Archived news and commentary: November 26 - December 2, 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:

"The Dumbest Immigration Policy" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, from the Winter 2001 issue)
"The multiculturalist liberal believes that all cultures are equal, except for his own, which is uniquely wicked and imperialist. Assimilation, in his view, would be yet another despicable instance of cultural imperialism - but, of course, it would also throw doubt upon his own world outlook, which he has adopted precisely to establish his own superior broad-mindedness and tolerance. After all, my Indian medical students who know Shakespeare and speak what used to be called the King's English might suggest to him that the very people whose culture he claims to defend often see great value in the culture (to say nothing of the institutions) he is defending them from, and that therefore his presuppositions are profoundly mistaken. Keeping foreigners in cultural ghettos is thus a necessity for him, if he is to preserve his self-regard. ... Of course, if all cultures are equal, migration is itself a mystery, since it occurs (at least en masse) in one direction only. To preserve the division of the world into victims and victimizers, therefore, it is intellectually imperative to keep migrants in a state of the most complete dependence possible. And that is precisely what British immigration policy seems designed to do, at least when seen from close up. The last thing liberals need or want is sturdily self-reliant people who do not require their help."

"Israel faces deadly onslaught" (BBC News, 2001/12/02)
"A series of attacks by suspected Palestinian militants have killed at least 26 Israelis, causing carnage on the streets of Jerusalem and the northern town of Haifa. Fifteen people were killed and 40 wounded by a suicide bombing on a bus in Haifa at lunchtime. ... The violence began on Saturday night at a shopping centre in the Ben Yehuda precinct of Jerusalem. Ten people were killed and 170 injured, most of them teenage revellers. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres described the attack as 'one of the worst... ever seen'. He summoned all foreign ambassadors in the country to a meeting to impart the 'extreme gravity of the situation.'"

"Bobby Fischer speaks out to applaud Trade Centre attacks" (David Bamber and Chris Hastings, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/12/02)
"Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess grandmaster, has broken years of silence to support the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The Telegraph has discovered that Mr Fischer gave an interview to an obscure radio station in the Philippines hours after the events on September 11. ... In his interview on September 11 with Radio Bombo in Baguio City, Mr Fischer said: "This is all wonderful news. It is time to finish off the US once and for all. "I was happy and could not believe what was happening. All the crimes the US has committed in the world. This just shows, what goes around comes around, even to the US. "I applaud the act. The US and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years. Now it is coming back at the US." Mr Fischer, 58, also attacked Israel and "Jews" who he claimed were responsible for "bringing" the attack on the World Trade Centre. ... Mr Fischer, who usually lives in Hungary, is a well-known anti-Semite who has spoken out against 'the international Jewish conspiracy'."

"Secret US plan for Iraq war" (Peter Beaumont et al., The Observer, 2001/12/02)
"America intends to depose Saddam Hussein by giving armed support to Iraqi opposition forces across the country, The Observer has learnt. President George W. Bush has ordered the CIA and his senior military commanders to draw up detailed plans for a military operation that could begin within months. The plan, opposed by Tony Blair and other European Union leaders, threatens to blow apart the increasingly shaky international consensus behind the US-led 'war on terrorism'. It envisages a combined operation with US bombers targeting key military installations while US forces assist opposition groups in the North and South of the country in a stage-managed uprising. One version of the plan would have US forces fighting on the ground. Despite US suspicions of Iraqi involvement in the 11 September attacks, the trigger for any attack, sources say, would be the anticipated refusal of Iraq to resubmit to inspections for weapons of mass destruction under the United Nations sanctions imposed after the Gulf war."

News and commentary:

"Stranger in a Strange Land" (Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic, from the December 2001 issue)
"But let's say that three weeks after a mass murder had devastated the downtown district, and at a moment when the miasma from the site could still be felt and smelled, a ticket-buying audience of liberal New Yorkers awarded blame more or less evenhandedly between the members of al Qaeda and the directors of U.S. foreign policy. ... This work of self-reassurance and of hectic, hasty assimilation to the familiar is most marked in the case of Chomsky, whose prose now manifests that symptom first captured in, I recall, words by Dr. Charcot—"le beau calme de l'hysterique." For Chomsky, everything these days is a "truism"; for him it verges on the platitudinous to be obliged to state, once again for those who may have missed it, that the September 11 crime is a mere bagatelle when set beside the offenses of the Empire. From this it's not a very big step to the conclusion that we must change the subject, and change it at once, to Palestine or East Timor or Angola or Iraq. All radical polemic may now proceed as it did before the rude interruption. "Nothing new," as the spin doctors have taught us to say. There's a distinct similarity between this world view and that of the religious dogmatists who regard September 11 in the light of a divine judgment on a sinful society. ... Members of the left, along with the far larger number of squishy "progressives," have grossly failed to live up to their responsibility to think; rather, they are merely reacting, substituting tired slogans for thought. The majority of those "progressives" who take comfort from Stone and Chomsky are not committed, militant anti-imperialists or anti-capitalists. Nothing so muscular. They are of the sort who, discovering a viper in the bed of their child, would place the first call to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals."

