The Review
Evidently, every single municipal problem has been completely solved
(
Review) Apparently, there is no longer any crime in America's cities, all the potholes have been filled, every city worker is satisfied with his salary, no new roads or bridges need to be built, every piece of property is properly zoned, and all the cities' ihabitants are healthy, productive, and housed.
I mean, it must be true, because, instead of tending to the business of running the city, city councils are considering whether we should go to war with Iraq. Yes, I guess our cities are all just about running themselves now, since local politicians seem to feel they have time to engage in a debate about something that is entirely irrelevant to their responsibilities.
Al Franken's Suicide Mission
(
Review) Jonah Golberg doesn't have high expectations for the success of the new liberal talk radio venture the Democrats are pushing.
Franken is on to something when he says that liberals aren't interested in the sort of demagoguery provided by Limbaugh. That's not because liberals don't like demagoguery. They love demagoguery. They love hatchet jobs, low blows, cheap shots, and character assassination even more than conservatives do (and there are certainly more than a few conservatives into that sort of thing). When every day we hear another comparison between Bush and Hitler; when conservatives are likened to Klansmen, the mentally retarded and the Taliban; when the Democratic party sponsors ads saying that a vote for a Republican is a vote for church burnings, hate crimes, and organized murder; when every Republican economic policy is attributed to personal greed and every foreign policy is attributed to a hodgepodge of sins including, (again) greed ,racism, and vanity; it becomes very difficult to take Franken seriously when he says that his listeners aren't interest in demagoguery.
No, the problem for liberals is that their "movement" extends to virtually every boutique victim group under the sun. I don't just mean blacks, Hispanics, gays, women (roughly two thirds of the population right there), but pretty much anyone with a grievance. Even white guys can join the club if they complain about not getting enough workman's comp or about Gulf War syndrome. Liberalism has become a politics of complaint. In a sense, that's fine because politics is largely about the adjudication of complaints. Lord knows conservatives have plenty of grievances too.
But the problem for liberals is that they are terrified of offending anybody in their own massive Coalition of the Oppressed. That pretty much leaves white Christian men, rich non-liberals, and maybe a handful of right-wing Jews and conservative women. And, I'm sorry Al, there's just not enough material there to be entertaining. Liberals have been feeding off of Whitey for so long they can see their reflections in the bones, they're so picked-clean. If Franken thinks that there are millions of people who want to listen to the same tired and lame laments about white folks every day for three hours, he's nuts.
People don't want to be lectured to for hours about how racist or oppressive they are. It's not rocket science. Having spent 6 years as a radio braodcaster, three of them on prime-time radio in Los Angeles, I think I can safely say that you don't gather and hold an audience by constantly insulting them.
Post-War Planning
(
Review) Andrew Sullivan eyes the Bush planning for setting up a postwar Iraq, after reading a
Washington Post story detailing the current administration plans.
This is not a peripheral issue.
Too many people beleive that our purpose in Iraq is to set up an American Colony and take control of the countries oil. Now, that's a pretty stupid idea, but people beleive a lot of stupid things until facts hit them in the face repeatedly.
In the best of all possible worlds, a brief American administration might be required while the Iraqis themselves sort out the type of representative, responsible government they prefer, and we root out the Ba'athists left over from the previous regime. As soon as practicable, we then turn over the main administrative tasks to that new government, after which our role become an advisory one in assisting the Iraqis in creating a nonthreatening apparatus for maintaining public order and national security.
The one thing we don't want to do is have some interminable period where an American administrator runs the country. I may joke about having an American proconsul in Baghdad, but clearly, that is, at best, a short-term setup.
In the end, we must show the Iraqi people--and the world--that our main purpose is restoring Iraqi national life to the people themselves, liberating them from tyranny, and removing the Weapons of Mass Destruction from the country. Anything else makes our course too perilous.
The butt of jokes
(
Review) France is, increasingly the butt of jokes. In fact, it's a comedy gold mine according to FOXNews.
The best line: "Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion."
Into the fire
(
Review) US Special Forces troops--about 400 of them--will be going into battle alongside our Philippine allies in fighting the Abu Sayyaf guerillas in the Sulu Archipelago.
Good luck, guys. And good hunting.
Ideological blindness
(
Review) John Podhoretz writes about the defenders of Professor Sami al-Arian, the alleged head of Islamic Jihad in North America.
A vast segment of liberal opinion is desperate to see the war on terrorism as a new explosion of McCarthyism. And they want to sign up to fight the evil government in its evil effort to torment poor, innocent Muslims.
They do resemble certain people who were active during the 70-year life of the Soviet Union - those who closed their eyes to the threat emanating from World Communism. Lenin called such people, who were unknowingly serving his interests, "useful idiots."
Idiots, yes. Useful? Not any more.
It certainly looks like the DOJ has the goods on Al-Arian. But, like Mumia Abu Jamal, no amount of evidence will convince the left of his guilt. It's not about facts, you see, it's about ideology.
Perennially wrong
(
Review) The editors of the
National Post point out that Afghanistan was alleged to be about oil, too. Of course it wasn't, any more than the first Gulf War, where the "No bloood for oil" slogan was first rolled out.
Why doesn't the media notice, and explain, that these arguments are simply paranoid fantasies that get trotted out time after time, only to be proven wrong each time?
Liberation, not Subjugation
(
Review) Michael Ledeen counsels that a democratic government run by the Iraqis should be set up as soon as possible aftar an invasion.
The terrorists' task would be aided considerably if they were seen by the Iraqi people to be fighting against an imperial American presence, for they could credibly claim to be resisting a foreign occupier. But it would be impossible for them to claim to be freedom fighters if the allies quickly empowered an Iraqi government led by men who have long been fighting against Saddam for the liberation of the country.
