Archived news and commentary: June 2 - 9, 2002

2002/06/24 - 2002/06/30
2002/06/17 - 2002/06/23
2002/06/10 - 2002/06/16
2002/06/03 - 2002/06/09
2002/05/27 - 2002/06/02
2002/05/20 - 2002/05/26
2002/05/13 - 2002/05/19
2002/05/06 - 2002/05/12
2002/04/29 - 2002/05/05
2002/04/22 - 2002/04/28
2002/04/15 - 2002/04/21
2002/04/08 - 2002/04/14
2002/04/01 - 2002/04/07

Sunday, June 9, 2002

News and commentary:

"A New Round of Anger and Humiliation: Islam after 9/11" (Daniel Pipes, danielpipes.org, 2002/06/09)
An article from the collection "Our Brave New World: Essays on the Impact of September 11" (2002): "The pattern is clear: So long as Americans submitted passively to murderous attacks by militant Islam, this movement gained support among Muslims. When Americans finally took up arms to fight militant Islam, its forces were overwhelmed and its appeal quickly diminished. Victory on the battlefield, in other words, has not only the obvious advantage of protecting the United States but also the important side-effect of lancing the anti-American boil that spawned those attacks in the first place. The implication is clear: There is no substitute for victory. If the U.S. government wishes to weaken its strategic enemy, militant Islam, it must take two steps. First, continue the war on terror globally, using appropriate means, starting with Afghanistan but going on to wherever militant Islam poses a threat, in Muslim-majority countries (such as Saudi Arabia), in Muslim-minority countries (such as the Philippines), and even in the United States itself. As this effort brings success, secondly Washington should promote moderate Muslims. Not only will they represent a wholesome change from the totalitarianism of militant Islam but they, and they alone, can address the trauma of Islam and propose ideas that will ease the way for one sixth of humanity fully to modernize."

"Jihad 101" (Martin Kramer, Middle East Quarterly, from the Spring 2002 issue)
Kramer on the art of apologetics as practiced by many Islam "experts": "Jihad is perhaps the most loaded word in the lexicon of Islam's relations with the West. Over the last twenty years, it has been invoked by a succession of Muslim movements to justify their violence. Terrorist groups, some of them infamous for suicide bombings, have even named themselves "Islamic Jihad." And Usama bin Ladin described his terror campaign as a jihad. After September 11, America looked expectantly to its "experts" to explain what jihad means for those who invoke it. They never got an answer. Instead, they were told that Usama had it all wrong: jihad has nothing to do with war or violence. Listening to the academics, jihad began to sound like a traditional self-help technique - perhaps an Islamic version of controlled breathing." (See also: "Getting It Wrong in the Middle East" (Daniel Pipes, Jewish World Review, 2001/11/05))

"The Arab Betrayal of Balkan Islam" (Stephen Schwartz, Middle East Quarterly, from the Spring 2002 issue)
"In the wake of the atrocities of September 11, many American and other Western commentators have asked a perplexing question. They point out that the aim of the last three wars fought by the United States and its allies was to rescue Muslim or Muslim-majority peoples from aggression. ... But don’t Arab Muslims care that the United States saved the Balkan Muslims and Albanians from extermination or exile? Weren’t the Balkans a clear-cut case of massive U.S. military and humanitarian intervention on behalf of Muslims in distress? Yet it is a fact that no credit was given where credit was due. ... The mystery seems to deepen when one hears or reads what many Arabs do say about the U.S. intervention. These Arab assessments tend to be overwhelmingly negative - so much so that Usama bin Ladin himself denigrated of the U.S. intervention in the Balkans part of his standard repertoire. ... The United States had used its power repeatedly in the 1990s on behalf of besieged Muslims, who are grateful for its intervention to this day. Those who charged the United States with being intrinsically hostile to Islam displayed a willful ignorance of recent history - so willful that it is doubtful the United States could ever do anything to persuade them otherwise."

"Not What the Prophet Would Want" (Sohail H. Hashmi, The Washington Post, 2002/06/09)
"It is the religious scholars as much as the bomb makers who are responsible for sending young men and women - often impressionable teenagers - on their murderous missions with promises of a martyr's reward. Religious imagery and justifications suffuse the videotaped "suicide notes" of even the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, an offshoot of Arafat's generally secular Fatah organization. ... But it isn't simplistic to argue that their methods and the destruction they cause are morally equivalent to al Qaeda's terrorism, and, no matter how different the circumstances or justifications, that they amount to murder. ... So they have turned to other justifications, such as the argument that every Israeli is involved in the oppression and killing of Palestinians because they are citizens who support their state, or that every Israeli adult is a potential soldier. They are saying, in effect, that in Israel, there are no civilians. ... How are teenagers in a disco or a baby in a stroller responsible for the alleged crimes of "their" government? ... Finally, those Muslim scholars who justify Palestinian terrorism must weigh the consequences of any exception to the rule against killing innocents. If young Palestinians are justified in strapping bombs to themselves and killing randomly in Israel, then it isn't a far stretch for young Egyptians and Saudis to crash civilian airplanes into skyscrapers in the name of Islam. Once the rule against killing innocents is breached, what comes next? The use of anthrax or nuclear weapons?"

