Archived news and commentary: October 27 - November 2, 2003

2003/12/29 - 2004/01/04
2003/12/22 - 2003/12/28
2003/12/15 - 2003/12/21
2003/12/08 - 2003/12/14
2003/12/01 - 2003/12/07
2003/11/24 - 2003/11/30
2003/11/17 - 2003/11/23
2003/11/10 - 2003/11/16
2003/11/03 - 2003/11/09
2003/10/27 - 2003/11/02
2003/10/20 - 2003/10/26
2003/10/13 - 2003/10/19
2003/10/06 - 2003/10/12
2003/09/29 - 2003/10/05

Sunday, November 2, 2003

News and commentary:

"US soldiers inspect the site where a Chinook helicopter was shot down..."
(AFP, 2003/11/02)
"US soldiers inspect the site where a Chinook helicopter was shot down outside the flashpoint town of Fallujah, 50km (30 miles) west of Baghdad."

"Will Britain convert to Islam?" (Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday/AlterMedia, 2003/11/02)
Personally, I'm more of a "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" kind of guy, defending much of this "path of permissiveness" which Peter Hitchens deplores, but his question remains valid, inescapable and disturbing:
"Could Islam one day become the established church of Britain? Might English women adopt the headscarves and enveloping robes of their Asian sisters, as the call to prayer rises and falls across the slate roofs of rainswept industrial cities?
The idea is not as impossible, as bizarre or distant as you might think. An astonishing Channel 4 programme last week - The Last White Kids - showed two English children who live in an entirely Muslim district becoming enthusiastic attenders at the local mosque, wrapping themselves in Islamic draperies and learning the Koran. ...
But this strange little story contains a warning for Britain as a whole, as it careers ever more rapidly down the path of permissiveness which began so gently in the Sixties and now slopes ever more steeply downwards towards sexual chaos, drunkenness, family breakdown and the epidemic use of stupefying drugs. ...
Thanks to the immigration of recent decades, Britain has a young, energetic and swelling Muslim population which is increasingly assertive about its faith.
Official Islam may disapprove of such things but there have even been signs of the Muslim intolerance towards Christianity that is a nasty feature of so many Islamic societies.
In the Bradford suburb of Girlington, not far from where the Gallaghers live in Manningham, Asian youths tried to set fire to an Anglican church. Soon afterwards, a Brownie pack leader was attacked in a nearby street by young men who snarled 'Christian bitch' at her.
An isolated and meaningless incident? You might hope so, but it would be unwise to be sure.
If you travel to these areas, you get the sense that Islam, one of the great forces of history, long ago defeated by the armies and navies of a mighty Christian Europe, is once again feeling its strength and finding that it has been able to penetrate what were once the most impregnable fortresses of its great rival. ...
If we don't respect our own customs and religion, we may end up, as Ashlene and Amie Gallagher have done, respecting someone else's. Don't be surprised."

"Palestinians condemn US reward for info on Gaza bombing" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/11/02)
"The Palestinian Authority on Sunday condemned the US for offering a reward of up to $5 million for people providing information about the attack on American convoy in the Gaza Strip on October 15. ...
Col. Rashid Abu Shabak, commander of the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security Service in the Gaza Strip, lashed out at the US for making the offer, saying the PA was continuing its investigation into the case. "We strongly condemn this decision," he said. "This is an insulting announcement because it deals with a people whose mouth does not water in the face of financial temptations." ...
He said the PA was continuing to investigate the incident, but declined to say whether any progress has been made. It's also not clear what happened to the eight Palestinians who were detained shortly after the attack. Sources in Gaza City said most of the detainees have been released. ...
A senior PA official in Ramallah described the US offer as "imprudent" and a "flagrant intervention in Palestinian affairs." He added: 'The offer is a stab in the back of the Palestinians, who are doing their utmost to capture the culprits.'"

"Fifteen die as US helicopter downed" (BBC News, 2003/11/02)
"Fifteen American soldiers have been killed and 21 wounded in an attack on a US military helicopter in Iraq, the US military has confirmed.
It is the highest number of casualties suffered by the US-led coalition in a single incident since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April.
The helicopter came down in a cornfield near the flashpoint town of Falluja, 50 kilometres (32 miles) west of the capital. ...
Iraqi witnesses said the helicopter was hit by one of two surface-to-air missiles fired at it, but the US military has not confirmed the cause.
One military spokesman said the helicopter was hit by an "unknown weapon", but later, the military said it might have crashed while taking evasive action. ...
Some Iraqis in Falluja expressed delight at Sunday's attack.
"The Americans are pigs. We will hold a celebration because this helicopter went down - a big celebration," an Iraqi farmer near the crash site told Reuters news agency."

"On Hating the Jews" (Natan Sharansky, Commentary, from the November 2003 issue)
"Another shattered illusion is even more pertinent to our search. Shocked by the visceral anti-Semitism he witnessed at the Dreyfus trial in supposedly enlightened France, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, became convinced that the primary cause of anti-Semitism was the anomalous condition of the Jews: a people without a polity of its own. In his seminal work, The Jewish State (1896), published two years after the trial, Herzl envisioned the creation of such a Jewish polity and predicted that a mass emigration to it of European Jews would spell the end of anti-Semitism. Although his seemingly utopian political treatise would turn out to be one of the 20th century's most prescient books, on this point history has not been kind to Herzl; no one would seriously argue today that anti-Semitism came to a halt with the founding of the state of Israel. To the contrary, this particular illusion has come full circle: while Herzl and most Zionists after him believed that the emergence of a Jewish state would end anti-Semitism, an increasing number of people today, including some Jews, are convinced that anti-Semitism will end only with the disappearance of the Jewish state." (UPDATE: The essay can also be found here: "On Hating the Jews" (Natan Sharansky, OpinionJournal, 2003/11/17))

"Iraqification: A Losing Strategy" (Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, from the 2003/11/10 issue)
"If the American footprint is reduced, it will not make the guerrillas stop fighting. ("Hey, Saddam, we've scared the Americans back into their compounds. Let's ease up now and give them a break.") On the contrary, the rebels will step up their attacks on the Iraqi Army and local politicians, whom they already accuse of being collaborators. Iraqification could easily produce more chaos, not less.
The idea of a quick transfer of political power is even more dangerous. The Iraqi state has gone from decades of Stalinism to total collapse. And there is no popular national political party or movement to hand power to. A quick transfer of authority to a weak central government will only encourage the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds to retain de facto autonomy in their regions and fragment the country. ...
There are no shortcuts out. Iraq is America's problem. It could have been otherwise, but in the weeks after the war the administration, drunk with victory, refused to share power with the world. Now there can be only one goal — success. The first task of winning the peace in Iraq is winning the war — which is still being waged in the Sunni heartland. And winning it might take more troops, or different kinds of troops (send back the Marines). It might take a mixture of military force and bribes — to win over some Sunni leaders. But whatever it takes, the United States must do it. Talk about a drawdown of troops sends exactly the wrong message to the guerrillas. In the words of one North Vietnamese general, "We knew that if we waited, one day the Americans would have to go home.'"

"The End of the West?" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2003/11/02)
"Well, the numbers are in and the numbers don't lie. At the Madrid aid conference, Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion in new loans and credits for Iraq — and Germany and France pledged 0 new dollars. Add it all up and the bottom line becomes clear: Saudi Arabia actually cares more about nurturing democracy in Iraq than Germany and France. ...
So there we have it: Pretending to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people — by calling for the removal of sanctions but keeping Saddam in power so he can buy lots of stuff from Germany and France — is priceless to them. But easing the suffering of the Iraqi people by removing Saddam's whole sick regime is worthless to them. ...
What I'm getting at here is that when you find yourself in an argument with Europeans over Iraq, they try to present it as if we both want the same thing, but we just have different approaches. And had the Bush team not been so dishonest and unilateral, we could have worked together. I wish the Bush team had behaved differently, but that would not have been a cure-all — because if you look under the European position you see we have two different visions, not just tactical differences. Many Europeans really do believe that a dominant America is more threatening to global stability than Saddam's tyranny.
The more I hear this, the more I wonder whether we are witnessing something much larger than a passing storm over Iraq. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of "the West" as we have known it — a coalition of U.S.-led, like-minded allies, bound by core shared values and strategic threats?"