Better yet, a government representing all major groups in Iraq would be able to call upon the Iraqi people to hunt down the terrorists in their midst, thereby turning the tables on Iran and Syria. Instead of providing support for the terrorists, the Iraqi people would support allied forces, and create a model for the war against terrorism throughout the region: Free countries don't support terrorism. They fight it.
Ahmad Chalabi, the talented leader of the Iraqi National Congress - the umbrella organization that unites all segments of Iraqi society - is alarmed by the talk coming from some of our top diplomats of late, suggesting that the Bush administration is contemplating an American-led military government in Iraq that would last at least a couple of years.
Chalabi rightly describes this as insulting to the Iraqi people, and a betrayal of the president's promise that U.S. troops are fighting to liberate countries, not to dominate them.
He is certainly right on both counts, and the plan for a long-term military government is strategically foolish as well, both because it would help the terrorists gain popular support within Iraq and, perhaps worst of all, because it would discourage popular uprisings in the neighboring countries.
Iraqis don't need a military government. They need freedom from tyranny.
Disappointed in Canada
(
Review) Canadian historian J.L. Granatstein gives his fellow Canadians a toung-lashing in the
National Post:
And Canada? We continue to sleepwalk into the future. The shock of 9/11 passed quickly here. Most Canadians grieved with the Americans for a few weeks, then moved on. As a result, we largely missed or misunderstood the transforming impact of 9/11 on the United States. Our response to Washington seems to be "get over it," and the gulf between Canadian and U.S. attitudes has expanded in the past year and a half. There has been no defence buildup here; no effort to refurbish the ruined temple that used to be the Department of Foreign Affairs and to play a serious role in Washington and abroad; no effort to draw closer to the United States. Indeed, I believe anti-Americanism is now at a 15-year high.
The United States understands Canadian attitudes and does not like them at all. The Americans have sent repeated messages to us on military and trade areas, and the only problem is that Canada is not getting the message.
The message is very simple: Get serious. The West is under attack. North America is under assault and the United States is determined to prevent further 9/11s. In the circumstances, the U.S. elite is furious at the way Canadians talk about America. Furious at Canada's utter incomprehension of the present situation. Angry at our lax immigration and refugee policies and our sloppy border and port security. And the U.S. is especially furious because it believes we aren't serious about doing our share to militarily protect Canada, North America and the values we profess.
Canada, unfortunately, looks increasingly like Old Europe.
From Manhattan to Baghdad
(
Review) Victor Davis Hanson writes on the war on terror, and the questions surrounding it.
Old Europe vs. New Europe
(
Review) Charles Krauthammer comments on the division in Europe.
Europe did not take to the streets against America last weekend; only Western Europe did. The streets of Eastern Europe were silent. The Poles, and their Eastern European neighbors, have an immediate personal experience of life under tyranny -- and of being liberated from that tyranny by American power. The French and their neighbors are six decades removed from their liberation. They think freedom is as natural as the air they breathe, rather than purchased at the price of blood -- American blood in no small measure.
This division in experience sets the stage for the division in politics. And for France's fury at finding an American fifth column in the New Europe. When 13 Eastern European states came out in support of the United States on Iraq, Chirac lost all reserve. His scolding of the Eastern Europeans has inadvertently demonstrated how much France's current dispute with the United States is not really about Iraq.
No, it's about a vision of France where France is an important country because it opposes American policy.
The Last Chance
(
Review) Kenneth Pollack writes that we have one last chance to stop Iraq. Waiting is simply too dangerous.
Most ominous today, we have heard from many intelligence sources — including some of the highest-level defectors now in America and abroad — that Saddam Hussein believes that once he has acquired nuclear weapons it is the United States that will be deterred. He apparently believes that America will be so terrified of getting into a nuclear confrontation that it would not dare to stop him should he decide to invade, threaten or blackmail his neighbors.
America has never encountered a country that saw nuclear weapons as a tool for aggression. During the cold war we feared that the Russians thought this way, but we eventually learned that they were far more conservative. Our experts may be split on how to handle North Korea, but they agree that the Pyongyang regime wants nuclear weapons for defensive purposes — to stave off the perceived threat of an American attack. The worst that anyone can suggest is that North Korea might blackmail us for economic aid or sell such weapons to someone else (with Iraq being near the top of that list). Only Saddam Hussein sees these weapons as offensive — as enabling aggression.
If you think gas prices are high now, how high do you think they'll be if a nuclear armed Iraq invades Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and controls a substantial percentage of the world's oil supplies?
And, of course, how many more innocent people will he kill?
The UN gets another shot at it
(
Review) The US and UK will present another UN resolution on Iraq to the Security Council on Monday.
France has already declared it's intention to veto it.
My Newest TCS Column
(
Review) My newest TCS column is up. This week, it's all about France.
Christopher Hitchens pulls no punches
(
Review) Hitchens writes in
The Mirror a paper so far to the left that its web page background is blood red, that he wished the peace marches had been deluged in good old British rain. It's a fantastic article, and contains a superb one-liner:
I think I would prefer to have Vaclav Havel in my corner than the grotesque, corrupt, cynical dandy Jacques Chirac.
That's the thing about Chris. You're never in doubt where you stand with him.
Read the whole thing.
TrueMajority makes it easy!
(
Review) TrueMajority, an organization started by lefty Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream fame, sent an email to me today, offering to send a personalized anti-war fax message to my senators and representative, along with President Bush.
At their web site, they have a form that requires your contact information, and contains the sample anti-war message they've created in a text field that you can modify. Naturally, I replaced the simpering plea for appeasement contained in the original message with one of my own:
Since 1998, it has been the policy of the United States to eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
I urge you to implement that policy with all deliberate speed, in order to liberate the Iraqi people from his dreadful tyranny, assist in the creation of a free and democratic Iraq, and to remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a tyrannical, corrupt, and dangerous regime.