"Miles to Go Before Kabul Can Be Left Behind" (Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser, The Washington Post, 2002/06/09)
"Any trip outside the main cities in Afghanistan includes a strange ritual. Driving down the country's tattered highways, travelers invariably encounter small children who shovel some dirt into one of the many potholes as the car approaches and then stand back and wait for a contribution for their effort. An Afghan driver typically cracks open the window just a bit, sticks out a 5,000 afghani note and lets it go. The wind seizes the bill, worth about 15 cents, and the children chase after it as the car cruises past at full speed. The driver never so much as slows down."

"In Years of Plots and Clues, Scope of Qaeda Eluded U.S." (Judith Miller and Don van Natta Jr., The New York Times, 2002/06/09)
"A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week. ... Government officials and analysts say the tentacles of what later became Al Qaeda first appeared in the United States as early as 1986 - the same year the C.I.A. established its counterterrorism center to enhance the sharing of information among the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the other agencies that collect and analyze intelligence information. ... None of the country's intelligence agencies accurately perceived the threat posed by Al Qaeda until the mid-1990's, officials say. Osama bin Laden remained a shadowy figure who built a multinational terror network whose scope was largely undetected until 1998, when Al Qaeda bombed the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania."

"Where the Buck Stops" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/06/09)
"For months, Mr. Bush and Ariel Sharon have been looking for a stable status quo to emerge from the burning Mideast landscape. It is not going to happen. You will not get a stable status quo on the cheap. You will get it only by the U.S. president laying out a vision that restores hope and makes it very clear what we think the endgame should look like - although the parties themselves will have to negotiate the details. That vision should include the rollback of most Israeli settlements; a resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem by refugees returning to the West Bank and Gaza, not Israel; and a repartition of Jerusalem, with Jews controlling Jewish neighborhoods and Arabs controlling Arab ones. ... This is Mr. Bush's Truman moment. He has a chance not only to give birth to the Palestinian state, but to do it in a way that wins Israel the recognition it really needs - not from the U.S., but from all its neighbors."

"The Way Forward in the Middle East" (Ariel Sharon, The New York Times, 2002/06/09)
"Rather than resolve Israeli-Palestinian differences peacefully, [the Palestinian leadership] deliberately promoted a wave of terrorist attacks against the people of Israel. It failed to implement its written obligations to dismantle international terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Instead it provided them with sanctuary in the area under its jurisdiction. It also unleashed some of its most loyal forces, like the Tanzim militia of the Fatah movement and the presidential guard, Force 17, against Israeli civilians. ... Despite this situation, there is a way forward. First, Israel must defeat terrorism; it cannot negotiate under fire. ... Second, when Israel and the Palestinians eventually re-engage in negotiations, diplomacy must be based on realism. ... The only serious option for a successful negotiated settlement is one based on a long-term interim agreement that sets aside for the future issues that cannot be bridged at present. In the nearly two years of the Palestinian intifada, the people of Israel have seen Israel's vulnerabilities exploited, its holy sites desecrated and massive weaponry smuggled and used against Israel's cities. For this reason, Israel will not return to the vulnerable 1967 armistice lines, redivide Jerusalem or concede its right to defensible borders under Resolution 242. Movement from a long-term interim agreement to a permanent settlement can only be guided by changes in the reality of Israeli-Palestinian relations on the ground and not by a rigid timetable."

 

Saturday, June 8, 2002

News and commentary:

"Power and Weakness" (Robert Kagan, Policy Review, from the June & July 2002 issue)
"It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power - the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power - American and European perspectives are diverging. ...
The current situation abounds in ironies. Europe's rejection of power politics, its devaluing of military force as a tool of international relations, have depended on the presence of American military forces on European soil. Europe's new Kantian order could flourish only under the umbrella of American power exercised according to the rules of the old Hobbesian order. American power made it possible for Europeans to believe that power was no longer important. And now, in the final irony, the fact that United States military power has solved the European problem, especially the "German problem," allows Europeans today to believe that American military power, and the "strategic culture" that has created and sustained it, are outmoded and dangerous. Most Europeans do not see the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage. Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guard its own paradise and keep it from being overrun, spiritually as well as physically, by a world that has yet to accept the rule of "moral consciousness," it has become dependent on America's willingness to use its military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics."

