Archived news and commentary: September 30 - October 6, 2002

2002/12/30 - 2003/01/05
2002/12/23 - 2002/12/29
2002/12/16 - 2002/12/22
2002/12/09 - 2002/12/15
2002/12/02 - 2002/12/08
2002/11/25 - 2002/12/01
2002/11/18 - 2002/11/24
2002/11/11 - 2002/11/17
2002/11/04 - 2002/11/10
2002/10/28 - 2002/11/03
2002/10/21 - 2002/10/27
2002/10/14 - 2002/10/20
2002/10/07 - 2002/10/13
2002/09/30 - 2002/10/06

Sunday, October 6, 2002

News and commentary:

"Mayor of Paris stabbed in abdomen" (AP/MSNBC, 2002/10/06)
"The man suspected of stabbing Paris’ openly gay mayor early Sunday told interrogators he did it because he disliked politicians and homosexuals, judicial officials said. Bertrand Delanoe is expected to remain hospitalized for at least week to recover from the single stab wound to his abdomen. His office had initially described the injury as minor. He had surgery for three hours after being rushed to Pitie-Salpetriere hospital. The unidentified suspect, who was taken into custody immediately, confessed to the stabbing, said judicial officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said the 39-year-old attacker told them that he was a devout Muslim and acted out of opposition to politicians and gays. Investigators believe the suspect isn't linked to any Islamic fundamentalist parties. The suspect, who has been hospitalized previously for psychiatric treatment, comes from one of the tough neighborhoods in the Paris suburbs. Delanoe, 52, was attending a lively, all-night party at city hall as part of Paris’ first-ever "Sleepless Night" festival when he was attacked. Dozens of museums and tourist attractions, including the Eiffel Tower, were open all night, and concerts and art exhibits were held throughout the French capital. Nearly 2,000 people had gathered at City Hall for a concert of electronic lounge music and other festivities. Delanoe moved freely among the crowd without any security guards when he was stabbed in the Salle des Fetes, a lavish ballroom decorated with red and green lights and palm trees."

"Woman in hiding after she lambasts Islam" (Andrew Osborn, The Observer, 2002/10/06)
"Barely six months have elapsed since his murder but the Islamophobia openly espoused by anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn is now being voiced by a female immigrant whose words are outraging Dutch Muslims. ... In doing so Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become the Netherlands' very own Salman Rushdie and is now in hiding after receiving a barrage of anonymous death threats, allegedly from extremist Muslims. The trouble started when she took part in a live debate on Dutch TV. An advisor to the Dutch opposition Socialist party, she used the opportunity to launch a bitter attack on Islam, taking issue with what she called the shoddy way in which it regarded women. ...
In the months since Fortuyn's death, Hirsi Ali has become a fierce critic of the way women are treated in Islamic society, particularly in tight-knit fundamentalist circles in the West. One of her accusations is that conservative Muslim groups cover up widespread domestic violence and child abuse in their midst. Yassin Hartog, a spokesman for Islam and Citizenship, the Netherlands' main Muslim lobby group, says he believes the death threats against Hirsi Ali may have been fabricated to blacken the Muslim community. 'We're getting more and more signs that these death threats are bogus,' he told The Observer. In an effort to distance themselves from the affair 17 Muslim organisations have signed a declaration condemning the death threats."

"Voice on tape said to be bin Laden's" (CNN.com, 2002/10/06)
"The Al-Jazeera television network Sunday released an audiotape it said was made by Osama bin Laden and intended for an American audience. In the tape, the speaker extends two invitations to the American people: to join the Islam religion "of compassion and justice" and to try to understand why bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorists attacked New York and Washington. "I want to explain to the American people why we attacked New York and Washington," says the speaker on the two-minute recording, which the Qatar-based network said was left at its offices late Sunday. ...
"I'm inviting you to understand the message of my attack against New York and D.C., which came as an answer to your crimes," the speaker says in Arabic. "Evil brings evil." "If we follow the act of these criminal bandits at the White House, the Jewish agents who are preparing to attack the Islamic world and dividing it up, without you opposing them, one would think that you don't understand the attacks at all," the speaker says. "That's why I tell you, as God is my witness, whether America increases or reduces tensions, we will surely answer back in the same manner, with God's blessing and grace, and I promise you that the Islamic youth are preparing for you what will fill your hearts with horror, and they will target the centers of your economy until you stop your tyranny and terror, until one of us dies." (See also: "Jazeera TV Plays New Tape Said to Be Bin Laden" (Yahoo! News, 2002/10/06): "It warned that any attack against the Muslim world would be repaid "twofold" and accused U.S. administration officials of being a 'Zionist mob.'")

"Diagnosing Dubya" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2002/10/06)
"Here's a hilarious article in an Indian newspaper by Carol Wolman, M.D., who is described as "a board certified psychiatrist, in practice for 30 years". ... According to Dr. Wolman's carefully considered diagnosis, the most appropriate clinical term to describe George W. Bush is "nuts.": "Many people, inside and especially outside this country, believe that the American president is nuts, and is taking the world on a suicidal path. As a board-certified psychiatrist, I feel it's my duty to share my understanding of his psychopathology. He's a complicated man, under tremendous pressure from both his family/junta, and from the world at large." ... She dutifully proceeds to attribute to Bush virtually every psychiatric problem known to modern medicine; apparently Bush is suffering from an Oedipus complex, antisocial personality disorder, multiple personalities, narcissistic personality disorder, and dependent personality disorder. Whew. Must be awfully crowded inside the president’s head. Oh yes, and Hitler makes an appearance in all this too (you just knew he would, didn't you?): 'From a Jungian point of view: Dubya may be identifying with an archetype (as Hitler did with the ubermensch) - something out of Revelations, perhaps, whereby he sees himself as an instrument of God's will to bring about Armageddon.'" (See also: "Diagnosing Dubya" (Carol Wolman, OutLookIndia, 2002/10/04))

"The Right Response for Our Times" (John Keegan, The Washington Post Outlook, 2002/10/06)
One of three articles on the significance of the Bush Doctrine: "But he also warns that states that harbor terrorists - or are compromised by terrorism - will be held to account, by which he means military account. He goes on to say that enemies of the United States who are preparing weapons of mass destruction (enemies unspecified but by implication already identified by the Pentagon and State Department) will find themselves targets of U.S. action, even if - and this is a particularly menacing note - such preparations are not complete and the threats to America and its allies are not fully formed. No doubt it is America's readiness to make threats that contributes to the anti-Americanism now rampant in Europe. Fifty years of peace have skewed the European outlook on the world. Apart from some minor Balkan troubles, Europeans have not known war since 1945, and they have fallen into the habit of viewing war as an alien activity to which they have found a superior alternative - the building of pan-European institutions, free trade and the convening of tedious international conferences. ...
Unspoken in Bush's national security document is the idea that small, unstable, self-seeking states under dictatorial control must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq happens merely to be the first in that category to appear. Its pretensions to nuclear power must be quashed. But - and this is the real import of the president's statement - so must similar pretensions, if and when they appear, forever. The president has committed his country to a fearsome duty. It will never go away." (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))

"Speaking for Saddam, the cool survivor who has not lost his head" (Roger Matthews, The Times, 2002/10/06)
A profile of Iraq's Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz: "When Saddam sought to consolidate his grip on the presidency, Mr Aziz was instructed to get closer to the most senior people in the Baath Party to discover if they had, in the words of Saddam, “a black spot in their heart against me”. The horrific climax was a top-level meeting of the party during which Saddam drew a paper from his pocket, announced a conspiracy and with theatrical tears in his eyes, read out a list of those who had betrayed him. One by one, amid screams and roars of approval, they were led out. More than 20 were executed, many by their peers in the party."

"Seeking Terrorist Plots, F.B.I. Is Tracking Hundreds of Muslims" (Philip Shenon and David Johnston, The New York Times, 2002/10/06)
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to make an open book of the lives of hundreds of mostly young, mostly Muslim men in the United States in the belief that Al Qaeda-trained terrorists remain in this country, awaiting instructions to attack. ...
Law enforcement officials say the surveillance program has provided vital evidence to support a string of arrests and indictments around the country since late summer - in western New York, in Detroit, in Seattle and, on Friday, in Portland, Ore. - of Americans and others accused of conspiring in terrorist cells to assist Al Qaeda. Still, the F.B.I. has acknowledged that it has no evidence of any imminent terrorist threat posed by the so-called sleeper cells connected to Al Qaeda. Federal law enforcement officials say there is no sign of a terrorist cell operating on American soil that, in its level of commitment and training, resembles anything like the team of suicide hijackers who trained in the United States for several months before carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks. ... Still, law enforcement officials say they are convinced that at least several dozen people now under F.B.I. surveillance in the United States - with different degrees of terrorist training, and with varying degrees of loyalty to Al Qaeda - would take part in an attack if ordered, and that they represent a clear threat."

