Archived news and commentary: December 3 - 9, 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:

"Cheney: Tape evidence bin Laden behind terror attacks" (CNN.com, 2001/12/09)
"A videotape discovered in Afghanistan is "one more piece of evidence" that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks on Washington and New York, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday. ... The Washington Post reported Sunday that the tape was obtained in Afghanistan, during a search of a private home in Jalalabad. The Post reported that bin Laden describes the damage around the World Trade Center as better than he had expected, praises God for greater success than he expected and uses language that indicated he knew about the planning of the attack."

"Arafat's Suicide Factory" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2001/12/09)
"Convincing healthy individuals to blow themselves up is obviously not easy, but requires ideas and institutions. ... Militant Islamic suicide killers are not born; they are manufactured. Like the four simultaneous suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, the four nearly simultaneous suicide attacks in Israel last week resulted from long-term planning by sophisticated organizations. They cannot operate clandestinely, but require the permission of a ruling authority, either the Taliban or the PA. ...
This, in turn, has an implication for the war on terrorism. No less than in Afghanistan, the American goal must be to shut down the suicide factory in the Palestinian areas. And while it would be wonderfully convenient if Yasir Arafat could be delegated this task, the chances of his doing this are about as likely as the Taliban getting rid of Al-Qaeda - in other words, nil. Arafat has been in the business of murdering Israelis for nearly four decades; he does not deserve yet another chance." (See also: "An Arsenal of Believers" (Nasra Hassan, The New Yorker, from the 2001/11/19 issue))

"His true colors" (Daniel Bloch, The Jerusalem Post, 2001/12/09)
"Israel Television's Channel 1 should be commended for broadcasting an excellent interview with Yasser Arafat on Friday night's weekly news magazine. As far as my memory serves, it was the first time ever that an Israeli interviewer - Oded Granot - confronted the Palestinian leader with the facts and did not let him hide behind empty slogans. ...
Granot succeeded in making Arafat angry, as he did not have convincing answers to the strong questions posed to him. Did he do anything to stop attacks by suicide bombers? He replied that he issued a condemnation through a press release. ...
Granot then asks, why not declare unequivocally an end to the intifada? No straight answer from Arafat. These are just a few examples of the interview that succeeded in exposing Arafat in his true colors - a leader who is out of touch with reality, who has lost control of his people, who cannot stop terrorism and seems not to really want to stop it. He is the happy warrior who is not ready to settle down as a civilian head of state and a true social leader of the Palestinians."

"High Impact" (Andrew Sullivan, The New York Times Magazine, 2001/12/09)
"In any overview of the ideas of 2001, the massacre of Sept. 11 is unavoidable. However monstrous a crime, it was also a conceptual innovation. However evil, it was an idea. ...
Many commentators, though horrified, were nonetheless impressed. "We had to recognize," Norman Mailer observed, "that the people that did this were brilliant." But do we? In retrospect, the idea of Sept. 11 seems highly overrated. Like many foolish notions, it may have the allure of superficial intelligence, but it was, in fact, deeply unoriginal and profoundly misconceived. ...
And Al Qaeda clearly miscalculated. By committing such a vast atrocity, they all but guaranteed an overwhelming response, one that would cripple the network’s finances and military bases. ...
In some ways, then, Sept. 11 really was a suicide mission – for Al Qaeda as a whole. It didn’t just kill the terrorists involved; it sealed the fate of their superiors as well."

News and commentary:

"On unity and diversity" (James C. Bennett, UPI, 2001/12/08)
"At heart, the Anglosphere outlook is a set of perceptions about the relationship between strong civil societies and the linked phenomena of freedom, democracy, prosperity, and technological progress. These phenomena do not float around in some abstract philosophical space, but are set in the historical and cultural context of a particular set of strong civil societies, the nations of the English-speaking world. ...
As I have written elsewhere, one of the critical characteristics of the Anglosphere, and one of the reasons for its remarkable successes, it precisely its openness to the world. To freeze the Anglosphere cultures into the form they have at any given time is to destroy this ability to adapt. This openness has led to its ability, demonstrated over centuries, to accept, assimilate, and improve itself thereby. ...
The result has been a civilization that has tolerated substantial diversity in many things, but unity in a few but critical things. Particularly, Anglosphere nations have always come together against real external threats: Hitler, Stalin, and now the radical Islamists. ...
Anglospherism is a recognition of what has worked in the past, and why. This understanding leads to a rejection of the brittle compartmentalization of multiculturalism. It was multiculturalism that allowed deluded fools, denied access to their own heritage, to volunteer to fight against their fellow citizens for the Taliban, one of the most repressive regimes on earth. Anglospherism instead advocates the continuation of a culture that effectively balances diversity and unity with openness and liberty."

"U.S. Shifts Terror Hunt to Europe" (Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times, 2001/12/08)
"With the investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks slowing in the United States, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft plans to travel overseas next week to confer with European officials about the next steps in the expanding international war on terrorism, senior law enforcement officials said Friday. ...
U.S. authorities also believe that many of the larger terrorist cells linked to Osama bin Laden's global Al Qaeda network are deeply entrenched in the big cities of Western Europe. They said Friday that they want to boost their cooperative efforts with European allies in breaking up those cells, then determining what to do with suspects in custody."

 

Friday, December 7, 2001

News and commentary:

"Two Worlds" (V.S. Naipaul, Swedish Academy, 2001/12/07)
The Nobel lecture of this years Nobel Price of Literature winner - V.S. Naipaul: "Nearly thirty years ago I went to Argentina. It was at the time of the guerrilla crisis. People were waiting for the old dictator Perón to come back from exile. The country was full of hate. Peronists were waiting to settle old scores. One such man said to me, "There is good torture and bad torture." Good torture was what you did to the enemies of the people. Bad torture was what the enemies of the people did to you. People on the other side were saying the same thing. There was no true debate about anything. There was only passion and the borrowed political jargon of Europe. I wrote, 'Where jargon turns living issues into abstractions, and where jargon ends by competing with jargon, people don't have causes. They only have enemies.'"

"Sharon Flinches" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2001/12/07)
"The window thus opens for Israel finally to act. Here is the opportunity to do as America is doing to the Taliban: destroy the Arafat regime that harbors and protects Hamas terrorists. Here is the opportunity to root out Arafat's infrastructure -- training camps, arms depots, propaganda organs and eight personal "security" agencies. Here is the opportunity to detain and deport the Palestinian Authority leadership that brought Israel more terrorism in the eight years of the "peace process" than in all of its previous history. What does Prime Minister Sharon do? He flinches. He temporizes. He attacks symbolic targets - destroys two of Arafat's helicopters, tears up his Gaza airport runway, flattens a few police stations, blasts the office next door to Arafat's. The intent is to "send a message," namely, "we can get you." But the effect is precisely the opposite. It tells Arafat, "We can, but we dare not." The message is clear. Israel does not (yet) have the will - or the government - to fight its own war."

"Rumsfeld Says No Amnesty for Taliban Leader" (Vernon Loeb and Bradley Graham, The Washington Post, 2001/12/07)
"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that the United States would not accept a negotiated surrender between Afghanistan's new interim government and besieged Taliban forces in Kandahar that granted amnesty to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. But Rumsfeld said that U.S. custody of Omar and Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden might not be necessary to "bring them to justice" if arrangements could be worked out with other governments willing to put them on trial and ensure punishment."

 

Thursday, December 6, 2001

News and commentary:

"Victory: What it Will Take to Win" (Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books, from the Fall 2001 issue)
"Imagine if a magic wand were to eliminate from the earth al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and Afghanistan's Taliban regime. With them gone, would Americans be safe from Arab terrorists? No way. Then what good does it do for the U.S. government to make war on them and no one else? Why not make war on those whose elimination would eliminate terrorism? ...
Today Iraq, Syria, and the PLO are the effective cause of global terrorism. More than half of the world's terrorism since 1969, and nearly all of it since the fall of the Soviet Union, has been conducted on behalf of the policies and against the enemies of those three regimes. By comparison, Libya, Iran, and Sudan have been minor players. Afghanistan is just a place on the map. Factor these three malefactors out of the world's political equation and what reason would any Arab inclined to Islamism or radical nationalism have to believe that such causes would stand a chance of success? ...
Killing these regimes would be relatively easy, would be a favor to the peoples living under them, and is the only way to stop terrorism among us. ...
Their peoples hate them. Their armies would melt before ours as they have melted before Western armies since the days of Xenophon's Upcountry March. They produce nothing. Terror is their domestic policy and their foreign policy. The oil from which they get the money that they lavish on themselves and on terrorism comes from revenues that Westerners give them to satisfy Western ideas of what is right. The regimes that are killing us and defeating us are the product of Western judgments in the mid-20th century that colonialism is wrong and that these peoples could govern themselves as good stewards of the world's oil markets. They continue to exist only because Western elites have judged that war is passé. It is these ideas and judgments, above all, that stand in the way of our peace, our victory."

"Pipe Dreams" (Seth Stevenson, Slate, 2001/12/06)
"A theory making the rounds on the Internet, on the airwaves, and in the press claims that the bombing of the Taliban has nothing to do with a "war on terrorism" but everything to do with the oil pipeline the West wants to build through Afghanistan. ... Why does the bombing-for-pipelines theory hold such appeal? For the same reason the supporting-the-Taliban-for-pipelines theory attracted so many: There's evidence that points in that direction. Unocal did want to build a pipeline through Afghanistan and did cozy up to the Taliban. Bush and Cheney do have ties to big oil. But theories like these are ridiculously reductionist. Their authors don't try to argue conclusions from evidence- they decide on conclusions first, then hunt for justification. ... What's absurd about the pipeline theory is how thoroughly it discounts the obvious reason the United States set the bombers loose on Afghanistan: Terrorists headquartered in Afghanistan attacked America's financial and military centers, killing 4,000 people, and then took credit for it. Nope - must be the pipeline."

"Taleban leader to 'surrender Kandahar'" (BBC News, 2001/12/06)
"Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is reported to be on the verge of surrendering Kandahar, his last stronghold in Afghanistan. The former Taleban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said the Taleban would begin handing over control of the southern city on Friday to a local tribal elder, Mullah Naqibullah."

 

Wednesday, December 5, 2001

News and commentary:

"The Real Roots of Terror" (Jack Beatty, The Atlantic, 2001/12/05)
"All but three of the terrorists, like Bin Laden himself, were from Saudi Arabia; Mohamed Atta, their ringleader, was from Egypt, as is the number two man in al Qaeda, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. Something about these countries helped to produce the terrorists. The terrorists are dead; bin Laden will soon join them. But that something endures. The domestic political arrangements of Egypt and Saudi Arabia should be regarded as among our real enemies in the war on terror. The regimes in these countries, we know, are repressive, but so are governments throughout the Third World. What is special about the repression in Egypt and Saudi Arabia is that both governments escape its consequences by redirecting popular anger toward the United States. ... Egypt exports the terrorists the repression produces, but not before its state-dominated media has taught them to blame the misery and backwardness of Arab nations on the U.S. The terrorists then attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We are not a wicked nation but, as long as we subsidize this fated cycle, we are a stupid one."

"Afghan factions sign power deal" (CNN.com, 2001/12/05)
"Delegates at U.N.-sponsored talks in Germany have signed a landmark accord to set up a post-Taliban government in Afganistan representing a range of ethnic groups and regions. Pashtun chief Hamid Karzai will head that 30-member interim administration, which will include two women. Karzai is not in Bonn, but near Kandahar, commanding forces fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda members around the city."

"The cycle of absurdity" (Michael Freund, The Jerusalem Post, 2001/12/05)
"After the past week of bloodshed, it should now be clear to even the most ardent defenders of the Palestinian cause that Arafat is not a partner for peace. ... As self-evident as this would appear to be, there are still those incapable of mustering up the moral courage to point the finger of blame squarely at Arafat. ... After the attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa earlier this week, the EU issued a statement condemning the violence and calling on the PA to prevent further attacks. It went on, however, to speak of the need for both sides to work toward "breaking the cycle of violence," as if both Israel and the Palestinians are equally to blame for the events of the past 14 months. By referring to the intifada as a "cycle of violence," rather than a full-fledged Palestinian assault against Israel, the EU is choosing moral equivalence over moral clarity, which effectively provides the Palestinians with political cover to carry out future assaults."

