Archived news and commentary: November 12 - 18, 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

News and commentary:

"Bin Laden run to ground as allied special forces close in" (James Clark et al., The Sunday Times, 2001/11/18)
"British and American special forces have narrowed their search for Osama Bin Laden to a hilly area of just 30 square miles in southeastern Afghanistan, defence sources revealed yesterday. British SAS and American troops have been dropped by helicopter across the southern approaches to the area, near the Taliban city of Kandahar, to prevent Bin Laden from escaping into Pakistan. As the manhunt triggered by the September 11 terrorist attacks on America intensifies, British soldiers have been involved in firefights with enemy forces around Kandahar.
"The plan has always been to deny Bin Laden space," said Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary. "The space he has to operate in is now very limited indeed." The disclosure reflected a growing confidence in intelligence circles that they would find Bin Laden soon."

"Death of Bin Laden's deputy: How the US killed Al-Qaeda leaders by remote control" (Stephen Grey, The Sunday Times, 2001/11/18)
"Many thousands of men had fled in the Taliban withdrawal from Kabul. But amid all the chaos of the retreat, this small convoy was given special attention. It was believed by American intelligence to consist of fighters from Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organisation. ... Locking the cross-hairs of their weapon guidance systems on the hotel below, each of the three F-15s let loose a single GBU-15 "smart bomb". Weighing 2,500lb each, these bombs are guided on to their targets by infrared cameras in their noses. As the bombs slammed into the side of the hotel, the Predator completed the mission, launching its two Hellfire missiles at the vehicles in the car park. Almost everyone at the scene was incinerated, with close to 100 people killed. It was many hours before American officials could know just how much they had achieved. Then, in panic and pandemonium, an Al-Qaeda operative breached the organisation’s strict security rules and revealed that a large number of the movement's senior figures had been killed - including Mohammed Atef, the 57-year-old deputy to Bin Laden and the terrorist group’s senior military commander."

"The rout of the Taliban" (Peter Beaumont et al., The Observer, 2001/11/18)
"For weeks, away from the eyes of the media and the rest of the world, America and Britain had been plotting a strategy that was to result in what appeared to be an overwhelming victory in their campaign against terrorists using Afghanistan as a base for a war against the West. The stunning sweep through the country was the culmination of a carefully orchestrated campaign that has confounded the critics. ... Option three, the long air offensive, was gaining ground. Downing Street and the MoD saw it as the lowest-risk option but it needed a second phase. With a coalition ground offensive out of the question the Alliance 'would have to be supported militarily', one intelligence briefing said. This was the key. The Alliance, with American, British and Russian help, would undertake the ground offensive itself."

"Arab democracy and its implications" (Martin Walker, UPI, 2001/11/18)
"Although the West considers democracy a good in itself, Egyptian and other Arab officials warn that without widespread education and more job opportunities, democracy can swiftly become prey to demagogues and Islamic fundamentalists. "I sometimes wonder whether America will seriously try to promote democracy in the Arab world, after learning on September 11 just how much animosity and resentment there is against it in the Islamic world," suggests Egyptian writer Tewfik Kamel. "An Arab democracy that hates America could be a troubling development." He points to the vast U.S. military base at As Sayliyah in Qatar, just completed at a cost of $110 million to store the tanks and armored cars and other equipment for a brigade of troops who can fly directly into the base, mount up, and be in battle within hours. That base and the U.S. presence was authorized by the Emir in person. "If the decision were to pass into the hands of an elected parliament, and politicians are desperate for the votes of faithful Muslims who hear in their mosques that the United States is the friend of Israel and the enemy of Islam, then I wonder how welcome that base would be," Kamel concludes."

"What the Muslim World Is Watching" (Fouad Ajami, The New York Times Magazine, 2001/11/18)
"Al Jazeera, which claims a global audience of 35 million Arabic-speaking viewers, may not officially be the Osama bin Laden Channel - but he is clearly its star, as I learned during an extended viewing of the station's programming in October. ... Compared with other Arab media outlets, Al Jazeera may be more independent - but it is also more inflammatory. For the dark side of the pan-Arab worldview is an aggressive mix of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism, and these hostilities drive the station's coverage, whether it is reporting on the upheaval in the West Bank or on the American raids on Kandahar. ... Day in and day out, Al Jazeera deliberately fans the flames of Muslim outrage."

