Watch - Articles and opinion: October 22

Archived news and commentary: October 22 - 28, 2001

2001/12/24 - 2001/12/31
2001/12/17 - 2001/12/23
2002/12/10 - 2001/12/16
2002/12/03 - 2001/12/09
2001/11/26 - 2001/12/02
2001/11/19 - 2001/11/25
2001/11/12 - 2001/11/18
2001/11/05 - 2001/11/11
2001/10/29 - 2001/11/04
2001/10/22 - 2001/10/28
2001/10/15 - 2001/10/21
2001/10/08 - 2001/10/14
2001/10/01 - 2001/10/07
2001/09/24 - 2001/09/30
2001/09/17 - 2001/09/23
2001/09/11 - 2001/09/16

Sunday, October 28, 2001

News and commentary:

"Maharishi urges Bush ouster" (DesMoinesRegister.com, 2001/10/28)
Meditate on this: "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has called for the removal of President Bush, saying that his bellicose posture has opened the road to the gates of hell, followers said Saturday. Speaking from the Netherlands, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement told followers that many unintelligent people believe in arms. He said Bush's ignorance of science has led him to rashly go out and destroy the world, according to a statement by followers."

"Christians massacred in Pakistan" (BBC News, 2001/10/28)
"Unidentified masked gunmen on motorcycles have opened fire indiscriminately on worshippers in a church in eastern Pakistan, killing at least 18 people. Police say dozens more are seriously injured. The attack took place during a service attended by over 100 people at a Roman Catholic church in the town of Bahawalpur, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of the city of Multan, in Punjab Province. No one has so far said they carried out the attack, but officials said members of a banned Islamic group were under suspicion. ... In 1997, Muslim rioters in southern Punjab burned and looted hundreds of Christians' homes and ransacked 13 churches and a school, accusing some Christians of committing blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed."

"Give me Churchill, not Burchill" (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Observer, 2001/10/28)
"This is a bleak moment in the campaign against Osama bin Laden, with the capture and execution of Abdul Haq and no sign of the enemy cracking. And yet the best possible case for continuing military action has been made by the defeatism and spite of our own Left intelligentsia. Since the events of 11 September, we have heard a concerto of whining and stupidity and plain nastiness. ... Almost the worst thing about the bleating critics is their imperviousness to reason and complete lack of the intellectual humility needed to recognise that one may have been wrong. In the spring of 1999, I was one of those who deplored the bombing of Serbia. Elementary observation now suggests that Serb forces are no longer terrorising Kosovo, that Serbia is returning to something like democracy and that Milosevic is on trial. Would that have happened if we had dropped John Pilger, Julie Burchill and Simon Jenkins on Belgrade (tempting as that thought is)? But the worst thing of all about the defeatist intelligentsia is their complete futility, even in their own terms. As Orwell wrote: 'These people live almost entirely in a masturbation fantasy, conditioned by the fact that nothing they say or do will ever influence events, not even the turning out of a single shell.' That's just as true today and 'masturbation fantasy' is all too accurate for our own lot. What a bunch of wankers."

"The Making of bin Laden" (Jason Burke, The Observer, 2001/10/28)
"After months of interviews, and gathering startling new testimony from al-Qaeda associates and enemies around the world, Afghanistan specialist Jason Burke sifts fact from rumour to provide the fullest account yet of the life of Osama bin Laden.": "Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted man, and Mullah Mohamed Omar, supreme leader of the Taliban regime, had a lot to discuss. A few days earlier, at 8.45pm on 30 September, US and British cruise missiles had started hitting targets across Afghanistan in retribution for the terrorist attacks that had killed 5,000 people in New York and Washington nearly three weeks earlier. ... The meeting, revealed to The Observer by sources in a Gulf intelligence agency, did not last long. ... Partly it was because the two were in agreement on almost everything. Mullah Omar reaffirmed his support, affection and respect for his Saudi-born friend. Bin Laden replied in kind. The two swiftly reached a decision on tactics. They would jointly resist any aggression, they would work to create and exploit divisions in the coalition ranged against them, and they would exploit the humanitarian crisis - and any civilian casualties - to create global anger against the bombing campaign. Then the two embraced and went their separate ways. They are not thought to have met since."

