Archived news and commentary: September 16 - 22, 2002

2002/09/23 - 2002/09/29
2002/09/16 - 2002/09/22
2002/09/09 - 2002/09/15
2002/09/02 - 2002/09/08
2002/08/26 - 2002/09/01
2002/08/19 - 2002/08/25
2002/08/12 - 2002/08/18
2002/08/05 - 2002/08/11
2002/07/29 - 2002/08/04
2002/07/22 - 2002/07/28
2002/07/15 - 2002/07/21
2002/07/08 - 2002/07/14
2002/07/01 - 2002/07/07

Sunday, September 22, 2002

News and commentary:

"A Post-Saddam Scenario" (Robert D. Kaplan, The Atlantic, from the November 2002 issue)
"Iraq has a one-man thugocracy, so the removal of Saddam would threaten to disintegrate the entire ethnically riven country if we weren't to act fast and pragmatically install people who could actually govern. Therefore we should forswear any evangelical lust to implement democracy overnight in a country with no tradition of it. Our goal in Iraq should be a transitional secular dictatorship that unites the merchant classes across sectarian lines and may in time, after the rebuilding of institutions and the economy, lead to a democratic alternative. ...
In regards to Jordan and our other allies, U.S. administrations, whether Republican or Democratic, are simply going to have to adapt to sustained turbulence in the years to come. They will get no sympathy from the media, or from an academic community that subscribes to the fallacy of good outcomes, according to which there should always be a better alternative to dictators such as Hosni Mubarak, in Egypt; the Saudi royal family; and Pervez Musharraf, in Pakistan. Often there isn't. ...
Our success in the war on terrorism will be defined by our ability to keep Afghanistan and other places free of anti-American terrorists. And in many parts of the world that task will be carried out more efficiently by warlords of long standing, who have made their bones in previous conflicts, than by feeble central governments aping Western models. ...
The real question is not whether the American military can topple Saddam's regime but whether the American public has the stomach for imperial involvement of a kind we have not known since the United States occupied Germany and Japan."

"The Lonesome Doves of Europe" (Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, from the 2002/09/30 issue)
"For many months now Europe has been asking whether the United States would handle Iraq unilaterally or through the United Nations. The ball is now in Europe’s court. How will it handle Iraq? The record is not encouraging. For the past 10 years France and Russia have turned the United Nations into a stage from which to pursue naked self-interest. They have used multilateralism as a way to further unilateral policies. The dust from the gulf war had not settled when the French government began a quiet but persistent campaign to gut the sanctions against Iraq, turn inspections into a charade and send signals to Saddam Hussein that Paris was ready to do business with him again. "Decades from now, when all the documents are available, someone is going to write an eye-opening book about France's collusion with Saddam Hussein in the 1990s," says Kenneth Pollack, who worked at the CIA and the NSC during those years. ...
If France and Russia seek a world in which nations act purely on the basis of interest and power, they will get it. In it, America will do just fine."

"Jordanian Woman Attacks Harassers" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/22)
"Witnesses say a Jordanian woman ripped off her enveloping black cloak and veil - to reveal a traditional long dress that was nearly as enveloping - and punched and kicked into submission three young men who had been verbally harassing her. The official Petra News Agency reported Sunday that shopkeepers and passers-by believe the unidentified woman must have had martial arts training. In Friday's incident on the main street in Zarqa 13 miles north Amman, the three men were too shocked to react at first and ended up knocked to the ground, screaming in pain. They then scrambled up and fled. The woman quoted the title of a song made famous by the late Egyptian star Umm Kalthoum - "patience has its limits" - before continuing on her way as a crowd cheered her. Petra quoted witnesses as saying the three men had regularly directed obscenities at the woman as she walked in the area. It was not clear if they harassed other women as well."

"Islamists denounce Israel, US at Umm el-Fahm rally" (David Rudge, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/09/22)
"The radical northern branch of the fundamentalist Islamic Movement staged one of its largest demonstrations ever on Friday night with a mass rally in the municipal soccer stadium of Umm el-Fahm. Nearly 60,000 people were estimated to have packed the stadium to hear former Umm el-Fahm Mayor Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the northern branch of the movement, denounce US President George W. Bush as "that American cowboy." Members of the radical branch also condemned the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policies toward the Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Muslims in general. ... Participants chanted repeatedly, "With blood and spirit we will liberate al-Aksa" against the background of a huge poster of the mosque." (See also: "Justice Minister considers banning Islamic Movement for incitement" (Dan Izenberg, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/09/22): "[During the rally, which was entitled "Al Aqsa is in Danger," the leader of the northern branch, Raed] Salah also called on the Arab countries for help. "Wake up and be careful," he said. "I call on the Islamic nation and the Arab world and Arab leaders all over the world and say to them: Every second that passes, the Al-Aqsa Mosque remains under occupation, and all of you will be responsible for what happens in the future." The spokesman of the Islamic movement, Sheik Hashem Abed Elrahman blamed Sharon for the terrorism inside Israel. 'You are to blame for every massacre in Gaza, Tel Aviv, Haifa and everywhere else. They are all being killed because of you.'")

"Baghdad Battle May Topple Saddam" (John J. Lumpkin, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/22)
An interesting article about the prospect of urban combat in Baghdad: "Retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, who headed the Air Force during the 1991 Gulf War, likens urban battles in Baghdad to "knife fights in a phone booth." "It would be a tremendous public affairs catastrophe if we start fighting door to door in downtown Baghdad and kill women and children trying to get Saddam," McPeak said. "The frontal assault on the urban environment is doable, but we'd lose a lot of people." ...
U.S. military experts say occupying Baghdad while minimizing deaths of U.S. troops or civilians will require some unconventional thinking for ground forces wedded the to the idea of combat in the open field. ...
Many of their ideas involve new tactics, rather than technology. Instead of using tanks or infantry alone, Maj. Dan Sullivan, the unit's commander, proposes having them work together in teams as small as a single tank surrounded by a squad of infantry. The infantry provides the eyes; the tank, the muscle. ... Planners also are working on a small unmanned reconnaissance plane and a wheeled robot that can investigate dangerous areas without risk to the troops." (See also: "Iraqi Strategy Centers on Cities" (Greg Miller and John Hendren, Los Angeles Times, 2002/08/08): "Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has told regional government officials that he aims to thwart any U.S. invasion by avoiding open desert fighting and massing his military in major cities where civilian and American casualties would be highest, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.")

"War Plans Target Hussein Power Base" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/09/22)
"The war being designed now is an attack on a government, not a country. "Our interest is to get there very quickly, decapitate the regime, and open the place up, demonstrating that we're there to liberate, not to occupy," one military planner said. The bull's-eye is Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, where about 50,000 people live on the Tigris River about 100 miles north of Baghdad. "Tikrit is the political center of gravity," said Rick Raftery, a retired Marine intelligence officer who served in northern Iraq in 1991. "It must be immediately eliminated." Experts on Iraq say that Tikrit is the nexus between Hussein, the security police and his weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. "Iraq's WMD are under the control of the special security organization," Khidir Hamza, a former Iraqi nuclear engineer, recently testified on Capitol Hill."

"Europeans wary of 'political Islam'" (Andrew Borowiec, The Washington Times, 2002/09/22)
"Before last year's carnage in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania, the Islamic message in Europe was becoming increasingly strident. For example, the imam of Bradford in England appealed to his congregation to struggle "with the aim of replacing secular values by Islam." A booklet printed in Saudi Arabia and distributed throughout Europe describes the aim of Muslim societies as 'trying to become one day a majority through reciprocal assimilation with the non-Islamic majority which will gradually accept the morals and religion of Islam.'"

"Left Behind" (George Packer, The New York Times Magazine, 2002/09/22)
An in-depth profile of the radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, who represented Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and now face charges of aiding a terrorist organization:
"When the towers fell, she felt that her city had been violated and her own life disrupted (her office is below Canal Street). But this warmhearted woman took the slaughter of innocents with a certain coldbloodedness. The U.S. is constantly at war around the world and shouldn't expect its acts to go unanswered, she says. The Pentagon was ''a better target''; the people in the towers ''never knew what hit them. They had no idea that they could ever be a target for somebody's wrath, just by virtue of being American. They took it personally. And actually, it wasn't a personal thing.'' As for civilian deaths in general: ''I'm pretty inured to the notion that in a war or in an armed struggle, people die. They're in the wrong place, they're in a nightclub in Israel, they're at a stock market in London, they're in the Algerian outback - whatever it is, people die.'' She mentions Hiroshima and Dresden. 'So I have a lot of trouble figuring out why that is wrong, especially when people are sort of placed in a position of having no other way.'''

