The Review
MONA CHAREN writes about our "sophisticated"
European cousins:
"Europe is shaming itself. Across the continent, crowds fill the streets demonstrating against Israel. Synagogues are burning all over France. Old anti-Semitic imagery and language is resurfacing. The Italian newspaper La Stampa ran a cartoon featuring an Israeli tank pointing its muzzle at the crib of baby Jesus with the tag line, 'Don't tell me they want to kill me again.' "
BILL O'REILLY's advice to us is to pray for peace...
but polish the weapons.
DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL heaps some
well-deserved criticism on the Bush Administration for its inconsistent stand against terrorism.
GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS writes in Legal Affairs that legal scholars are
rethinking the Second Amendment, and that a growing body of opinion is that the Founders DID mean to provide an individual right to keep and bear arms.
The idea that the Second Amendment doesn't protect an individual right is a creature of the 20th century. Prior to that, an individual right to bear arms was unquestioned. So, it's good news to hear that the legal community is coming back to this view.
It's ALWAYS a good thing when individual liberty is recognized. I am not afraid of freedom. I am, however, afraid of those that are.
FINALLY! After 19 months of suicide bombings, YASSER ARAFAT
finally condemned terrorism--in Arabic. It took over a year and a half--and an Israeli invasion--to get him to do it, but he's finally done it.
Of course, the only question now is to see if he means it.
WorldNet Daily is reporting that Palestinian suicide bombers tried to
blow up COLIN POWELL's motorcade when he arrived in Israel.
Yeah, I know, it's WorldNet Daily, so, whatever.
It's hard to belive that anybody would be THAT stupid. It'll be interesting to see if there's any confirmation of that from reliable sources.
FOUAD AJAMI writes in today's Wall Street Journal that, although Arab despots threaten chaos,
they're bluffing:
"We can't impose a "settlement" of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle: That would be hubris. And we can't fall for the myth that Palestine is what ails Egypt, for example, or Iraq, and that al Qaeda's adherents are driven also by the passions of Palestine. We can't hold our own war hostage to Arafat's campaign of terror. That world is what it is, and we shall not be given a warrant for a strike against Iraq, or a reprieve from anti-Americanism, by accommodating Arafat or the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
"There is a truth we should know: In the Arab world that beckons American power and hectors it at the same time, there are people terrified that the young men--and now young women--of terror may yet prevail. In the aftermath of victory in Afghanistan, these people saw prospects of deliverance. We owe them and ourselves fidelity to this new campaign. We need to reiterate to them that the truth of this campaign against terror holds in Netanya and Kabul, and that the way out of political ruin is an Arab break, once and for all, with the false consolations of terror."
Our European cousins, for all their sophistication and toleration, seem to be having trouble with
Anti-Semitic violence, writes JOHN PODHORETZ. In the past two weeks, "Synagogues have been firebombed in France, Finland, Ottawa and, just yesterday, in Tunisia. A school bus filled with Jewish children was bombarded with stones outside Paris and a Jewish shopkeeper was shot and killed near Toulouse. A Hasidic Jew was brutalized on the streets of London. A pro-Palestinian protest in Calgary featured thousands of demonstrators chanting "Death to Jews" in Arabic."
I just love it when the Europeans lecture us about how "simplistic" WE are.
The Russian Republic is
raking in the money from their new 13% flat income tax.
Last year, Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN replaced the republic's confiscatory tax rates with the low, 13% flat tax. As a result, revenue shot up by 47% last year. Early results for 2002 look even better.
Now, I'm not a supply-sider, but the Laffer curve IS a real phenomenon. At high tax rates, the government loses revenue. People simply avoid paying what they feel to be excessive taxation. By massively cutting tax rates, huge numbers of people are declaring thier income, going back on the tax rolls, and revenues from taxation are shooting up.
High marginal tax rates deprive the government of income. It was true when JOHN KENNEDY said it in 1962, and its still true today.
The IRS has mistakenly paid out $30 million in
"slavery tax credits". Such a tax credit doesn't exist.
It could have been worse. Last year 77,000 people filed tax returns claiming the slavery tax credit, claiming a total of $2.7 billion.
Now, here's an
interesting picture of former generals COLIN POWELL and ARIEL SHARON together.
Guess which one has been keeping up with his army physical exercise program...
German Chancellor GERHARD SCHROEDER is
going to court to stop news agencies from implying he dyes his lustrous brown hair.
Well. With all the trouble in the world, it's good to see the German leader has a sense of proportion about what's really important.