"The Crisis of Arab Moderates" (The Washington Post, 2001/12/05)
"The Arab rulers strike back hard when the terrorists target them, not hesitating to use torture, beheadings and massacres of civilians in their own defense. But when the target is Israel, or the United States, their usual response is to demand "restraint" from the victim, or to say any response must address what they say are the "causes" of the terrorism – which invariably turn out to be located in Israel and the United States. What’s missing is an acceptance by Arab states that Islamic extremism and terrorism are inherently evil, a threat to civilization that must be opposed without compromise, regardless of the target. ... Now Mr. Arafat at last is being forced by the world to decide: He can break with the terrorists or be stripped of government and international acceptance. The Arab moderates rush to his defense; but if they do not change, sooner or later they will likely find themselves in the same vise."

Tuesday, December 4, 2001

News and commentary:

"Colonialism is alive and well in the Middle East" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2001/12/04)
"And now, again, the failure of many in the West clearly to discern the difference between a democratic state fighting for survival and its totalitarian aggressor is condemning more innocents to death. Israel, a nation which has preserved its democratic identity under almost unendurable strain, has had to bury another 25 of its dead this weekend, victims of Islamist terrorism. Those terrorists operate freely within a territory, controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which encourages and facilitates their recruitment, preparation and operation. ... We view the conflict in the Middle East from underneath the district commissioner’s pith helmet, as just another tribal wrangle between Big Chief Sharon and Sheikh Arafat. Until we see it for what it is - a totalitarian assault against democracy - we shall continue to be accomplices to injustice."

"Breakthrough at Afghan talks" (BBC News, 2001/12/04)
"The four Afghan factions holding talks in Bonn have reached agreement on a United Nations blueprint for rebuilding the country's political system. The breakthrough came early on Tuesday morning after the Northern Alliance, the largest delegation, submitted a list of its candidates for a 29-member interim administration to rule Afghanistan."

"Israel moves against Palestinian Authority" (BBC News, 2001/12/04)
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has won his cabinet's backing to declare the Palestinian Authority an "entity that supports terror". ... The cabinet's decision, which followed a stormy debate, came as Israeli troops and bulldozers moved into Gaza airport on Monday night and began ripping up its runway as part of a wave of retaliation." (See also: "Full text: Sharon's address" (BBC News, 2001/12/04): "Arafat made his strategic choice when he chose a strategy of terror. When he chose to attempt to attain political achievements by means of murder, when he chose to allow the merciless slaughter of innocent civilians, Arafat chose the path of terror. ... Arafat is the biggest obstacle to peace and to stability in the Middle East. That was the case in the past, and we also see it today, at present, and I am sorry to say it, probably in the future as well")

News and commentary:

"Is the President a 'Dictator'?" (David Tell, The Weekly Standard, 2001/12/03)
Tell wonders if Bush really has "assumed...dictatorial powers" (William Safire) or if the detentions of suspects after September 11 constitutes an "American gulag" (Richard Cohen): "For a start toward the real answer, perhaps we should provide a little update on Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida computer engineering professor whom we have met before in these pages. Al-Arian is a piece of work: a man who in the past has played host or even employer - right there in the Tampa/St. Pete metropolitan area - to a number of notorious international terrorists and their equally notorious propagandists and sympathizers. Al-Arian appears ill-disposed towards Jewish people; in February 1995, ten days after two young Arab zombies had blown themselves up at an Israeli bus stop, killing 22 people and injuring 59 others, Al-Arian wrote a fund-raising letter exulting in the deed and requesting "support to the jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as these can continue." Al-Arian appears similarly ill-disposed toward Americans, even those who aren't Jewish. "Let us damn America" and its allies "until death" he has been heard to proclaim, at one of the many jihadist pep rallies he has sponsored since arriving in the states more than a decade ago. Federal authorities have been keenly aware of Sami Al-Arian since the mid 1990s. The FBI and INS, in particular, seem soon thereafter to have concluded that he was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's principal representative in North America. But so habitually cautious about the law is our Justice Department that Al-Arian has never been charged with a crime. Nor has he ever been targeted for deportation. Nor - even now, while the government is said to be rounding up every Arab or Muslim fellow it can get its hands on - has Al-Arian even been detained. Quite the contrary; he is currently free as a bird, and the subject of an incredibly stupid profile in the Los Angeles Times, which thinks we should know that Sami Al-Arian "wears Hush Puppies and resembles Mahatma Gandhi." Some 'gulag.'"

