Archived news and commentary: August 26 - September 1, 2002

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

Sunday, September 1, 2002

News and commentary:

"The Axis of Envy" (Josef Joffe, Foreign Policy, from the September/October 2002 issue)
Joffe on the linkage between European anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism: "Pick a peace-minded demonstration in Europe these days or a publication of the extreme left or right, and you'll find anti-Israeli and anti-American resentments side by side-in the tradition first invented by the Khomeinists of Iran, whose demonology abounds with references to the "small" and "great Satan." ...
The unconscious syllogism goes like this: Globalization is Americanization, and both have found their most faithful disciple in Israel.
Second, there is an element of bad old anti-Semitism. A hallowed place in its mythos is the Jewish quest for world domination. Now "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" come with a new twist. The Jews, so the lore goes, finally achieved global domination by having conquered the United States: Jews control the media, the U.S. Congress, and the economy. Assisted by American Jewry, Israel has built up the most powerful lobby in Washington-one that delivers almost $3 billion worth of aid per year. And thus, with the help of the "hyperpower," a term coined by the former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine, Jews actually do rule the world."

"An Apology from an Arab" (Ali Salem, TIME, 2002/09/01)
Salem is a playwright and author living in Cairo: "A long time before New York City's Twin Towers were destroyed, many towers in my country were brought down by this same brand of perpetrators. They killed President Anwar Sadat, who initiated peace with Israel and liberalism in Egypt; they killed the Egyptian writer Farag Fouda, a defender of freedom and secularism; they stabbed our Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz, when he was 82 years old, after discovering that 30 years earlier he had written a novel they considered the work of an infidel. They said they had not read the novel. Who told them it was sacrilegious? Someone living in a cave in the mountains of Afghanistan, or sitting in a London café or a mosque in New Jersey, told them so. In Egypt alone, these fundamentalists have killed more than 1,000 policemen and ordinary citizens, Christian and Muslim alike. In one of the most beautiful places on earth, the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Luxor, they slaughtered nearly 60 tourists in 1997. In Algeria their sickles endlessly harvest the souls of the poor and helpless. They have committed all these crimes with the purpose of establishing the kingdom of God on earth and have succeeded only in turning our lives into hell."

"Fenced In" (Helena Cobban, Boston Review, from the Summer 2002 issue)
A report from the Middle East, including a tragicomical interview with Yasser Arafat. Found via IMRA: "But at other times during our thirty-minute meeting, the Palestinian leader's once-renowned memory seemed to flag and his attention wandered. Three of his currently favored advisers were sitting around him. One of them, spokesman Saeb Eraqat, jumped into the conversation frequently, often talking "on behalf of," or over, or even in direct contra-diction to "the President." It was an extraordinary performance, a display of lèse-majesté unthinkable until recently in Arafat's tightly-controlled inner circle. ...
What we did not get from Arafat was any sense of an effectual national leader articulating a convincing strategy for his much-beleaguered people. ... He changed tack, and asked us with a grin if we knew who the first suicide bomber in history had been. I imagine we all looked fairly blank. "Samson!" he exclaimed. "The first suicide bomber ever - and he was Jewish!" "We have to follow this great example given by one of the Prophets," he intoned in mock piety. ...
Then came the paper-play. Arafat triumphantly produced a piece of paper with about six lines of writing on it from the stack in front of him. "See! Here is the report!" he announced. "Yesterday I stopped a very serious suicide operation." I asked to read the report. "No, no, it's security!" he said."

"MESA Culpa" (Martin Kramer, Middle East Quarterly, from the Fall 2002 issue)
If he isn't busy throwing stones at Israelis, Edward Said will receive the WOCMES Award for Outstanding Contributions to Middle Eastern Studies on September 11. The scandal of Middle East studies continues: "Said is the Columbia University celebrity professor who has made a career of accusing all and sundry of misrepresenting Islam. In the process, he has committed not a few acts of misrepresentation himself. For example, in introducing the latest (pre-9/11) edition of his book Covering Islam, Said ridiculed "speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings, sabotage commercial airliners and poison water supplies." Such talk is based on "highly exaggerated stereotypes." ...
A contribution to an academic discipline usually takes the form of some epistemological breakthrough. Said's attack on Middle Eastern studies, made in his 1978 book Orientalism, prompted an epistemological breakdown. Yet he never provided a serious alternative, just a kind of floating over-identification with political causes like Palestine, Arab nationalism, and Muslim anti-imperialism. ...
The decadence that pervades Middle Eastern studies today, the complete subservience to trendy politics, and the unlikelihood that the field might ever again produce a hero of high culture - all this is owed to Edward Said." (For more on Said, see also: "Edward Said and the War Against Terrorism" (Ronald Radosh, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/03/08) "Complex Nonsense" (Rich Lowry, National Review, 2001/10/11) and "The Scandal of Middle East Studies" (Stanley Kurtz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2001/11/19 issue). And, of course, the third chapter of Kramer's "Ivory Tower on Sand", "Islam Obscured" (ivorytowers.org, October 2001): "The closest Said came to an account of Islamism was to blame the orientalists: according to Said, Muslim Orientals, subjected to orientalist demonization, had entered a reactive mode, "acting the part decreed for them" by the experts. ... By this logic, Said could trace every Islamist excess to Western prejudice, and eventually he did. ... This mode of argumentation conveniently absolved Said and followers of the difficult job of accounting for Islamist deeds. Instead, each Islamist action became another opportunity for the repetitive and ritual denunciation of Western prejudice against Islam.")

"The Return of Hizbullah" (Eyal Zisser, Middle East Quarterly, from the Fall 2002 issue)
"First, Hizbullah has established its own "Hizbullahland," a territory in south Lebanon over which it has complete control. This territory serves as a home base both for Hizbullah's military operations against Israel and for mobilizing support for the organization's activities within Lebanon. The area lies outside the effective control of the Lebanese government, and even of Syria. Second, Hizbullah has succeeded in recent years, and particularly since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pulled out of Lebanon in May 2000, in building an impressive military capability. It has a rocket arsenal that includes thousands of Katyushas and more advanced rockets that cover the entire north of Israel. Hizbullah's direct and immediate threat to the Israeli civilian population is greater than that of some neighboring Arab states. ...
Sheltered from the intervention of Arab governments and retaliation by Israel, it has become a military power of considerable strength and one full of its own sense of invincibility. By astute maneuvering among much larger forces, Hizbullah has become the key to peace and tranquility in the Middle East. Only one player has a clear license to remove this time bomb from the stage: Syria. But Bashshar al-Asad appears to lack both the will and the strength to take the necessary actions. In this vacuum, and with each passing day, a confrontation between Israel and Hizbullah moves from the realm of the probable to that of the inevitable."