Even if the United Nations rejects our proposals to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein, I urge you to place the interests of the American and Iraqi people first, and support the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime by any means that may be necessary.
Since he is clearly unwilling to abide by the 17 UN Resolutions directing him to disarm himself of Weapons of Mass Destruction, I submit that, at this point, the most effective weapons inspectors would be the young men of the 82nd Airborne, 1st Marine Expeditionary force, 7th Cavalry, et al.
The time for inspections, negotiation and compromise has ended. The time for reckoning has begun.
Perhaps you'd like to use Ben's little fax machine with this message, or a similar one as well. I mean, how delicious is it to use Ben's fax machine and money to send a message of support for regime change in Iraq?
Although, I doubt that's what Ben initially had in mind.
The French, of course, insist that inspections are working
(
Review) According to the Washington
Post, Iraq is not cooperating with Un inspectors well at all.
President Saddam Hussein's government, apparently emboldened by antiwar sentiment at the U.N. Security Council and in worldwide street protests, has not followed through on its promises of increased cooperation with U.N. arms inspectors, according to inspectors in Iraq.
No Iraqi scientist involved in biological, chemical or missile technology has consented to a private interview with the inspectors since Feb. 7, the day before the two chief U.N. inspectors arrived here for talks with Iraqi officials. The United Nations also has not received additional documents about past weapons programs, despite the government's pledge to set up a commission to scour the country for evidence sought by the inspectors, U.N. officials said.
One U.N. official here said that since Friday's Security Council meeting, "we have not seen any positive moves on the part of Iraq." Another charged, "They are not fulfilling their promises."
Like Inspector Reynaud, I'm shocked--shocked!--to learn that this is happening.
Zell knows taxes
(
Review) One thing Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) is sure of: He likes tax cuts.
The shrill class warfare crowd criticizes the president's plan as a sop to the rich. Well, if this is a program for the rich, then there's a lot of "rich" folks in Georgia and you are probably one of them. More than 80 percent of Georgia's taxpayers -- that's four out of five -- earn less than $50,000. And virtually all of them -- married or single, children or no children -- will benefit from this tax cut.
A Georgia family of four making a combined total of $39,000 will receive a $1,100 tax cut. Some call that insignificant. I guarantee it's not insignificant to that family.
On the dividend proposal, more than 860,000 Georgia taxpayers -- many of them seniors -- earn dividend income and would benefit from this tax relief. These Georgia dividend earners are middle-income -- 60 percent make less than $75,000.
Most Georgians who will benefit from the president's plan are not rich. They are the very definition of middle-class America. They deserve to keep more of their hard-earned money, as do Georgians at every income level.
The president said during his State of the Union address, "The economy grows when Americans have more money to spend and invest. And the best and fairest way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the first place."
I and only one other Democratic senator in the chamber joined Republicans in standing to cheer those words. Is it any wonder the Democratic Party is in the minority in Washington?
Well, now that you ask Zell, no, it isn't. The real wonder is that you're actually a member of the Democratic Party.
It's called an Economics course. You might want to take one.
(
Review) Advice to
New Republic editor John Judis: If you don't know anything about macroeconomics, then maybe you shouldn't comment about it.
Take the economy. Sure, an economic downturn was inevitable after the speculative excesses of the '90s, and 9/11 certainly hurt airlines and hotels. But the Bush policies of enormous tax cuts directed at the most wealthy, and equally large increases in military spending, will prolong the current slump well through the decade, leaving large deficits just as baby boomers begin to retire.
Income tax cuts
always go to the most wealthy, because they're the only people who really
pay income taxes under the US tax system. The top 10% of taxpayers pay 67.33% of all income tax revenues. The bottom 50% pay 3.9% of all federal income taxes. We have a system where
only the rich are substantially taxed. You can't give a tax cut to people who don't freakin' pay any.
We have also known, since 1936, when John Maynard Keynes published
The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money that if you wish to stimulate the economy, you do so by cutting taxes, increasing government spending, and/or lowering interest rates. Now it doesn't matter whether you're a Keynesian or a Supply-Sider, you know this to be true. You may argue over the relative effectiveness of these policies, Supply-Siders preferring fiscal stimulus through tax reductions, and Keynesians arguing for Monetary policy stimulus through interest rate reductions, but you know the basic premise to be true. While the rest of us have known this for nearly 70 years, Mr. Judis is apparently still in the dark about it.
He seems similarly out of touch with foregn policy, too.
Though few of Al Qaeda's recruits came from the clash of Israelis and Palestinians, that conflict remained the single greatest source of instability in the Mideast.
After 9/11, we had a clear path before us: wage war against Al Qaeda and those regimes that sustained it, while simultaneously waging peace in the Mideast by using our considerable influence to force the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
The Bush administration did wage war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But instead of seeking negotiations, the administration sided with Israeli leader Ariel Sharon, who responded to terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians by trying to destroy the Palestinian Authority -- Israel's only viable negotiating partner. That made it impossible for the U.S. to win anything but grudging support from other Arab governments for our conflict with Iraq, and it also inflamed Islamic radicals.
Now, Let me get this straight. The Palestinian deal wasn't really an Al-Qaeda issue. But we should have dealt with it anyway, because not doing so helps Al Qaeda.
For whom the issue was never a priority in the first place.
Okay...
As for Iraq, if our initial goal had been the reasonable and important one of preventing Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons, there was a host of options that could have been pursued, such as a demand for inspections coupled with the threat of an air campaign against any potential military target.
Okay, maybe I haven't been keeping up with current events the way Mr. Judis has. In fact I'm sure that's so, because I thought the whole Security Council Resolution 1441 deal and the new inspections regime was an option that we pursued. Maybe I imagined it.