 

Saturday, November 17, 2001

News and commentary:

"Go now, Afghans tell Taliban" (CNN.com, 2001/11/17)
"Political control of Kandahar remained unclear Saturday as Afghan tribal leaders held meetings with Taliban commanders, trying to persuade them to lay down their weapons or face an attack by opposition forces. ... The apparent administration shuffle came as a group of 80 to 100 tribal leaders met in Quetta to give the Taliban an ultimatum on Kandahar: surrender within a week or face an attack by well armed Pashtun tribesmen from six southern Afghan provinces."

"We are at war with the losers" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/11/17)
"This war is in trouble. We're bogged down, getting nowhere and staring at a Vietnam-style quagmire. The Taliban's grip on the country remains total. These famously tough warriors of iron resolve are unlikely to be... Whoops, sorry, that was last week. Just let me punch up this week's Conventional Media Wisdom. Ah, here we go. Things are moving too fast. There's a dangerous power vacuum. The Taliban, being famously tough, etc, have pulled off a brilliant double-bluff by abandoning every major city and lever of government. Their grip on selected southern and western caves remains total. The Northern Alliance are too vicious, unfairly targeting enemy soldiers instead of just killing unarmed women and homosexuals. The collapse of the burqa market will devastate the Afghan fashion industry."

"Collapse of the Taliban" (Steven Morris and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, 2001/11/17)
"The US-led coalition scored two stunning successes in its mission in Afghanistan yesterday when the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was reported to have surrendered control of Kandahar and it emerged that Osama bin Laden's closest friend and military planner had been killed in a bombing raid.The apparent loss of Kandahar, the southern stronghold and spiritual heart of the Taliban, marks the final collapse of their formal rule in Afghanistan. Mullah Omar said he had agreed to leave the city by tonight and head back to the mountains after discussions with tribal chiefs who staged an uprising this week to challenge Taliban control of the city. Just as damaging to Taliban and al-Qaida morale, Mohammed Atef, who as the military leader of al-Qaida is believed to have masterminded the September 11 attacks, is said to have died during a bombing raid on Kabul three days ago."

News and commentary:

"Five Not-So-Easy Pieces" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2001/11/16)
"We were warned that there were thousands of charred babies in the cities of Afghanistan, but instead see citizens thankful to be freed from fascism. ... Moral equivalence, cultural relativism, and anti-Westernism on the cheap have been discredited as the conceited indulgence of the affluent and bored. Our Left has not been principled in its criticism of the military response, but rather shallow, ethically bankrupt, and dead wrong; the poor in Kabul amid the bombs seem to like what we have done far more than do the wealthy and comfortable of Berkeley, Madison, and Cambridge in their faculty lounges."

"Kabul Lessons" (Steven Plaut, National Review, 2001/11/16)
"Which brings us to one of the worst blood libels of the 20th century: the accusation that Israel in general and Ariel Sharon in particular were directly to blame for the massacres of Palestinian Arabs by Lebanese Arabs at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps outside Beirut in 1982. It will be recalled that in 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon after years of shellings and terrorist incursions into Israel by Palestinians, backed by Syria and Lebanon. These same Palestinians had long played a role in the Lebanese civil war - a war that claimed thousands of lives and reduced Lebanon to being a puppet of the Syrian dictator — and they were responsible for countless atrocities inside Lebanon itself, between 1970 and 1982. When the Israeli troops entered Lebanon, many an Arab greeted them with flowers. But all did not go smoothly. When Israeli troops closed in on Beirut and on the PLO headquarters there, the world started grumbling. On September 14, 1982, the Christian president of Lebanon, Pierre Gemayel, was assassinated by a bomb planted by Palestinians. In response, the Christian-Arab Falange militias that had been headed by Gemayel entered Sabra and Shatilla and killed some people, probably about 400, but estimated by some to have been as high as 800. In Afghanistan, massacres are being dismissed casually, as minor byproducts of Third World militiamen's quaint way of settling scores. The events in Beirut, by contrast, became the focus of one of the worst anti-Jewish libels since the Middle Ages. The media (especially the Israeli media, long the occupied territories of Israel's far Left) insisted that Ariel Sharon knew or should have known what the Christian Falange militiamen would do in the camps, despite the fact that the Falange were the official praetorian guards of the late elected president of Lebanon."