"It's a Crime That Some Don't See This as Hate" (Paul Hollander, The Washington Post Outlook, 2001/10/28)
"The champions of global peace and social justice readily rise to moral indignation and anger against the United States, but appear incapable of similar sentiments against the terrorists. Concern for the unintended victims of American action against the terrorists and the nations that harbor them greatly outweighs compassion toward the actual and wholly intentional victims of Sept. 11. ... At the core of these attitudes is anti-Americanism, which I define as a historically specific expression of a universal scapegoating impulse, a type of bias similar to racism, sexism or antisemitism, and a largely irrational, often visceral aversion to the United States and its government, domestic institutions, prevailing values, culture and people, fueled by a variety of frustrations and grievances. It culminates in the feeling, memorably expressed by a Hamas leader, that "America is the problem that lies behind all other problems." Those within our shores who harbor these sentiments have seized on the events of Sept. 11 to express renewed hostility toward our society. America's homegrown critics hold the peculiar conviction that if hatred of the sort that led to the destruction of the World Trade Center is directed at the United States, there must be good and justifiable reason for it. Yet these same critics never seem to take such a position in regard to victims of other hate crimes."

"This war has made me a conservative" (Stephen Pollard, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/10/28)
"Last week I dined with a group of Left-wing friends, one a prominent Labour backbencher, another a senior minister. Out came the familiar stuff: killing thousands of people is terrible but if America had not been such a malign presence in the world it would never have happened; bin Laden may be an evil criminal but he speaks for large numbers of the dispossessed. Blah blah blah. We've heard it all before, we've read it all before.
But the unpleasant truth for someone like me, who has spent his entire adult life on the Left, is that such reactions are not restricted to a few Guardian readers: they are shared by Labour MPs, ministers and almost everyone I know on the Left. I feel like Norman Podhoretz's definition of a neo-conservative: a liberal mugged by reality.
There is, it seems, a fundamental divide in this world between those with instincts on the side of freedom and decency - and prepared to defend it - and those who live in a different moral universe. What else can explain the grotesque, shameful remarks of Peter Hain, the Foreign Office minister, on Thursday? According to Mr Hain, "We are just as horrified as Arab leaders and Arab peoples about the atrocities in the occupied areas - and indeed in Israel. ... We deplore all terrorist attacks, whether suicide bombs in Tel Aviv or terrorist acts in the occupied areas."
So in the warped world-view of the Left, a democratic state taking action to apprehend the murderer of a cabinet minister is terrorism - the equivalent of the events of September 11. I feel ashamed to be a member of the same party as Mr Hain. If being in favour of democracy, peace and freedom means being on the Right, then I would wear that badge with pride."

"Questions for V.S. Naipaul on His Contentious Relationship to Islam" (Adam Shatz, The New York Tomes Magazine, 2001/10/28)
"What do you think were the causes of Sept. 11?
It had no cause. Religious hate, religious motivation, was the primary thing. I don't think it was because of American foreign policy. There is a passage in one of the Conrad short stories of the East Indies where the savage finds himself with his hands bare in the world, and he lets out a howl of anger. I think that, in its essence, is what is happening."

"All Suicide Bombers Are Not Alike" (Joseph Lelyveld, The New York Times Magazine, 2001/10/28)
Reports from Gaza, Cairo and Hamburg "in search of what really made Sept. 11 possible": "Then it dawned on me that the Middle East might not be the immediate sphere of contention. Gaza had its own battle. Cairo was full of emotion but basically sidelined, and Operation Enduring Freedom notwithstanding, remote Afghanistan had just been a refuge. If we were talking about preventing further attacks, the field of battle had moved to Europe and America. A looming question, I was coming to believe as I walked around Hamburg, was how you smash terrorist networks in conditions of an open society, which allow them to operate on our ground far more confidently than they ever could on their own."

"Hijackers were from wealthy Saudi families" (The Sunday Times, 2001/10/28)
"Most of the hijackers in the terrorist attacks on America were recruited from wealthy Saudi families and were bound by family ties, the first detailed account of their background has revealed. ... Fifteen of the 19 hijackers are now known to be Saudis, including the brother of a police commander, the son of a tribal chief, two teachers and three law graduates. ... Al-Fagih, the leader of the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, said contact with dozens of local sources confirmed visits by at least 11 of the hijackers to training camps of Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda."

Saturday, October 27, 2001

News and commentary:

"Taliban Captures, Executes Key Opposition Commander" (Tyler Marshall et al., Los Angeles Times, 2001/10/27)
"In a major setback to the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign, Afghanistan's Taliban regime on Friday executed a prominent opposition military commander who had secretly entered the country on a mission to gain support for a new government. The Taliban's Bakhtar News Agency reported that Afghan war hero Abdul Haq had been arrested near his home village of Azra southeast of the capital, Kabul, on Thursday evening after being stalked for two days by Taliban militia units. He was taken to Kabul along with two companions, where all three were tried and summarily executed Friday."