"Arafat threatens 'disastrous explosion'" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/08)
"In a speech broadcast today, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat threatened that if Israel does not retreat from PA-ruled areas that there will be a "disastrous explosion that will impact stability of the whole world." According to the Palestinian Authority's official news agency WAFA, in an address broadcast in Spain to an awards ceremony honoring EU Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos, Arafat claimed that "the situation in Palestine is at the edge of explosion." Arafat warned that if Israel does not withdraw from Palestinian held territory immediately, 'enabling our people to practice their legitimate rights of establishing the independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the whole region will witness a disastrous explosion that will impact not only the region but the stability of the whole world.'"

"Manufacturing dissent" (Matt Welch, National Post/Matt Welch, 2002/06/08)
A must-read article on the anti-war left: "Just before the kidnappers sawed through Daniel Pearl's neck, they forced the Wall Street Journal reporter to "confess" that his experiences in captivity had been equivalent to those of the prisoners being held by the United States in Guantanamo Bay. ... So where did the Pakistani militants get such a monstrously inaccurate analogy? Perhaps from Gore Vidal, or international journalist/activist John Pilger, or the editorial board of London's Independent newspaper or countless dozens of anti-war Web sites in North America. Every one of these publishing entities had described the Guantanamo facility, in the days leading up to Pearl's decapitation, as a "concentration camp." ... This is what much of the anti-war Left has come to: No hypothesis is too sketchy, no fact too unsubstantiated and no emotive novelist is too under-qualified, as long as they all make the United States (and the U.S.-led globalization project) look bad. ... For years, this ideological subculture thrived in the academic shadows, far from the glare of public attention, comfortable in its grievances about being ignored. After Sept. 11, this cushy arrangement came to a crashing end. When Islamo-fascists mouth Berkeley slogans while waving around severed American heads, an engaged citizenry is now bound to take note."

"The Specter of Terrorism" (David Tell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/06/17 issue)
"So Arlen Specter, our four-term, senior senator from Pennsylvania, thinks foreigners visiting the United States shouldn't be kept under surveillance unless there's a "really good reason" for it, and thus is "troubled" to learn that the FBI is now tailing people on the flimsiest of pretexts - like that they're "supporters of al Qaeda" who have "sworn jihad" and the Bureau thinks they're "terrorists." We are troubled, too. We are troubled by Sen. Specter's assertion that he is troubled. ... Last week Attorney General Ashcroft announced that the Immigration and Naturalization Service would soon implement a formal registration system for temporary foreign visitors traveling to America on passports issued by certain Middle Eastern countries known to export terrorism. ... The ubiquitous James Zogby of the Arab American Institute: "The message it sends is that we're becoming like the Soviet Union, with people registering at police stations." Ameena Jandali of the Islamic Networks Group, with a grotesquely inappropriate Holocaust analogy heard round the world: 'What's going to be next? Are all Muslims going to have to wear a yellow or green crescent or something?'"

"In Israeli Hospital, Bomber Tells of Trying to Kill Israelis" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/06/08)
"In a conversation that lasted more than two hours tonight, the bomber, Zaydan Zaydan, gave a rare glimpse into the blend of religion, desperation, low technology and cruelty that can produce suicide bombers. ... Mr. Zaydan, who is 18, spoke of his hopeless search for a job, of long days spent in pool halls before he found his way deeper into Islam, and of how his recruiter composed his last, videotaped statement for him, because, as a fifth-grade dropout, he can read but not write. He said he was "pushed" to make his attack not by Israeli action or a terrorist group, but by "the love of martyrdom." He added: "I didn't want revenge for anything. I just wanted to be a martyr." ... Mr. Zaydan, who is from the West Bank city of Jenin, triggered his bomb at Megiddo junction on May 8, Israeli officials said. They said that only the detonator fired, tearing open his stomach and damaging several organs. A picture of an Israeli Army robot dragging his wounded body across the pavement was published around the world."

 

Friday, June 7, 2002

News and commentary:

"Taking the battle to the terrorists" (Daniel Schorr, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/06/07)
"There was a certain irony in holding the summit of 19 NATO countries plus Russia at Italy's Pratica Di Mare air base. The irony was that here, symbolically assembled, was the greatest array of armed might in history, nervously taking shelter from terrorists and protesters. ... We are entering a new era in warfare in which terrorist conspiracies defy armies, borders, and sovereignties. We are, in a way, returning to the Middle Ages, when wars were fought by religious fanatics, suicide attackers, and crusading movements. At the NATO summit, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi addressed the terrorists: "We are stronger. You will never be able to beat us. So give up the madness." If madness it is, it is not giving up."