"Rolling Back Radical Islam" (Ralph Peters, Parameters, from the Autumn 2002 issue)
A must-read essay, which I found via InstaPundit: "A struggle of immense proportions and immeasurable importance is under way for the soul of Islam, a mighty contest to decide between a humane, tolerant, and progressive faith, and a hangman's vision of a punitive God and a humankind defined by prohibitions. And we have not even noticed. ...
It is time to write off the Arab homelands of Islam as lost. They are as incapable of constructive change as they are unwilling even to consider liberal transformations. They have been left behind by history and their response has been to blame everyone but themselves - and to sponsor terror (sometimes casually, but often officially). Much of the Arab world has withdrawn into a fortress of intolerance and self-righteousness as psychologically comfortable as it is practically destructive. They are, through their own fault, as close to hopeless as any societies and cultures upon this earth. ...
Over the past few decades, Middle Eastern oil wealth has been used by the most restrictive, oppressive states to export a regressive, ferociously intolerant and anti-Western form of Islam to mosques and madrassas abroad, from the immigrant quarters of London to the back-country of Indonesia. When we noticed anything at all, we dismissed it as no more than an annoyance, our attitude drifting between the Pollyanna notion that everyone is entitled to his or her own form of religion (no matter if it preaches hatred and praises mass murder) and the "serious" policymaker's view that religion is a tertiary issue, far less instructive and meaningful than GDP numbers or arms deals. But no other factor is as important as belief in this disturbed and dangerous world."

"Freelance fanatic or follower of Osama?" (Jason Burke, The Observer, 2002/09/01)
A profile of the Swedish hijack suspect, Karem Chatty: "Chatty's conversion came after - or during - his incarceration in 1998. When interviewed by police after 11 September he told them, according to a friend, he was praying five times a day and was now 'a good Muslim'. That he was interested in the more radical fringe of modern Islam seems clear. When police raided his Stockholm apartment last week they found quantities of hardline Islamic literature. According to friends, Chatty talked a lot about Jihad (holy war), and made a series of trips overseas. His mother says he was in Saudi Arabia, possibly visiting Mecca, on 11 September. He spoke of moving to the Yemen, the southern Arabian state which has been a haven for hardline Islamic groups, and enrolling in a religious school. But he apparently told friends that he did not want to be part of any one group. His jihad, he said, would be a personal one."

 

Saturday, August 31, 2002

News and commentary:

"Hijack Suspect 'Planned U.S. Embassy Attack'" (Peter Andersson, Reuters, 2002/08/31)
"A Swedish man of Tunisian origin, arrested on suspicion he was about to hijack a plane, was planning to crash the aircraft into a U.S. embassy in Europe, Swedish intelligence and police sources said on Saturday. ... A highly-placed intelligence source said police were hunting four more men, including an explosives expert, who were believed to have worked on the plan with the suspect, aged 29. "We know for sure that the plan was to crash the plane into a U.S. embassy in Europe," the source told Reuters. ...
But a source in Sweden's Sapo security police said Sapo had been instructed by the government to play the incident down at a politically sensitive time, two weeks before an election. ...
Swedish police do not believe the arrested man or anyone he was working with were part of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group, blamed by Washington for the September 11 attacks. Instead they believe a copycat attack was being planned." (See also: "Accused hijacker took flying lessons" (The Daily Telegraph, 2002/08/31): "A CIA source had said earlier today that Swedish security officials told him of the plot and were searching for four other men who were acting with Karem Chatty. But tonight he withdrew the claims amid confusion after the head of Sweden's national security police Margareta Linderoth categorically denied the reports.")

"Year One" (Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/09/09 issue)
"Before the first year was out, it was back, all of it. Irony. Triviality. Vulgarity. Frivolousness. Whimsy. Farce. All the things no healthy society can live without. We returned to normality. ... Can you doubt it is back when the culture king of 2002 is Ozzy Osbourne, now locked with Anna Nicole Smith in a race to the cultural bottom? ...
National character does not change in a day. September 11 did not alter the American character, it merely revealed it. It allowed - it forced - the emergence of a bedrock America of courage, resolve, resourcefulness, and, above all, resilience. What the enemy did not know (nor at that time did we, fully) was that beneath the shallowness and the triviality, the outward normality of America in post-Cold War repose, lay the sleeping giant that Admiral Yamamoto knew he had awakened on December 7, 1941, and that Osama bin Laden had no inkling he had awakened on September 11, 2001. ...
Success will require that both sides of the American character - the visible fluff and the (once) buried steel - remain in play."

"Sept. 11, 2002: A Time to Speak Up" (Andrei Cherny, The Washington Post, 2002/08/31)
"Moments of silence will be observed. But unfortunately the silence will extend to political leaders, whose voices are needed and whose guidance is required. In a moment still crying out for context and guidance, our democratically elected officials have decided to turn to the ideas and words of the past. Instead of offering their own thoughts that day, New York Gov. George Pataki will recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey will read from the Declaration of Independence, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will recount Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. ...
From the shadows of those fallen towers soared a renewed spirit of community and patriotism. But a year later, that spirit has withered away, and the status quo ante seems to be the rule of the day. On 9/11, America was challenged as never before. Yet today, with al Qaeda intact, Osama bin Laden's whereabouts unknown and little required of us at home save witnessing the bizarre spectacle of old ladies being patted down at airports, some wonder whether America is ready to meet that challenge. ...
In 2002, we know that America has yet to come to terms with the events of last year. Whatever they may mean, the attacks on America have become part of history. Now our political leaders need to not just read history, they need to write it." (See also: "Don't Dianafy 9/11" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/08/29))

"Hijack attempt linked to bin Laden" (Andrew Norfolk and Daniel McGrory, The Times, 2002/08/31)
Misleading headline, as the police rather say they are "looking into" such links: "Kerim Chatty, a keep-fit fanatic of Tunisian origin, was found with a loaded gun in his hand luggage as he arrived late to catch the Ryanair flight from the small rural airport of Vasteras, north of Stockholm. ... He was jailed for a year for carrying a loaded Glock machine pistol and possessing two other automatic weapons. In 1993 he was imprisoned for having an unlicensed shotgun, and has also been convicted of assault. ...
Police yesterday visited the mosque in a southern suburb of the Swedish capital which he has attended since converting to Islam two years ago. It is believed he was a follower of the fundamentalist Salafi version of Islam, as are all the terrorist suspects arrested in Europe since last September, including Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a plane in mid-air. Salafi, or Wahabi, is the main sect of Saudi Arabia." (Note: According to the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Chatty has trained to be a pilot in America, receiving a sport pilot license 1997: "The friend tells Aftonbladet: 'He wanted to participate in the Jihad, but not just in whichever group. He was more into going to Chechen and fight against the Russians. He talked a lot about Chechen, listened to taped speeches and so on.'" [my translation] ("Utbildad till pilot – i USA" (Andreas Harne and Jens Karrmann, Aftonbladet, 2002/08/31))

 

Friday, August 30, 2002

News and commentary:

"That Lonesome Road" (Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, 2002/08/30)
"On consecutive days this week, China and France insisted that the Bush administration seek U.N. approval before sending troops to Iraq. ... But France and China, along with longtime Iraq ally Russia, are among the practical reasons that President Bush should be highly skeptical of any return to the United Nations in dealing with Iraq. Those countries, which occupy three of the five permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council, (the United States and Britain have the other two) have used that influential perch for more than a decade to thwart many of the serious efforts to disarm Iraq, despite Saddam's obvious and arrogant flouting of the U.N. resolutions requiring him to do so."