Wait a sec.
(pause)
Yeah, I looked it up. The President went to the UN personally and everything. Evidently, there are also some kind of inspectors in Iraq even as we speak. They work for some guy named "Blix" or something.
That can't be his real name. I mean, c'mon. Blix?
Anyway, there is also evidently some kind of No-Fly zone patrolled by British and American fighters who bomb provacative Iraqi military installations on a regular basis.
Funny how Mr. Judis doesn't seem to be up to speed on this.
If these efforts had failed, their failure would have created far more support for an invasion than currently exists. Instead, the Bush administration began by demanding "regime change," declaring its willingness to fight a preventive war, and sending troops.
Uh, actually, the Clinton Administration was the administration that demanded regime change in Iraq. Indeed, in 1998 the Clinton Administration got Congress to declare it to be the official policy of the United States.
Perhaps Mr. Judis forgot that little tidbit. Or, perhaps, he didn't mind it so much when Mr. Clinton was calling for it.
Frankly, I'm surprised that Mr. Judis has anything to do with
The New Republic. They usually represent far higher quality of thought than this.
The Federal prison system may be getting a new computer science instructor for their skills training program
(
Review) The Feds have jacked up USF CompSci professor Sami al-Arian and others, and dragged them away in cuffs. The Feds say al-Arian is the US head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Al-Arian says its just politics.
A little marital advice
(
Review) The Arab Times, Saudi Arabia's English daily newspaper, takes an enlightened and principled stand on the subject of wife-beating in the kingdom.
Before a husband contemplates any physical action, he should ask himself why he should strike her and if it is the solution to the problem.
It is certainly against Islam to beat a good wife. An erring wife should be warned first and advised. If that does not work, then the husband could give her a light beating, the purpose of that being to embarrass rather than inflict pain.
See? Only light beatings. And only if you're bad. And you get a warning and everything, too.
Alistair Cooke Remembers
(
Review) Few of Alistair Cooke's generation are still alive. But he remembers it as if it were yesterday.
And in a sense, it is.
I promised to lay off topic A - Iraq - until the Security Council makes a judgment on the inspectors' report and I shall keep that promise. But I must tell you that throughout the past fortnight I've listened to everybody involved in or looking on to a monotonous din of words, like a tide crashing and receding on a beach - making a great noise and saying the same thing over and over. And this ordeal triggered a nightmare - a day-mare, if you like. Through the ceaseless tide I heard a voice, a very English voice of an old man - Prime Minister Chamberlain saying: "I believe it is peace for our time" - a sentence that prompted a huge cheer, first from a listening street crowd and then from the House of Commons and next day from every newspaper in the land. There was a move to urge that Mr. Chamberlain should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In Parliament there was one unfamiliar old grumbler to growl out: "I believe we have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat." He was, in view of the general sentiment, very properly booed down. This scene concluded in the autumn of 1938 the British prime minister's effectual signing away of most of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. The rest of it, within months, Hitler walked in and conquered. "Oh dear," said Mr. Chamberlain, thunderstruck. "He has betrayed my trust."
Oh, dear.
The Review Newsletter
(
Review) The February Edition of
The Review is up. France, the UN, the economy and tax cuts, a good fisking of Robert Scheer, and much more. All in one neat little package.
Chirac sparks 'New Europe' ire
(
Review) The BBC rounds up the response of the candidtate EU ststes to Chirac's intemperate remarks. Man, this guy really shot himself in the foot.
Romania takes a stand
(
Review) One Romanian response to French President Jacques Chirac's fit of temper has hit print in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentul Zilei:
We can ask ourselves what France and Germany did in 50 years of communism for all the countries in the Eastern bloc. The answer is simple: nothing else than business! To us, who were moaning in the prisons of communism, they sent only friendly greetings. The Germans also did something else. They took their fellow nationals, brought them back home, and left us manage on our own. In what judicial or procedural pretext they got stuck over this period? Communism wrung our neck while the honourable democracies issued communiqués. And now they are surprised that all the countries in the former communist bloc do not give a damn about obsolete stratagems of France and Germany. Only they, in their games behind the scene, can make all sorts of mean calculations though many of their citizens were killed in all sorts of attacks. How many others have to die in the USA, in the Paris subway or in other crowded places so that France and Germany react firmly against the countries which supply terrorism? We can no longer afford going into this game of procedures, of diplomatic duplicity only to be the fools and the sacrificed of the region in the end.
Romania needs stringently the support of the most powerful democracy. And it is about to get a firm support. We have to respond to it in the same way. We go with the Americans and we make efforts to be their alternative for the old Europe. It costs us, but we no longer depend on the French illusionism or the German fears. Besides, we have a chance to demonstrate that we got rid of all the doubts of a country ruled with irresolution. We also have the chance to recover our debt from Iraq. Moreover, we have to imagine that a large part of the most brilliant Romanian young people, who emigrated to the USA and Canada, are about to follow Bush. Romania needs to make a clear choice, either USA or France and Germany. When making this choice we have to take one more thing into account. We are not a priority for the two European countries. They already see us as the fifth wheel of the coach, which cost them enormously (not to say that sometimes they see us as thieves, Gypsies or beggars). Instead, we are really important for the Americans. In this dispute we offer them an alternative to go in the long run with a country which needs the know-how of democracy. Now it is the time to go with the Americans all the way, even if they might be wrong. And with the British too. Now it is the time to take into consideration what the leader of the Conservative Party, Ion Lahovary, the father of Martha Bibescu, once said: "A coalition joined by England always gets a victory".
We have had enough failures with France and Germany!
Odd English translating aside, these guys seem fairly torked off at France.
Whatever happened to the Hanseatic League?
(
Review) George Will writes that that today's UN is providing a good case study on the mortality of organizations.