"Rescue raid ends in hostage deaths" (CNN.com, 2002/06/07)
"A Philippine commando raid meant to free two Americans and a Philippine citizen held hostage by the Islamic rebel group Abu Sayyaf ended with two of the hostages dead Friday. The hostages were held for more than a year by Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic separatist group in the southern Philippines that U.S. officials say is linked to al Qaeda. President Bush said Friday that Abu Sayyaf would be held accountable for the hostages' deaths. The rescue attempt early Friday led to a two-hour firefight and the deaths of hostages Martin Burnham, an American missionary from Wichita, Kansas, and Deborah Yap, a Filipina nurse. The third hostage - Burnham's wife, Gracia Burnham - was wounded in her right leg and is out of danger, Philippine Marine Brig. Gen. Emmanuel Teodosio said."

"bell hooks Spews Anti-American Tirade in Commencement Speech at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX" (Marc Levin, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/06/07)
Levin on Professor bell hooks' (sic) commencement speech, in which she "condemned many members of her audience, urged them to disregard the future because caring about the future is a capitalist construct, bemoaned the so-called patriarchy, slammed the war on terrorism, and equated conservatism with murder." Here's a quote from the speech: "Indeed our nation's call for violence in the aftermath of 9/11 was an expression of widespread hopelessness, the cynicism that has been at the heart of our nation's ongoing fascination with death. Any society based on domination supports and condones violence. Yet as that violence wreaked havoc in our own hearts and in the lives of our loved ones and fellow citizens, many Americans experienced for the first time a moment of clarity when they knew without a doubt that to choose life, we must stand against violence, we must choose peace. And yet that moment of collective clarity was soon obscured by the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal hunger to show the planet our nation's force, to show that this nation would commit absolute acts of violence that will wipe out whole nations and worlds. The world was held spellbound by our government's declaration of its commitment to violence, to death. Yet just as the violence of the terrorists who slaughtered the innocent on 9/11 does not lead us closer to justice, to reconciliation or peace, the violence acts of imperialist aggression enacted in the name of bringing an end to terrorism have brought us no closer to reconciliation, to peace, to justice."

"'Under War, Everything Happens'" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2002/06/07)
Ignatius has met "the man some analysts identify as the inventor of the modern suicide bomb," Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, in Beirut: "It was Fadlallah who supposedly issued the fatwa, or religious ruling, that encouraged Shiite terrorists to detonate truck bombs outside the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in 1983 - killing hundreds of Americans and beginning the process that soon drove the United States from Lebanon. ... But Fadlallah expressed such a deep and unyielding opposition to Israel - a state he referred to at one point as "this bizarre situation called Israel" - that I left his headquarters more pessimistic than ever about the prospects for anything that deserves to be called "peace." ... In other words, as a moral matter, he does not accept Israel's right to exist. I asked Fadlallah whether he could imagine a peace settlement that would lead him to advise his followers that it was time to stop the killing. Yes, he said. If Israel agreed, say, to the Saudi peace proposal and recognized a Palestinian state, "war is no longer a realistic option and no longer something people should think about," he said. But in his heart, would Fadlallah accept that Israel had a moral right to exist? It seems clear that he - and millions of Arabs with him - would continue to view the Jewish state as immoral and unjust. That's the problem. There is no peace; only truce."

"From Berkeley to Jenin" (Gerald M. Steinberg, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/07)
"The campaign to demonize Israel, which reached a crescendo in the Jenin massacre myths and the Durban conference, did not suddenly appear following the collapse of the Oslo process two years ago. Rather, its origins can be found in the glorious 1960s, in the era of the civil rights movements, free speech, flower power, protests against the Vietnam war, and the marches for justice, equality, and national liberation for all except Jews. ... However, from the moment the Jewish people and Israel ceased being victims and demonstrated the capability to defend themselves and their homeland, the sympathy suddenly shifted to hostility. On university campuses, the use of any military force, even for self-defense and prevention, was automatically condemned as "aggressive" and immoral, and Israel's victory in a war for survival was condemned in the same breath as America's war in Vietnam. ... The rampant intellectual laziness and moral equivalence drawn between terrorist ("activist" or "militant" in newspeak) attacks and self-defense extends far beyond the Israel-Arab framework. ... Terrorism is excused in the name of cultural misperception and responsibility for fictional "root causes" that are used to justify mass murder."

