The Review
And they were American citizens, too
(
Review) The FBI has nabbed 5 suspects for supporting Al-Qaida, all of whom are native-born American citizens. The FBI says all five attended an Al-Qaida training camp that was visited by Osama bin Laden last summer. The camp also counts John Walker Lindh among its alumni.
The families of the five men swear on a stack of Bib--that is, Korans--that the five men are lovable little sheep who wouldn't hurt a fly. Everybody loves them, in fact.
A small attempt at appeasement
(
Review) There is an odd little story of FOXNews' web site. The story is mainly about us Rep Nick Rahall (D-WVa) who is leading a delegation of the Usual Suspects to Iraq, under the aegis of an organization called "The Institute for Public Accuracy".
The Institute, based on it's
web site, is the kind of organization that believes accuracy is something one obtains from Noam Chomsky. Here's a few gems gleaned from the institute:
Professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence: Could the U.S. War on Terrorism Go Nuclear?, Francis Boyle said today: "President Bush is exploiting the terrible human and national tragedy of September 11 in order to monger for war against Iraq at the United Nations."
Naseer Aruri is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. He is author of the book The Obstruction Of Peace: The U.S., Israel and The Palestinians. He said today: "The hawks in the Pentagon are trying to find a way to war.... Their real agenda is to reshape the strategic landscape of the Middle East by redrawing not only the map of World War II, but that of World War I too, not unlike what the previous imperial powers (Britain and France) did when they balkanized the Arab world and fragmented it into more than 20 weak principalities and sheikhdoms, and at the same time allocated Palestine as a state for European Jewish settlers."
The delegation arrived in Munich--uh...I mean, Baghdad--yesterday.
What is Pat Leahy smoking?
(
Review) Vermont's senior senator has declared that the government should look into the West Nile virus outbreak for possible terrorist connections. He thinks that maybe terrorists are testing a biological warfare agent against us.
We are nation of 280,000,000 people. 1295 people have contracted the disease. 54 have died. I mean, do the math. That's a pretty lame biological agent. More people die of the flu or food poisoning each year.
Senator Leahy admits he has no evidence for such a claim. Of course.
Meanwhile the CDC in Atlanta respectfully disagrees with the senator.
Tariq Aziz says "Bomb us now"
(
Review) Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz sys Iraq will not submit to the unconditional return of UN weapons inspectors. The best line, though, is this:
Aziz said Iraq's invitation to U.S. and British lawmakers to visit Iraq on a fact-finding mission was a shorter route to proving compliance with U.N. resolutions.
Oh, yeah, why didn't we think of it before? We don't need arms inspectors with a lifetime of training and experience looking for WMD strockpiles. No, just send over the US Rep from Critter Creek, Alabama, and the British MP for St.Bigglesworth on the Green.
They'll get to the bottom of it!
Why is it that dictators always come up with such transparently silly counterproposals? Is it because they've gotten so used to feeding the lamest propaganda to their own citiziens, who take it without complaint, that they think the rest of the world will too?
UPDATE: Tariq Aziz is backing off ever so slightly from his earlier comments. According to
MSNBC, he now says "If there is a solution which maintains Iraq’s sovereignty, dignity and legitimate rights and prevents aggression, we are ready.” But he said Iraq would prevent inspectors returning if “there is no honest, balanced and credible formula that will take us to the truth.” “What is being said [that Iraq should allow the inspectors back] is not a solution,” he added.
My kind of Liberals
(
Review) The editors of
The New Republic are castigating the Democrats for their unwillingness to stake out a position in war with Iraq.
The Democrats' evasions come in several forms. The first, and most naked, is the contention that the Iraq debate should wait until after the November elections. This is what Senator Ted Kennedy meant when he argued last week that "we can't let it [Iraq] replace the domestic agenda," and it is what Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe meant when he declared hopefully that "people are going to vote on the kitchen-table issues we've talked about for eighteen months." But if the Democrats succeed, if they make this fall's election a referendum on prescription drugs and pension reform, they will have done the voters a disservice. Elections should be about the most urgent issues facing the country; and compared with war with Iraq, the Democrats' litany of poll-tested standbys is frankly trivial.
The Democrats rationalize their efforts to keep Iraq off the campaign trail by insinuating that the Bush administration, by proposing a congressional vote on Iraq before Election Day, is exploiting the war for political gain (see "Hidden Profit" by Michael Crowley, page 18). But in fact, the real cynics are the Democrats, who are trying to conceal their views on the war until after November 5 and, thus, deny their constituents the information they need to cast an intelligent vote. As a matter of democratic process, the party's position is untenable. And it is self-defeating even as a matter of crass political self-interest. Today's polls may show the Democrats with an advantage on the domestic issues the public supposedly cares about most, but ultimately that advantage will not matter if the party is timid and irresponsible on questions of war and peace. Do today's Democrats really need to be reminded of the political history of the last two decades of the cold war?
The Democrats attempt to prevent the voters from knowing their position on the most important issue facing the country is contemptible. Conversely, TNR's willingness to criticize their political allies for it is wholly commendable.
What's a metaphor for "stupid"?
(
Review) Jonah Goldberg attacks the "metaphor" explanantion of Susan Sontag and Paul Krugman.
Further evidence of the popularity of this argument, which you can hear bandied around on talk radio and TV, is columnist Paul Krugman's statement, which appeared on the same day and in the same newspaper as Sontag's metaphorical assault. "Our leaders and much of the media tell us that we're a nation at war," he writes. "But that was a bad metaphor from the start, and looks worse as time goes by."
Krugman at least offers what he thinks is a better metaphor. He says the war on terrorism begun on Sept. 11 was reminiscent "not of a military attack but of a natural disaster." "Indeed," he adds, "there were almost eerie parallels between Sept. 11 and the effects of the earthquake that struck Japan in 1995."