"Why I Miss the Cold War" (Arnold Beichman, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/11/02)
"The Cold War world of the 20th century is not the world of the 21st. To amend Hobbes's "Leviathan": It is a condition of war of some against all, a universal vulnerability. We have gone from a world of bipolar quasistability to a world of bipolar anarchy. That transformation has affected our quality of life as the Cold War never did to those of us fortunate enough to have lived beyond the Iron Curtain and outside the Berlin Wall. ...
The Islamist jihadists have no immediate desire to convert the West to Islam. They are not interested in WHAMing ("winning the hearts and minds," as it used to be called in the days of the Vietnam War). They are not interested in negotiations, summit meetings, detente agreements, cultural exchanges or nonaggression pacts, as we all were during the Cold War. As an ultra-state, ultra-government, ultra-treasury, ultra-supreme court legitimized, in its own eyes, by the Koran, al Qaeda decides who lives and who dies.
Looking back, we can now see that the end of the Cold War came with the election of Ronald Reagan and the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev. President Bush is a worthy successor but who, realistically, can foresee a Muslim Gorbachev? And even if one arose, how long would he survive? There were weapons of mass destruction on both sides during the Cold War but they were never used. The war with jihadist Islam is a war in which non-Muslims are all hostage to bin Laden, his followers and his successors. Jihadist Islam gave us a taste, on Sept. 11, 2001, of what it could do without weapons of mass destruction. And when they do get such weapons? The war goes on, no end in sight."

"Haven for the Taliban" (The Washington Post, 2003/11/02)
"The Pakistani city of Quetta lately has become more than a provincial capital; it might also be described as the new headquarters of the extremist Taliban movement, which ruled Afghanistan and sheltered Osama bin Laden until two years ago. According to one recent report by the respected Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, "Thousands of Taliban fighters reside in mosques and madrassas with the full support of a provincial ruling party and militant Pakistani groups. Taliban leaders wanted by the U.S. and Kabul governments are living openly in nearby villages." Mr. Rashid quoted the provincial government's information minister as saying, "Only the Taliban can constitute the real government of Afghanistan." ...
All this is happening in a country whose government claims to be an ally of the United States in the war on terrorism and to which the Bush administration has pledged more than $3 billion in aid - the down payment on what it describes as a "long-term commitment." The Taliban leaders and their followers are not ensconced in remote caves or dispersed across trackless badlands but operate openly in a major city, where they effectively control several neighborhoods. Local politicians deliver speeches and raise money on their behalf. When they travel to Afghanistan to carry out attacks, they cross not in ones or twos but by the score, in buses that are waved through by Pakistani border guards. In the past several months they have killed more than 400 Afghan civilians and soldiers, along with several U.S. soldiers, in various attacks." (See also: "Pakistan Haven Makes US War On Taliban Hard Win" (Ahmed Rashid, The Wall Street Journal/Pakistan Facts, 2003/10/09))

"Worse than North Korea?" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/11/02)
"Over the past decade, the North Korean "people's" regime of Kim Jong-Il has starved an estimated three million of its citizens. A roughly equal number work in slave labor camps that dwarf Auschwitz in size and nearly in cruelty.
The regime has developed nuclear weapons, in violation of several agreements, and intends to sell those weapons to the highest bidder. It has lobbed ballistic missiles over Japan. It threatens a war of annihilation against its southern neighbor. It supports itself by dealing drugs and counterfeit currency. But at least it's not as bad as Israel.
That, at any rate, is the conclusion of a just-released poll of Europeans from 15 EU member states sponsored by the European Commission. Asked to rank 15 countries on how they threaten "world peace," Europeans chose their top threats thus: Israel, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United States. ...
We know that Europeans tend to regard any discussion of good and evil, or democracy and dictatorship, as "cowboy talk" and terribly unsophisticated. But now we find the European opposition to such petty distinctions taken to an opposite extreme." (See also: "Petition to European Commission President Romano Prodi" (Simon Wiesenthal Center, 2003/11/01) and "European poll calls Israel a big threat to world peace" (Thomas Fuller, International Herald Tribune, 2003/10/31))

"Iran challenged over US professor" (Jim Muir, BBC News, 2003/11/02)
"A senior Iranian official has expressed concern over the continued detention of an Iranian-born American professor.
Dariush Zahedi was arrested on suspicion of spying during a summer visit to his family in Tehran. ...
He was arrested in Tehran at the request of the intelligence ministry on suspicion of spying.
After a lengthy investigation, the ministry concluded he was innocent and recommended he be freed.
However, according to the head of the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs and national security committee, Mohsen Mirdamadi, the hardline judiciary refused to comply.
He said the judiciary took Professor Zahedi from the intelligence ministry's custody and transferred him to "a parallel intelligence apparatus".
Mr Mirdamadi expressed fears that Mr Zahedi would be subjected to long periods of solitary confinement and other pressures which might force him into a false confession."

Saturday, November 1, 2003

News and commentary:

"Mind the gap" (Julie Burchill, The Guardian, 2003/11/01)
"No, it's the hipocrites who fascinate and repel me; the enlightened, unrepressed, liberal thinkers whose deepest governing belief would appear to be "Do what I say, not what I do", and who seem to believe that the rest of us are too thick to notice the yawning credibility gap opening up between their feet as they pontificate.
You expect it from showbiz kids. You expect Ms Dynamite and Justin Timberlake to mouth off against American war in Iraq/US cultural imperialism just before signing massive deals with Pepsi and McDonald's. ...
It seems to me that far too many liberals believe that once you've ticked the Brotherhood Of Man box on your spiritual census, this gives you the right to be as big a bastard as you choose to be in your private life. The sexual duplicity of "enlightened" men is legend; be it the liberal lawyer Michael Mansfield with his wife and mistress installed in the same hotel or the Tory-hypocrisy-slaying Angus Deayton snorting cocaine off the bodies of hookers in seven-star bunk-ups when his partner was pregnant with their child. And the Alpha Male role model of these awful males is, of course, good ol' Bill Clinton, sticking cigars up the help between bleating on about human decency.
It is partly my suspicion that if you scratch a member of the Brotherhood Of Man, you're likely to find a woman-hater, which makes me suspicious of the current alliance between socialism and extreme Islam. Being anti-racist is admirable, but if one is not equally anti-sexist, then it makes a nonsense of the argument, and leaves one woefully wide open to accusations of hipocrisy of the silliest, sleaziest kind."

"The Hunt for Iraq's Weapons" (The Washington Post, 2003/11/01)
David Kay criticizes Barton Gellman's article on the Iraqi nuclear threat: "The Oct. 26 front-page article "The Oct. 26 front-page article "Search in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat" is wildly off the mark. Your reporter, Barton Gellman, bases much of his analysis on what he says was told to him by an Australian brigadier, Stephen D. Meekin. Gellman describes Meekin as someone "who commands the Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to [David] Kay."
Meekin does not report, nor has he ever reported, to me in any individual capacity or as commander of the exploitation center. The work of the center did not form a part of my first interim report, which was delivered last month, nor do I direct what Meekin's organization does. The center's mission has never involved weapons of mass destruction, nor does it have any WMD expertise." (See also: "Iraq Survey Fails to Find Nuclear Threat" (Barton Gellman, Washington Post, 2003/10/26))

"Petition to European Commission President Romano Prodi" (Simon Wiesenthal Center, 2003/11/01)
"I join with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and its supporters around the world, in expressing outrage and deep concern at the results of a special European Commission poll which indicates that the State of Israel presents the biggest threat to world peace.
These shocking poll results defy logic and demonstrate a racist flight of fancy that only proves that a systematic campaign vilifying Israel by European institutions, leaders, and the media has embedded antisemitism more deeply within European society than in any other period since the end of World War II.
If the results of this survey are as reported, then Israel should draw the only conclusion possible: that such blatant bias disqualifies the European Union and its members from any future role in the Middle East peace process." (See also: "European poll calls Israel a big threat to world peace" (Thomas Fuller, International Herald Tribune, 2003/10/31))

"A War of Choice, and One Who Chose It" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2003/11/01)
Ignatius on Paul Wolfowitz: "Commentators in Europe and the Arab world write darkly about America's designs on Iraqi oil, or a conspiracy to enrich Vice President Cheney's old friends at Halliburton, or a plot to help Israel. It would be nice, in a weird way, if the Iraq war were anchored to such worldly interests. But it isn't.
The reality is that this may be the most idealistic war fought in modern times - a war whose only coherent rationale, for all the misleading hype about weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda terrorists, is that it toppled a tyrant and created the possibility of a democratic future. It was a war of choice, not necessity, and one driven by ideas, not merely interests. In that sense, the paradigmatic figure of the war is Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and the Bush administration's idealist in chief. ...
America's problems in Iraq stem in large part from wishful thinking, and Wolfowitz and his colleagues must be careful to avoid any more of it now as they try to craft a sustainable strategy. What worries me most after touring Iraq with Wolfowitz is how little the U.S. forces know about their adversaries here. Pressed at a briefing about who is controlling the resistance, a general answered, "We don't have the intelligence to lay this out on a chart." That was chilling.
Now that the going is difficult in Iraq, the Bush administration needs to think more with its head and less with its heart. The idealists can win this war, but only if they act with brutally honest pragmatism."