"Hawks save lives; doves don't" (Brendan Simms, The Spectator, from the 2001/12/01 issue)
"The political ghosts of Bosnia were exorcised during Kosovo, and finally laid to rest in Kabul. But many of the British attitudes that led to the Bosnian fiasco persist, and were briefly reinvigorated over the past six weeks. Then, as now, the punditocracy vastly overestimated the enemy and underestimated the effectiveness of US air power. Then, as now, sneering at American 'cowboy' tactics was comme il faut. Then, as now, there has been a tendency to "humanitarianise" a politico-strategic problem. ... As in Bosnia, a humanitarian operation may prove more costly and less effective than waging war."

"Why Europe Hates Israel" (Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, 2001/12/01)
"On Wednesday a Belgian court heard arguments from lawyers representing 23 Palestinians, survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Chatilla massacres near Beirut, that Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should be prosecuted in Belgium for crimes against humanity. ... More than a half century after the Holocaust, a Europe awakened to the importance of human rights is looking to punish the leader of the world's only Jewish state for a crime that was actually committed by a Christian Lebanese militiaman, later employed by the Syrian regime of Hafez Assad. And yet blame for the massacres seems to be apportioned to Mr. Sharon alone."

News and commentary:

"Post 9/11: The European Dimension" (Martin Walker, World Policy Journal, from the Winter 2001/02 issue)
An interesting essay on transatlantic aliiances after 9/11: "But the crisis has already sparked or accelerated some important shifts in international relations that may well prove problematic for the Atlantic alliance.
Under the spur of crisis, the European Union proved a weak reed. Expectations in Brussels that the European allies would increasingly choose to act through the European Union rather than NATO, or through bilateral relations with the United States, were swiftly confounded. The EU took a back seat as NATO and Europe's national capitals took the lead. ...
Belgium, by accident of rotation, held the presidency of the European Council for the six-month period covered by September 11 and its aftermath, a role that traditionally requires the country to speak "for Europe" rather than for itself. Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel publicly rebuked Blair for "grandstanding and warmongering" and warned that Europe "will not follow Bush and Blair blindfold." Not much attention was paid to this outburst. The EU visibly did not matter greatly in times of urgent crisis, when the United States turned to its traditional nation-state allies and to NATO, and Europe's nation-states responded in kind."

"Victory Changes Everything..." (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2001/11/30)
"Kramer's indisputable point was that there has always been and always will be poverty and oppression, anger and resentment in the Arab world. And much of it will be directed against America. That is a constant. The variable factor is whether America commands respect or contempt. ... The Taliban's collapse shattered two myths: Islamic invincibility and American weakness - myths amplified over eight years by the Clinton administration's empty gestures and demonstrable impotence in the face of Islamic terror. The Islamic street exploded after Sept. 11, not because of rage - the rage is there always - but because of triumphalism. ... The elementary truth that seems to elude the experts again and again - Gulf War, Afghan war, next war - is that power is its own reward. Victory changes everything, psychology above all. The psychology in the region is now one of fear and deep respect for American power. Now is the time to use it to deter, defeat or destroy the other regimes in the area that are host to radical Islamic terrorism."

"Militias in South Nearing Siege of Taliban's Last Major Bastion" (James Dao and Douglas Frantz, The New York Times, 2001/11/30)
"Aided by American air power and ground troops, opposition forces in southern Afghanistan have encircled and are on the verge of laying siege to the city of Kandahar, the last major bastion of Taliban military power, senior United States military officials said today. As American warplanes continued to bomb Taliban positions in and around Kandahar, opposition militias cut off the main roads leading into the city from the north, west and east."

News and commentary:

"Is There a Good Terrorist?" (Timothy Garton Ash, The New York Review of Books, 2001/11/29)
With the Albanian Macedonian guerrilla leader Ali Ahmeti as an example, Garton Ash tries to define who is a terrorist: "Here are four things to look at in deciding whether someone is a terrorist, and, if they are, what kind of terrorist: Biography, Goals, Methods, and Context. Only a combination of the four will yield an answer. I will use the example of Ahmeti and the NLA, but the template can be used anywhere. ... METHODS: This is the single most important criterion. An old man who stands on a soapbox at Speakers' Corner in London of a rainy Saturday afternoon demanding that the Lord raze to the ground all branches of Marks & Spencer is not a terrorist. He is a nut at Speakers' Corner. The Scottish National Party has goals much more far-reaching than the NLA - it wants full independence for Scotland - but it works entirely by peaceful, constitutional means. Does the individual or group use violence to realize their personal or political goals? Is that violence targeted specifically at the armed and uniformed representatives of the state, or does the terrorist group also target innocent civilians? Does it attempt to limit civilian casualties while spreading panic and disruption - as Irish paramilitaries have sometimes done, by telephoning bomb warnings - or does it aim for the mass killing of innocent civilians, as al-Qaeda plainly did on September 11?"