Interesting! So the next time someone gives me a hard time about the United States dropping atomic bombs on Japan, I guess I can say, "Get over it. It wasn't an act of war or a crime against humanity. Think of it like an earthquake."
Touche.
Quote of the day
(
Review) John Podhoretz, in todays NY
Post column:
The Democrats are performing "Wag the Dog" in reverse: They're trying to delay a war for their own political gain.
The issue of Iraq is the single most important issue facing the American people today. Yet, the Democrats want to delay a vote on it so that they can cast a vote without having to face the electorate.
That tells us everything we need to know about the principles of Democratic officials, none of it good.
A walkover, but a dangerous one
(
Review) David Ignatius writes that an attack on Iraq would be a walkover. Indeed, many experts believe that in the event of invasion, even Republican Guard Units may help us in attacking Saddam's strongholds.
The dangerous bit is that Saddam knows that such an attack would be do or die for him. And he might decide to do some pretty nasty things.
The biggest threat Hussein poses, said one official, is biological weapons delivered through unconventional means, such as a suitcase, a drone or a suicide airplane. "He's such an unpredictable person, he may be thinking of things that would horrify us," the official said.
"You could imagine Saddam having someone carry a briefcase of smallpox virus, and opening the briefcase in the New York subway -- and saying that he has such people all over the United States, and unless the U.S. withdraws its troops, he will release all the virus," speculated another of the intelligence officials.
War is serious and dangerous business. Fortitude and an unwavering sense of purpose are required. But the threat will not recede as time goes by. Indeed, history has shown that, with dictators like Saddam Hussein, the passage of time only increases the threat.
High Marks for the UN Speech
(
Review) Newsweek's Martha Brant characterizes the President's UN speech yesterday as "smooth diplomacy".
Patn Leahy has to go
(
Review) Thomas Lipping writes about the meltdown in the Judicial nominations process. A meltdown that is mainly attributable to the rabid partisanship and outright dishonesty of Sen. Patrick Leahy.
Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy's partisan unfairness has reached a new low. He once said that judicial nominees with the support of both home-state senators would be considered quickly. He once said that the American Bar Association's rating was the "gold standard" for evaluating nominees. He once said that long-standing vacancies must be filled promptly. He once said that 20 appeals-court vacancies constitute a "crisis."
That was then, this is now. Justice Owen, a member of the Texas Supreme Court, had the strong support of Texas Sens. Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison. She received a unanimous "well qualified" rating from the ABA. The position to which she was nominated has been designated a "judicial emergency" because it has been vacant for 2,059 days. Today's 28 appeals-court vacancies are 40 percent more than Sen. Leahy's "crisis" level. Yet, he led the Judiciary Committee to a partisan rejection of Justice Owen – the first time the committee has voted down a woman.
Why do the people of Vermont keep electing this buffoon?
This is outrageous!
(
Review) London resident Barry-Lee Hastings returned home and found a burglar in the house. Mr. Hastins stabbed the burglar with a bread knife several times during a struggle in which the burglar was armed with a crowbar. The burglar died. Mr. Hastings has been convicted of manslaughter and now faces a possible life imprisonment.
The burglar was, of course, a habitual violent offender. Yet, Mr. hastings is the one facing life in prison. Welcome to European justice.
No wonder the Euros act like moral cripples in foreign affairs.
Bad News for Gray Davis
(
Review) After being blasted by California Governor Gray Davis as an untrustworthy near-criminal in Television ads, GOP candidate Bill Simon got good news today. The $76 million civil fraud verdict against his compnay was thrown out by the trial judge as fundamentally flawed.
SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE James C. Chalfant dismissed both the huge compensatory and punitive damages verdict against William E. Simon & Sons and a nearly $20 million verdict also levied by a jury against another investor group.
He also awarded the investors $125,000 to cover their costs for fighting the charges.
So, not only was the verdict thrown out, but SImon's side got a judgement to cover their legal costs.
In his ruling, Chalfant wrote that it was “an immutable fact established by overwhelming evidence that Hindelang defrauded” the investors by failing to disclose his criminal convictions, his negotiations with federal authorities to forfeit drug proceeds and the fact that Pacific Coin may have been founded with drug money.
The investors “never would have invested $26 million in Pacific Coin had they known the truth,” he wrote.
That's one less argument for Gray Davis to use for his re-election. Which is bad news for Davis, because he sure can't point to a record of success as governor.
Maybe Morris really is right
(
Review) The Washington
Times' Donald Lambro evidently agrees with Dick Morris.
If there is any political advantage in the general election debate over President Bush's plans to topple Saddam Hussein from power, it is not going to the Democrats.
With little more than seven weeks to go before Election Day, the Democrats can ill afford to have the national campaign dialogue waged largely on the GOP's strongest ground: national security.
Worse, the Democrats cannot afford to have the news media focusing week after week on the prospects of war in Iraq, drowning out the Democrats' domestic campaign offensive on passing prescription drug benefits, preventing Mr. Bush and the Republicans from partially privatizing Social Security, the economy and a host of other social welfare proposals.
Yet this is the campaign scenario that Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe fear most. They had plans to pound the administration on its domestic policies, but that strategy becomes problematic now.
Instead, they face weeks of debate in both houses of Congress and on the airwaves on a resolution authorizing military action to deal Iraq's threat to America's national security.
This might be an interesting election season.
Ok, so he has a thing about feet, but still...
(
Review) I'm not convinced of the overwhelming wisdom of Dick Morris, but his NY
Post op/ed today makes an interesting point.
But now the Democrats, led by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, have solved their successor's problems for him. Reversing the yearlong Democratic policy of support for Bush's foreign policy, they have challenged the president to articulate the reasons that force us to attack Iraq.
