Year
In Review - 2002
Selected news and commentary
Columnists of the Year
Sites of the Year
Some of the most interesting and important commentators, historians etc. of the year.
Oriana Fallaci
Mark Steyn
Robert Kagan
Jeffrey Goldberg
John Fonte
Bat Ye'or
Christopher Hitchens
"I feel as a soldier. The duty of a soldier is to fight.
And to fight this war, I deploy a personal weapon.
It is not a gun. It's a small book, The Rage and the Pride."
Oriana Fallaci
Oriana Fallaci - The mother of all whistleblowers. Her book "The Rage and the Pride" is a "J'accuse" or Voltairean "écrasez l´infâme" not only aiming at Islamic fundamentalism, but also at Western appeasement and lack of passion for its own values."I accuse ourselves also of another crime: the loss of passion. Haven't you understood what drives our enemies? What permits them to fight this war against us? The passion! They have passion! They have so much passion that they can die for it! ... And a civilization, a culture, cannot survive without passion, cannot be saved without passion. If the West does not wake up, if we do not refind passion, we are lost."
"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)
Mark Steyn - Brilliant columnist for National Post, The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph among other publications. Steyn's purely satirical pieces, such as "'Gay professors on the march across Europe'" (The Daily Telegraph, 2002/05/11) and "My Sharia Amour" (The Daily Telegraph, 2002/11/30), are good examples of his particular sense of black humour. And don't miss his website: SteynOnline.
"In a unipolar world, it's clear that the real enemy in this war is ourselves, and our lemming-like rush to cultural suicide. ... George W. Bush had a rare opportunity after 11 September. He could have attempted to reverse the most toxic tide in the Western world: the sappy multiculturalism that insists all cultures are equally valid, even as they're trying to kill us. He could have argued that Western self-loathing is a psychosis we can no longer afford."
"The war Bush is losing" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/08/24 issue)
Robert Kagan - Columnist for The Washington Post and contributing editor at The Weekly Standard. "Power and Weakness", a must-read essay on the growing U.S.-Europe divide, was probably one of the most cited and commented of the year.
"It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power - the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power - American and European perspectives are diverging. ... The current situation abounds in ironies. Europe's rejection of power politics, its devaluing of military force as a tool of international relations, have depended on the presence of American military forces on European soil. Europe's new Kantian order could flourish only under the umbrella of American power exercised according to the rules of the old Hobbesian order. American power made it possible for Europeans to believe that power was no longer important."
"Power and Weakness" (Policy Review, from the June & July 2002 issue)
Jeffrey Goldberg - Reporter extra-ordinaire for The New Yorker. "The Great Terror" (The New Yorker, from the 2002/03/25 issue), about Saddam Husseins genocidal campaign against Kurds, is a classic. "In the Party of God" (The New Yorker, from the 2002/10/14 and 21 issues), an in-depth report on Hezbollah, is also a must-read.
"I left Pakistan and Afghanistan believing that America had done nothing to alienate the Taliban or these madrasah boys: Their hate was independent of American action. ... Their hatred of America, I realized, was rooted in their culture, in the theology of Islamic supremacy, in their jealousy and rage at American success. ... It was after a couple of months in Pakistan and Afghanistan that I began to realize that these forces of Islamic fundamentalism had already declared war on us; that there was nothing left for us to do but fight them; and that by not fighting them, we were convincing them we were without virtue, strength, or courage."
"But It Is Genocide, Bob" (Jeffrey Goldberg, Slate, 2002/10/07)
John Fonte - Are you prepared for the future of the ideological war within the West? Meet John Fonte, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, who opposes Fukuyama's thesis that liberal democracy has won. Fonte argues that liberal democracy is increasingly challenged by "transnational progressivism", an ideology which is "a universal and modern worldview that challenges in theory and practice both the liberal democratic nation-state in general and the American regime in particular."
"The key concepts of transnational progressivism could be described as follows:
The ascribed group over the individual citizen. The key political unit is not the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born.
A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor vs. victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims. Transnational ideologists have incorporated the essentially Hegelian Marxist "privileged vs. marginalized" dichotomy.""The Ideological War Within the West" (Foreign Policy Research Institute, May 2002)
Bat Ye'or - Historian who studies the history of jihad and dhimmitude - the institutionalized treatment of Christians and Jews under Islamic rule. Her work challenges the politically correct view of Islam as essentially peaceful and tolerant, instead pointing to the apologetically overlooked continual history of holy war and religious apartheid. Check out Dhimmis and Dhimmitude for more information about her books and articles.
"America should not choose European ways: the road back to Munich via appeasement, collaboration, and dhimmitude. For decades at the instigation of France, Europe backed Arafat - the godfather of modern terrorism - as the champion of liberty, and their hero. ... The ministers and intellectuals who have created Eurabia deny the current wave of criminal attacks against European Jews, which they, themselves, have inspired. ... The cracks between Europe and America reveal the divergences between the choice of liberty and the road back to Munich on which the European Union continues to caper to new Arab-Islamic tunes, now called "occupation," "peace and justice," and "immigrants' rights" - themes which were composed for Israel's burial. And for Europe's demise."
"Eurabia" (National Review, 2002/10/09)
Christopher Hitchens - If you want to hear the sound of one hand clapping, just listen to the debate in the West about the war against terror. As a major part of the left has moved into a Bizarro world of conspiracy theories and anti-American rhetoric, the field of rational arguments has been left open for conservatives. Which of course is a shame, as an open and lively dialogue is very much preferable, especially considering the historical importance of the situation. "Blaming America First" (Todd Gitlin, MotherJones, 2002/01/08) and "Can There Be a Decent Left?" (Michael Walzer, Dissent magazine, from the Spring 2002 issue) are two articles examining this dilemma. Ron Rosenbaum and Ian Buruma are two noteworthy exceptions to the rule, but it was perhaps Christopher Hitchens decision to leave The Nation that best summed up the problem.
"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."
"Stranger in a Strange Land" (The Atlantic, from the December 2001 issue)
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."
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
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