"Calls to Jihad Are Said to Lure Hundreds of Militants Into Iraq" (Don Van Natta Jr. and Desmond Butler, 2003/11/01)
"Across Europe and the Middle East, young militant Muslim men are answering a call issued by Osama bin Laden and other extremists, and leaving home to join the fight against the American-led occupation in Iraq, according to senior counterterrorism officials based in six countries.
The intelligence officials say that since late summer they have detected a growing stream of itinerant Muslim militants headed for Iraq. They estimate that hundreds of young men from an array of countries have now arrived in Iraq by crossing the Syrian or Iranian borders."

Added in archive:
"A crucifix hangs on a wall of an elementary school in Naples, Italy..." (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta, 2003/10/26)
"Storm over Italy crucifix ruling" (BBC News, 2003/10/26)

Friday, October 31, 2003

News and commentary:

"'Those Jews'" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/10/31)
"There are certain predictable symptoms to watch when a widespread amorality begins to infect a postmodern society: cultural relativism, atheism, socialism, utopian pacifism. Another sign, of course, is fashionable anti-Semitism among the educated, or the idea that some imaginary cabal, or some stealthy agenda — certainly not our own weakness — is conspiring to threaten our good life. ...
This fashionable anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism — especially among purported intellectuals of the Left — reveals a deep-seated, scary pathology that is growing geometrically both in and outside the West. For a Europe that is disarmed, plagued by a demographic nightmare of negative population growth and unsustainable entitlements, filled with unassimilated immigrants, and deeply angry about the power and presence of the United States, the Jews and their Israel provide momentary relief on the cheap. So expect that more crazy thoughts of Israel's destruction dressed up as peace plans will be as common as gravestone and synagogue smashing. ...
These are weird, weird times, and before we win this messy war against Islamic fascism and its sponsors, count on things to get even uglier. Don't expect any reasoned military analysis that puts the post-9/11 destruction of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's evil regime, along with the liberation of 50 million at the cost of 300 American lives, in any sort of historical context. After all, in the current presidential race, a retired general now caricatures U.S. efforts in Iraq and quotes Al Sharpton."

"The controversy of Israel" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/10/31)
Stephens on Tony Judt's "Israel: The Alternative": "Israel's existential legitimacy has been widely assailed for years – but that came, or comes, mainly from Arab, Islamic and Soviet corners. By contrast, Israel's critics in the West usually confined themselves to arguing about Israel's borders. As for the rightness of the Zionist dream itself, that was ideological territory upon which they dared not trespass.
Now that's changed. A line has been crossed. With the media's help, Israel has become "controversial." ...
It does not really matter what Judt thinks about the dummy's ventriloquist. It matters that his views are being published in prestige magazines. It matters that his views are on this side of acceptable discourse.
It matters that his views are a matter of controversy, not disrepute.
It will be said that I am trying to quash debate. That is exactly what I would have done, were it still possible. It no longer is. The controversy of Israel's borders is over. Our enemies have won. The controversy of Israel is now upon us." (See also: "Israel: The Alternative" (Tony Judt, The New York Review of Books, from the 2003/10/23 issue) and "What is Not to be Done" (Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic, 2003/10/18))

"European poll calls Israel a big threat to world peace" (Thomas Fuller, International Herald Tribune, 2003/10/31)
"Almost 60 percent of Europeans say that Israel is a larger threat to world peace than North Korea, Iran or Afghanistan, according to a poll scheduled to be made public Monday by the European Commission.
The result from a survey of about 7,500 people across the European Union was confirmed Thursday by an official at the commission.
Although Europeans have been consistently critical of Israel in recent surveys, the poll appears to show a severe souring of attitudes toward the Jewish state.
Full details of the survey were not available Thursday but an official at the commission confirmed that Israel was rated first when pollsters presented a list of 15 countries and asked: "Tell me if in your opinion it presents or not a threat to peace in the world." Fifty-nine percent of Europeans chose Israel, according to the official at the commission, who said the data were still being processed and could change, but only by 'a matter of decimals.'" (UPDATE - See also the full report: "Iraq & Peace in the world" (European Commission, November 2003) and "Wiesenthal Center: Poll vilifying Israel shows EU not worthy of role in Middle East peace process" (Simon Wiesenthal Center, 2003/10/28))

"Muslim Clerics Caution Against Collaborating with Americans" (AP/beliefnet, 2003/10/31)
"An association of Sunni Muslim clerics on Friday urged Iraqis to shun contacts with Americans as much as possible, saying that their religion prohibited cooperation with the occupation authorities. "Beware of supporting the occupiers and know that contacting them, without a legitimate necessity is sinful," the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq said in a statement read to worshippers. "Supporting them is apostasy...and animosity to Muslims."
The grouping of clerics and religious leaders is one of several formed in Iraq after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. Its leaders, who have adopted an attitude of hardline opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq, say their aim is to unite the country's Muslims. "Cooperating with the occupiers against the people ... angers God and represents a betrayal of religion," said the statement read after Friday prayers at Mosul's al-Haj Sedeeq Rashan mosque. It said it was acceptable for Muslims to join the U.S.-sponsored police force in order to protect Iraqi lives, honor and property, but warned policemen not to exceed these duties and help in defending the occupation. 'We call upon you ... not to violate the sanctities of Muslims by confronting them or by reporting on those who do not commit a crime in the eyes of God.'"

"Iraqis fear Bush ouster" (Richard Sisk, Daily News, 2003/10/31)
"Violence may be surging in Iraq, but there's another thing Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz says Iraqis fear: President Bush getting booted from office.
Wolfowitz, speaking at Georgetown University, said a worried resident of the southern city of Najaf asked him in July at a town hall meeting, "What's going to happen to us if George Bush loses the election?"
Wolfowitz didn't mention the Democrats, but he suggested the question sums up Iraqi fears that a new team in the White House would abandon them.
Wolfowitz said he tried to assure the Iraqis, but 'when they hear the message that we might not be there next year, they get very scared.'"

"German MP defends Jewish remarks" (BBC News, 2003/10/31)
"A German parliamentarian has refused to apologise for remarks that appeared to compare Jews during the Bolshevik Revolution to Nazis in World War II.
Conservative Martin Hohmann had said many Jews were active in execution squads during the Russian Revolution. ...
Mr Hohmann's comments, made in a 3 October speech, have only surfaced now.
He compared the killings in Russia's violent 1917 revolution, which he said were orchestrated by Jews, with the murder of Europe's Jews during the Holocaust of World War II.
According to a transcript of his speech on the website of his local CDU branch in Neuhof, Mr Hohmann said: "Jews were active in great numbers in the leadership as well as in the Cheka [Soviet secret police] firing squads.
"Thus one could describe Jews with some justification as a Taetervolk [a race of perpetrators].
"That may sound horrible. But it would follow the same logic with which one describes the Germans as a race of perpetrators."
However, he went on to say: 'Neither the Germans nor the Jews are a race of perpetrators.'" (See also: "Germans as Victims" (Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 2003/10/15))

"U.S. warns of 'day of resistance' in Iraq" (CNN.com, 2003/10/31)
Terrorists threaten to target not only schools but all Iraqis, including "women and children": "The U.S. Consulate on Friday urged Americans to take precautions amid rumors of a "day of resistance" this weekend in the Iraqi capital. ...
A number of dates have been mentioned for possible attacks, but the common one is for Saturday. ...
One U.S.-led coalition official said threats against Iraqis are coming mostly to schools, where men with their heads covered in black cloth, have threatened students, teachers and families.
The threats have been verbal and written on paper, saying that no one will be safe and police stations, schools, markets, mosques, hotels and nongovernmental organizations will be targeted regardless of women and children in the areas, the official said.
The official wouldn't say if a specific group is behind the threats but did say authorities believe that foreign fighters may be responsible." (See also: "Our Syrian friend recuperating" (Zeyad, healing Iraq, 2003/10/30) and "Threatening children" (Zeyad, Healing Iraq, 2003/10/22))

"Bush and Muslims" (Diane West, The Washington Times, 2003/10/31)
West on Bush's official remarks in connection with the latest Ramadan dinner: "Islam may have a lot of things — love of family and gratitude to God, as the president said, along with jihad (holy war), dhimmitude (inferior status of non-Muslims) and a corner on the suicide bombing market — but it does not have "a commitment to religious freedom." And, that goes even after excluding al Qaeda, the Taliban and the entire royal family of Saudi Arabia. Take Egypt. According to a report I first saw posted at www.robertspencer.org, a new Web site devoted to both jihad and dhimmitude, a slew of Christian converts from Islam have been arrested since Oct. 21 in Egypt — our modern (moderate?) friend and recipient of billions in U.S. aid — in a crackdown on "apostates." ...
The impulse to hide the truth about Islam — about its connection to terrorism and its disconnection from Western civilization — is a shocking fact of the "war on terrorism." Addressing reporters on the day of his Ramadan dinner, Mr. Bush said Muslim leaders have asked him: "Why do Americans think Muslims are terrorists?" Instead of answering, "Because an unending pattern of catastrophic terrorism against the United States has been perpetrated by Muslims, that's why," Mr. Bush replied: 'That's not what Americans think. Americans think terrorists are evil people who have hijacked a great religion.'" (See also Robert Spencer's new site: Jihad Watch.)

