The Review
Holy Crap! Even the Guardian going pro-war
(
Review) I never thought I'd see the day. They are not comfortable about it, and it clearly leaves a bitter taste in their mouths, but even the editors of the
Guardian are coming over to the pro-war camp.
One thing which has been stressed too little in recent weeks is that it is Iraq's choices that have brought war closer. The debate in Britain and Europe continues to focus largely on what America is doing and why. Too often, it is overlooked that it is Iraq which remains, at the eleventh hour, in defiance of the will of its region and the wider world. That will is still to find a sensible resolution to the current crisis without war. The coercive diplomacy that could yet lead to Saddam's disarmament or his disposal by his own side must be pursued. Indeed, the military build-up remains the best strategy for seeking to disarm him, short of war. Yet he still shows signs of frustrating the demands of December's UN resolution. If this continues, few analysts doubt that the United States will seek support for a military attack. It is becoming equally clear that Tony Blair's Britain would participate. Would we be right to do so?
Some will still argue that because the world contains other unpleasant dictators, it would be wrong to get rid of this one. We disagree. The recent past contains several examples of military intervention against sovereign states where the outcome, if not ideal, has certainly been much better in humanitarian terms than what went before: Vietnam's removal of Pol Pot from Cambodia; Nato's Kosovo campaign, with the subsequent indictment of Slobodan Milosevic; the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan.
War with Iraq may yet not come, but, conscious of the potentially terrifying responsibility resting with the British Government, we find ourselves supporting the current commitment to a possible use of force. That is not because we have not agonised, as have so many of our readers and those who demonstrated across the country yesterday, about what is right. It is because we believe that, if Saddam does not yield, military action may eventually be the least awful necessity for Iraq, for the Middle East and for the world.
Yeah, I've checked. It's the
Guardian, not the
Telegraph. I mean, I just don't know what to say.
The Smoking Gun?
(
Review) Evidently, the UN weapons inspectors have just found documents detailing the Iraqi government's continuing quest to build nuclear weapons.
Huh. Who'd have thought?
Once inside they found what one Western official has described as a "highly significant" batch of documents which, on closer inspection, revealed that Saddam's scientists were continuing development work on producing an Iraqi nuclear weapon.
Although these documents are this weekend still being examined by IAEA experts to establish the current state of Saddam's nuclear weapons programme, the discovery could well turn out to be the "smoking gun" that officials in the Bush administration have pinned their hopes on obtaining in order to justify launching military action against Baghdad.
When Saddam submitted his 12,000 page dossier to the United Nations Security Council at the end of last year, the Iraqi leader insisted that Baghdad no longer had any interest in developing nuclear weapons, and that Iraq's nuclear research programme had been discontinued.
The documents seized at the homes of the two scientists, however, confirm what Western intelligence has been arguing all along, that Saddam is continuing with his quest to develop the first Arab atom bomb.
Not that this will have any effect on the anti-war movement. They are ininterested in evidence of Iraqi perfidy. They are already conviced that the real perfidy lies in US policy, which clearly provoked Saddam into his nuclear ambitions.
We can prove it
(
Review) Evidently, SecState Colin Powell thinks he can prove to the UN that Iraq is not complying with the UN demand to disarm.
Sheryl Crow - Idiotarian
(
Review) Andrew Sullivan whacks Sheryl Crow with a hammer.
The Hour is late
(
Review) The editors of
National Review fear that the Bush Administration's policy has begun to drift.
Plain Speaking
(
Review) Victor Davis Hanson laments the loss of plain speaking, and it's replacement with the ubiquitous "but".
We now live in a labyrinth of BUTs, and they appear almost daily in clusters, like the following:
The Washy-Washy BUT
I am no fan of Saddam Hussein, BUT…
I don't particularly like Arafat, BUT…
September 11 was horrible, BUT…
The terrorists were not justified in what they did, BUT…
Suicide murdering is wrong, BUT…
The Koran forbids killing innocents, BUT…
The Nonsensical BUT
Iraq is capable of being contained and thus does not warrant military intervention; BUT Iraq is too dangerous, due to its arsenal, and thus military intervention is not worth the risk.
There is no real proof that Iraq possesses chemical weapons; BUT were we to invade, our troops could die horrible deaths from chemical weapons.
Because Korea already has nuclear weapons, we should deal with that threat first; BUT because Korea already has nuclear weapons, we should not dare provoke them.
Once a country gets nuclear weapons, our options are limited; BUT why pick on Iraq when, unlike North Korea, it does not have nuclear weapons?
The Dilatory BUT
The Taliban are terrible; BUT let us first take care of al Qaeda.
Saddam is terrible; BUT let us first take care of al Qaeda.
Saddam is terrible; BUT let us first take of North Korea.
North Korea is terrible; BUT let us first take care of al Qaeda.
The America-Is-Always-At-Fault BUT
The removal of the Taliban was, of course, good; BUT we installed them in the first place.
I support removing Saddam Hussein, BUT we helped him in the past.
Who likes bin Laden? BUT we created him.
Everyone agrees that the mullahs in Iran are terrible, BUT our past policies are to blame for them.
The Israel BUT
Of course, Israel is a democracy, BUT…
No one supports the methods of the intifada, BUT…
I am not saying what the Palestinian bombers are doing is right, BUT…
Arafat is terrible, BUT look at Sharon.
The Bush BUT
Bush gave an excellent speech after 9/11, BUT…
Of course, Bush was right to take out the Taliban, BUT…
No one is a fan of Iran, Iraq, or North Korea, BUT…
Sure, in theory, there are potential terrorists right here in the United States, BUT…
The Alternative Is Worse BUT
The Saudi monarchy is pretty awful, BUT…
I agree that Mubarak really is a dictator, BUT…
I don't like Musharraf any better than you do, BUT…
Remove Saddam? Sure, BUT…
To dethrone the reign of BUT, I suggest a revolution led by therefore — a better adverb which follows from, rather than sidesteps or elides, the truth:
Saddam Hussein murders his own, attacks others, and threatens us; therefore let us remove him.