"Authorities Gain Tools to Fight Terrorism" (Adam Clymer, The New York Times, 2001/10/27)
"President Bush signed into law today antiterrorism measures that he said would "help law enforcement to identify, to dismantle, to disrupt and to punish terrorists before they strike." In a White House ceremony, Mr. Bush praised several provisions of the bill, including its efforts to attack money-laundering and to allow information sharing between law enforcement and intelligence authorities. He also cited new powers for roving wiretaps across the country and for the surveillance of computers and electronic mail."

"The abuse of women" (Theodore Dalrymple, The Spectator, from the 2001/10/27 issue)
"Multiculturalism, however, is not just a question of eating Mexican on Monday and Thai on Tuesday. It is, among other things, the denial that assimilation into our historical, cultural and political traditions should be the goal of immigrants. It is permission for Albanians and Kurds to take their driving test in Albanian and Kurdish (though perhaps not in all the latter’s several mutually incomprehensible dialects) instead of expecting them to have mastered a certain amount of English before doing so. It is to adopt a cringeing and uncritical attitude to every manifestation of every culture except one’s own. It is to disarm oneself in advance against the argument that an unpleasant practice is part of someone’s culture, and therefore inviolable.
When a Muslim in Birmingham observes that one of the largest mosques in the city is called the President Saddam Hussein mosque, is he more likely to feel gratitude for the tolerance that allows his co-religionists to worship unmolested in such an establishment, or contempt for the spinelessness and decadence of a country whose tolerance can so easily be turned against it, and whose liberties might without difficulty be used to propagate and eventually impose tyranny? ...
Every multiculturalist believes — whether he knows it or not — that it is right to force young girls into marriages they don’t want, to deprive them of the schooling and careers that they do want, to regard them as prostitutes if they leave their abusive husbands, and to punish, even to kill, those who cross cultural and religious boundaries. As an Italian commentator once put it, multiculturalism is not couscous; it is the stoning of adulterers."

"Islam Can't Escape Blame" (Amir Taheri, The Wall Street Journal, 2001/10/27)
"Anyone familiar with textbooks in most Muslim countries would know the twisted view of the world they propagate and the hatred they promote. Anyone who follows the media in the Muslim world would know that the verbal version of the Sept. 11 attacks is an almost daily fare. Go to the Internet and check the editorials of virtually any Muslim paper on Sept. 10 and see what they were saying about the West in general and the U.S. in particular. Anyone listening to a sermon in virtually any mosque, including many in the West, would be shocked by the vehemence of the anti-Western, especially anti-American, sentiments expressed. ... The Muslim world today is full of bigotry, fanaticism, hypocrisy and plain ignorance - all of which create a breeding ground for criminals like bin Laden. The principal victims of these criminals are Muslims, who are prevented from developing a modern political culture without which they cannot reform their societies and rebuild their economies."

Friday, October 26, 2001

News and commentary:

"Liberal Democracy vs. Transnational Progressivism - The Future of the Ideological Civil War Within the West" (John Fonte, Hudson Institute, 2001/10/26)
Fonte on "transnational progressivism": "This ideology constitutes a universal and modern worldview that challenges in theory and practice both the liberal democratic nation-state in general and the American regime in particular.
The Key Concepts of Transnational Progressivism
(1) The ascribed group over the individual citizen
The key political unit is not the individual citizen who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born. ...
(2) A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor groups vs. Victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims
Influenced (however indirectly) by the Hegelian Marxist thinking associated with the Italian writer Antonio Gramsci and the Central European theorists known as the Frankfurt School, global progressives posit that throughout human history there are essentially two types of groups: the oppressor and the oppressed, the privileged and the marginalized. ... In the United States, oppressor groups would include white males, heterosexuals, and "Anglos;" whereas "victim" groups would include blacks, gays, Latinos (including obviously many immigrants), and women. ...
If our system is based not on individual rights, but on group consciousness; not on equality of citizenship, but on group preferences for non-citizens (including illegal immigrants) and for certain categories of citizens; not on majority rule within constitutional limits but on power-sharing by different ethnic, racial, gender, and linguistic groups; not on constitutional law, but on transnational law; not on immigrants becoming Americans, but on migrants linked between transnational communities; then the regime will cease to be "constitutional," "liberal," "democratic," and "American," in any real sense of those terms, but will become in reality a new hybrid system that is "post-constitutional," "post-liberal," "post-democratic," and 'post-American.'"