"U.S. Officials See Hussein's Hand in Attacks on Americans in Iraq" (Douglas Jehl, The New York Times, 2003/10/31)
"Saddam Hussein may be playing a significant role in coordinating and directing attacks by his loyalists against American forces in Iraq, senior American officials said Thursday. ...
Mr. Hussein is believed to have met with Izzat Ibrahim, an Iraqi general who was officially the second highest ranking member of the Iraqi government at the time of the invasion, and who is described by American officials as playing a significant role in the insurgency.
General Ibrahim, who is No. 6 on the American most-wanted list, has been described by some Defense Department officials as having recently been in contact with members of Ansar al-Islam, a militant group that had been based in northern Iraq before the American-led invasion and which is linked to Al Qaeda." (See also: "Saddam aide linked to al-Qaida, claims US" (The Guardian, 2003/10/30) and "Saddam's New War" (Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2003/10/29))

"U.N. Pulls Staff Out of Baghdad While It Reviews Security" (Kirk Semple, The New York Times, 2003/10/31)
"The United Nations is withdrawing its international staff from Baghdad while it re-evaluates the security situation following a series of deadly suicide bombings in Iraq earlier this week, officials from the organization confirmed today. ...
The announcement follows a decision by the International Committee of the Red Cross to scale back its presence in Iraq. ...
Doctors Without Borders has also announced it will pull out its non-Iraqi staff of seven."

Thursday, October 30, 2003

News and commentary:

"Amid the bombs and the rubble, the country is still slowly on the mend" (The Economist, 2003/11/30)
An article on the rebuilding of Iraq: "For many Iraqis, living standards have already risen a lot. Boosted by government make-work programmes, day labourers are getting double their pre-war wages. A university dean's pay has gone up fourfold, a policeman's by a factor of ten. ...
The short-term economic priority, everyone concurs, is fixing the appalling infrastructure. Slowness on this score, reckon many Iraqis, has gained America more ill-will even than its soldiers' itchy trigger fingers. Yet here, at last, real progress is being made — and that is without counting the looming bonanza of $33 billion in aid that Iraq has just been promised at last week's conference in Madrid. ...
The southern capital, Basra, for example, got only two-to-four hours of electricity a day before the war — and now has a power surplus. Baghdad still works to a regime of three-hours-on/three-hours-off, but the country as a whole is producing as much power as before the war. By spring it will be up by 25%. Within three years, if America sticks to its plan of sinking $5 billion-plus into the sector, power output should have more than doubled."

"Calling evil by its name" (Tony Parkinson, The Age, 2003/10/30)
Via Backspin: "The bombing of the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad exposes yet again the absurdity of attempts to portray the wave of violence in Iraq as other than a vicious and calculated campaign of terror. ...
In anyone's language, this was an unconscionable act of terror.
So why are some of the world's media still walking on eggshells, groping for euphemisms such as "organised resistance" as if attempting somehow to legitimise these bleakest of atrocities? ...
The terms of the debate are by now familiar: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." In the Middle East, this has become code language for extending a blanket exemption to Palestinian extremists who target Israeli civilians on school buses, at seaside cafes, shopping malls or nightclubs.
This is the conflict at the heart of the definitional dispute. But for how much longer can these semantics go on? ...
In Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter-Terrorism and the Threat to Democracy, Hocking says terrorism is a term mired in ambiguity, its meaning culturally and politically defined. She cites approvingly an opinion published in the Alternative Law Journal last year, which insists that "terrorism exists only in the eye of the Western beholder; it has no independent reality".
Hocking goes on to complain that the use of the term by Western governments "abstracts specific instances of political violence from their political and social contexts" and "averts consideration of complex questions of causation".
In the spirit of Noam Chomsky, she argues there is a sense in which the war on terror "is all about language".
All this may pass for a worthy debate in some legal and academic circles but, in appraising events such as the bombing of the Red Cross offices, and in searching for consistent and coherent responses, this approach becomes not only circular but surreal."

"The 'Savage' Left" (Cara Remal, Who knew?, 2003/10/30)
As does Cara Remal: "I have to say that I agree with Roger Simon and the Democratic Senator Zell Miller on this one. Unless the delusions of the far "left" stop infecting these candidates, unless they stop hallucinating that Iraq is Vietnam, unless they get off the opportunists bus they’re riding on, unless they see that the (party) problems of nine little candidates don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, and if the election were held today, even though I disagree with Bush domestically, I would have to vote for George W. Bush. No contest.
These guys, as well as the rest of the American and European "left", are profoundly far away from reality. "Conservatives believe it when they see it and Liberals see it when they believe it"* is horrifically appropriate these days. This period will be written about as the era that the "left" totally abandoned every last stitch of moral progressive principle in favor of the adrenaline rush of the Bush=Hitler Rage Fest. They have totally lost it."

"I'm with Zell!" (Roger L. Simon, rogerlsimon.com, 2003/10/30)
Roger L. Simon also endorses Bush: "Still, if the election were held today, like Georgia Democratic Senator Zell Miller, I would vote for George W. Bush without a second’s hesitation. That’s how bad I think the Democrats are on foreign policy, by far the most important issue of our day. I will go further. They are one of the sleaziest collections of low-down opportunists I have ever seen on one stage together short of that crowd of tobacco executives who testified "No, sirree, I didn’t know that nicotine was addictive." These dudes and one dudette (Mosely-Braun) are downright dangerous. (Okay, Lieberman can be sane, but he doesn’t seem to have a chance in that bizarre atmosphere). And here’s why I think they’re dangerous — they're acting like we’re still in Vietnam when we’re in a real war of civilizations. We’re on the right side this time. Haven't they seen the videotapes of Baathists chopping their own countrymens' heads off and pushing them off roofs? Haven't they seen the unmarked graves of children? What's going on with these people? Do they think suicide bombers driving into the Red Cross are pacifist Buddhist monks?" (Note: Found via Michael J. Totten. See also: "Zell Miller Endorses Bush" (Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard, 2003/10/29))

"Outpost"
(Ilkka Uimonen, ei8th, 2002)
From ei8th's interesting project "Israel/Palestine": "A unique and constantly updated online forum where readers present conflicting photographic points of view on 'Israel and Palestine'"

"The Church and Islam. "La Civiltà Cattolica" Breaks the Ceasefire" (Sandro Magister, L'Espresso, October 2003)
Via the invaluable Little Green Footballs: "'La Civiltà Cattolica,' edited by a group of Jesuits in Rome, is a very special magazine. Every one of its articles is reviewed by the Vatican secretary of state before publication. So the magazine reflects his thought faithfully.
In its October 18 edition, "La Civiltà Cattolica" published a strikingly severe article on the condition of Christians in Muslim countries. The central thesis of the article is that "in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike and conquering face"; that "for almost a thousand years, Europe lived under its constant threat"; and that what remains of the Christian population in Islamic countries is still subjected to "perpetual discrimination," with episodes of bloody persecution.
What follows is an ample extract from the article printed in "La Civiltà Cattolica" no. 3680, October 18, 2003, and used here with the kind permission of the magazine:

... In conclusion, we may state in historical terms that in all the places where Islam imposed itself by military force, which has few historical parallels for its rapidity and breadth, Christianity, which had been extraordinarily vigorous and rooted for centuries, practically disappeared or was reduced to tiny islands in an endless Islamic sea. It is not easy to explain how that could have happened. [...]

In reality, the reduction of Christianity to a small minority was not due to violent religious persecution, but to the conditions in which Christians were forced to live in the organization of the Islamic state. [...] ...

But the conquering spirit of Islam did not die after Lepanto. The Islamic advance into Europe was definitively halted only in 1683, when Vienna was liberated from the Ottoman siege by the Christian armies under the command of John III Sobieski, the king of Poland. [...] In reality, for almost a thousand years Europe was under constant threat from Islam, which twice put its survival in serious danger.

Thus, in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike face and a conquering spirit for the glory of Allah. [...] against the "idolaters" who must be given a choice: convert to Islam, or be killed. [...] As for the "people of the Book" (Christians, Jews, and "Sabeans"), Muslims must "fight them until their members pay tribute, one by one, humiliated" (Koran, Sura 9:29). [...]"