"Bush Seeks Security Department" (Mike Allen and Bill Miller, The Washington Post, 2002/06/07)
"President Bush, outlining the most ambitious reorganization of the government's national security structure in a half-century, urged Congress last night to create a Department of Homeland Security to coordinate intelligence about terrorism and tighten the nation's domestic defenses. The department would absorb a huge swath of the executive branch, including all of the Coast Guard, Secret Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs Service, as well as the new agency in charge of airport security, the Transportation Security Administration. Only the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs would have more employees." (See also: "Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation" (The White House, 2002/06/06))

 

Thursday, June 6, 2002

News and commentary:

"Face to Face With a Terrorist" (Brian Ross, ABC News, 2002/06/06)
"Four of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept. 11 tried to get government loans to finance their plots, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, who sought $650,000 to modify a crop-duster, a government loan officer told ABCNEWS. ...
"At first, he refused to speak with me," said [Johnelle] Bryant, remembering that Atta called her "but a female." Bryant explained that she was the manager, but he still refused to conduct business with her. Ultimately, she said, "I told him that if he was interested in getting a farm-service agency loan in my servicing area, then he would need to deal with me." ...
When Bryant explained that there was an application process, Atta became "very agitated." He thought the loan would be in cash, and that he would have no trouble obtaining it to purchase an aircraft. He also remarked about the lack of security in the building, pointing specifically to a safe behind Bryant's desk. "He asked me what would prevent him from going behind my desk and cutting my throat and making off with the millions of dollars in that safe," said Bryant, who explained that there was no money in the safe because loans are never given in cash, and also that she was trained in karate. ...
Before leaving Bryant's office, Atta became fixated with an aerial photo of Washington that was hanging on her office wall. ...
'I believe he said, 'How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it,' like the cities in his country had been destroyed?'"

"Damned if they don't" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2002/06/06)
"Terror apologists typically blame Israel for suicide massacres by claiming that such attacks are the work of legitimately aggrieved people driven to desperate measures by Israeli brutality. The trouble with this is, as we've often noted, is that Israel has done nothing to match the barbarity of deliberately murdering civilians. These apologists thus live in a topsy-turvy moral world in which the life of a Jewish child is worth less than an Arab TV set. More topsy-turvy still, however, is this unsigned editorial on a Web site called The Globalist. It argues that the problem with Israel is that it's too civilized: 'To "get rid" of Israel requires international support. As hopeless as such a cause may be, Palestinian extremists do even further damage to their aim by blowing things up. ... The strategy of Israeli extremists uses perfect Machiavellian logic: Provoking Palestinians to violence without committing any themselves are the political means to keeping the occupied territories in the end.'" (See also: "Suicide Bombers Vs. Suicide Settlers" (The Globalist, 2002/06/06))

"India plans war within two weeks" (Rahul Bedi, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/06/06)
"India's military is seeking final authorisation to invade the Pakistani side of divided Kashmir in the middle of this month to destroy the camps of Islamic militants. The planned campaign would be similar to the American attack in Afghanistan, in which air strikes would be followed by ground assaults by special forces transported by helicopter, military sources said yesterday. ... As Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, strengthened his warning to Britons to leave the region, military planners in Delhi expressed confidence that a war would not boil over into a nuclear exchange. ... One officer said he believed there was only the "slimmest chance" of nuclear weapons being used. "We will call Pakistan's nuclear bluff," he said. It [the nuclear factor] cannot deter us any more'"

"Analysis / With Islamic Jihad in Damascus, Syria is also to blame" (Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz, 2002/06/06)
"If CIA Director George Tenet wanted to find out this week if the Palestinian Authority and its leader Yasser Arafat really want - and are ready - to turn over a new leaf to achieve a cease-fire and genuine reforms, he got an unequivocal answer in the negative yesterday with the terror attack at the Megiddo Junction. The international community also received an unprecedented announcement, when, from Damascus, capital of the current president of the United Nations Security Council, the claim of responsibility for the attack came from Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah. Syria and President Bashar Assad thereby are partners in the responsibility for the terrorist attack. ... The terrorist attack yesterday raises in the most critical way the question of Damascus' role and that of the Syrian president in the terror networks. The Islamic Jihad maintains its main headquarters in Damascus, and Shalah would not have made his public statement claiming responsibility yesterday without an okay from the Syrian authorities. Thus, Assad is taking on indirect responsibility for the terrorism inside Israel. The issue is particularly critical because Syria just recently took on the presidency of the UN Security Council."

"Don Quixote diplomacy" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/06)
"The urgent task is not to define the political horizon but the opposite: All talk of horizons, all conference preparations, all envoy missions, all time line preparations should simply stop. Because if they do not stop, the message is that the more Israelis are murdered, the more the world will run around looking for something to give the Palestinians so that they will stop. ... The terrorists understand what it seemed that President Bush does: If terrorism succeeds anywhere, it can succeed everywhere. They have discovered that Arafat has carved out the world's only regime-change free zone. No one talked about reforming the Taliban. No one talks about reforming Saddam Hussein. But Arafat is supposed to preside over a new regime ostensibly controlled by his equally tainted colleagues. This shell game will fool no one, least of all the shells themselves."

