Archived news and commentary: October 28 - November 3, 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, November 3, 2002

News and commentary:

"The Fifty-first State?" (James Fallows, The Atlantic, from the November 2002 issue)
"Regardless of these differences, the day after a war ended, Iraq would become America's problem, for practical and political reasons.":
"When the lid comes off after a long period of repression, people may be grateful and elated. But they may also be furious and vengeful, as the post-liberation histories of Romania and Kosovo indicate. Phebe Marr, a veteran Iraq expert who until her retirement taught at the National Defense University, told a Senate committee in August, "If firm leadership is not in place in Baghdad the day after Saddam is removed, retribution, score settling, and bloodletting, especially in urban areas, could take place." William Nash, who supervised Iraqi prisoners in liberated parts of Kuwait, told me, "The victim becomes the aggressor. You try to control it, but you'll just find the bodies in the morning." ...
The presence or absence of allies would have both immediate and long-term consequences for the occupation. No matter how welcome as liberators they may be at first, foreign soldiers eventually wear out their welcome. It would be far easier if this inescapably irritating presence were varied in nationality, under a UN flag, rather than all American. All the better if the force were Islamic and Arabic-speaking. ...
The longer-term consequences would flow from having undertaken a war that every country in the region except Israel officially opposed. Chris Sanders, the consultant who used to work in Saudi Arabia, says that unless the United States can drum up some Arab allies, an attack on Iraq "will accomplish what otherwise would have been impossible — a bloc of regional opposition that transcends the very real differences of interests and opinions that had kept a unified Arab bloc from arising." Sanders adds dryly, 'If I were an American strategic thinker, I would imagine that not to be in my interest.'" (Note: The full article can also be found here.)

"France's Dream World" (Robert Kagan, The Washington Post, 2002/11/03)
"Seen through French eyes, the world is suddenly a wonderful place, at least for France: There is the United States, the rogue colossus. There is Tony Blair, America's poodle. There is Schroeder, impaled - internationally if not domestically - upon his unilateralist, "German way" pacifism. And then there is France, tougher-minded than the Germans, prouder and more independent than the British and, because of its seat on the Security Council, the only modern, civilized power in the world able to tame and civilize the American beast. It is a mission worthy of a great country. Who would ever want to wake from such a dream? The real world of terrorists, tyrannical aggressors and weapons of mass destruction is a much less accommodating world for France than the legalistic, one-country, one-vote world of the Security Council or the postmodern paradise of the European Union. ... And who knows? If France can prolong the game for a few more months, as Powell suggests, Bush's chance to remove Saddam Hussein will have passed and the Iraqi leader will be safe again. What a triumph that will be for France's vision of a just international order. And then only the American people and all of Iraq's many neighbors will have to stay awake, waiting for the next catastrophe to strike." (See also: "Dubious Council" (The New Republic, 2002/11/01))

"Let Them Come to Berlin" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/11/03)
"Bottom line: Many Europeans today fear, or detest, America more than they fear Saddam. That's crazy, but it explains why Mr. Schröder easily moved from raising legitimate questions about how to handle Iraq to taking Germany out of any war against Saddam under any conditions. This put Germany to the left of Saudi Arabia, which at least says it will support an Iraq war if it is approved by the U.N. It was the kind of rhetoric that leaves Americans thinking Europeans won't use force under any conditions, and therefore are a danger to themselves and to us. It is time for both sides to knock it off. We need each other. ... With a nod to J.F.K., my motto today is simple: "Ich bin ein New Yorker." We are all New Yorkers now. Wherever you live, if you believe in the open society, if you cherish a world of freedom, you are now in World War III - a war against the new totalitarians, who strike at our businesses, discos, airports and theaters in an attempt to get us to shut ourselves in and our societies down. Either we fight this war together, or we lose it together. To those who forgot what it takes to defend the open society, let them come to Berlin - let them walk the winding path where the Wall once stood and recall the collective effort that brought it down."

"Saddam & Terror" (Jim Hoagland, New York Post, 2002/11/03)
"The brief official note that came from Baghdad to the health ministry of a quasi-friendly European nation a few weeks ago was polite in tone, chilling in content. Iraq's health-service director wanted to know: Could you provide information and help to treat an anthrax outbreak? No answer went back to Baghdad. Instead, the European government reported the Iraqi inquiry to the State Department and asked its own questions: Could the note represent a genuine request for help for an outbreak that had already occurred? Or was it a veiled warning of a weapon that invading American forces would meet? "There is no way of knowing, and that may be the point," said an official who described the note's contents to me. 'The Iraqis are very adept at using disguised threats. But it is also conceivable that their efforts to weaponize anthrax have created a problem at home. There is no way to be sure.'"

"Mistry cancels U.S. tour over racial profiling" (Colin Freeze, The Globe and Mail, 2002/11/03)
"An award-winning Canadian author told a Toronto literary event Saturday that he cancelled a portion of his U.S. book tour after overzealous scrutiny at U.S. airports target him repeatedly and started giving him "visions of Guantanamo [Bay] and of concrete slabs." Rohinton Mistry, author of Family Matters and A Fine Balance said the security inspections were degrading and made him feel like a second-class citizen. He decided that he would simply not travel to the U.S. due to the practice. ... Canada-U.S. relations have been strained lately because of racial profiling. The U.S. has marked travellers origninating from several muslim countries for increased scrutiny, including ones with Canadian passports. Mr. Mistry is not a muslim, however, nor is he from any of the countries that the U.S. has recently targetted for increased scrutiny. ... The reason behind the cancellations has upset U.S. booksellers. "I find it outrageous," said Betsy Burton of The King's English bookstore in Salt Lake City. 'It makes me feel ashamed of my country.'"

"Religion Casts Shadow on Vote in Turkey" (Karl Vick, The Washington Post, 2002/11/03)
"But in a world preoccupied with political Islam, the challenge embodied by the Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, has consequences beyond this nation of 67 million. "Everyone is talking about Turkey serving as a role model for the Muslim world with its secular democracy," said Cengiz Candar, a columnist for the Yeni Safak newspaper, which supports AKP. "If that secular democracy votes in a very mild form of Islamism - a moderate party which claims to be like Christian Democrats, conservative centrist - is that permissible?" The central question looming over the election is just how moderate AKP really is. When AKP's charismatic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994 as a member of the Welfare Party, he declared himself the city's imam, or prayer leader, and banned alcohol from municipal restaurants - a bold stroke in a cosmopolitan city. "You cannot be secular and a Muslim at the same time," Erdogan once said. "With Allah's blessings, our rebellion will begin." ... With a level of support that opinion polls register at 30 percent and above, the AKP's popularity is twice that of the next party."

"The 'Sons' Rise In Chechnya" (Anna Politkovskaya, The Washington Post, 2002/11/03)
Politkovskaya is a journalist who negotiated with the terrorist group during the Moscow siege: "We don't want anything, says Abubakar sharply; we do not intend to survive. We don't need it. We have come to die. And we are going to die in battle. He is wearing military fatigues that cover the figure of a physically fit special forces fighter with long service. An automatic weapon is on his lap; he constantly strokes it as if it is a baby. ...
- Are you answerable to Aslan Maskhadov (the Chechen separatist leader and former president)?
- Yes, Maskhadov is our president, but we are fighting on our own. Abubakar says this coldly. It confirms one's worst fears: This group is a force that operates on its own, waging a war of its own. He names certain members of the leadership. They are conducting peace talks very slowly, he says, because they sleep on sheets, whereas we are dying in the woods. We are tired of them. That was it, the sum total of their "ideology." It's easy to deride it as primitive, but I don't feel like doing that just now. This group, which is gaining the upper hand in Chechnya, promises innocent blood in the future - one terrorist act after another. Meanwhile, the Kremlin does not even want to hear about a peace process. The fate of the Chechen leader Maskhadov is becoming ever more predictable: Choose the frenzied radicalism of the "sons" or be swept away, and very soon."

"Saddam Says Public Opinion Works Against U.S.-British Desire to Oust Him" (Maamoun Youssef, The Washington Post, 2002/11/03)
From an interview with Saddam Hussein: "Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said in a rare interview that he believed the American and British determination to make war on Iraq could collapse under the weight of anti-war sentiment in the two countries. "Time is in our favor, and we have to buy more time hoping that the U.S.-British alliance might disintegrate because of ... the pressure of public opinion on American and British streets," Saddam told the Egyptian weekly Al-Osboa in the interview published Sunday. "The demonstrations in the Arab and Western world include hundreds of thousands of peace-loving people who are protesting the war and aggression on Iraq," he said, apparently referring to protests in the United States and around the world last month."