"His grasp of spin is chilling..." (Julia Magnet, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/11/16)
"Few Westerners have seen Osama bin Laden's recruitment video in full. So what did Julia Magnet, a young Jewish New Yorker, make of it?": "This is a great propaganda film - the kind that you can't get out of your head. Bin Laden's story of Muslim subjugation turning to resistance is so effective that I barely need my transcripts. He uses the most sophisticated western film-making techniques: it's as if Guy Ritchie, Sylvester Stallone and Spielberg have banded together to make jihad, the movie. ... In slow motion, and in time to the music, Israeli soldiers beat two women with sticks, until one falls to ground. The soldiers carry off screaming men, as if they are so much rubbish. Then, they strike a little boy with such force that he crumples to the ground. These images, and similar ones, are repeated over and over, until the violence seems unending. ... Throughout, he is screaming tearfully over the music: "Your sister goes to bed honourable and wakes up violated, raped by the Jews." As we see images of beatings for the umpteenth time, all he can do is wail - a curiously effective cry of impotence and grief."

"The new Islamic fascism" (Robert S. Wistrich, The Jerusalem Post, 2001/11/16)
"There is something apocalyptic about the sheer scale and seismic shock effect of the Twin Towers massacre in New York. The Islamic terrorist perpetrators of this act, like the Nazis and fascists 60 years ago, speak a language of unquenchable hatred for the Jewish people, for America and the West, indeed for civilization itself. They, too, enjoy - at least in the Muslim world - the acclamation of significant sectors of the population. ... The conspiracy theory at its heart, which links plutocratic capitalism, international freemasonry, Zionism, and Marxist Communism, is almost identical with the mythical structure of Nazi anti-Semitism. For contemporary jihadists, a "Judaized" America and Israel, together with heretical, secular Muslim regimes are the godless spearhead of these dark occult forces that seek to destroy Islam and undermine the cultural identity of Muslim believers." (UPDATE: The link is down, but the article can be found here, via the Wayback Machine.)

"Breaking the Circle" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2001/11/16)
"The states responded by crushing or expelling the Islamists, but without ever trying to reform the Islamic schools - called madrasas - or the political conditions that keep producing angry Islamist waves. So the deadly circle that produced bin Ladenism - poverty, dictatorship and religious anti-modernism, each reinforcing the other - just gets perpetuated. Some are now demanding the circle be broken. Consider this remarkable open letter to bin Laden that a Pakistani writer and businessman, Izzat Majeed, wrote in last Friday's popular Pakistani daily The Nation: 'We Muslims cannot keep blaming the West for all our ills. ... The embarrassment of wretchedness among us is beyond repair. It is not just the poverty, the illiteracy and the absence of any commonly accepted social contract that define our sense of wretchedness; it is, rather, the increasing awareness among us that we have failed as a civil society by not confronting the historical, social and political demons within us. ... Without a reformation in the practice of Islam that makes it move forward and not backward, there is no hope for us Muslims anywhere.'"

"War of the words" (Polly Toynbee, The Guardian, 2001/11/16)
"Much of the left writes as if only the utter humiliation of America and removal of its power will do. (More or less what Bin Laden has in mind.) Until then, everything the US does is de facto evil. ... Everyone stands exactly where they did: not one mind has been changed. Fire still pours out of the anti-war party, despite women emerging from burkas, girls back in school, music in the streets. The anti-war demo this weekend has not been called off. The Stop the War Coalition promises the biggest demo yet: "The fall of Kabul has only exposed to ever greater scrutiny the hypocrisy, injustice and dangerous ambiguity underlying this war." Emails still flood in as furious as ever, "slavering government poodle", "naive idiot" and "murdering bitch" are only among the more printable of yesterday's batch. The anti-war left gives no inch, their world view perfectly intact, nihilism disguised as pacifism."