"US targets bin Laden's fortress" (Roland Watson and Michael Evans, The Times, 2001/11/29)
"Osama bin Laden and the Taleban leadership have lost control of their troops, the Pentagon said last night as American forces concentrated on a deep mountain bunker in which they believe the al-Qaeda leader is hiding. The extensive cave complex near the village of Tora Bora, south of Jalalabad, has become the focus of US bombing after the latest American and British intelligence pinpointed it as bin Laden's hiding place. ... Defence sources are increasingly sure that bin Laden is in the Tora Bora complex. "We're now convinced this is where he is and where the 1,000 or so al-Qaeda fighters with him will make their last stand," said one."

"Afghan talks 'agree first step'" (BBC News, 2001/11/29)
"Two key parties at UN-sponsored talks on Afghanistan's future have agreed on the first step towards setting up a broad-based government, officials said. The Northern Alliance, the largest delegation, was reported to have agreed with supporters of Afghanistan's former king Zahir Shah to set up an interim council, charged with naming a provisional government for the country. ... There is also no sign of agreement on a multinational security force being sent to the country, after the Northern Alliance repeated its view there was no need for such a force."

News and commentary:

"American academics get it wrong, again" (Helle Bering, The Washington Times, 2001/11/28)
"The September 11 terrorist attack "was no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism . . . that the United States has committed during my lifetime." Who said this? A crazed Muslim extremist? Or a professor at a major American University? ... But all three of the quotations above originated on American colleges campuses in the days and weeks after September 11 and are quoted in a recent report, "How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It," by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Given the awful losses Americans had just sustained in the worst terrorist attack the United States had ever seen, such sentiments may come as a surprise. Then again, given the rampant suspicion bordering on hatred of everything American that has been nurtured by the academy for decades, such reactions are as predictable as they remain shocking." (See also: "How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It" (Jerry L. Martin and Anna D. Neal, ACTA, November 2001))

"CIA blunder sparked Taleban revolt that became a mass suicide" (Oliver August, The Times, 2001/11/28)
"The siege of Kala-i Janghi, the ancient mudbrick fortress near Mazar-i Sharif, ended yesterday when the last foreign Taleban of Konduz were wiped out. ... A witness said: "The fighting started when the Taleban were being questioned by two men from the CIA. They wanted to know where they had come from and whether they might be al-Qaeda." Both CIA operatives were dressed in Afghan robes, had grey beards and spoke Persian. One of them was known as Michael, the other as David. Michael asked one Taleb why he had come to Afghanistan. He replied: "We’re here to kill you", and jumped at Michael, who killed him and three others with his pistol before being wrestled to the ground. ... Now, after three days of US airstrikes, desperate resistance and continuous assault, the death-toll includes scores of Northern Alliance fighters and every one of the resisting prisoners. In the swiftly minted military euphemism, this was an "uprising", but it was also an act of mass suicide and, in the end, a slaughter: by Afghans, of "foreigners", directed by Britons and Americans."

"Despite the Naysayers" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2001/11/28)
"A month ago, the anti-war and the anti-American elements of the left in the United States and in Europe were howling that war in Afghanistan was unjust because: The attacks of Sept. 11 were mere criminal acts, to be properly dealt with by the police and the courts; war would likely cause the deaths of millions of innocent Afghans through bombing and through a bombing-induced famine; war was unlikely to succeed against the never-say-die Taliban; and war would not buy America peace but only more war. ... In light of the refutation of almost every major criticism and alarm from the left, what have we heard from the peacemongers? Well, mostly, a determined silence. And where the silence is broken, it is to obfuscate."

News and commentary:

"A War Like No Other? You Bet!" (David Graham Du Bois, BlackElectorate.com, 2001/11/27)
An anti-American (or rather anti-Western) article by Du Bois, who is a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts: "This "war against terrorism" is in fact an open declaration of war against the peoples of the developing world; initially the peoples of the Middle East and Africa, and ultimately the peoples of South and Central America and the Caribbean, all Asia, the South Pacific and the islands of the Seas - some four-fifths of humanity. It is a desperate attempt to meet and overcome this developing world's growing challenge to the continuation of four centuries of European and American hegemonic domination, exploitation, suppression, insult and injury by its executors in America and Europe."