"Saddam orders agents to assassinate Iraqi opposition leaders sheltering in Britain" (Con Coughlin, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/11/03)
"Saddam Hussein has instructed his security officials to kill Iraqi opposition leaders based in Britain to prevent them from forming an alternative government in the event of an Allied military attack to remove his regime, The Telegraph can reveal. According to highly classified information received by British and American intelligence officials in the past week, Saddam has issued a presidential decree authorising the murder of leading members of the Iraqi opposition "by any means necessary". He is also said to have approached the Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi - who is known to have a network of "sleeper" agents based in Britain and Europe - to help him to target Iraqi dissidents. Details of the decree, which was transmitted from Saddam's presidential palace compound in Baghdad to Iraqi security officials in Europe and the Middle East last week, have been intercepted by British officials at the GCHQ listening complex in Cheltenham. Saddam's instructions have also been picked up by CIA spy satellites and by agents in the Middle East."

Saturday, November 2, 2002

News and commentary:

"The End of the West" (Charles A. Kupchan, The Atlantic, from the November 2002 issue)
Kupchan compares the Trans-Atlantic gap with the split of the Roman Empire into rivaling eastern and western halves: "The transatlantic rivalry that has already begun will inevitably intensify. Centers of power by their nature compete for position, influence, and prestige. The coming clash between the United States and the European Union will doubtless bear little resemblance to the all-consuming standoff of the Cold War. Although military confrontation remains a remote prospect, however, U.S.-EU competition will extend far beyond the realm of trade. ...
Europe will resist rather than backstop U.S. leadership, perhaps paralyzing the World Bank, the United Nations, and other institutions that since World War II have relied on transatlantic cooperation to function effectively. An ascendant EU will surely test its muscle against America, especially if the unilateralist bent in U.S. foreign policy continues. A once united West appears well on its way to separating into competing halves. ...
History also provides ample warning of the trouble likely to accompany a division such as the one that the West is now starting to experience. Consider the fate of the Roman Empire after Diocletian decided, at the end of the third century, to split the realm into eastern and western halves, leading to the establishment of a second capital, in Byzantium—which Constantine elected to rename Constantinople in 324. Despite their shared heritage, Rome and Constantinople became rivals: a common religion fell prey to lasting disputes over authority and doctrine, and imperial unity gave way to bloodshed and the demise of Roman rule. ...
Europe will inevitably rise up as America's principal competitor. Should Washington and Brussels begin to recognize the dangers of the growing gulf between them, they may be able to contain their budding rivalry. Should they fail, however, to prepare for life after Pax Americana, they will ensure that the coming clash of civilizations will be not between the West and the rest but within a West divided against itself."

"After Saddam 1" (Kanan Makiya, Prospect, from the November 2002 issue)
"The removal of Saddam's regime presents the US with a historic opportunity-as big as anything in the middle east since the fall of the Ottoman empire and the entry of British troops into Iraq in 1917. Iraq is not Afghanistan. It is rich and developed enough and has the human resources to become as great a force for democracy and economic reconstruction in the Arab and Muslim world as it has been a force for autocracy and destruction. ... Federalism has become the key issue inside the Iraqi opposition. In the Iraqi circles with which I am involved-and which work closely with various agencies of the US government-federalism is the big idea. The origins of this debate go back to 1992, when the Kurdish parliament voted for federalism. A few months later the Iraqi National Congress (INC) adopted the policy in its conference in Salahuddin, northern Iraq. I attended that conference and spoke out strongly in favour of the idea. The INC later reaffirmed federalism at its 1998 New York conference. ... Iraqis deserve a country in which a Kurd, Chaldean, Assyrian or Turkoman can be elected to the highest offices. That means that even though the Arabs form a majority in the country, that should not grant them the right to exclude anyone else from positions of power-as has been the case in the regime led by a party that calls itself the Arab Ba'ath Socialist party. A democratic Iraq has to be an Iraq that exists for all its citizens equally, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. That means a non-Arab Iraq."

"Bin Laden son detained in Iran" (Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, 2002/11/02)
"Iranian security forces have detained at least one of Osama bin Laden's sons along with several hundred people suspected of having links to the al-Qaeda organisation. The captures happened on Iranian territory as the group fled Afghanistan, according to an Iranian official. The official, who asked not to be identified, said Mr bin Laden's son was handed over to either the Saudi or Pakistani authorities. ... Iran's government believes the al-Qaeda leader himself is dead, the official added. Mr bin Laden (pictured) is reported to have married four women and fathered some 20 children. Kamal Kharrazi, Iran's foreign minister, said this week that Iran had detained about 250 people linked to al-Qaeda and that, in line with government policy, they had all been returned to their home countries. Iranian officials have declined to identify them. Diplomats believe the number is much higher than 250, however. One European diplomat said some 350 suspects had been sent to Saudi Arabia alone."

"Kashmir killings rock hopes for peace" (BBC News, 2002/11/02)
"A new chief minister has been sworn in as the head of a coalition government in Indian-administered Kashmir. Mufti Muhammad Sayeed's pledge to try to bring the Indian Government and separatists closer has raised hopes of a new phase in the politics of Kashmir, where 30,000 people have died in a 12-year revolt. But a series of attacks coincided with the inauguration in Srinagar, the state's summer capital, and a BBC correspondent says the separatists are clearly not impressed. ...
In Saturday's attacks:
- Separatists shot dead a leader of Mr Sayeed's coalition partner, the Congress Party. Mohammad Sikander Khan and two police were killed as they left Srinagar after the inauguration ceremony in an attack claimed by a militant group, al-Madina.
- Militants shot and killed a police officer in Srinagar.
- Indian security forces shot dead 12 militants in the Saujian area of Poonch district, near the Line of Control which divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
- Grenades were fired at Mr Sayeed's home in Mowgam three hours before he took his oath of office. A police officer was hurt though the people inside the house were unharmed.
The inauguration ceremony itself was held amid tight security at a packed auditorium in Srinagar."

"Belgrade told to stop arms sales to Saddam" (Richard Beeston and Zoran Kusovac, The Times, 2002/11/02)
"Britain is preparing to confront Yugoslavia at the highest level next week over new and irrefutable evidence that Belgrade has been secretly selling crucial military technology to Saddam Hussein. Officials said last night that the arms threatened the lives of British soldiers in the impending war with Iraq, and the revelations have enraged London and Washington. The two Governments consider Yugoslavia’s breaches so serious that it risks regaining the pariah status that it endured before the 2000 revolution that overthrew President Milosevic. The showdown will take place on Tuesday when Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, flies to Belgrade to demand that President Kostunica stamp out an illegal arms trade that has supplied sophisticated weapons not only to Iraq, but also to Liberia, Libya and possibly Burma." (See also: "Yugoslavia 'sold arms to Iraq'" (CNN.com, 2002/10/28))

"Berliners protest move to put 'Jewish' back into street name" (dpa/Drudge Report, 2002/11/02)
"Crowds of angry residents in Berlin Friday protested attempts to return a road to its pre-Nazi-era name of Jewish Street, with several shouting, "The Jews have made us suffer enough.'' The protest began peacefully enough Friday afternoon when about 40 people turned out to protest the changing of Kinkel Strasse to Jueden Strasse, which had been approved by the Berlin city council. ... The protest turned ugly, however, when representatives of Berlin's Jewish community arrived for the formal name-changing ceremonies. Then there were chants of "You Jews have had enough say'' and "The Jews have made us suffer enough.'' Jewish Community Chairman Alexander Brenner attempted to fend off the attacks as TV camera crews filmed the scene, but as the vehemence rose, he responded, "You people are siding yourselves with the Nazis with such remarks,'' and turned and left."

Friday, November 1, 2002

News and commentary:

"Saddam's Brain" (David Brooks, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/11/11 issue)
Brooks on Michel Aflaq, the founder of the Syrian and Iraqi Baath parties, and the Baathist ideology: "The Arab Nation for him is a transcendent spiritual force, a bit like Hegel's concept of the Spirit of History. The Arab Nation is the ideal around which human history ascends. The Arab Nation is the culmination of all values. Arabs attain spiritual perfection when they achieve solidarity with the Arab Nation and purge themselves of the cancerous influences of the West. ... The Baath saw themselves as strugglers, as people engaged in a permanent revolution aimed at uniting them with the inner perfection that is Arabism. ...
The Baath party is not quite like the Communist parties. It bears stronger resemblance to the Nazi party because it is based ultimately on a burning faith in racial superiority. The revolution, in Saddam's terms, is not just a political event, as the Russian or French revolution was a political event; it is a mystical, never-ending process of struggle, ascent, and salvation. ...
Saddam Hussein has taken such awful risks throughout his career not because he "miscalculated," as the game theorists assert, but because he was chasing his vision. He was following the dictates of the Baathist ideology, which calls for warfare, bloodshed, revolution, and conflict, on and on, against one and all, until the end of time."