News and commentary:

"Terrorism? What Terrorism?!" (Martin Kramer, Wall Street Journal/The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001/11/15)
Kramer on The Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) in general and their statement regarding the terror attacks in particular: "In introducing the latest edition of his book, "Covering Islam," Mr. [Edward] Said mocked "speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings, sabotage commercial airliners and poison water supplies." Such talk was based on "highly exaggerated stereotyping." Many denounce U.S. policy in extreme terms, believing the Middle East is subjected to a "neoliberal, repressive 'pax Americana'" - a description of the American role offered by incoming MESA president Joel Beinin of Stanford. The past head of Columbia's Middle East Institute, Richard Bulliet, has called American efforts to promote democracy part of "a world hegemonic discourse of Western cultural imperialism." This is the necessary background to understanding MESA's statement. Its most striking feature is a studied avoidance of the words "terror," "terrorism," and "terrorist." These were "violent acts," "horrific acts," and "tragic events." But even now, the board members of MESA cannot bring themselves to describe any Arabs or Muslims - even suicide kamikazes who kill thousands of American civilians - as terrorists."

"A war that has served notice on all terrorists" (Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, 2001/11/15)
"By overthrowing the Taleban and scattering its mad mullahs, America has sent the clearest possible signal to other regimes which harbour terrorists or support violent religious fanatics. ... The defeat of the Taleban has shown to the entire Muslim world that the mullahs’ vision of an ultra-orthodox Islamic Utopia is a catastrophic delusion. Not only does returning to medievalism lead to economic catastrophe. Even worse, it produces political humiliation and military disgrace. In a battle between religion and technology, between medievalism and modernity, between theocracy and democracy, the West has long known which side was bound to win. The collapse of the Taleban may now teach the Islamic world the same lesson."

"Bin Laden's nuclear secrets found" (Anthony Loyd, The Times, 2001/11/15)
"Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network held detailed plans for nuclear devices and other terrorist bombs in one of its Kabul headquarters. The Times discovered the partly burnt documents in a hastily abandoned safe house in the Karta Parwan quarter of the city. Written in Arabic, German, Urdu and English, the notes give detailed designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons. There are descriptions of how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a chain reaction, and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction. ... The discovery of the detailed bomb-making instructions, along with studies into chemical and nuclear devices, confirms the West’s worst fears and raises the spectre of plans for an attack that would far exceed the September 11 atrocities in scale and gravity. Nuclear experts say the design suggests that bin Laden may be working on a fission device, similar to Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. However, they emphasised that it was extremely difficult to build a viable warhead."

"The Lone Gunmen" (Ehud Sprinzak, Foreign Policy, from the November-December 2001 issue)
"Yet the inability to foresee the latest attacks exposes a problem well beyond poor intelligence gathering. Rather, it reveals an intellectual failure to identify an entirely new category of terrorism. Our post-September 11 comprehension of terrorism must recognize a new enemy: the megalomaniacal hyperterrorist. ... Megalomaniacal hyperterrorists operate according to an altogether different logic. While often working with the support of large terror groups and organizations, they tend to be loners. They think big, seeking to go beyond "conventional" terrorism and, unlike most terrorists, could be willing to use weapons of mass destruction. They perceive themselves in historical terms and dream of individually devastating the hated system."

"Taleban leader remains defiant" (BBC News, 2001/11/15)
"Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has rejected any cooperation with a future broad-based government for Afghanistan. Speaking exclusively to the BBC's Pashto-language service, he said the southern city of Kandahar remained in the hands of Taleban fighters. He also spoke of a "big" plan to destroy the United States which could happen within a short period of time. ... 'The current situation in Afghanistan is related to a bigger cause - that is the destruction of America... The plan is going ahead and God willing it is being implemented, but it is a huge task beyond the will and comprehension of human beings. If God's help is with us this will happen within a short period of time. Keep in mind this prediction.'"