In other words, they've invited precisely the national discussion for which Bush most fervently hopes - one tailored to bring GOP victory in November.
Now, at the Democrats' instigation, Bush and the Republicans can spend the entire fall campaign adducing additional evidence of Saddam's perfidy, danger and malevolence. What better topic for the Republican Party to talk about?
By "challenging" Bush to make public the evidence that Iraq is seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction, the Democrats have opened the door. Now, the Republicans can let the data drip-drip-drip into public view, monopolizing the news.
I think this is probably a fairly accurate assessment. The public perception of the Democrat's is that they aren't really very trustworthy when it comes to military or foreign affairs. By demanding public debate on Iraq, and making their wobbles on Iraqi policy known during an election season, the Democrats give the Republicans the gift of a prime opportunity to bash the public perception of Democratic weakness on military policy.
Ok, we've talked to the UN, now what?
President Bush's speech to the UN this morning contained all the requisite nods to multilateralism, collective security, and the other obligatory UN platitudes. Whether this speech will have the desired impact is still in doubt.
The president listed all of the UN Security Council resolutions that Iraq's leader has violated. The list is a long one. Saddam Hussein has refused to allow weapons inspectors back into the country. He has stolen the revenues from oil sales that were meant for the people, and used them to fund his military, as well as his lavish lifestyle. He continues to provide financial support and shelter for terrorist groups. He has continued a research program into weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including nuclear weapons. He has refused to return the remains, or account for the whereabouts of, prisoners taken during the Gulf War. In addition, the president listed the evasions and outright lies the Iraqi government employed in order to hide its WMD programs from the UN.
One would think that such a long history of defiance would be enough to convince UN delegates that Something Must Be Done.
Evidently not.
Kofi Anan, the UN Secretary General, seems to have an entirely different attitude towards the threat of Iraq. Indeed, in his remarks, he indicated that the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the Kashmir conflict between Pakistan and India were more important than the threat posed by Iraq. He did say, however, that if Iraq continued to refuse weapons inspection, "the council must face its responsibilities".
Whatever that means.
Certainly, the issue of Kashmir is an important one, as it is the focal point of a potentially disastrous conflict between two nuclear-armed states. But the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is potentially more dangerous than the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iraq is stupefyingly incomprehensible.
But, of course, that's a fairly apt description of the UN in general.
Evidently, Mr. Anan has never even considered the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iraq invading and occupying Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the contiguous oil-producing states in order to hold a substantial percentage of the world's oil supply for ransom.
I am currently reading, as I do every few years, William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The Second World War could have been entirely avoided if the League of Nations, or even France alone, had decided to uphold the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Indeed, Hitler would have fallen from power in 1935 if France had prevented Germany's reoccupation of the Saarland in 1935.
The principal lesson of the Second World War is that it was entirely unnecessary. It came because, instead of resisting and punishing aggression, the "responsible" nations of the West attempted to appease it. Appeasement, however, does not satisfy aggressive dictators; it merely whets their appetite for more. Appeasement begets aggression just as surely as the sun rises in the east.
Despite the horrible cost of this lesson, the delegates at the UN seem to have forgotten it entirely.
Too bad he's not still in the Senate
(
Review) Former Senator Bob Kerrey says that Saddam must go.
Why am I not surprised
(
Review) Islamic militants gathered in Britain today to discuss the "positive outcomes" of the 911 attacks. Here are some choice quotes:
The words on Wednesday were not fiery, nor aimed at incitement, but Syrian-born Mohammed had warm words for bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network, though he said he disagreed with their violent tactics. "Nobody loves them but the believers, nobody hates them but the hypocrites," Mohammed said.
-----
"Definitely Al Qaeda has got rational justification for what they did on Sept. 11. Maybe I disagree with them, but they have the right to fight back especially after they (the United States) bombed Sudan, then they bombed Afghanistan."
-----
Al-Masri said the meeting had a message for President Bush. "We are telling that crazy man to stop. Don't use the war beyond your borders," al-Masri said.
-----
"The event will discuss the positive outcomes from the 11th September not least of which is the clear crystallization of the two camps of Islam and Kufr (non-Islam), of believers and hypocrites and of those who follow the Messenger Muhammad and his companions (the salafis) and those deviant from this path," the statement said.
-----
The "believers" in this context, of course, are those devotees of the Religion of Peace who prefer to make their protests known by the intentional murder of innocent men, women, and children.
Democrats get wobbly
(
Review Democrats are trying to postpone a vote authorizing the use of force on Iraq until after the fall elections.
I'll just bet they are. They know that if they vote against it, they may face real trouble in the elections. And, frankly, a lot of them want to vote against it. They just want to wait until after the election, so that they can have two years for voters to forget their positions on the issue.
If the Democrats have their way, there won't be an attack on Iraq at all.
The balloon is going up
(
Review) The headquarters for US Central Command (CENTCOM) the joint command responsible for the Mideast, is preparing to move from Florida to Qatar. In addition, military sources tell FOXNews that air activity in the Iraqi No-Fly zones will be stepped up in order to take out Iraq's Air Defense capability.
One year later II
(
Review) James Lileks reflects on what he would say to himself if he could travel back in time one year.
911: Not all bad
(
Review) Dennis Prager reminds us that, in its effects, there was good that came out of the 911 attack.
You don't know anything about punishment...yet
(
Review) According to MSNBC, the Iraqi state-owned weekly Al-Iktisadi covered its front page with a photograph of a burning World Trade Center tower and a two-word headline in red: “God’s Punishment.”
Uh huh. I expect you'll be learning more than you ever wanted to know about punishment in the near future.
Civil Libertarians take note
(
Review) It's been lurking out there for years, but now it's close to a reality. A National ID Card.