Options are limited when a rogue nation gets nuclear weapons; therefore let us ensure that Saddam does not.
Israel is a democracy; its enemies are not; therefore let us be sure to support freedom over autocracy.
The Saudi monarchy is pretty awful; therefore let us insist on reforms or cease our support.
I kind of like the sound of that.
Our "allies", the Saudis
(
Review) The Saudis are so dead set against a war in the Mideast against Iraq, that they appear to be trying to engineer a coup to bump off Saddam.
Well, whatever works.
Transatlantic disconnect
(
Review) Germany's Ambassador to the US, Wolfgang Ischinger, writes in the Washington
Post about US/European goals in the Mideast. His suggestions are esentially that we talk a lot more. For instance:
Fourth, a strengthened nonproliferation strategy. Past efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction have not succeeded in the Middle East. Iraq is not the only problem. Not only have India and Pakistan gone nuclear in recent years, but a number of other countries are also interested in developing or acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Surely, reliance on counterproliferation will not be a sufficient response to this continuing challenge. As suggested by the recent U.S. strategy paper on proliferation, we need to take a fresh look at all our instruments, including global and regional arms control agreements. Arms control treaties such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will, however, be ratified by others only if the United States decides to lead the way.
Note the absence of any enforcement mechanism. Treaties, negotiations, test bans, and the like are all well and good, assuming that both parties have an equal interest in them. The key European mistake is in assuming that they do, when the clear evidence from North Korea and Iraq is that they do not.
The West should define its priorities. We need to clarify whether, as some in Washington are suggesting, we intend to pursue a "Wilsonian project for reshaping the whole Middle East" (historian Timothy Garton Ash), and whether -- as many in Europe doubt -- the West would have the resolve and the stamina to sustain it.
Well, clearly Europe doesn't have the resolve, that's for sure.
Nuclear Deterrence
(
Review) Daniel Gouré reviews America's Policy of nuclear deterrence with a historical overview, and a precis of lessons learned that we should apply now.
A blinding glimpse of the obvious
(
Review) Henry Sokolski & Victor Gilinsky point out that a new "agreement" with North Korea, or any dictator for that matter, would be pointless. Such agreements never work, because dictators can't be trusted to live up to their agreements.
This seems like a pretty simple argument. Simple enough even for Sean Penn and Mike Farrel to understand.
Bush the appeaser?
(
Review) Charles Krauthammer isn't happy with the way the Bush Administration is handling North Korea.
Steyn Speaks
(
Review) Mark Steyn culls some lessons from the Falklands War,m and applies them to today's situation in Iraq.
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE
The first thing the British Government did was assemble and dispatch a vast task force as quickly as possible. From Mrs. Thatcher's point of view, this put a clock on events: It would take a couple of weeks for the ships to reach the area. At that point, they'd start firing. So, if General Galtieri was seriously interested in avoiding war, that was the schedule, and Maggie intended to stick to it.
For its part, Argentina calculated that the longer the situation went on without being reversed the less likely it was that it would ever be reversed. World opinion gets used to things very quickly -- the Argies have the Falklands, North Korea has nukes -- and such will to rollback as there is dissipates quickly.
In the war on terror, I fear the clock has stopped.
THE UN IS FOR SHOW ONLY
To recall what the striped-pants set were advocating after the Argentine invasion is to understand why the world should never be left to the experts. The peace plan being promoted by Javier Perez de Cuellar, the UN Secretary-General, involved the UN taking over administration of the islands. This "solution" would have been seen, correctly, as a massive defeat for the British.
The Prime Minister understood the UN was institutionally inimical to the West. The Falklands, for example, came under the organization's absurdly anachronistic "Decolonization Committee," even though the islanders had no interest in being decolonized. Mrs. Thatcher went through the motions of UN diplomacy, but she never ceded control of the agenda or the timetable.
TO THE EXPERTS, IT'S ALWAYS A QUAGMIRE
From The New York Times of May 8th 1982:
"In Argentina, Junta's Confidence Grows"
News Analysis by James M. Markham
"One of the central premises of the strategy of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain in the South Atlantic conflict -- that gradually increasing military pressure will generate concessions from the Argentine junta -- does not appear to be working ..."
If it seems incredible that The New York Times would pay good money for Mr. Markham's "analysis," look at all the Afghan quagmire guys -- hello, Eric Margolis! -- now making a good living as Iraqi quagmire predictors. Dictatorships are always unbeatable until that moment when they suddenly collapse and implode.
DICTATORS ARE NEVER RATIONAL
Why would anybody think, faced with economic catastrophe, that invading a string of distant islands is the answer? Dictators don't behave rationally. Indeed, one reason they become dictators is precisely to escape the tiresome constraints of rationality. There may be valid arguments for not going to war with Iraq, but not the ones that begin, oh, even if Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, he'd never use them against the West. Never bet on a dictator's rationality.
STABILITY IS A FETISH
From The Washington Post of May 26th 1982:
"British Move to Seek A Definitive Victory Said to Unsettle U.S.
By Leonard Downie Jr.
"Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is creating an uncomfortable dilemma for the Reagan administration in her determination to win a complete military victory in the Falkland Islands and restore them to full British colonial administration ...
"Reagan administration officials fear that a humiliating defeat for Argentina will sour American as well as British and European relations with much of Latin America for a long time to come, according to the sources ..."
Well, the sources were wrong. Mrs. Thatcher liberated not just the Falklands, but also Argentina, at least from the military. Galtieri fell and democracy returned. The "humiliating defeat" of the junta tainted all the other puffed-up bemedalled tinpots by implication. And, whatever the problems of Latin America today, no one's pining for the return of the generals. Twenty years ago, the realpolitik crowd thought a democratic South America was a fantasy and that we had to cosy up to the strutting little El Presidentes-for-Life. Today, the same stability junkies tell us we have to do the same with Boy Assad and Co. They're wrong again. They always are.