"Marching off to peace" (Ken Loach, The Observer, 2002/09/22)
Ken Loach is "ahead of this week's anti-war demonstration". He seems to be unable to draw a distinction between dictatorships and democracies: "An authoritative witness, Scott Ritter, the man who spent seven years as a UN arms inspector in Iraq, says: 'Since 1998, Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed.' Where is the substantial evidence to counter that? If such weapons are the issue, then Israel should be first in the dock, since it possesses far more than any regime in the area. Indeed, if all are equal before the law, should not the UN send inspectors to all countries with these weapons? ... Respect for international law and UN resolutions cannot be the issue either. Israel defies the UN without suffering any sanctions. In 1986, the US was found guilty by the International Court of Justice of illegally mining Nicaragua's harbours and fined $370 million. The US ignored the court and its decision. ... The US forfeited any claim to moral leadership long ago. It has a history of undermining international law, contempt for the human rights of others and promoting its own brand of international terrorism."

"Revealed: Iraq's quest to build nuclear bomb" (Peter Beaumont and Nick Paton Walsh, The Observer, 2002/09/22)
"But the scientists and managers from Badr had different orders from Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. What they have been up to goes to the heart of US and UK concern that Saddam has been trying to assemble the expertise and materials to build weapons of mass destruction, for the men from Badr turned up at a factory in Minsk in the former Soviet republic of Belarus. ...
The delegation was careful to cover its tracks, keeping the visit and the deals signed secret from the UN. Iraq went to greater lengths still to hide these purchases from the UN sanctions regime, smuggling them into Iraq via the Jordanian free port of Aqaba, and trying to hide the equipment once it reached Iraq. The Iraqi deal with Belstroyimpex was not unique. As arms inspectors and independent researchers have established in the past two years, the deal was only a small part of an intensive effort by companies and organisations linked to the Iraq's Ministry of Military Industrialisation to acquire forbidden technologies and materials from Belarus and over a dozen other countries. ...
The Iraqi activity in Belarus is the most worrying evidence that Iraq is still pursuing a covert procurement programme . It may not be the 'smoking gun' that proves that Saddam has acquired the fissile material to build his bomb, but it is evidence that he is trying hard."

"Israel piles pressure on Arafat" (BBC News, 2002/09/22)
"The Israeli army has pulled down a building next to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's office in his Ramallah compound after a night of protests in which four Palestinians were reported killed. Mr Arafat has been under siege there for three days, and the latest action leaves his entire headquarters - except for his office - in ruins. Mr Arafat is refusing to give in to the Israeli Government's demands that he surrender 50 suspected militants Israel says are hiding in his offices. ... Israel's Deputy Defence Minister Weizman Shiri said that Mr Arafat could leave the country, but would not be allowed to return. "If he decides he wants to get out we'll give him a lift," Mr Shiri told army radio on Sunday. 'We'll give him a one-way ticket in a dignified way.'"

 

Saturday, September 21, 2002

News and commentary:

"Israelis order Arafat HQ evacuation" (BBC News, 2002/09/21)
"Israeli forces have warned people in and around the Ramallah headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to leave the compound and surrender. Reports from the West Bank town said loudspeaker announcements also told people living in the neighbourhood to leave the area immediately. Palestinian sources in and around Yasser Arafat's compound say Israeli forces appear to be preparing for a major operation."

"Israel Tells U.S. It Will Retaliate if Iraqis Attack" (Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 2002/09/21)
"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has informed the Bush administration that he plans to strike back if Iraq attacks Israel, according to Israeli and Western officials. Mr. Sharon's statements, made privately to senior American officials in recent weeks, represent a major shift in Israeli thinking since the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when 39 Iraqi Scud missiles struck without any Israeli response. The prime minister's position reflects a widespread belief among Israeli politicians and generals that Arab leaders perceived Israel's restraint in 1991 as weakness. Throughout his military and political career, Mr. Sharon has always held that any attack on Israel must be promptly and powerfully punished. ... Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress on Thursday that it would be in Israel's "overwhelming best interests" not to intervene if the United States went to war with Iraq."

"Man kills family over friends" (Sapa-AP/News24, 2002/09/21)
A report from Islamabad, Pakistan. Found via Little Green Footballs: "A man angered over his daughter's decision to marry a Christian boy and his son's relationship with a Christian girl shot and killed his wife, four children and two other relatives on Saturday, police said. The man, Mohammed Nawaz, a former employee of Pakistan's Interior Ministry, turned himself in to police in the capital after committing the crime, said Ehsan Sadiq, a senior police official. Nawaz said he killed his family members to protect their honor. "The accused is psychologically disturbed," Sadiq said. Nawaz's wife belongs to a Christian family, but she converted to Islam to marry him. One of their daughters announced recently that she wanted to marry a Christian relative from her mother's family, and the son was also involved with a Christian girl, Sadiq said."

"Iraq Says Won't Accept New U.N. Resolution" (Reuters, 2002/09/21)
"Iraq said on Saturday it would not accept any new U.N. Security Council resolution that runs contrary to an agreement reached with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "Iraq announces that it will not cooperate with a new resolution which is different from what has been agreed upon with the (U.N.) Secretary-General," said a statement issued following a meeting of top Iraqi leaders chaired by President Saddam Hussein. The statement carried by state-run Baghdad radio gave no details of the agreement Iraq had reached with Annan."

"Bush Has Received Pentagon Options on Attacking Iraq" (Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 2002/09/21)
"The Pentagon has completed and delivered to President Bush a highly detailed set of military options for attacking Iraq, Pentagon and White House officials said today. ... Officials said, however, that any attack would begin with a lengthy air campaign led by B-2 bombers armed with 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs to knock out Iraqi command and control headquarters and air defenses. They said a principal goal of the aerial bombardment would be to sever most communications from Baghdad and isolate Saddam Hussein from his commanders in the rest of the country. At the same time, according to officials knowledgeable about the planning, tens of thousands of marines and soldiers would stage out of Kuwait and possibly other countries in the region, officials said." (See also: "Iraq warns against fresh UN resolution" (BBC News, 2002/09/21): "The Iraqi declaration comes as US forces commander Tommy Franks said his forces were ready for war. "We are prepared to do whatever we are asked to do", General Franks told a news conference in Kuwait, but insisted Mr Bush had not taken a final decision.")

"The Fog of Peace" (David Brooks, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/09/30 issue)
A must-read article about the parochialism of the anti-war left: "For example, on September 19, a group of peaceniks took out a full-page ad in the New York Times opposing the campaign in Afghanistan and a possible campaign in Iraq. ...
In the text of the ad, which runs to 15 paragraphs, Saddam Hussein is not mentioned. Weapons of mass destruction are not mentioned. The risks posed by terrorists and terror organizations are not mentioned. ...
Reviewing Noam Chomsky, legal scholar Richard Falk, a member of the editorial board of the Nation, observes that while he agrees with much of what Chomsky writes, he is troubled by the fact that Chomsky is "so preoccupied with the evils of U.S. imperialism that it completely occupies all the political and moral space." That is exactly what you see in the writings of the peace camp generally - not only in Chomsky's work but also in the writings of people who are actually tethered to reality. Their supposed demons - Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, and company - occupy their entire field of vision, so that there is no room for analysis of anything beyond, such as what is happening in the world. ...
This is the dictionary definition of parochialism - the inability to consider the larger global threats because one is consumed by one's immediate domestic hatreds. This parochialism takes many forms, but all the branches of the opposition to the war in Iraq have one thing in common: Iraq is never the issue. Something else is always the issue." (See also: "Mixed Nuts" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/09/20))