"Islam is in Dark Ages" (Diana West, The Washington Times, 2001/10/26)
"When George W. Bush says "Islam is peace" and Tony Blair insists the war now begun "has nothing to do with Islam," some of us scratch our heads and try, brows furrowed, to reconcile their soothing words with our frightening vision: the dirty war on Western civilization waged by evil forces in the name of Islam. ... Meanwhile, where is that peaceable majority overflowing Islamdom? Are they filling the streets in unity with America's effort to eradicate Islamist terrorism, "marginal" though its supporters may be? Hardly. Only last week, UPI reported that Pakistan's Tahirul Qadri had become ''the first prominent Muslim scholar to condemn Osama bin Laden and the Taliban so strongly in public.''' Even if the wire service missed a bin-Laden-condemning cleric here or there, the singularity of Mr. Qadri's achievement is striking. ... In Cairo, the paper reported, last Friday's prayers at the famous Al-Azhar University mosque ended with a rousing chant of: "America is the enemy of Arabs and Muslims. Let us die in our war against America." In New Delhi's largest mosque, the imam urged "moral" support for a Taliban jihad. In Nairobi, services progressed from attacking the United States to the parable: 'Every Muslim is Osama bin Laden.'"

"Czech Officials Say Hijacker Met With Iraqi Agent" (Peter Finn, The Washington Post, 2001/10/26)
"Czech officials publicly confirmed today that Mohamed Atta, one of the key hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, had contact with an Iraqi intelligence agent during a trip to the Czech Republic early this year and possibly in an earlier trip in June 2000. An Iraqi connection, if proven, would force the administration to dramatically widen its declared war on terrorism, which is currently focused on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Taliban movement that shelters it in Afghanistan. ... But any proof of Iraqi involvement, and a consequent U.S. military response, could hurt the administration's alliance-building in the Arab world, which would find it much more difficult to support an assault on Iraq than one on the Taliban, some analysts have argued. "We have no relation whatsoever with groups that are being accused by the U.S.," Iraqi Foreign Affairs Minister Naji Sabri said last month. But Iraq has not explained why its agent met Atta."

"In current context, racial profiling makes sense" (Jonah Goldberg, TownHall, 2001/10/26)
"When the Justice Department released its revised list of "Most Wanted" criminals two weeks ago, all of the people on the list were Arabic. This mostly has to do with the fact, inconvenient to some, that all of the people directly responsible for murdering 6,000 Americans on Sept. 11 happened to be Arabic. Undaunted, Hussein Amin, a widely quoted Islamic intellectual and former Egyptian Ambassador to Algeria, responded, "Why pick on Arabs? Are there no South Americans, Irish, Serbs, Japanese among the most wanted?" He told the Reuters news agency, "This will increase the bitterness people here feel against the West." George Joffe, a Middle East expert at Cambridge University, had similar complaints. Pointing to the pictures of the Arab criminals, Joffe noted, "All of the indicators, the simplifiers - the head dress, the beards, the appearance - all indicate a particular group, associated with a particular culture. All this goes against the attempts by the U.S. administration to de-demonize Islam." ... But the sad truth is the people responsible all happen to be Middle Easterners. I guess we could throw a few Norwegians and maybe a Mormon high school soccer team on the list, but that hardly seems fair, does it?"

"Israel and the FO" (The Daily Telegraph, 2001/10/26)
"A British minister yesterday crossed a new line of hostility to Israel by accusing it of terrorism in the West Bank. Peter Hain, who is responsible for Europe at the Foreign Office, put last week's assassination of Rehavam Ze'evi, the tourism minister, and the Israeli response to it on a par, by referring to "atrocities and terrorist acts in the occupied areas." ... The Government should answer this question: if Mr Hain, or any other minister, were assassinated by the IRA, would it not pursue the perpetrators, if necessary by armed force? To murder a minister is to declare war on a state."

Added one new section and eleven new links in Links:
Islamism. Eleven articles on islamism; definitions, history, ideology etc.