Commerce Secretary DON EVANS spoke to the Press today about the Bush Administrations trade "policy". RAMESH PONNURU writes that
the explanations offered were essentially a load of tripe.
Free Trade lowers prices and increases choice for consumers. Tariffs increase prices, and reduce choice for consumers. Not only is this not rocket science, it has, over the last 170 years, become almost the unanimous opinion of the economic community.
So far, the Bush Administration, despite its claims to belive in free trade has, at every point a decision on trade has been necessary, slapped tariffs on foreign goods. To date, the Administration has levied trade restrictions on steel, lumber, and textiles.
Not only is that bad economic policy, it is a direct violation of GEORGE W. BUSH's campaign promises.
Rep. CYNTHIA McKINNEY (D-GA) has
accused the Bush Administration of knowing about the 9/11 attacks in advance, and doing nothing to stop them.
This is the same person, by the way, who tried to curry up to BANDAR BIN SULTAN, Saudi Arabia's Ambassador, to see if he would give her the money returned by the city of New York after his intemperate comments.
Some people are just dumber than a bag of hammers.
NASA is going to try to
send another teacher into space.
I hope it works out better than it did the last time.
COLIN POWELL has
postponed his meeting with YASSER ARAFAT, the Nobel peace prize-winning father of modern terrorism. Arafat, it seems, is refusing to condemn the suicide bombings in Arabic, despite the soothing mouth noises he makes for Western consumption.
This should not, for the clearer-minded, come as any surprise. Arafat likes the suicide bombings. And as far as he's concerned, they're working for him. He has provoked the Israelis in response, and moral cripples in the Western world condemn the Israelis for responding.
Arafat is an evil man. He has the blood of scores of Israelis--and Americans--on his hands, yet we treat him as if he were a legitimate leader, rather than the evil scum he is.
MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS, professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College, argues that
Israel must finish the job is has started if it expects to have security.
The LA Times os of the opinion that
penalizing the PLO would be misguided.
The trouble is that granting concession to the PLO hasn't worked out very well either. Evenetually, you have to realize that concessions are no longer useful, and try a bit of the stick, as well as the carrot.
While I don't agree with everything he says, MUBARAK AWAD has a very strong point when he says that Palestinians should use
a non-violent strategy against Israel if they want an independent state.
Demcratic states have historically been unable to stand up to non-violent resistance. Israel would be no different. But as long as they perceive a threat to their existence from the Palestinians, the struggle will not end.
While we try to figure out what to do about SADDAM HUSSEIN,
he is not waiting. Hussein is a threat to any peace in the Mideast. Whatever we're going to do, we'd better do quickly.
Once again, VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
asks the uncomfortable questions that too few people seem interested in answering.
SETH GITELL writes that, despite the loss of several soldiers,
the battle of Jenin appears to have been a significant victory for Israel. They cleaned out a whole nest of Hamas operatives.
MORTON KONDRAKE
is exactly right in his opinion column for Roll Call.
Secretary of State COLIN POWELL needs to tell YASSER ARAFAT that this is his last chance. Everybody has bent over backward to appease this guy, and all we've gotten in return is butchery. IF he doesn't come around, then it's time we do the Pontius Pilate bit and wash our hands of him.
The UN is celebrating the new
International Criminal Court this week.
This is a bad thing. The court will claim jurisdiction over anyone, anywhere in the world. It will not be subject to any country's government or legislature. It will operate without supervision or oversight. And forget about appeals.
Oh, yeah, and, just like the UN Human Rights Commission, jurists from such famously just nations such as Cuba and Syria will sit in judgement of people from democratic nations with well-polished legal systems of their own.
The UN might be a great idea in world full of democracies, where human rights are universally respected. But that isn't the world we live in.
If you think an unfettered court that defines its own rules of discretion will not very soon begin abusing that power, especially in the hands of representatives of dictators, then you are a fool.
UN Secretary General KOFI ANNAN is upset about the
humanitarian crisis caused, of course, by Israel's actions.
Mr. Annan neglects to mention any responsibility that YASSER ARAFAT may have for formenting suicide bombings.
TAREK E. MASOUD
tells it like it is in today's Wall Street Journal:
"But of course, as Thomas Friedman and others have pointed out, the choice before the Palestinians is not between liberty and death. Israel's leaders long ago accepted the logic of a Palestinian state; they put forward proposals for what that state would look like, and they haggled with the Palestinians over these proposals. Whatever one wants to say about the quality of Israeli proposals or the personal commitment of Ariel Sharon to a Palestinian state--and I happen to think both were fairly low--surely the Palestinians were not in a hopeless situation, the kind of situation which, we are told, causes sane men and women to fall into murder and suicide?