"Ritter of Arabia" (Stephen F. Hayes, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/09/21)
Hayes on Scott Ritters turnabout regarding Iraq: "Mr. Ritter's arguments lately have deteriorated, from discrepant to disturbing. On Dec. 7, in a speech delivered at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington, Mr. Ritter suggested that Saddam would be justified in working with al Qaeda to blow up a U.S. government building. Here is Mr. Ritter's take on the Prague meetings between an Iraqi spy and Mohamed Atta, as transcribed by the Center: 'What it appears transpired was that the Iraqi intelligence officer spoke with Mohamed Atta at length about an attack, but it was an attack on a radio transmission tower of Radio Free Europe in Prague, Czechoslovakia. If you're the Iraqi government and you're looking at the Iraqi National Congress (the prominent opposition group), they are a legitimate enemy. Indeed, you could make the case that the Radio Free Europe transmission tower, under international law, is a legitimate target.'" (See also: "Joe Biden was Right" (Sam Schulman, Jewish World Review, 2002/09/19) and "Saddam Hussein's American Apologist" (Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, from the 2001/11/19 issue))

"US studies 'Iraqi chemical war plan'" (Shyam Bhatia, The Times, 2002/09/21)
"US intelligence experts are examining a top secret document sent to Iraqi military commanders on President Saddam Hussein’s orders that appears to confirm that they have a chemical arsenal and are prepared to use it. The 23-page military order allegedly instructs local commanders that, in the event of the Iraqi regime facing defeat in a war, the officers are free to use their own initiative and unleash chemical weapons. Signed by the head of the Iraqi Navy, it talks of preparations that must be made for a "chemical battle" between Iraqi and US forces. It also allegedly includes details of the radio-coded messages for the use of chemical weapons."

"Russia opposes new resolution" (Joseph Curl, The Washington Times, 2002/09/21)
"Russia yesterday refused to agree to a White House demand for a new U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein, setting President Bush on a course to block the reintroduction of arms inspectors into Iraq. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who spoke by telephone for half an hour yesterday with Mr. Bush, said getting a U.N. inspection team back into Iraq to look for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons remains the priority. ... The Russian stance differs from that of the Bush administration, as articulated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Thursday. ... The secretary of state went so far as to say the existing inspections regime - flouted by Saddam for years before he kicked U.N. inspectors out of Iraq in 1998 - is so unacceptable that "if somebody tried to move the team in now, we would find ways to thwart that." The differing positions on inspectors has set up a collision course between the United States and Russia, which, as one of the five permanent members on the U.N. Security Council, has veto authority over any resolution."

"Isolated Arafat at Israel's mercy" (BBC News, 2002/09/21)
"Israeli tanks and troops have taken up positions just a few metres from the office of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as the army continued demolishing other structures in his compound in Ramallah. At least three large explosions on Saturday morning have inflicted damage on Mr Arafat's building and thick black smoke hung over the scene. ... Overnight, at least one tank shell hit Mr Arafat's refuge, showering the Palestinian leader in dust but not causing any injuries, according to a reporter inside the building. ... Mr Arafat is said to be unhurt, but a Palestinian cabinet minister described him as "angry". Arafat wanted "to fight the Israeli army himself". When told that Israeli bulldozers were tearing down a fence, Mr Arafat "became tense, pulled out his little machine-gun and ran to fight the Israelis outside," the Labour Minister, Ghassan al-Khatib, told Reuters news agency. "His aides and bodyguards ran after him and forced him back," he added."

 

Friday, September 20, 2002

News and commentary:

"Germany's Trial Balloon - Anti-Semitism for political gain and profit" (Joshuah Bearman, LA Weekly, 2002/09/20)
"Jürgen Möllemann is the second in command of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), the classically liberal, center-right party that has participated as a junior partner in Germany's government for much of the postwar era. What began as a political critique of Israel turned nasty when Möllemann began suggesting in May that Ariel Sharon and Michel Friedman, an aggressively public German Jewish personality with his own talk show, were to blame for anti-Semitism, because they conjured it out of non-Jews with their behavior. ...
This was the affair inside the affair: Not only did an anti-Semite come out of the closet, but he did so for political gain. Chaim-Schneider says it's a paradigm shift: "Okay, an anti-Semite; nothing new. But now, for the first time in German politics since the war, a leading politician from a democratic party - this was a liberal, no less, not some fringe nut - went looking for votes with anti-Semitic stereotypes. This was unthinkable 10 years ago. No one would have dared. He would have been kicked out of the party." (See also: "Israel critic breaks national taboo" (Roger Boyes, The Times, 2002/09/19))

"Schroeder Apologizes to US for 'Hitler Comparison'" (Kevin Liffey, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/20)
"German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder apologized to President Bush on Friday for the offence caused by a report that his justice minister had compared Bush's methods to Hitler's. ... Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin tried to calm the transatlantic row on Friday by denying the report. ... Schroeder wrote to Bush, saying: 'I want to let you know how much I regret the fact that alleged comments by the German justice minister have given an impression that has offended you.'" (See also: "U.S. Slams German Minister for Bush-Hitler Comment" (Reuters, 2002/09/19) and "Today's round-up, straight from the German press" (Shark Blog, 2002/09/20), where Stefan Sharkansky summarizes an article from Tagblatt: "Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin doesn't dispute the reported quote comparing Bush to Hitler. Yet she insists that her comments were misinterpreted. It also came out that at the same trade union meeting she said that the US has a "lousy criminal justice system" and that Bush should have gone to jail for some of his financial transactions.")

"Mixed Nuts" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/09/20)
"A group calling itself "Not in Our Name" bought an ad in yesterday's New York Times proclaiming its opposition to America. ... "We call on all Americans to RESIST the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration," it declares. "It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate." Among the signers are such luminaries as "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, Ed Asner, Susan Sarandon, Casey Kasem (of "America's Top 40" fame), Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Edward Said, Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's), Kurt Vonnegut and murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal. The ad adds: "The brutal repercussions have been felt from the Philippines to Palestine, where Israeli tanks and bulldozers have left a terrible trail of death and destruction." Not a word about Palestinian terrorism, or indeed about any kind of terrorism except for the attacks of Sept. 11, which the signatories dismiss by likening them to 'similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City, and, a generation ago, Vietnam.'" (See also the ad: "Not In Our Name" (Not In Our Name, 2002/09/19), "Blind to Evil" (Ronald Radosh, New York Post, 2002/09/15) and "US artists damn 'war without limit'" (Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, 2002/06/14))

"Vichy Thought Police" (Michael Radu, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/09/20)
Radu on "l'affaire Houellebecq": "One therefore has to pay far more attention to the opinion of Dalil Boubakeur, Rector of the Paris Mosque, who thinks that Houellebecq has "abused, attacked, and insulted" Islam. "Words can kill. Freedom of expression stops at the point it starts hurting." ... Still, he is convinced that any opinion unfavorable to Islam, no matter whether informed or not, and whether or not it comes from a Muslim, is a crime. This is also the opinion - and policy - of Saudi Arabia, where it is against the law for non-Muslims to even live in the country. It also flies in the face of everything Western democracies stand for: freedom of expression and, perhaps more importantly, the individual's freedom of thought. ... With apologies to the American triumphalists of the "democracy is on march throughout the world" school of thought, here is a case of theocracy on the march, on the banks of the Seine." (See also: "French author denies racial hatred" (BBC News, 2002/09/17))

"Pacifism is disguised timidity" (Elizabeth Nickson, National Post, 2002/09/20)
"The source of this wrong thinking was outlined almost 40 years ago by Malcom Muggeridge in the benchmark essay of our time called "The Decade of The Great Liberal Death Wish." Muggeridge, a columnist for The Guardian, was sent to Moscow in the 30s, to report on Stalin, joining all his fellow lefties who believed that under the Great Stalin, a new dawn was breaking in which the human race would at last be united in liberty, equality and fraternity ever more. Stalin, reported Muggeridge, would literally rub his hands together and laugh. The liberal mind, says Muggeridge, is intrinsically susceptible to grovel before any Beelzebub who claims, however implausibly to be a prince of liberals. ...
We hate ourselves and we want to die. Little other explanation for not rethinking immigration, for warbling about human rights for prisoners whose stated wish is to kill us, and refusing to defend the women ritually beaten and killed in the Arab world every day. For passively allowing men like Saddam Hussein, whose stated aim is to acquire nuclear weapons to use against us, to stay in power. For not signing up to the most important cause of today. The army is for peacekeeping. Saddam is misunderstood. We give welfare cheques to terrorists, and teach them to fly planes. We want our civilization to die." (See also Muggeridge's lecture: "The Great Liberal Death Wish" (Malcolm Muggeridge, Imprimis/Liberty Haven, from the May 1979 issue): "The thing that impressed me, and the thing that touched off my awareness of the great liberal death wish, my sense that western man was, as it were, sleep-walking into his own ruin, was the extraordinary performance of the liberal intelligentsia, who, in those days, flocked to Moscow like pilgrims to Mecca. And they were one and all utterly delighted and excited by what they saw there. Clergymen walked serenely and happily through the anti-god museums, politicians claimed that no system of society could possibly be more equitable and just, lawyers admired Soviet justice, and economists praised the Soviet economy. They all wrote articles in this sense which we resident journalists knew were completely nonsensical.")

