much rat poison to place in a bomb meant for American soldiers or Israeli school children.
Israel's Major General Dan Halutz got himself in big trouble when he echoed McAuliffe. He said he slept just fine, slept like a baby, after Arab terrorist leader Salah Shehadeh was killed by a bomb from an Israeli Air Force helicopter, which, however, killed several bystanders who were not terrorists at that moment.
Therefore, Halutz had to stand before Israel's Supreme Court to answer why he wasn't more sympathetic to murderers and more inclined toward Choca Mocha. Israel's High Court Justices demand a kinder, gentler army, a latte army, as meanwhile, over in Iran, those Supreme Court mullahs have convicted a woman of adultery, and the only decision left is whether to hang her or stone her.
Such punishment goes on regularly in Iran and in other parts of that world, but here - mostly silence from the ladies who lunch on high coffee about their sisters in distress.
A Starbucks Generation is upon us, people of refinement and adherents of moral equivalency, and that's perfectly all right, except that as they came into being, so did the Suicide Bombing Generation; and these latter people are more likely to visit Sbarro's in Jerusalem to commit massive bloodshed. (Fifteen Israelis murdered by Arabs, August 9, 2001.)
The difference between Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts is the difference between a poet and a plumber. No offense against poets, but I'll take the plumber when the drains in both showers need unclogging.
This is no knock on Starbucks, either, which percolates at 8,724 locations around the world, but five dollars for a cup of coffee (or thereabouts) means that you're living comfy and have no clue as to what's going on outside; as when George Bush comes to shove a Palestinian terror state down Israel's throat.
He's taking out the terrorists in Iraq, which is good, and moving them into the Jewish State, which is not good, and you don't have to be Jewish to believe that, merely believe that terrorism is bad anywhere; like when they put too much cream in your Caramel Macchiato.
Yes, I am generalizing about the Starbucks crowd, especially when I say, "Real Men don't do Starbucks," and sorry about that, but I'm also sorry that I never did get a decent hot cup of coffee those two times I visited Starbucks in Philly. Give me that Dunkin' Donuts brew any day. Real coffee that fights back, that's what I want. Does it get any hotter in Jerusalem?
Most likely so, if Israeli soldiers make you play the violin. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? "Practice, practice," Jascha Heifetz told a visitor, according to legend.
The Starbucks people over there, in Israel, and actually everywhere, got all upset when, at a checkpoint near Nablus, some IDF guys allegedly made an Arab do Heifetz to prove that the case he was carrying really had a violin inside, as opposed to the same kind of case that carried the bomb that blew up Sbarro's. How do you get to Sbarro's? (This skill - of murder - they do keep practicing.)
Well, you should have heard the weeping, even as it turned out that this fiddler had volunteered to fiddle. Not good enough for Israel's Human Rights Ladies, the ladies of the fanatical Left who find nothing but rights for Arab terrorists and nothing but wrongs for Israeli victims.
They made such a stink, against their own people, that it reached all around the world and touched CNN's Wolf (in sheep's clothing) Blitzer, who reminded us that Jews were made to play the violin for the Nazis. This is the same CNN where its editor-in-chief, Eason Jordan, admitted, in the New York Times, that for years his network held back the truth about Arab atrocities for the safety of its reporters. (There's your media manipulation in a nutshell.)
Surely they mean well, these genteel souls who are imbedded at Starbucks, but do they know what's up? Over in San Francisco, the Chronicle newspaper prepared a group of kids for a Spelling Bee by reminding them that "disproportionate" is spelled "Israeli retaliation". Israel, as the Chronicle would have it, is not allowed to protect itself. How do you spell "anti-Semitism"?
Our man in Israel, Steven Plaut, is up against his own tenured academics who ride with the terrorists. Plaut is a professor himself, and a terrific writer to boot, and for exercising his freedom to speak openly, he's been taken to court to clamp him down. Plaut keeps telling it straight against those enemies who come from our own house and family.
That's his war. That's our war. Praise the Lord... and pass me that glazed donut.