That great thinker Sheryl Crow declared the other day: "War is based in greed and there are huge karmic retributions that will follow. I think war is never the answer to solving any problems. The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies."
In the Falklands, war solved a lot of problems. For 20 years, the islanders have lived in peace and freedom. So, in their own chaotic Latin fashion, have the liberated peoples of Argentina and most of the rest of the continent. If the best way to solve problems is not to have enemies, then the best way not to have enemies is to get rid of them. Thank you, Mrs. Thatcher. Rest in peace, General Galtieri, wherever you are.
And thanks for the lessons, Maggie.
After the War
(
Review) Stanley Kurtz says it might be possible to bring democracy to Iraq and other Middle Eastern autocracies. But it will be hard.
I am a bit more sanguine about the possibility than Mr. Kurtz is. I thgink the Iraqi people have suffered enough under totalitarianism to know that they don't want more of it dressed up in clerical robes.
The Noko Gulag
(
Review) Robert Windrem details the horrific abuses of the North Korean gulag.
Promises of suicide
(
Review) Saddam Hussein promises suicide. Not, unfortunately, for himself, but for anyone who attacks Iraq.
Well, he's half right.
Hypocrisy on Sharpton
(
Review) Jeff Jacoby is disgusted by the fawning treatment Al Sharpton gets.
If Sharpton were a white skinhead he would be a political leper, spurned everywhere but the fringe. But far from being spurned, he is shown much deference. Democrats embrace him. Politicians court him. And journalists report on his comings and goings while politely sidestepping his career as a hatemongering racial hustler.
Let's hope that if Sharpton runs for President, the press will look into his background as deeply as they did, say, W's.
Something's up
(
Review) An Iraqi nuclear physicist was escorted from his home by UN weapons inspectors, along with an armload of documents. They then went to look at what appears to be a man-made mound in an empty field, then escorted the physicist back to the UN headquarters in Bagdhad.
Interesting.
Mr. Blix's Irresolution
(
Review) The editors of the Washington
Post aren't impressed by Hans Blix's attempts to create his own UN policy.
The impasse ends
The Republicans finally got the Democrats to agree to turn over the gavel to the majority yesterday, after several days of wrangling. The whole situation torked me off, and I wrote an op/ed piece about it. Unfortunately, I didn't submit the piece until yesterday, so, by this morning, it was too late to run it. But, I'd still like it to see the light of day, so I present it below.
===========
LETTING EVERY VOTE COUNT?
In the turmoil that surrounded the 200 elections, Democrats held themselves out as the party of democracy. All of the votes, they told us, should be counted. Judging from the Democratic Senate leadership's actions over the last two weeks, however, their fidelity to electoral results evidently cools somewhat when they are not the winners.
After every election, the Senate passes an "organizing resolution" that defines how the Senate will operate, based on the results of the preceding election. The organizing resolution defines who will sit on what committees, how committees will be divided among the majority and minority parties, how much money will be given to the majority and minority staffs, and many other similar measures that define how business will be done in the Senate. Until a new organizing resolution is passed, the Senate operates under the previous one.
We are now two weeks into the current session, and we still have no new organizing resolution, because the Democratic leadership refuses to allow such a resolution to come to a vote unless their demands are met. As a result, Democrats still control all Senate committees, where the lion's share of the Senate's work is done.
Part of the problem is that the Democrats want more money for the minority staff. Prior to the last Congress, money for Committee staffs was divided up on a 66%-33% basis, with the majority receiving 66%. After the 2000 election, when the Senate was split 50-50, the staff money was split on a nearly even basis. Democratic leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) now says that the current split should be the same.
But that allocation was a response to an unusual situation. The Democrats and Republicans held an equal number of seats, and the Republican majority was based on the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Cheney. The Republicans agreed to a more equitable distribution of funds to recognize the reality of an equally divided Senate.
That is not the case now. For the fifth consecutive time, the voters have returned the Senate to Republican control, this time with an absolute majority. The Democrats, as the losers of that election, are not entitled to now refuse to turn the Senate over to the majority simply because they do not desire to labor under the traditional financial restraints of their minority status. For them to demand both financial and procedural concessions that have never before been given to the minority party smacks of a sore loser's fit of pique.
"What we had agreed to with a 51-49 breakdown in the 107th Congress is what we ought to agree to with a 51-49 breakdown in the 108th Congress," says Tom Daschle. "Let's do in this Congress what we did in the last one."
The difference, of course, is that the 51-49 split in the last session was due not to an electoral result, but due to the fact that one senator, elected as a Republican, switched sides. Because this switch occurred in the middle of the 107th Congress, it wasn't practical to negotiate an entirely new organizing resolution. Republicans did, however, re-organize the committees, and turn the committee chairmanships over to the Democrats.
Something the Democrats, by the way, still haven't done, despite losing the 2002 election.
On top of this, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman – still – of the Judiciary Committee, along with several other members of the committee's Democratic "majority" signed a letter demanding procedural concessions for judicial appointments as a prerequisite for allowing a new organizing resolution to pass. These demand include limiting the number of "controversial" (i.e. conservative) appointees, limiting the number of appointees at each hearing, and limiting the number of hearings. Each of these demands would work to slow the pace of judicial nominations, especially of conservative judges. In effect, the Democrats are demanding procedural control over judicial nominations, even though they are the minority party.
Meanwhile, 11 Republican senators have little to do, because they cannot be seated on committees until a new organizing resolution is passed. The citizens of their states are, in effect, not fully represented in the Senate, because their Senators cannot attend committee meetings, participate in hearings, or cast their votes.