"Breakthrough hope at Afghan talks" (BBC News, 2001/12/03)
"The two main factions at the talks on Afghanistan's political future in Bonn appear to have agreed on a candidate to head an interim government. The UN-brokered talks have been held up over agreement on the cabinet, which will be recognised internationally as Afghanistan's sovereign government pending a meeting of chiefs from Afghanistan's complex ethnic groups. An adviser to the Northern Alliance said on Sunday that it had agreed with the royalist Rome faction to nominate an aide to the former king to the post, Reuters news agency reports. Abdul Sattar Sirat is an ethnic Uzbek who served as justice minister before Zahir Shah was forced into exile in 1973."

"We are not risking world war so women can show their ankles" (Barbara Amiel, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/12/03)
"But the darkest aspect of the Left these days is a virulent anti-Americanism, exemplified in America by Noam Chomsky, and in this country by Harold Pinter. On September 10, Pinter gave a speech at the University of Florence. ... He said that America was a murderous state, a vast gulag of torture and rape. Without a scrap of evidence, he asserted that the bombing of a southern Yugoslavian market town was not a mistake, as America claimed, but a deliberate act of murder and part of Nato's policy to terror-bomb. ... His speech also listed the agenda of the Left, from the Kyoto Accords to the International Criminal Court of Justice, and stated that, by rejecting these initiatives, America had "come out of the closet" as an "authentic rogue state . . . the most dangerous power the world has ever known". ... In conclusion, Pinter, a man whose life and liberty have been largely guaranteed in the past century and this new one by America, told his audience in Florence: "But we are free. And I believe that this brutal and malignant world machine must be recognised for what it is and resisted." ... Of course, there was no direct relationship between his speech and the bombing. But for years Pinter's words, in speeches such as these, have been an incitement to violence. No amount of bon mots can quite distance him morally from what took place the next day." (See also: "Degree Speech to the University of Florence 10th September 2001" (Harold Pinter, haroldpinter.org, 2001/10/10): "Arrogant, indifferent, contemptuous of International Law, both dismissive and manipulative of the United Nations - this is now the most dangerous power the world has ever known - the authentic ' rogue state' - but a 'rogue state' of colossal military and economic might. ... It is certainly true that the police action in Genoa recently made it clear that the forces of reaction and repression remain savage, vicious and merciless. But we are free. And I believe that this brutal and malignant world machine must be recognised for what it is and resisted.")

"The Taliban-like ultimatum" (The Jerusalem Post, 2001/12/03)
"The lesson of September 11 is that terrorists will commit greater and greater atrocities until they and their bases of support are eliminated. The lesson of December 2 is the same: Terrorism cannot be talked out or wished away, it must be wiped out. ... The goal of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Authority that harbors them, is not just to disrupt daily life but to defeat Israel and "conquer" territory. These means will not cease if Israel were to withdraw, but will continue until Israel can be forced to commit suicide through implementation of the "right of return." The US is not in a diplomatic mode with respect to Islamism; it recognizes that it is at war and Islamism must be defeated. Accordingly, the Taliban were given an ultimatum to either give up Osama bin Laden or give up power. The Palestinian Authority must be given a similar ultimatum with respect to Hamas and Islamic Jihad."

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)

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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)

Weekly archive

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