Thursday, September 13, 2012

The American Exception

Mitt-blower Kevin D. Williamson:
How to respond to the attacks on U.S. diplomatic interests in the Muslim world? One especially appropriate tool we have at hand involves the State Department itself: the issuance of visas. If the Egyptians cannot bring themselves to behave like civilized human beings, then there is no reason to extend to them the benefits of international norms that they have no intention of respecting.

[...]

To my mind, the best thing about using visas as a sanction tool is that doing so hits the ruling elites in a very sensitive area. They want to send their children to Stanford, attend conferences at Harvard, do business in Houston, and send their mistresses shopping on Fifth Avenue, just like members of any other ruling elite in the world. We should categorically cut them off. Let Egypt’s best and brightest spend their days in their dreary and backward homeland; perhaps that would provide them with an appropriate incentive for improving the place.
Oh yeah, everyone wants to do business in Houston. I guess this would work because there are no other countries or schools or business districts or shopping opportunities in the world that are attractive to rich people.

12 comments:

Hamish Mack said...

How to respond to the attacks on U.S. diplomatic interests in the Muslim world?... the issuance of visas. If the Egyptians, BLAH BLAH BLAH.
From Muslims to Egyptians in a single bound. Tough luck to you Copts! Maybe you should be nastier to the Moozelims?

Substance McGravitas said...

Gee, I wonder when the Canadian embassy is closing.

Hamish Mack said...

Mr Harper will have his butt plug alarm set on max. sensitivity and be ready to do whutevah he's told, I'm thinking.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Who cares, you can always get a MasterCard instead.
~

mikey said...

What, you didn't see the video?

The attackers in Cairo pulled up in chauffeured black Benzes, dressed in Savile Row soots and escorted by a top-notch Belgian security detail.

We clearly have no option left but to direct as many indignities and deprivations as we possibly can directly at the wealthiest and most powerful Egyptians in order to punish them for sacking our embassy.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Better to go after the Lebanese, mikey.
~

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Oh yeah, everyone wants to do business in Houston.

Milano's on Houston St is one of NYC's great dive bars. Hey, wait a second...

Smut Clyde said...

one of NYC's great dive bars

NYC is underwater? WE WARNED YOU about global warming.

Smut Clyde said...

The attackers in Cairo pulled up in chauffeured black Benzes, dressed in Savile Row soots

Perhaps Kevin Williamson believes that mass movements & demonstrations do not arise spontaneously but need to be astroturfed by a moneyed elite. I do not know how he could have gained that impression.

M. Bouffant said...

Poor Gyppos don't have any oil, so there's no reason for them to do any beeznis in Houston.

Substance McGravitas said...

They've got a little, and natural gas too. When you're flying over the eastern part of it you can see that a lot of the hills are shale, a telltale for oil, because the sand blown off the top of them stretches out along the path of the wind like a plume of soot.

M. Bouffant said...

Well, not (yet) enough to make it worth installing another dictator.