Because of this Democratic intransigence, other business is suffering in the Senate, too. On January 14th, the Governmental Affairs Committee was supposed to hold a confirmation hearing and vote on the Homeland Security Department's prospective chief, Tom Ridge. That meeting was cancelled, leaving the Homeland Security Department headless for now.
Never before has a minority party made such obstinate demands, nor has a party ever before refused to give up their majority in recognition of their losses at the polls. Since the Republicans don't have the 60 votes necessary to force an organizing resolution through the Senate over Democratic objections, they have little choice but to hope that public pressure forces the Democrats to retreat.
If the Democrats want to play that game, then fine, let them. But, let's not hear any more pious mouthings from them about letting every vote count.
Resisting demagogery
(
Review) Doug Bandow says that, unless we resist calls for Nationalized health care, we will live to regret it.
Canadian health care is no model for the U.S. Adjust for the two nations' differences — the U.S. has more war veterans and inner-city residents and spends far more on medical research, for instance — and medicine doesn't look so cheap up north. Indeed, a commission headed by former provincial premier Roy Romanow, appointed last year by the prime minister to review Canada's health-care system, has just published a report advocating doubling the national government's subsidies.
No wonder, given the fact that Canadians routinely stand in long lines for care. In fact, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute estimates that Canadians are waiting longer than ever before for medical services. The average delay between general practitioner referral and specialty consultation is 16.5 weeks; the time between the latter and actual treatment is another 9.2 weeks.
Delays for cancer patients run a month or two. The wait is almost seven months for eye care and eight months for orthopedic surgery.
Canadians have only limited access to new technologies. In August, reported Nadeem Esmail and Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute, "While ranking number one as a health care spender [compared to 26 largely European states], Canada ranks eighteenth in access to MRIs, seventeenth in access to CT scanners, eighth in access to radiation machines, and thirteenth in access to lithotripters."
Total health-care outlays are determined by a "global budget" rather than medical needs; the province of Ontario closed its hospitals around Christmas 1993 because it was out of money. Explained Theodore Freedman, president of Toronto's Mount Sinai, which was shuttered for two weeks, "This is not about health care. This is about the deficit."
Patients flee abroad, particularly to America, to jump local queues. Provinces contract out treatment, such as for cancer, to U.S. hospitals.
Nationalized health care leads to rationing of medical treatment. That is the experience of every nation that has done it.
Steyn Speaks
(
FrontPage magazine.com) This time, he takes on the Left's pursuit of ideological purity, no matter what the cost.
Every so often you read something that stops you in your tracks. A week ago, The Boston Globe ran a 10,000-word profile of Ted Kennedy by Charles Pierce. For the first gazillion paragraphs or so, it chugged along in familiar Boston Globe snoozefest mode, and then:
"If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age."
That's terrific, isn't it? If he hadn't killed her, he'd have given her a grand old age -- if 62 counts as "old age," which most women would surely dispute (unless the Globe's using actuarial tables based on female life expectancy of Kennedy acquaintances). But Mr. Pierce's point is a simple one: Sure, 34 years ago, Teddy fished himself out of the briny, staggered away and somehow neglected to inform the authorities until the following morning that he'd left some gal down there. But, if he was too tired to do anything for her back then, he's been "tireless" on her behalf ever since.
The environmental crowd have a favourite bumper sticker: "Think Globally, Act Locally." But many global thinkers, like Mr. Gore, have a lot of trouble acting locally. And, when the inevitable contradictions arise, ideological purity always trumps local glitches. What I find creepy about the Clymer/Pierce line on Miss Kopechne is its careless assumption of her disposability. It's we on the right who are supposed to be heartless: We're the ones who think nothing of sacrificing "other people's sons" in wars fought for our corporate interests; it's George W. Bush who, in the celebrated insight of Canada's rising political star Bill Blaikie, is "planning every minute of his life to kill as many Iraqi children as he can in the name of oil."
If we right-wing madmen do indeed spend every waking minute dreaming up ways to kill as many children as possible, we're not very good at it. By contrast, the left does a wonderful job of sacrificing the little people in the name of its own corporate interests. In America, generations of black children have drowned in the swamp of inner-city public schools because the Democratic Party subordinates their interests to those of the teachers' unions. Overseas, the hypothetical body-count of an Anglo-American war with Iraq exercises Bill Blaikie far more than the actual slaughter Saddam has already visited on his people. But then one of the curious qualities of the ideological left is its increasing imperviousness to reality. The uselessness of Canada's billion-dollar gun registry is not the point: Just having one, no matter how expensive, no matter how irrelevant, "sends the right message."
Priceless.
Doesn't every vote count?
(
Review) Despite their 2000 claims to be vigilant guardians of the electoral process, the Democrats don't seem quite as keen on election when they are on the losing end of them. Two weeks into the current session, Democrats are still refusing to turn the Senate committees over to Republicans. According to the NY
Times:
Republican leaders said the impasse was disenfranchising the voters of 11 states that sent new senators to Washington since they could not yet be seated on any of the panels where most of the business is done. And they said it was blocking Congress from completing work on last year's spending bills, which will be contentious themselves because of planned reductions, as well as other legislative initiatives. It has also stalled hearings.
Democrats said they were simply insisting on the same near-equitable split of committee financing and office space that they gave Republicans when Democrats held the same two-seat margin of control in the last Congress.
"If it was good enough last year, it ought to be good enough this year," said Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader.
It was good enough last year, Tom, because the balance in the Senate was
not based on the results of an election, but because one senator, elected as a Republican, repudiated his party membership and crossed the aisle. Republicans acknowledged that switch by agreeing to the organizing resolution reflecting that switch.
Unlike last year, however, the voters--for the fifth consecutive time--returned the Senate to Republican control. There was an election and everything. But the Democrats want to exercise control of the Senate, even though they are in the minority.
So, let's not hear any more pious mouthings from the Democrats about letting every vote count.