"The Real War" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2001/11/27)
"If 9/11 was indeed the onset of World War III, we have to understand what this war is about. We're not fighting to eradicate "terrorism." Terrorism is just a tool. We're fighting to defeat an ideology: religious totalitarianism. ... We patronize Islam, and mislead ourselves, by repeating the mantra that Islam is a faith with no serious problems accepting the secular West, modernity and pluralism, and the only problem is a few bin Ladens. Although there is a deep moral impulse in Islam for justice, charity and compassion, Islam has not developed a dominant religious philosophy that allows equal recognition of alternative faith communities. ... Christianity and Judaism struggled with this issue for centuries, but a similar internal struggle within Islam to re-examine its texts and articulate a path for how one can accept pluralism and modernity - and still be a passionate, devout Muslim - has not surfaced in any serious way."

"What Do Women Want?" (Thomas J. Bray, The Wall Street Journal, 2001/11/27)
"Gloria Steinem insisted that unless the administration forced the Afghans to include women at the highest level of government, it would be guilty of collaborating in "gender apartheid." ... On the one hand, the multicultural left likes to prate about the need to respect "cultural differences." On the other, it is confronted by the need to deny that the Taliban - or some less brutal but still strict interpretation of Islam - might constitute a legitimate culture. Feminists are trying to slip off the horns of this dilemma by insisting that it only seeks to "restore" the pre-existing rights of Afghan women. ... But as evidence of an Afghan version of women's lib, that's a serious stretch. Women's suffrage arrived as far back as 1964, it's true, but voting has never been high on the list of Afghan activities. ... But in a country like Afghanistan, the issue isn't democracy. It's survival. Or as France's Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine acidly put it: 'We can't wave a magic wand and turn them into a Swedish society.'"

"Allies direct the death rites of trapped Taliban fighters" (Luke Harding, The Guardian, 2001/11/27)
"There is no way out from the Qala-i-Jhangi: the 19th century fortress on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif where they are now trapped. Hundreds of their colleagues lie dead. The Taliban's foreign fighters are going to their doom with a defiance verging on the flamboyant. ... Less than four hours later, American missiles plunged into the stable area where the Taliban had been holed up, killing hundreds of prisoners in an inferno. Gen Dostam, a Soviet-trained officer famed for his ruthlessness, had approved the US decision to bomb the prisoners, some of whom had played no part in the fighting. The nine or 10 US missiles also killed several Northern Alliance troops."

News and commentary:

"When America Blinked" (Robert Kagan, The New Republic, 2001/11/26)
A brilliant review of David Halberstam's "War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals", which at the same time is a survey of the post-Vietnam syndrome of American foreign policy: "The horrors of September 11 may have rocked the nation and turned the normally pacific American citizenry bellicose, but World Trade Center or no World Trade Center, the old arguments about American power continue. The liberal establishment wrings its hands and asks why the Muslims hate us. Isn't it something that we have done, in the Middle East or elsewhere? It is possible that even the worst attack in the nation's history has not shaken the American foreign policy establishment out of a post-Vietnam syndrome still vibrant in its fourth decade. ... As much as we may hope that the United States, after the horrendous shock of those attacks, has lost the hesitancy, the ambivalence, and the moral confusion that have characterized its attitudes toward the use of its power ever since its misfortunes in Vietnam, this, as the editorial writers like to say, remains to be seen. Perhaps through this test of fire, the establishment will regain the confidence it had after World War II. The American people desperately need it to do so."

"Legal Battles - The Pan Am 103 fiasco shows why we need military tribunals" (Seth Lipsky, The Wall Street Journal, 2001/11/26)
"The first point some of us made after the attack on the World Trade Center was the importance of treating it as an act of war. What we had in mind was the dangers of going into the fight relying on the tools of criminal justice and tort law. The reaction was born of years of watching in dismay the use of both criminal procedures and civil law against such terrorist nations as Iran, Cuba and, most spectacularly, Libya, whose agents brought down Pan American Flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, killing 270. More than a decade later, the families of those victims are still waiting for justice. ... But more than anything else, it is a reminder that at the end of the day there is no dodging the responsibility of a nation to answer an act of war with war. It has its risks, but so does not going to war. And war holds out the prospect of a victory that the civilized world is savoring today."

"US troops mass in Taleban heartland" (BBC News, 2001/11/26)
"Hundreds of American ground troops have been flown in to an airport near the main Taleban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Officials at the Pentagon said the marines, who were ferried in under cover of darkness by waves of helicopters, would be followed by hundreds more from American ships in the Arabian Sea.The total force, which will be supplied with armoured vehicles, could finally number 2,000 men."

"Northern Alliance takes Kunduz" (BBC News, 2001/11/26)
"The northern Afghan city of Kunduz has finally fallen to the forces of the Northern Alliance. BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, speaking from the city centre, says local people told him the Taleban had left late on Sunday night and alliance troops moved in shortly after. The atmosphere in Kunduz is very festive, with thousands of people milling around, our correspondent says."

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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"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

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November 2006
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Author index

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



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