"The Future Is Now" (Stanley Kurtz, National Review, 2002/08/30)
Kurtz argues that both sides in the debate over an invasion of Iraq might be right: "But this is the unspoken truth: Even now, our troops face the possibility of serious casualties and disruption from a weapons of mass destruction attack by Saddam Hussein. Yet that prospect, frightening as it is, cannot compare to the consequences of allowing an invasion to be called off by the fear of a WMD attack on our troops. It's better to have our forces facing chemical and biological attack now, than to subject our troops, and the country itself, to WMD attacks when Saddam is even stronger. ...
That means both sides are right. This war is a lot more dangerous than the public may yet realize. Yet failing to go to war at this critical juncture of history will land us in much deeper danger - with the power equation between nations in danger of shifting radically through the proliferating technology of mass terror. ...
If we can't take action in Iraq, and keep sufficient troops on hand to deal with the consequences, we shall shortly enter a deeply dangerous new era in which proliferating weapons of mass destruction essentially neutralize America's military dominance, freeing up rogue regimes to act with impunity throughout the globe. More than we know, this may already be happening."

"Militants kill teenage girl for 'collaborating' with Israel" (Reuters/Haaretz, 2002/08/30)
"Palestinian militants shot a teenage girl in the head, killing her for "collaborating" with Israel, Palestinian sources said on Friday. Israel Radio reported that they subsequently released her brother, who was also abducted a few days ago from the West Bank city of Tul Karm on suspicion of aiding Israel. ...
The two siblings are the niece and nephew of Ikhlas Khouli, the 35-year-old mother of seven who was seized from her Tul Karm home and shot dead Saturday after admitting to collaborating with Israel. Khouli's sister, who is the mother of the two arrested Thursday, was also interrogated, but was released after admitting her collaboration with Israel. She said that the admitted to the charges after being tortured." (See also: "Palestinians execute mother of seven as alleged collaborator" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/25))

"A Top Palestinian Official Calls for End to Suicide Attacks" (Serge Schmemann, The New York Times, 2002/08/30)
"While officials of the Palestinian Authority have criticized suicide bombings in the past and have claimed to oppose them, Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, who was appointed Palestinian interior minister last June, has emerged as the primary Palestinian contact with Israelis in talks on easing violence. ...
In his interview, Mr. Yehiyeh said he had told all Palestinian factions: "Stop the suicide bombings, stop the murders for no reason. Return to the legitimate struggle against the occupation, without violence and following international norms and legitimacy." Suicide attacks, he said, harmed the Palestinian cause. 'Children were exploited for these attacks, when they could have made a much more positive contribution to future Palestinian society.'"

"Swedish 'hijacker' foiled" (BBC News, 2002/08/30)
"A man has been charged with trying to hijack a Ryanair flight from Stockholm to Stansted, outside London, after allegedly being caught trying to board the plane with a gun. Swedish police say the man - who was born in Sweden to Tunisian parents - was with a party travelling to an Islamic conference in Birmingham, central England. Security officers say they found a handgun in a toiletries bag when they scanned the 29-year-old man's hand luggage at Vasteras Airport, west of Stockholm. "We believe he was going to hijack the plane," police spokesman Ulf Palm said. ... However, unidentified security officials quoted by the Swedish TT news agency said they believed it was more likely the man was a disturbed individual who was acting alone." (Note: While the passengers quoted in the BBC article said "they were relieved to see that security measures had been effective", a woman in the same group as the suspected hijacker is highly critical. And not of him: "The police apprehended us simply because we are muslims. It feels terribly unjust. We don't know what we are suspected of." [my translation] ("De grep oss bara för att vi är muslimer" (Johan Bratt and Jens Karrmann, Aftonbladet, 2002/08/30). One would like to think that being in the same group as the man who tried to board the plane with a gun is a completely valid reason for security measures in itself. But apparently not in groupthink land.)

"The Tatters of Anticolonialism" (Bruce S. Thornton, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/08/30)
Thornton on the Marxist concepts of "colonialism" and "imperialism": "The behavior of the Europeans in the rest of the world - grabbing territory and resources, just as human beings had done for millennia - was now redefined as some new unique evil peculiar to Western capitalist societies. ... But what about America? The greatest capitalist and bourgeois nation in history had no colonial empire to speak of. ...
The answer was to transform American minorities, particularly blacks and Indians, into the equivalents of third-world colonial subjects. ...
If the Europeans and Americans were like the rest of humanity in violently appropriating resources, they were different in one fundamental respect: ultimately they viewed their own behavior as evil and a betrayal of the highest Western values. ...
"Colonialism" and "imperialism" are verbal smokescreens used to disguise an ideologically skewed standard by which America and the West are judged uniquely evil and the rest of the world is idealized into noble-savage victims whose violence is justified or rationalized away as an understandable response to Western depredations. That is, these concepts justify an anti-Western and anti-American prejudice."

"Iranian Conservative Daily: 'America is the New Nazism'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 417, 2002/08/30)
Excerpts from an editorial in the Iranian Farsi-language conservative daily Jumhur-ye Islami, drawing parallels George W. Bush's America and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany: "These are some of the words of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the revolution... For the past half-century, the language of the Americans has always been the language of power and coercion. If Hitler had had to show the face of a bloodthirsty dictator, he would have had to adopt [the face of] George W. Bush... who has, for the past 20 months, since the beginning of his rule, taken on the pattern of Hitler's behavior in international relations. ... There is a great resemblance between the behavior of today's Americans and the behavior of the Nazis then: terrorizing other countries, seeking to rule over [them], intervening aerially [by bombing], and making a mockery of all the international rules and treaties."

"Saudi Reactions to the Lawsuit by September 11 Families" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 416, 2002/08/30)
Excerpts from articles in Saudi newspapers on the lawsuit against Saudi and other Arab officials and organizations by the families of September 11 victims: "In an article titled "This is America," [Saleh Al-Shihi, a columnist for the Saudi daily Al-Watan] wrote: "This is America, the civilization that arose on the skulls of others. ...
America, that erected the Statue of Liberty so as to plunder others by it; America, that established liberty in order to kill millions of people in its name, from the Indians to Afghan children..." ..
A columnist for the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, Abdallah Al-Kaid, wrote: 'The [Saudi] people are not to be blamed for the state of horror to which you [Americans] are subject in your country – a situation from which you will not escape... unless you concede the rights of the people and fight the evil among you and stop your aggression towards the world. ...
We have no need to defend our good and clean name, as we are peace-loving people who never started a war against anyone throughout their history. As for you [Americans], no one needs proof of your crimes, written in history in ink as black as your history of murder and genocide.'"

"9/11 Hijacker Boasted Thousands Would Die" (Peter Finn, The Washington Post, 2002/08/30)
"One of the Sept. 11 hijackers boasted a year and a half before the attacks that the World Trade Center would be hit and "there will be thousands of dead," Germany's chief prosecutor said today in providing one of the most detailed public reconstructions of the terror planning that took place in Germany. ...
Cell member Marwan Al-Shehhi, who investigators believe piloted the second airliner to strike the trade center, had a conversation in April or May 2000 with a female librarian in which he mentioned the trade center as a target, Nehm said. "There will be thousands of dead," Al-Shehhi, originally from the United Arab Emirates, told the librarian, according to Nehm. 'You will all think of me.'"