"Saddam and the Jews" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2002/09/20)
"I'm mystified why more hasn't been made of Saddam's assertion in his letter to the United Nations of the global threat of world Jewry. Here's the key passage: "In targeting Iraq, the United States administration is acting on behalf of Zionism, which has been killing the heroic people of Palestine, destroying their property, murdering their children and seeking to impose their domination on the whole world, not only militarily, but also economically and politically." Like the rest of the letter, this part is barely literate but its meaning is clear. Saddam is claiming that the U.S. is a tool of Zionist forces that are trying to take over the whole world! This isn't like Hitler. It is Hitler. When a figure like this simply echoes Nazi language, why isn't there universal shock and derision? Why isn't that the headline? Or have we become completely inured to the fact that the 1930s are alive and well and centered in Baghdad and the West Bank?" (See also excerpts from the letter to the United Nations General Assembly from President Saddam Hussein of Iraq: "In Saddam Hussein's Words: It's for Oil" (The New York Times, 2002/09/19))

"What Wonderful Roads" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2002/09/20)
"A reader sent me this priceless Robert Fisk piece in 1993 - on Osama bin Laden. Puff piece doesn't begin to describe it. There are breathless paeans to Osama's construction business! Read every word, and get a clue where this "reporter" is coming from.": "With his high cheekbones, narrow eyes and long brown robe, Mr Bin Laden looks every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend. Chadored children danced in front of him, preachers acknowledged his wisdom. ... The Egyptian press claims he brought hundreds of former Arab fighters back to Sudan from Afghanistan, while the Western embassy circuit in Khartoum has suggested that some of the ''Afghans'' whom this Saudi entrepreneur flew to Sudan are now busy training for further jihad wars in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt. Mr Bin Laden is well aware of this. ''The rubbish of the media and the embassies,'' he calls it. 'I am a construction engineer and an agriculturalist. If I had training camps here in Sudan, I couldn't possibly do this job.''' (See also: "Ussamah Bin Laden ... a closer look at the man, the phenomenon..." (Robert Fisk, Independent/MENIC, 1993/12/06) and "My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war" (Robert Fisk, Independent, 2001/12/10))

"The Case for Toppling Saddam" (Benjamin Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/09/20)
"Though I am today a private citizen, I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam's regime. We support this American action even though we stand on the front lines, while others criticize it as they sit comfortably on the sidelines. But we know that their sense of comfort is an illusion. For if action is not taken now, we will all be threatened by a much greater peril. We support this action because it is possible today to defend against chemical and biological attack. ...
But no gas mask and no vaccine can protect against nuclear weapons. That is why regimes that have no compunction about using weapons of mass destruction, and that will not hesitate to give them to their terror proxies, must never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. These regimes must be brought down before they possess the power to bring us all down."

"Is This the Way To Decide on Iraq?" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/09/20)
"When the case for war is made purely in terms of American national interest - in terms of the safety, security and very lives of American citizens - chins are pulled as the Democrats think it over. But when the case is the abstraction of being the good international citizen and strengthening the House of Kofi, the Democrats are ready to parachute into Baghdad. This hierarchy of values is bizarre but not new. Liberal internationalism - the foreign policy school of the modern Democratic Party (and of American liberalism more generally) - is deeply suspicious of actions taken for reasons of naked national interest. ... My point is to express wonder at Americans who find it unseemly to act in the name of their own national interests and who cannot see the logical absurdity of granting moral legitimacy to American action only if it earns the approval of the Security Council - approval granted or withheld on the most cynical grounds of self-interest."

"Shin Bet foils plan to poison Jerusalem hospital's water" (Amos Harel, Haaretz, 2002/09/20)
"The Shin Bet security service recently foiled a plan by some Gazan Islamic Jihad activists to poison the drinking water at one of Jerusalem's hospitals, a charge sheet filed at the Erez Junction military court reveals. ... The plan called for Salame to go to Jerusalem for treatment at the hospital's ophthalmology department. He was then supposed to drop the poison, made from a combination of baking powder and an unnamed liquid poison, into the hospital's drinking water reservoirs. In return, he would be paid NIS 300. [appr. $ 62]"

"Palestinians: U.S. urging PA to hand over wanted terrorists" (Gideon Alon, Haaretz, 2002/09/20)
"The United States has urged Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to hand over 19 wanted Palestinians, currently holed up in the PA's Ramallah headquarters. Twenty Palestinians, including some wanted by Israel, surrendered to IDF troops early Friday morning, but Israel Radio reported that none of them were on Israel's wanted list, which includes Tawfiq Tirawi, powerful head of West Bank general intelligence. An IDF source said that tanks would keep up their siege of the compound. The operation follows a cabinet decision Thursday night demanding that the PA hand over wanted militants from inside the compound." (See also: "Israelis wreck Arafat's HQ" (BBC News, 2002/09/20): "Israeli forces besieging Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have been systematically destroying buildings at his West Bank compound. Mr Arafat remains confined to an office deep inside his battered headquarters in Ramallah - described by a BBC correspondent at the scene, Barbara Plett, as resembling a lonely island in a sea of rubble.")

"Bush to Outline Doctrine of Striking Foes First" (David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 2002/09/20)
"On Friday, the Bush administration will publish its first comprehensive rationale for shifting American military strategy toward pre-emptive action against hostile states and terrorist groups developing weapons of mass destruction. The strategy document will also state, for the first time, that the United States will never allow its military supremacy to be challenged the way it was during the cold war. In the 33-page document, Mr. Bush also seeks to answer the critics of growing American muscle-flexing by insisting that the United States will exploit its military and economic power to encourage "free and open societies," rather than seek "unilateral advantage." It calls this union of values and national interests 'a distinctly American internationalism.'" (See also the full text of President Bush's new national security strategy: "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" (The White House, September 2002))

"US threat to stop Iraq inspections" (BBC News, 2002/09/20)
"The American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has said the United States will find ways to stop weapons inspectors going back to Iraq unless there is a new United Nations Security Council resolution on the issue. Addressing a Congressional committee, Mr Powell said the Security Council must spell out to Iraq the serious consequences if it fails to co-operate with the inspectors. The BBC State Department correspondent Jon Leyne says the US is in effect giving an ultimatum to the Security Council."

 

Thursday, September 19, 2002

News and commentary:

"Bush Seeks OK on Iraq From Congress" (Matt Kelley, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/19)
"President Bush asked Congress Thursday for authority to "use all means," including military force if necessary, to disarm and overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein if he does not comply quickly with United Nations demands that he abandon all weapons of mass destruction. Separately, the White House pressed reluctant allies Russia and France to support a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing force. ... The proposal Bush sent to Capitol Hill would give him broad war-making authority. "If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force," he told reporters in the Oval Office." (See also the text of the resolution: "In Bush's Words: 'Use All Means' on Iraq" (AFP/The New York Times, 2002/09/19))

"Iraq Tells U.N. It Is Weapons-Free" (Dafna Lifner, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/19)
"Iraq is free of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Saddam Hussein told the United Nations in a speech read Thursday by his foreign minister. The White House dismissed the speech as a "disappointing failure." ... "I hereby declare before you that Iraq is clear of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons," Sabri said, further quoting Saddam. The speech to the U.N. General Assembly - one week after Bush addressed the gathering - was greeted with loud applause by diplomats from around the world. ... "The U.S. administration wants to destroy Iraq in order to control the Middle East oil and consequently control the politics as well as the oil and economic policies of the whole world," the foreign minister said." (See also excerpts from the letter to the United Nations General Assembly from President Saddam Hussein of Iraq: "In Saddam Hussein's Words: It's for Oil" (The New York Times, 2002/09/19))