Thursday, October 25, 2001

News and commentary:

"Seeking Moderation" (Stephen Schwartz, The National Review, 2001/10/25)
A critique of David F. Forte's "Religion Is Not the Enemy" (The National Review, 2001/10/19): "First, the claim of a moral distinction between the Wahhabi sect and al Qaeda is worth just as much as the claim of a moral distinction between the Nazi Party and the SS, and no more. And that is the way the majority of traditional Muslims in the world see it. ... Wahhabism justifies terrorism, whether that of the Saudis in 1924, bin Laden, or Hamas. Hizbullah represents a Wahhabized Shiism. The Taliban are a non-Wahhabi sect that has been bought by Wahhabi petrodollars. If Forte wishes to find some moderate fundamentalists, he should start with the Taliban. ... Wahhabism rejects any and all coexistence with Judaism and Christianity, and would treat the good Forte more or less as the aliens in Independence Day treated the dancing hippies calling for cosmic love - by killing him. Wahhabis would be much happier with Noam Chomsky, but they would kill him too, eventually."

"Arab world poverty - whose fault?" (Larry Elder, TownHall, 2001/10/25)
"'I don't have the knowledge to blame a government,' said Bakhtiar Khan, an Afghan man in his mid-twenties. 'I don't know about politics, but for our problems I blame the world community. All humans should be equal, but we are not. You ask me who is to blame. You find out who is to blame.' ... A recent story on Afghan schools described a teacher who holds up a wealth pie chart. America, she shows her students, controls this huge slice of the pie, leaving a tiny sliver for us Afghans. The not-so-subtle point? Afghans suffer poverty because of America's disproportionate wealth. But no, Khan lacks the 'knowledge to blame a government.' For, through knowledge, Khan would discover that his poverty stems from corrupt, dictatorial governments, the absence of capitalism and free trade, and the lack of individual rights and the rule of law. But who, in the Arab world, spreads this message?"

"Why the new terrorism threatens all of humanity" (John Keegan, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/10/25)
"Most terrorists have some aim, which they believe will be advanced by violence. Their belief may be wrong and their methods self-defeating, but they at least belong within the same intellectual system as the rest of the world. ... Al-Qa'eda, by contrast, has completely unrealisable aims and is unsusceptible to material inducement. Osama bin Laden, in so far as he outlines a policy, speaks of "killing all Americans" and "destroying the United States". ... The past few weeks have introduced the world to an entirely novel threat: the nihilism of a rich and insatiable fundamentalist movement."

Wednesday, October 24, 2001

News and commentary:

"Arab and Muslim worlds confront civilization crisis" (Kanan Makiya, Tapei Times, 2001/10/24)
"The Arab and Muslim worlds now confront a civilizational challenge unlike any they have faced since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The terrorists' attacks on New York and Washington cost thousands of innocent lives. Millions of other lives will be wasted or lost if Muslims and Arabs respond to Sept. 11 by wallowing even more in their sense of victimhood. ... The Arab and Muslim worlds today comprise a basket case of collapsing economies and mass unemployment overseen by ever more repressive regimes. But in many ways the greatest failure in the Islamic world is intellectual, specifically a failure of the intelligentsia - writers, professors, artists, journalists, and so forth - who, with few exceptions, fail to challenge the region's wildest and most paranoid fantasies. ... Instead they act as "rejectionist" critics, excoriating their rulers for being insufficiently anti-zionist or anti-imperialist. Lost in all of this is the hard work of creating a modern, rights-based political order, one that could form the basis for general prosperity. Absent that alternative focus, in the thick of endlessly self-pitying victimizing rhetoric, is it any wonder that despairing middle class individuals gravitate toward radical and terrorist activities aimed at smiting the demonized other? Their horrific/suicidal actions call forth ever more summary and violent responses, which in turn reinforce that pervasive sense of victimhood, yielding other delusional martyrs. Here is the abyss facing the world's Arab and Muslim communities today."

"With the ground offensive underway, the 'propaganda war' heats up" (U.S. Department of State, 2001/10/24)
A survey of foreign media reactions between October 15-24. Here's an example of anti-Semitism from Saudia Arabia: "Since the Zionist terrorism is being inflicted on the U.S. daily, it blocks the improvement of American-Arab-Muslim relationships. We know quite well that the American media is the first target of Zionist terrorism. This influence on the media sometimes even works against American interests. Therefore, we are not surprised by the current American media campaign against the Kingdom...but for this campaign to reach Congress, the source of American domestic and foreign policy, indicates that the Zionist Anthrax has penetrated the American body to the bone." (Abha-based, moderate Al-Watan held (2001/10/23))