"Harsh words for America as Baghdad trade fair opens" (Dusan Stojanovic, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/11/01)
"The Baghdad International Trade Fair opened Friday with patriotic songs, praise for Saddam Hussein and condemnation of America. Participation at the two-week fair was at a level not seen since the 1991 Gulf War . Saddam's aides hailed the turnout - nearly 1,200 companies from 49 countries - as a global show of support for Iraq's struggle against Washington's "aggressive policies." But the participants, mostly representing smaller trade firms looking for lucrative deals once a punishing U.N. trade embargo is lifted, said they were here to sell - not to support Saddam's regime. "We are here not for politics but for pure business," said Guy Jevinoy, a representative of France's E-Sat company, which sells satellite phones. "We are here to establish contacts and hope for better days for Iraq." ... Girls waving scarves with Saddam's portrait sang patriotic songs as Iraqi's top brass - except for the reclusive Iraqi president - watched the opening ceremony under watchful eyes of machine-gun totting guards and plainclothes police. "America can say what it wants," the girls sang, 'but for the next 1,000 years, we will say Yes, Yes for Saddam.'"

"Chechen warlord claims theatre attack" (BBC News, 2002/11/01)
"Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has taken responsibility for the mass hostage-taking at a Moscow theatre 10 days ago and promised new attacks. He also tendered his resignation from the rebel leadership and asked rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov for his forgiveness for not informing him of the operation. ... In a statement carried by the main Chechen rebel website Kavkaz-Tsentr, Mr Basayev defended the hostage-taking for giving "all Russians a first-hand insight into all the charms of the war unleashed by Russia and take it back to where it originated from". The veteran warlord, who made his mark by personally leading a hostage-taking raid on the Russian town of Budyonnovsk in 1995 in which over 100 civilians died, said that in future Chechen rebels would "not make any demands and not take hostages". Their "main goal will be destroying the enemy and exacting maximum damage", he said in his statement, which was couched in Islamic terms."

"Sending in a dupe to disarm Saddam" (Per Ahlmark, The Washington Times, 2002/11/01)
Ahlmark is a former deputy prime minister of Sweden and my favourite Swedish political commentator: "Hans Blix will head the U.N. arms inspectors charged with searching for, finding and destroying Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. ... I can think of few European officials less suitable for a showdown with Saddam. Indeed, it is with utter disbelief that I watch television news about Mr. Blix's negotiations with the Iraqi dictator's henchmen. ...
When Mr. Blix headed the IAEA before the Persian Gulf war of 1991, he blithely assured the world, after several inspections, that nothing alarming was happening in Iraq. He delivered the clean bill of health that Saddam had hoped for when he began hiding his atomic factories and nuclear ambitions. Since then, we have learnt all too unambiguously that Saddam is obsessed with procuring weapons of mass destruction - chemical and biological warheads as well as atomic bombs and the missiles to deliver them. ...
Saddam's chemical and biological arms, and his determination to get nuclear weapons, are a threat to the world. The dictator could use these arms himself or make them available to terrorist organizations. And the issue of war and peace depends on a man repeatedly duped the Iraqi regime. The Bush administration probably understands Mr. Blix's weaknesses. My guess is that the United States will not allow Mr. Blix and the inspectors that he oversees to be deceived by Iraq again. Regardless of how this crisis develops from this point, the United Nations has neglected its duties by asking a wimp to lead the inspectors who are supposed to stand up to the brute of Baghdad." (Note: The original link is down, but the article can be found here.)

"Dubious Council" (The New Republic, 2002/11/01)
"In truth, France's fantasies of grandeur - fantasies that are decades, if not centuries, out of date - would be laughable, except that they are taken seriously in Turtle Bay. And so the Bush administration must endlessly negotiate with a country whose Iraq policy is motivated by petro-dollars and anti-American resentment, particularly the anti-American (and anti-Western) resentment of its Muslim immigrant masses. Why not stop the charade and let France veto the Iraq resolution? The United States and its allies could, on their own, eliminate the unconventional weapons of that most unconventional tyrant, Saddam Hussein. And, as a side benefit, the United Nations would suffer a humiliation so profound that it might force some long-overdue reconsideration of the Security Council's anachronistic composition. For international organizations to be relevant, privilege must follow power, and for them to be admirable, privilege must follow decency. Nothing would more dramatically further both goals than dethroning France."

"Jihad and the Professors" (Daniel Pipes, Commentary/danielpipes.org, from the November 2002 issue)
A devastating comparison between the politically correct definitions of jihad made by more than two dozen "Middle East experts" and its meaning in Islamic law and Muslim history: "But an even larger contingent - nine of those surveyed - deny that jihad has any military meaning whatsoever. For Joe Elder, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, the idea that jihad means holy war is "a gross misinterpretation." ... And Farid Eseck, professor of Islamic studies at Auburn Seminary in New York City, memorably describes jihad as "resisting apartheid or working for women's rights." ...
The trouble with this accumulated wisdom of the scholars is simple to state. It suggests that Osama bin Laden had no idea what he was saying when he declared jihad on the United States several years ago and then repeatedly murdered Americans in Somalia, at the U.S. embassies in East Africa, in the port of Aden, and then on September 11, 2001. ...
And what about all the Muslims waging violent and aggressive jihads, under that very name and at this very moment, in Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao, Ambon, and other places around the world? Have they not heard that jihad is a matter of controlling one's anger? But of course it is bin Laden, Islamic Jihad, and the jihadists worldwide who define the term, not a covey of academic apologists. More importantly, the way the jihadists understand the term is in keeping with its usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history."

"Genocide: Sudan Found Guilty!" (Nat Hentoff, The Village Voice, 2002/11/01)
"'The acts of the Government of Sudan . . . constitute genocide as defined by the [United Nations] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).' - Sudan Peace Act, signed by the president of the United States, October 21, 2002. ... Since 1983, over 2 million black, non-Muslim civilians have died during the civil war in Sudan. Blacks in the south of the country have been fighting for self-determination and to end the enslavement of women and children, ethnic cleansing, aerial bombardment of schools and churches, and the creation of famine conditions - all of this by the National Islamic Front government of the north. Much of the world, including the United States, has all along largely ignored what The Washington Post, in a September 9 editorial, called "possibly the greatest humanitarian disaster on Earth." But that newspaper and The New York Times, among other dailies and weeklies, have only glancingly covered the disaster, and often with false information. ... However, an extraordinary historic coalition of abolitionists has in recent years put such unremitting pressure on Bush and Congress that at last, on October 9, a unanimous Senate passed the Sudan Peace Act. ... Keep in mind, however, that with the United States having found Khartoum guilty of actual genocide, a heavy obligation now falls on the White House and Congress to follow through. Article One of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states clearly: "The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish." (Emphasis added). We have now contracted to do that."

"Behind the Placards" (David Corn, LA Weekly, from the November 1-7 issue)
"FREE MUMIA. FREE THE CUBAN 5. FREE JAMIL AL-AMIN (that's H. Rap Brown, the former Black Panther convicted in March of killing a sheriff's deputy in 2000). And free Leonard Peltier. Also, defeat Zionism. And, while we're at it, let's bring the capitalist system to a halt. When tens of thousands of people gathered near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for an anti-war rally and march in Washington last Saturday, the demands hurled by the speakers extended far beyond the call for no war against Iraq. ...
This was no accident, for the demonstration was essentially organized by the Workers World Party, a small political sect that years ago split from the Socialist Workers Party to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. The party advocates socialist revolution and abolishing private property. It is a fan of Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba, and it hails North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il for preserving his country's "socialist system," which, according to the party's newspaper, has kept North Korea "from falling under the sway of the transnational banks and corporations that dictate to most of the world." ...
At the rally, speaker after speaker declared, "We are the real Americans." But most "real Americans" do not see a direct connection between Mumia, the Cuban Five and the war against Iraq. Jackson, for one, exclaimed, "This time the silent majority is on our side." If the goal is to bring the silent majority into the anti-war movement, it's not going to be achieved by people carrying pictures of Kim Jong-Il - even if they keep them hidden in their wallets." (See also: "Peace Kooks" (Michelle Goldberg, Salon.com/FrontPageMagazine, 2002/10/17))

"West too soft on Pakistan, says India" (Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian, 2002/11/01)
"Britain and the US have "lost the right" to lecture New Delhi on how to respond to terrorist provocation by displaying double standards by tracking down bombers in Pakistan but letting them operate freely in Kashmir, India's foreign minister [Yashwant Sinha] said yesterday. ... New Delhi has been furious that the west has not taken a harder line with President Musharraf, who pledged to crack down on militants crossing into Indian Kashmir before the elections in the state earlier this month. Mr Sinha said 800 people were killed in terrorist violence during the election campaign, including candidates and a state minister. "Terrorism in Kashmir is entirely imported and exported by Pakistan," he said. "The international community calls Pakistan a stalwart ally, so the terrorists in Pakistan are bad and the terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir are good. If the international community want to live with this definition then good luck to the international community. But it is the same al-Qaida fellow who comes into Jammu and Kashmir, who goes to Bali, who goes Singapore, who goes to the US and who comes to Europe." It was the responsibility of countries such as the US and Britain to force Pakistan to act, he said. If they could not, then India would respond 'without restraint.'"

"The Chorus of Useful Idiots" (Bruce S. Thornton, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/11/01)
"For years Communism was the opiate of the secular materialists, an apocalyptic creed which filled the chosen with assurance of their righteousness and election. So too with anti-Americanism, a sect of that old-time Marxist religion. This doctrine knows the font of evil in the world - the West and especially America - whose deadly sins of "imperialism" and "colonialism" and "racism" have created a fallen world of suffering and exploitation, a world whose redemption depends on battling the power and influence of the wicked militarists and global capitalists. Or as one sign from last week's "anti-war" rally in New York succinctly put it, "Bush is a Devil." America is guilty and must atone for its sins by abandoning its power and pouring vast sums of money into its Third World victims, for only then will the golden age of peace, equality, and universal tolerance come about."

"PA rejects rights group report about suicide bombers" (Al Bawaba, 2002/11/01)
"The Palestinian leadership lashed out at a report by a prominent international rights group that denounced suicide bombers as "war criminals" and said the Palestinian Authority (PA) bore heavy responbility for not stopping them. ... "We strongly criticize the report's content, especially those passages that say the president (Arafat) and the PA bear the responsibility," for suicide attacks, Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP. Abu Rudeina noted Friday that "the occupation is entirely responsible for everything that occurs and it must be ended." ... Hamas and Islamic Jihad also slammed the rights watchdog. HRW's "way of thinking is Zionist and one-sided," charged Islamic Jihad official Mohammed al-Hindi. "The report speaks the same language as (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon and the Israeli extremists," he said. A top Hamas spokesman described the report as "exactly biased toward the Zionist enemy." "It omits every crime committed by Israel" against the Palestinians, said Abdelaziz Rantissi, adding that he saw "a suspect Zionist hand" in this report."

"Suicide Attacks Are 'War Crimes'" (Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, 2002/11/01)
"A leading human rights organization charged today that Palestinians who order and dispatch suicide bombers, including senior leaders, are guilty of war crimes and should be brought to justice. In a comprehensive, 170-page report, the New York-based Human Rights Watch also says that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat bears "significant political responsibility" for the "repeated deliberate killing" of Israeli civilians in the last two years of blood-soaked conflict. ... The report is a departure from most human rights investigations into Israeli-Palestinian violence that focus on the Israeli army, including the killing of civilians, demolition of houses and other forms of collective punishment." (See also the report: "Erased In A Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks Against Israeli Civilians" (Human Rights Watch, October 2002): "High-ranking PA officials, including President Arafat, failed in their duty to administer justice and enforce the rule of law in compliance with international standards. Through their repeated failure to arrest or prosecute individuals alleged to have planned or carried out suicide attacks against civilians, they contributed a climate of impunity - and failed to prevent the bloody consequences. Their payments to, and recruitment of, individuals responsible for attacks against civilians likewise demonstrate, at least, a serious failure to meet their political responsibilities as the governing authorities, if not a willingness to support them." )

"Based on Koranic Verses, Interpretations, and Traditions, Muslim Clerics State: The Jews Are the Descendants of Apes, Pigs, And Other Animals" (Aluma Solnick, MEMRI/Special Report - No. 9, 2002/11/01)
A study placing "references to Jews as apes and pigs in their religious and historical context": "Depicting Jews – and sometimes also Zionists – as "the descendants of apes and pigs" is extremely widespread today in public discourse in the Arab and Islamic worlds. ... The image has pervaded the public consciousness, even in child-rearing. ...
According to Islam, the ancient Jews were turned into animals for transgressing the word of God. This divine punishment is mentioned in the most important sources of Islamic religious law, in both the Koran's recounting of the divine revelation, and in the extremely reliable Hadiths (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) compiled by the leading ninth-century sages Muslim and Al-Bukhari, which mention also mice, lizards, and other animals in the same context. ...
Recently, the Hamas monthly Falastin Al-Muslima published a series of articles on how Allah punished Jews. One chapter was devoted to the punishment of transforming them into animals. The series' author, Ibrahim Al-'Ali, takes the approach of most Koran commentators, explaining that the change was actually physical. He writes: 'Allah did not mete out the punishment of transformation on any nation besides the Jews. The significance of the punishment is actual change in the image of the Jew, and the perfect transformation from a human condition to a bestial condition – an actual change from human appearance to the form of genuine apes, pigs, mice, and lizards...'"

"From Anxiety, Fear and Hope, the Deadly Rescue in Moscow" (Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times, 2002/11/01)
"Mr. Vasilyev, the producer, recalled that after the shooting, the guerrillas asked him to help in the theater's glassed-in sound and lighting room. Mr. Vasilyev, who knew the equipment and theater well, said the guerrillas wanted to edit a videotape of their own raid taken by the theater's security cameras. ... The Chechens' interest in the video did not seem to mesh with actions expected of those preparing to bring the siege to a deadly climax, Mr. Vasilyev said. But the guerrillas' fascination with creating a record of their raid may have saved hundreds of lives. As many of the Chechens worked on the video, the deadly gas started seeping into the hall, quickly knocking hostages and hostage-takers unconscious. Mr. Vasilyev said he believed the Chechen women, 18 in all, never received an order to detonate the explosives strapped to their bodies. "They were involved with watching that video recording," he said of the men. 'At that moment, the gas started to be pumped in.'"

Added in archive:
"Paying for Terrorism" (Rachel Ehrenfeld, The Wall Street Journal/ACD, 2002/10/23)

Thursday, October 31, 2002

News and commentary:

"Bali suspect identified" (Sophie Morris and John Kerin, The Australian, 2002/11/01)
"As ASIO boss Dennis Richardson warned Australians could soon face terrorist attacks at home, Indonesia's police chief said one of three suspects in the October 12 Bali bombings had been identified. Speaking a day after Indonesian investigators and the Australian Federal Police released photo-fit images of three unidentified suspects, Police General Da'i Bachtiar said one had been identified and he hoped that would lead to the arrest of all three. "Out of the three men whose faces we have sketched, one has been identified," General Bachtiar told reporters after meeting with Indonesian Vice-President Hamzah Haz. General Bachtiar would not release the man's name but said that 'based on the identification, we are hoping to arrest the other two.'"

"PLO Openly Threatens To Abandon Two-State Solution As Sharon's Coalition Government Collapses in Israel" (Adam Daifallah, New York Sun, 2002/10/31)
"Though Yasser Arafat said he accepted Israel's right to exist in the 1993 Oslo Agreement, skeptics have always said he was seeking a two-stage solution that would eventually eliminate Israel. They've pointed to PLO maps, logos, and stationery that show all of Israel as "Palestine," and to statements by Mr. Arafat and other PLO officials to Arab audiences. But now, both a key Palestinian Arab negotiator and an important Israeli military official are saying that the PLO may formally abandon its support for a two-state solution and try instead for a Palestinian Arab state that would stretch from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to - and perhaps past - the Jordan River. The state known as Israel would cease to exist. "We have basically concluded that if the colonization continues at this pace, we are going to have to start questioning whether a two-state solution is even plausible," a legal adviser to the PLO, Diana Buttu, told the newsletter Bitter Lemons. ... 'The leadership is going to have to start reassessing whether it really should be pushing for a two-state solution or whether we should start pushing for equal citizenship and an anti-apartheid campaign along the same lines as South Africa.'" (See also: "Security for freedom" (bitterlemons.org, 2002/10/28) and "A New Palestinian Agenda After Iraq?" (Amos Gilad, Jerusalem Issue Brief, 2002/10/29))

"Tough Ex-Army Chief Chosen as Israeli Defense Chief" (Mark Heinrich, Reuters, 2002/10/31)
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has chosen a former army chief known for harsh tactics against a Palestinian uprising to be defense minister. Official sources said on Thursday that Sharon picked Shaul Mofaz to replace the Labour party's Binyamin Ben-Eliezer after a broad government coalition with the left collapsed. Mofaz would be a heavyweight in a narrower right-wing government Sharon was seeking to form after center-left Labour ditched its alliance with his Likud party on Wednesday. ... The dour Mofaz reshaped Israel's battle against the uprising into a controversial "war on terror." He advocated expelling Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and accused the Palestinian leadership of 'being infected from head to toe with terror.'" (See also: "Arrest call for Israeli ex-army chief" (BBC News, 2002/10/29))

"Chechens 'planned to devastate theatre'" (BBC News, 2002/10/31)
"Chechen rebels who held hundreds of people hostage in a Moscow theatre had enough explosives to blow the building to pieces, Russian officials have said. The authorities have released more details on how the theatre had been filled with the equivalent of more than 110 kilograms (242lb) of TNT. ... Colonel Vladimir Yeremin, deputy head of the Russian Federal Security Service's crime detection institute, said there were bombs packed with ball bearings, booby traps, hand grenades, even a homemade rocket launcher, as well as plastic explosives strapped to the waists of armed Chechen women. He said the largest bomb on its own - containing about 20 kilograms of TNT - would have been enough to have killed everyone in the theatre. There were more than 25 other bombs, he said."

"In the Party of God" (Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, from the 2002/10/14 and 21 issues)
Goldberg's article on Hezbollah is finally available online:
"The true propaganda engine of Hezbollah is the Al Manar satellite television station. ... Al Manar's news director is Hassan Fadlallah, who is in his early thirties and is a member of the same clan as Muhammad Hussayn Fadlallah, the Hezbollah spiritual leader. ... "We cover only the victim, not the aggressor. CNN is the Zionist news network, Al Jazeera is neutral, and Al Manar takes the side of the Palestinians." ...
He said Al Manar's opposition to neutrality means that, unlike Al Jazeera, his station would never feature interviews or comments by Israeli officials. "We're not looking to interview Sharon," Fadlallah said. "We want to get close to him in order to kill him." Al Manar would not rule out broadcasting comments from non-Israeli Jews. "There would be one or two we would put on our shows. For example, we would like to have Noam Chomsky." ...
Al Manar has modern equipment, and the day I was there Mansour, who was in charge of mixing the videos, was working on a Windows-based editing suite. ...
"The idea is that even if the Jews are killing us we can still kill them. That we derive our power from blood. It's saying, 'Get ready to blow yourselves up, because this is the only way to liberate Palestine.''' The video, he said, would be shown after the next attack in Israel. He said he was thinking of calling it "We Will Kill All the Jews." I suggested that these videos would encourage the recruitment of suicide bombers among the Palestinians. "Exactly," he replied." (See also the second part of the article: "In the Party of God" (Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, from the 2002/10/14 and 21 issues). Also: "Party of God" (The New Yorker, 2002/10/07) and "The Return of Hizbullah" (Eyal Zisser, Middle East Quarterly, from the Fall 2002 issue))

"Storm over 'Elders of Zion' Anti-Semitic series on Egypt TV stirs outrage" (Ashraf Khalil, San Francisco Chronicle, 2002/10/31)
"Muhammed Sobhi seems genuinely puzzled by all the fuss being made about his latest project - a "historical" series about a Jewish plot to rule the world due to start airing during the television-intensive holy month of Ramadan. ... While Sobhi claims to be on a research mission, his mind appears to have been made up some time ago. He told an interviewer from Al-Jazeera television earlier this year that "Zionism exists and it has controlled the world since the dawn of history." Sobhi adds that the series provides proof that 18 of the 24 "Protocols" (which include sections entitled "Methods of Conquest," "Control of the Press" and "Instilling Obedience") have already come to pass." (See also: "Anti-Semitic 'Elders of Zion' Gets New Life on Egypt TV" (Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times, 2002/10/26))

"Simon sez" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/10/31)
Stephens on Reporters sans Frontières new worldwide press freedom index, where the Palestinian Authority scores better than Israel: "So, for that matter, do Lebanon, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, and Chad. This, too, is no surprise. Earlier this year, the Committee to Protect Journalists, ordinarily a reputable organization, produced its own hatchet job on Israel, accusing the IDF of using "threats, intimidation and, in some cases, potentially lethal force to prevent journalists from covering its military operations." But that was small beer next to the RSF report, which goes out of its way to single out Ariel Sharon as a press "predator" worse than the likes of Iran's Ali Khamenei, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Libya's Gaddafi, and Kirsan Iloumjinov of the Kalmykia Republic (of whom and of which, I confess, I had never heard). So scratch another name from the list of benign-sounding NGOs worthy of your $15 of charity. To take one example, Lebanon is a country in which journalist Raghida Degham was recently prosecuted in a military court merely for participating in a Washington, DC panel discussion at which an Israeli official was present. Yet Lebanon comes in at #56 on the RSF report, against Israel's #92. As for the Palestinian Authority, it would be tedious here to recite its record of violent abuse - including murder, intimidation, confiscation of equipment and so on - of foreign and local journalists. Yet the PA comes in at #82." (See also: "Reporters Without Borders is publishing the first worldwide press freedom index" (Reporters sans Frontières, 2002/10/23))

"The Left's Odd Man Out" (Edward W. Lempinen, Salon.com/FrontPageMagazine, 2002/10/31)
An interview with Christopher Hitchens, who's latest book is "Why Orwell Matters": "The idea that something like Afghanistan is the ideal society - I know what I think about that. If it involves smashing planes full of people into buildings full of people, I'm against that too. How tough is that? More surprising I think are the people who would evade that question, or try to change the subject. But I think Orwell was a help in guessing the motive of that kind of masochism, that kind of self-hatred. ... They'll be patriotic about others, or they'll make excuses about others they wouldn't make for themselves. It's a sort of psychological displacement, if you will. There was and there still is a sickening amount of that on what you could call the American left and, of course, never forget, on the American right. ... The fallacy is one of moral equivalence. The motive for it, or the ruse of it, is - I prefer to call it masochistic. It's a self-hatred. ... You see the bad faith of this all the way through. It culminates in the most fatuous slogan yet devised, which is: "Stop the war before it starts." Which is a protest against removing either al-Qaida from Afghanistan or the Taliban from Afghanistan or both. Well, at this point it has to be said I think that the left has lost every moral and political element that made it a formidable force as an antiwar movement in the 1960s." (See also: "The Power of Facing" (Elizabeth Wasserman, The Atlantic, 2002/10/23))

"Attacks on Schools for Girls Hint at Lingering Split in Afghanistan" (David Rohde, The New York Times, 2002/10/31)
"Tacked to a dying tree, 50 yards from a girls' school attacked Friday night, the anonymous letter urges Afghans to rise up against American forces who have "occupied" Afghanistan and "made our Afghan sisters their servants and slaves." "We call on all the countrymen to save their clean sisters and daughters from this infidel net," the note reads. "Stop carrying out the plans of the Americans, or you will face further deadly attacks." The girls' school was one of four damaged late Friday in remote villages just south of Kabul. ... No one was hurt in any of the incidents, which occurred after school hours. Two of the schools were hit by rockets that left gaping holes in classroom walls. Fires at the two others burned chalkboards, floor mats and roofs. But the well-coordinated timing of the attacks, and the copy of the letter obtained today by The New York Times, appear to confirm that Islamic militants have begun a campaign against the education of girls. ... Raihana, a timid 9-year-old whose school was hit by a rocket on Friday, stared at the ground, covered her face with a black silk shawl and mumbled answers to questions from a foreigner. But she grew emphatic when asked whether she would continue attending school. "I am afraid," she said. 'But I will continue.'"

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

News and commentary:

"Islam's 'idealistic version of itself' not quite the reality" (Julia Duin, The Washington Times, 2002/10/30)
An interview with historian Bat Ye'or: "Q: How have Islamic governments treated their religious minorities compared to how Christians treated theirs?
A: Islam links politics and religion together, whereas Christianity separates the two. In Christianity, there is a trend that criticizes religious intolerance. Christianity has developed a dialectic that leads to self-criticism and improvement. One can then fight against racism, anti-Semitism and prejudices. But Islam does not emancipate the dhimmis [religious minorities] nor recognize that jihad and dhimmitude are evil institutions. In fact, they say those are good institutions. They do not recognize the evil in their own history. The Islamic concept of non-Muslims engenders hostility. In Christianity, there is not a concept of permanent holy war.
Q: Where, then, did jihad originate?
A: The ideology of jihad was formulated by Muslim theologians from the eighth century onward. It separates humanity into two hostile blocks - the community of Muslims, and the infidels. According to this ideology, Allah commands the Muslims to conquer the whole world in order to apply Koranic laws. Hence, they have to wage a perpetual war against the infidels who refuse to submit. Its principle is based on the inequality between the community of Allah and the infidels. The first is a superior group, whose mission it is to rule the world. The second must submit." (See also: "State of 'dhimmitude' seen as threat to Christians, Jews" (Julia Duin, The Washington Times, 2002/10/30))

"'O, Heinous, Strong, and Bold Conspiracy!'" (Andrew Breitbart, National Review, 2002/10/30)
Breitbart on the era of Leftist conspiracy theorizing: "The instinct to go wacky is so reflexive in current progressive ranks that even before Paul Wellstone's body has been buried, his death has become the subject of a purported Republican plot. Yes: Bush and the evil cabal so feared the mighty Minnesota populist that they rigged his plane engine and knocked off seven innocents in the process. ...
Indifferent to history's harsh judgment, self-proclaimed progressives continue to navigate the political map without a moral compass. The modern Left explains its political losses - both electoral and strategic - not by turning to self-reflection but by resorting to raw conspiracy-theorizing, emptied of reason. So preposterous is the average conspiracy allegation that it can only too clearly be seen to be motivated by cynicism - to say nothing of the scary possibility that the Democratic party believes their supporters are too gullible to challenge them. And notice that none of these plots are ever brought to a verifiable conclusion. Nor is there even an attempt at verifying or disproving them: After all, if they were to be proved wrong, the conspiracies couldn't hover above as a permanent fog with which to distract the electorate - over and over and over again."

"Idiocy of the week" (Andrew Sullivan, Salon.com, 2002/10/30)
Sullivan on the conspiracy theory of the week - Michael I. Niman's and Ted Rall's "Wellstone-was-murdered"-columns: "Should the U.N. be called in to investigate whether the "president" of the United States ordered a hit job on a leading senator? This is looney tunes. It reminds me of the nut cases on the right who peddled the notion that Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster. Niman isn't an outcast. He teaches at a state-funded university in New York state. He is way out there on the left, but so are most of the faculty members at mainstream colleges these days. ... In other words, Niman's bizarre conspiracy theory is perfectly within the orbit of respectable left-wing opinion. As if to prove that, the cartoonist Ted Rall, widely syndicated in the liberal media, has echoed the charge in his Universal Press Syndicate column. ... If this kind of speculation doesn't transgress essential American reasonableness, then what on earth does?" (See also: "The (possible) assassination of Paul Wellstone" (Ted Rall, Yahoo! News, 2002/10/30) and "Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?" (Michael I. Niman, AlterNet, 2002/10/28))

"Watson lecturer calls for pacifist response to terrorism" (Monique Meneses, The Brown Daily Herald, 2002/10/30)
Moral equivalence aligned with its usual companion - plain stupidity: "University of Rochester Professor Robert Holmes compared President George Bush to Osama bin Laden and argued that pacifism, not aggression, will stop terrorism at his lecture Tuesday afternoon at the Watson Institute for International Studies. ... "Once you strip away the patriotism and the nationalism, you are left with George Bush on one hand and Osama bin Laden on the other hand," Holmes said. He said he found similarities in Bush's and bin Laden's beliefs. "I see both convinced that he has the absolute truth with a capital 'T,' each willing to kill for the truth and each believing he has major backing from the strongest religion in the world," he said. ... He proposed a pacifist alternative to the war on terrorism by opening discussion and debate on issues of conflict, helping put Afghanistan on it feet, calling off the "dogs" of war against Iraq and talking with the very people who we are designating as the enemy."

"PA: CIA behind Moscow Terrorists" (PMW/IMRA, 2002/10/30)
File under "Blame America First": "A senior writer in the Palestinian Authority official daily claims that the attack in Moscow by Islamic terrorists was a CIA plot. According to the writer, the US hopes that having the Russians suffer a Muslim terror attack will convince them to vote with the US in the UN in support of attacking Iraq. ... The following is from the text of the article: ... "The CIA will never acknowledge its responsibility for this operation which claimed over 170 lives, including those of the perpetrators.... However, the American message reached Moscow and was, perhaps, read the same way by the decision makers in France, who oppose the American pressure in the Security Council and insistently resist giving the Americans an international power of attorney to destroy the most ancient of Arab countries. We do not know whether there are members of pro-American organizations in Paris, but we believe that American Intelligence has no need for operatives in France, and we therefore fear a recurrence of a bloody scene in the capitol of [our] friends, the French." ... [Fuad Abu Hajleh, senior columnists, PA official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, October 29, 2002]"

"Two libels and an escalation" (Eliahu Salpeter, Haaretz, 2002/10/30)
"In preceding decades, modern Arab anti-Semitism drew its terms from those of Christian anti-Semitism and European racism. Now, with the surge in Muslim fundamentalism, Arab anti-Semitism has also returned to the Koran. The Jews are no longer an inferior people that should be kept in inferior status and their lives protected; they are enemies of Islam and must be obliterated. Muslim anti-Semitism is thus becoming like the "annihilationist" anti-Semitism of the Nazi era. ... The radicalized return to fundamentalist Muslim roots is described by Dr. Meir Litvak's study in the 2002 report of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He notes, among other things, that "Zionism," "Israel" and "Jews" are used interchangeably by the Arabs, not only for tactical propaganda purposes, to argue that they are not anti-Semites, but also for ideological reasons. They see Zionism and the State of Israel as the modern embodiment of Judaism, which they claim, was the sworn enemy of the prophet, Mohammed."

"Return of the 'Chicken Hawks'" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2002/10/30)
"I am certainly now a hawk, and during the Vietnam years I was certainly a dove. What changed me was in fact experience of war - but not as a soldier. I covered the Gulf War as a reporter, and it was this experience, later compounded by what I saw reporting in Bosnia, that convinced me of the moral imperative, sometimes, for war. In liberated Kuwait City, one vast crime scene, I toured the morgue one day and inspected torture and murder victims left behind by the departing Iraqis. "The corpse in drawer 3 . . . belonged to a young man," I later wrote. "When he was alive, he had been beaten from the soles of the feet to the crown of the head, and every inch of his skin was covered with purple-and-black bruises. ... The man in drawer 12 had been burned to death with some flammable liquid. ... Corpses 18 and 19 ... belonged to the brothers Abbas ... the eyeballs of the elder of the Abbas brothers had been removed. The sockets were bloody holes." That was the beginning of the making of me as at least an honorary "chicken hawk." After that, I never again could stand the arguments of those who sat in the luxury of safety - "advocating nonresistance behind the guns of the American Fleet," as George Orwell wrote of World War II pacifists - and held that the moral course was, in crimes against humanity as in crimes on the street corner: Better not to get involved, dear."

"States cannot negotiate with suicidal terrorists" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/10/30)
"What should the British Government do if a group of hijackers, declaring themselves eager to embrace death and martyrdom, seize a London theatre audience? Start talking to them, I hear you suggest. Yes, but what about? Well, you ask them what they want and begin a dialogue. But suppose they say that what they want is an end to the domination of the world by the evil, idolatrous Western countries - which is pretty much what Osama bin Laden's team wants. Where will your negotiations go from there? Do you promise to consider it? ... The killing of innocent civilians is not part of any dialogue. Murder is not a political argument. There can be only one answer to people who say, "Give us what we want or we will kill anybody who is unlucky enough to fall into our hands." What should governments do when faced with this? Absolutely anything that it takes, even if it means (God forgive me) losing some innocent lives in the process. In any but the shortest possible term, the ending of such incidents with all the force that is required is the only way that a free society can defend itself against this threat. Terrorism must end in disaster for the perpetrators. It must not only be futile; it must be counter-productive."

"Saudi Arabia Takes Steps To Acquire Nuclear Weapons" (Defense & Foreign Affairs/FrontPageMagazine, 2002/10/30)
"Highly-reliable sources indicate that the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has, since the beginning of October 2002, and possibly before, begun active efforts to acquire completed nuclear weapons. It is known that Saudi officials had approached officials of the Government of Pakistan in this regard, on the basis that Saudi possession of such weapons would act as a deterrent to any possible Israeli threat of nuclear force against Saudi Arabia. ... It is believed that the Saudi officials had also approached one or more other states to assist in the provision of nuclear weapons, possibly including the PRC and/or the Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea (DPRK). There is no indication that any of the states approached have hinted that they would consider the Saudi requests, although some of the negotiations have been ongoing, with several meetings taking place."

"Senior Chechen envoy held" (BBC News, 2002/10/30)
"A leading official of the Chechen Government has been arrested in Denmark at Russia's request, Danish police have said. Ahmed Zakayev, an envoy of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and the region's deputy prime minister, was detained in Copenhagen where he was attending a world congress of Chechens, officials said. He is suspected by Russia of being involved in last week's siege by Chechen rebels of a theatre in Moscow, according to Danish television. The Russians were furious with the Danes for allowing the conference to go ahead. Russia has cracked down on suspected Chechen militants. Reports of Mr Zakayev's arrest came as police in Moscow detained 30 people, including security officials and political advisers, believed to have helped the Chechen rebels."

"Terrorist kills woman, two girls in West Bank settlement" (Amos Harel and Haim Shadmi, Haaretz, 2002/10/30)
"A Palestinian terrorist shot dead a woman and two girls aged 12 and 14, after infiltrating the Jenin-area West Bank settlement late Tuesday and opening fire in the residential area of the small enclave. ... Residents of the small settlement of some 40 families said the terrorist slipped under a back gate near the residential area at about 10:30 P.M., opening fire in all directions. He came upon the two girls, shooting them, and was then fired on by a woman in the area. Her handgun jammed, however, and witnesses said the terrorist then entered a house, hitting a man and woman there. He continued firing until soldiers stationed at the settlement rushed to the site and opened fire at the terrorist, killing him."

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

News and commentary:

"Do not click on this link" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2002/10/30)
"Endangered cultures take desperate measures. The Slavs of the former Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 20th century faced such a danger. Weakened by centuries of oppression, they faced absorption into the German culture which had contended with the Slavs for centuries. The Russians, with their Dostoyevskyan Messianism, fed by a smoldering sense of inferiority, embraced the Slavic cause. ...
Iraq's nuclear program is the 21st century equivalent of Russia's railroads in 1914. The United States must prevent Saddam Hussein from building nuclear weapons now, or the cost of stopping him (and others in the future) will be incalculable. The trouble is that today's Arabs (and to a great extent other Islamic populations) are in the position of the Slavs of 1914. They are an endangered culture, and like many endangered cultures, the extremists among them will take desperate measures.
No more than in 1914 can the diplomats avert a tragedy. No more than in 1914 does any important participant desire a tragedy. The elite of Europe and America's East Coast somnambulistically re-enacts the first days of August 1914, wailing out warnings like a tragic chorus. The American administration believes it will bring democracy to the Mideast, and plows ahead like a tragic hero. The tragedy will proceed. Unlike 1914, of course, the two sides are not equally matched. America outweighs its prospective adversaries by an order of magnitude. Yet its potential adversaries are so numerous and so bereft of hope that the tragedy will not play itself out in four terrible years. It well may last for 40."

"The (possible) assassination of Paul Wellstone" (Ted Rall, Yahoo! News, 2002/10/30)
Rall echoes Michael I. Niman's allegation that Bush might have ordered an assassination of Wellstone. Loony beyond imagination: "George W. Bush and his henchmen stole the presidency. They threw thousands of innocent people into prison without even charging them with a crime. ... Now some Democrats and progressive Americans are asking the unthinkable about an administration they increasingly believe to be ruled by thugs and renegades. Did government gangsters murder the United States' most liberal legislator? ... With Election Day looming on Nov. 5, many analysts were predicting a Wellstone victory and continued Democratic dominance of the Senate. Perhaps, the thinking goes, someone in the Bush regime decided Wellstone had to go. ... Asking mailmen to spy on ordinary Americans, creating military tribunals for anyone deemed an "enemy combatant," locking prisoners of war in dog cages, spending a decade's worth of savings in six months, allowing journalists to die rather than provide them with help in a war zone, smearing Democratic politicians as anti-American, invading sovereign nations without excuse - these are acts that transgress essential American reasonableness. A man capable of these things seems, by definition, capable of anything." (See also: "Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?" (Michael I. Niman, AlterNet, 2002/10/28) and "Ted Rall and His Web of Half-Truths: A Critique" (John Giuffo, The Comics Journal, from the #247 issue))

"Stupidity Watch" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/10/29)
The Mother of all Democracies II: "Joseph Smith, a 25-year-old "pizza parlor worker" and independent city council candidate in New Brunswick, N.J., has some interesting ideas about democracy. He tells the Newark Star-Ledger that he "supports the right of self-determination for the Iraqi people. We see they have determined to stand up with Saddam, results of the election are 11.4 million to zero." "I didn't see any resistance to the vote. I haven't heard anything from any other nations or any other groups inside of Iraq calling it unfair," he goes on. 'I support Saddam to be the chosen leader of the Iraqi people until they choose a new leader. They for themselves have to determine who their leaders are.'" (See also: "Hopeful injects Saddam into race" (Alexander Lane, The Star Ledger, 2002/10/29) and "Saddam 'wins 100% of vote'" (BBC News, 2002/10/16))

"Arrest call for Israeli ex-army chief" (BBC News, 2002/10/29)
What's next? An arrest call for Rumsfeld?: "A British lawyer working on behalf of Palestinian families has begun proceedings for the arrest of the former head of the Israeli army, currently touring the UK. Shaul Mofaz, who retired in July after four years, is currently touring Britain speaking to members of the UK's Jewish community. Lawyer Imran Khan has submitted a 17 page letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions outlining allegations of war crimes against General Mofaz. The allegations include instructions to assassinate, torture and demolish houses. ... General Mofaz gained a reputation for tough tactics against the Palestinian uprising in the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank. He directed some of Israel's most controversial military operations in the West Bank earlier this year, including Jenin - where Palestinians claim a massacre took place - and Ramallah." (See also: "BBC Bias Watch" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2002/10/29): "Amazingly, even after it's been disproved by a UN report and an Amnesty International report and the Palestinians themselves (who now refer to it as "a victory"), the BBC uncritically repeats the Jenin "massacre" Big Lie.")

"Black Widows" (Leela Jacinto, ABC News, 2002/10/29)
"Covered from head to toe in all-black Islamic robes with only their determined, kohl-lined eyes showing, they quickly came to be called the "black widows" as a horrified world watched a new Chechen female suicide squad in action last week. They were widows of Chechen rebels killed in the separatist war with Russia, they told the 700-odd terrified hostages at Moscow's Palace of Culture Theater. ... Russian newspapers reported chilling witness accounts of the determination and discipline of the female rebels, with several freed hostages complaining that the women guerrillas were particularly aggressive. In an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda, for instance, Ludmila Fedyantseva, a schoolteacher who was trapped in the theater with her 73-year-old mother, recounted how she constantly sought medicine for the ailing woman. On one such mission, Fedyantseva said she was accosted by a female Chechen rebel called Svyeta, who demanded to know why the teacher had left her seat. "My mother is dying," Fedyantseva said she told her captor. She said Svyeta replied stonily: "It doesn't bother my conscience. If I see [you] again, I'll shoot." ... "You're having a bad day," one of the Chechen rebels reportedly told Fedyantseva. 'But we've had a bad 10 years.'"

"The bloody history of a people with an unquenchable thirst for independence" (Phil Reeves and Mary Dejevsky, Independent, 2002/10/29)
A short history of the Chechnya conflict: "Many of the Chechens who fought the first war against Russia – and certainly, Mr Maskhadov himself – had portrayed themselves primarily as freedom fighters. But now, Islamic militants, keen to wage a jihad against Moscow, started to come to the fore. In August 1999, they made their presence felt. A group of Islamic militants with ties to the Taliban crossed the eastern border from Chechnya and invaded Dagestan, a Muslim republic which, like Chechnya, is part of Russia, but unlike Chechnya has an outlet to the sea, with a long coastline on the Caspian. Their declared aim was to establish an Islamic state uniting the two Muslim republics. ...
Moscow has milked the association for all it is worth after the seizure of the theatre last week. One Russian state-run television channel mixed its coverage from the scene last week with lengthy reports about the spread of Islamic militancy, bunching together Palestinian groups, al-Qa'ida, the World Trade Centre and assorted bombings carried out by Islamists in central, south and south-east Asia. In one of these, a map was produced purporting to show a plan to establish an Islamic empire stretching around the globe. It was almost as if it was preparing the audience for the worst."

"A New Palestinian Agenda After Iraq?" (Amos Gilad, Jerusalem Issue Brief, 2002/10/29)
"Within any peace agreement, Arafat is determined to force Israel to absorb the 300,000 Palestinians now living in Lebanon. These Palestinians, living under the influence of Syria and Iran, are very bitter and they remind Arafat daily of his obligation to solve the problems of all Palestinians. So Arafat wants Israel, suicidally, to grant all of these Palestinians (whose families originally hailed from the Galilee/Haifa area) full Israeli citizenship, including full voting rights in elections for the Knesset. Arafat is further determined that the independent Palestinian state should have the full right to absorb more than half a million overseas Palestinians into the Palestinian territories. Arafat mentally adds these to the 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank, the 1.2 million in Gaza, and the 3.2 million in Jordan, and hopes to create an overwhelming Palestinian majority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Iraqi desert. This is Arafat's dream, if not his obsession. The Camp David talks failed mainly because Arafat simply cannot give up his dream. He is determined that, in 30 to 50 years, there will be one sweeping pan-Palestinian state in place of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with Israel losing its Jewish majority."

"No Prince Charming here" (Jed Babbin, The Washington Times, 2002/10/29)
Babbin on Hussein's "presidential palaces", which again are likely to be off-limits to any weapons inspections: "The main Baghdad "Presidential Complex" covers about 2 square kilometers, and about 15 or 20 buildings, including several palaces. One palace, Al-Seqoor ("the Eagle") houses a biological weapons lab called Al-Tahaddi, "the Challenge." Like almost all of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction facilities, the Al-Tahaddi lab is underground. Unconfirmed reports say that the Al-Tahaddi lab is working on the Ebola and West Nile viruses, among others. Just west of there is the Al-Radwaniyeh compound, which covers about 9.3 square kilometers. Al-Radwaniyeh is used to store biological weapons of mass destruction and also has hardened bunkers for a large command and control facility. ...
About 80 miles northwest of Baghdad is the city of Samarra. Just north of there is the Jabal Makhul Presidential Site. It's about 10 square miles in size with about 90 buildings. Jabal Makhul - which means "under the mountain" - is the home of Project 555, Saddam's uranium enrichment program. Located in the Al-Fajir site within the huge complex, Project 555 is working overtime shifts, trying to make fissile materials for nuclear weapons. According to my sources, it's also a favorite place to hide other weapons of mass destruction in a large complex of underground tunnels."

"The Snipers: Crazy or Jihadis?" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2002/10/29)
"One answer came from a friend who quoted John Muhammad, the senior alleged sniper, saying that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks "should have happened a long time ago." This implies that Muhammad might have seen himself as a foot soldier in the jihad (holy war) against the United States, and that he took up arms to terrorize Americans. Media across the country as one, however, shut their eyes to this explanation. A Los Angeles Times article proffered six motives for Muhammad (his "stormy relationship" with his family, his "stark realization" of loss and regret, his perceived sense of abuse as an American Muslim post-9/11, his desire to "exert control" over others, his relationship with Malvo, and his trying to make a quick buck) but did not mention jihad. Likewise, a Boston Globe article found "there must have been something in his social interaction - in his marriage or his military career - that pulled the trigger." ... Unwilling to specify the possibility of jihad as even part of his motive, media analyses dismissed it by implication. ... Not to see this real and present danger renders the United States vulnerable to more violence by the forces of militant Islam."

"Where terror fails, Chirac's posturing may succeed" (Tim Hames, The Times, 2002/10/29)
"It is fashionable to argue that the terrorists "always win" but, in truth, most of the time they lose. That is because no number of recruits, size of arsenal, or source of funds can make up for the advantages held by those in command of a nation state. ... Al-Qaeda was, 15 months ago, a unique threat because it had acquired a symbiotic relationship with the Taleban in Afghanistan. It had become a pseudo-state and thus in a position to operate on an ostentatious scale. ...
The evidence that rogue governments can inflict so much more chaos than rogue gunmen or groups does not seem to be concentrating minds much at the United Nations. The Iraqi regime and its weapons programme are a far greater threat to global peace than any alliance of terrorist networks. ... The notion that a struggle with Iraq represents some sort of "distraction" from the War on Terror is almost comical. It is like asserting that the search for a cure for cancer diverts energy from the search for perfect cosmetic surgery. ...
The Security Council has proved incapable of framing even a modest resolution which asserts that Iraq has ignored all previous international demands for a decade and that something at some time has to be done about it. ... It is [Jacques Chirac] who in the next few days will make or break a meaningful international stance against a menace far more awesome than snipers or Chechens. It is why, ironically, despite the bloodshed elsewhere, it is the President of France who is today the most serious obstacle to world order."

"Afghans Freed From Guantánamo Bay Speak of Heat and Isolation" (David Rohde, The New York Times, 2002/10/29)
"Three members of the first group of prisoners to be freed from indefinite, secret detention at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba complained tonight that prisoners are locked for days at a time in sweltering 8-by-8-foot cells and are denied contact with their families. They also said that dozens of low-level Taliban foot soldiers and Afghans are imprisoned on the island. Two of the three Afghan men turned over to Afghan officials appeared to be in their 70's. Both had been held by American officials in secret detention in Guantánamo Bay. A Pakistani man who was handed over to Pakistani officials yesterday was said to be in his 50's. In an interview tonight, the three Afghans said they were not tortured or abused by their American interrogators, but that the prospect of being trapped in endless isolation wore away at them."

"Little-known Arab group claims killing of U.S. diplomat in Amman" (Daniel Sobelman, Haaretz, 2002/10/29)
"A little-known Arab group has claimed responsibility for the assassination Monday of United States diplomat Laurence Foley outside his home in the Jordanian capital of Amman, the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported Tuesday. The group, which calls itself "Shurapa al Urdun," claimed responsibility for the killing of an Israeli businessman, Yitzhak Snir, in Amman a year ago. At the time, the Jordanians denied the existence of such a group. According to the Al-Quds Al-Arabi report, the group said it had decided to act after the U.S. war assault on Afghanistan and because of what it called Zionist aggression in Palestine. It added, however, that the main reason for its latest attack was the recent bill passed by the U.S. Congress which recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital."

"Al Qaeda's New Leaders" (Susan Schmidt and Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/10/29)
"U.S. and European intelligence sources identified six emerging leaders as key to running the terrorist network's global military and financial networks. ... But the overall network is becoming increasingly decentralized. While the al Qaeda leadership prior to Sept. 11, 2001 had a ruling council, called a shura, which vetted plans and made major financial decisions, the new leaders are less able to communicate and are spread around Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Arabian Peninsula and Southeast Asia, intelligence officials said. ... Al Qaeda's military operations have moved out of Afghanistan to the Middle East, Southeast Asia and around the world, said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. ... "It would be much easier if we had a more centralized structure to aim at, like al Qaeda was in Afghanistan," said a senior U.S. official. 'Now, instead of a large, fixed target we have little moving targets all over the world, all armed and all dangerous. It is a much more difficult war to fight this way.'"

Added one new theme in Themes:
The Moscow Siege - News and commentary on the siege of the Moscow theater by Chechen terrorists.

Monday, October 28, 2002

News and commentary:

"Echoing Bush, Putin Vows Expansive Effort Against Terror" (Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times, 2002/10/28)
"President Vladimir V. Putin said today that Russia was prepared to strike at international terrorist groups and the countries that harbor them, explicitly echoing the arguments that President Bush made after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, to declare a war on terrorism. ... Mr. Putin ordered Russia's military to draft new doctrine that would adapt its forces and tactics to counter the threat from terrorism both internally and externally, presaging sweeping changes for a military that has been slow to change. "The tragic events are over," Mr. Putin said, 'but there still remain very many problems. We are paying a heavy price for the weakness of the state and inconsistency of actions.'"

"A Man, A Bottle, A Shot, Then Gas" (Valeria Korchagina et al., The Moscow Times, 2002/10/28)
Accounts of the Moscow siege by hostages: "[The two young women hostages] said that they had talked to the Chechen women who guarded them. "They all said that the best religion in the world is Islam and that ours is wrong, that 'We have come here to die, we've nothing to lose," Salina said. "They told us about the war in Chechnya, that they've had somebody killed, a mother, a brother, a son, in front of their eyes and they were so tired of all that, that they are used to hunger and cold, to living without food and sleep. "The most interesting is that we did not hate them, we felt sorry for them. I felt sorry for them. Maybe it is not normal." Not all shared her sympathy. Yegor Legeza, a former hostage who appeared to be in his late teens, spoke to journalist after he walked out of Hospital No. 13 and said his opinion of Chechens had not changed. "They are all guerrillas," he said."

"Preaching Politics" (Jason L. Steorts, The Harvard Crimson, 2002/10/28)
"You learn a lot from the Bible. There are, first, the moral teachings: Love your neighbor, obey the Ten Commandments and so on. There are answers to the Big Questions: God exists; we are immortal; the choices we make now determine the way we spend eternity. And then there is the injunction to oppose President Bush's Iraq policy. Just ask the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, who recently gave a sermon - or, rather, a political lecture masquerading as a sermon - on this topic. ... After quoting a verse from Jeremiah in which the Lord delights in "love, justice, and righteousness" Gomes goes on to assume without argument that a war in Iraq would run contrary to these values - as though he has found, along with the case of Nazi Germany, an obvious tension between commitment to God and commitment to country. That conclusion does not follow in any straightforward way from the Scripture Gomes cites, and to lump Nazism and the Bush administration together as didactic examples would be risible if it weren't so offensive." (See also: "Sermon: Patriotism is Not Enough" (Rev. Peter J. Gomes, The Memorial Church, 2002/10/06): "Since we are not Nazi Germany, and because we do claim love, justice, and righteousness not only as personal values but as national values, we have all the more responsibility to make the country we love a lovely country. ... Don't allow yourself to be overpowered with evil: take the offensive and overpower evil with good. That is what Paul is saying: Take the offensive: overpower evil with good! Now that is a radical foreign policy.")

"Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?" (Michael I. Niman, AlterNet, 2002/10/28)
Anti-Bush conspiracy theorizing gone insane. Found via Best of the Web Today: "Wellstone's popularity surged after he voted to oppose the Senate resolution authorizing George Bush to wage war in Iraq. ... Then he died. ... There is no indication today that Wellstone's death was the result of foul play. What we do know, however, is that Wellstone emerged as the most visible obstacle standing in the way of a draconian political agenda by an unelected government. And now he is conveniently gone. For our government to maintain its credibility at this time, we need an open and accountable independent investigation involving international participation into the death of Paul Wellstone. Hopefully we will find out, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this was indeed an untimely accident. For the sake of our country, we need to know this."

"Islamic leader: Men who marry more than one wife for wrong reasons should be whipped" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2002/10/28)
"Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, spiritual leader of [Malaysias] largest opposition political group, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, was quoted Monday as saying too many Malaysian