"Tel Aviv Bus Bomb Kills 6, Hurts 49" (Steve Weizman, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/19)
"A suicide bomber blew himself up on a crowded bus in downtown Tel Aviv on Thursday, killing at least six other people and wounding 49 in the second such attack in two days after a six-week lull. The blast tore through the bus while it was driving on Allenby Street, in the heart of a crowded restaurant and business district at lunchtime. ...
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, though various Israeli media outlets reported conflicting claims by the militant Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas. ...
"People were hurting, screaming, wounded. We saw pieces of people," said Zohara Pillo, 27, a visitor from Haifa. "The driver was sitting in his seat and his hands were on the window and he was dead, he was all blackened," she said. The blast scorched the bus and blew out its windows. One man with blood over his bare chest was wheeled away by paramedics. Another man sat on the sidewalk, crying." (See also: "Eight Palestinians Surrender at Besieged Arafat HQ" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/19): "Eight Palestinians surrendered to Israeli troops at Yasser Arafat's besieged presidential compound on Thursday night after Israel demanded he hand over militants it said were holed up inside, witnesses said. It was not clear whether any of the men taken into Israeli custody in the West Bank city of Ramallah were among the 19 or 20 which Israeli officials said were wanted for their alleged involvement in attacks on Israelis. Israeli forces assaulted Arafat's compound just hours after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five people and wounded about 50 on a bus in Tel Aviv.")

"Free Speech 101" (Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, 2002/09/19)
"Wartime censorship is alive and well, but it's happening only in our colleges, our "laboratories of democracy." ... Last week, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. When hundreds of anti-Israel protesters staged what turned into a riot, the speech was canceled. Never mind that protesters punched and kicked prospective listeners who were lined up to hear the speech or that the protesters shattered windows, upended newspaper boxes, and hurled furniture. ...
Ahmed Abdirahman, a spokesman for one of the groups that organized the protest, was quoted in the Montreal Gazette saying, "As responsible citizens, we have to be here to say physically to Netanyahu that his hatemongering isn't permitted in Montreal." Apparently to "say physically" is not the same as "assault" in his book. It is in mine. ...
Free speech does not encompass the right to fire, suspend, or riot your way into a universe in which everyone agrees with your views, even if you have legitimate grievances. The courts are well aware of this, but it seems that universities, both here and in Canada, are not. On campus, you may "speak" freely - with fists, chairs, and broken glass - so long as you are a member of an aggrieved minority with delicate sensibilities and a narrative of oppression." (See also: "Protest halts Netanyahu" (Sean Gordon et al., Montreal Gazette/Campus Watch, 2002/09/10))

"Joe Biden was Right" (Sam Schulman, Jewish World Review, 2002/09/19)
An interesting article about Scott Ritter's strange turnabout regarding Iraq: "One can trace this turn rather exactly. In 1999, Ritter published his book about the Iraq experience, Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem Once and for All. The key comes in Ritter's response to a generally favorable review in Commentary by Bret Stephens, now of the Jerusalem Post. ...
In a long letter to the editor which fails to engage any of Stephen's criticisms, Ritter concludes by deciding that Stephens was attacking Ritter personally: "Mr. Stephens has seen fit to denigrate my abilities as a formulator of policy without any appreciation of the depth of knowledge and understanding of these issues I bring to the table. However, rather than attacking the messenger, Mr. Stephens and others should spend more time evaluating the message." And here is the key - Scott Ritter felt unappreciated. He believed himself to be the victim of intellectual and perhaps social snobbery. From this sense stems the increasingly bizarre defenses of Saddam and denial of what he said so clearly in 1998 and 1999." (See also: "Ex-Inspector Warns Against Iraq War" (Sameer N. Yacoub, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/08))

"The war Oslo Wrought" (Norman Podhoretz, The Jerusalem Post, September 2002)
From a supplement called "Naming the War: Two Years of Violence", in which Michael Oren, Richard Perle and other commentators give their views on the second Intifada: "Some of us predicted when the Oslo accords were signed that they would lead not to peace but to war. For this we were derided and dismissed by the architects and supporters of that nefarious treaty, which has earned a place of dishonor in the dark history of appeasement alongside the agreement concluded in Munich in 1938 by Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler. ...
Well, the terrorism materialized, but in a form more diabolically evil than we had been capable of imagining. Now it remains to be seen whether The War That Oslo Wrought will end in a return to the deal that triggered it. If so, Shimon Peres and his confederates, incurably blinded by their illusions, will have created the conditions for yet another war to which his name will deserve to be attached."

"Columnist for Saudi Daily Al-Jazirah: Jews Use Blood for Baked Goods" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 421, 2002/09/19)
The ancient anti-Semitic blood libel and the "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are used as "proofs" of "the intentions of the Jews" in a recent article by columnist Dr. Muhammad bin S'ad Al-Shwey'ir, published in the Saudi state controlled daily Al-Jazirah: "Christian Europe showed enmity toward the Jews when it transpired that their rabbis craftily hunt anyone walking alone, [tempting] him to enter their house of worship. Then they take his blood to use for baked goods for their holidays, as part of their ritual. ... In the book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Precepts of the Talmud, by Shauqi Abd Al-Nasser, the 24th protocol appears; it represents the goal towards which the Jews strive with their tactics, their false media, and their treachery. The free world must take notice – primarily the West and America, where the intentions of the Jews have been revealed – as they gnaw away at the societies like the worm gnaws away at the wood until it is entirely consumed before signs [of the damage] are [visible]. [The West and America] must awaken, and must support the Muslims against them [i.e. the Jews] before it is too late." (See also: "Saudi Government Daily: Jews Use Teenagers' Blood for 'Purim' Pastries" (Special Dispatch No. 354, MEMRI, 2002/03/13))

"Saudi Arabia recalls envoy who praised bomber" (Richard Beeston, The Times, 2002/09/19)
"Ghazi Algosaibi, a writer and poet, said that after a decade as Saudi Arabia’s top envoy in Britain he had been summoned home to take up a new post as Minister for Water. ... In April Dr Algosaibi wrote a poem dedicated to Ayat Akhra, a teenage Palestinian girl who blew herself up outside a supermarket, killing two Israelis. In the ensuing public dispute, he accused Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, of genocide, said that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was worse than the Nazi occupation of Europe and hinted that he would not mind if his own son joined the suicide bombers. ...
Many of the ambassador's friends and colleagues in the diplomatic service defended him, insisting that he had represented his country well over the past decade. "He has been an outstanding ambassador to London with an extraordinary intellectual grasp and a very fine pen," Sir Andrew Green, the former British Ambassador to Riyadh, said." (See also: "Diplomat censured over bomb poem" (BBC News, 2002/04/18), "Saudi Ambassador to London: 'I Want Peace with Israel; I Long to Die as a Martyr; Stoning and Amputating Hands Are at the Core of Every Muslim's Belief'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 389, 2002/06/13) and "Saudi envoy: Israel occupation worse than Nazis" (Reuters/Haaretz, 2002/07/09), for examples of Algosaibi's "extraordinary intellectual grasp" and "very fine pen".)

"Imagine no America" (Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, 2002/09/19)
"Take this thought and chew on it: you will probably see a nuclear war in your lifetime. As nuclear weapons proliferate, and become easier to make and carry, the chances increase that some terrorist or dictator will use them. It is difficult to prevent. It will probably happen. But one way to reduce the chances is to have an international norm of rigorous, intrusive inspections. The Carnegie Endowment in Washington has proposed that such "coercive inspections" should be backed by a multinational UN military force trained specially for the purpose. ...
Unstable states will always wriggle and twist - as Saddam will. Yet the chance of such inspections gaining wider international acceptance is fading since they are widely seen as the tool of an aggressive American policy. Rightly or wrongly seen? In a sense, the answer does not matter. The perception is the reality. So there is our dilemma. It is a fine and necessary thing to make the Orwellian (in the positive sense) mental exercise of asking what would I think of this if America were not involved? But America is involved, almost everywhere. We can't just say "let's leave America out of this". So if the association with Bush's America is tarnishing this liberal internationalist project, what do we do? Try to moderate America's position, and appeal to the other Americas that are certainly still there? Try to build up a stronger European voice? Yes, both. And so we end up like Tony Blair - doing the splits. Very uncomfortable."