"Saddam aide linked to al-Qaida, claims US" (The Guardian, 2003/10/30)
"US defence officials believe that one of Saddam Hussein's senior aides is working with radical Islamists on a suicide bombing campaign in Iraq, it was reported today.
The Associated Press news agency said it had been told by a senior Pentagon figure that two captured members of Ansar al-Islam, a northern Iraqi militant group, have named Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri as a force behind some of the attacks.
The second-in-command of Saddam's revolutionary command council, Mr al-Douri was one of the former Iraqi leader's few longtime confidants and his daughter was married to Saddam's son, Uday.
Mr al-Douri is number six on the US's list of its most wanted Iraqis.
The US says that Ansar al-Islam, which it claims has links to al-Qaida, controls large numbers of non-Iraqi fighters in the country." (See also: "Saddam's New War" (Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2003/10/29))

"Our Syrian friend recuperating" (Zeyad, healing Iraq, 2003/10/30)
A terrorist group threatens all Iraqis who are not terrorists: "The minister of Health Khudheir Fadhil stated yesterday that the failed suicide bomber had recovered completely. ... Well, it appeared after questioning him that he is a 22 year old Yemeni who had entered Iraq legally by his Syrian passport two days ago. An Iraqi doctor described him as dressed elegantly and said that the bomber refused to talk at first and alleged that he was mute. ...
The attack on Al-Khadhraa' police station was also carried out by an ambulance. The ministry of Health has denied that any of its ambulances were stolen. I wonder where they got them. A policeman from that station was talking about a threat letter they received a week ago signed by a Sheikh Abdullah, the leader of an Assad Allah group (haven't heard of that one). It goes like this: "Repent fast and fight in the name of Allah. Jihad is a duty of every Iraqi citizen today. Do not follow the ignorants who refuse to call for Jihad against the infidels. Whoever kills you instead of the Americans is not to blame. Blame only yourselves. You have entered an alliance with the Americans to kill your Mujahedeen brethren instead of supporting them and fighting the infidels along with them". That together with a bunch of Quran verses that warn believers not to side with their enemies. Typical stuff."

"The multicultural thought police" (Leo McKinstry, The Spectator, from the 2003/11//01 issue)
"In our modern secular society, we pride ourselves on our supposed tolerance. We sneer at the bigotry of the past, wondering how the monstrous cruelty of events such as the Spanish Inquisition could ever have occurred. But we should not be so smug. For in Britain today we have our own powerful creed — multiculturalism — which is imposed on the public by a political establishment that is brimming with self-righteous fervour. And anyone refusing to accept this dogma is likely to be branded a heretic, bullied and brainwashed until they change their opinions. ...
Instead of facing up to reality, the multiculturalists are becoming more authoritarian in their suppression of negative thinking. In their eagerness to impose the ideology of diversity, they are like the old Soviet Politburo, which pretended that communism had created an earthly paradise and that anyone who claimed otherwise was either a crank or a criminal."

"It's No Vietnam" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2003/10/30)
"Since 9/11, we've seen so much depraved violence we don't notice anymore when we hit a new low. Monday's attacks in Baghdad were a new low. Just stop for one second and contemplate what happened: A suicide bomber, driving an ambulance loaded with explosives, crashed into the Red Cross office and blew himself up on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This suicide bomber was not restrained by either the sanctity of the Muslim holy day or the sanctity of the Red Cross. All civilizational norms were tossed aside. This is very unnerving. Because the message from these terrorists is: "There are no limits. We have created our own moral universe, where anything we do against Americans or Iraqis who cooperate with them is O.K." ...
The great irony is that the Baathists and Arab dictators are opposing the U.S. in Iraq because — unlike many leftists — they understand exactly what this war is about. They understand that U.S. power is not being used in Iraq for oil, or imperialism, or to shore up a corrupt status quo, as it was in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Arab world during the cold war. They understand that this is the most radical-liberal revolutionary war the U.S. has ever launched — a war of choice to install some democracy in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world."

"Colonel in Iraq refuses to resign" (Rowan Scarborough; The Washington Times, 2003/10/30)
How to lose a war the politically correct way: "The attorney for Lt. Col. Allen B. West said yesterday his client will not quit the Army, rejecting a prosecutor's offer to resign rather than face charges he threatened an Iraqi detainee to gain information on a planned guerrilla attack. ...
The prosecutor has offered Col. West two choices: quit now, short of his 20-year retirement eligibility tomorrow, or face criminal proceedings that could lead to a trial. The assault charges carry a maximum penalty of eight years in prison. ...
The Times contacted Col. West via e-mail earlier this week, and he responded with an account of his actions in August.
He was working as a liaison with the town council of Saba al Boor. His unit learned through an informant of impending attacks. The next day, some of his soldiers were attacked on a road leading to the town.
The informant said an Iraqi police officer was involved. Col. West had the policeman detained. When two interrogators failed to gain any information, Col. West went to the detention center, brought the detainee outside and fired his 9 mm pistol twice to scare him into talking.
Col. West said the detainee then provided the names of two accomplices and told of another planned sniper attack the next day. ...
Said Elaine Donnelly, head of the Center for Military Readiness: 'Excuse me while I go to look up Marquis of Queensberry. No wonder we haven't gotten any information on Hussein's present location from all of those 'deck of cards' people we have captured. Has the Army lost its institutional mind? Or maybe they have forgotten that a state of war exists in Iraq.'"

"Red Cross And U.N. To Reduce Iraq Staffs" (Theola Labbé and Colum Lynch, The Washington Post, 2003/10/30)
"The United Nations and the Red Cross will scale back their presence in Iraq, officials said Wednesday, responding to the threat of new terrorist attacks after a suicide car bombing at Red Cross headquarters. ...
U.N. officials said Secretary General Kofi Annan had decided to withdraw all 15 remaining international staff members from Baghdad. Annan discussed his decision with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who argued against the withdrawal. U.S. officials expressed concern that the U.N. departure could increase pressure on private aid agencies to reconsider their roles in Iraq. ...
The International Committee of the Red Cross announced it would withdraw some of its 30 foreign staff members in Iraq. The organization said, however, that it would continue operations in Iraq."

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

News and commentary:

"The real threat to Iraqis is coming now from Western defeatists" (Johann Hari, The Independent/johannhari.com, 2003/10/29)
"This time last year, I visited a Marsh Arab family crammed into a tiny straw hut in the stinking heat in the Iraqi desert. It was not their poverty or their grief - overwhelming though they were - that changed my mind and made me resolve to support the military overthrow of this Stalinist tyranny. It was the fact that in this - the tiny patch of sand and straw that remained to them - they were forced to hang a vast, menacing portrait of the man who had done all this.
If Blair and Bush had listened to the opponents of the war, they would still be festering in that shack. Instead, the marshes are being flooded with water once again. After the liberation (not a word Marsh Arabs scoff at), they began to hack away at the dams that destroyed their lives, and sympathetic officials have opened the massive al-Karkha dam to help them. Tony Blair always said that "the greatest beneficiaries of the war will be the Iraqi people." No, this is not the primary reason why we went to war, but the liberation of the Marsh Arabs was an entirely predictable result of military action - and many of you marched to stop it. ...
Do you imagine that the people launching savage attacks on aid agencies in Baghdad care about the Marsh Arabs? Do you delude yourself that they care about the Iraqi people at all? Thugs have blown up the United Nations and Red Cross headquarters. What more will it take for good liberal people who opposed the war to realise that these are not democrats who want a decent Iraq? What kind of Iraq do you suppose these bombers want to build?
You might have doubts about America being a friend of Iraqi democracy - given their one-time backing for Saddam and a myriad of tyrants, all sane people should - but you can be absolutely certain that the bombers - attackers of the Red Cross - are its resolute enemy. America helped the Kurds to build democracy in Northern Iraq; neither jihadists nor Baathists have ever built democracy anywhere. America offers some hope; the bombers, none." (See also: AMAR rappeal - "Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees.")