I have never been comfortable with the idea of a national ID card. Now, in the post-911 world, the government may push it through.
The road ahead
(
Review) Military historian John Keegan has written a very good analysis of the War on Terror and where its leading in today's NY
Post.
Please answer the question
(
Review) Richard Lessner has a question for those who don't approve of whacking Saddam Hussein.
Thw war skeptics who allege that Iraq is contained, that Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat to the United States, and that there is no evidence the Butcher of Baghdad is willing to share his weapons of mass destruction with such terrorists as al Qaeda, should be obliged to tell us something: Exactly which American city are they willing to bet that they're right?
Not that I'll be holding my breath, waiting for an answer.
We've already won?
(
Review) Ronald Bailey writes that extreme Islam has already lost the clash of civilizations.
Yet even Osama bin Laden realized he could not fight the West with swords and his twisted version of Islamic piety. He needed the Land Rovers, the cell phones, the radios, the videotapes, the computer networks, and, yes, even the guns that only the universal civilization he loathed could produce. Those goods are produced not merely by factories but by social and political customs--customs such as democracy, private property, a free press, free markets, an independent judiciary, academic freedom, limited liability corporations, the rule of law, women's suffrage, and universal literacy. Reactionary Islam, like Soviet and Chinese communism before it, is being undermined from within by the natural yearnings of all people for the good things of life, including the freedoms that make them possible. It turns out that social and political freedom is inextricably attached to imported computers and jeans.
The atrocities of September 11 showed that we in the West can be harmed by the raging death throes of a resentful, expiring culture. Whether or not direct military interventions will hasten the coming victory over reactionary Islam is arguable, but the ultimate victory is not in doubt.
I am of the opinion that military interventions will help, by the way.
How many roads must a man walk down?
(
Review) David Pryce-Jones writes that the Muslims have a long, long, road to walk down.
How the world has changed
(
Review Victor Davis Hanson is fantastic today.
On Islamic fundamentalism:
The more the world knows of al Qaeda and bin Laden, the more it has found them both vile and yet banal — and so is confident and eager to eradicate them and all they stand for. It is one thing to kill innocents, quite another to take on the armed might of an aroused United States. Easily dodging a solo cruise missile in the vastness of Afghanistan may make good theater and bring about braggadocio; dealing with grim American and British commandos who have come 7,000 miles for your head prompts abject flight and an occasional cheap infomercial on the run. And the ultimate consequence of the attacks of September 11 will not merely be the destruction of al Qaeda, but also the complete repudiation of the Taliban, the Iranian mullocracy, the plague of the Pakistani madrassas, and any other would-be fundamentalist paradise on earth.
On our relationship with Europe:
Foreign relations will not be the same in our generation. Our coalition with Europe, we learn, was not a partnership, but more mere alphabetic nomenclature and the mutual back scratching of Euro-American globetrotters — a paper alliance without a mission nearly 15 years after the end of the Cold War. The truth is that Europe, out of noble purposes, for a decade has insidiously eroded its collective national sovereignty in order to craft an antidemocratic EU, a 80,000-person fuzzy bureaucracy whose executive power is as militarily weak as it is morally ambiguous in its reliance on often dubious international accords. This sad realization September 11 brutally exposed, and we all should cry for the beloved continent that has for the moment completely lost its moral bearings. Indeed, as the months progressed the problems inherent in "the European way" became all too apparent: pretentious utopian manifestos in lieu of military resoluteness, abstract moralizing to excuse dereliction of concrete ethical responsibility, and constant American ankle-biting even as Europe lives in a make-believe Shire while we keep back the forces of Mordor from its picturesque borders, with only a few brave Frodos and Bilbos tagging along. Nothing has proved more sobering to Americans than the skepticism of these blinkered European hobbits after September 11.
On "moderate" Araby:
America learned that "moderate" Arab countries are as dangerous as hostile Islamic nations. After September 11, being a Saudi, Egyptian, or Kuwaiti means nothing special to an American — at least not proof of being any more friendly or hostile than having Libyan, Syrian, or Lebanese citizenship. Indeed, our entire postwar policy of propping up autocracies on the triad of their anticommunism, oil, and arms purchases — like NATO — belongs to a pre-9/11 age of Soviet aggrandizement and petroleum monopolies. Now we learn that broadcasting state-sponsored hatred of Israel and the United States is just as deadly to our interests as scud missiles — and as likely to come from friends as enemies. Worst-case scenarios like Iran and Afghanistan offer more long-term hope than "stable regimes" like the Saudis; governments that hate us have populations that like us — and vice versa; the Saudi royal family, whom 5,000 American troops protect, and the Mubarak autocracy, which has snagged billions of American dollars, are as afraid of democratic reformers as they are Islamic fundamentalists. And with good reason: Islamic governments in Iran and under the Taliban were as hated by the masses as Arab secular reformers in exile in the West are praised and championed.
There's lots more. Read it.
One year later
One year ago today, I was driving to work in my car, listening to a CD. For whatever reason, the CD didn't please me so I switched to the radio. That was when I heard a plane had crashed into one of the towers at the WTC. A few minutes later, I was listening live as another plane slammed into the second tower. Obviously, this wasn't an accident.
Although I am a civilian, I work for a DoD contractor on a military installation. I, along with many of my coworkers, both government and contractor, are ex-military, so an attack on America keenly interests us. At 7:20 am (Pacific Time), when I walked into by building, I noticed that the conference room television was already being set up to bring in CNN.
Not much work got done that day. We crowded into the conference room, and watched with little gasps as the Towers came down, sat in silent dismay as we surveyed the damage at the Pentagon.
