Archived news and commentary: December 10 - 16, 2001

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

 

Sunday, December 16, 2001

News and commentary:

"Hate Hits the Mainstream" (Abraham Cooper, Los Angeles Times, 2001/12/16)
"Witness the new series airing on the state-run satellite television network of the Arab gulf state Abu Dhabi. Facing stiff competition for 25 million homes in the Arab and Muslim world from satellite network Al Jazeera, Abu Dhabi TV has decided to seek its market share by launching "Plots of Terror." ... Between ads for Procter & Gamble shampoo, chocolate and computers for kids, viewers are introduced to an Israeli leader depicted as a vampire who craves the blood of Arab children and markets "Dracu-cola." The "prime minister" is shown personally leading the massacre of helpless prisoners and, in the most horrific scene of all, is shown overseeing the tossing of Arab babies into a bonfire. ... Ominously, the Abu Dhabi series reflects the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism across the Arab world." (Note: The original link is down, but the article can be found at standwithus.com)

"Last al-Qaeda stronghold 'falls'" (BBC News, 2001/12/16)
"Tribal fighters in Afghanistan say they have taken the last al-Qaeda positions in the caves and tunnels of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. Hundreds of al-Qaeda militants are reported to be on the run. "We cleared al-Qaeda from our land. We did the job," senior commander Haji Mohammad Zaman told reporters. He added that he had no information on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. The reported victory comes after weeks of fighting and relentless bombing, with US warplanes dropping hundreds of bombs on al-Qaeda positions in the past couple of days alone."

 

Saturday, December 15, 2001

News and commentary:

"US troops storm al-Qaeda caves" (BBC News, 2001/12/15)
"American special forces have been fighting a pitched battle alongside Afghan allies against al-Qaeda fighters in the mountainous Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan.
The commander of the US military in Afghanistan, General Tommy Franks, said many al-Qaeda fighters had been killed or captured and steady progress was being made. A local Afghan commander has said that up to 300 Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters may be ready to surrender."

"Israelis Raid Four Towns in Counterterror Action; Eight Palestinians Die" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2001/12/15)
"In a new form of Israeli counterterrorism, stealthy troops swept though Salfit before dawn today in a lightning raid, overwhelmed astonished Palestinian security forces, killing six, and then went door to door arresting several suspected militants. Similar military action in three other Palestinian towns and cities resulted in at least 18 more arrests, as well as two more Palestinian deaths. No Israeli soldiers were injured. Tonight, Israeli warplanes resumed their attacks in the Gaza Strip, bombing an empty complex used by Yasir Arafat's elite guard. That is the other side of the Israeli military campaign — a showier effort to isolate and embarrass Mr. Arafat. Tonight's bombing wounded at least five, Palestinians said."

 

Friday, December 14, 2001

News and commentary:

"Who Is Zacarias Moussaoui?" (Sarah Downey, Newsweek, 2001/12/14)
"Moussaoui, they say, was carrying the phone number in Dusseldorf, Germany, assigned to Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Al-Shibh, now a fugitive, is allegedly a member of the Hamburg Al Qaeda cell that also included Mohammed Atta, who flew American Flight 11 into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Al-Shibh served as a financial coordinator for the conspiracy, the Feds say, and in early August sent $14,000 in two wire transfers to Moussaoui, who was evidently using some of the cash to enroll at Pan Am. Then there are the disturbing similarities between Moussaoui and Mohamed Atta, federal sources say. Atta visited the same flight school in Norman, Okla., that Moussaoui attended, although Atta wound up taking flight training in Florida. Atta and Moussaoui both researched using crop dusters for what might have been a biochemical attack, and Atta and Moussaoui both bought "flight deck" instructional videos for the Boeing 747 from the same retailer, Sporty’s Pilot Shop in Batavia, Ohio."