Regime Change
(
Review) Christopher Hitchens writes about regime change in Iraq, and how we got to the current state of affairs.
Seoul Mates
(
Review) Robert Lane Green, writing in
The New Republic, also says it's time to get out of South Korea.
True, an end to the American presence in South Korea could make it easier for Kim's troops to come storming across the border to fulfill the "Dear Leader's" expansionist aims. As a result, South Koreans will inevitably feel more exposed. But after 50 years of guaranteeing the South's security, surely it'd be difficult for Kim to conclude from the mere act of our leaving that we wouldn't intervene in the event of an attack. And, in any case, the marginally increased threat just might force those blasé South Koreans to take their own security more seriously. An analogous form of ambiguity has been helped bring relative stability to the Taiwan Straits. It may be exactly what our Korea policy needs.
"There's no way North Korea will attack us with their nuclear weapons," another young South Korean told The Washington Post last week. "You don't bomb and kill your family. We share the same blood." Anyone who knows anything about how the North treats its own people wouldn't be the least bit reassured by that statement. Maybe it's time South Korea learned a thing or two on its own.
Yes, maybe it is. But, it might turn into a rather harsh lesson.
Why all the America Bashing?
(
Review) Lee Harris exposes the intellectual roots of anti-Americanism.
The Peacemongers
(
Review) More on the peacemongers from
The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes.
The New Math
(
Review) Tom Friedman says the math doesn't look good for Israel.
As a result of all this, the conflict is entering a terrible new phase: the beginning of the end of the two-state solution. Under Mr. Sharon, the Jewish settlers have expanded existing settlements in the West Bank and also set up scores of illegal ones. The settlers want to ensure either the de facto or de jure Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. And with no credible Arab or Palestinian peace initiative to challenge them, and no pressure from the Bush team, and no Israeli party to implement separation, the settlers are winning by default and inertia. Winning means they are making separation impossible.
But if there is no separation, by 2010 there will be more Palestinians than Jews living in Israel and the occupied territories. Then Israel will have three options: The Israelis will control this whole area by apartheid, or they will control it by expelling Palestinians, or they will grant Palestinians the right to vote and it will no longer be a Jewish state. Whichever way it goes, it will mean the end of Israel as a Jewish democracy.
Unfortunately, under Arafat, a two-state solution is probably unworkable as well.
It takes an army to oust a dictator
(
Review) Michael Kelly, unlike John Derbyshire, believes that the underlying reality is that there will be a war against Iraq.
Don't Write off California
(
Review) Shawn Steel is chairman of the California Republican party. He thinks the W has a good shot at winning California, if the appropriate preparations are made.
I told you so
(
Review) John Derbyshire offers more evidence of the rightness of his predictions from last year, including his prediction that the US will not go to war against Iraq.
Adam G. Mersereau on Peace Movement on National Review Online
Review) Adam Mersereau writes about the combination of foolishness and arrogance that animates the "peace" movement.
The peace movement is founded upon a subtle ethnocentrism that escapes detection even by the multicultural Left where most peace activists are bred. The group that most openly celebrates the diversity of mankind does not understand that many people in the world hold diverse beliefs and subscribe to ideologies that are entirely independent of American influence. In the mind of the peace activist, America is not just the sole superpower, it is the center of gravity for all world events; and so every world event is simply an equal (and sometimes opposite) reaction to a prior American action. Peace activists believe that America's economy and culture are such dominant forces in the lives of people throughout the world that the actions and policies of other nations can be interpreted only as mere reactions to the actions and policies of the United States government. Therefore, they believe America has the unbounded ability to manipulate foreign governments through economic and cultural means.
Peacenik foreign policy is really very simple: Without an action by the United States, there will be no reaction by others. If America does not start a war, there will be no war. This is the arrogant ethnocentrism of the peace movement. Under this view, it is unthinkable that quaint little dictators — such as Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-il — might deign to manipulate America as much or more than America tries to manipulate them. It is unthinkable that a nation would resort to building nuclear weapons if they did not first feel threatened by the world's only super-bully. It is inconceivable that Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-il might have diabolical plans and evil aspirations that were not created by, and are not controlled by, the U.S. State Department. The peace activist then reaches the conclusion that the United States can make a unilateral decision for peace, simply by choosing to lay down its arms. If the United States would ignore open and notorious breaches of U.N. directives and treaties, and simply refuse to disturb the current state of peace, then peace would prevail by default.
If only the answer was that simple.
"Deceptive Drama"
(
Review) The NoKos have blasted the Bush administrations offer of talks on aid to N. Korea.
"The U.S. loudmouthed supply of energy and food aid are like a painted cake pie in the sky as they are possible only after the DPRK [North Korea] is totally disarmed," said the statement, issued late on Wednesday night.
"It is clear that the U.S. talk about dialogue is nothing but a deceptive drama to mislead the world public opinion," the ministry said.
I'm not sure how this counts as an attempt to mislead world public opinion. My sense of the world's public opinion is that the NoKo government is run by a bunch of fruitcakes, in whose hands a nuclear arsenal is rather frightening.
Actually, this is a bit of a surprise
(
Review) Despite the predictions of many pundits, the Bush administration will file an
amicus brief against the U. Mich affirmative action program.
Bring 'Em Home
(
Review) Ken Adelman writes that it's time to bring our boys home from South Korea, and that doing so would have positive benefits.
First, it would show the world what Americans instinctively know - that, no, we're not an imperial power. Americans don't want troops stationed anywhere abroad they're not wanted. The default position of U.S. foreign policy is isolationist, not expansionist.
That's a critical message to beam just now. U.S. troops shouldn't stay in Iraq after liberation any longer than they're wanted by the freely-elected Iraqi government post-Saddam. Despite what the political left claims, Americans seek no conquest or riches by our military presence abroad.