"And, even if the situation were hopeless, if all the options were exhausted, is there ever a justification for the murder of innocent civilians? The philosopher Michael Walzer recently argued that those who claim to have tried everything before resorting to terror are lying to us and to themselves. He asks, "What exactly did they try when they were trying everything?" There's always something else you can do short of killing.
"But many of the most vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause would rather not address these moral issues. Instead they want only to criticize Ariel Sharon. Even if you cringe, as I do, at reports of mass arrests and the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, Mr. Sharon is right about one thing: There is no difference between the murder-suicides perpetrated in the name of Palestinian statehood and Osama bin Laden's attacks on American civilians. You cannot, as many pro-Palestinian groups in this country have done, denounce the latter and justify the former. Those who do invite us to question either the sincerity of their denunciations of Sept. 11 or their capacity for moral consistency."
The PLO has been
kicked out of it's offices in Washington DC. HASSAN ABDEL RAHMAN, the PLO's chief representative says it's all about politics. The eviction is part of an effort "to isolate and shut off the Palestinian voice." In effect, the landlord said, "No, we don't want you," Rahman said.
The landlord said the PLO was in arrears in its rent payments over an extended period for the second time in less than a year.
In other words, it ISN'T about politics. Not that PLO lies on this--or any other--subject come as any surprise.
COLIN POWELL says
he's optimististic about Mideast peace talks this week.
Well. Good for him. A man's reach should exceed his grasp.
The Washington Post reports that ARIEL SHARON
is losing the support of the White House. Well, perhaps he is. But if that's true, I think that says more about the White House, and its lack of moral clarity, that it does about Sharon.
Sure, Sharon is a hard-line guy, and he doesn't go for half measures. But the fact remains that if it were Americans who were being blown up every day in cities around the country, the Bush administration would find whoever was responsible and PUNISH them, and anyone who supported them.
Remember Afghanistan?
Yet, somehow when Israel does it, they have to show restraint that we are unwilling to show when it's our turn in the barrel.
GEORGE W. BUSH seems to be floundering. He can't figure out whether he wants free trade, he can't figure out that YASSER ARAFAT is a terrorist who runs a terrorist state, he can't figure out who are friends are, and who our enemies are in the region, he can't figure out the difference between reproductive cloning and cloning for medical research...In fact, there are a lot of things he seems to be having trouble figuring out.
The American people are noticing this, too, and I suspect that's why his approval ratings are starting to drop.
RONALD RADOSH writes that the American student Left have become
pro-Palestinian propagandists. He has some questions about the student Left:
"Where are the condemnations by Shapiro and others on the student Left of the mass repression and brutality practiced by Saddam Hussein and the others? Where is their concern for the security of the average Israeli, whose very ability to live and function is threatened by daily acts of terrorism? For that matter, where is their condemnation of the terrorist acts themselves? What are they personally doing to urge the Palestinian "resistance" they support to stop the suicide bombings?"
ARIEL SHARON has told GEORGE W. BUSH to
back off. The Israelis are going to do what they feel they have to do.
Good for them.
JEREMY RIFKIN, famed doomsayer, writes in the LA Times that
the pressure is on for the Arabs to play the oil card.
The last time they did that, in the 1970s, he writes, "Oil prices quadrupled, motorists waited in long lines at filling stations and the global economy began to slide into a prolonged recession."
Well, yes, that did happen, and that was largely the result of US policy to ration oil, creating an ARTIFICIAL shortage, high prices, and subsequent economic slump. In point of fact, the amount of available oil in the US was almost exactly the same as it was before the Arab embargo. Flawed economic policy was the cause of those problems, not a reduction in the actual amount of oil. Yet, Mr. Rifkin is apparently unaware that this was figured out by the economic community years ago.
In any event, the Arabs would find it much more difficult to embargo oil today. Without that revenue, they cannot support their populations in the manner to which they have become accustomed, nor can they afford to pay for the upkeep of their infrastructure, or to buy off domestic political forces which might be sources of political instability.
I suspect the possibility is smaller than Mr. Rifkin makes it out to be.
DAVID CLARK, a former Special Advisor to the British Foreign Office writes in the Guardian that
some myths need to be shattered in order to get the Israelis and Palestinians to play nicely.