News and commentary:

"Isn't It Time for the Truth?" (Harry Browne, Antiwar, 2001/11/14)
Just as I had managed to forget Mr. Browne, he returns with his twisted version of "the Truth": "President Bush says, 'You're either with us or against us.' Does that mean he'll bomb neutral Switzerland – the island of freedom, privacy, and security in the midst of socialist Europe – if it doesn't confiscate private bank accounts and otherwise act on every whim of our President? Why doesn't he simply tell the truth: 'America rules the world and I rule America. You will do as I say or I'll kill your people.'" (See also: "When Will We Learn?" (Harry Browne, Antiwar, 2001/09/12))

"UK Muslims 'against Afghan war'" (BBC News, 2001/11/14)
According to a poll, made before the fall of Kabul, 80% of the British Muslims "thought military action by the United States and UK was not justified." I'm certain their brothers in the parts of Afghanistan that now are liberated from the Taliban terror feel heartened by the support. Here's an eyewitness report from Kabul: "This morning when we came in very early, there was a huge celebration: people shouting, soldiers hugging each other, screaming "America, America!" ...
I saw a woman looking out a window without her burqa. There were women walking alone and people flying kites - kites were not allowed under the Taliban - kites everywhere. There were several places with people playing music in the streets and dancing. ...
The Northern Alliance soldiers and the people in Kabul both realize that without heavy bombing the Taliban front lines would have held. They are very aware that the Taliban had massive assistance from other countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and I think they saw the U.S. bombing as kind of making it a more even fight." (See also: "The Fall of Kabul" (Sebastian Junger, ABC News, 2001/11/13))

"Why Are We In Afghanistan?" (Nicholas von Hoffman, The New York Observer, 2001/11/14)
Andrew Sullivan has introduced the "Von Hoffman Award" for the "most prophetically challenged pieces of media war-wisdom so far". It's named after one of the main contenders: "The war in Afghanistan, the one he should never have declared, has run into trouble. Just a few weeks into it and it's obvious that the United States is fighting blind. ...
We are mapless, we are lost, and we are distracted by gusts of wishful thinking. That our high command could believe the Afghani peasantry or even the Taliban would change sides after a few weeks of bombing! This is fantasizing in high places."

Which of course is hard to beat, but my nominee is Noam Chomsky: "Looks like what's happening is some kind of silent genocide. It indicates that whatever will happen, we don't know, but plans are being made, and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the deaths of several million people in the next – in the next couple of weeks. Very casually, with no comment here [i.e. in the US] ...
Well, that's what's happening now. What's happening now is very much under our control... that we're in the midst of apparently trying to murder three or four million people..."

The anti-war stance should also prove interesting this weekend. Consider this quote: "Blair's sermons on the war in Afghanistan have become less bellicose in recent weeks, and there is a reason for the change. He was knocked off his perch by the vast demonstration on October 13. He will be even more shocked by the demonstration against the war this Sunday." ("Byers at risk on the track" (Paul Foot, The Guardian, 2001/11/13)) So we'll have an anti-war demonstration on Sunday, protesting the "racist war", at the same time as the liberated people of Afghanistan are celebrating the outcome, thus far, of it?

"Ha ha ha to the pacifists" (Christopher Hitchens, The Guardian, 2001/11/14)
"There's no pleasing some people, but as a charter supporter of CND I can remember a time when the peace movement was not an auxiliary to dictators and aggressors in trouble. Looking at some of the mind-rotting tripe that comes my way from much of today's left, I get the impression that they go to bed saying: what have I done for Saddam Hussein or good old Slobodan or the Taliban today? Well, ha ha ha, and yah, boo. It was obvious from the very start that the United States had no alternative but to do what it has done. It was also obvious that defeat was impossible. The Taliban will soon be history. Al-Qaida will take longer. There will be other mutants to fight. But if, as the peaceniks like to moan, more Bin Ladens will spring up to take his place, I can offer this assurance: should that be the case, there are many many more who will also spring up to kill him all over again. And there are more of us and we are both smarter and nicer, as well as surprisingly insistent that our culture demands respect, too."

"The Incredible Shrinking Taliban" (William Saletan, Slate, 2001/11/14)
"Now the Taliban is disintegrating. Why? Because the crisis of confidence Osama Bin Laden sought to foment in the West has taken hold in Afghanistan instead. The Taliban's aura of invincibility has burst like a stock bubble. Everyone, including the Taliban, is selling. ...
What traveled from city to city in minutes wasn't the armies of the Northern Alliance, but the news of the Taliban's defeat. Civilians and Taliban soldiers who had resented the regime lost their fear of it. Those who had supported the regime lost their confidence in it. Taliban armies didn't lose their cities in battle; they defected or fled. Each flight or defection, in turn, provoked others. Sell, sell, sell."