"West Bank violence escalates" (BBC News, 2001/10/24)
"Reports from the West Bank say at least 13 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, 10 of them during an incursion into a village by Israeli forces. The village of Beit Rima near Ramallah has been sealed off since early morning when a column of Israeli tanks rolled in, firing on a Palestinian police outpost as they entered under cover of darkness. ... General Gershon Yitzhak, the senior Israeli army commander in the West Bank, said that Rehavam Zeevi's killers lived in Beit Rima. A Palestinian official said most of the dead were apparently Palestinian militants mown down by Israeli helicopter gunships as they fled the village when the tanks arrived. The Palestinian Cabinet issued a statement accusing Israel of carrying out an 'ugly massacre'..."

"The Sentry's Solitude" (Fouad Ajami, Foreign Affairs, from the November/December 2001 issue)
"There were men in the shadows pulling off spectacular deeds. But they fed off a free-floating anti-Americanism that blows at will and knows no bounds, among Islamists and secularists alike. For the crowds in Karachi, Cairo, and Amman, the great power could never get it right. A world lacking the tools and the political space for free inquiry fell back on anti-Americanism. ... This kind of fury a distant power can never overcome. Policy can never speak to wrath. Step into the thicket (as Bill Clinton did in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and the foreign power is damned for its reach. Step back, as George W. Bush did in the first months of his presidency, and Pax Americana is charged with abdication and indifference."

"The Gathering Storm" (Robert Kagan and William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, from the 2001/10/29 issue)
"Here's a prediction. When all is said and done, the conflict in Afghanistan will be to the war on terrorism what the North Africa campaign was to World War II: an essential beginning on the path to victory. But compared with what looms over the horizon--a wide-ranging war in locales from Central Asia to the Middle East and, unfortunately, back again to the United States--Afghanistan will prove but an opening battle. ... But this war will not end in Afghanistan. It is going to spread and engulf a number of countries in conflicts of varying intensity. It could well require the use of American military power in multiple places simultaneously. It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid."

"The "Ladenese Epistle" - What you can learn from reading Osama's oeuvre" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2001/10/29 issue)
"The overall effect is more that of an article from the Nation than that of an Islamic religious text, as if it had been lifted from Susan Sontag or Noam Chomsky. But that is consistent with reports that some of bin Laden's cadres, although exploiting Islam, are former leftist extremists. The Wahhabi ideology has always been about power first." (See also:"Ladenese Epistle: Declaration of War" (The Washington Post, Full text of Osama bin Ladens 1:st order, October 1996))

"Self-doubt has no place in the West's war on terror" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/10/24)
"This obsessive self-recrimination is partly the automatic anti-Western political reflex that has been so widely commented on since September 11. But there is a larger phenomenon, too: the complete absorption of the political into the personal. A whole generation of politicians, academics and commentators seems unable to understand (or at least to describe) foreign affairs other than in the terms of individual relationships. So immersed are we in this mindset that it scarcely strikes us as odd to talk in this way, but, historically, it is positively bizarre. There is no refrain that has been repeated more uncritically and relentlessly in the media than the anguished: "We must understand why we are hated." Even if the most offensive anti-American gloating has been quietly dropped, this cry still persists."

Tuesday, October 23, 2001

News and commentary:

"09-11-01. This is next..." (FBI, 2001/10/23)
FBI discloses the anthrax-laced letters sent to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw et al: "09-11-01. This is next. Take Penacilin Now. Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great."

"Brutality smeared in peanut butter" (Arundhati Roy, The Guardian, 2001/10/23)
Arundhati Roy seems to be sort of a female Noam Chomsky, combining moral equivalence and anti-Americanism with an inverted view of modern history: "The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely [sic] cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league." (See also: "The algebra of infinite justice" (Arundhati Roy, The Guardian, 2001/09/29))

"Radical Islamist Profiles (2): Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad" (MEMRI, Inquiry & Analysis No. 73, 2001/10/23)
A profile of the founder of the London branch of Hizb Al-Tahrir (the Islamic Liberation Party): "But after the arrest of the seven, Bakri changed his tune, and in an interview with an Egyptian weekly he denounced Britain as 'the spearhead of blasphemy that seeks to overthrow Muslims and the Islamic caliphate.' ... Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., Bakri told the BBC that 'what happened was a direct consequence of the evil foreign policy of the USA. This is the compensation and payback for its own atrocities against Muslims.' ... '...There is no doubt that America attacked, and is still attacking, the Muslims in every place and is carrying out massacres against them... It is the obligation of all Muslims to be in a state of war with it.'"