Perhaps a gathering of former career military people is different from a gathering of life-long civilians, but our dominant emotion wasn't grief, or sadness, although we certainly felt those things. Our dominant emotion was anger. For the first time since I left the military in the fall of 1993, I wished I were back in uniform. So did a lot of other people in that conference room. We wanted to personally find out who was responsible, hunt them down, and...punish them.
A year later, I feel much the same way.
But now, I am less concerned with finding the actual individuals involved. For the most part they are probably dead, including, I suspect, Osama bin Laden. The real goal on which we should be focused is not a particular group of terrorists, but rather the entire culture of extremism and totalitarianism that pervades the Islamic world, especially the Arab portion of it.
There are two major totalitarian movements in the Arab world that, between them, controls almost every portion of it. First is the Islamic Fundamentalist movement. Second is the Ba'athist political movement. In many ways these two movements, though independent, are closely intertwined, since Ba'athist states such as Syria and Iraq make use of, and provide support to, the fundamentalist movement for political purposes. Both are equally hostile to the west.
In the long run, if we expect to live in a peaceful world, both movements must be destroyed, and replaced with tolerant, democratic, and limited government in the Arab world.
This will not be easy, nor will it be cheap. It will require that we refrain from unquestioned support of despots who we are trying to woo as allies, and instead, promote political and economic freedom and democracy everywhere in the region, even at the cost of short-term advantage. It may require that we occupy portions of the Arab world, much as we did in Germany and Japan, in order to give these liberal institutions time to take root. It may require that we spend our treasure on an Arab "Marshall Plan" to promote economic growth and opportunity for the people of the region.
But, America is supposed to stand for something. We are supposed to be a beacon of freedom and values. We should, therefore, make the expansion of freedom and democratic values the center point of our foreign policy, and the chief goal of the war against terror.
This does not mean that we must try to make Arab states into reflections of our own popular culture. Indeed, even a tolerant Islamic country may contain cultural elements with which we are uncomfortable. But what we can, perhaps, try to give to the Arab world are those things that all human beings want: security for their persons and possessions, the opportunity to create a better future for their children, freedom from political or religious persecution, and the fair and impartial rule of law. The right, as Justice Holmes once wrote, to be let alone. In short, the right to justice. If we cannot do that, if we cannot change the culture of extremism into a culture of tolerance then the war against terror will never end.
Unfortunately, this may not be accomplished solely by peaceful means. Harsh lessons might have to be dealt out. The reason Germany and Japan are peaceful, liberal, cooperative members of the international community today is because we invaded their countries; crushed their armies; captured, tried, and executed their leaders; purged their communities of extremists; and imposed liberal democracy on them by force.
It would be a wonderful thing if we didn't have to fight this war. It would be a wonderful world if all our differences could be settled peacefully, and if all people were willing to listen to reason. But, the real lesson of 911 is that, no matter how much we might wish it so, that isn't the world we live in. We live in a world where evil men plan the deaths of the innocent.
The way towards having the more peaceful world of our dreams lies down the path of eliminating these men of evil, and replacing the culture that produces them.
Todays color is orange
(
Review) The Government has raised the terrorist threat level to Orange. That's the second highest level.
Oh, cool, this will make our case easier
(
Review) Iraq is calling for the creation of suicide squads to attack American targets and interests. It's good to see them helping us out in making the argument that the Iraqi government is run by weasels who are just asking to be whacked.
He's more than a crank
(
Review) Earlier, I wrote that I didn't know whether Scott Ritter was just a crank. Now he's in Bagdhad, addressing the Iraqi "parliament", telling them that they are all cool guys.
I hope Scott Ritter is being paid well.
Try to stop it this time
(
Review) Terry Eastland writes that, if the Republicans take back the Senate, the President should nominate Priscilla Owen to the Federal bench again. I agree.
American citizens do have rights, you know
(
Review) Stewart Taylor argues that you can't detain US citizens indefinitely as enemy combatants, and completely refuse them access to the courts. They are citizens, and their rights should be respected. We may indeed have to hold them, but they at least need to have a hearing.
The real issue is whether the government can refuse to give people it says are enemy combatants any opportunity, ever, to tell their side of the story to any court, any lawyer, or the public, and can instead keep them in solitary confinement for months, years, perhaps decades -- even if they are U.S. citizens, and even if they were arrested in this country in civilian clothes.
That is the Bush administration's argument in the pending cases of Yasser Esam Hamdi, who was born in Louisiana and captured in Afghanistan, and Jose Padilla, who was born in New York City and arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Padilla was famously accused by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft -- based on sketchy evidence from untrustworthy informants that would not come close to supporting a criminal prosecution -- of "exploring a plan to build and explode... a 'dirty bomb' in the United States." Both men are being held incommunicado in military brigs. They may be the first of many, officials have indicated.
The US Government's position is, essentially, that US citizens can be held as enemy combatants for as long as the sun burns hot in space. Taylor predicts that if the Gov't holds to this position, the Supreme Court will smite them, yea, with all the strength of their pens.
The administration's position is, in short, radical, fraught with the risk of victimizing harmless innocents, and unnecessary in the fight against terrorism. It is also essentially unprecedented: No U.S. court has ever held that U.S. citizens who deny being enemy combatants can be incarcerated indefinitely in military brigs with no due process at all.
Indeed, the administration position is so outrageous as to run a very great risk of provoking the Supreme Court to put aside the judiciary's habitual deference to the president on military matters and hand Bush a humiliating defeat. Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the conservative 4th Circuit, while stressing this tradition of deference, pointedly refused in the July 12 ruling to "summarily embrace" the administration's "sweeping proposition... that, with no meaningful judicial review, any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel on the government's say-so."
I agree completely. The complete denial of due process for American citizens is troubling. I'd prefer the Administration back off from such a radical position. If not, I hope the court hands the Administration its head on this issue.