Unsurprisingly, these illusions are, he thinks, mainly Israeli ones. He sets aside a single sentence in which to criticize the Palestinians, saying, "The Palestinians clung to maximalist demands on refugee returns in the hope that demographics would allow them to rewrite the past."
He makes no mention of terrorism, or suicide bombers.
MAUREEN DOWD has written
yet another insipid column, this time complaining that men don't want to marry successful women, but women want to marry successful men. And that's just wrong, she "thinks".
As if we needed it, this article is more proof that journalists have the barest inkling of science. It never seems to have occurred to Ms. Dowd that there may be a really simple explanation for this. In the ancestral environment in which we evolved, females were attracted to powerful males, because settling for a mate that was insufficiently able to protect her was a possible death sentence. By the same token, males were attracted to females that seemed to offer domestic abilities and fecundity.
As fascinating as I'm sure it is, four years of feminist poetry at Brown aren't quite enough to overcome 5 billion years of evolution.
Ms. Dowd, of course, must believe that gender is a social construct. The truth is that social constructs are informed by human nature, not the reverse. Human nature is not the result of the society in which we live, but rather the environment in which we evolved.
She laments that career women who try to find a husband and start raising a family at 35 have a tough time of it. Well, yeah, they do. Most people get married in their early 20s, when males are at the height of their sexual drive, and females are at the height of their fecundity. This is not the result of the anti-female patriarchy, as Ms. Dowd seems to belive, but the result of evolutionary drives to mate and have children at the appropriate age.
Ms. Dowd then also spends the last few paragraphs of here article describing the gentility of the bonobo monkey society, in which females are dominant, or at least, codominant with males. Which is all very interesting, but Ms. Dowd appears unaware that the female bonobos didn't hold a Seneca Falls convention to declare their equality. They EVOLVED that way.
Just like we did.
National Review editor RICH LOWRY
writes:
"The Bush administration may comfort itself by thinking that in recent weeks it has only made tactical concessions. In fact, however, it has established an important principle: that a few street protests and howls from Arab governments can serve to stifle American power, to make its leaders reverse themselves and generally seem confused and weak.
"This means that the Arab governments have a positive incentive to stay dissatisfied with anything the administration does. Their very dissatisfaction amounts to important leverage. They certainly have watched it worked wonders in recent weeks.
"If you believe in the Arab governments' good faith, perhaps the administration can do something to satisfy them. If not, every concession the administration makes will only set the predicate for the next concession, which has been the dynamic of the last three weeks.
"Unless Bush manages to draw a line in the sand somewhere, the rolling may have just begun."
That is an accurate analysis. Concessions to the feelings of the Arab world have been--and will remain--essentially worthless. As I pointed out a few weeks ago, negotiations and concessions are useless unless the other side is willing to negotiate as well. Failing that, all you are doing is accomplishing the other sides goals for them.
ARIEL COHEN points out that YASSER ARAFAT and SADDAM HUSSEIN are
playing the terrorism game together:
"Arafat is playing the role of Saddam's subcontractor for this bloody diversion, while Arab rulers, especially Prince Abdullah, and the Europeans, have become the enablers of Saddam and Arafat, with their policy of murder and human sacrifice."
From Hussein's point of view, trouble in the West Bank keeps the US too occupied to bother with him. Arafat gets to kill Jews--which is, after all, what he has done his whole life--and perhaps get an autarky of his own from which he can, as he has already done in the Palestinian Authority, skim off all the profits he can.
Why the Israelis didn't bump Arafat off YEARS ago, I don't know.
ERIC FETTMAN writes in today's NY Post that, while there are all sorts of complaints about Israeli "defiance" of GEORGE W. BUSH, no one seems to be complaining about
Arab defiance.
The Arab leaders are, after all, the ones who refused to define terrorism in such a way as to include terrorist acts against Israel. The Arab leaders ore the one's who are uniting behind SADDAM HUSSEIN to express disapproval of any American Action there. The Arab leaders are the ones who have ignored ARIEL SHARON's call for face-to-face meetings.
But, I guess they get a pass.
Note to the Europeans: Now I really understand how you guys let Adof Hitler run roughshod over you.
A state appeals court in Ohio says the state's
ban on concealed weapons is unconstitutional.
Forty-three states allow concealed weapons in some form, And both conservative JOHN LOTT and liberal GARY KLECK have shown fairly convincingly that states that allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons have less violent crime, for obvious reasons.