"Trouble: Mistaken for the Mullah" (Sami Yousafzai, Newsweek, from the 2002/10/14 issue)
"Mulvi Hafizullah is hiding in the remote Afghan countryside in fear of his life. ... Mullah Omar was rarely photographed during his time in power, and in a case of mistaken identity, Hafizullah says it’s his picture - not Omar's - on the hundreds of thousands of leaflets that have been dropped all over Afghanistan offering $25 million for the capture of Omar and Osama bin Laden. Hafizullah fears that thousands of Afghan soldiers and villagers - not to mention U.S. troops - are looking for him. "I'm afraid to leave my house," he told Newsweek. ... His troubles began early this year when he fled to his village in Maidan province after the Taliban’s collapse. An elderly neighbor approached him, showed him the leaflet and asked if he was in fact Mullah Omar. "I looked at the photo and it was me," says Hafizullah. "Now we are even more proud to know you," the old man told him."

"Bin Laden still alive, reveals spy satellite" (Jason Burke, The Observer, 2002/10/06)
"Osama bin Laden is alive and regularly meeting Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of the Taliban, according to a telephone call intercepted by American spy satellites. In the conversation, recorded less than a month ago, Omar and a senior aide were discussing the American-led hunt to track them down. The two men, using a mobile Thuraya satellite phone, spoke about tactics for several minutes. Omar then turned to a third person who was within a few yards of him, voice analysis has revealed. After exchanging a few words, Omar said that 'the sheikh sends his salaams [greetings]'. Senior Taliban figures habitually refer to bin Laden as 'the sheikh'. Voice analysis appears to corroborate the identification of bin Laden."

 

Saturday, October 5, 2002

News and commentary:

"Address to the 2002 Weinberg Founders Conference" (Martin Kramer, www.martinkramer.org, 2002/10/05)
"Let me say that I am sympathetic to the intentions behind the promotion of democracy in the Middle East. I am also profoundly skeptical about what its consequences might be. ... Any attempt to promote democracy, far from making things better, might make them worse. ... We owe it to ourselves, if not to the Arab world, to be frank with them and with ourselves: the Arab world doesn't yet have the basic building blocks of democracy. ...
The basic building blocks are attitudes - above all, a tolerance of political differences, indeed even a celebration of political differences, debated openly and decided freely. Arab society lacks that tolerance. It is very sharing of many things - but not of political power. That power is like the honor of one's women: it cannot be compromised without being lost. And in the Arab world, historically, the loss of power has meant the loss of everything: honor, possessions. home, life itself. ...
As the United States and Israel have just pursued a utopian peace process to its unintended consequence, it seems to me very appropriate to ask this: does anyone think that our tools of social engineering are any more precise when it comes to the democracy process? ...
To the promoters of democracy, I say, promise one thing: that the existing order will not be replaced by civil war as in Bosnia or Algeria or Lebanon. For bad as the Arab world is, it could get worse, and in fact it has been worse at various times and places. Almost everywhere, beneath the coercive order enforced by the regimes, there are precisely the same ethnic tensions that produced war in Bosnia, the same inter-faith hatreds that gave us war in Lebanon, or the same struggle for Islam that ended in civil war in Algeria. Can the doctors of democracy promise, first of all, to do no harm?"

"A revolution crumbles" (Tim Judah, The Guardian, 2002/10/05)
A report from "Tehran's underground": "Down in the basement, a man with an uncanny resemblance to the Sgt Pepper period John Lennon is recording a CD. ... A girl in jeans, T-shirt and trainers is slouched on a sofa with a young man. Two other girls are watching the session. ... It is as if I have stepped through the looking glass into another country. Above us, in the streets, is the Iran of women in all-enveloping black chadors, vast murals of revolutionary martyrs and officially sanctioned demonstrations where thousands chant the old slogans of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel". ...
In the aftermath of the Islamic revolution, and following Saddam Hussein's attack on Iran in 1980, the mullahs demanded martyrs. Women were encouraged to go forth and raise children. The result was a massive baby boom but, for the mullahs, the grand scheme has gone dreadfully wrong. The statistics are stark. Two thirds of Iran's 70 million people are under 30 and - far from creating a nation of martyrs - the mullahs have created millions of angry young people who would rather check their email than die for Islam. ...
Dancing, of course, especially between unmarried girls and boys, is strictly forbidden here. When bands do get permission to give concerts, security officials keep a strict eye on the audience, who are penned into their seats, nodding their heads or upper bodies as much as they dare. 'Once, I played a concert where there were 5,000 people," says Riahipour. "One guy got up and started dancing, and they beat the shit out of him.'"

"Why Israel and not Sudan, is singled out" (Charles Jacobs, The Boston Globe, 2002/10/05)
"An instructive case is Sudan. Atrocities there exceed every other world horror. For 10 years the blacks of South Sudan have been victims of an onslaught that has taken more than 2 million lives. ... Western lack of interest is all the more stunning as Khartoum's onslaught has rekindled the trade in black slaves, halted (mostly) a century ago by the British abolitionists. Arab militias storm African villages, kill the men, and enslave the women and children. Accounts by journalists and others depict the horror. In these pogroms, after the men are slaughtered, the women, girls, and boys are gang raped - or they have their throats slit for resisting. The terrorized survivors are marched northward and distributed to Arab masters, the women to become concubines, the girls domestics, the boys goat herders. ...
How can it be that there is no storm of indignation at Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, which, though they rushed to Jenin to investigate false reports of Jews massacring Arabs, care so much less about Arab-occupied Juba, South Sudan's black capital? ...
This selectivity, at least in the United States, does not come from the hatred of Jews. It is ''a human rights complex'' - and is not hard to understand. The human rights community, composed mostly of compassionate white people, feels a special duty to protest evil done by those who are like ''us.'' ...
The biggest victims of this complex are not the Jews who are obsessively criticized but the victims of genocide, enslavement, religious persecution, and ethnic cleansing who are murderously ignored: the Christian slaves of Sudan, the Muslim slaves of Mauritania, the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Christians in Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt."

"Masters of the Universe" (Bill Keller, The New York Times, 2002/10/05)
"The prime opinion-slinging show on Russian TV these days is called "Svoboda Slova," "Freedom of Speech." ... The other day the subject was Iraq, and it was a depressing glimpse of how America looks these days from outside its sanctuary of self-absorption. ... The studio audience started out 75 percent opposed to "tough measures" against Iraq, and by the time the show was over, the opposition had grown to 85 percent. You could fairly sum up the Russian consensus this way:
- In threatening Iraq, President Bush is mainly after cheap oil, and probably some cheap votes in the next election.
- America may pretend to be promoting lofty democratic ideals, just as the Soviet Union pretended to be exporting Socialist ideals. But America likes the tyrants who serve its interests. Saddam - like Osama bin Laden's compatriots in Afghanistan - was once a beneficiary of American largess, back when he was fighting Iran, and he might still be on the American dole if he hadn't tried to kill the first President Bush. ... From Russians I've talked to, that indictment seems to be pretty much the mainstream view. Many Russians now see us the way we once saw them - expansionist bullies, disguising our appetite as humanitarian vision. The fact that much of this attitude stems from a post-Soviet inferiority complex doesn't make it any prettier to hear."

"Not So Innocents Abroad" (David Tell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/10/14 issue)
"Even as McDermott and Bonior were still on the ground in Baghdad, issuing their all's well cry, Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan was telling the world, by way of Lebanese television, that his government reserved the right to launch a preemptive first strike - against American and allied targets, military or civilian, anywhere in the world. Where war is concerned, Ramadan promised, 'we'll decide when it happens." Iraq "has the right to confront the aggressors on its land and in any place the aggressors are found. An enemy is an enemy. ... Any American, British, or Zionist interests on Arab land or within reach of Arabs, wherever they are, I consider as legitimate.'"

"Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector Backs Stiff U.S. Demand on Iraq" (Todd S. Purdum and David Firestone, The New York Times, 2002/10/05)
"The chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, today endorsed the main demand of the United States that Iraq make a full declaration of its weapons programs before inspections resume. After an hourlong meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other officials, Mr. Blix said that there was "very broad support" in the Security Council for a new resolution setting tough terms for inspections. He also endorsed the threat of consequences if Iraq fails to disarm, saying, "I think it is clear that there has to be constant pressure" to make Baghdad comply."

"C.I.A. Says Iraq Revived Forbidden Weapons Programs" (Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 2002/10/05)
"The Central Intelligence Agency said today that Iraq had taken advantage of the withdrawal of United Nations weapons inspectors to resume the production of chemical arms, expand efforts to develop biological weapons and revive its program to make nuclear arms. ... Iraq, the report said, has rebuilt weapons plants destroyed in American air raids. "Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX," the C.I.A. said. The agency estimates that Iraq has several hundred metric tons of chemical agents that it could put in bombs, artillery shells and missile warheads. As for biological arms, the agency said that "all key aspects" of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program were active and that "most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf war." (See also: "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs" (Central Intelligence Agency, 2002/10/04))

 

Friday, October 4, 2002

News and commentary:

"'American Taleban' jailed for 20 years" (BBC News, 2002/10/04)
"A US court has sentenced John Walker Lindh, the "American Taleban," to 20 years in jail for fighting for the ousted regime in Afghanistan. ... In an emotional 20-minute statement, he said that if he had known the Taleban would be sheltering Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, he never would have joined it. ... He told the court he joined the Taleban to fight Northern Alliance atrocities in Afghanistan and never expected to be opposing Americans. "I did not go to fight against America, and I never did." Lindh's lawyers said he had never fired his weapon. Lindh added: "I have never supported terrorism in any form and I never will. 'I made a mistake by joining the Taleban. Had I realised then what I know now, I would never have joined them.'"

"FBI arrests four with suspected al Qaeda ties, 2 others at large" (CNN.com, 2002/10/04)
"Federal officials have charged five U.S. citizens and another person with being part of a terrorist cell, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Friday. "We've neutralized a suspected terrorist cell within our borders," Ashcroft said. Four have been arrested - three in Portland, Oregon, and one in Detroit, Michigan. Two others are overseas and not yet in custody, he said. The six, one of whom is a woman, tried to go to Afghanistan to train with the al Qaeda terrorist network, according to Ashcroft. ... The six are charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to contribute services to al Qaeda and the Taliban."

"Shoe Bomb Suspect Pleads Guilty" (Denise Lavoie, AP/Excite News, 2002/10/04)
"Richard Reid pleaded guilty Friday, laughing as he admitted he tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes. He also declared himself a follower of Osama bin Laden. "Basically I got on the plane with a bomb. Basically I tried to ignite it. "Basically, yeah, I intended to damage the plane," Reid said in court, laughing. He said he did not recognize the American justice system but agreed that he committed the acts outlined in the indictment against him. The 29-year-old British citizen was accused of trying to murder 197 passengers and crew members aboard the American Airlines flight in December. He was subdued by passengers after a flight attendant saw him trying to light a fuse sticking out of his sneakers, and the Paris-to-Miami flight was diverted to Boston. In court Friday, when U.S. District Judge William Young asked him why he pleaded guilty, Reid replied: 'Because I know what I've done. ... At the end of the day I know that I done the actions.'" (See also: "United States of America, vs. Richard Colvin Reid - Government's Statement of Relevant Facts" (FindLaw, 2002/10/04))

"Vicious circles closing in" (Micha Odenheimer, Haaretz, 2002/10/04)
A must-read interview with Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, "one of Germany's leading authorities on human rights in Iraq": "When did you first realize that the Iraqi regime was not just another Middle East dictatorship?
"When I first came to Iraq, I very quickly realized that I could not compare the situation there to other Middle Eastern countries I had been in, like Syria, Jordan or Egypt. This country was hell. ... The Iraqis made people lie down in the streets and then buried them alive under asphalt. They killed everyone who looked a little religious, because this was a Shi'ite area. It was forbidden to take the corpses from the street. All in all, 60,000 or 70,000 people were killed in this area in 1991. ... The fear in Iraq, a BBC reporter said recently, is so palpable you can eat it. It's really indescribable. Syria is a dictatorship, but the fear and control in Iraq reaches into your living room. If there is no picture of Saddam Hussein in your living room, you might be arrested." ...
What do you think drives German policy against U.S. intervention in Iraq?
'There are very close ties between a certain German ideology dating back to the 19th century, running through World War I and escalating in World War II with the Nazis and continuing afterward, which has close ties to pan-Arabism. One that shares the same enemies: America, the Jews, Israel. Anti-American and anti-Israel resentments are very strong in Germany and they have become stronger since 1989. ... At the moment, you can hardly distinguish between the very far right wing and the very far left wing. ... Germany is signaling that it is standing on the other side. Everywhere in the Middle East, in the Syrian press, in the Hezbollah press, in the Baghdadi press, Germany is being praised for taking the same side they did 50 years ago. So people understand what the Germans are doing. And I think that that is quite interesting - and quite horrifying.'"

"Message Full of Hypocrisy" (Christopher Hitchens, The Daily Mirror, 2002/10/04)
Hitchens on Bill Clinton's speech to the Labour Party conference in England: "There probably was not a delegate present who would not have been primed to laugh at a George Dubya "cowboy" joke. Yet Mr Clinton's most notorious foreign policy action was to launch a flight of cruise missiles into the outskirts of the city of Khartoum, destroying the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory on the pretence (now acknowledged to have been false) it was a chemical weapons facility. How could such an atrocity have been committed? Because Mr Clinton did not even demand an inspection, did not consult the UN or Congress, and over-ruled Joint Chiefs of Staff, CIA and State Department. ...
It is the nearest America has come to a "wag the dog" moment, and the most cowboyish piece of presidential thuggery. Hardened as I am to Clintonian hypocrisy, I sucked in my breath when he went moist about Rwanda. On the eve of the genocide there, all the plans for the impending slaughter were conveyed to the UN by its commander on the ground. He pleaded for a small increase in the protection force, and for a warning to the bloodthirsty authorities that they had been detected in their plan. This was vetoed by Clinton's then-ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright. Thus, he comes before us as the man who acted rashly when in the wrong, and acted like a coward when he would have been in the right. And Labour ate it up and begged for more... ...
At least we can be sure of one thing - after yesterday's abject performance, Labour forces who jeer at Bush and take a holy attitude to the UN must admit they do not do so consistently, or out of principle." (See also: "Full text of Bill Clinton's speech" (Bill Clinton, The Guardian, 2002/10/03))

"The Myth Of 'U.N. Support'" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/10/04)
"Much of the leadership of the Democratic Party is in the thrall of the United Nations. War and peace hang in the balance. The world waits to see what the American people, in Congress assembled, will say. These Democrats say: Wait, we must find out what the United Nations says first. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, would enshrine such lunacy in legislation, no less. He would not even authorize the use of force without prior U.N. approval. ...
Now, the Security Council has five permanent members and 10 rotating members. Among the rotating members is Syria. How can any senator stand up and tell the American people that before deciding whether America goes to war against a rogue state such as Iraq, it needs to hear the "final recommendation" of Syria, a regime on the State Department's official terrorist list? ...
Okay. So we are not talking about these dots on the map. We must be talking about the five permanent members. The United States is one. Another is Britain, which supports us. That leaves three. So when you hear senators grandly demand the support of the "international community," this is what they mean: France, Russia and China. As I recently asked in this space, by what logic does the blessing of these countries bestow moral legitimacy on American action? China's leaders are the butchers of Tiananmen Square. France and Russia will decide the Iraq question based on the coldest calculation of their own national interest, meaning money and oil."