Trying to get the UN on board
(
Review) Philip Gordon, Martin Indyk, and Michael O'Hanlon think that the Bush Administration's best bet for getting support for an attack on Iraq is to to go the UN route, and demand rigorous inspections. Then, if the Iraqis refuse these inspections--which would be fairly coercive ones--we could get the UN on board.
This ultimatum strategy requires people on both sides of the argument to compromise to some degree. For hawks, it means accepting the possibility that Saddam will for now remain leader of Iraq. For doves, it means recognizing that only a very real threat of war--to be carried out if Saddam rejects the ultimatum--can create the leverage needed to gain full Iraqi compliance with the disarmament demands placed upon it at the end of the Persian Gulf War. It also means recognizing certain flaws in the past U.N. inspection process and fixing them.
The first step is to try to develop a U.N. Security Council consensus around a new resolution that would contain the ultimatum. Britain is already supportive of U.S. goals in Iraq, and France seems willing to support force provided that the Security Council authorizes such an approach. Russia can be induced to cooperate with promises that its multibillion-dollar Iraqi debt will be repaid and that it will have a stake in future oil deals in Iraq. China can almost surely be convinced to support an effort that the other permanent members have all endorsed. Faced with the likelihood that we would take unilateral action against Saddam if they fail to reach agreement with us, our fellow permanent members may well be willing to join in the consensus if for no other reason than to have some influence over an operation that they cannot prevent.
This is more or less the way I see it. If we can get allies on board, and UN support, we would certainly shield ourselves from criticism by the more hysteric members of the world community. That shielding is not strictly necessary, of course, but a desire to have it is not unreasonable.
A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged
(
Review) James Cramer describes how 911 turned him into a hawk.
I'm not against intellectuals, just intellectualism
(
Review) Heather MacDonald writes that there are two wars going on. In one war, Americans are fighting against islamic terrorism. The other war is American elites fighting against the bigotry they are sure pervades every nook and cranny of American culture.
One of the reasons that Americans have such a history of anti-intellectualism is that intellectuals are generally at the forefront of stupidity like this.
It's not a war, its a metaphor
(
Review Susan Sontag says the war against terror isn't actually a war, its a methaphor, a rhotorical device for the government to use to strip us of our cherished freedoms, make debate on policy more difficult, and in general, turn the US into the fascist state that Ms. Sontag has always known it to be. What the government really wants is "a mandate for expanding the use of American power", because we Americans so like to invade other countries and push them around.
But, at the end of the article, she says it's OK to hunt down the Islamofascists anyway. She just prefers we did it with a less sweeping rhetorical flourish.
Whatever.
We're the pack leader of the infidel dogs
(
Review) Bernard Lewis takes the long view of why the US is hated by the Islamofascists as the leader of the Infidels.
The central issue
(
Review) Jonah Goldberg points out that if an attack on Iraq is the central issue of the day, then it should be the central issue in the upcoming elections.
But, could someone please explain to me what's so wrong about making these congressional elections about the war?
In Europe, elections are used as referenda on the EU, or the euro, or immigration policy, or a new kind of foot-flavored soft cheese or whatever, all the time. In Israel, governments are formed around issues of war and peace on a regular basis. Such elections focus the public as well as the politicians on what the nation's agenda should be.
Now, I don't want to live in a parliamentary democracy (heck, as a small-"r" republican, I'm not that in love with democracy in general). But, if it just so happens that a congressional — or presidential — election happens to coincide with the emergence of the biggest possible issue a country can face, I'm at a loss to understand why we shouldn't make it the central issue of the election.
But the war is the
last thing the democrats want to talk about.
Freedom vs. Security
(
Review) The LA
Times is calling for judges to step in and restrain the president and congress from reducing our civil liberties. But, being the LA
Times, the editors couldn't help from spoiling an otherwise acceptable article by launching a spurious attack on Attorney General John Ashcroft, one of their favorite whipping boys.
In May, for instance, judges on the secret federal court that approves classified wiretaps and searches in terrorism and espionage cases blasted Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft for the FBI's use of false information in dozens of requests for top-secret warrants.
Well, no, actually, that isn't what happened. All of the false information complaints mentioned by the court occured under Janet Reno during the Clinton Administration. But that's the LA
Times for you. The truth is never quite enough for them.
Or perhaps its too much for them.
If only this weren't true
(
Review) Car and Driver editor Brock Yates writes in TCS that, no matter how much we want it, the technology just isn't there yet to replace the Internal Combustion engine.
Jeez, wouldn't it be
great to tell the OPEC guys to stuff it?
*sigh*
And after Iraq...
(
Review) Like it or not, says Michael Ledeen, we're at war with Iran, too.
Well, maybe, but I suspect an externally imposed regime change in Iraq might very well lead to an internally imposed one in Iran.
More answers to dumb questions
(
Review) Evidently I wasn't the only one who thinks that Zell Miller's dumb op/ed needed an answer. Michael Long does the job for NRO.
A little liberty for a little safety
(
Review) Nick Gillespie writes that the Post-911 tendency to trade a little freedom for extra security is an old trade--and a useless one.
We’ve become trained to show up hours earlier to airports and to shuffle passively through security checkpoints, to unbuckle our pants and untuck our shirts, to hold our feet up in the air while agents wave wands over our shoes, to surrender nail clippers at the gate or just travel without them, to grin and bear it while Grandma’s walker gets the once-over. (Who even remembers the relative ease of air travel pre-9/11 -- much less before the mid-’90s, when we first started showing picture IDs as a condition of flying?) We’ve already started to ignore the ubiquitous surveillance cameras like the ones that watched over us as we celebrated the Fourth of July on the Mall in Washington, D.C. We’ve learned to mock a never-ending series of proposals such as the infamous Operation TIPS and plans for beefing up the old Neighborhood Watch program into a full-blown "national system for...reporting suspicious activity," both of which are moving forward in modified form despite widespread hooting.