And, of course, even a casual look at post-gun ban Britain and Australia shows that violent crime has risen sharply since implementing those bans.
While others will certainly disagree, I believe that free citizens should be allowed to protect themselves.
In today's Washington Post, CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER is raising the spector of
Hezbollah launching Armageddon from southern Lebanon:
"Hezbollah is armed with 8,000 Katyusha rockets. Practically all of northern Israel lies under its guns. They are ready for firing. Hezbollah's spiritual leader, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, threatened Monday to hit Haifa with Katyusha rockets if Israel dared to respond to Hezbollah attacks.
"Were that to happen, the northern front would explode. Israel has been sending urgent messages through the United Nations and the United States that it would not tolerate such aggression. It would be forced to counterattack -- on Lebanon, on Syrian army positions in Lebanon and possibly on Syria itself, Syria being Hezbollah's boss and patron.
"Syria could not withstand such an Israeli attack conventionally. It might then launch its missiles equipped with chemical weapons into Israeli cities. And that could trigger Armageddon. Israel was established so that never again would the gassing of Jews be permitted."
NAtinal security analyst JAMES ROBBINS points out that oil can be used
as an AMERICAN weapon in the war against terror.
Simply put, most Middle Eastern governments cannot afford to lose oil revenues, without facing severe political pressures, or even revolution.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON asks why all our enemies and their friends in the Mideast
get a pass for being vicious dictatorships.
"We hear frequently about "Mr. Sharon's war." But, in fact, he is an elected leader who deals with an opposition — among them Arab Israelis and an often-hostile press. He enjoys power solely because a majority of Israelis presently support him. But when and if they choose not to, he will be replaced. The same is not true of Mr. Arafat or his authority.
"Similarly, some Israelis march against Sharon's policies and organize both passive and active civilian resistance. To do the equivalent in Palestine--rallying in a demonstration to condemn Hamas or Mr. Arafat himself--earns someone a bullet or a noose. Israelis who march into the West Bank to protect Mr. Arafat find scorn from their citizens; the unproven accusation of sympathizing with the Israeli wins Palestinians summarily execution--bound and tied before being shot without a trial."
By the way, I will probably be posting in the afternoon tomorrow and Thursday. My schedule is kind of jammed in the mornings for those days. Sorry.
Secretary of State COLIN POWELL says
he will meet with YASSER ARAFAT.
Well, good luck, Mr. Secretary.
From all accounts, the Powell mission is already a failure. ARIEL SHARON is ignoring the president's demand for an immediate withdrawal, mainly because he doesn't work for the president. The Israelis, despite some divisions, seem to belive that peace with the Palestinians under their current leadership is impossible. 13 Israeli soldiers were killed today by a booby trap set off, if BENYAMIN NETANYAHU is telling the truth, by a 10-year old suicide bomber.
The United States has been restraining Israel for 50 years. Restraint on Israel's part has not bought peace. I think the Israelis are starting to put 2 and 2 together.
Powell can prattle on all he wants about the "cycle of violence", but let's at least acknowledge that, for some reason, the cycle always starts with a Palestinian atrocity inflicted on Israel. And Israel--and only Israel--is urged to show restraint.
Well, restraint hasn't done them a hell of a lot of good.
When airplanes were flown into the World Trade Centers, we weren't too interested in restraint. Well, when a suicide bomber blows up a bunch of elderly Jews sitting down to a Passover seder, we shouldn't expect them to show any more restraint than we did.
After all, we leveled Afghanistan.
Readers have written to ask if I am Jewish, mainly because of my positions on the Mideast.
Nope, I am not Jewish as far as I know, but rather Scots/German.
I am, however, 1/32 Cherokee so I may be partly Jewish if the Mormons are right.
DENNIS PRAGER says that this is the scariest time for Jews
since the Holocaust.
"So here we are, just one generation after nearly every Jew in Europe was murdered, and the remnant that remains in the New Jersey-sized Jewish state is threatened with extinction.
"Even the bulk of Jewry that was not alive in 1938 feels now as if that year of appeasement of evil is being replayed. As in 1938, the world now seems to be divided between those nations that were about to murder Jews and those that would let it happen.
"It is almost unbelievable."
Read the article. Powerful stuff.
At
Reason.com today, CATHY YOUNG writes:
"For all its faults, Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has a functioning democratic government, a free press, and other liberal institutions. Yet its treatment of the Palestinians is being deplored by Arab regimes that are guilty of far worse abuses - and public opinion around much of the world seems to agree, focusing on Israeli misdeeds while ignoring the atrocities of its enemies."