Second, to challenge South Koreans on whether our presence is indeed unwanted. It sure seems so, but I doubt it really is so.
Yet, if our protection is deemed no longer vital to ward off aggression from the North, fine, let's end it. The American government shouldn't be more concerned about South Korean security than South Koreans.
Third - and surely most potently - withdrawing troops from Korea would send shockwaves across Asia. This, to my mind, is a good thing.
Russia, China, and especially Japan - now languishing - would bolt up. Thus far, these three neighbors - whose security is far more endangered by a nuclear-packed Korean peninsula than is ours - have laid back.
Under the current set of circumstances, they can get away with that. Both North and South Korea are successfully spinning the North's nuclear crisis - both kicking out the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and withdrawing from the NPT - as a face-off between America and North Korea. Everyone else can just relax as spectators.
Even a leak that the Bush administration was considering U.S. troop withdrawals would jolt their stance of "what, me worry?"
It is, after all, their country. If they aren't especially worried about their security vis a vis an invasion from the north, it's hard to see why we should be.
An imprtant little island
(
Review) Nikolas K. Gvosdev writes that the island of Cyprus may be a key issue in helping us to win the war on terrorism.
Huh. I guess they aren't cooperating after all
(
Review) For those who beleive that we shouldn't attack Iraq because it is cooperating with the inspectors, guess again. Iraq is not cooperating with the inspectors at all. Moreover, it is still violating the UN agreements it signed.
"We have found several cases where it is clear that Iraq has imported weapons-related material in violation of the prohibitions of the Security Council," Blix said. "There has been a considerable amount of import in the weapons sector, which clearly is smuggling, and in violation, and they are in fact large quantities."
The only way in which the iraqis are "cooperating" is that they are not physically preventing inspectors from going to the sites they wish to visit.
The world wants Iraq to disarm peacefully, Blix said. But to do that it must provide documents, allow U.N. inspectors to interview Iraqi scientists in private, and show physical evidence of what facilities and weapons have been destroyed.
"What the show of force demonstrates to Iraq is that here is the other alternative," he said.
Blix said the key message that he and Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will deliver to Iraqi officials when they visit Baghdad on Sunday and Monday is that Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration submitted to inspectors last month did not contain any new evidence to verify its claim that its weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed.
"We need to have more evidence supplied to us. There are a great many open questions as to their possession of weapons of mass destruction and the Security Council and the world would like to be assured that these questions be sorted out," Blix said.
Liberate Iraq.
What's wrong with inner-city schools?
(
Review) Joshua Kaplowitz has a pretty good idea.
(
Review) Noemie Emery asks, "what unites the Democrats?" Her answer: A cartoonish view of Republicans. Unfortunately for the Democrats, she notes, cartoons aren't real life, and the voters know it.
So almost four decades after the mid-'60s disruptions, the Republicans have done better at exorcising their demons than the Democrats have done with theirs. The last vestiges of racism are leaching out of the South and of the Republican party. But the nihilism that seeped into the Democrats is still hanging in there, the small rock-hard core at the heart of the party that time has not softened. Yes, there is a reason the Democrats keep losing elections, but it isn't "code words" or Jim Crow. Democrats delude themselves if they believe the Confederate flag played a key role in the 2002 defeat of Roy Barnes and Max Cleland in Georgia, by turning out a huge white vote in exurban areas. The trouble with this theory is that the voting patterns in Georgia tracked exactly the patterns elsewhere in the country, where massive white turnout fueled the Senate wins of Norm Coleman in Minnesota, Jim Talent in Missouri, and Wayne Allard in Colorado, along with Bob Ehrlich's big win of the statehouse in Maryland. Does nostalgia for the days of Jefferson Davis run high in those states, too?
There was one big wedge issue that did work in Georgia, and perhaps in some other states. In late September, three Democratic House members (including Jim McDermott and outgoing whip David Bonior) took a trip to Iraq, where they criticized Bush and blamed the United States for killing small children. It was then that the numbers for Roy Barnes and Max Cleland started tanking in Georgia. For weeks, the Baghdad Democrats were all over the airwaves. No chagrined fellow Democrats stood up to say "this isn't our party," as Bush and some others did about Lott. The nostalgia for segregation of politicians like Lott may have been the reason the South first moved into the Republican column, but the bitter leftism of Democrats like McDermott and Bonior is high on the list of reasons it stays there. It is the reason many Democrats are running a seemingly permanent deficit among non-minority voters, a deficit that makes race-baiting essential, even as they run out of racists to criticize. They have seen the enemy, and it is Stonewall Jackson. Too bad he's still dead.
Too bad that accusations of racism seem to be the only card the Democrats are able to play, too.
Politics vs. Economics
(
Review) Tom Sowell points out the fallacies of the Democrats' class warfare rhetoric on tax cuts.
The sweet taste of freedom
(
Review) Iraqi expatriate Zainab Al-Suwaij says we must liberate iraq. Now.
As an American who was born and raised in Iraq, I am often asked, "Are you for the war on Iraq?"
My answer: I am for ending the war in Iraq — and that won't happen until Saddam Hussein goes.
I know the horrors of war all too well. In 1980, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, beginning eight years of bombing raids on my hometown of Basra. In 1990, I left for Kuwait, only to witness Iraq's invasion in August. In 1991, I returned home and experienced both the allied bombing assault and the painfully short popular uprising against Saddam.
But I also know that freedom is possible. For one week in March 1991, I saw what it was like to live outside of Saddam's control. As Saddam withdrew from Kuwait, the first President Bush encouraged Iraqis to rise up. We did and, within a few days, liberated most of Iraq's 18 provinces. The secret police state collapsed, and we began to talk openly with our own families and our neighbors. Iraqis celebrated in the streets, freed Saddam's prisoners and volunteered in hospitals. But American help never came, Saddam regrouped, and his state of terror came crashing back down on us.