 

Wednesday, June 5, 2002

News and commentary:

"Jenin: The Israeli reservist's view" (Lou Marano, UPI, 2002/06/05)
"The Jenin operation met with a firestorm of media criticism, especially in Europe. [Jonathan] Alster dismissed the suggestion that Israel could have forestalled this by accommodating the press from the outset. "Why didn't we let the media in earlier? Why didn't we show that we had nothing to hide? It is so ridiculous!" he said. "We did not receive supplies inside the camp for two to three days because it was too dangerous for our tanks and armored personnel carriers to move in it. "At a certain point, they stopped bringing us water in jerry cans. They moved to bottled water because it became too dangerous to carry the jerry cans the 5 yards from the personnel carrier to our door. They threw us the box with food into the house. The crossfire was too intense. 'It was a madhouse! Who would have dealt with 10 reporters being killed the first day?'" (See also: "Jenin: The human rights activist's view" (Jennifer Loewenstein, UPI, 2002/06/05), in which Loewenstein, as Best of the Web Today points out, probably is "the first activist ever to stand up for the rights of home entertainment devices": "Walking was unsafe in Jenin, whether you were outside picking your way through blasted blocks of cement and wire, or inside trying to step over destroyed furniture, scattered and torn clothing, or broken household items. A television set had been shot. The speakers of a stereo had bullets in them. Were these appliances also considered terrorists, I wondered.")

"U.S. links Kuwaiti to both WTC attacks" (John Diamond, USA Today, 2002/06/05)
"U.S. counterterrorism officials are focusing on a Kuwaiti lieutenant of Osama bin Laden with links to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a key architect of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, 37, is a suspect in the 1993 attack that killed six people, suggesting a connection between the first strike at the twin towers and their destruction nine years later. Mohammed is related to Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted in the earlier attack. ... Bin Laden is generally regarded as the lead figure in the plot, but U.S. counterterrorism officials say that Mohammed has the operational skill and drive to carry out planning for the attacks. A counterterrorism official told the Associated Press that within three months of Sept. 11, Mohammed had moved money used to pay for the attacks. Since then, more evidence has been gathered that implicates Mohammed, the official said."

"At least 16 dead in bus bombing in north" (David Rudge, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/05)
"A suicide attacker detonated a powerful car-bomb Wednesday morning alongside a crowded bus in northern Israel, killing at least 16 people and wounding more than about 30. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was timed to mark the 35th anniversary of the Six-Day War. The bombing occurred on the Nahal Irron (Wadi Ara) Highway, right next to Megiddo jail, and not far from the northern town of Afula, at 7:15 a.m. local time. ... Witness accounts indicated that a suicide bomber was in the exploding car. They reported seeing a car pull alongside the bus just before the blast occurred. According to one report, the suicide bomber had been following another bus which was less full, and apparently decided to pull up alongside the 830 bus, which was crowded with passengers, many of them soldiers. He then detonated the very large explosive device in his car."

"Leahy blocked key anti-terror reforms" (Paul Sperry, WorldNetDaily, 2002/06/05)
"The amazingly prescient reforms were first proposed in a 64-page counterterrorism report delivered June 5, 2000, to Congress. ... Yet Leahy and other Democrats bristled at many of the key proposals, which they viewed as too intrusive and discriminatory toward foreigners, and the entire final report – "Countering the Changing Threat of International Terrorism" – collected dust on Capitol office shelves. ... The bipartisan panel warned that religiously motivated groups, namely al-Qaida, were hellbent on inflicting "mass casualties on American soil." ... Spaulding, who also praised Kyl's efforts, says Democrats were also swayed by media reports that "mischaracterized" the tracking of foreign students as "spying." ... Woolsey says universities also fought the proposal. "From the uproar from university lobbyists, you would have thought we had proposed jackbooted SS agents following foreigners around on campus," he said." (See also: "Countering the Changing Threat of International Terrorism" (National Commission on Terrorism, 2000/06/05))

 

Tuesday, June 4, 2002

News and commentary:

"Age Limit" (Laurence Grafstein, The New Republic, 2002/06/04)
"The tactic of deliberately attacking civilians, which the Palestinians are so obtusely debating (and much of the world is so readily tolerating), depends for its success only on the moral superiority of the adversary - on the willingness of the Israelis to refrain from the abhorrent behavior the Palestinians broadly support. Similarly, Osama bin Laden's widely held belief that he promotes Islam by destroying the World Trade Center is dependent on America's willingness to refrain from destroying the sacred sites of Islam, which it could surely do. By relying on the superior morality of their enemies, the advocates of terrorism concede their own immorality and forfeit their own legitimacy. And it's hard to think of a consideration that this particular form of evil 'transcends.'"