"Hated rulers flee like thieves" (Alan Philps, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/11/14)
"Nothing became the Taliban so much as the manner of their departure. Their rule had been vicious and incompetent, and their defence against the Northern Alliance was bone-headed and feeble. But when it came to saving their skins, they proved up to the task. ...
The Taliban's rout is a great day for Afghanistan. But the speed of their defeat still remains a mystery. They were not conquered. They just collapsed like a paper tiger, to use Chairman Mao's phrase. Their attempt to turn Afghanistan into the Islamic ideal, a replica of Medina when it was ruled by the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century, could never succeed. As a critic of the hardcore Islamists remarked: 'If you are forever looking backwards, you are bound to trip yourself up.'"

"All-Negative, All the Time" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2001/11/14)
"Good evening, and welcome to 'All Is Lost,' the nightly public affairs program produced by National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp. Tonight we discuss what has been called America's war against terror. I am your host, Perfectly Modulated Voice of Reason. ...
Perfectly Modulated: "Fabled Newsman, what says the view from inside the Beltway?"
Fabled Newsman: "Been there. Best and brightest. Tet. Vietnamization. No light at the end of the tunnel."
Perfectly Modulated: "And would you go so far as to say . . . "
Fabled Newsman: "Yes. Absolutely: Quagmire. Quagmire. Quagmire. Quagmire. Waist deep in the Big Muddy. Quagmire." ...
Perfectly Modulated: "Now let's go to our European analyst, Loathes America, for the insight from over there. Loathes, what is the mood of Europe tonight?"
Loathes America: "Bleak, of course. And properly so. I mean, one does not wish to say that this debacle is what America deserves for its arrogance, its vulgarity, its bullying ways - well, actually one does wish to say it, doesn't one rather? Really, one just hates America. Really, one always has, ever since one was just a little chap."
Perfectly Modulated: "Thank you, Loathes America. A valuable insight as always. Gentlemen, last thoughts?"
Scientifically Trained: "Things could hardly be worse." ...
Perfectly Modulated: 'And that wraps up another edition of 'All Is Lost.' Good night, and pleasant dreams.'"

"Fundamental flaws in the Taliban way of life" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/11/14)
"Certainly the relativists are having a bad time at the moment. First, they exulted over America's defeat at the hands of terrorists. Then they warned about the arrogance of Western power trampling the truly devout Muslims of Afghanistan. We would be bombing this poor, simple country into the Stone Age, they said. Instead, we seem to be bombing it happily into the 21st century. ... Almost everyone, it seems, wants to live this life with some degree of self-determination and sense of self-worth before contemplating the challenge of the next one. Most people want to do this in relative peace and security. The conditions that are, on the historical evidence, most likely to give rise to this possibility are liberal democratic government and free market economics. Nobody needs to apologise for propagating them."

"Playing for Keeps" (Michael Ledeen, The Wall Street Journal, 2001/11/14)
"Even more important - and this is a weapon that is greatly underestimated by many of our intellectuals and diplomats - we are an awesome revolutionary force. Creative destruction is our middle name. We tear down the old order every day, in business and science, literature, art and cinema, politics and the law. ... There is every reason to believe we will succeed in revolutionizing the Middle East, for we have always excelled at destroying tyrannies. The great democratic uprising at the end of the 18th century bore a clear American hallmark, and the entire 20th century stands as tribute to the enormous power of our history-changing energies. Again and again we were dragged into war, and we invariably tossed our enemies onto history's trash heap of failed lies. We wage total war, because we fight in the name of an idea - freedom - and ideas either triumph or fail."

"Our victory has proved the pessimists utterly wrong" (Polly Toynbee, The Guardian, 2001/11/14)
"Television reporters would have blushed to hear rebroadcast words of foreboding they spoke so recently. Never in the field of human conflict have so many experts of the highest renown been so thoroughly wrong. Never have so many old warhorses of right and left been so embarrassingly trounced. That must be why the news passed abruptly from dire warnings of a bloodbath ahead, to dire warnings about the make-up of the Kabul government, with no pause to contemplate the enormity of what happened in between. So on it goes, seeking out the next possible source of trouble, not stopping for an instant to ponder this deeply embarrassing good news."