Other German Voices
(
Review) Angela Merker, chairman of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, writes that Gerhard Schroeder doesn't speak for al Germans.
Of course, he is the Bundeskanzler, so we have to assume that, as an elected official, he speaks for a majority of them.
Protestors appear to be idiots
(
Review) Evan Coyne Maloney went to the protests in New York, and interviewed the protestors.
Nice people. Dumb as posts, but nice.
Chirac Backlash
(
Review) It looks like Chirac's intemperate comments of the last few days have drawn an unexpectedly strong negative reaction from his fellow Europeans.
Not Barbra Streisand
(
Review) James Earl Jones joins Dennis Miller in the small band of Hollywood types who have a freakin' clue.
Of course, Jones is a former Army officer.
Read lileks now
(
Review) James Lileks doesn't mince words.
The Spartacists won’t prevail; I’m not suggesting that we saw Western liberal democracies dissolving before our eyes. There are millions in Europe who hate the US - oh, stop the presses. There are millions of people who believe that tyrants should always be handled with the delicate tongs of democracy - well, blow me down. “It is time to think about human rights, not money” I heard one French protester say on the news. “War is not the answer to war.” If it weren’t for the autonomous nervous system, some of these people would die because they’re too stupid to remember to breathe. War is always the answer to war if war is brought down upon you. Evil requires resistance. If a man in a crowd grabs your child from your arms, you do not wonder what brought him to this moment, or petition the city council for a resolution requiring him to hand over the skeletons of his previous victims. You stab him in the eyeball with your car keys.
There's more. Read the whole thing.
For what it's worth...
(
Review) We're gonna try to get another "attack Iraq" resolution through the UN. France has already stated that they will veto it, though.
Clue for Legislators: Read bills before you vote for them
(
Review) It appears that many supporters of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation didn't exactly know what they were voting for. Now they are learning, and they don't much like it.
The really hilarious bit is where the Democrats realize that a) they are prohibited from taking soft money as candidates, and b) the Republicans collect twice as much hard money contributions as Democrats do. And the funny thing is, they can't repeal it, because they all went on the record calling the Republicans weasels for not wanting to pass it. Democrats are
invested in the darn thing.
Another requirement is that candidates have to appear full face in their television advertisements for four full seconds, and have to declare that they stand behind the ad's content. No more nasty attack ads with the candidate's name in a tiny white crawl at the botton for a second and a half. They gotta do it like a man, and stand by their ads.
The part about spending 5 years in a Federal pen just for speaking at the wrong type of political gathering has them a bit spooked, too,
Heh.
Well, the stupid law's unconsitutional anyway, so a good part of it will be tossed out by the Supremes eventually.
Surveying the Damage
(
Review) Janet Dailey surveys the damage done to the UN and the EU for the
Telegraph. All this, and no one's even fired a shot yet.
Jacques Chirac has gone from the simply arrogant to the pathologically offensive. He has alienated the Americans in a way that will not be forgotten for a generation. But he has also now insulted the new Eastern European accession countries for European Union membership with a recklessness that is truly breathtaking.
Support for the American position on Iraq by countries such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic was, M Chirac said, "infantile" and "dangerous". (Dangerous for whom? This seems to amount to nothing other than an explicit threat to make life difficult for EU fledglings who did not recognise where the real power lay in this outfit.)
His sarcasm lived up to every satirical cliche of Gallic superciliousness: the new members had "missed an opportunity to keep quiet". What must the Poles and the Czechs, who have vivid memories of the last century's wars, make of being addressed in this way? If the United States is unlikely to forget Old Europe's stream of anti-American bile, how readily will this contemptuous dismissal be overlooked by proud East Europeans who have rebuilt their countries and their economies?
I am reminded of Dean Rusk's question to Chrles DeGaulle when NATO forces were ordered out of France. "Should we dig up the bodies in Normandy and take them with us, too?"
The "rush to war"
(
Review) John Podhoretz comments on the "rush to war".
This shift makes it clear just how laughable the argument is that we're somehow "rushing toward war." The coming clash with Saddam Hussein has been among the most deliberate and slow-moving confrontations in the recorded history of warfare.
Bob Woodward reports in "Bush at War" that it was only days after the 9/11 attacks that Bush told his close advisers that he wanted plans drawn up for a possible attack on Iraq.
That was 17 months ago.
Our boys should already be drinking tea in Baghdad.
Body Counts
(
Review) Amir Taheri writes that millions turned out for this weekend's protests. Indeed, they drew almost as many people as Saddam has tortured or killed.
Lucky He's in Germany
(
Review) Mounir el Motassadeq has been convicted by a German court for 3,000 counts of murder as a result of his complicity in the 911 attacks. He will get the stiffest sentence a German court can hand out: 15 Years.
So, about one year for every 250 murders.
Playing hardball
(
Review) David Frum showcases some reader suggestions on how to get back at France.
He's not actually eating crow yet, but he's certainly pre-heating the oven
(
Review) British-turned-American curmudgeon Jahn Derbyshire admits that we may actually go to war against Iraq after all.
France's Public Blackmail
(
Review) Paul Aligica examines French President Jacque Chirac's criticism of those candidate EU countries, and what it means for the EU.
Even more important, Chirac's declaration marks a turning point in the way the European integration process is perceived. There is little doubt that France has done considerable damage to the image that the European Union had managed to create over recent years in Eastern Europe -- and around the world -- as a community of free countries amiably negotiating their way to an ever closer union. Instead, a new image of the European Union is emerging from the ruins of the old picture, one of a Franco-German dominated block of countries intent on dominating the continent.