"A 'Final Exam' Begins for Security Agencies" (Dana Priest, The Washington Post, 2002/06/04)
"In scope and importance, the congressional intelligence inquiry that begins today behind closed, soundproof doors on the Capitol's top floor rivals the 1975 hearings chaired by Idaho Sen. Frank Church (D) that curbed spying on U.S. citizens and prompted stricter oversight of covert operations overseas. But facing an elusive terrorist enemy based both abroad and in the United States, the bipartisan panel of Senate and House intelligence committee members that meets today is poised to undo nearly three decades of restraints aimed at curbing CIA and FBI abuses and safeguarding civil liberties. ... The committee, co-chaired by Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), is trying to answer three interwoven questions: What did the intelligence agencies know about the 19 al Qaeda hijackers before the Sept. 11 attacks? What did these agencies do with the information? And how can the system be improved to ensure that planning for such an assault does not slip past the $30 billion-a-year U.S. intelligence apparatus again?"

"The particularity of Palestinian terrorism" (Louis Rene Beres and Allesandra Delgado, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/04)
"All terrorist groups, of course, emphasize violence and the use of force, but the Palestinian groups are altogether unique in several important ways. Most significant of all is that, for the Palestinians, violence is generally its own reward. Rejecting more instrumental views of force, Hamas, the PLO, and all other movement organizations have now come to regard terror violence as an end in itself. The root of this dark sentiment lies in their common and all-consuming hatred of "the Jews." ... Today, the PLO call for annihilation of Israel still remains codified at PA Web sites and publications, and the Hamas Covenant still calls insistently for the "realization of Allah's promise: 'The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, killing them.'" ... Palestinian terrorism, based upon fanatical religious hatreds and intentionally wanton killings, bears no close resemblance to other forms of contemporary terror violence. Starkly medieval, it seeks the death and dismemberment of individual Jews and the total annihilation of the Jewish State. It follows that there can be absolutely no civilized justification for its manifold crimes."

"Mubarak to Press Bush on Palestinian Statehood" (Patrick E. Tyler and Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times, 2002/06/04)
"President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt says he will press President Bush in talks in Washington this week to support the declaration of a Palestinian state early next year. In an interview, the 74-year-old leader said he would urge the administration to apply international pressure to the Israelis and Palestinians to return to negotiations. ... "I think to declare a state just theoretically like this and then to sit and negotiate what would be the borders, what about Jerusalem — I think it may work," Mr. Mubarak said. On the other hand, declaring a state on a fraction of the Palestinian lands seized by Israel in 1967 would only perpetuate tensions and lead to more "terror and violence," he said." (See also: "Egypt Warned U.S. of a Qaeda Plot, Mubarak Asserts" (Patrick E. Tyler and Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times, 2002/06/04) and "Excerpts From Interview With Egyptian President" (The New York Times, 2002/06/04))

"Citing Israeli threats, PA says PFLP head to stay behind bars" (Aluf Benn, Haaretz, 2002/06/04)
"The Palestinian High Court ruled Monday that PA Chairman Yasser Arafat should release Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine commander Ahmed Sa'adat from his incarceration in Jericho. The a three-judge court in Gaza said there was no evidence linking Sa'adat to the assassination of then-tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi - a claim Israel made after the October assassination. But the Palestinian Authority is set to ignore the court ruling. The Palestinian cabinet said Monday night it would keep Sa'adat in jail despite the order. In a statement, the cabinet expressed "respect for the High Court of Justice decision" but said its ruling to release Sa'adat "cannot be implemented under these circumstances because of Israeli threats." ... It was Israeli agreement to a deal to jail Sa'adat that helped end a five-week IDF siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, where Sa'adat had been holed up with five other men on Israeli most-wanted lists."

 

Monday, June 3, 2002

News and commentary:

"Amnesty's lies" (Evelyn Gordon, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/03)
"When one compares Amnesty International's 2002 annual report to the previous year's, one disturbing fact immediately leaps out: The writers of the chapter on Israel have become much smarter - and considerably more dishonest. Consider, for instance, the section titled "political prisoners." The new report, released last week, states simply that "at the end of the year, 2,200 Palestinians were held on political charges." Since no elaboration is given, most readers would conclude that these people were jailed for expressing anti-government opinions or attending peaceful demonstrations, in the grand tradition of China and the former Soviet Union. ... But when one goes back to the 2001 report, one discovers a very different picture. That report also has a section titled "political prisoners" - but in it, Amnesty is kind enough to elucidate what it means by the term. The first sentence of the section explains it clearly: "Israel continued to detain 1,600 Palestinians from the Occupied Territories and 29 Palestinians from Israel sentenced in previous years by military courts for offenses such as attacks on Israelis" ... By neglecting to mention that this year's crop of "political prisoners" were also jailed for "offenses such as attacks on Israelis" - which in fact is what almost all Palestinians imprisoned last year were jailed for - Amnesty has turned an action that most civilized people would support into a damning indictment of Israel."