"The grapes of wrath" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2001/12/15 issue)
"Robert Fisk of the Independent nicely captured the likely fate of the apologists, not in anything he wrote (he's been pretty much wrong on everything since September) but in the simple act of getting beaten up by the people he’s championed for so long. His column on the lessons to be drawn from his savage assault by disaffected Afghans was a gem of self-parody: Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head.... And even then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing.... If I was an Afghan refugee in Kila Abdullah, I would have done just what they did. I would have attacked Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find. It's not their fault; their "brutality is entirely the product of others": i.e., us. Mr Fisk is the quintessential New Racist. He believes that, while he and Bush are sophisticated human beings who should be held accountable for their actions, the Noble Savage (and no one’s done more to ennoble him than Fisk) should be offered moral absolution for assaulting a civilian on no other basis than his ethnic identity. As Salman Rushdie has said, this denies 'the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions'." (See also: "My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war" (Robert Fisk, Independent, 2001/12/10))

"Europe Finally Wakes Up and Recognizes Arafat's Nastiness" (Yoel Esteron, International Herald Tribune, 2001/12/14)
"The European Union has changed its tune. After 14 months of unstinting support for the Palestinian intifada that erupted in October last year, the European Union's council of foreign ministers is demanding that Yasser Arafat appeal to his people in Arabic for an end to the armed uprising. In a statement after a meeting of the foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, the European Union demanded that the Palestinian Authority pledge "the dismantling of Hamas and Islamic Jihad's terrorist networks, including the arrest and prosecution of all suspects." ... From the earliest days of the intifada, the conduct of the Europeans has reinforced Mr. Arafat's belief that he can allow, and sometimes even encourage, murderous acts of terror without losing any face in Europe. ... Certain governments – in Belgium, France, Denmark – were particularly hostile to Israel, and this hostility was interpreted in the West Bank as a license to continue the terror, supposedly a legitimate form of national resistance against occupation. These governments and other professional do-gooders believed that they were helping the Palestinians when they blamed Israel for the bloodshed without insisting that Mr. Arafat do his part to stop it. In practice, they share responsibility for the continuation of this armed struggle, which has left hundreds dead on both sides. The blood is on their hands, too."

News and commentary:

"'This is all that we had hoped for'"
(U.S. Department of Defense, 2001/12/13)
Frame grab from the Osama bin Laden videotape: "UBL: (...Inaudible...) we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. ...This is all that we had hoped for."

"Bin Laden on tape: Attacks 'all that we had hoped for'" (CNN.com, 2001/12/13)
"Osama bin Laden recounts with delight the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States as he talks with associates on a videotape released Thursday by the Bush administration. Reveling in the details of the fatal attacks, bin Laden brags in Arabic that he knew about them beforehand and says the destruction went beyond his hopes. He says the attacks "benefited Islam greatly." Bin Laden - branded by U.S. authorities as the mastermind behind the attacks - indicates during the recording that he knew for several days that September 11 would be the date of the attacks. He says he turned on his radio in advance to listen to coverage of the attacks and that he underestimated the damage that would be inflicted on the World Trade Center." (See also: "Transcript of Osama bin Laden videotape" (CNN.com, 2001/12/13): "UBL: (...Inaudible...) we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.")

"India on alert after parliament shootout" (CNN.com, 2001/12/13)
"India has pledged to crush terrorism after an unprecedented suicide attack on parliament that put the country in a state of high alert. A fierce 30-minute shootout came just after lawmakers adjourned inside the New Delhi building. No group has claimed responsibility so far for the assault, which left at least 12 people dead. ... The region is tense because of the Afghanistan situation and continuing terrorist activities in the northern state of Kashmir, which India blames on its nuclear neighbor, Pakistan Within hours, Vajpayee went on national television and vowed to crush terrorism. "This was not just an attack on the building, it was a warning to the entire nation. We accept the challenge," Vajpayee said."

"Stop coddling the Palestinians - they're bloodthirsty bigots who would have exterminated the Jews if they were in charge" (Norah Vincent, Jewish World Review, 2001/12/13)
"The lie is this: Palestinians (and, post September 11th, much of the Arab world) hold the rest of the world to a moral standard they themselves neither uphold, nor share. ... Except for our (and Israel's) cultural commitment to tolerance and the rule of civic law, and the use of violence only in self-defense, or after the diplomatic solutions have been exhausted, the Palestinian people would have no cause at all. They would not exist. If treated according to their own barbaric rules, with the same visceral bigotry, the Palestinians would have been exterminated long ago, and all their Jewish executioners enshrined as martyrs. But instead, we have heard them, honored their complaints, and have done everything - short of absconding - to deal justly with them. But they answer only with more bombs, all the while declaiming our brutality. They want from us what they refuse to give. They act according to one code and hold us to another, never seeing the incompatibility of the two. ... The posture of victimhood may be exploited in the West, but consider for a moment what things might be like if the shoe were on the other foot. If Israel were a Palestinian state, complete with superior firepower and all the privileges of internationally recognized statehood, and the West Bank were a Palestinian occupied Jewish enclave, do you really suppose there would be any Jews left to protest?"