"Idiocy Watch #7" (The New Republic, 2001/10/23)
The seventh installment on "dumb and outrageous things being said and written about America and the terrorists": "'Only 13 days [after the World Trade Center attacks] on Public Broadcasting Stations, a seven-part, eight-hour event of grave importance was also witnessed by millions of Americans... Both events have much in common... And while the public now understands from President Bush that 'We're at War' with religious fanatics around the world, they don't have a clue that America is being attacked from within through its public schools by a militant religious movement called Darwinists... [L]et this blatant video series speak for it. And let its support documents tell you of mind control beyond anything yet seen in public education.' (Ken Cumming, Institution for Creation Research)"

"When America-haters become Americans" (Martin Peretz, Jewish World Review, 2001/10/23)
"The governments of the Arab world have been surprisingly effective and unsurprisingly brutal in their attacks on their religious zealots, and that has forced many of the people who deeply hate America to flee here for survival. ... Ours is not a country with which they identify or whose values they share. The American flag has been a flag of convenience for them, the flag of a patsy country that lets them in without scrutiny, lets them work, go to school, organize, harangue, hate, and, then, foolishly tries to fit them into some fanciful mosaic of gorgeous diversity. ... Scrupulous observers estimate that there are as many as 5,000 actual or potential terror operatives in Britain today, and probably more in Germany. It's anybody's guess how many reside in the United States. ... The grim truth is that we will have great trouble combating the war that the terrorist international has now brought to our shores. ... The struggle at home will be as difficult as the struggle in the mountains of Afghanistan. And no less important."

"West Bank Delusions - A Palestinian state will make things worse" (Steven Plaut, National Review, 2001/10/23)
"It seems like the deeper the U.S. gets in the war against Islamist terrorism, the more energetically the Bush administration wants to promote the idea that Palestinian terrorism should be rewarded with "statehood." ... But by now, it should be obvious to all that the only reason Arafat and his gang ever had any interest in the West Bank and Gaza was in order to use these areas as launch pads for the jihad against Israel itself. ... Arafat and the PLO have responded to each and every goodwill gesture and concession from Israel or the U.S. with escalated violence and atrocities. ... In short, any Palestinian state is a sure-fire recipe for violence, escalation and war. The only way the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will ever be resolved is if Israel finds the courage to reoccupy and denazify the Palestinian "autonomy zones" — hopefully with U.S. endorsement and support. A good time to begin doing so would have been the day the U.S. ground forces landed in Afghanistan."

"Labour's awkward squad is having it much too easy" (Robert Harris, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/10/23)
"Here, for example, is Mr Marsden's reply to Ms Armstrong, when she inquired what he would do about Osama bin Laden: "I think we should indict him on criminal charges. It could be done very quickly and then the UN should take charge of the military action, not the USA. It would be much more effective. By all means send in the SAS, but let's get the UN on-side first." It would be interesting to watch Mr Marsden taken through this, forensically, line by line. Bin Laden - indicted where? With evidence gathered how? (Are he and his associates likely to turn up to answer questions? Will they willingly hand over documents?) How does Mr Marsden know this process "could be done very quickly", given the years it has taken to bring criminals to justice over the massacres in Bosnia? What would bin Laden do in the meantime - merely comb his beard and clean out his cave?" (See also: "Nazi jibe fuels Labour dissent" (Lucy Ward, The Guardian, 22/10), "We will not be silenced" (George Galloway, The Guardian, 20/10))

Monday, October 22, 2001

News and commentary:

"Terror and Liberalism" (Paul Berman, The American Prospect, 2001/10/22)
"The present conflict seems to me to be following the twentieth-century pattern exactly, with one variation: the antiliberal side right now, instead of Communist, Nazi, Catholic, or Fascist, happens to be radical Arab nationalist and Islamic fundamentalist. ... For the radical nationalist and Islamist movements are not, as I say, anything new. Movements of that sort are a reality of modern life. They are the echo that comes bouncing back from the noise made by liberal progress. And this should tell us truths about the struggle that has suddenly fallen upon us. ... But we are facing a substantial and well-organized enemy. Our enemy is the combat wing of radical and Islamist movements that are genuinely enormous. Those movements are supported by clerics and businessmen. They are protected by the apologies of the shrewdest of intellectuals. They deploy worldwide networks of organizations. They enjoy popular support not just in one or two remote places - a support that is strong enough to have pushed one state after another into an ambiguous attitude toward those movements: not willing to endorse, and not willing to suppress, either. ... The genuine solution to these attacks can come about in only one way, which is by following the same course we pursued against the Fascist Axis and the Stalinists. The Arab radical and Islamist movements have to be, in some fashion or other, crushed. Or else they have to be tamed into something civilized and acceptable, the way that some of the old Stalinist parties have agreed to shrink into normal political organizations of a democratic sort. The solution, in short, lies in effecting enormous changes in large parts of the political culture of the Arab and Islamic world - the sort of transformation that can be achieved, if at all, only after many years or even decades of struggle, and not through any single decisive strike."