 

Thursday, August 29, 2002

News and commentary:

"Say no to the nay-sayers" (Bruce Anderson, The Spectator, from the 2002/08/31 issue)
"There has never been any question that President Bush is committed to the overthrow of Saddam. Any apparent hesitations have either arisen from debates over military tactics or they have been invented by the war's opponents, exploiting the leakiness of the American system of government. Nor is President Bush embarking on this war for low or cynical reasons; he is convinced of the threat from Saddam. But even if he were not, it would now be too late for him to draw back. ...
If Mr Bush were to retreat, America would retreat with him. If the US backed down now, nobody anywhere would still believe in America's ability to assert itself. ...
Recently, one British visitor was chatting to CIA Director George Tenet about the Europeans' role. 'I'll tell you exactly what the President said the other day on that very subject,' said Mr Tenet. 'He said, 'I don't give a shit what the Europeans think.''"

"The enemy within" (Ari Shavit, Haaretz, 2002/08/29)
A must-read interview with Israel's new IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon: "When I look at the overall map, what disturbs me especially is the Palestinian threat and the possibility that a hostile state will acquire nuclear capability. Those are the most worrisome focal points, because both of them have the potential of being an existential threat to Israel. ...
The characteristics of that threat are invisible, like cancer. When you are attacked externally, you see the attack, you are wounded. Cancer, on the other hand, is something internal. Therefore, I find it more disturbing, because here the diagnosis is critical. If the diagnosis is wrong and people say it's not cancer but a headache, then the response is irrelevant. But I maintain that it is cancer. My professional diagnosis is that there is a phenomenon here that constitutes an existential threat. ...
Do you have a definition of victory? Is it clear to you what Israel's goal in this war is?
'I defined it from the beginning of the confrontation: the very deep internalization by the Palestinians that terrorism and violence will not defeat us, will not make us fold. If that deep internalization does not exist at the end of the confrontation, we will have a strategic problem with an existential threat to Israel. If that [lesson] is not burned into the Palestinian and Arab consciousness, there will be no end to their demands of us. Despite our military might, the region will perceive us as being even weaker. That will have an impact not only on those who are engaged in the violent struggle, but also on those who have signed agreements with us and on extremists among the Arabs in Israel. That's why this confrontation is so important. There has not been a more important confrontation since the War of Independence.'"

"Crude Zionist Propaganda" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2002/08/29)
Johnson examines an anti-Semitic review of Michael B. Oren's "Six Days of War" written by Arab News editor John R. Bradley: "It isn't long before the favorite equation of the non-anti-Semite makes an appearance: Zionism = Nazism. ...
"The Biblical context was dragged in later, when the early Zionists realized "Israel" could serve as a Western colonialist outpost. The Biblical myth was then successfully confused with the terrible consequences for Jews of the Holocaust, just when the Zionists themselves - we should remember - were behaving like fully-trained Nazis." ...
Are you getting the feeling that Bradley would only be happy if Oren changed the full title of his book to Six Days of War: Perpetrated by a Fully-Trained Nazi-Like State Born of Terror, Against Blameless Peaceful Arabs?" (See also: "An official history of Israel" (John R. Bradley, Arab News, 2002/08/29 [?])

"Don't Dianafy 9/11" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/08/29)
"And there seems to be an effort to do on the anniversary what they were unable to accomplish on the day: to make September 11th 2002 an occasion for "coping." ...
If you think America's largest teachers' union is just some minor fringe group of no consequence, then what are we to make of the ceremonies at Ground Zero itself? New York's woeful mediocrity of a mayor, Mike Bloomberg, has decreed there are to be no speeches: Instead, Governor Pataki will recite the Gettysburg Address, just as the third-graders do on small-town New England commons on Memorial Day. The Gettysburg Address is a fine address, but it's nothing to do with September 11th. It's as if at Gettysburg Lincoln had been told, "Well, this speech looks a little controversial. Couldn't you just stand up and recite the Declaration of Independence?" The nullity of Bloomberg's planned ceremony is an acknowledgment, even in the most sorely wounded city in America, that one year on there is no agreement on what Sept. 11 means. To some, it calls forth righteous anger and bestselling kick-ass country songs. To others, far more influential in the culture, it demands 'healing circles.'"

"An Interview With Daniel Pipes" (John Hawkins, Right Wing News, 2002/08/29)
"John Hawkins: Some people have compared Conservative Christians to militant Islamists. How similar are those two groups in your mind?
Daniel Pipes: I think there is no similarity whatsoever. I believe the useful way of seeing a militant Islamist is not in comparison with Christians, Jews, or other members of religious groups. It's more useful to compare the militant Islamists with the Fascists or Communists and their radically utopian ideology. Yes its wellspring is religion, but its final form is ideology. There is no comparable Christian radically utopian ideology or Christian totalitarian ideology, nor Jewish, nor Hindu, nor any other religions.
John Hawkins: You've said that militant Islam has a ways to go before it peaks. Why do you believe that to be the case?
Daniel Pipes: I believe militant Islam is getting stronger. For example, look at major countries like Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Indonesia that a decade ago were relatively free of it and now are very much contending with militant Islam. It's still rising."

"If Churchill were alive today, he would strike at Saddam" (John Keegan, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/08/29)
"The odour of appeasement that permeates the Western world has apparently driven President George W Bush to seek strength by studying the career of Winston Churchill. ...
When - it is not a question of if - Saddam acquires nuclear weapons, the moment when he could be crushed without risk to his opponents, or of provoking a wider war, or of truly destabilising the Middle East, will be gone. At the moment Saddam could be toppled quickly, cheaply and without difficulty. The moment will not last. Churchill would see the opportunity and, if in power, would grasp it. He would ignore the timidity of yesterday's men and strike. ...
Britain did arise, at terrible cost. It could not have arisen had Hitler acquired nuclear weapons. The signs are, thank goodness, that President Bush is determined not to fall."

"Secret files on Baghdad's weapons plans" (Michael Evans, The Times, 2002/08/29)
"Although the Government has been anxious to keep the contents of the dossier to itself, the thrust of its message has become clear: without the opportunity to send in international inspectors to check on suspected weapons-of-mass-destruction laboratories, the world will remain dangerously ignorant of what Saddam has managed to achieve in the past three and a half years. The sources said that Saddam had "several hundred" scientists and engineers fully employed on developing nuclear, chemical and biological systems. "All of them know from the experience of the few defectors who have managed to escape to America and Britain that Saddam takes ruthless revenge on the families of those who dare to betray the secrets of his weapons programme,"one said. ... He may be several years away from completing his nuclear bomb programme, but if he were to acquire sufficient fissile material, the countdown to his nuclear dream could start much earlier." (See also: "The dossier against a dictator" (The Times, 2002/08/29))

"4 Men Charged With Being in Terrorist Cell in Detroit Area" (Dannu Hakim, The New York Times, 2002/08/29)
"The government indicted four Arab men in federal court here today, saying they were part of a terrorist cell operating in the Detroit area and were planning attacks in the United States, Jordan and Turkey. ...
In addition, three of those indicted worked at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. They were taken into custody shortly after Sept. 11, though one was freed for a time. ...
In Seattle, the government indicted a Muslim man today on charges of conspiring to help Al Qaeda and trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon. At the same time, German prosecutors brought charges against a Moroccan man accused of supporting members of the Hamburg cell suspected of helping to plan and carry out the Sept. 11 attacks."