That is precisely why the hpocrisy of various Arab governments disgusts me. Saddam Hussein uses nerve gas on his own citizens. The government of Syria massacred the Entire Syrian village of Hama, because they were insuficiently servile to HAFEZ AL-ASSAD.
The Arab governments--the whole lot of them--are rancid autarkies that should be assigned to the ash-heap of history, along with Nazism, Soviet Communism, and Maoism, and the rest of the murderous assemblage of despotism left over from the 20th century.
David Brooks has a very interesting articles on why the Europeans and the Arabs, each in their own way
hate America and Israel. He blames the French.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF is feeling a bit cynical
about the Mideast today.
Aren't we all.
The NY Times is
running an editorial today that should be looked at--and refuted. Below aree some gems from the piece, and my responses to them.
Excerpt 1:
"Yet Mr. Sharon says he will remove the tanks and troops whenever it suits him. This is an insult to Mr. Bush and the United States."
Well, only if you belive that Mr. Sharon, the leader of a sovereign nation, has some responsibility to obey the commands of a foreign leader 5000 miles away. Mr Sharon has the responsibility for the security of his country, and perhaps he sees things a bit clearer than Mr. Bush does from his lofty post of the other side of the Atlantic. In any event, we in the United States wouldn't kowtow to, say, Jacques Chirac, should he attempt to give us imperial commands about our security policy from the safety of the Elysee Palace.
Excerpt 2:
"It is increasingly clear that the costs to broader Israeli interests far outweigh whatever short-term security benefits this military operation may be yielding."
It is "increasingly clear"? And what precisely are those long-costs? Will the Arabs hate the Israelis any less if Mr. Sharon does nothing? Will the suicide bombings stop? Pardon me, but maybe I missed the bit where the Arabs all got together and proclaimed that men are brothers. Maybe it happened while I was watching the OIC conference in Kuala Lumpur, where the Arabs couldn't even define what terrorism was, except that whatever it is, it isn't terrorism when it happens to the Israelis. Oh, and by the way, you can talk about the "long-term all you want", but if there isn't any security in the short-term, there won't BE a long-term.
Except 3:
"The refusal of Israeli forces to let wounded Palestinians be removed to hospitals is inexplicable."
Actually, the explanation is quite simple. When the Israelis let the ambulances move, the Palestinians use them to transport gunmen, because the Israelis don't shoot at ambulances. Hmm. Maybe if the Palestinians followed the civilized rules that bar the use of churches and hospitals for military uses, the Israelis might allow it. But, of course, the Palestinians don't follow those rules. They exempt them from them, then demand the Israelis play fair.
Excerpt 4:
"It is also true that the Arab states have reacted shamefully to Mr. Bush's efforts. The president asked them to condemn Palestinian terrorism and make clear that suicide bombers are murderers, not martyrs. There has been no response."
And yet, though the editors acknowledge this, they don't seem to understand that it contradicts their position quoted in excerpt 2, above. HELLO!
The editors of the LA Times beleive that other Arab nations can urge YASSER ARAFAT to
return to the bargaining table. The argument they present is that other Arab nations know that ARAFAT walked out on the best deal he was likely to get at Camp David during the Clinton Administration, and that they will assist us in getting Arafat to negotiate again.
The trouble with this argument is that it assumes that the other Arab states are willing to act as honest brokers in this situation. I'm not sure this is true, or that the Arabs wish to accomplish anything for the present moment beyond getting some breathing space for Arafat, so that he can rebuild his organization and start again.
Suicide bombings are a relatively cheap way to kill a lot of people. JOEL MOWBRAY writes in today's NRO that it's surprising that they haven't happened here yet. The
risk profile for the US seems fairly high, however.
The Archdiocese of Boston knew that one of its priests, Rev. Paul Shanley, now accused of rape, spoke in favor of sex between men and boys at a 1979 meeting that apparently led to the
founding of NAMBLA, a national group advocating the practice, according to court documents released today.
Although most people don't realize it, pedophilia, i.e. the sexual attraction to children under 12, is almost exclusively a heterosexual phenomena. But what we are seeing in the Catholic Church is not pedophilia. It is exactly the type of thing advocated by NAMBLA, i.e. homosexual men in sexual relationships with adolescent boys.
Now, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) have come under a lot of abuse for not allowing gay scoutmasters. But the very existence of NAMBLA proves that there is a subgroup of homosexual men who are interested in having sex with adolescent boys. So, does this show that the BSA has a point in trying to avoid a NAMBLA situation like the Catholic Church appears to have gotten into?