"Israel cuts ties with Arafat" (BBC News, 2001/12/13)
"Israel has decided to break off all contact with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, accusing him of doing too little to stop terrorism. The decision was announced as Israeli F-16 warplanes and helicopters carried out raids on Gaza and the West Bank in retaliation for a Palestinian attack on an bus at a Jewish settlement in which at least 10 people died. ... A statement from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office issued after a special meeting of the security cabinet said Israel had decided to hold Mr Arafat "directly responsible" for terrorist attacks. "Yasser Arafat is no longer relevant to the state of Israel and there will be no more contact with him," the statement said. It added that Israeli troops would be rapidly deployed into Gaza and the West Bank to make arrests and confiscate weapons. Plans were also being drawn up on combating militant Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad."

 

Wednesday, December 12, 2001

News and commentary:

"US lays first 11 September charges" (BBC News, 2001/12/12)
"A man has been charged with conspiring with Osama Bin Laden and other suspects to kill thousands in the 11 September attacks on the United States. Zacarias Moussaoui, 33, was detained on immigration charges in August when he aroused suspicion at a Minnesota flight school where he sought training. ... Mr Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is the first person to be indicted since the suicide attacks which killed an estimated 3,900 people. Four of the six charges faced by Mr Moussaoui are punishable by death if he is found guilty, said US Attorney General John Ashcroft."

"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Islam" (The Atlantic, 2001/12/12)
A presentation of four archived articles on "the question of the suitability of democracy for governing Islamic states and peoples". "Islam" (Albert Kinross, The Atlantic, November 1920), "Islam Past and Present" (Ishaq Husseini, The Atlantic, October 1956), "Islam and Liberal Democracy" (Bernard Lewis, The Atlantic, February 1993) and "What is the Koran?" (Toby Lester, The Atlantic, January 1999). Here's a clip from Husseini's article: "The central problem facing Arab Muslims, and indeed all Muslims, today is how to find a new way of life - Islamic in character - which will be halfway between the East and the West and which will provide the internal stability necessary to enable Muslims to face their problems independently. The Arab World can borrow technology from the West but it must find the answers to its deeper problems within itself."

"Don't 'Engage' Rogue Regimes" (Michael Rubin, The Wall Street Journal, 2001/12/12)
"In the Islamic world, confrontation may work better than dialogue. As the Taliban were driven from Kabul, Afghans spontaneously celebrated, cheering America in the streets. This need not be an isolated occurrence. When I traveled to Kabul 18 months ago, ordinary Afghans repeatedly asked why the United States did not come to their assistance and force the Taliban away. ... Washington should not negotiate with rogue regimes, at least not until they move beyond mere rhetoric and unilaterally cease all weapons proliferation and terror sponsorship without precondition. Perhaps State Department bureaucrats believe they can be party to a great compromise in Sudan or Iran, but in Khartoum and Tehran the people know the truth will be quite the opposite. As one Sudanese Arab merchant put it, 'If America wants Sudan to be a friend, they should not talk to Omar. They should just end his jihad.'"

 

Tuesday, December 11, 2001

News and commentary:

"Bombs 'R' Us" (Bill Hoffmann, New York Post, 2001/12/11)
"He and other kids - as young as 4 and no older than 8 - are fitted with fake explosives as they are taught how to become suicidal terrorists by members of the Palestinian terror group Hamas. These classes of hate, which were held over the weekend, were part of the 14th anniversary celebration of Hamas in Ain El Helweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. ... Followers say it's an honor to die as a martyr to their cause- an ideal drummed into their heads at a very early age. That's evident in these exercises, in which about 40 boys were lined up and fitted with empty explosives canisters. Then, hooded Hamas members - many of them the boys' fathers - showed them the proper way to detonate the canisters to turn themselves into human bombs. Just as American boys play enthusiastically with G.I. Joe, the Palestinian kids happily practiced over and over again."

"The ruthless grip of logic" (Robert W. Tracinski, Jewish World Review, 2001/12/11)
"We have been told, by apologists for the "peace process," that the only way to stop the "cycle of violence" in the Middle East is to urge restraint on both sides, to regard Israeli and Palestinian claims as equal, and to reassure Arafat that we will support his quest for an independent state. But when we did all of these things, the terror attacks continued unabated. The moment we throw up our hands and threaten to abandon Arafat - the moment we take sides against the Palestinian Authority and stop urging Israeli restraint - that is the moment Arafat takes some actual steps to suppress terrorism."