News and commentary:

"People in downtown Kabul..."
(Pete Souza/Chicago Tribune, 2001/11/13)
"People in downtown Kabul react to a shopkeeper playing a radio. Music was banned by the Taliban."

"Women and children yell in excitement..."
(Pete Souza/Chicago Tribune, 2001/11/13)
"Women and children yell in excitement as a car with American journalists passes by."

"Kabul falls to Northern Alliance" (BBC News, 2001/11/13)
"Northern Alliance troops have taken control of Kabul amid scenes of chaos and jubilation.
In a dramatic overnight advance, Northern Alliance units entered the Afghan capital after Taleban fighters fled towards their southern stronghold, Kandahar. There was a vacuum of authority in the city after the Taleban withdrew, with reports of looting, but the BBC's William Reeve says the atmosphere is now less tense.Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is reported to have urged his troops to regroup and fight. ...
Residents said music - banned by the Taleban - was broadcast on Kabul radio for the first time in five years. "You can celebrate this great victory," a female announcer told residents - another novelty in a city where women have been banned from most work and education since 1996. And men have been queuing at barbers' shops to have their beards shaved off - another gesture of freedom from the strict Taleban interpretation of Islam." (Note: Everybody are not jubilating. This is the captions of two BBC reports: "The BBC's Rageh Omaar: "It was exactly the kind of disorder that the Western allies must have been fearing"
Jim McDermott, Democrat Congressman: 'I think we've got a serious problem'")

"Entering Kabul as Taleban flees" (Kate Clark, BBC News, 2001/11/13)
"The scenes are amazing. I'm surrounded by crowds of people coming up to me, shaking my hand and shouting "Peace be with you" and "May you live long".
Everyone seems very happy, jubilant that the Taleban have been thrown out of their city. ...
Now that the residents of Kabul believe their city is free from Taleban and foreign militants, most people seem to be very, very happy.
But as I talk to Afghans, as well as jubilation there is some trepidation.
People are worried about security and some say there has been looting overnight, particularly from houses where Taleban used to live."

"Take Kabul" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2001/11/13)
"Psychologically, the defeat of the Taliban in their capital would symbolize their forfeiting the mandate from heaven. And it would demonstrate the awesome reach of American air power: Operating at enormous distances and with an outnumbered ally on the ground, it prevails without a single U.S. combat casualty. Politically, the effects would be enormous. Weeks of presidential protestations about our religious tolerance and respect for Islam have had so little effect abroad that administration officials are huddling with Hollywood to figure out how to fix our image. How about this, gentlemen? Let Kabul be taken as soon as possible and then have every earthly news camera show (as has just happened in Mazar-e Sharif) women taking off their burqas, music again being played, girls going back to school, and the Taliban gallows in the soccer stadium being torn down. We claim to be liberators. Every army does. But we can prove it. On camera."

"Holy War 201" (Claudia Winkler, The Weekly Standard, 2001/11/13)
"It hasn't exactly been front-page news, but for the last 18 months this Islamist militia has been pressing its fight to convert, drive out, or kill Christians in the Moluccas and Central Sulawesi. ... Now, in the areas under attack, ethnic cleansing and forced conversion - sometimes followed by forced circumcision for men, women, and children - are the order of the day, according to Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, in Washington, D.C. An e-mail Marshall received Monday from a Christian contact in Indonesia conveys the present danger: "Over 50,000 Christians are in terrible peril as I write. The Jihad are attacking and the situation is critical. Unless there is a miracle many lives will be lost. I have just talked with Christian leaders in Tentena and they are crying out for help. They are desperate for food, medicine and PROTECTION. They are completely surrounded. . . ." Marshall, who is general editor of an annual report on religious freedom and persecution around the world, stresses the lack of solid statistics but estimates the number of dead so far at up to 7,000."