"Terrorists at our universities" (Ben Shapiro, Town Hall, 2002/09/19)
"Al-Talib, the UCLA Muslim student newsmagazine, is funded by the tuition money of UCLA students. A few quotes from the magazine should suffice to demonstrate just how patriotic the staff members' American education has made them:
- "Race and racism are deeply rooted in the very foundations of American society and the collective American psyche."
- "With the coming of death into this country, the U.S. has entered Afghanistan so as to once again rob the world of its innocent lives." ...
- The magazine also calls Osama Bin-Ladin a "prominent Muslim activist" and jokes about changing the name of the magazine to 'Al-Taliban.'" (See also Al-Talib's latest editorial for another example of their position: "First, it was the Indigenous Americans. They were forced off their own land in an unimaginable genocide, their way of life altered forever. Then came the turn of the African Americans. Forced into slavery, they became part of an enduring cycle of social oppression, which continues to this day. ... As thousands of Muslims sit behind bars without due process, we come to the painful realization that now, it's the Muslims' turn…" ("Then They Came For Us" (Al-Talib, volume 12, issue 3, Autumn 2002))

"U.S. Slams German Minister for Bush-Hitler Comment" (Reuters, 2002/09/19)
Germany IV: "President Bush's spokesman on Thursday expressed outrage that Germany's justice minister drew a link between Bush's saber-rattling on Iraq to the tactics used by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Spokesman Ari Fleischer said the United States and Germany have long had a strong relationship, "but this statement by the justice minister is outrageous and is inexplicable." The regional Schwaebisches Tagblatt newspaper quoted German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, as saying 'Bush wants to divert attention from his domestic problems. It's a classic tactic. It's one that Hitler used.'"

"The German Problem" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2002/09/19)
Germany III: "At a meeting in the Axel Springer building in Hamburg on Aug. 27 with about 30 American friends of Germany, the defense minister who had been recently booted out of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's cabinet for financial irregularities was asked why Germany was so loudly opposed to President Bush's campaign to oust Saddam Hussein. Rudolf Scharping reported that he had answered that very question in a Schröder cabinet meeting: it was all about the Jews. Bush was motivated to overthrow Saddam by his need to curry favor with what Scharping called "a powerful - perhaps overly powerful - Jewish lobby" in the coming U.S. elections."

"Berlin's Isolation" (Wolfgang Schauble, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/09/19)
Germany II: "One thing is clear: By working at cross purposes with the U.S. and all of Germany's European allies - with all our friends - the [German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder] has for his own personal gain plunged the federal republic into an international crisis. ...
German-American relations are at their lowest level since the founding of the state in 1949. A common European position on Iraq is also not in sight because Berlin is blocking it, and so Germany finds itself isolated within the European Union. In the meantime, the chancellor has put Germany in the unenviable position of being Saddam Hussein's favorite Western state; no other European state has had so much praise heaped on it from Baghdad. On Iraqi state television, Chancellor Schroeder and his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, are shown as chief witnesses for the resistance to American imperialism." (See also: "Schröder's anti-war stance puts him ahead of the pack" (Roger Boyes, The Times, 2002/09/12))

"Israel critic breaks national taboo" (Roger Boyes, The Times, 2002/09/19)
Germany I: "Germany's election campaign took a nasty twist yesterday when a senior politician from the Free Democratic Party attacked the Israeli Government and a leading member of the German Jewish community. ...
At an election rally in Aachen [Jürgen Möllemann] was applauded when he said: "I will continue to describe Israel as a war-mongering state as long as Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister, violates the Oslo peace treaty." No one, he said, would stop him, not even "the Friedmanns of this world". Michel Friedmann, a Christian Democrat who is also deputy leader of the Jewish community, is one of Herr Möllemann's most outspoken critics. ...
Both the phrasing and the timing - in the midst of a debate on whether Germany should fight Iraq - have ensured that Herr Möllemann is being ostracised by the political establishment. Paul Spiegel, the head of the Central Council of German Jews, said: 'Anyone who positions himself like this in the final stretch of an election campaign has disqualified himself from a democratic election.'"

"While America Slept" (The New York Times, 2002/09/19)
"The initial findings of a Congressional committee that has been reviewing the performance of America's intelligence agencies before Sept. 11 are profoundly disturbing. ... One of the great unanswered questions has been whether the government had enough intelligence in the months before Sept. 11 to fear an imminent blow within the United States and to take aggressive steps to heighten security, especially at airports. The answer now appears to be affirmative." (See also: "Probe: U.S. Knew of Jet Terror Plots" (Ken Guggenheim, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/18))

Added in Author index:
Bruce Bawer

Added in archive:
"Edward W. Said, intellectual" (Bruce Bawer, The Hudson Review/brucebawer.com, from the Winter 2002 issue)
"9/11 wicked but a work of art, says Damien Hirst" (Rebecca Allison, The Guardian, 2002/09/11)
"Tribute to the towers" (Linda Herrick, The New Zeeland Herald, 2002/09/09)

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

News and commentary:

"Probe: U.S. Knew of Jet Terror Plots" (Ken Guggenheim, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/18)
"Intelligence agencies failed to anticipate terrorists flying planes into buildings despite a dozen clues in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks that Osama bin Laden or others might use aircraft as bombs, a congressional investigator told lawmakers Wednesday as they began public hearings into the attacks. Just a month before the attacks, intelligence agencies were told of a possible bin Laden plot to hit the U.S. Embassy in Kenya or crash a plane into it. The preliminary report by Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint House and Senate intelligence committee investigation of the terrorist strike, showed authorities had many more warnings about possible attacks than were previously disclosed. The reports were generally vague and uncorroborated. None specifically predicted the Sept. 11 attacks. But collectively the reports "reiterated a consistent and critically important theme: Osama bin Laden's intent to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States," Hill said." (See also the preliminary report: "Joint Inquiry Staff Statement, Part 1" (Eleonor Hill, Staff Director, Joint Inquiry Staff/The Washington Post, 2002/09/18))

"Activists prepare anti-war campaign" (Brian Wheeler, BBC News, 2002/09/18)
And they call Bush simpleminded?: "Speaking at a Stop the War Coalition rally in East London, veteran left-wing journalist Paul Foot told activists they genuinely had the power to stop a conflict. He said public opinion was with the anti-war movement and the "utter madmen" in George Bush's administration had already bowed to pressure by going to the United Nations. ...
"Those madmen that are in charge can be stopped," he added. ...
He dismissed talk of Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction as "piffle". "If you close your eyes when they are talking about Iraq and replace it with Israel then everything they say applies. The weapons of mass destruction are there in the Middle East, they are in the hands of the Israeli government, the most dangerous hands they could possibly be in." To rapturous applause, Mr Foot told activists: 'Whatever the UN says, we are against war with Iraq.'"

"'They Should Be Slaughtered'" (John Perazzo, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/09/18)
"If you attended religious services this past weekend, recall, for a moment, the preacher's sermon. Did any portion of his or her message bear some resemblance to this: "Have no mercy on the Jews. No matter where they are, fight them. ... Wherever you are, kill the Jews, the Americans, ... and those who stand by them. ... It is forbidden to befriend Israelis or to aid them. Don't love them or enter into agreement with them. ... They should be slaughtered. They should be murdered." There's little likelihood of any listener dozing off during such a sermon, which was in fact delivered during worship services at a Gaza mosque on October 13, 2000 by Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, a member of the Palestinian Authority's "Fatwa Council," and former acting Rector of Gaza's Islamic University. ...
That anti-Semitism now fuels not only the passion with which Arab nations bang the drum for Palestinian statehood - but also their adjoining hatred for Israel's strongest supporter, America. With near unanimity, however, Western religious and political leaders have been reluctant to acknowledge the shocking level of anti-Semitism in the Islamic world. ... The refusal to face uncomfortable truths about those who seek our destruction only prevents us from comprehending the enormity of their hatred. And that is a recipe for disaster of a magnitude beyond words."