"Who Says We Never Strike First?" (Max Boot, The New York Times, 2002/10/04)
"It is certainly true that pre-emptive wars are not the norm in history. But they are not as rare as President Bush's critics suggest. The president's pre-emption doctrine - and its first application, in Iraq - is firmly rooted in centuries of tradition. Although England [1587], Prussia [1756] and Israel [1967] all technically struck the first blow, the consensus is that they were smart to do so. Contrariwise, who today thinks it was wise of Britain and France to stay their hands in the 1930's when they could have thwarted Hitler's ambitions early on? Some critics, such as Michael Walzer, the political theorist, argue that the current threat from Iraq is different from and less immediate than those faced in the past. Attacking Iraq now, they argue, would make this a preventive, not a pre-emptive, war, and hence less morally justified. This is a distinction that may have made sense in the past, when mobilization took time and diplomacy proceeded at a slower pace. But today weapons of mass destruction can be used without warning. For this reason, the distinction between pre-emptive and preventive collapses. "Preventive" actions like Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility have become essential."

"Palestinian Urges Defiance; Plan to Grab Arafat Reported" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/10/04)
The Terrorist Card II: "One of Mr. Barghouti's lawyers, Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli, compared him to Moses. Speaking of Moses, he said, "According to some lawyers, he should be called a terrorist, but according to Exodus, he is a freedom fighter." Mr. Leibowitz argued that Moses killed an Egyptian not because he hated Egyptians but because the man was beating a fellow Jew." (See also: "Falwell: 'Muhammad Was a Terrorist'" (Fox News, 2002/10/03))

 

Thursday, October 3, 2002

News and commentary:

"A new exodus for the Middle East?" (Benny Morris, The Guardian, 2002/10/03)
"The idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century. And driving it was an iron logic: There could be no viable Jewish state in all or part of Palestine unless there was a mass displacement of Arab inhabitants, who opposed its emergence and would constitute an active or potential fifth column in its midst. This logic was understood, and enunciated, before and during 1948, by Zionist, Arab and British leaders and officials. ...
Both before and during 1948 all understood the logic of transfer: Given Arab opposition to the very idea and existence of a Jewish state, it could not and would not be established, as a viable, lasting entity, without the displacement of the bulk of its Arab inhabitants. ...
One wonders what Ben-Gurion — who probably could have engineered a comprehensive rather than a partial transfer in 1948, but refrained - would have made of all this, were he somehow resurrected. Perhaps he would now regret his restraint. Perhaps, had he gone the whole hog, today's Middle East would be a healthier, less violent place, with a Jewish state between Jordan and the Mediterranean and a Palestinian Arab state in Transjordan. Alternatively, Arab success in the 1948 war, with the Jews driven into the sea, would have obtained the same, historically calming result. Perhaps it was the very indecisiveness of the geographical and demographic outcome of 1948 that underlies the persisting tragedy of Palestine."

"Duisenbergs Antisemitism Update" (Michael Visser, The Visser View, 2002/10/03)
"Wim Duisenberg, the Dutch socialist, may be presiding over the European Central Bank, but he sure isn't boss in his own home. Some of you may remember the furore that broke out when his wife, Gretta, hung a Palestinian flag from her house, to show her anger at the "the rich Jewish lobby in America" that perpetuates the injustice against the "Palestinian people." Wim Duisenberg then quietly removed the flag, after complaints from Jewish organizations, but Gretta moved it back. She has since come out as president of a left-wing committee campaigning for an immediate end to the "occupation of Palestine." But things have now really gotten out of hand. The prominent Dutch lawyer Abraham Moszkowicz (son of a Holocaust survivor) has filed a complaint on behalf of Jewish organizations against Mrs Duisenberg for insulting Jews. Mrs Duisenberg was asked in a radio program how many signatures she was hoping to collect for her petition. She said: "Oh, perhaps six million" and started laughing loudly, in an apparent reference to the six million Jews who perished in the War. Mrs Duisenberg thought it very witty to equate the Jewish "aggression" against the "Palestinians" with Nazi aggression against the Jews. Yet another in the long strings of recent incidents that prove anti-semitism is alive and well on the continent that slaughtered the Jews like animals only fifty years ago. Will there be a public uproar over her comments? Don't count on it..." (See also original article in dutch: "Aanklacht ingediend tegen Gretta Duisenberg" (NOS; 2002/10/03))

"Walker Lindh: Al Qaeda planned more attacks" (CNN.com, 2002/10/03)
"John Walker Lindh told military and FBI questioners he believed the September 11 attacks were the first of three waves of terrorist strikes against the United States, according to secret documents obtained by CNN. Walker Lindh, the first American taken prisoner in Afghanistan as a Taliban fighter - and scheduled to be sentenced Friday - also said he turned down an offer to take part in suicide attacks against the United States, and that he believed as many as 50 operatives had been sent on missions against the United States and Israel. The secret documents are summaries of his first interrogations by U.S. Special Forces troops on December 1, 2001, and of three interrogations conducted by FBI agents in Afghanistan on December 9 and 10. The FBI's interrogation report says Walker Lindh related that after September 11, one of his former al Qaeda training-camp instructors said 'that UBL (Osama bin Laden) said this was the first attack. ...
The group speculated that the second attack would involve attacking nuclear facilities, oil/gas pipe lines, or some kind of biological attack.'"

"Turtle Dove" (Franklin Foer, The New Republic, 2002/10/03)
Foer on Kofi Annan: "In the face of genocide and dictators, he loses his nerve. That's why he bailed out Saddam last month and why he may still be the Iraqi tyrant's best hope for survival. ... At these key moments in Bosnia and Rwanda, Annan showed his fundamental timidity by his insistence that U.N. troops adhere to the strict letter of Security Council mandate - even if it meant sacrificing lives - and by his refusal to treat either the Hutus or Serbs as forces of evil rather than negotiating partners. ...
When Annan traveled to Baghdad in February 1998, he joined Saddam in the Republican Presidential Palace to smoke Cuban cigars. Annan, according to the Shawcross account, showered Saddam with flattery. As Shawcross later recounted the conversation, Annan told Saddam, "You're a builder. You built modern Iraq. It was destroyed once. You've rebuilt it. Do you want to destroy it again?" During the conversation, Saddam took notes on a yellow pad and never looked Annan in the eyes. When Saddam didn't respond, Annan escalated the flattery. "You've taken some courageous decisions," he continued. Too bad the same cannot be said of Annan more often."

"The New Age of Tyranny" (Mark Lilla, The New York Review of Books, from the 2002/10/24 issue)
Lilla argues that the concept of totalitarianism is inadequate in the "new age of tyranny": "Europeans today still find themselves locked into the rhetoric of anti-fascism, understood primarily as resistance to all forms of militarism and racism. The problem in the Balkans was that these two elements of anti-fascism pointed in opposing directions: anti-fascism could be used to justify intervention, on the grounds that the Serbs were committing genocide, but it could also justify neutrality, on the grounds that the European military should never again be mobilized except in case of direct attack (if then). Very few Europeans were able to make the more moderate case that while Milosevic was not Hitler he was a dangerous tyrant who had to be combated with means commensurate to the threat he posed. American policymakers find themselves in a similar bind today when building their case against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. ...
The democratic West does not face an "axis of evil" today, it faces the geography of a new age of tyranny. That means we live in a world where we will be forced to distinguish, strategically and rhetorically, among different species of tyranny, and among different sorts of minimally decent political regimes that might not be modern or democratic, but would be a definite improvement over tyranny."

"Leviathan to the Rescue" (Paul Johnson, National Review, 2002/10/03)
"The foreground is occupied by the need to eliminate regimes which, in one way or another, make international terrorism on a large scale possible and threaten to produce mass-destructive terrorism. Such states include not only all "the usual suspects" - Iran, Libya, Syria, Cuba, and North Korea (as well as Iraq) - but Saudi Arabia too, whose authoritarian monarchy pays protection money to terrorists and spreads the religious fundamentalism which lies at the root of the problem. All these regimes need to be changed. By whose right, and with what authority, can the U.S. undertake such a wide-ranging program? It is this which takes us to the heart of the new, 21st-century form of geopolitics. ...
We need a Leviathan figure now much more than in the 17th century, when the range of a cannon was a maximum of two miles and its throw-weight was measured in pounds. America is the only constitutional Leviathan we have, which is precisely why the terrorists are striving to do him mortal injury, and the opponents of order throughout the world - in the media, on the campus, and among the flat-earthers - are so noisily opposed to Leviathan's protecting himself."