"Officials: Two D.C. deaths may be anthrax-related" (CNN.com, 2001/10/22)
"Two postal workers who recently died may be anthrax cases, Washington authorities said Monday, stressing that the tests are not yet conclusive. In addition, a second postal worker has been diagnosed with inhalation anthrax, according to Dr. Ivan Walks, Washington's chief health officer. One postal worker was diagnosed Sunday with inhalation anthrax. Both men are hospitalized."

"Bin Laden is a Fundamentalist" (Daniel Pipes, National Review, 2001/10/22)
"Sadly, I must report that the sympathizers of Osama bin Laden are legion. Fully one quarter of the populations in Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority (survey research finds, in separate polls both overseen by U.S. organizations) consider the September 11 attacks acceptable according to the laws of Islam. To me, this suggests that a very substantial body of Muslim opinion is already in bin Laden's camp; more, that virtually the whole range of fundamentalist Islamic opinion agrees with his goals and his methods."

"Muslims love Bin Laden" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/Middle East Forum, 2001/10/22)
"Karen Armstrong, author of a bestselling book about Islam, reports that the "vast majority of Muslims . . . are horrified by the atrocity of Sept. 11." Well, that "vast majority" is well hidden and awfully quiet, if it even exists. With the exception of one government-staged anti-bin Laden demonstration in Pakistan and very few prominent Islamic scholars, hardly anyone publicly denounces him. The only Islamic scholar in Egypt who unreservedly condemns the Sept. 11 suicide operations admits he is completely isolated. ... Everywhere, The Washington Post reports, Muslims cheer bin Laden on "with almost a single voice." The Internet buzzes with odes to him as a man "of solid faith and power of will." A Saudi explains that "Osama is a very, very, very, very good Muslim." A Kenyan adds: "Every Muslim is Osama bin Laden." "Osama is not an individual, but a name of a holy war," reads a banner in Kashmir. In perhaps the most extravagant statement, one Pakistani declared that "Bin Laden is Islam. He represents Islam." In France, Muslim youths chant bin Laden's name as they throw rocks at non-Muslims. ... The wide and deep Muslim enthusiasm for bin Laden is an extremely important development that needs to be understood, not ignored."

"The West is fighting to rescue Islam, not destroy it" (The Daily Telegraph, 2001/10/22)
"'A great assault on Muslim states,' wrote Jenkins, protesting against the current military action, 'would be the answer to bin Laden's prayer. Fanatics would flock to his cause . . .' Fanatics have been flocking to bin Laden's cause for the past 10 years, which is why there is no more World Trade Centre. There is nothing we can do to make fanatics worse. Even if you accept the proposition (as Jenkins seems to do) that fanatics exist because of the creation of Israel or the allied bombing of Saddam Hussein, what are we to do? Must we allow Israel to be swept into the sea, Saddam to conquer both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, then let him use our aid or trade to subsidise biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction for use on his own Shi'ite and Kurdish population or the rest of the world? Would this make the world more secure?"

"Nazi jibe fuels Labour dissent" (Lucy Ward, The Guardian, 2001/10/22)
"Labour's backbench critics of the bombing of Afghanistan warned last night of hardening opposition to the military action after ministers compared outspoken anti-war MPs to appeasers of the Nazis. The armed forces minister Adam Ingram likened the terrorist "evil that is stalking the world" to Nazism and fascism, and suggested anti-war voices were giving terrorists "succour and support". Mr Ingram issued his condemnation after Paul Marsden, the Labour MP for Shrewsbury & Atcham, published his account of a fierce dressing-down he received from the government chief whip, Hilary Armstrong, for his opposition to the military campaign."

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

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

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

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

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

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

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

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

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

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

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

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

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

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