"The silent majority voices its sympathy for America" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/09/18)
In last week's column, Daley wrote about anti-Americanism in British media. As a result she has received a "tidal wave of kindness and sympathy...from readers who wanted to assure me that the reaction of some parts of the British media to the World Trade Centre attack, about which I had written so bitterly, did not in any way represent the feelings of the real people of this country": "Over and again, the letters assured me that "the BBC has nothing to do with us": I should not mistake the national broadcasting service for the nation. The letters came from all over the country and many of them were scathing of the metropolitan circles that I inhabited. Britain was full of decent people who were not fooled. The obnoxious chatterers to whom I was referring were "a tiny minority" - which is statistically true enough. So why, you ask, don't I just ignore them? Because I can't, dear reader. And neither can you. Whether you like it or not, they claim to speak for you. Unlike the diffident people who took the time to write to me, they speak with a loud voice and they invariably see to it that they are heard by those they wish to influence." (See also: "I found where I was when the terrorists hit home" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/09/11))

"France to free Nazi collaborator" (BBC News, 2002/09/18)
"Maurice Papon - a former French police chief imprisoned for his role in sending Jews to Nazi death camps - is to be set free on health grounds, his lawyer has said. A French appeals court ordered the release of Papon, who was jailed in 1999 for complicity in crimes against humanity for the deportation of nearly 1,700 Jews, according to lawyer Jean-Marc Varaut. ...
The BBC correspondent in Paris said the release - allowed because Papon was virtually incapacitated - was expected to be greeted with horror. ... Papon - who was the head of police in Bordeaux during the Nazi era - fled to Switzerland after his conviction in 1998. He returned to France to begin his sentence in October 1999 but wrote a letter to France's justice minister last year saying he felt no "regrets of remorse" for his actions."

"Terror cells at liberty to strike" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2002/09/18)
"Information obtained from self-professed September 11 organizer Ramzi Binalshibh indicates al Qaeda has decentralized its leadership structure, making it more dangerous, according to U.S. officials. Terrorist cells now have more autonomy to conduct attacks around the world, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The decentralization means the danger from this group is growing," said one U.S. intelligence official. ...
Meanwhile, officials have identified two key aides to bin Laden as the most active plotters of several recent al Qaeda attacks. They are Mohammed — the September 11 organizer — and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Mohammed is one of al Qaeda's most senior leaders who is on the run. Al-Nashiri is chief of al Qaeda's operations in the Persian Gulf region. Both are among about two dozen al Qaeda leaders being sought by U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement officials."

"Calling Islam stupid lands author in court" (Paul Webster, The Guardian, 2002/09/18)
"Michel Houellebecq, whose new novel Platform was released in Britain this month, appeared in a Paris court yesterday charged with inciting religious and racial hatred in an interview about the book, in which he dismissed Islam as "stupid".
The charges, based on a complaint by the Islamic authorities in Lyon and Paris, are being challenged by a group of best-selling authors led by Philippe Sollers and Régine Desforges who have condemned the trail as an attack on freedom of speech.
Mr Houellebecq, who has also written the books Whatever and Atomised and whose eccentric work and lifestyle are the subject of intense literary and social gossip, flew from his tax-haven cottage in western Ireland for the trial.
The charges arise from comments quoted in the magazine Lire that Islam is "the most stupid religion" and that the "badly written" Koran made him fall to the ground in despair. ...
Mr Houellebecq told the judges that he had never despised Muslims but felt contempt for Islam. He said he had been misreported, but added: 'There is no point in asking me general questions because I am always changing my mind.'" (See also: "French author denies racial hatred" (BBC News, 2002/09/17))

Added in archive:
"Islamic Studies' Young Turks" (Danny Postel, The Chronicle, from the 2002/09/13 issue)
"Arab and Muslim worlds confront civilization crisis" (Kanan Makiya, Tapei Times, 2001/10/24)

 

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

News and commentary:

"French author denies racial hatred" (BBC News, 2002/09/17)
"A prize-winning French author on trial for calling Islam "the dumbest religion" has denied charges of inciting racial hatred. Michel Houellebecq told a Paris court that his words had been twisted. "I have never displayed the least contempt for Muslims," he said, but added, "I have as much contempt as ever for Islam". ...
The controversial writer is being sued by four Islamic organisations over his comments about his book, Platform, in an interview last year with the literary magazine Lire. The novel is also cited in the case being brought by the largest mosques in Paris and Lyon, the National Federation of French Muslims (FNMN) and the World Islamic League. France's Human Rights League has also joined them, saying that Mr Houellebecq's comments amount to "Islamophobia". ...
In a written submission, lawyers for the Paris mosque said: "The fact that a famous author can be allowed to proclaim clearly his hatred for Islam in a magazine like Lire constitutes incitement to religious hatred." Dalil Boubakeur from the mosque told the court: 'Islam has been reviled, attacked with hateful words. My community has been humiliated.'" (See also: "Author on trial over Islam 'insult'" (BBC News, 2002/09/16))

"A domestic outlook on 9/11: Seeing through it all" (Al-Ahram Weekly, from the 12 - 18 September 2002 issue)
Results from a poll made by the Egyptian magazine. Note the conspiracy theorizing inherent in the heading:
"QUESTION 1: How would you describe your feelings when you saw the destruction of New York's twin towers?
They deserved it: 52%
Sympathy for the victims: 35%
Afraid of the future: 24%
Admiration for the culprits: 28%
Anger at the culprits: 10%
QUESTION 2: Who do you think is responsible for the attacks?
Israeli intelligence/Mossad: 39%
We'll never know: 25%
Al-Qa'eda or other Islamic militants: 19%
Others: 19%
QUESTION 3: How do you view the American war on terror?
A means of asserting the US's global dominance: 68%
A war against Arabs and Muslims: 51%
A justified response to the attacks: 15%"

"Address at morning prayers" (Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University, 2002/09/17)
The Harvard president condemns the increasing anti-Semitism at Harvard and around the world: "But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent. ...
Hundreds of European academics have called for an end to support for Israeli researchers, though not for an end to support for researchers from any other nation. ...
And some here at Harvard and some at universities across the country have called for the University to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested. I hasten to say the University has categorically rejected this suggestion." (See also: "How Harvard and M.I.T. professors are planting a seed of malevolence" (Ruth Wisse, Jewish World Review, 2002/05/29))

"Where Have All the Iraq Experts Gone? Long Time Passing" (Martin Kramer, Sandstorm, 2002/09/17)
Kramer on two Iraq experts who have passed away - Elie Kedourie and Uriel Dann: "In 1991, as it became clear that Saddam would remain in the saddle, Dann wrote a piece for The New Republic (June 3, 1991), entitled "Getting Even." Read these words and commit them to memory: they are the considered judgment of a man who knew Iraq as well as, if not better than, any "expert" alive today: 'Saddam Hussein does not forget and forgive. His foes brought him close to perdition and then let him off. ... He will strive to exact revenge as long as there is life in his body. He will smirk and conciliate and retreat and whine and apply for fairness and generosity. He will also make sure that within his home base it remains understood that he has not changed and will never change. ... And the day will come when he will hit, we do not know with what weapons. ... And when he does...the innocent will pay by the millions. This must never be put out of mind: Saddam Hussein from now on lives for revenge.'"

"Feminism's Slide Since September 11" (Cathy Young, Reason, 2002/09/17)
Found via InstaPundit: "Perhaps most damningly, many feminists' allegiance to the left made them reluctant to endorse the West's liberation of Afghani women from tyranny. A statement issued in June by prominent American leftists, including feminist luminaries such as Gloria Steinem, novelist Alice Walker and "Vagina Monologues" author Eve Ensler, denounced "the war and repression ... loosed on the world by the Bush administration." It mentioned the "attack" on Afghanistan but not the consequences to that nation's women. Maybe the real gender-related message to be gleaned from Sept. 11 is this: However much we would like to see women's liberation as a natural right, it is the achievement of a complex, advanced civilization. Recent events remind us that this civilization is fragile and that its enemies are hostile to freedom for anyone - but especially women. Feminists, perhaps more than anyone else, should realize that the West is worth defending. Perhaps if they did realize it, they wouldn't be so irrelevant."

"Militant Linked to Pearl Killing" (Afzal Nadeem, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/17)
"An al-Qaida militant arrested with alleged Sept. 11 organizer Ramzi Binalshibh has been identified as one of the killers of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, a senior police official said Tuesday. If true, this would be the first evidence that al-Qaida may have been involved in Pearl's abduction and killing. The identification was made by a Pakistani held but not charged in the kidnap-slaying of the newspaper's South Asian correspondent, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ... The official refused to identify Pearl's alleged killer by name but said he was not among the five people, including Binalshibh, who were handed over to U.S. authorities Monday and flown out of the country. He said the man was believed to be a Yemeni."