Until now, this view was considered a fixation of the extreme Euro-skeptics. Nowadays the question is out in the open: What is the true nature of the European Union? What is the real project behind all these institutional and political arrangements? What is the place of France and Germany in the emerging system? What are the legitimate goals of an EU member country? What are the legitimate uses of power in the Union? How should the Eastern European countries be seen and treated in the context of these European processes? These are questions that will be asked with ever-growing intensity in the future, long after the Iraqi crisis is over.
Can you imagine the response if W had spoken about France or Germany in the same way that Chirac spoke about Romania and Bulgaria?
Steyn Speaks
(
Review) This time, he comments on the anti-war rallies of the past weekend.
Moral equivalists like Harold Pinter insisted that America and the Soviet Union were both equally bad. But the traffic across the Berlin Wall was all one way. East German guards were not unduly overworked trying to keep people from getting in. The Eastern bloc collapsed because it was a lie, and the alternative wasn't.
Well, the Soviet Union's gone now so Pinter no longer has to observe the pox-on-both-their-houses niceties. Addressing the demonstrators on Saturday, he declared that the U.S. is "a country run by a bunch of criminals ... with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug."
Got that? It's not Saddam who's the thug, it's Tony. It's not the Baathist killers from Tikrit who are the bunch of criminals, it's the Republican Party. It's not the million-man murderer of Baghdad who's the new Hitler, it's George W. Bush. It's not the Iraqi one-party state with its government-controlled media that "crushes dissent," it's the White House. It's not the Wahhabis who are the fundamentalists, it's Bush, Blair and the other Christians. It's not Osama bin Laden who's the terrorist, it's American foreign policy. Supporting the continued enslavement of the Iraqi people is "pacifist," but it's "racist" for America to disagree with the UN, even though it's Colin Powell and Condi Rice doing the disagreeing and the fellows they're disagreeing with are a bunch of white guys from Europe.
The new Universal Theory, to which 99% of Saturday's speakers and placards enthusiastically subscribed, is that, whatever the problem, American imperialist cowboy aggression is to blame. In fact, it's not so different from the old Universal Theory, in that the international Zionist conspiracy is assumed to be behind the scenes controlling the cowboys: Bush is a "puppet of Jewry," just like Churchill was -- notwithstanding the fact that America's Jews voted overwhelmingly for Gore. But, if you believe that the first non-imperialist great power in modern history is the source of all the world's woes, then logic is irrelevant. "It's all about oil"? Yes, for the French, whose stake in Iraqi oil is far more of a determining factor than America's ever has been or will be. "America created Saddam"? No, not really, the French and Germans and Russians have sold him far more stuff, and Paris built him that reactor which would have made him a nuclear power by now, if the Israelis hadn't destroyed it in the Eighties.
Perhaps we did help to create Saddam. The difference between us and France, however, is that we're willing to do what it takes to rectify that mistake.
War in Korea?
(
Review) According to FOXNews:
North Korea threatened on Tuesday to abandon the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War if the United States goes ahead with alleged plans to impose a naval blockade and other steps as preparation for a pre-emptive attack.
A spokesman of the North's Korean People's Army said that "the situation on the Korean Peninsula is getting extremely tense" because the United States is planning to send reinforcements in a standoff over the North's nuclear activities.
North Korea "will be left with no option but to take a decisive step to abandon its commitment to implement the Armistice Agreement as a signatory to it and free itself from the binding force of all its provisions," said the unidentified spokesman, quoted by the North's state-run KCNA news agency.
The 1950-53 Korean War ended with the armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the Koreas technically in a state of war. A North Korean withdrawal from the armistice would greatly increase tensions and uncertainty along the world's most heavily armed border.
We'd better take care of Iraq fast, so we can move on to...other things.
Phlegmatic or Apathetic?
(
Review) Brit David Thomas questions in the
Sunday Telegraph whether the Brit Spirit is phlegmatic or apathetic.
Maybe we are not so phlegmatic, after all. Maybe we are exhausted by the weight of our own history. Maybe, like our cheese-eating fellow-Europeans, we have become unwilling or unable to meet threats head-on, and defeat them. And that is where the advantage swings to America. You could say they panic - although it is only fair to point out that mockery of the Homeland Security department's advice was at least as scathing in Middle America as it was in Middle England. But one could also say that Americans come from a culture which still believes in taking action.
If Americans think they are going to be gassed, they buy gas-masks. If they think they might go thirsty, they buy water. And if they think their country has deadly enemies, they expect their President - whoever he is - to find the person and blow that sucker away.
British phlegm is the response of a nation that has lost the capacity to mould events, and decides, instead, to endure them. Americans may not have so much phlegm. But they do have stealth bombers, aircraft carriers, and the 101st Airborne Division. And who needs phlegm when you've got all that on your side?
And to think that Winston Churchill's watchword when giving orders to his military commanders was "Action This Day".
Just Vote
(
Review) The Washington
Post--that's
Post, not
Times--savages the Democratiuc arguments against the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the DC Circuit appeals court.
The arguments against Mr. Estrada's confirmation range from the unpersuasive to the offensive. He lacks judicial experience, his critics say -- though only three current members of the court had been judges before their nominations. He is too young -- though he is about the same age as Judge Harry T. Edwards was when he was appointed and several years older than Kenneth W. Starr was when he was nominated. Mr. Estrada stonewalled the Judiciary Committee by refusing to answer questions -- though his answers were similar in nature to those of previous nominees, including many nominated by Democratic presidents. The administration refused to turn over his Justice Department memos -- though no reasonable Congress ought to be seeking such material, as a letter from all living former solicitors general attests. He is not a real Hispanic and, by the way, he was nominated only because he is Hispanic -- two arguments as repugnant as they are incoherent. Underlying it all is the fact that Democrats don't want to put a conservative on the court.
Is there any chance of decency--any chance at all?--on the part of the lefty political hacks that make up the officialdom of the Democratic Party?