 

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

News and commentary:

"Old Guard" (Michael Crowley, The New Republic, 2002/08/28)
"Nothing would better demonstrate our new post-September 11 resolve than a fierce, uncompromising, worldwide clampdown on nuclear materials and expertise. No expense would be spared. Bold action would replace idle talk. And yet so far, it hasn't. ...
Many of the most worrisome nuclear sites are in other, still more lawless areas in Africa and the Middle East. One reactor in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, for instance, is protected by only a rusted, padlocked metal gate. It has been missing a fuel rod since the 1980s, when the director evidently lent out his key ring without realizing the reactor key was on it. (When recently questioned on the matter by a Western reporter, the director feigned deafness.) Some reports suggest the rod was stolen and shopped around by the Italian mafia, although its fate is unclear. Nor is anyone quite sure what's happening at the plant now. Since a 1997 coup in the Congo, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not been allowed to inspect the plant. There are disputes about whether this reactor produces material fissile enough to build a crude nuke, but certainly it could provide the key components of a dreaded, radiation-spewing "dirty bomb." And the Kinshasa reactor is just one example of the similarly appalling conditions that can be found at several other reactors in nations like Romania, Uzbekistan, and Ghana." (See also: "US and Russia in raid to snatch uranium" (Michael Evans, The Times, 2002/08/24))

"Saudi Foreign Minister Says Iraq Attack 'Unwise'" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/28)
I wonder if the Saudi Foreign Minister thinks it "gullible" to presume that Iraqis don't like to be gassed, executed or tortured to death?: "Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday it would be unwise for the international community to try to force Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and install its own replacement. Prince Saud al-Faisal said in an interview with the BBC that it was up to the Iraqi people to oust Saddam and it was gullible of people to think they knew better than the Iraqis what would be best for their country."

"Secretary Rumsfeld at Camp Pendleton Town Hall Meeting" (Donald Rumsfeld, DefenseLINK, 2002/08/28)
Transcript of a "Town Hall meeting" with Donald Rumsfeld at Camp Pendleton held yesterday, in which he commented on the question of unanimity versus unilateralism regarding eventual action against Iraq: "I can go back to the buildup to World War II, but I don't suppose anyone else here can. But I remember, and during that period, the voices of concern about what Adolf Hitler was doing were very few. There was not unanimity. There were all kinds of diplomats running around, holding meetings with him. There were people saying, "Don't do anything; he'll stop. He won't do anything terrible." And as he - they occupied one country after another country after another country, it wasn't till each country was attacked that they stopped and said, "Well, maybe Winston Churchill was right." Maybe that lone voice expressing concern about what was taking place was the right voice. So, in unanimity, we often find an absence of rigorous thinking. And it's more important - it's less important to have unanimity than it is to be making the right decisions and doing the right thing, even though at the outset it may seem lonesome." (See also "Secretary Rumsfeld Town Hall Meeting" (Donald Rumsfeld, DefenseLINK, 2002/08/06): "What we have said, and I think it's terribly important, is that we've got a big, complicated world, and the mission has to determine the coalition. And you must not fashion a coalition and then let it determine the mission. To the extent you do that, you end up dumbing down to the lowest common denominator. And it seems to me that we can't do that.")

"Eminent Arab Scholars" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2002/08/28)
"The Jerusalem Post has a report on a new conference on Holocaust denial and the evil Jewish Conspiracy™ scheduled at "The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up," a Bizarro World "think tank" in Abu Dhabi. ...
Please note that the Zayed Centre for Drooling Lunacy is not some kind of fringe organization; they are funded by the Arab League, and other speakers this year have included former vice president Al Gore, former secretary of state James Baker, and President George W. Bush’s brother, Neil Bush. Oh, and Lyndon LaRouche. ...
This is what passes for thinking from the "eminent Arab scholars" at the Zayed Centre for Obsessive Hand-Washing and Paranoid Psychosis; first the Executive Director: 'Mr. Mohammed Khalifa Al Murar, the Executive Director of the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up repudiated Israelis claim of being the real Semites. ...
Yet, they churn out lies after lies till they make people believe that they are Semites and are being persecuted by others. ...
Expressing their true face, Mr. Al Murrar said, "Jews claim to be God's most preferred people but the truth is they are the enemies of all nations. Most philosophers like Zimmer, consider Jews as cheaters whose greed knows no bounds. Today, after having controlled print and electronic media, they distort facts to suit their objectives", added Mr. Al Murar.'" (See also "Eminent Arab Scholars speak at Seminar on Semitism" (Zayed Centre for Coordination & Follow Up, 2002/08/28) and "Arab League to participate in Holocaust-denial symposium" (Michael Freund, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/27): "In a press release describing the symposium, the Zayed Center said, "Israel has indulged in spreading lies and exaggerations about the Holocaust in order to squeeze out huge funds from European countries through blackmail." Labeling the Holocaust a "false fable," the center said that, 'The symposium aims at disclosing many historical, political fallacies promoted by Israel and Zionism through different means especially the spread of fibs and exaggerations regarding the so-called Holocaust.'")

"The Terrible Logic of Nukes" (Charles Krauthammer, TIME, from the 2002/09/02 issue)
"The iron law of the nuclear age is this: nuclear weapons are instruments of madness; their actual use would be a descent into madness, but the threat to use them is not madness. On the contrary, it is exceedingly logical. ... That is precisely why today we cannot allow bad guys like Saddam to get their hands on nukes: not merely because a crazed Saddam might actually use them on us but also because a rational Saddam, one not interested in committing suicide by attacking us out of the blue with nukes, could nonetheless use them as accessories to aggression. ...
As it was, war against a nonnuclear Iraq was authorized by the U.S. Senate by a mere five votes. Had Saddam had nukes in 1991, he would probably today be king of all Arabia. We are in a race against time. Were Iraq to acquire a deliverable nuclear weapon, it would gain a measure of invulnerability. ... Nukes are not weapons of insanity. They have a logic. The U.S. showed it during the cold war. Pakistan showed it this year. Saddam would like to show it tomorrow. Which is why time is short. Nukes do not have to explode to be useful. Their value lies in mere possession. Possession creates an umbrella of inviolability. And there is nothing more dangerous than an inviolable aggressor."

"Lifestyles of the Poor and Obscure" (Katherine Mangu-Ward, The Weekly Standard, 2002/08/28)
The end logic of moral relativism II: "The introduction of electricity has caused the "destruction" of cultures in the third world, according the editor of an environmental website. He says "there's a lot of quality to be had in poverty." "I don't think a lot of electricity is a good thing. It is the fuel that powers a lot of multi-national imagery," said Gar Smith, editor of the Earth Island Institute's online journal the Edge, in an interview with CNSNews.com's Marc Morano. "I have seen villages in Africa that had a vibrant culture and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity," Smith said. "People who used to spend their days and evenings in the streets playing music on their own instruments and sewing clothing for their neighbors on foot-pedal powered sewing machines" are now inside their huts watching television. ...
Smith goes on to declare that poverty is "relative." He explains that "you can't really have poverty unless you have wealthy people on the scene." One wonders why he hasn't moved to a locale more in tune with the lifestyle he and his friends embrace. There, with no health care, living on a subsistence diet, with a leaky roof over his head, at least he'd have the comfort of knowing he isn't poor." (See also: "Environmentalist Laments Introduction of Electricity" (Marc Morano, CNSNews.com, 2002/08/26) and "What do we really want?" (George Monbiot, The Guardian, 2002/08/27): "But it is impossible not to notice that, in some of the poorest parts of the world, most people, most of the time, appear to be happier than we are. ...
This is not to suggest that poverty causes happiness. In southern Ethiopia people desperately want better healthcare, better education, better housing and sanitation, not to mention smart clothes, motorbikes, refrigerators and radios. But while poverty does not cause happiness, there appears to be some evidence that wealth causes misery.")