If the Iraqi people are to have any hope of again experiencing that exhilarating feeling of freedom, the United States needs to make certain that Saddam can no longer terrorize his own people. If America again fails to remove Saddam Hussein from power, the long-term suffering of my people will only continue.
Saddam's war in Iraq has raged for more than 30 years. In 1968, his Baath Party seized power, and Saddam began his climb to become Iraq's dictator. To dominate the country, he has unleashed every known weapon in Iraq's arsenal against his own people — from tanks to torture chambers to poison gas. The war in Iraq has claimed more than 1million lives and made 4 million refugees.
Saddam employs thousands of secret police and informers throughout the country to turn Iraqis against each other, even within families. On TV, we watched Saddam reward fathers with large cash prizes for turning in sons who had deserted the army.
Even children are not spared. When I attended fourth grade in 1981, my teacher called me to the front of the class and asked: "Do your parents say anything bad about the government?" The whole class was staring at me. Stunned and scared, I answered, "No." But when one of my classmates said in passing that Iran was not so bad, she disappeared the next day, along with her family.
Eliminating the Ba'ath Party state in Iraq is the right thing to do, irrespective of whether or not Iraq has WMD.
A Modern Galileo
(
Review) Jonah Goldberg writes that Bjorn Lomborg is today's equivalent of Galileo.
The roots of Anti-Americanism
(
Review) Victor Davis Hanson writes on the psychological roots of anti-americanism for the
Wall Street Journal. It's too good to excerpt here, but it's today's required reading.
Insulting ads
(
Review) Cathy Young is tired of having her intelligence insulted by preachy, commercials railing at her for drug use or SUV owership as a supporter of terrorism.
Drivers of small cars fill up at the same gas pumps as do SUV owners; it's not just what you drive, it's how much you drive. (''I say if your drive your offspring to any superfluous activity besides school, you're supporting terrorism,'' a friend of mine sarcastically suggested.) Critics point out that some of the wealthy sponsors of these commercials live in vast, oil-heated homes, have fleets of cars, and fly private jets.
In one sense, however, the ads are most welcome - as a parody of the even more ludicrous commercials from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which assert that anyone who uses drugs is helping support terrorism.
Surely, Americans who get locked up for growing marijuana plants in their basements have not given any aid or comfort to international terrorists. Yet somehow, I doubt that we'll see an ad campaign with the slogan, ''Fight terrorism - grow your own pot!''
In the past two decades, the US government has expended billions of dollars and untold human effort on the War on Drugs. Just when the terrorist threat might have made us question the wisdom of this investment, the drug warriors quickly piggybacked onto the War against Terrorism.
I'm getting tired of being preached to as well.
Those seven democrats
(
Review) Peggy Noonan takes a look at the democratic presidential hopefuls, as well as some lessons of 1992, and the George the First.
North Korea Goes South
(
Review) Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan lament the collapse of the Pentagon's two-war standard.
What is amazing, and depressing, is that the strategic predicament in which the United States currently finds itself--with simultaneous crises in the Persian Gulf and on the Korean peninsula--is precisely the one everyone imagined could arise. From the end of the first Bush administration through the Clinton era, our military posture was supposedly based on a "two-war" standard, derived from the evident possibility that crises in the Persian Gulf and in Korea could erupt simultaneously. The only problem was, successive administrations, Republican and Democratic, and successive Congresses, led by Republicans and Democrats, refused to provide our military the funds necessary to be ready to fight two wars simultaneously. Throughout the 1990s political support for defense spending was scant. What political will existed was undermined, in part, by a coterie of defense experts who counseled starving the Pentagon even further to force it to carry out a "revolution in military affairs"--to cut force levels and eliminate weapons systems. They argued that the present era was a time of "strategic pause," that the United States faced a period of about 20 years when no threat would require large-scale military action. Not a very sound prediction, as it turned out.
Even the present administration has largely failed to address the problem. The proposed defense budget increase this year is a pitiful $14 billion. The administration is using its political capital to propose hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Surely we can afford the necessary tens of billions for defense. After all, whatever the merits of the tax package, what's really bad for the economy is collapsing international security.
It's not just military capacity this nation lacks right now, however. It's an adequate sense of the seriousness of the present world crisis. It seems odd to suggest, after September 11, 2001, that the United States has still not awakened to the real challenges of this dangerous era. But we fear that is the truth. Right now not just the administration but Congress and the foreign policy establishment and the nation are all having great difficulty managing two crises at once. But it is entirely possible that we haven't seen the end of troubles. There have been periods in the past when the world was confronted by multiplying crises--the 1930s, for instance, when every year seemed to bring fresh aggression from the "rogue" states of that era, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Today it is just as easy to imagine new crises--involving Iran, India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan--as it was to imagine the present confrontations with Iraq and North Korea. Are we ready? The answer, we're afraid, is no.
If we're going to have a two-war standard, then we have to pay for it. Otherwise, let's at least be honest and abandon it.
Maybe it's not the right plan after all
(
Review) Mort Zuckerman, editor in chief at
US News & World Report, isn't all that impressed with the president's economic plan.
The Right Plan at the Right Time
(
Review) Writing in the Washington
Post, Stephen Friedman says the President's economic plan is just chock full o' good stuff.
Of course, since he's assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council, he may be biased.
Rating the Bush Plan
(
Review) Supply-Side fundamentalist Stephen Moore rates the President's tax plan.
Henry's suggestion
(
Review) Henry Kissinger offers his suggestions for dealing with the NoKos.
This is why the U.S. should begin looking toward an international conference on the North Korean nuclear program, composed of the countries most affected--the U.S., Japan, China, Russia and South Korea--to decide on a common strategy. In its first phase, this conference should endorse the restoration of the nuclear status quo ante. When that has been accomplished, North Korea should be invited to join to discuss the ultimate destruction of its nuclear capability. In pursuing such a course, the U.S. has to navigate between two extremes: Pre-emption is prevented because North Korean artillery is holding Seoul hostage, but appeasement would hold the world community hostage to perhaps the most brutal and repressive regime in the world.