This is an uncomfortable question, but I think it deserves more than a contemptuous dismissal because it offends your ideological sensibilities.
It's wonderful when you see evidence that the American people can come to a nuanced decision about complicated events. A new
NBC/Wall Street journal Poll shows that a majority of people support the idea of a Palestinian state. At the same time, a majority of people beleive that the Palestinian Authority, and YASSER ARAFAT in particular must go.
That is, I think, a fairly good assessment of what should happen. A Palestinian state is a necessary pre-requisite for peace in the region. The Israelis are going to have to get used to the idea of going back to the 1967 borders, and Israeli settlements in the west bank and Gaza will have to stop, and of those that are already there, many will have to be abandoned.
At the same time, this will require a Palestinian leadership other that Arafat--who is an Egyptian, by the way, not a Palestinian--and his cronies. Arafat is the father of modern terrorism, and as the last two years have shown, he is still a terrorist, despite the nice mouth noises he makes in English.
If the Palestinians are to have a state--and eventually, peace requires that they must--it must be equally committed to peace, and to use diplomatic rather than violent means of addressing grievances. Arafat can not provide the leadership for such a state. More importantly, he has no wish to provide it.
Finally, the remaining Arab states will have to acknowlege the legal right of the state of Israel to exist, and to normalize relationships with it.
The Telegraph provides
a thumbnail analysis of how SADDAM HUSSEIN will be overthrown.
Unlike many of the nay-sayers, the Telegraph has noted the huge improvement in our ability to accurately bombard tactical as well as strategic targets. Frankly, a massive buildup like that of the Gulf war is necessary. Certainly some ground forces, perhaps a substantial number will eventually be needed. But we have developed a system that provides air superiority and tactical accuracy that was undreamed of during the Gulf War.
Following the example of Afghanistan, an American tactical air campaign, combined with Kurdish forces armed and trained by the west, might be enough to topple Hussein from power. At the very least, a sharp, aggressive air campaign will make it tortuously difficult for him to move and supply his forces. Immobile, unsupplied forces are forces that are incapable of offensive reaction.
I really like something the Wall Street Journal does. They do it again in the
Best of the Web Today from todays OpinionJournal.com. Every time they report a story about YASSER ARAFAT's liks with terrorism, they always tag the story by mentioning that Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize. Today it was written as follows:
"London's Daily Telegraph...reports that Arafat's men have been meeting with Iraqi intelligence operatives to identify terrorist targets. In a March Baghdad meeting, 'an Arafat aide is said to have provided a list of strategic sites in Israel and Saudi Arabia that might be attacked in the event of American air strikes on Baghdad.'
"Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994."
Really it's just classic the way they do that.
JONAH GOLBERG was written a
very fine article about the stupidity of the moral equivalency arguments made by YASSER ARAFAT's supporters, especially those in Europe.
"Even the glow of the synagogues burning on soil already well fertilized with the viscera of Jews is paled by the bonfire of hypocrisy now raging in capitals across Europe."
Nice line, Jonah.
And it is an interesting observation. Much of the European attitude towards Israel strikes me as thinly disguised anti-Semitism. I suspect this is why it's "extremely difficult" to protect Jews in France. It's as if there's a gentlemen's agreement among the Europeans that as long as you say "Israelis" instead of "Jews", everyone will pretend that you're not a hostile bigot.
Now, members of the Nobel Prize committee say they wish they could make SHIMON PERES give his peace price back.
It's funny, though, when an Israeli goes off the deep end and kills an Arab, he's caught, prosecuted and convicted. When a Palestinian does it, his family throws a party, and Arafat goes on the Arabic-language radio station he runs, and extols the virtues of the "glorious martyrs".
But, nobody's asking Arafat to give back HIS Nobel Prize.
One of the interesting things about war is that it exposes illusions for what they are. No matter how deeply one cherishes one's illusions, an injection of brutal reality is often a permanent cure for them.
For several months now, the Palestinians have been living under some common illusions. They have believed that terrorism would be an effective means to get what they could not get at the negotiating table. They have believed that international disapproval would keep Israeli retaliation in check. They have believed that the dichotomies between Yasser Arafat's public statements in English and Arabic could go unnoticed. These illusions have been the biggest obstacle to peace in the region, and they must be stripped away.
The brutal truth is that when a country is suffering from terrorist attacks, the most effective way to relive that suffering is by hunting down and capturing--or killing--the people responsible for them.