"Sudan Guest Blogs: Impressions" (Lawrence T. Peter, Winds of Change, 2002/08/28)
The second of three reports from Sudan, with Peter reporting about pro-American sentiments: "On a day-to-day basis I am America, I perform 'diplomatic representation' and - you know what? - the Sudanese folks I meet think America can do no wrong. I find myself telling them America is not as great as they think, not because America is not great, but because no reality can be as splendid as the opinion they hold of the USA. ...
In the late 1980s Sudan experienced a severe drought. Then-Vice President Bush visited Sudan, and actually came to El Obied. According to legend (and that is the character this story has acquired) Bush promised the United States would provide grain and seed to help the Sudanese. The USA delivered on this promise and today, fields of wheat or sorghum or whatever are referred to as fields of Reagan (as in "the Reagan is growing well this year. . ."). Also, because of the promise, many Sudanese families named their sons after George Bush (e.g. Bush al Sa’ad or Bush Ismail Ahmed Elhaj). ...
But, even in the deepest corners, the Sudanese know about America. I had a small (12"x18" US flag sewn inside my vest. When I've visited villagers at some small dirt airstrip deep in the bush, and talked with them, eventually I'd be asked from what country I had come. I'd of course tell them America and then take off my vest to show the crowd. This small act always results in cheers. Just the sight of the Stars and Stripes was a nourishment of sorts for these impoverished people."

"I'm With Dick! Let's Make War!" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/08/28)
"Making the case for going to war in the Middle East to veterans on Monday, the vice president said that "our goal would be . . . a government that is democratic and pluralistic, a nation where the human rights of every ethnic and religious group are recognized and protected." O.K., I'm on board. Let's declare war on Saudi Arabia! Let's do "regime change" in a kingdom that gives medieval a bad name. ...
Once everyone realizes that we're no longer being hypocrites, coddling a corrupt, repressive dictatorship that sponsors terrorism even as we plot to crush a corrupt, repressive dictatorship that sponsors terrorism, it will transform our relationship with the Arab world. ... We haven't been hit at home by any of Saddam's Scud missiles. But the human missiles launched by Saudi Arabia have taken their toll."

"We need Bush and not Saddam calling the shots" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2002/08/28)
"The cartoons all tell the same story. Whenever they depict the President of the United States the same props reinforce the same message. We've got ourselves a cowboy in the White House. George W. Bush is a trigger-happy, ten gallon-hatted, good ole boy who just won’t listen to his more civilised friends. Who does he think he is planning to take on the bad guys when wiser heads counsel caution? Gary Cooper? Let's hope so. Because we are perilously close to High Noon. ...
The realpolitik which led Republicans, and Tories, in the past to acquiesce in the propping up of regimes in Baghdad, and Riyadh, has not bought us security. It has allowed evil to incubate. And we have been forced to pay, in the innocent blood shed on September 11, for that folly. Now, however, America is determined to ensure that danger is defeated by liberating those whom its past policies have betrayed. It is an irony, and one perhaps not welcome among the old Left or the old Right, that morality has been restored to international affairs by a conservative American President. Just as it was in the 1940s by a Conservative British Prime Minister. While Europe stands irresolute and divided, while America's old managerialists cavil, while the Left temporises in the face of tyranny, the White House recognises that Western democracy’s future depends on democracy taking root in Iraq. Cynics might call it cowboy diplomacy, but putting its faith in freedom is how the West has always won."

"Double Standards Make Enemies" (Salman Rushdie, The New York Times, 2002/08/28)
While I think it is wise to consider possible negative outcomes of an attack on Iraq, I would like to hear a viable alternative. Those against an attack are often the same people who are against the UN sanctions as well. But what is their alternative? Just leaving a megalomaniacal and genocidal tyrant, busy stocking up on chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, in place? Perhaps Rushdie would answer that the alternative is focusing on a peaceful solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but given the history of that conflict, that could easily take years, if not decades. Which means the question remains: "And it is in Iraq that George W. Bush may be about to make his biggest mistake, and to unleash a generation-long plague of anti-Americanism that could make the present epidemic look like a time of rude good health. Inevitably, the reasons lie in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ...and if, in the present highly charged atmosphere, the United States does embark on the huge, risky military operation suggested Monday by Vice President Dick Cheney, then the result may very well be the creation of that united Islamic force that was bin Laden's dream. Saudi Arabia would almost certainly feel obliged to expel U.S. forces from its soil (thus capitulating to one of bin Laden's main demands). Iran - which so recently fought a long, brutal war against Iraq - would surely support its erstwhile enemy, and might even come into the conflict on the Iraqi side. The entire Arab world would be radicalized and destabilized. What a disastrous twist of fate it would be if the feared Islamic jihad were brought into being not by the al Qaeda gang but by the president of the United States and his close advisers."

"Olmert: Government must act now to prevent collapse of southern wall on Temple Mount" (Nadav Shragai, Haaretz, 2002/08/28)
The ongoing destruction of parts of the Temple Mount is a crime of historical proportions. The indifference to it, as Israeli authorities and the world stands by, is a scandal of historical proportions. It seems the world is more outraged by the destruction of home a Palestinian terrorist than by the willful destruction of irreplaceable archeological artefacts fundamental to the history of Judaism, Christianity as well as Islam: "Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert called yesterday on the government to take immediate action to prevent a potential "historical and human disaster" should the southern wall collapse. The area of the wall in question has gradually moved outward from its original position. Some people have claimed the shift is the result of illegal construction on the Temple Mount by the Waqf, the Muslim religious trust. ...
On Monday, a citizens' watchdog group sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warning of "a clear and present danger that the southern part of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount might collapse" as a result of the Waqf's construction. ...
"To date, no steps have been taken in the matter, which means that nothing can be done to correct the situation," said archaeologist Eilat Mazar, a member of the group. The question now is 'whether the Wall will collapse on thousands of worshipers or if it will happen in a controlled manner.'" (See also: "The Temple Mount - the Haram-esh-Sharif" (AICE), the homepage of The Committee for the Prevention of Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount (har-habayt.org) and "Mounting irresponsibility" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/28))

"Al Qaeda Deputies Harbored by Iran" (Peter Finn, The Washington Post, 2002/08/28)
"Two figures who have assumed critical roles in the al Qaeda hierarchy in recent months, including one reported dead by the Pentagon, are being sheltered in Iran along with dozens of other al Qaeda fighters in hotels and guesthouses in the border cities of Mashhad and Zabol, according to Arab intelligence sources. The two - Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian on the FBI's most-wanted list, and Mahfouz Ould Walid, also known as Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, whom U.S. officials reported had been killed near the eastern Afghan city of Khost in January - are directly involved in planning al Qaeda terrorist operations, according to the intelligence sources, who are outside Saudi Arabia and did not want their names or countries disclosed. ... Dozens of other al Qaeda fighters, and possibly more, are also staying in a cluster of hotels in Mashhad, in northeastern Iran near the borders with Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, and in guesthouses in Zabol, about 400 miles farther south on the Iranian-Afghan border, the sources said."