If North Korea agrees to return to the nuclear status quo ante, and after it has implemented it, it should be invited to preparatory talks regarding three principal agenda items:
(a) the destruction of North Korea's nuclear military capability;
(b) if North Korea is genuinely concerned about its security, some multilateral formula similar to that which evolved from the European Security Conference by which the parties renounce the use of force for the purpose of changing frontiers, but the United States has no reason to stigmatize itself by signing a separate non-aggression pledge;
(c) and, if North Korea were prepared to become a normal nation seeking to raise the standard of living of its population, possible economic cooperation. But it must be clear that there are limits that can only be modified by an improved human-rights record in Pyongyang. The outside world must not be asked to sustain one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world.
What if North Korea refuses such an approach? I cannot believe that nations on which the security of the world depends will tolerate the permanent possession of nuclear weapons by the world's most ruthless contemporary nation. If that were to happen, the U.S. would be obliged to find its nuclear partners where it can and reserve its freedom of action for when its fundamental security is challenged.
Translation: A nuclear-armed Japan is inevitable if the Nokos can't be persuaded to dump their nuclear ambitions.
A waste of time
(
Review) Amir Taheri says that UN weapons inspections in Iraq are a waste of time.
The full truth about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction can be known only when and if there is a new regime in Baghdad, willing to cooperate with an inspection mission.
The most that Blix can do is to announce that he has not found anything illegal in the agreed sites that he will complete inspecting by the end of the year. For the rest, he would have to use the Arab phrase: Only God knows the truth of things.
Still, it would be nice to find that smoking gun.
The fig leaf of 'diversity'
(
Review) Jaff jacoby writes about trhe upcoming Affirmative Action cases the Supreme Court will be hearing.
The justices will be asked to decide, in effect, whether Powell was right: Is the goal of diversity enough of a ''compelling interest'' to override the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment?
Certainly most Americans don't think so. In a nationwide poll reported last year in The Washington Post, respondents overwhelmingly opposed racial preferences. That view cut across all groups: 86 percent of blacks, 94 percent of whites, 88 percent of Hispanics, and 84 percent of Asians agreed that college admissions (as well as hiring and contracting) ''should be based strictly on merit and qualifications other than race or ethnicity.''
Americans have internalized Martin Luther King's foremost teaching - that human beings should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. They understand that real diversity encompasses ''points of view, backgrounds, and experiences,'' as Powell put it in Bakke. They know that race is no proxy for those qualities, and that a state university that claims otherwise engages in just the kind of racial stereotyping that the 14th Amendment forbids.
The defenders of racial preferences insist that racial diversity enhances college life. It has ''positive effects on civic and social attitudes, tolerance, even analytic skills,'' writes Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard and a leading advocate of the existing race-based system. But one could just as easily argue that the absence of racial diversity enhances college life. That is one of the attractions, after all, of historically black colleges like Morehouse and Spelman.
Balkanizing Americans on the basis of race leads to...well..the Balkans. And I'd be a lot mroe inclined to listen to universities prate on about "diversity" if they showed the slightest interest in promoting the kind of diversity that really matters, diversity of thought.
A Worldwide Economic Stimulus Plan
(
Review) Yale's Jeffrey Garten calls for a worldwide economic stimulus program.
One thing he doesn't call for, however, is for European nations to lower taxes from their current confiscatory rates. That is a key reason for Europe and Japan's economic malaise, and the one policy option they refuse to implement.
Immature & Vicious: A bad combination
(
Review) Marty Peretz writes on Palestine for
The New Republic.
Warren Christopher wrote last week in The New York Times of terrorist attacks "wreaking havoc in far-flung places such as Indonesia, Kenya, Jordan and Yemen." Maybe I am being myopic, but why didn't he mention Israel in that list, the state that suffers most from this savagery? Certainly Bill Clinton's secretary of state wouldn't be the first prominent American to believe that terror against Israelis is different, not quite so satanic, as terror against other civilians. Palestinian terror, say its apologists, is political--the illegitimate means to a legitimate end, statehood. But many peoples have pursued statehood in modern history, and only the Palestinians have pursued it so barbarically. Terrorism, truth be told, is about the sum total of what the Palestinians have bestowed on our civilization during the last five decades.
The Palestinians already have a state. It's called Jordan.
Morality vs. Strategy
(
Review) Fareed Zakaria predicts that the Bush Administration will return to the Clinton policy on North Korea.
Soon the administration will return to a version of the Clinton policy it condemned. Senior officials have already told CNN that while they will not “negotiate” with North Korea, they could well “talk.” I suppose it all depends on what the definition of the word “negotiate” is.
Heh. Cute line.
Maybe, at the end of the day, he's right, and negotiation is the only option open to us.
But for 30 years now, the NoKo's have been using this brinksmanship strategy to extort ever more expensive aid from the West. We can negotiate with them all day long, but if they won't live up to their agreements, such negotiations amount to little more than giving the NoKos whatever they want, whenever they want it.
On the other hand, short of nuking Pyongyang, our options consist of a basket full of nothin'.
Sure, we can cut off all aid to the NoKos. But they'll just get what they need from China. Even assuming that we can get China to join us in isolating Pyongyang, what then? In that case, an invasion of South Korea for the purposes of looting that country's treasure might start looking like an attractive option to Kim.
Already, it appears that we are taking the first step towards another "agreement" with the NoKos.
MSNBC is reporting that Assistant SecState James Kelly said, "Once we get beyond nuclear weapons, there may be opportunities with the U.S., with private investors, with other countries to help North Korea in the energy area.”
Does that mean yet another Agreed Framework agreement?
It's official
(
Review) Joe Lieberman has announced his candidacy for president.