Dear marcher, please answer a few questions
(
Review)
The Guardian, of all places, prints an open letter to the "peace" marchers by David Aaronovitch, himself an old lefty activist and marcher. This is one march, however, he can't get behind. And he has some pretty critical questions for the marchers.
I wanted to ask whether, among your hundreds of thousands, the absences bothered you? The Kurds, the Iraqis - of whom there are many thousands in this country - where were they? Why were they not there? When Tony Benn was confronted by a young pro-war Iraqi woman on Channel 4 news on Saturday night, why did he describe the organisations of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition as "CIA stooges"?
Did some of the slogans bother you? Do you really believe that this parroted "war about oil" stuff is true? If so, what were the interventions in oil-less Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan about? What did you feel about the marchers wearing stickers bearing the Israeli flag and the words "the fascist state"? Did you say to yourself, "Actually, there's only one fascist state in this equation, and it's the one we're effectively marching to save"?
If you got to Hyde Park, did some of the speeches bother you? How about the equivalence used by Tony Benn, as in, "If there are inspectors in Iraq, I want to see inspectors in Israel, inspectors in Britain and inspectors in America"? Name Welsh villages attacked with chemical weapons by British bombers in the past 20 years.
Do you agree with Harold Pinter that the US is "a country run by a bunch of criminals ... with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug"? Is there any word in that sentence, apart from Tony, Blair and Christian, that isn't quite mad? What about rail union leader Bob Crow's suggestion that the government be brought down by civil action? Are you up for that?
If you think that it's all nonsense but you don't mind, then perhaps you can explain the extraordinary speech by Charles Kennedy MP. Here is the boss of a top party, yet one cannot tell what his view on war against Saddam actually is. Instead his speech was all about how unconvincing Blair's arguments were. "I have yet," he said, "to be persuaded that the case for war against Iraq has been made." It's been made, Charles, and if you don't agree with it, why don't you just say so? Stop blathering on about how "people are suspicious and scared" and tell them what you think ought to be done. Or is there a serious case for war, but you didn't want to say so in front of a million demonstrators?
Back to those demonstrators, and just to ask, do you believe that Blair should act on your demands because so many people turned out on Saturday? If so, do you also think he should halt plans for the housing of asylum seekers in Lee-on-Solent because, at the same time as you marched, one-third of Lee's entire population took to the streets to demand no asylum seekers in their town? Did the way the demo was reported in Baghdad bother you? Not your fault, but did you have any worry afterwards that it might make Saddam more obdurate and not less? Or maybe, like Benn, you don't much care.
While we're about it, why do you think Saddam readmitted inspectors after nearly five years in the first place? Was it because he felt it was the right thing to do? Or was it because of the threat of force? If it was the latter, what does this tell you? Should your protest bear fruit, are sanctions part of your preferred containment strategy (should you desire one)? If not, what replaces them? What do you mean, you don't know?
Finally, what are you going to do when you are told - as one day you will be - that while you were demonstrating against an allied invasion, and being applauded by friends and Iraqi officials, many of the people of Iraq were hoping, hope against hope, that no one was listening to you?
Useful idiots, the whole lot of them.
Schumer's Lies
(
Review) Nat Hentoff writes--in the
Village Voice, no less--that Sen. Chuck Schumer's accusations against Bush judicial nominee Charles Pickering are a pack of lies, which makes Schumer a liar.
Destroy France: Invade Iraq
(
Review) Mark Steyn has found yet another reason why Iraq should be invaded: It will help cripple France.
The French have an interest in a Europe that's a counterweight to America, but none at all in a Europe that's as pro-American as Blair and the Vilnius Group are. For them, that's what the picture's about--and Saddam and Turkey and NATO are just MacGuffins.
If Chirac's vision of Europe prevails, we can pretty much guarantee, from his performance this last month, how the UN, NATO, the ICC and all the rest will develop. Therefore, it is necessary that he emerge from the ruins of Saddam's presidential palace as dazed and diminished as possible. That's not the main reason for going to war, but it's now an important subplot.
I don't know. Its enough for me.
OpinionJournal - Extra
(
Review) OxBlog's Josh Chafetz and David Adesnik are in today's
Wall Street Journal, writing about their campus activist association. Unlike most such organizations, theirs actually
supports American and liberal democratic values.
That was then. This is now. II
(
Review) John O'Sullivan also looks at the roots of today's "peace" marchers.
It does not require an overriding serious political commitment to get into buses and trains, journey to very pleasant cities like London and San Francisco, and spend a lively Saturday afternoon marching along, chanting and singing in a generally festive atmosphere of collective moral self-congratulation. The late Edward Banfield, a great American sociologist, pointed out that one neglected explanation of the 1960s' urban upheavals was that testosterone-driven young men were rioting mainly for fun and profit. Demos may be interpreted as the equivalent activity, naturally more timid and less risky, of middle-class young people with longer time-horizons and careers to consider. Their parents, nostalgic for their own lost youth and Sixties' "sit-ins," would certainly approve and very likely "participate."
As to the "irresistible" character of the marchers and their opinions, it is worth recalling that there have been three such mass movements in the past two decades. In the years 1982 and onwards, there were massive "peace" marches in Western Europe and the United States to protest against the installation of defensive U.S. missiles in NATO countries when the Soviet Union refused to withdraw its own SS-20s. NATO and the West stood firm; the Soviet Union imploded; and it is now hard to find someone who admits to having been a peace marcher.
Nine years later in 1991 there were massive peace marches in Europe to protest against the U.S.-led war to liberate Kuwait. The young (well, youngish) Gerhard Schroeder, now Germany's Chancellor, led the campaign, warning that the Bush regime might use nuclear weapons against Iraq "with terrible consequences." But the U.S.-led coalition ignored the marchers and liberated Kuwait without any of the horrors predicted. Does even Schroeder now defend his "peace" activities then? Almost certainly he would prefer a kindly veil to be drawn over them.