"Egypt leads Arab revolt against US" (Richard Beeston et al., The Times, 2002/08/28)
"President Mubarak of Egypt, one of America's closest allies in the region, gave warning of Arab anger unless some form of peace was first reached between Israel and the Palestinians. "If you strike Iraq, and kill the people of Iraq while Palestinians are being killed by Israel . . . not one Arab leader will be able to control the angry outburst of the masses," he told students in Alexandria. "I don’t think there is one Arab state that wants a strike on Iraq, not Kuwait, not Saudi Arabia, not any other state," he said, adding that a military intervention in Iraq could lead to 'chaos across the region'."

Added in Celebrity Watch:
Jean Baudrilliard
bell hooks
Gayatri Spivak

 

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

News and commentary:

"Arabic: a language for Belgium?" (Andrew Osborn, The Guardian, 2002/08/27)
"His organisation - the Arab-European League - numbers just a thousand members (by his own account), but the words of Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Belgian national of Lebanese origin, have prompted many of Belgium's mainstream politicians to spit figurative blood. His latest pronouncement - that Arabic should be recognised as Belgium's fourth official language after French, Flemish and German - has been too much for many to bear. ...
Mr Abou Jahjah, who has organised "lively" pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Antwerp and who doesn't hide his sympathies with groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, would seem, however, to mark a change in tactics. ... He has, for example, spoken out in forthright terms against Belgian-style assimilation. "It's always being said that we can keep our individuality, but that's not true", he claims. "The (Belgian) objective is for us to hang on to our culture in a minimal sense, even in a folkloric sense, and erasing cultural differences is fascism." ...
"We don't have to seek approval or acceptance from another part of the population. There is an unacceptable logic in Flanders of cultural terrorism but we are a national minority, we aren't immigrants anymore." ... He is also reported to have said he is able to "summon up understanding" for Osama Bin Laden and his website continues to refer to the Israelis as "neo-Nazi Zionists". ...
"Let's live for freedom or die defending it," he writes. 'Let's raise our children to do the same and let them raise their children on that same path. Freedom or death.'" (See also the website: Arab European League)

"Columbia U. Prof. excuses suicide "resistance" - An Unanswered Letter to Columbia's Dean of Academic Affairs by Edward Alexander" (Edward Alexander, IMRA, 2002/08/27)
The end logic of moral relativism I - a Columbia University professor calls The 9/11 attacks and suicide bombings "suicidal resistance" and says there "is no dishonor in such shared and innocent death": "On June 22, Columbia University professor and postmodern theorist Gayatri Spivak gave the keynote address at a conference at the University of Leeds entitled "Translating Class, Altering Hospitality." ...
I merely offer a few excerpts from Spivak's keynote speech, on the subject of what she calls "suicidal resistance," to show what currently passes for wisdom in academic circles: 'Suicide bombing - and the planes of 9/11 were living bombs - is a purposive self-annihilation, a confrontation between oneself and oneself, the extreme end of autoeroticism, killing onself as other, in the process killing others. It is when one sees oneself as an object capable of destruction in a world of objects, so that the destruction of others is indistinguishable from the destruction of self. Suicidal resistance is a message inscribed on the body when no other means will get through. It is both execution and mourning, for both self and other. For you die with me for the same cause, no matter which side you are on. Because no matter who you are, there are no designated killees in suicide bombing. No matter what side you are on, because I cannot talk to you, you won't respond to me, with the implication that there is no dishonor in such shared and innocent death.'" (See also the conference website: "CongressCATH 2002: Translating Class, Altering Hospitality" (University of Leed, Summer 2002))

"Bin Laden Reportedly Back at Helm of al Qaeda" (Michael Georgy, Reuters, 2002/08/27)
"Osama bin Laden is firmly back in command of al Qaeda and the group is digging in for guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, an Arab journalist with close ties to the militant's associates said on Tuesday. Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based daily al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said al Qaeda associates recently told him the network had regained confidence after facing intense U.S. bombing and was ready to fight U.S. troops over the long haul. ...
Bin Laden's associates told Atwan that the Saudi-born militant was well, "safe" and planning new attacks on the United States. They did not say where bin Laden was currently living. "My sense is that he will time any new attack to coincide with a U.S. attack on Iraq. He would want to capitalize on this to appeal to the Arab street so he will probably delay any attacks until the United States moves on Iraq," said Atwan."

"Preparing for war" (Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, from the 22 - 28 August 2002 issue)
An interesting report from the Jordanian-Iraqi border on Iraqi preparations for war. Thanks to R G Fulton for the pointer: "Sources also confirm that the Iraqi leadership will resort to using its remaining weapons of mass destruction if US troops make significant progress on the ground. ...
In addition, dozens of long range land-to-land missiles with a range of more than 1,000 kilometres have been moved into a western region of Iraq, which extends hundreds of kilometres in the direction of the Jordanian border. The deep caves that abound in this area and can provide cover for large amounts of massive equipment. From these locations, Iraqi missiles could strike at targets in the Gulf, neighbouring Arab countries and Israel. According to some sources, Hussein and Qusai have drawn up a parallel plan to strike at US interests in the event of an assault. The sources say that over the past weeks some 300 suicide fighters have received training and have been sent into various Arab, Asian and European countries. The suicide fighters are said to be under the command of the Iraqi Intelligence Agency and its covert operations department and will be supervised by special field agents."

"Spreading the Wealth" (David Pryce-Jones, National Review, 2002/08/27)
Pryce-Jones has proposed the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy in a post-Hussein Iraq. The idea made Claude Salhani accuse Pryce-Jones of "colonialism". Here's his response: "Why, I must be one of what he calls "a certain group of people" who believe that the West and in particular the United States should interfere in the internal policies of other countries. Let me confess outright to conspiracy, I belong to a one-man group with the belief that it is absolutely wrong for a ruler to be killing his own people. If it is colonialism to stop such a ruler, then I am all for it. "Colonialism is dead" says Salhani in the tone of someone holding an ace. That's news. Try telling it to the Tibetans who live under Chinese colonialism. Try telling it to the Lebanese who live under Syrian colonialism. Try telling it to the Afghans who were colonized by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Try telling it to the Bosnians and the Kosovars who were colonized by the Serbs. ...
He's trapped in the mindset of the Fifties which held Western powers to be bad because they were guilty of colonialism, and emerging nationalist rulers to be good because they defined themselves as victims. ... Western colonizers tried to put democratic systems in place. They didn't do it too well, but a great deal better than the nationalist rulers who succeeded them and then spent the Fifties and Sixties closing down parliaments and law courts and building up secret police. That's why we have Islamists in some countries, and ugly thugs in others. If the people in those unhappy countries can't help themselves to be free, then outsiders have to help them, which may mean expedients as unlikely or imperfect as a Hashemite restoration. Unlike Salhani, I want for others the freedoms I enjoy for myself." (See also: "Kings for Mesopotamia?" (Claude Salhani, National Review, 2002/08/23))

"Something Rotten In Denmark?" (Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard, New York Post, 2002/08/27)
"A Muslim group in Denmark announced a few days ago that a $30,000 bounty would be paid for the murder of several prominent Danish Jews, a threat that garnered wide international notice. Less well known is that this is just one problem associated with Denmark's approximately 200,000 Muslim immigrants. ...
For years, Danes lauded multiculturalism and insisted they had no problem with the Muslim customs - until one day they found that they did. Some major issues: ...
Third-world immigrants - most of them Muslims from countries such as Turkey, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Iraq - constitute 5 percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending. ... Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark's 5.4 million people but make up a majority of the country's convicted rapists, an especially combustible issue given that practically all the female victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes. ...
Anti-Israel marches have turned into anti-Jewish riots. One organization, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, openly calls on Muslims to "kill all Jews . . . wherever you find them." ...
Other Europeans (such as the late Pim Fortuyn in Holland) have also grown alarmed about these issues, but Danes were the first to make them the basis for a change in government. ...
Contrary to media reports, the real news from Denmark is not flirting with fascism but getting mired in inertia. A government elected specifically to deal with a set of problems has made minimal headway. Its reluctance has potentially profound implications for the West as a whole."