"In Pakistan, It's Jihad 101" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2001/11/13)
"In 1978 there were 3,000 madrasas in Pakistan; today there are 39,000. ... The teacher asked an 8-year-old boy to chant a Koranic verse for us, which he did with the beauty and elegance of an experienced muezzin. What did it mean? It was a famous verse: "The faithful shall enter paradise and the unbelievers shall be condemned to eternal hellfire." I asked one of the students, an Afghan refugee, Rahim Kunduz, age 12, what his reaction was to the Sept. 11 attacks, and he said: "Most likely the attack came from Americans inside America. I am pleased that America has had to face pain, because the rest of the world has tasted its pain." And his view of Americans generally? "They are unbelievers and do not like to befriend Muslims and they want to dominate the world with their power." ... I am all for reviewing our policies, but only the Pakistanis can rebuild their schools so they meld modernity, Islam and pluralism. Bin Laden is a sideshow, but one we must deal with. The real war for peace in this region, though, is in the schools."

 

Monday, November 12, 2001

News and commentary:

"Christian in a Muslim World" (Julia Duin, National Review, 2001/11/12)
"At first, Muslims were allowed to attend [the Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary] for the purpose of studying Christianity, but when it became obvious some of them were converting, the government clamped down. In 1999, the government imprisoned three such converts (an Iraqi, a Sudanese, and an Egyptian) under wretched conditions — then deported them. The incident was so egregious, it even got mention in the State Department's 2000 Human Rights Report. ... [Shehadeh's] travails are part and parcel of what Christians in the Middle East endure on a regular basis. We got to sample this during an interview with Akel Biltaji, then minister of tourism for Jordan. All was serene until he was asked why Muslims were not allowed to change their religion in Jordan. Muslims could convert to Christianity, he said smoothly, but they must expect to suffer, if not die for their new faith. After all, he added, Christ died for them. One could almost hear jaws drop around the room. He was quite cold about it. And Jordan is considered one of the more friendly countries toward its Christian minority; in fact, only Lebanon is said to be freer."

"Opposition sweeps to edge of Kabul" (BBC News, 2001/11/12)
"Opposition forces have made sweeping gains across northern Afghanistan, advancing to within six kilometres (four miles) of the capital, Kabul, and reportedly taking control of the key western city of Herat. However, the Northern Alliance's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said his troops would respect US and Pakistani requests not to enter Kabul, in case it triggered ethnic tensions."

"Repression Breeds Terrorism" (Gerald O'Driscoll Jr. et al., The Wall Street Journal, 2001/11/12)
"The 2002 Index of Economic Freedom, released today by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, might just as easily have been titled "A Guide to the Sources of Peace and Prosperity." Or, as a primer for terrorism's Western apologists, it could be called "Civilization for Dummies." The findings of this study, now in its eighth year, have always been straightforward: Countries with the most economic freedom also have higher rates of long-term economic growth. But this year, another pattern also jumps out at the reader. Economically free countries exhibit greater tolerance and civility than economically repressed ones, where hopelessness and isolation foment fanaticism and terrorism."

"Resolution, Not Compromise, Builds Coalition" (Robert L. Bartley, The Wall Street Journal, 2001/11/12)
"This progress, note well, has not been won by placating Muslim or Arab sensibilities. The U.S. has spurned pleas to halt the bombing during Ramadan. It's added anti-Israeli terrorists Hamas and Hezbollah to its list of proscribed organizations. President Bush did not meet with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat at the U.N. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice explained, "You cannot help us with al Qaeda and hug Hezbollah - that's not acceptable - or Hamas." Indeed, the acceleration of diplomatic progress can pretty much be marked to the first B-52 raids on Taliban lines, the earliest expression of U.S. decision to win the war militarily and worry later about political refinements. What matters is not sensitivity but resolution."

"Watch out, bin Laden, the West is winning" (Tom Utley, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/11/12)
"I was particularly struck by one question that [bin Laden] put last week to his Pakistani interviewer, Hamid Mir. "You journalists, you never ask Bush or Blair why they are killing people," he said. "Why do you ask me?" Well, I suppose that somebody should explain it to him, and it may as well be me. The reason, Mr bin Laden, is that Mr Bush and Mr Blair are between them the elected leaders of more than 300 million human beings, while you are just a murderer who has spent his daddy's money on arming about 15,000 deluded fanatics. We know why Bush and Blair are killing people. They are killing people because you, Mr bin Laden, murdered many thousands of American and British citizens, and they do not want you to murder any more. Every drop of blood shed in Afghanistan is on your hands."

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