So today's peace marches really are "déjà vu all over again." All that remains of the first two campaigns is a fading outline of revolutionary posturing and a nasty smell of idealism gone sour. The irresistible advance of the peace marchers was resisted. And history sees them merely as the dupes of tyrants.
Just as history will see today's "peace" marchers.
That was then. This is now.
(
Review) Tod Lindberg writes that this weekend's peace marchers remind him of nothing so much as those peace marchers--many of them the very same people--who protested in Europe during the 80s against the deployment of Pershing II, and GLCM missiles.
They are just as wrong now as they were then.
Useful Idiots
(
Review) That's the verdict of Wiliam Rees-Mogg on the "peace" marchers.
Iraq craves liberation
(
Review) Zainab Al-Suwaij, an Iraqi expatriate, is ready to see Saddam go, and he's happy that we're the ones doing it.
Outside our school, my friends and I used to wave at passing military cars with young soldiers in the back, heading off to the front. We would flash them victory signs, but they would shake their fingers at us and make an upside down V -- the opposite of victory. With hundreds dying every week on the front lines and capital punishment the penalty for deserters, these young men were bitter because they knew their lives had been stolen from them for no reason other than Hussein's deadly ambition.
Today in the U.S., as I watch soldiers shipping off, I see protesters chanting against American ambition and greed. Having lived through wars that were all about one man's ambition and greed, I am pained to see how these protesters have missed the mark. On behalf of Iraqis who cannot speak openly with reporters or who have given their lives trying to free Iraq from Hussein's brutal rule, let me say clearly: American, British and other allied soldiers are a sign of hope and liberation.
War is terrible. I never want my American children to experience what I lived through in Iraq. So as my fellow Americans leave for battle today as I remember Iraqi soldiers going off to fight two decades ago, I am again moved to flash the victory sign, but this time to people who are proud to stand up for freedom at home and around the world.
I recently participated in an interfaith event at a synagogue in Boston to discuss building bridges between Muslims and Jews in these tense times. Afterward, a woman approached me with tears in her eyes. "My teenage son is an American soldier who recently shipped out to the Persian Gulf," she said. "I just want to know, is my son going there to do the right thing?"
Even though I had never met this woman before, I immediately recognized her pain. "I am so proud of your son," I told her. "You should be too."
Every time I see an Iraqi expat, they are always agreed that Saddam Hussein has to go, and the best service we could provide toi the peoiple of Iraq would be to liberate them. I figure that with that kind of unanimity, they must know what they're talking about.
Those Darn Jews
(
Review) Larry Kaplan writes about the left's not-so-subtle anti-semitism. It's those "Jewish interests" say many on the Left, that is provoking this "rush to war".
But the real problem with claims such as these is not just that they are untrue. The problem is that they are toxic. Invoking the specter of dual loyalty to quiet criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday pollution of public discourse. It is the nullification of public discourse, for how can one refute accusations grounded in ethnicity? The charges are, ipso facto, impossible to disprove. And so they are meant to be.
Funny how racially tolerant the Left is to those with whom they disagree, huh?
Oh, and this "rush to war" business has to stop. I mean, it's been over a year now that we've been debating over this. In my book, once you've talked about something for more than six months, characterizing it as a "rush" just makes you sound stupid.
The "peace" movement
(
Review) Stephen Pollard is learning a lot about his friends and fellow Britons in the "peace" movement. He doesn't seem to like what he's learning, though.
I am a warmonger. I am bloodthirsty. I am rabid. My friends want only peace and harmony, but I want to wreak destruction and killing. I want to see British soldiers doing the Texan moron’s dirty work for him.
Almost alone among my friends, I did not go on The March. My absence was not due to ambivalence, but because I considered the march to be contemptible. I think the marchers are not only wrong but dangerously, wilfully, shamefully wrong.
Since this is, literally, a matter of life and death, I have been prepared to tell them precisely why I think that they are so in error. Their response has been to tell me what they think of me.
In all my 38 years, I have never before felt such a sense of personal shock. I am shocked that so many of my friends would rather a brutal dictator remained in power — for that would be the direct consequence if their views won out — than support military action by the United States. I am ashamed that they would rather believe the words of President Saddam Hussein than those of their own Prime Minister. I am nauseated that they would rather give succour to evil than think through the implications of their gut feelings.
It is a shocking experience to realise that your friends are either mindless, deluded or malevolent.
It's so sad to see naivete bludgeoned away like that, isn't it?
Return to the 1930s
(
Review) Paul Greenberg has the awful feeling that he's seen all this before.
History keeps coming back, sometimes like a bad dinner. In case you missed the '30s, you could experience it again last week watching the Security Council at the United Nations, which begins to bear an uncanny resemblance to the late League of Nations.
Listening to the calm, neutral, simultaneous translation of the Security Council's proceedings over calm, neutral, simultaneous NPR, one was struck by how exactly this attempt to disarm Iraq paralleled the world's efforts in the 1920s to make Germany disarm — in compliance with that defeated country's obligations under the Versailles Treaty.
Both regimes swore they were complying. And both were engaged in purely a paper exercise. An old joke, circa 1930: A German who works in a perambulator factory decides to sneak out the parts one by one so he can build his own baby buggy at home, but every time he puts all the parts together, all he gets is a machine gun.
Iraq's factories, unfortunately, make things far worse than machine guns.
The Churchill of his time
(
Review) If you missed Tony Blair's outstanding speech to the Labour Party Conference in Glasgow, then you can rectify that error, at least in part, by reading the excerpt posted by the
Wall Street Journal.