 

Monday, August 26, 2002

News and commentary:

"Cheney Argues for Preemptive Strike on Iraq" (Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, 2002/08/26)
"Vice President Cheney argued today for a preemptive attack on Iraq's Saddam Hussein, declaring there is "no doubt" the dictator has weapons of mass destruction and is preparing to use them against the United States and its allies. ...
The White House quickly said that Cheney's remarks did not indicate the administration had decided to attack Iraq. But advocates of such a move interpreted Cheney's remarks, more forceful and detailed than any yet offered by a senior official, as a virtual battle cry." (See also Willam Kristol's comments as well as a full transcript of the speech: "'We Will Not Live at the Mercy of Terrorists'" (William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, 2002/08/26))

"Stealth Bomber" (Janine Zacharia, The New Republic, 2002/08/26)
"Still, while the Israeli public focuses on a missile attack, Israeli security and terrorism experts quietly worry about a more sinister prospect: that Saddam could equip Palestinian militants with deadly biological pathogens that, if disbursed clandestinely, could go undetected until scores of people fall ill. ...
The agents at Saddam's disposal, according to varying reports, include botulinum toxin, anthrax, ricin, smallpox, and maybe the Ebola virus - the hardest of all to distribute. ...
Which is why the easiest way for Saddam to circumvent these difficulties may be simply to equip a Palestinian terrorist with a slightly modified aerosol can, replace the deodorant with a test-tube-sized amount of smallpox (which is highly contagious and easily transmittable by air), and have the terrorist spray the virus in a shopping mall, movie theater, or school. ...
Or he could use high-grade powdered anthrax, like that sent by U.S. mail. It would be enough, says Shoham "to open a test tube and shake it. ...
If he is more sophisticated he could put it in the ventilation of the Azrieli building," a Tel Aviv skyscraper." (See also: "Whitehall dossier says Saddam plans biological weapons for Palestinians" (Michael Evans, The Times, 2002/08/03))

"Turkey's Hangman Retires" (Amir Taheri, National Review, 2002/08/26)
"According to most surveys, almost 70 percent of all legal executions in the world during the past two decades have taken place in the Muslim world. The overwhelming majority of those executed had been convicted of so-called "political crimes," which means opposing the regimes in place. In Iran alone at least 28,000 people were executed between 1979 and 2000. Opposition to the abolition of capital punishment comes from both religious and secular elements in Muslim societies. Most secular groups, including the Turkish Nationalist Party, present arguments often used by opponents of abolition in the West, notably that the death penalty is a powerful deterrent against capital crime. Radical fundamentalists argue on less rational grounds, claiming that the idea of abolishing capital punishment is part of "a Jewish conspiracy" to deprive Islam of an "effective means of eliminating its enemies." "Those who preach abolition [of the death penalty] would also oppose the fatwas needed to cleanse the earth from those who cause corruption on it," says Ayatollah Muhammad-Ali Shahroudi, the Iranian Chief Justice. 'They are the same people who also condemn the heroic acts of Palestinians who commit suicide while wiping out large numbers of Zionist evil-doers.'"

"IDF nabs top Hamas man, says was behind Sbarro attack" (Haaretz/AP, 2002/08/26)
"IDF special forces arrested in Jenin Monday afternoon the most wanted Hamas man in the West Bank, Sheikh Jamal Abu el Hija. Troops arrested Hija, who is responsible for several suicide bombings that killed dozens of Israelis, as well as Aslam Jarar, a Hamas member of lower rank. Hija was allegedly behind several suicide bombings, including:
- an Egged bus at the Meron junction in the north on August 4, in which nine people were killed and dozens injured;
- the Arab-owned Matza Restaurant in Haifa on March 31, 2002, in which 15 people were killed and more than 40 injured;
- and at the Sbarro pizzeria in the heart of Jerusalem on August 9 last year, in which 15 people were killed and about 90 wounded."

"Take It to the Security Council" (Richard C. Holbrooke, The Washington Post, 2002/08/26)
"The road to Baghdad runs through the United Nations Security Council. This simple truth must be recognized by the Bush administration if it wants the international support that is essential for success in Iraq. To build such support, a new Security Council resolution is necessary, one that authorizes the use of force if Saddam Hussein refuses to allow an airtight weapons inspection regime - no-notice inspections anywhere, anytime. Such a resolution would provide those nations (Turkey, Britain) that want to support an effort to remove Hussein a vital legitimizing cover for action, and put great pressure on those (Germany, France, Saudi Arabia) that are wavering or opposed."

"How they twisted the hawk Kissinger into a fake dove" (Barbara Amiel, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/08/26)
"What has been happening at the Times is far more ominous than just veering to the support of one party or one ideology. ... There is a type of liberalism, pioneered in America, which tries to be fairer than fair. But trying to be better than fair is like trying to bend over backwards to be straighter than vertical or defining "objective" as being neutral between good and evil. That path leads straight to moral equivalence. In the 1980s, this pseudo "objectivity" and "fairness" expressed itself in an impartiality between totalitarian systems and the free world. Currently, it expresses itself in the notion that Palestinian actions against civilians have the same moral legitimacy as those of Israelis against the intifada. ... Super-liberalism has sub-liberal consequences. Because super-liberalism has no reality behind it, the truth has to be distorted. The news has to be re-written or spun to suit the agenda if it involves topics the paper considers of vital ideological importance, such as the unseating of President George W Bush, the prevention of war against Iraq, the creation of a Palestinian state without regard to the security of Israel. Ultimately, in such a wonderland, the super-liberals have to rise to the defence of suicide bombers. Day has to become night. Henry Kissinger must be made into an anti-Bush dove." (See also: "Top Republicans Break With Bush on Iraq Strategy" (Todd S. Purdum and Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times, 2002/08/16) and "Steps on the way to ousting Saddam from Iraq" (Henry Kissinger, HoustonChronicle, 2002/08/09))

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

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

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

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

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

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

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

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

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

› AOTW Archive



From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

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

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

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

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

Weekly archive

2006/12/04 - 2006/12/10
2006/11/27 - 2006/12/03
2006/11/20 - 2006/11/26
2006/11/13 - 2006/11/19
2006/11/06 - 2006/11/12
2006/10/30 - 2006/11/05

› From 2001/09/11 -



Monthly index

December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006

› From September 2001 -



Author index

› Ajami, Fouad - Johnson, Paul
› Kagan, Robert - Ye'or, Bat



Support Watch

Please feel free to donate if you enjoy the daily content and links Watch provides:

Contact Watch

Email:
watch-at-windsofchange.net