"The War on Campus" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2002/09/17)
Pipes compares the reception of Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia University in Montreal with that of Hanan Ashrawi at Colorado College in Colorado Springs: "Both incidents point to profound problems in the university, and why Abigail Thernstrom calls it "an island of repression in a sea of freedom." In Colorado, the administration made the morally idiotic choice of honoring an apologist for terrorism. At Concordia, a weak-kneed response let thugs inhibit free speech. The incidents also point to the differing faces of pro- and anti-Israel activism, with the former acceptably political and the latter crudely violent. The first resembles the restrained actions of the Israeli armed forces. The second represents a North American face of the suicide bombings. Or, in the most elemental terms, we see here the contrast between the civilized nature of Israel and its friends versus the raw barbarism of Israel's enemies." (See also: "The Speech He Couldn't Give" (Benjamin Netanyahu, The Globe and Mail/FrontPageMagazine, 2002/09/12) and "9/11 Outrage In Colorado" (Steven Plaut, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/09/05))

"Orwellian 'Peace' Movement" (David Harsanyi, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/09/17)
Harsanyi on the Student Peace Action Network: "In other words, SPAN tutors students on the despotism of United States policy, and that policy's responsibility for all the troubles of the world - poverty, famine, war, and especially the threat of nuclear war. They advocate practical alternatives like appeasement and surrender. Carrie Benzschawel, a program associate at Peace Action, for instance, writes that Iraq, North Korea, and even al-Qaeda, shouldn't be our major focus since "the biggest nuclear threat we now face doesn't come from some rogue nation, but from the radical unilateralists within the Bush administration." ...
The group has a tentative pro-Iraqi demonstration scheduled for the last weekend in September, where they plan to make stops at the embassies of Egypt, Japan, and Iraq to actually thank them for the opposition to war. Never mind that between them, Egypt and Iraq, have started seven major wars since World War II..."

"Recipes for Death" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2002/09/17)
"On my desk is a set of self-help books that I've been buying at gun shows and on the Internet. ... Right now I'm leafing through "Assorted Nasties," which has detailed instructions on how to make sarin, VX gas and even mustard gas. Then there's "Silent Death," with 30 pages about manufacturing nerve gases like sarin, tabun and soman. The book also contains a helpful description of the best ways to disseminate gases so as "to lay waste to a metropolitan area." ...
Then there's a three-volume set of books, "Scientific Principles of Improvised Warfare," which offers details on where to find anthrax spores and how to cultivate them and turn them into an aerosol. "If you can make Jell-O," the book promises, "you can wipe out cities. Enjoy!" Fortunately, it's not that easy. But still, do we as a nation really want to permit books that facilitate terrorism and mass murder? As Justice Arthur Goldberg declared in a 1963 Supreme Court case, the Constitution 'is not a suicide pact.'"

"'O God, deal with the Americans, the English, and the Jews' Iraqi sermon 13 September 2002" (IMRA, 2002/09/17)
"Baghdad Republic of Iraq Television in Arabic, official television station of the Iraqi Government, carries on 13 September 2002 at 0916 GMT a live sermon from Imam Abu-Hanifah mosque in Baghdad. ... The imam calls on the faithful "everywhere in the world" to understand "the seriousness of the savage onslaught on Islam and Muslims" and unite against the US and British aggression. ...
He also prays: "O God, support your mujahidin subjects everywhere, support them in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. O God, make them steadfast, guide their shots, and make them triumph over Your enemy and their enemy. O God, deal with the Americans, the English, and the Jews, for they are within Your power. O God, show us a black day for them. O God, shake the land under their feet, lower their flags, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes. O God, terrorize them in their homes. O God, intimidate them, as they intimidate the peaceful."

"UN divided over inspections offer" (BBC News, 2002/09/17)
"The United Nations Security Council has been thrown into disarray following Iraq's decision to allow weapons inspectors back into the country. Russia said the threat of war had been averted and no further UN resolutions would be needed. But America has dismissed the offer as a cynical ploy. Britain is backing the US, with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisting a new UN resolution on Iraq is still necessary. ...
The contrast with Russian reaction to Iraq's offer was stark. "Thanks to our joint efforts, we managed to avert the threat of a war scenario and go back to political means of solving the Iraqi problem," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said. 'It is essential in the coming days to resolve the issue of the inspectors' return. For this, no new [Security Council] resolutions are needed.'"

Added in Author index:
Theodore Dalrymple
Laurie Mylroie
Ralph Peters

Added in archive:
"The British Left Goes Anti-Semitic" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 2002/07/23)
"Crime is Law, Law is Crime" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 2002/07/18)
"Letting Saddam Be" (Laurie Mylroie, National Review, 2002/05/29)
"The Morality of Terror" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 2002/04/16)
"The Most Politically Correct Magazine in the World" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 2002/02/25)
"Stability, America's Enemy" (Ralph Peters, Parameters, from the Winter 2001-02 issue)
"The Dumbest Immigration Policy" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, from the Winter 2001 issue)
"What We Have to Lose" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, from the Autumn 2001 issue)
"Familiar Rogue" (Laurie Mylroie, National Review, 2001/09/17)

 

Monday, September 16, 2002

News and commentary:

"Iraq agrees to weapons inspections" (CNN.com, 2002/09/16)
"Iraq says it will allow U.N. weapons inspectors to immediately return to the country without conditions, but a senior U.S. official discounted the announcement, saying "we do not take what Saddam says at face value." ...
The timing of the Iraqi letter coincided with a major push by the Bush administration to draft tougher U.N. resolutions ordering weapons inspectors back into Iraq on a tight deadline and threatening the use of military force if Iraq does not comply." (See also: "White House Dismisses Iraqi Offer" (George Gedda, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/16): "The White House dismissed Iraq's offer Monday to let weapons inspectors return there unconditionally — a move that could be an attempt to split the Security Council and preclude stern U.S. action against Iraq. The White House released a written statement that called the offer "a tactical step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong U.N. Security Council action." "As such, it is a tactic that will fail," spokesman Scott McClellan said in the statement. "This is not a matter of inspections. It is about disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi regime's compliance with all other Security Council resolutions," McClellan said in Washington.")

"Chrétien caught in a web of confusion" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/09/16)
"Just to clarify: Most of us "war hawks" don't have a problem with the Canadian government attempting to identify the "root causes," only with the particular root cause they settled on: Poverty. The late Osama bin Laden was a wealthy man. Wealthier even than Jean Chrétien, who's spent his entire adult life in government service except for six months in the late Eighties but has happily wound up a multi-millionaire. If M. Chrétien feels he's too rich (as we must assume he does), how much more excessively rich is the late Mr. Weirdbeard? Or Saddam Hussein, whose personal fortune is estimated at US$7-billion, a career in public service in Baghdad apparently being even more lucrative than one in Ottawa. ...
The Islamists have no rational demands, and no conceivable changes to U.S. policy will deflect them. M. Chrétien says he formulated his theory - American arrogance plus Osama's poverty equals global terrorism - on the evening of September 11th. And what's heartening is that in the last 12 months nothing in the torrent of evidence has stirred our grand buffoon from his complacency." (See also: "PM links attacks to 'arrogant' West" (Sheldon Alberts, National Post, 2002/09/12))

"Officials: U.S. holding key 9/11 suspect outside Pakistan" (CNN.com, 2002/09/16)
"A key al Qaeda operative captured last week in Pakistan is now in U.S. custody outside that country, U.S. officials said Monday. Ramzi Binalshibh is not part of the top tier al Qaeda leadership, but he is a "very, very big fish for us," a senior official said, both because he is believed to have played a critical role in the September 11 plot and because he is believed to have been in contact with senior al Qaeda leaders since then. Binalshibh, a Yemeni national, will be questioned by U.S. intelligence in an undisclosed location, officials said. Pakistani government officials told CNN that Binalshibh and about half of the others captured in raids last week in Karachi were taken out of Pakistan by U.S. officials." (See also: "Top al-Qaeda suspect captured" (BBC News, 2002/09/14))

"Author on trial over Islam 'insult'" (BBC News, 2002/09/16)
"Prize-winning French novelist Michel Houellebecq is to stand trial on Tuesday on charges of making a racial insult and inciting rel