"The Pied Piper of Tora Bora" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2001/12/11)
"Rather than looking to itself - by emancipating women, holding free elections, opening markets, drafting constitutions, outlawing polygamy, curbing fundamentalism, insisting on secular education, and ending tribalism - the Islamic world has more often cursed others. And, consequently, a musician has been welcomed into town - one not conversant with the true tune of salvation, but arriving as a sinister player, whose narcotic chords of resentment have captivated the Muslim world and so tragically led it, singing as it went, right over the precipice of disaster. Bin Laden's mesmerizing jingle of a sinister Israel and conspiratorial America has stampeded an entire culture. At the vanguard of the enthralled were the terrorists and the piper's own al Qaeda gangsters. Thanks to bin Laden's insane and cowardly attack on the world's sole superpower, his cells have been rounded up in nearly every European country; their Middle East nests are burning; and hundreds themselves have been torched or blown to bits. Bullets or bars await them and any other self-loathing killer in the Muslim world who believes the West - not his own conduct and culture - brought him his misery. The siren song of bin Laden has done more to destroy terrorism than has any cruise missile or Interpol operative in the last decade."

 

Monday, December 10, 2001

News and commentary:

"My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war" (Robert Fisk, Independent, 2001/12/10)
Found via Best of The Web Today, who points out that Fisk "says he was the victim of a hate crime, attacked simply because he was a Westerner. And he is in favor of hate crimes":
"They started by shaking hands. We said "Salaam aleikum" – peace be upon you – then the first pebbles flew past my face. A small boy tried to grab my bag. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back. Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn't see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find."

"From Afghanistan to Araby" (Martin Kramer, National Review, 2001/12/10)
"In this respect, the Palestinian response to the terror attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa is not just a test. It's the final exam. We have now seen the first major wave of post-September 11 terrorism. The Arabs are poised on the edge of their seats to see whether anything has changed, or whether the "resistance" can go on blowing up Israeli Jews as usual. ... But if the war against terrorism is about anything, it is about zero tolerance for paradise-obsessed suicide bombers taking themselves and innocent victims to fiery deaths. And the people who have to acknowledge this are not Brazilians or Australians. First and foremost, they are the Arabs, whose societies have tolerated the creation of production lines for suicide terrorists. The message of the United States on this point has to be unequivocal: Hamas and Jihad are Osama and the al Qaeda. Whoever allows such terrorists to flourish under his roof will be Talibanized. Not next year. Not next month. Now."

"Radical Sheik" (Shelby Steele, The Wall Street Journal, 2001/12/10)
"But there is another message as well: that traditional American history, culture and religion are without any special authority. Worse, historic racism and sexism may leave these American offerings with less moral authority than foreign options. In these precincts, a little anti-Americanism becomes a sophistication, a mark of authenticity. ... Cultural liberalism serves up American self-hate to the young as idealism. And this idealism, along with the myth of the victim-sage, was the context of Walker's young life. It's too much to say that treason is a rite of passage in this context. But that is exactly how it turned out for Walker. In radical Islam he found both the victim's authority and the hatred of America that had been held out to him as marks of authenticity. He liked what he found. And when he turned on his country to be secure in his new faith, he followed a logic that was a part of his country's culture."

"A Long, Strange Trip to the Taliban" (Newsweek, from the 2001/12/17 issue)
"Walker was troubled to discover that Islam was not quite as "pure" as he had hoped. He later complained to his mullah, Mufti Iltimas, that he was disappointed during his stay in Yemen to find Islam divided among the Sunni and Shiites and many other sects and factions. All Muslims should follow one code, one law—the absolute truth of every word of the Quran, he believed. Walker, who had been oblivious to politics in the United States, began to absorb some of the politics of radical Islam. In October 2000, when suicide bombers blew a hole in the side of the USS Cole as the American destroyer was refueling in the Yemeni harbor of Aden, Frank Lindh e-mailed his son to lament that some of the 17 young sailors killed in the blast were the same age as his son. Walker wrote back that bringing the U.S. destroyer into a Yemeni harbor was 'an act of war' against Islam. His son’s message 'raised my concerns,' Frank told Newsweek, 'but my days of molding him were over.'"

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



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