This is an unpleasant truth for some people, who would rather have us believe that violence never solves anything.
But, of course, it does. It doesn't solve all problems, but it is certainly effective with a certain class of them. If you don't believe that, then ask yourself why German troops haven't invaded France for 57 years.
It isn't the massive military competence of the French.
Taliban supporters in Afghanistan tried to
assassinate the Afghan Defense Minister.
I know the president doesn't want to get us involved in nation-building, and, as a general rule, I don't either. But some extra troops on the ground as peacekeepers there might help the new government get it's feet on the ground. Removing the Taliban from power will turn out to have been a pointless task if we, through our own inaction, allow them to bring down the interim government.
MIKE LYNCH has a story about HUD boondoggles that show why government programs are so
hard to kill.
Will wonders never cease? The LA Times has an editorial that is all about the nastiness of
the communist dictatorship of FIDEL CASTRO in Cuba.
Since the US no longer has a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission, the Times is calling for a Latin American nation to sponsor a condemnation of Cuba for Human Rights abuses.
Not a bad idea. Despite the fawning that Castro receives from some corners of the American left, the true nature of his regime should regularly be pointed out.
ARIEL SHARON has announced that Israel will
continue military operations until they are satisfied that they have done the job they started.
It's noteworthy how little interest Israel has in following US orders when they feel threatened. This shouldn't come as a surprise to any American considering how keen we are to do things our own way when faced with a threat. Why should the Israelis be any different?
This doesn't bode well for COLIN POWELL's attempt to calm things down over there.
Iraq has announced that they will
stop pumping oil for one month in support of the Palestinians. SADDAM HUSSEIN is calling on other Arab nations to support an oil embargo as well. The decision drove Brent Crude prices up by 94 cents a barrel to $26.45.
Funny how a guy who gasses his own people has so much compassion for the Palestinians.
REUEL MARC GERECHT writes in the Wall Street Journal that
only war can stop the suicide bombers in the Mideast.
I'm not sure I sign on to that idea, but clearly the main cause of the current problems there is the cult of martyrdom that has been injected into Palestinian culture, often with the support of the Palestinian Authority, and the Usual Suspects among other Arab governments.
It is that cult that is the primary obstacle to peace in the region, and it's extirpation is a pre-requisite for any lasting solution.
THOMAS SOWELL reminds us that one of the reasons
economists aren't popular is that they keep reminding us that there's no such thing as a free lunch. "Free" health care, for example, isn't.
More and more, Americans are demanding policies that someone has to pay for. Usually, someone else. But it is simple law of life that every decision, every policy, and every choice has consequences for which someone must pay.
A friend wrote me over the weekend asking me why so many families need two incomes, when in the 50s, a family could be supported on one. Well, of course, there are a lot of answers to that one. People live more extravagantly then they used to. Houses, are larger, and more crammed with neat toys, for example. but even simple living won't carry you as for today as it did back then.
Why?
Taxation. The federal tax burden for the average family has doubled over the past 50 years, going from 10% to 20% of gross income. At the same time, state taxes have mushroomed considerably as well. In other words, we've made a lot of choices about what government should do in the past 50 years. One of the prices we've paid for those decisions is substantially higher taxes, and the loss of the ability of a single income earner to support a family.
Yet, there are a substantial number of us who STILL don't think we're paying enough. Think about THAT on Monday morning as you or your spouse drop off the kids at day care.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN writes a
thougtful column on the Mideast for today's NY Times.
Towns in northern Israel
have been shelled from Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon. UN Officials urge the Israelis not to retaliate. Naturally, Israel retaliates anyway.
I invite readers to imagine what the US government's response would be if artillery sites in Canada were shelling Buffalo or Detroit. I suspect we wouldn't be much for listening to the UN's requests for "calm".
JACK KELLY has written
a clear-eyed column on the Mideast for today's NY Post. He says:
"Acts of Palestinian terror, no matter how egregious or how frequent, can never bring the Middle East to the brink of war, because for most world political and opinion leaders, the killing of Jews is of small consequence. There are calls for a halt to violence only when Israelis retaliate."
"Most Palestinians believe they can destroy Israel. The Palestinians think they are winning, and think things can't get worse for them than they are now. They must be disabused of these notions."
"Israel Defense Forces have been rounding up the terror suspects Arafat promised to arrest but didn't and destroying weapons caches. This will do more to protect Israelis from suicide bombings than any agreement diplomats make."