"The dirty D-word" (Kenan Malik, The Guardian, 2003/10/29)
Malik on the dogma of diversity: "The unthinking pursuit of diversity not only gives legitimacy to the likes of Nick Griffin. It helps divide communities more effectively than racism. Take Bradford. From the beginnings of mass immigration in the 50s, racism has helped create deep divisions in the city. But it also helped generate political struggles against discrimination, the impact of which was to create bridges across ethnic, racial and cultural fissures. In response to the militancy of these struggles, the local council in the early 80s rolled out its multicultural programme, including a 12-point race-relations plan, which declared that every section of the "multiracial, multicultural city" had "an equal right to maintain its own identity, culture, language, religion and customs". Council funding became linked to cultural identity, so different groups began asserting their differences ever more fiercely. The consequence has been not simply to entrench the divisions created by racism, but to make cross-cultural interaction more difficult. ...
I travelled with a group of Asian 10-year olds from the all-Asian Farnham Primary School in Great Horton as they visited their white counterparts at the largely white St Anthony's Catholic school. For most of them, it was their third trip. "What was it like the first time you visited St Anthony's?" I asked one child.
"I was nervous," he said.
"Why were you nervous?"
"Because I didn't know what they'd be like. I'd never met them before."
"You'd never met white children before?"
"No."
"Do you know any white children apart from those at St Anthony's?"
"No."
Could this really be Britain, 2003?" (Note: The essay is a slightly shortened version of "The dirty D-word" (Kenan Malik, kenanmalik.com, 2003/10/29))

"Saddam's New War" (Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2003/10/29)
"There is growing evidence that the devastating series of terrorist attacks bedeviling U.S. troops in Iraq may have been planned by Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants as part of a well-coordinated guerilla war strategy that was hatched well before the U.S. invasion of Iraq last March, U.S. intelligence sources tell Newsweek. ...
The belief among officials who are focusing attention on this intelligence is that cells of Saddam loyalists, possibly responding to plans made before the war, first tried out a few improvised, small-scale guerilla attacks on U.S. troops in the weeks after the overthrow of the regime. When they found that these were effective, and not that difficult to carry out successfully, the terrorists' ambitions grew. Later those latent networks of Baathist guerillas started to team up with Iraqi jihadis and so-called "foreign fighters" who began to flock to Iraq from neighboring Arab countries. ...
The terrorist infrastructure inside Iraq may be even more complex than pessimists inside the U.S. government fear. According to Mullah Krekar, the now-exiled leader of Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish Jihadi group that some U.S. officials have recently blamed for the wave of anti-U.S. attacks in Iraq, and at least four Islamic groups linked by ideology or personnel to the international jihadi movement that includes Al-Qaeda are operating in Iraq, along with at least two Saddam-ite groups and cells from Ansar al-Islam itself." (See also: "Iraqi 'secret plan' orders mayhem" (Paul Martin, The Washington Times, 2003/06/09) and "The New Arab Way of War" (Peter Layton, Naval Institute Proceedings, from the March 2003 issue))

"Your Taxes for PLO Propaganda" (David Bedein, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/10/29)
Bedein on how tax money funds PLO propaganda. One outrageous example is a seminar for Palestinians on how to effectively manipulate the media, where Eric Weiner of NPR suggests that Israelis should "have to justify their existence" in stories for better effect: "The participants are moderators Dr. Khatib and Rami Khouri of Jordanian television, Tudor Lomas and two Western journalists: Eric Weiner, of National Public Radio (NPR) - another U.S. taxpayer funded enterprise - and Lyse Doucete of the BBC.
Readers are first told by Weiner that, "being balanced, according to their mandate, can be frustrating" and urges the audience/reader "to present your stories on a human level and not rely on the facts." Present tear-jerkers in which Israelis "have to justify their existence, which makes it easier to get through to us."
Ms. Doucete, who refers to homicide bombers as "honor" killers, believes "her job is to translate" rather than simply report the news, because 'Israel is led by a Prime Minister who believes that it is not Israel's policy that is wrong, just that they have to explain it better.'"

"Syrian Ramadan TV Series on Hizbullah's Al-Manar: 'Diaspora,' Episode I" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 598, 2003/10/29)
"During the month of Ramadan, Hizbullah's Al-Manar satellite television channel, which is viewed worldwide, will broadcast a 30-part antisemitic Syrian-produced series titled Al-Shatat ("Diaspora"). The series purports to tell the story of Zionism from 1812 to the establishment of the state of Israel. Like the Egyptian series Knight Without a Horse which aired last Ramadan, this Syrian series also depicts a "global Jewish government" similar to that described in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. MEMRI will be releasing a subtitled video of the series once it has completed its airing. The following are excerpts from the first episode of the series, broadcast October 27, 2003:
Episode 1 is preceded by the following statement in text: 'Two thousand years ago, the Jewish sages established a global government, aimed at ruling the world, subjugating it to the precepts of the Talmud, and segregating Jews completely from the other peoples. Then, the Jews turned to inciting wars and internal strife and the [various] countries condemned them. They falsely presented themselves as persecuted, and waited for their savior, the 'Messiah,' who would complete the vengeance upon the 'gentiles' that their God Jehovah had begun. In the early 19th century, the Jewish global government decided to escalate the conspiracies. It dissolved itself in order to create a new secret Jewish global government headed by [Mayer] Amschel Rothschild.'"

"Broken Baghdad Brutal, Bloody and bellowing" (Tish Durkin, New York Observer, from the 2003/11/03 issue)
"Americans, of course, have the right to criticize the occupation. But they also have an obligation to criticize it proportionately, accurately, realistically — and, above all, with the Iraqis constantly in mind.
Of course, I cannot speak for the Iraqis. But after spending four of the past six months talking to Iraqis, I do feel that it is relatively safe to make the following five points:
One, most Iraqis do not want America to leave now or very soon. Two, while it is true that a huge proportion of Iraqis have at least some very negative opinions about the war and life here since, it is also true that a huge proportion of those opinions boil down to anger at the Americans for not being enough of a presence here, not anger at the Americans for being too much of a presence. Three, there is very little to support the notion that Iraqis would be, or feel, notably better off under United Nations occupation than under a United States–led occupation. Four, although the Bush administration should be hung out to dry for whatever it has lied about, it is widely accepted here that various of their pet assertions happen to coincide with the truth. Iraqis do not need Mr. Bush to tell them that most of the troublemakers here are not resistance fighters, but highly paid, often imported thugs; Iraqis have been saying that from the start. Fifth, a steady stream of terrible events has generated a steady stream of legitimately negative news stories about Iraq, the sum effect of which seems to have been to leave the rest of the world with the impression that Iraq now appears in the dictionary next to "unqualified disaster"; that hardly anything is improving here, and that hardly anyone is or feels any better off than he or she did before the war. This impression is false."

"We're Not Losing the Culture Wars Anymore" (Brian C. Anderson, City Journal. from the Autumn 2003 issue)
An interesting article on how Fox News Channels, the blogosphere and South Park have revolutionized the media landscape:
"It's hard to overstate the impact that news and opinion websites like the Drudge Report, NewsMax, and Dow Jones's OpinionJournal are having on politics and culture, as are current-event "blogs" — individual or group web diaries — like AndrewSullivan, InstaPundit, and "The Corner" department of NationalReviewOnline (NRO), where the editors and writers argue, joke around, and call attention to articles elsewhere on the web. This whole universe of web-based discussion has been dubbed the "blogosphere."
While there are several fine left-of-center sites, the blogosphere currently tilts right, albeit idiosyncratically, reflecting the hard-to-pigeonhole politics of some leading bloggers. Like talk radio and Fox News, the right-leaning sites fill a market void. "Many bloggers felt shut out by institutions that have adopted — explicitly or implicitly — a left-wing orthodoxy," says Erin O’Connor, whose blog, Critical Mass, exposes campus PC gobbledygook. The orthodox Left’s blame-America-first response to September 11 has also helped tilt the blogosphere rightward. "There were damned few noble responses to that cursed day from the 'progressive'part of the political spectrum," avers Los Angeles–based blogger and journalist Matt Welch, "so untold thousands of people just started blogs, in anger," Welch among them. 'I was pushed into blogging on September 16, 2001, in direct response to reading five days' worth of outrageous bullshit in the media from people like Noam Chomsky and Robert Jensen.'" (Note: Coincidentally, Watch started on the very same day and for the very same reason.)

"Anti-Semitism in Sweden" (Arnold Beichman, The Washington Times, 2003/10/29)
Ouch. Beichman on my "inadequately translated" Swedish article on Muslim Jew-hatred ("Silence surrounds Muslim Jew-hatred" (Sverker Oredsson and Mikael Tossavainen, Dagens Nyheter/Watch, 2003/10/20)). I know, I shouldn't translate — at least not from Swedish to English — and as a rule I don't, except for a paragraph here and there. But I just couldn't help myself with this one, as I thought it should be made available in English.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in helping out with the translation, please contact me at watch-at-windsofchange.net. Indeed, it would be very cool to find someone who is interested in translating Swedish articles for Watch on a more permanent basis:
"At some point the European democracies, like Sweden, will have to decide how far freedom of expression and other civil liberties extend when Web sites in several European languages, including Swedish, are publishing blood libels against Jewish citizens. The American philosopher, Arthur O. Lovejoy, has written:
'The conception of freedom is not one which implies the legitimacy and inevitability of its own suicide. It is, on the contrary, a conception which defines the limits of its own applicability; what it implies is that there is one kind of freedom which is inadmissible — the freedom to destroy freedom. The defender of freedom of thought and speech is not morally bound to enter the fight with both hands tied behind his back.'"