"In the Taliban's Eyes, Bad News Was Good" (David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, 2002/06/03)
"In fact, said Mehrin and three other former Taliban reporters, the Taliban routinely altered their reports to inflate civilian casualties and minimize military losses. If Al Qaeda commanders were killed in a safe house by an American airstrike, they said, it was reported as Afghan families wiped out. If two Afghan civilians were killed by an American bomb, it was reported as a dozen dead. A destroyed Taliban antiaircraft site was reported as a deadly attack on a maternity ward. ... Taliban propaganda contributed to a portrait in many parts of the world of an indiscriminate U.S. bombing campaign. On Oct. 31, just 24 days after the airstrikes began, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan claimed that they had already killed 1,500 to 1,600 civilians. The envoy, Abdul Salam Zaeef, accused the United States of genocide. ... "Our bosses called this the war against the Christian crusaders," Qanay said. 'They thought that if the people were told that the Americans were deliberately bombing civilians, they would rise up and kill the invaders.'" (See also: "'The Americans ... They Just Drop Their Bombs and Leave'" (David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, 2002/06/02))

"Top Saudi imam sees conspiracy" (Paul Martin, The Washington Times, 2002/06/03)
"Saudi Arabia's top Muslim cleric has called on the Islamic world to unite against a worldwide conspiracy of Hindus, Christians, Jews and secularists threatening Islamic moral values. Muslims, he said, should cleanse themselves from creeping Western values and American-controlled "globalization." ... "The idol-worshipping Hindus indulge in their open hatred against our brothers and sanctities in Muslim Kashmir, threatening an imminent danger and a fierce war in the whole Indian subcontinent," [Sheik Abd-al-Rahman al-Sudays, the imam of the Mosque of Mecca] said in a live sermon heard throughout the Arab world via the official Saudi national television and satellite channel. ... Though he was particularly scornful of Jews, whom he said had been cursed and turned into "pigs and monkeys" by Allah, he turned his ire on Christians and capitalists as well. "Their course is supported by the advocates of credit and worshippers of the Cross," the imam asserted, 'as well as by those who are infatuated with them and influenced by their rotten ideas and poisonous culture among the advocates of secularism and Westernization.'"

"Who Blew It?" (Mark R. Levin, National Review, 2002/06/03)
"During the last three or four weeks, we've seen a cycle of leaks and spin intended to assign blame for supposed intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At first, the culprit was President Bush, then the FBI, and most recently the CIA. But how credible are these news stories? The first attempt was a leak to CBS News about an August 6, 2001 intelligence briefing in which Bush received generic information about the possibility of terrorists hijacking U.S. airliners. Upon receiving that information, the relevant federal agencies were put on alert. Immediately, members of Congress, in particular Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle and House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, claimed that Bush had not shared this information with Congress. ... There was nothing to this story. And to the best of my knowledge, there are no news reports even suggesting that Bush (or for that matter, Congress) had information predicting, with any specificity, the Sept. 11 attacks."

"The Hijackers We Let Escape" (Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, Newsweek, from the 2002/06/10 issue)
"What happened next, some U.S. counterterrorism officials say, may be the most puzzling, and devastating, intelligence failure in the critical months before September 11. A few days after the Kuala Lumpur meeting, Newsweek has learned, the CIA tracked one of the terrorists, Nawaf Alhazmi, as he flew from the meeting to Los Angeles. Agents discovered that another of the men, Khalid Almihdhar, had already obtained a multiple-entry visa that allowed him to enter and leave the United States as he pleased. (They later learned that he had in fact arrived in the United States on the same flight as Alhazmi.) Yet astonishingly, the CIA did nothing with this information. Agency officials didn't tell the INS, which could have turned them away at the border, nor did they notify the FBI, which could have covertly tracked them to find out their mission. Instead, during the year and nine months after the CIA identified them as terrorists, Alhazmi and Almihdhar lived openly in the United States, using their real names, obtaining driver's licenses, opening bank accounts and enrolling in flight schools - until the morning of September 11, when they walked aboard American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon."

"Indians scorn worry and love the bomb" (Catherine Philp, The Times, 2002/06/03)
"Scientists have predicted that a nuclear exchange would kill 12 million people, half of them in India, but all over the country people are baying for war, nonetheless. About 82 per cent believe that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict, but 74 per cent believe that India should attack. ... When India tested its first atomic weapon in 1998, the nuclear scientists responsible were fêted like cricket heroes. No one dared to suggest there might be a downside. ... The result is a profound ignorance about the reality of nuclear conflict. The depth of misconception among ordinary people, who are pushing for their Government to go to war, is alarming. "The bomb is some kind of gas," Lalith Kumar, a drinks vendor, said as he served his customers iced tea from his stall in the trendy Priya shopping district. 'Farmers will be okay because they can dig trenches to hide in. The rest of us will be annihilated.'"

Added one new theme in Themes:
"Who Blew It?" - News and commentary on supposed intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

 

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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