"Put up or shut up" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/10/05 issue)
"But I wonder if the rest of the anti-Yank set have thought it through. When they bitch about America's warmongering but think the UN's the perfect vehicle to restrain it, you know they're just posing, and that, though they may routinely say that 'Bush frightens me', they're not frightened at all. ...
Imagine any previous power of the last thousand years with America's unrivalled hegemony and unparalleled military superiority in a unipolar world with nothing to stand in its way but UN resolutions. Pick whoever you like: the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, the Third Reich, the Habsburgs, Tsarist Russia, Napoleon, Spain, the Vikings. That's really 'frightening'. I've now read a gazillion columns beginning, 'He's a dangerous madman with weapons of mass destruction. No, not Saddam. George W. Bush.' It barely works as a joke never mind a real threat. The fact that, in all the torrent of anti-Americanism, there's no serious thought given to how to reverse it nor any urgency about doing so tells you precisely how frightening and dangerous these folks really think the Great Satan is. ...
Saddam's creditors in Moscow and under-the-table trading partners in Paris, his useful idiots in Europe and kindred spirits in the thug states may yet team up to stymie America at the UN and those 150,000 'peace' marchers will cheer. But be careful what you wish for."

"Falwell: 'Muhammad Was a Terrorist'" (Fox News, 2002/10/03)
The Terrorist Card I: "The Rev. Jerry Falwell says "I think Muhammad was a terrorist" in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on the CBS program 60 Minutes. The conservative Baptist minister tells correspondent Bob Simon he has concluded from reading Muslim and non-Muslim writers that Islam's prophet "was a - a violent man, a man of war." "Jesus set the example for love, as did Moses," Falwell says. 'I think Muhammad set an opposite example.'" (See also: "God Gave U.S. 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says" (John F. Harris, The Washington Post, 2001/09/14))

"Oakville MP compares Bush to WW2 villains" (Sheldon Alberts, National Post, 2002/10/03)
"An Ontario Liberal MP set off a heated debate in the Commons yesterday for comparing any U.S. attack on Iraq to the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor and Nazi aggression in Europe during the Second World War. ...
During a debate on Iraq late Monday, Bonnie Brown, the MP for Oakville, suggested a pre-emptive U.S. strike on Saddam Hussein would be akin to the actions of the Japanese empire's attack on Pearl Harbor. Military experts said her grasp of history is flawed. "When we moved in World War Two as Allies, we were moving against the idea of one nation aggressively invading and taking over another. This is exactly what George Bush is now proposing," Ms. Brown said. The third-term MP also drew an analogy between possible U.S. bombing of Iraq and the surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941. "If he does go ahead and strikes Iraq, will he have to rewrite history so that the other pre-emptive strike, Pearl Harbor, is no longer described as an atrocity?" ...
Military analyst David Bercuson said Pearl Harbor was just one part of a long war Japan was fighting for control of Asia in which millions had already died. A U.S. attack against Iraq would be a strike against a murderous tyrant who might use weapons of mass destruction, he said. 'If you saw someone coming at you with a bloody, dripping axe in their hand and you had a gun, would it be pre-emptive to shoot them?'"

"How to bomb thy neighbor: Hamas offers online 'Academy'" (World Tribune.com, 2002/10/03)
"The Hamas organization has launched an Internet course in the production and assembly of explosives. Israeli and Palestinian sources said Hamas, which claims responsibility for the lion's share of Palestinian suicide bombing attacks, has established an Internet site that offers Muslims instructions in the production of bombs, rockets and light aircraft. They said the news of the site has spread throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The instructions can be found on the web site of Hamas's Izzedin Kassam military wing, Middle East Newsline reported. The site, called "Military Academy," offers 14 lessons in bomb-making as part of what the Islamic group said is a campaign to expand the pool of bomb-makers."

"Man Accused of Shoe-Bomb Plot Says He Intends to Plead Guilty" (Pam Belluck, The New York Times, 2002/10/03)
"The man accused of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes filed a motion today saying he intended to plead guilty to all the charges against him. The man, Richard Colvin Reid, had been scheduled to go on trial on Nov. 4 to face eight counts, including attempted murder and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, and prosecutors were caught by surprise by the move. ... Mr. Reid's lawyers, federal public defenders, issued a statement saying Mr. Reid "has no disagreement with the facts asserted in the charges as to his actions on Dec. 22, 2001, and wants to avoid the publicity associated with a trial and the negative impact it is likely to have upon his family," the statement said."

 

Wednesday, October 2, 2002

News and commentary:

"Pilar Rahola, Former Member of Parliament of the Spanish Republican Left: 'Judeophobia Explains the Pro-Palestinian Hysteria of the European Left'" (Marc Tobiass, proche-orient.info, 2002/10/02)
An interview with Pilar Rahola on "In Favor of Israel", denouncing the "flagrant imbalance in the handling of information from the Middle East":
"Marc Tobiass For whom did you write this book, and with what objective?
Pilar Rahola Fundamentally, this book is addressed to the anti-Jewish school of thought in Spain. The goal of our book is to launch a debate about Judeophobia in Spain. We are convinced that the current view of the conflict, so Manichaean — with the good, always the Palestinians, and the evil, always the Israelis — has deep roots. It comes from an ancient anti-Jewish feeling that exists in Spain and that also explains the history of Spain. This feeling softened slightly after the Franco era [translator's note : post-1975], but today there is a virulent resurgence of this savage feeling to the point where one can find genuinely anti-Semitic expressions in the Spanish press. In essence, this is a provocative book in the face of totally pro-Arab thinking in Spain, that is completely uncritical of the mistakes of the Arab world in general and of the Palestinians in particular. We want to counter this flagrant imbalance. ...
Marc Tobiass According to you, it is this Judeophobia that explains the "pro-Palestinian hysteria" that exists in Europe.
Pilar Rahola I am sure of it… There is undeniably of late a very serious effort at disinformation about everything to do with the Middle East. There is a kind of madness that excuses all the crimes, abuses, and errors of the Palestinian side, and, at the same time, there is a historical predisposition that condemns any single error of the Israeli side — and this to the point where the Palestinian victims are given maximum attention and the Israeli (victims) are ignored. It is as if the Jewish victims didn't exist, on the pretext that they were responsible for their own death!"

"Poll on US ties rocks Iran" (BBC News, 2002/10/02)
"Media heads face prosecution in Iran over a ground-breaking opinion poll on mending relations with the United States. It showed a large majority of the population in favour of dialogue with the "Great Satan" and nearly half showing sympathy with US policy on Iran. The conservative judiciary has shut down a state-run polling institute and is taking both its director and the head of the state news agency Irna - which published the poll - to court. ... According to the poll of 1,500 Iranians, conducted by three separate institutes including the National Institute for Research Studies and Opinion Polls (NIRSOP) and published by Irna on 22 September:
- 74% of respondents over the age of 15 support dialogue with the US
- 45.8% believe Washington's policy on Iran is 'to some extent correct'."

"Stupidity Watch" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/10/02)
"'Many more people die from hunger than in Sept. 11,' says Charlotte Bunch, head of Rutgers University's Center for Women's Global Leadership and a contributor to The Nation. A report in the Daily Targum, a student newspaper, adds: 'Sept. 11 has, in many ways, had a negative impact on women's rights. Although removal of the Taliban has furthered women's rights to some degree, Bunch said, she fears a backlash from the Taliban that would further restrict women's rights.'" (See also: "Speaker blasts U.S. war policy" (Tanya Pastor, The Daily Targum, 2002/10/02))

"Preachers of hate in the Mideast" (Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman, The Washington Times, 2002/10/02)
"Take Sheik You Al Qaradawi, who reaches millions each week through his own show on Qatar-based Al Jazeera television. He was praised by the New York Times for condemning the September 11 attacks, but he only opposed them because the planes that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon carried civilian passengers ("had there been nobody on board, the matter would be different.") ...
Just a few days ago, the United Arab Emirates' deputy prime minister chaired a conference at the Zayed Center, a respected Arab think-tank in Abu Dhabi, at which the center's executive director dismissed Israel's right to exist and issued a press release declaring the Holocaust a "false fable." These "men of god" even endorse the use of nuclear weapons against the enemies of Islam. Aaed ben Maqbul al-Qurni, a leading Muslim theologian, recently argued, for example, that Arabs must reject the obligations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty because there can be "no agreement with (heretics) concerning the prohibition of such weapons, [unless] either they become Muslims ... or accept the reign of Islam ... or a battle with whatever weapons are allowed by Islamic law." In other words, he invokes Islamic tradition to urge Muslim governments to acquire and deploy weapons of mass destruction against Israel and other "enemies of Islam." The clock is ticking. Political, religious and human-rights leaders must either publicly condemn the "apocalypse now" rhetoric gripping the Arab and Muslim world, or be prepared to witness the fulfillment of the vision of the preachers of hate."

"Gagged in Paris" (Salman Rushdie, The Washington Post, 2002/10/02)
Rushdie on "l'affaire Houellebecq": "The accusations against him turn out to be ridiculously slight. Last year, in an interview published in Lire magazine, Houellebecq called Islam "the dumbest religion" and compared the Koran unfavorably with the Bible, which "at least is beautifully written because the Jews have a heck of a literary talent." This generalization may raise one or two non-Muslim hackles: What, all Jews? And are the Christian authors of the New Testament deliberately excluded from this ungainly compliment? But if an individual in a free society no longer has the right to say openly that he prefers one book to another, then that society no longer has the right to call itself free. Presumably any Muslim who said that the Koran was much better than the Bible would then also be guilty of an insult, and absurdity would rule. As to "the dumbest religion," well, it's a point of view. And Houellebecq, in court, made the simple but essential observation that to attack people's ideologies or belief systems is not to attack the people themselves. This is surely one of the foundation principles of an open society." (See also: "French author denies racial hatred" (BBC News, 2002/09/17))

"Susan Sontag Award" (The Daily Dish, 2002/10/02)
Sullivan quotes Edward Said, "once again comparing Israelis to Nazis": "But it is certainly true that one universal truth about the Holocaust is not only that it should never again happen to Jews, but that as a cruel and tragic collective punishment, it should not happen to any people at all. ... Quite apart from his actual history of mistakes and misrule, Yasser Arafat is now being made to feel like a hunted Jew by the state of the Jews. There is no gainsaying the fact that the greatest irony of his siege by the Israeli army in his ruined Ramallah compound, is that his ordeal has been planned and carried out by a psychopathic leader who claims to represent the Jewish people. I do not want to press the analogy too far, but it is true to say that Palestinians under Israeli occupation today are as powerless as Jews were in the 1940s." (See also: "Low point of powerlessness" (Edward Said, Al-Ahram Weekly, from the 26 Sept. - 2 October 2002 issue))

"White House Would Welcome Hussein Assassination" (The Washington Post, 2002/10/02)
"The White House press secretary today said the Bush administration would welcome the assassination of Saddam Hussein by his countrymen, arguing that "one bullet" would be a cost-effective way of removing the threat the Iraqi leader represents. "The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less" than going to war, President Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, said when asked at a televised briefing about the cost of military action against Iraq. Asked whether the administration was advocating the assassination of Hussein, Fleischer repeatedly replied: 'Regime change is welcome in whatever form that it takes.'"

"US threatens to thwart inspectors' return to Iraq" (Richard Beeston et al., The Times, 2002/10/02)
"Progress between Iraq and the United Nations hit an immediate snag last night when Washington said that it would work to block the swift return of weapons inspectors. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said that the inspectors should not go back to Iraq until they had received new instructions from the UN Security Council. His intervention came after Iraqi officials in Vienna reached a comprehensive agreement with Hans Blix, the UN’s chief weapons inspector, that could see inspectors back in Baghdad within two weeks after a four-year absence. ... One State Department official said that the United States would "thwart" the return of inspectors until they had fresh instructions from the Security Council."

 

Tuesday, October 1, 2002

News and commentary:

"The 2002 Wriston Lecture: A Balance of Power That Favors Freedom" (Condoleezza Rice, MI, 2002/10/01)
"We will break up terror networks, hold to account nations that harbor terrorists, and confront aggressive tyrants holding or seeking nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that might be passed to terrorist allies. These are different faces of the same evil. Terrorists need a place to plot, train, and organize. Tyrants allied with terrorists can greatly extend the reach of their deadly mischief. Terrorists allied with tyrants can acquire technologies allowing them to murder on an ever more massive scale. Each threat magnifies the danger of the other. And the only path to safety is to effectively confront both terrorists and tyrants. For these reasons, President Bush is committed to confronting the Iraqi regime, which has defied the just demands of the world for over a decade. We are on notice. The danger from Saddam Hussein’s arsenal is far more clear than anything we could have foreseen prior to September 11th. And history will judge harshly any leader or nation that saw this dark cloud and sat by in complacency or indecision."

"Crude" (Peter Beinart, The New Republic, 2002/10/01)
"Antiwar leftists say America shouldn't attack Iraq because American foreign policy shouldn't be dictated by oil. While the "this war is really about oil" thesis may be marginal in Washington, it's pervasive beyond America's shores. ...
But this just raises another logical problem: If all the Bush administration wanted from Iraq were those six million daily barrels of crude - if all its talk about nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons was merely a smoke screen - why wouldn't the United States simply lift sanctions? Attacking Saddam, after all, entails huge financial costs, risks American lives, and could prompt civil war in precisely those parts of Iraq where oil companies want to drill. Lifting sanctions would far more easily produce the same result - since it is sanctions that have partially prevented Iraq from importing the equipment that it needs to boost oil production. ...
Indeed, for their first nine months in office, Cheney and the Bush team didn't propose invading Iraq; they proposed scaling back the U.N. sanctions regime. The Bush administration changed its mind not because of oil but because of terrorism." (Note: For a recent example of the war for oil-thesis, see "The Sun Can't Set on This Empire Too Soon" (Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, 2002/10/01): "It sure smells like imperialism. That's the word historians use when powerful nations grab control of desired resources, be it the gold of the New World or the oil of the Middle East. Imperialist greed is what "regime change" in Iraq and "anticipatory self-defense" are all about, and all of the rest of the Bush administration's talk about security and democracy is a bunch of malarkey." And for a critique of Scheer, see "Scheer Deception: The Lies and Jargon of Robert Scheer" (Ben Fritz, Spinsanity, 2001/10/08): "In column after column, his favored tactics have been irrational criticism, distortion, and spin. ... For those concerned about the rise of irrational discourse in American politics, Robert Scheer stands out as one of the worst offenders." )

"The Recruitment of Children in Current Palestinian Strategy" (Justus Weiner, Jerusalem Issue Brief, 2002/10/01)
"Recently, Abu Mazen, a senior Arafat aide who is the Secretary General of the PLO executive, criticized the tactics of terrorist organizations in Gaza. Abu Mazen told a Kuwaiti newspaper interviewer, "I am against little children going out to die. It is a terrible thing. At least 40 children in Rafah [in the Gaza Strip] lost their arm from the throwing of Bangalore torpedoes [a form of pipe bomb]. They received 5 shekels [approximately $1] in order to throw them." ...
One Palestinian Authority television program clip, aimed at young viewers, features a boy killed in Gaza arriving in heaven where there are beaches, waterfalls, and a Ferris wheel. He is saying, "I am not waving goodbye, I am waving to tell you to follow in my footsteps." On the accompanying soundtrack a song plays, "How pleasant is the smell of martyrs, how pleasant the smell of land, the land enriched by the blood, the blood pouring out of a fresh body." ...
Signs on the walls of kindergartens proclaim their students as "the shaheeds [martyrs] of tomorrow," and elementary school teachers and principals commend their young students for wanting to "tear their [Zionists'] bodies into little pieces and cause them more pain than they will ever know." ... Blatant child abuse of this kind, and efforts to cover it up, would not be tolerated anywhere else in the civilized world. Where are the children's welfare advocates to condemn the practices that poison the minds and imperil the bodies of young Palestinians?"

"Newsnight 30 Sept - Kerim Chatty" (BBC News, 2002/10/01)
A transcript of yesterdays Newsnight report: "Karim Chatty was arrested last month trying to board a flight from Stockholm to Stansted with a loaded gun in his hand luggage, but now he is a free man again, for the time being. The incident has added to rumbles in the intelligence community where Sweden is increasingly regarded as a place where terrorists believe they can base themselves without fear of detection. ...
[PETER] MARSHALL:
Whatever Kerim Chatty was up to it seems there are serious flaws in Sweden's ability to handle terrorism. It's long been viewed as perhaps the safest place in Europe in which to hide. Now intelligence sources in America and France have told Newsnight that they believe attempts are being made from Sweden to co-ordinate terrorist cells across the rest of Europe and North Africa. In short, Sweden has become a base.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO:
Former Chief of Operations, CIA
The FBI, for example, is concerned about Sweden and the CIA as well, because they've seen some Al-Qaeda activity there. They think that Sweden has become a more welcoming environment for some of the Al-Qaeda people, particularly because of immigration policies and social welfare benefits. So, there is less focus on Al-Qaeda and immigrants as the intelligence target by the Swedes themselves. So, that is apparently one of the vulnerabilities that Al-Qaeda has identified and is trying to take advantage of." (See also: "Sweden releases hijack suspect" (BBC News, 2002/09/30))

"Saddam's Patsies" (George F. Will, New York Post, 2002/10/01)
"Not since Jane Fonda posed for photographers at a Hanoi anti-aircraft gun has there been anything like Rep. Jim McDermott, speaking to ABC's "This Week" from Baghdad, saying Americans should take Saddam Hussein at his word, but should not take President Bush at his. ...
McDermott sided with Saddam in opposing what McDermott calls the "coercive stuff" - inspections backed by force, which are the only kind that have even a remote chance of being productive. Parroting Saddam's line to perfection, he said "Iraq did not drive the inspectors out, we" - actually, the U.N. - "took them out. So they should be given a chance." His implication is that America, not Iraq, foiled inspections. ...
Bonior's contribution from Baghdad was to charge that "a horrendous, barbaric, horrific" number of cases of childhood leukemia and lymphomas have been caused by "uranium that has been part of our weapons system that was dropped here during the last war." ...
The radiation involved is much less than that occurring naturally in the Iraqi soil where tank battles occurred in 1991. At least a dozen U.S., U.N. and European studies, including one involving U.S. soldiers who still have depleted uranium in their bodies resulting from "friendly fire" accidents, show no grounds for believing in the health effects Baghdad and Bonior claim." (See also: "Democratic Congressman Asserts Bush Would Mislead U.S. on Iraq" (John H. Cushman Jr., The New York Times, 2002/09/30))

"Goodbye to Europe?" (Victor Davis Hanson, Commentary, from the October 2002 issue)
"The essential point is this: American strength and European weakness are not just a temporary manifestation of our spending more on guns and accepting less in social services, while they insist on state help at the expense of navies and armies. ... September 11 has awakened America in ways we still are not quite sure of. But as far as Europe is concerned, it seems more than possible that we are coming to the end of a relationship born out of the unusual circumstances of the 20th century. ... Hardest of all to accept in our current circumstances is that our European allies would or could join us in any meaningful way in sustained military operations abroad that involve real costs and risks. Indeed, we may be one unilateral action away from the de-facto dissolution of NATO. ... By any objective standard, we have long ago ceased being members of a true partnership, and it may be time to accept that reality and move on."

"60 Minutes: The Arafat Papers [his link with Iran and Iraq]" (IMRA, 2002/10/01)
A transcript of "60 Minutes: The Arafat Papers" [2002/09/29]: STAHL: (Voiceover) Ido Hecht, a senior Israeli intelligence official, told us that the Israelis have caught and interrogated members of a Palestinian terrorist cell who admit they were trained in Iraq by Iraqis this past June.
Mr. IDO HECHT: They were trained in an Iraqi base near Tikrit, Saddam's home town. ...
STAHL: (Voiceover) And most alarmingly, he said, they were taught how to shoot down an airliner.
Mr. HECHT: The training included use in - of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, equivalent to the American Stinger, SA-18. ...
STAHL: Were they given instructions, specific instructions, to shoot down - What? - a civilian aircraft, a military aircraft?
Mr. HECHT: We don't know about the specific instructions, but they were operating in the area of Ramallah. They had information about Ben Gurion Airport. Ben Gurion Airport is a civilian airport. Ramallah is next to Ben Gurion Airport, so the obvious target would be a civilian airliner."

"US begins entry checks on Muslims" (BBC News, 2002/10/01)
"The United States is to start registering men from selected Arab and Muslim countries when they arrive in the United States. They will be fingerprinted, photographed and questioned if immigration officers deem it necessary. ... Already, since the anniversary of 11 September, visitors from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Syria have been quietly taken to one side for questioning. Now, when visitors arrive from there, or from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen, men aged 16 to 45 will be formally registered by the authorities." (Note: As Little Green Footballs points out, the headline is "scandalously misleading". "This is utter nonsense, as I'm sure the BBC is well aware - because their own sidebar makes it clear who is actually being checked on entry:
Those affected by the new policy:
- all nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria
- non-immigrant foreign nationals who present an elevated national security risk
- foreign nationals identified by INS inspectors")

 

Monday, September 30, 2002

News and commentary:

"Ted Rall and His Web of Half-Truths: A Critique" (John Giuffo, The Comics Journal, from the #247 issue)
An in-depth critique of the works of the cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall. Found via Little Green Footballs: "In the ensuing months [after 9/11], his analysis of the war and its combatants has been thoroughly shot through with distortion, exaggeration and lies. ... Oct. 2 marks the first chance he gets to address the war in Afghanistan. His column from that day, knee-slappingly titled "Give Thought a Chance," is an attempt to explain why any military action in Afghanistan would be both a waste of time and "an escalation of genocide by trade sanction." ...
Rall argues that oil is the real purpose of the war in his strip from Oct. 4 and his column on Oct. 12, when he connects the dots between a newly revived pipeline plan by energy company Unocal, and the Bush administration's notoriously close ties with Big Oil. Therefore, "... this ersatz war by a phony president is solely about getting the Unocal deal done without interference from annoying local middlemen." ...
Seeing America - warts and all - is necessary. Seeing only America's warts is just stupid. But moreover, it means Rall's opinions - and the strips and columns those opinions inform - are fatally flawed. Factor in exaggeration, inaccuracy and outright lies, and what's left is an utterly worthless political cartoonist." (See also: Ted Rall Online.)

"What is Really at Stake in the US Campaign Against Terrorism" (David Rieff, Crimes of War - The Magazine, from the September 2002 issue)
A very interesting essay on human rights and international law in the US campaign against terrorism: "For in the wake of September 11, it is clear that the United States is increasingly determined to be an imperial power. That, rather than specific violations, misinterpretations, or end runs around international law, is the real transformation we have witnessed - and the real radicalism of the Bush administration. For they are not, it turns out, realpolitiker - indeed, in the Iraq debate, the realist greybeards like Scowcroft and Baker have opposed the use of force. Instead, they are right-wing revolutionaries in the mould of Ronald Reagan, and they do not accept Cooper's claim that we live in a post-imperial world or that globalization and the sway of international law stand or fall together. ...
Under these circumstances, surely the crisis of international humanitarian law was an accident waiting to happen. For when law and material reality no longer coincide, it is, of course, law that must give way. The ingenuity of Robert Cooper's approach has been that he has managed to resituate an energetic, indeed a revitalized use of force to combat both the terrorists and the warlords of the 21st century - Osama Bin Laden and Sierra Leone's Foday Sankoh, as it were - within the tradition of multilateralism and the rule of law. ...
Whether Cooper's erstwhile colleagues in the British government, and their opposite numbers in Berlin and Paris, will have the imagination to undertake such a rethinking remains an open question. And until they do, that leaves the field in the sole possession of an American vision of imperial power humanely used. But there seems little question that one of the main ways in which such an imperium will change the way the world really works is by radically diminishing the importance of international law. It is a process already well under way, and, seemingly at least, quite unstoppable." (See also: "Order, Force and Law in a New Era" (Robert Cooper, Crimes of War - The Magazine, from the September 2002 issue)

"Order, Force and Law in a New Era" (Robert Cooper, Crimes of War - The Magazine, from the September 2002 issue)
A must-read essay on order, force and law in a post-imperial world: "The events of 11 September have shown us the other side of globalisation and the post-imperial world. We live in a world which is doubly vulnerable. First, it is vulnerable because it is open and because cross-border trade, travel and communication has never been easier. Second, it is vulnerable because, with the international division of labour in an ever more competitive global economy, we operate on increasingly fine margins of error. It requires much less to do serious economic damage to today’s world than was the case thirty years ago. 11 September both made clear how much damage a small group could do to our society, and at the same time provided a powerful image that will dominate the imagination of the disaffected for decades to come. ...
If these threats develop – and history suggests good grounds for pessimistic assumptions – then both internal and international order, both the state and the state system will be at risk. How the international system will cope remains to be seen, but it is unlikely that the comparatively benign, ordered, law-governed world that seemed to be emerging from the Cold War will survive intact. If the state and the state system weaken, if violence becomes cheap and the states lose their monopoly on it, if disorder grows, the prospects for international society look increasingly bleak. ...
In the meantime we have to adjust our legal concepts to take account of the new realities: preemptive force and covert operations may need legal recognition, and the UN Security Council may or may not be able to play a central role. At all events the attempt to continue as though nothing was happening, or to assume that a particular conception of the legal order must remain unchanged, will not be a recipe for success." (See also: "The new liberal imperialism" (Robert Cooper, The Observer, 2002/04/07))

"You've Lost Your Way, Baby" (Catherine Seipp, Reason, from the October 2002 issue)
Seipp on how "organized feminism has made itself irrelevant": "The Feminist Majority Foundation has also been stuck in a bog of moral equivalency over the war on terrorism. In December its Web site, www.feminist.org, touted an online chat with its founder and president, Eleanor Smeal, "connecting U.S. and International Terrorism." The connection Smeal sees concerns not extremist American mullahs indoctrinating terrorists intent on murdering thousands but (and she's not kidding) anti-abortion protesters. ...
Another lesson to be learned from organized feminism's reaction to 9/11 is that no tragedy is too great, no issue too important, not to be reduced to the most simple-minded identity politics. Those 343 firemen who sacrificed themselves at the Twin Towers? NOW is upset that there were no women among them. ...
One of the minor casualties of 9/11 was patience for listening to privileged Americans complain, in distinctly anti-American terms, about their privileged American lives. If feminism doesn't want to completely wear out women's patience - and men's, too - it had better find a new agenda. Perhaps one that is, to start with, less blatantly foolish, and more engaged with the issues that women regularly tell pollsters they care most about: crime, the economy, child care, balancing work and motherhood, their children's schools."

"Univ. of Michigan to Host 'Zionism is Racism' Conference" (Michael Freund, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/09/30)
"The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is slated to play host to a national student conference late next week, one of whose "guiding principles" is that it "condemns the racism and discrimination inherent in Zionism", the Jerusalem Post has learned. The Second National Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement, which is scheduled to begin on October 12, is being sponsored by pro-Palestinian and socialist groups. It aims to promote an end to US aid to Israel and to encourage divestment by universities and corporations from the Jewish state. In the conference's promotional material, organizers refer to "apartheid Israel", and refuse to condemn Palestinian terrorism, stating, "As a solidarity movement, it is not our place to dictate the strategies or tactics adopted by the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation." In addition to asserting that "racism" is "inherent to Zionism", the organizers call for "the right of return and repatriation for all Palestinian refugees" as well as 'an end to the Israeli system of Apartheid and discrimination.'"

"A familiar ring to Israel criticism" (Robert Leikind, The Boston Globe, 2002/09/30)
"Under the cover of seemingly rational critiques of Israel, anti-Semitism is taking root. Palestinian clerics call for the killing of Jews without eliciting protest. Media in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt report on Jewish conspiracies to destroy Islam, but there is no outcry. French President Chirac denies there is anti-Semitism in France, despite nearly 400 incidents against Jews in April alone. Evidence is mounting that demonization of Jews is gaining respectability and that the struggle in the Middle East is providing cover for the expression of such hatred. This does not justify reflexively labeling all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. It does, however, compel us to ask why some critics seem interested in investing all their moral capital in attacking embattled, democratic Israel." (See also: "Where to draw the line?" (Cathy Young, The Boston Globe, 2002/09/30): "Far more common is the ploy of equating the Israelis with the Nazis: posters depicting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a swastika armband, comments about ''the Zionist SS,'' comparisons of Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust. One can disagree with Sharon's policies, but comparing the head of the Jewish state to Hitler, who sought to exterminate the Jews, is beyond obscenity." For a recent example, see "Genocide in Palestine" (Islamic Republic News Agency, 2002/09/28))

"A Question of Anti-Semitism" (Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, from the 2002/10/07 issue)
"But there's a dark side to divestment. In the case of Israel, the movement suffers from a careless use of analogy and a poor reading of the Middle East. ... But at a certain point, persistent double standards start to smell of something more malignant. Funny how campus activists never seem to mention, say, Syrian occupation of Lebanon. They bemoan capital punishment in the United States but say nothing when the Palestinians routinely execute suspected collaborators, including the mothers of young children. They single out Israeli human-rights abuses that pale next to those of their Arab neighbors, which we know less about because of press restrictions. Anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitism - until it reaches a certain pitch. Divestment may be only a fall fad on college campuses, but it's political nitroglycerin. It raises unrealistic hopes that Palestinians might eventually get all of Palestine with the help of sympathizers in Europe and the United States. It under mines any progress toward a two-state solution, the only practical and moral path to peace."

"Idiots" (Andrew Stuttaford, National Review/The Corner, 2002/09/30)
"According to the London Sunday Express, here's what Moroccan-born London resident Abdul Lakhouane has to say about Britain: "When we declare war on Britain it will be jihad - not defensive jihad but a holy war to attack...The Muslims once conquered Rome. In the same way we will conquer Britain. When we attack there will be bloodshed..." Lakhouane reportedly accepts $500 per week in welfare benefits from the British infidel state. According to the Express, he is also being provided with a $600,000 'council house' (municipally-funded housing) which, under British law, he will ultimately be entitled to sell for a profit of around $500,000."

"Sweden releases hijack suspect" (BBC News, 2002/09/30)
"The Swedish authorities have released from custody a man held on suspicion of trying to hijack a plane bound for Britain. Kerim Sadok Chatty, 29, was arrested a month ago at a Swedish airport after a gun was found in his hand luggage. But the authorities say suspicions that he was planning a hijack have weakened since then. Despite his release, prosecutors say investigations into the incident will continue. They have imposed a travel ban on Mr Chatty, and ordered him to report to police regularly." (See also: "Swedish 'hijacker' foiled" (BBC News, 2002/08/30))

"Protesters turn to thoughts of Iraq" (Kevin Anderson, BBC News, 2002/09/30)
Moral equivalence in yesterdays anti-war march in Washington: "Anti-war messages had been part of the weekend's protests, centred around the World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington. But this was the only demonstration focussed solely on war in Iraq. ... Paul Rubenson and Trish Bright carried a sign saying "Al Qaeda had a first strike policy too". ... Mr Rubenson added: 'We talk about how we believe in the rule of law and democracy and how we believe in peace and justice, and yet, we're doing exactly the same things that we accuse our enemies of doing.'"

"Democratic Congressman Asserts Bush Would Mislead U.S. on Iraq" (John H. Cushman Jr., The New York Times, 2002/09/30)
"Democratic congressmen who are visiting Iraq this week stirred up anger among some Republicans when they questioned the reasons President Bush has used to justify possible military action against Iraq. ... Speaking of the administration, Mr. McDermott said, "I believe that sometimes they give out misinformation." ... When pressed for evidence about whether President Bush had lied, Mr. McDermott said, "I think the president would mislead the American people." But he said he believed that inspections of Iraq's weapons programs could be worked out. ... Mr. Bonior, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, said: 'We've got to move forward in a way that's fair and impartial. That means not having the United States or the Iraqis dictate the rules to these inspections.'" (See also: "Congress Sharply Divided on Iraq" (Laura Meckler, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/29) and "Whose side are they one?" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2002/09/30): "So at a crucial juncture in American diplomacy, this Democrat is saying that Bush is a liar and a cheat - and in Baghdad! The only word for this is vile. ... This guy is saying that we should be neutral between the demands of the United States and Iraq over weapons inspections. Neutral. Between his own country and a vicious military despot with weapons of mass destruction, Bonior cautions neutrality." UPDATE: shilobucher.com has a transcript of the interview: "Live from Iraq" (shilobucher.com, 2002/09/30))

Added in Author index:
Roger Scruton

Added in archive:
"Since Durban: An entrenchment of hatred" (Anne Bayefsky, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/09/12)

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

Copyright © Watch 2001-2006. Copyrights of quoted materials belong to their respective owners.

"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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