"King and Country" (Bernard Lewis and R. James Woolsey, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/10/29)
Lewis and Woolsey on "the Hashemite solution for Iraq": "The key is that Iraq already has a constitution. It was legally adopted in 1925 and Iraq was governed under it until the series of military, then Baathist, coups began in 1958 and brought over four decades of steadily worsening dictatorship. Iraqis never chose to abandon their 1925 constitution - it was taken from them. ...
Selecting the right monarch for the transitional government would be vitally important. Conveniently, the 1925 constitution provides that the people of Iraq are deemed to have "confided . . . a trust" to "King Faisal, son of Hussain, and to his heirs . . . ." If the allies who liberated Iraq recognized an heir of this Hashemite line as its constitutional monarch, and this monarch agreed to help bring about a modern democracy under the rule of law, such a structure could well be the framework for a much smoother transition to democracy than now seems at hand. ...
The respect enjoyed by the Hashemites has been earned. They have had a generally deserved reputation for tolerance and coexistence with other faiths and other branches of Islam. Many Iraqis look back on the era of Hashemite rule from the 1920s to the 1950s as a golden age. ...
The king should be a Hashemite prince with political experience and no political obligations or commitments. In view of the nation's Shiite majority, the prime minister should be a modern Shiite with a record of opposition to tyranny and oppression. Such leaders would be well-suited to begin the process that would in time lead to genuinely free and fair elections, sound amendments to the 1925 Iraqi Constitution, and the election of a truly representative governing body."

"Under suspicion: Hub mosque leader tied to radical groups" (Jonathan Wells et al., The Boston Herald, 2003/10/29)
The second of a two-part investigative series: "The leader of the local Islamic organization preparing to build a major new mosque in Boston is allegedly linked to a network of Muslim companies and charitable groups in Virginia suspected by federal investigators of providing material support to Islamic terrorists.
The chairman of the board of trustees of the Islamic Society of Boston, which has city approval to construct a $22 million cultural center and mosque in Roxbury, was also a leader of an Indiana-based Muslim organization known for its anti-Western rhetoric and for providing a platform for radical Islamists, some of whom have been linked to terrorism.
The chairman, Osama M. Kandil, has been a leader of the Islamic Society of Boston for more than a decade. In addition to serving on the group's board of trustees for many years, public records show he has been a trustee of the group's real estate arm since 1993, when it purchased property for its current mosque in Cambridge." (See also:"Radical Islam: Outspoken cleric, jailed activist tied to new Hub mosque" (Jonathan Wells et al., The Boston Herald, 2003/10/28))

"Speeches Called Propaganda" (Walter Pincus, The Washington Post, 2003/10/29)
I really don't get these outrages against the use of "evil" as a description of, well, evil. Reagan was lambasted for naming the Soviet Union The Evil Empire. Wesley Clark dubs Axis of Evil "the single worst formulation in the last half century of American foreign policy". And I don't think he means the debatable part of it - which rather is defining their relation as an Axis. To paraphrase George Jones: The big problem is not the existence of evil regimes, but the reluctance by others to define them as such:
"To many Iraqis, though, Bremer's prime-time addresses are more reminiscent of the regular television appearances of former president Saddam Hussein, according to both American and Iraqi media specialists who have studied IMN, the Iraqi Media Network. Iraqis see the station not as a vehicle for free speech but "as the mouthpiece of the CPA," the BBC World Service Trust reported after studying the stations this summer.
In last week's address just before the holy month of Ramadan, Bremer repeatedly referred to Hussein as "the evil one." "You must not lose hope, because you have seen the evil one go," Bremer said at one point. "You, the Iraqi people, whom the evil one was bound to protect, he instead tortured, he instead murdered. You, the Iraqi people, whom the evil one was bound to feed, he instead starved."
Flynt L. Leverett, a former CIA Middle East counterterrorism analyst who served on the Bush National Security Council and is now at the Brookings Institution, said: 'He is using religious and cultural symbolism, but it is an obvious resort to propaganda. It is not inappropriate, there is a war going on, but he is doing it in so obvious a way.'"

"Assassins in Baghdad Kill a Deputy Mayor" (Theola Labbé, The Washington Post, 2003/10/29)
"The warnings came from his mother, sister, four brothers, and friends — and from people who called late at night and threatened harm.
Stop working with the Americans.
Faris Abdul Razzaq Assam, one of Baghdad's three deputy mayors, heard the messages but listened to his heart, family members said. He continued to work on water projects and set up neighborhood councils. He supervised thousands of employees as the head of city technical services.
When Assam returned Sunday from an international donors' conference in Madrid, he excitedly told his family that he had secured billions of dollars in pledges. "I'm going to turn Baghdad into heaven," he said.
Hours later, witnesses said, two gunmen walked into an outdoor cafe where Assam was playing dominoes and shot him in the head at point-blank range. The assailants slipped into the night and remain at large."

"Spy chief says Iraq moved weapons" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2003/10/29)
"Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the nation's top satellite spy director said yesterday.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria.
Other goods probably were sent throughout Iraq in small quantities and documents probably were stashed in the homes of weapons scientists, Gen. Clapper told defense reporters at a breakfast."

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

News and commentary:

"Mahathir is right: Jews do rule the world" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2003/10/28)
"Just because you are paranoid it doesn't prove that they are not out to get you. Paranoid, to be sure, was Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's allegation that the "Jews rule this world by proxy" on October 16. Whether Dr Mahathir himself is paranoid, or whether he adapted his words to the paranoia of his audience makes little difference. Through the twisted prism of paranoia, the facts on the ground do indeed suggest that the Jews rule the world.
Europeans who turn up their noses at Malaysia's leader should recall that just 60 years ago, Europe's official ideology (under Nazi conquest) agreed with Mahathir's claim that the Jews "invented and successfully promoted socialism, communism, human rights and democracy". That is where Mahathir doubtless got the idea in the first place. ...
In his own paranoid fashion, Mahathir has advanced the cause of mutual understanding between the Islamic world and America. Mahathir has made clear that the Jews do, indeed, rule the world, at least in the sense that he and his compatriots understand the words "to rule". And he has made clear to Americans that the filter through which the Islamic world views America is a form of paranoia that cannot quickly be cured." (See also: "Jews rule the world: Mahathir" (news.com.au, 2003/10/16))

"Clark Blames Bush for 9-11 Intel Failure" (Nedra Pickler, AP/The Guardian, 2003/10/28)
If America wants this, it's time to leave the planet: "Democrat Wesley Clark on Tuesday blamed President Bush for the intelligence failures that contributed to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"There is no way this administration can walk away from its responsibility for 9-11," Clark told a conference, titled "New American Strategies for Security and Peace," "You can't blame something like this on lower level intelligence officers, however badly they communicated memos with each other. ... The buck rests with the commander in chief, right on George W. Bush's desk.'' ...
Clark argued that Bush has manipulated facts, stifled dissent, retaliated against detractors, shown disdain for allies and started a war without just cause. He said Bush put Americans at risk by pursuing war in Iraq instead of hunting for Osama bin Laden and other terrorists, pulling a "bait-and-switch" by going after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein instead of al Qaida terrorists.
He called Bush's labeling of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an axis of evil in his January 2002 State of the Union address - 'the single worst formulation in the last half century of American foreign policy.'" (See also Andrew Sullivan's fisking of Wesley Clark and John Kerry: "Fog of War" (Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic, 2003/10/27))

"'A Media Coup'" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/10/28)
"How's this for an offensive headline: "Attack Is a Media Coup for Iraq Resistance, Experts Say." That appeared on the front page of yesterday's Los Angeles Times. There's something almost obscenely decadent about a newspaper reporting on an attack against Americans as if it were a public-relations campaign.
Along similar lines, here's the first paragraph of a story in today's Long Island Newsday: "The latest rocket and bomb attacks in Baghdad are only the most recent in a series of setbacks for the Bush administration that threaten to turn Iraq into a political liability just as the 2004 election cycle is beginning."
Oh, and by the way, some people were killed." (See also: "Attack Is a Media Coup for Iraq Resistance, Experts Say" (Alissa J. Rubin, Los Angeles Times, 2003/10/27) and "Political Threat To Bush Growing" (Ken Fireman, Newsday.com, 2003/10/28))

"Sontag and the killers" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/10/28)
"This just in from the AP:

New York-born writer and human rights activist Susan Sontag on Tuesday criticized U.S. President George W. Bush for not admitting that the U.S invasion in Iraq was wrong and that the Arab country is being driven into chaos.
"You can't expect the government of President Bush to say, 'We made a mistake by invading Iraq,'" said Sontag. "He (Bush) says they (the bombers) are just criminals, amateurs, they are enemies of the Iraqis, we (Americans) are friends of the Iraqis".
"This type of propaganda is not going to change, and if they (the U.S. military) eventually leave Iraq, the message will always say: 'We've won the war.'"