Has any of this made us safer? Not from our government, which has done little to earn our trust over the years, especially when it comes to law enforcement. And not from terrorists, either. If they’ve been cowed, it’s because we went after bin Laden and his minions with specific, extreme, and righteous prejudice. It’s because of regular people who took the terrorists down over Pennsylvania instead of the White House, and who wrestled shoe bomber Richard Reid onto the floor at 30,000 feet. It’s because, as a nation and as individuals, we showed that we would fight for a way of life that values freedom and privacy.
Most of the extra security measures taken since 911 have been cosmetic. They inconvenience us without providing any real level of additional security. I've seen the pictures and heard the stories of old ladies and old men being detained and searched. The threat is from young middle-eastern males. They're the ones that need to get the extra security attention.
Yet, its American citizens that face the brunt of the new "security" measures.
The one bright spot...
(
Review Sebastian Malaby thinks President Bush's foreign policy is fetid swamp of incompetence and failure. Except for the part about whacking Saddam Hussein. He really likes that bit.
All that said, however, the worst silliness in the Iraq debate comes from those who write off the war talk as an example of Bush's blinkered attitude to foreign policy. It is the critics who are blinkered, for it is they who refuse to see a real threat. And it is the critics, in many cases, who have called repeatedly upon the administration to engage in the world -- and who now pout and sulk because their calls have been answered.
Well said.
A nice note from Tony
(
Review) British Prime Minister Tone Blair writes a friendly message to New Yorkers, and americans, in the NY
Post today.
The idiotarian-in-chief
(
Review Pejman Yousefzadeh addresses the idiocy of Noam Chomsky.
The corruption of judicial nominations
(
Review) Jim Wooten weighs in on the rejection of the Priscilla Owen nomination, and the ideologues who have corrupted the process.
The second dynamic is more ominous. In the last half century, a gradual power shift has occurred. The left, recognizing that the nation is essentially conservative, has concluded that the legislative arena is an obstruction. Its policy-making agenda, thus, is largely moved to the bureaucracy and to the courts.
Narrow-agenda zealots who have little chance of persuading a full body of legislators to implement their agenda recognize that greater power comes by boring into a bureaucracy and nesting. Thus when Congress or state legislatures pass vague laws on the environment, education or business, for example, the business of writing the interpreting regulations falls to the moles.
The federal courts, too, have become a policy-making arena. It is far easier and more productive for agenda-driven groups to find an activist federal judge to implement their agenda than it is to convince legislators. Many judges, to their discredit, have been compliant.
Distrustful of legislative bodies, the left has targeted the courts and the bureaucracy to advance agendas, while Congress either falls into stalemate or into incrementalism.
That tells us much about the Left, especially about the real respect they have for democracy.
Hmm, I guess there is such a thing as a stupid question
(
Review) Georgia Senator Zell Miller has penned a surprisingly vapid op/ed piece for the Washington
Post. As a rhetorical device, he poses a set of questions to President Bush, requesting answers. Let's delve a little deeper into this gem of mindlessness, shall we?
When it comes to showing deference to our president in a time of war, I doubt there are many who have more respect for him as a leader and an individual than I do. As a Marine, I was taught to say, "Aye, aye, sir," do an about-face and go do the job my commander in chief ordered me to do.
That's just my nature, and that's why I'm with the president 100 percent on his homeland security bill now in the Senate.
I also believe he has gathered together the finest national security team since Harry Truman had George Marshall.
So, when it comes to expanding the war on terrorism to Iraq, I stand with the president and I will not criticize his judgment. He has already made the case with me, and I am convinced that Saddam Hussein has to go.
If the case has already been made for Senator Miller, then the rest of the article is just pointlessly stupid. Because, if he really is convinced that Saddam Hussein has to go, then why doesn't he already know the answers to the questions he's about to pose, and why doesn't he use this forum to present those answers? If he's all for overthrowing Saddam Hussein and he doesn't know the answers to the questions he's about to pose, then he doesn't come off as a keen politico-strategic thinker.
Or a thinker of any kind, actually.
But I always like to run things by my focus group back home, and lately the comments from my focus group tell me that the folks out there in Middle America, sitting around their kitchen tables, have questions that need to be answered before we march our soldiers into Iraq.
Now, my focus group is not one of those formal meetings where you pay people to sit around a conference table in an office building. It's a very informal chat with the regulars at Mary Ann's Restaurant, up the street from my home in rural Young Harris, Ga. They are construction workers, retired teachers, farmers, preachers and the waitresses who chime in with their opinions as they pour coffee and bring more biscuits. Several of these folks have previously worn the uniform of this country, some in combat. Not an Ivy Leaguer in the bunch. Not a single one reads the New York Times, The Washington Post or the Weekly Standard. And their television time is devoted mainly these days to the evening news and to watching the Braves, who are close to clinching another division pennant.
I jotted down some of the questions that they want the president to answer in building a case for going to Iraq.
"Well, shucks," he seems to be saying, "I'm just an ol' Georgia country boy, talkin' to my friends and neighbors over bacon & grits. And we got t' thinkin' 'bout this Iraq deal, and we was kinda confused about a few points." This is simply a transparent rhetorical device.
(1) Even if Hussein has nukes, does he have the capability to reach New York or Los Angeles or Atlanta?
Well, certainly not by ballistic missile. Still, nuclear bombs can be made fairly small nowadays. The technology, after all, is 60 years old, and a lot of strides have been made in miniaturization. Both the US and USSR had 155mm nuclear artillery shells as far back as the 1960's, so we already know that a nuclear bomb can fit into a casing approximately 8" x 36". It is certainly conceivable that one or more nuclear weapons of this size could be smuggled into the US and set off by Iraqi agents or terrorists operating here.
Does he have any of these types of bombs? We don't know. Is it possible to build them? Certainly. Can we be certain to stop and inspect every 8" x 36" package brought into the US that could contain such a weapons? Not a chance.
(2) The old Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear missiles for decades, many of them capable of reaching our major cities, and yet we didn't get into a war with the Soviets. The president needs to explain why Iraq is different.
Because the USSR could incinerate the US about 10 times over. Saddam Hussein can't. The risks of action against the USSR were unacceptable. Those risks are not relevant to our current situation with Iraq. Now will they be if we take action now.
(3) Who will join with us in this war and what share will they be willing to bear? (There was also some grumbling about our boys in Afghanistan "just doing guard duty" to protect those warlords.)
Perhaps no one will join us. Our concern is whether the threat should be eliminated. Whether anyone else wishes to help in eliminating this threat is a relatively minor concern. If Iraqi infiltrators set off a suitcase nuke in New York, or Chicago, or LA, what will the opinions of leaders in Berlin, Paris, or Rome matter?
As far as concerns about our boys just protecting the "warlords" in Afghanistan, I would point to the empty hole in the ground where the World Trade Centers stood and ask if they prefer we give the country back to the Taliban and Al Qaida.
(4) What happens after we take out Hussein? How long will our soldiers be there? And, again, with whose help?
What happens is we occupy it in much the same way as we occupied the capital of the kamikazi suicide bombers in 1945, and build a liberal, democratic society. Will we need to be there for 10 years? Perhaps. It will less traumatic than watching thousands of American citizens vomiting and twitching to death after a release of VX gas, or watching the center of a major American city being immolated in a mushroom cloud.
Moreover, it will have the effect of liberating a nation from tyranny, and region from which we obtain our oil supplies from the threat of armed aggression. More about oil in due course.
(5) There is concern about too much deployment. We've got our soldiers stationed all over the world. Someone needs to bring us up to date on where they all are, why they are there and how long our commitment to keep them there is.
That's a fascinating point. Perhaps we are spread too thin in some places. Perhaps some deployments should be ended or curtailed. It's hardly relevant to the threat posed by Iraq, however.
(6) How does our plan in Iraq fit in with the whole Middle East question? How will it affect Israel? How will it affect our war on terrorism? Does taking Saddam out help or hurt that entire messy situation?
Many, many experts on the region think that the overthrow of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq would be extraordinarily helpful. It would remove a major threat to our Israeli allies. It would end Iraqi support for the Hamas and El Aksa Brigades. It would remove a terrorist sanctuary from the Middle East. It would eliminate the threat of Iraqi aggression against the oil-producing nations in the region. A very existence of a democratic Iraq would put even more pressure on the Mullahs in Iran to liberalize from their captive population. A whole host of positive outcomes can be visualized.
(7) At Mary Ann's Restaurant, Tony is all right. But Putin is not. Why are we putting so much trust in him? Is he still with us in the war on terrorism, or was that just so much talk at a photo op?
The real answer lies somewhere in the middle. Putin, like many European leaders, wants to see action only under the aegis of the UN. Putin also faces a variety of other problems unrelated to the war on terrorism per se, but that affect his decisions vis a vis the war. For example, Russia has a severe economic crisis, and desperately needs hard cash of the type that their Iraqi deals provide. He faces a variety of pressures that American or even other European leaders don't face.
This is hardly, however, a central problem related to the Iraqi threat.
(8) The people at Mary Ann's know very well who fights our wars -- the kids from the middle-class and blue-collar homes of America. Kids like their grandchildren. They want to hear the president say that he knows and understands that.
Perhaps they'd like the president to come over and hold their hands, too. I submit that we're better off with a president who stands ready to defend American interests than we are to a president who can get all teary-eyed, bite his bottom lip and feel our pain. We've had quite enough of that, thank you.
(9) Forgive my bluntness, but these folks also want to hear the president and the vice president say that this war is not about oil.
Well, uh, actually, it is about oil. Oil is not an illegitimate interest of the American people. Except, of course, for those who actually wish to lode their jobs then freeze to death in the dark. We have an affluent, comfortable society because we have a high level of energy-based technology.
Imagine a nuclear armed Iraq invading and taking over Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. IS there
anyone who really thinks this would be a good thing? How many of us would have jobs if oil was $100 per barrel? How many of us could afford to pay our heating bills?
If you don't think oil is a legitimate interest of the United States, then you are a fool.
(10) They also want to hear an explanation of why we didn't take care of this in the Persian Gulf War, and why it is on our doorstep again so soon.
Well, these are certainly some fascinating questions. Perhaps they should be better addressed to the previous two administrations, rather than the one that was unfortunate enough to inherit their messes. Since President Bush can't step into the wayback machine, debating them with him is essentially a waste of time.
None of the above in any way should be interpreted as my backing down in my support of the president's effort. His position and his principles have already made the case with me. I write this in the spirit of trying to get a better explanation for the folks back home and the folks across Middle America. Those folks who love their country very much and who respect their president, but who need a few more answers.
Well, if you already know the answers, Zell, then why weren't you giving them to the folks back home?
In any event, I hope this means that when the president asks congress for authority to invade Iraq, you'll be one of the first ones to vote "yea".
Criticizing a crank
(
Review) Like me, Tony Adragna is pretty skeptical about former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. For some reason, Ritter has been making the talk show rounds proclaiming that Saddam Hussein doesn't have any WMD capability at all. Nobody else beleives this.
Why is Scott Ritter doing this? Is he just a publicity whore, or is he a crank?
Style Evolves
Well, after some late-night ASP programming, I now have comments added to the site. Talk to me. Show me your love.