I think what Sontag is saying is that the murderers of the last week are actually the true friends of the Iraqis, and that the Americans are the enemy. I think what she is saying is that Saddam Hussein and his murdering goons are preferable to a democratic and pluralist Iraq. I think what she is saying is that she wants to see the United States defeated by Baathist terrorists. If you ever had any doubts where the far left is headed, listen to Sontag. Before long they will be forced to the logical conclusion of their current hatred of the U.S.: open support for Islamist terror."

"Where Have All the Flower Children Gone?" (Porphyrogenitus, 2003/10/28)
"So, remember before the war, when the Human Shields were going over to Iraq? And whenever someone even hinted that they were supporters of Saddam they would denounce that, and say that no, they abhorred Saddam and his policies but were for the Iraqi people?
Ok, so I've been reading the news accounts of the latest round of bombings in Iraq. I figured that if anything was deserving of such protection as having a ring of human shields to prevent bombing, it might be a Red Cross facility dedicated to succoring the Iraqi people. But no mention of any human shields. But then I thought: Of course, they left Iraq after the fighting (some left during the war). But of course now they should be planning on returning to Iraq, right? Out of the same interest for the well-being of the Iraqi people. I mean, sure, they don't like Bush's policies, but they claimed they didn't like Saddam, either. So I scanned the papers and news wires for stories of their plans to return to Iraq. I haven't found any such stories about any of the former human shields who went to Iraq to protect it from American bombs planning on returning to Iraq to place their bodies between bombs and Red Cross facilities now. But surely they must be doing just that, if they were sincere when they said they did not support Saddam, only the Iraqi people. I just haven't found the stories. Do you happen to know where the human shields are?" (Note: Found via InstaPundit.)

"Krugman Meltdown" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2003/10/28)
"Paul Krugman attempts to defend his ugly column excusing Mahathir Mohamad’s antisemitic speech to the OIC, in a confused piece that plumbs new depths of moral equivalence: A Willful Ignorance. I don't have time to fisk the whole thing (it pretty much fisks itself anyway), but one sentence really sticks out:

Why won't the administration mollify Muslims by firing Lt. Gen. William Boykin, whose anti-Islamic remarks have created vast ill will, from his counterterrorism position?

"Mollify?" This sentence makes more sense if you substitute the first synonym for "mollify" listed at Merriam Webster's dictionary: "appease." He excuses the noxious hatred of Mahathir Mohamad, while at the same time calling for General Boykin to be fired for creating "vast ill will" ... it's just sick, and totally ignores the fact that Islamic ill will toward America and Israel existed long before these charges against General Boykin were trumpeted around the world by our feckless, self-hating media.
Another sentence that reads like it came straight out of one of the worst Arab News articles:

Moderate Muslims would have more faith in America's good intentions if there were at least the appearance of a distinction between the U.S. and the Sharon government — but the administration seeks votes from those who think that supporting Israel means supporting whatever Mr. Sharon does.

Wow.
Krugman is the chief idiotarian at the New York Times, and it has never been more obvious than in this disgusting column." (See also: "A Willful Ignorance" (Paul Krugman, The New York Times, 2003/10/28) and "Anti-Semitism Tolerant?" (Donald Luskin, National Review, 2003/10/22))

"Why History Has No End" (Victor Davis Hanson, City Journal. from the Autumn 2003 issue)
Hanson on the naiveness of Fukuyama's "End of History" theory and the "seismic importance" of the growing split between the U.S. and Europe: "Though the effort to create a "European Union" may offer superficial relief when one considers Europe's bloody history, it in fact constitutes a potential long-term threat to the U.S. and to the world. To the extent that this project succeeds in forging a common European identity, anti-Americanism will likely be its lodestar. But of course, it ultimately will fail, because for most people being a European could never be as meaningful, have such rich cultural and historical resonance, as being a Frenchman or a German. And even in failure, the project could be catastrophic: by denigrating a healthy and natural sense of nationhood, the E.U. risks unleashing a militaristic chauvinism in some of its member states — threatening not only the U.S. but Europe as well. ...
An armed Europe of renascent nationalisms, or one pursuing the creation of a transnational continental super-state, could prove our greatest bane since 1941. That Europe is now militarily weak and hostile does not mean that it will not soon be either powerful and friendly — or powerful and hostile.
These emerging trends require the United States to rethink its relations with Europe. ...
Ultimately, America seeks neither a hostile nor a subservient Europe, but one of confident democratic allies like the U.K.: allies that provide us not only with military partnership but trustworthy guidance too. The U.N. has never really either prevented or ended a war; our democratic friends in World War I and II, along with NATO, sometimes have. We stand a better chance of bringing about such a future if we remember from history that man's nature, for all the centuries' talk about human perfectibility, is unchanging — and that therefore history never ends."

"Antiglobalism's Jewish Problem" (Mark Strauss, Foreign Policy, from the November/December 2003 issue)
An interesting essay on the new anti-Semitism: "The backlash against globalization unites all elements of the political spectrum through a common cause, and in doing so it sometimes fosters a common enemy — what French Jewish leader Roger Cukierman calls an anti-Semitic "brown-green-red alliance" among ultra-nationalists, the populist green movement, and communism's fellow travelers. The new anti-Semitism is unique because it seamlessly stitches together the various forms of old anti-Semitism: The far right's conception of the Jew (a fifth column, loyal only to itself, undermining economic sovereignty and national culture), the far left's conception of the Jew (capitalists and usurers, controlling the international economic system), and the "blood libel" Jew (murderers and modern-day colonial oppressors). ...
The browns and greens are not simply plagiarizing one another’s ideas. They're frequently reading from the same page. In Canada, a lecture by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist David Icke was advertised in lefty magazines such as Shared Vision and Common Ground. ("Canadians voted down free trade and we got it anyway," said one woman who saw the ads and attended the event. "So there has to be something to that.") Far-right nationalists, such as former skinhead Jaroslaw Tomasiewicz, have infiltrated the Polish branch of the international antiglobalization organization ATTAC. The British Fascist Party includes among its list of recommended readings the works of left-wing antiglobalists George Monbiot and Noam Chomsky. A Web site warning of the dangers of "Jewish Plutocracy, Jewish Power" includes links to antiglobalization NGOs such as Corpwatch and Reclaim Democracy." (Note: Thanks to Larry Allen for the pointer.)

"Jihad for Dummies" (Saul Singer, National Review, 2003/10/28)
"What a shot in the arm. The Malaysian premier tells us that we not only control the world, but that Jews invented socialism, Communism, human rights, and democracy, "so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others." Flattery will get you everywhere. ...
But the significance of Mahathir's speech lies neither in its anti-Semitism, nor in the moderation that sophisticates argue was hidden behind it. In essence, the speech was a pep talk for jihad.
Look at the tension between Mahathir's two key realizations: "Over the past 50 years of fighting in Palestine we have not achieved any result. We have in fact worsened our situation." "It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews."
Mahathir correctly concludes that the Muslim war to eradicate Israel has been a dismal failure. But his solution is to use more modern tools to find a better way to accomplish the same end. ...
Those who see Mahathir as a moderate are confusing the trappings of modernization with the modernization of the mind. Muslims, including the most fundamentalist variety, would be happy to embrace a very modern device, the nuclear bomb, in the service of an aim as primitive as the caveman's club." (See also: "Jews rule the world: Mahathir" (news.com.au, 2003/10/16))

"With us, or with the terrorists" (The Washington Times, 2003/10/28)
"As more Syrian links to attacks in Iraq are exposed, the European Union (EU) is increasing economic links to Syria. In Damascus, a weekend business conference funded by the EU brought together 180 European officials and business executives and 226 of their counterparts from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. The goal was to strengthen business cooperation and pave the way for a Syrian-EU trade pact by the end of the year.
It is clear that this European coddling of Syria is a direct response to the growing movement toward American sanctions against the nation. ...
And of course, there's France. "History has shown us that they were not effective and created more problems than they solved," said French President Jacques Chirac about sanctions. His government is pushing the EU's policy to increase trade with Damascus. Monsieur Chirac seems to have forgotten that French business deals with Saddam Hussein did not encourage democracy in Iraq. It is difficult to determine whether the European Union is for us — or for the terrorists."

"Begala Award Nominee" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/10/28)
"'Fear breeds hatred, and Bush's policies create a lot of both. U.S. citizens like Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi disappear into the night, never to be heard from again. A concentration camp rises at Guantánamo. Stasi-like spies tap our phones and read our mail; thanks to the ironically-named Patriot Act, these thugs don't even need a warrant. As individual rights are trampled, corporate profits are sacrosanct. An aggressive, expansionist military invades other nations "preemptively" to eliminate the threat of non-existent weapons, and American troops die to enrich a company that buys off the Vice President.' - Ted Rall, proud Bush-hater." (See also: