Archived
news and commentary: October 11 - 17, 2004
2004/11/01 - 2004/11/07
2004/10/25 - 2004/10/31
2004/10/18 - 2004/10/24
2004/10/11 - 2004/10/17
2004/10/04 - 2004/10/10
2004/09/27 - 2004/10/03
Sunday,
October 17, 2004
News and
commentary:
"Al-Zarqawi group claims allegiance to bin Laden" (CNN.com, 2004/10/17)
Tawhid wal Jihad II: "A statement attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's militant group declared allegiance to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Sunday.
The statement, posted on Islamist Web sites, addressed bin Laden as "the sheik" and said al-Zarqawi's Unification and Jihad movement "badly needed" to join forces with al Qaeda.
"We will listen to your orders," it said. "If you ask us to join the war, we will do it and we will listen to your instructions. If you stop us from doing something, we will abide by your instructions." ...
Sunday's statement said al-Zarqawi has "exchanged views" with al Qaeda over the past eight months.
"[Al Qaeda] showed understanding for our strategy, and they showed their support for our strategy and style and system," the group's statement said." (See also: "Text from Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi Letter" (Coalition Provisional Authority, 2004/02/12))"Zarqawi group claims 11 beheadings" (AFP/SBS, 2004/10/17)
Tawhid wal Jihad I: "A statement attributed to Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi's militant group claims it has beheaded 11 members of the Iraqi police and national guard.
"Today alone, your brethren were able to decapitate 11 apostates ... affiliated to the so-called national guard and police force," said the statement attributed to the military wing of the Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group.
The authenticity of the statement which was posted on an Islamist website could not be confirmed and the claim has not been verified.
The statement did not give details, but a headline introducing it said the group had "killed 11 apostates" on Baghdad's Haifa street, the site of frequent clashes between US forces and insurgents.""New York Review of Lefties" (John Derbyshire, The Corner, 2004/10/17)
"A Martian seeking to understand current U.S. intellectual life might pick up a copy of The New York Review of Books under the illusion that it offers a wide-ranging survey of the literary scene by talented writers with a good range of outlooks and opinions.
Well, let's see. The current (11/4/04) issue of NYRB includes a round-up of views on the coming election from the magazine's contributors. You can get the flavor of the thing from the following quotes. ...— Ian Buruma: "The question is whether the US will be a better place after years of fear-mongering, military abuse, erosion of civil liberties, and a constant stream of political propaganda that distorts America's proudest legacies..." ...
— Anthony Lewis: "[S]ince September 11, 2001, President Bush and his administration have made a mockery of the American commitment to law. Using the threat of terrorism as a reason, they have overridden constitutional rights and treaties to take harsh, punitive action against hundreds of individuals..."
— Norman Mailer: "The sorriest thing to be said about the US, as we sidle up to fascism (which can become our fate is we plunge into a major depression, or suffer a set of dirty-bomb catastrophes), is that we expect disasters. We await them. We have become a guilty nation..."
— Edmund S. Morgan: 'We cannot now escape credit for what our government has so shamefully done. We began as a people with 'a decent respect for the opinions of mankind,' and we won admiration for it. We have now lost the good opinion of mankind and with it the self-respect of decent Americans...'"
(See also: "The Election and America's Future" (The New York Review of Books, from the 2004/11/04 issue))
"'Conspiracy' Crises" (Amir Taheri, New York Post/Benador Associates, 2004/10/17)
"Last year a number of "investigative journalists" had a field day with "news" of a secret Saudi plan to help President Bush's re-election. The charge that made many headlines and became the subject of much television chatter passed as news: The Saudis would bring the price of oil down to $15 to make the average American, who drives a gas-guzzler, happy, thus persuading him to vote for Bush.
The claim was picked up by Sen. Edward Kennedy, an old adept of conspiracy theories, and inspired several books and "documentaries" in which Bush was labeled "The Arabian Candidate." Some weeks later, Sen. John Kerry picked up the theme at his party's convention.
Well, here we are on the eve of the election with oil above $50 a barrel, the highest price ever. ...
The fact that so many Americans are prepared to buy "alternative histories," as presented by the arch-liar Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," and more than 200 books built on conspiracy theories, must be seen as a sign that American democracy is unwell. It shows that the opposition is unable to take on the governing party and the president through normal political debate (which is about options, choices, policies and performance).""Without a Doubt" (Ron Suskind, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/10/17)
A profile of Bush, which opens with an assessment of him as an extremist Messianic fundamentalist.
In fact, the president is compared directly to Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy — he is "just like them".
The irony is that the Bush = Bin Laden crowd sound rather like they are "driven by a dark vision" themselves:"Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that "if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3." The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
"Just in the past few months," Bartlett said, "I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do." Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: 'This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them.'"So there you have it. According to the two major profiles of the presidental candidates in the New York Times, Kerry is serious, nuanced and wise and Bush is — Osama bin Laden. (See also: "Kerry's Undeclared War" (Matt Bai, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/10/10))
"This futile fundamentalism" (William Pfaff, The Observer, 2004/10/17)
The unpleasantness of 9/11. "The lesson the American people refuse to understand", says Pfaff, is that the threat from Islamist terrorism is "unpleasant", but not serious:
"The language of political hyperbole used by some alarmists to describe the threat of Islamist radicals resembles the language of totalitarianism. It does not describe an empirically observed reality. It describes and exaggerates something feared and imagined. ... All this adds up to a false and grossly ideological conception of war between civilisations. ...
Today's militant Islamic revival has seemed a success because it is taken so seriously in the West. Al-Qaeda's attack on the United States have produced three years of frenzied and quasi-paranoid reaction by the American government. ...
But as Gilles Kepel, the French authority on Islamic society, has already said, the Islamist movement is moribund in moral terms, although its military and political energy is not yet exhausted. There is no way in which it seriously threatens the Western industrial nations, other than through sporadic acts of terrorism. And that is the sort of thing Britain endured for many years from the IRA, Italy and Germany during the 1970s and 1980s from their Red Brigades, and Spain from Basque separatists. It is unpleasant, but it is not serious. (This is the lesson the American people refuse to understand.)" (See also: "The making of the terror myth" (Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 2004/10/15))"Kerry the Clueless" (Martin Peretz, Los Angeles Times, 2004/10/17)
"So why am I still exercised about John Kerry?
It's the ramifications of his foreign policy in general, especially his fixation on the United Nations as the arbiter of international legitimacy, proctor of that "global test."
Save for the U.S. veto in the Security Council, Israel loses every struggle at the U.N. against lopsided majorities. In the General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission, Muslim states trade their votes to protect aggressors and tyrannies from censure in exchange for libels against the Jewish state. The body's bloated and dishonest bureaucracies are no better, as evidenced most recently by the head of the U.N. Palestine refugee organization, who defended having Hamas militants on his staff. ...
As a response to militant Islam and to encourage moderate Muslims, the presidential aspirant proposed that "the great religious figures of the planet" — he mentioned the pope, the archbishop of Canterbury and the Dalai Lama — hold a summit.
To do exactly … what?
"To begin to help the world to see the ways in which Islam is not, in fact, a threat," Kerry said, "and to isolate those who are, and to give people the strength to be able to come together in a global effort to take away their financing, their freedom to move, their sanctuary and so forth." ...
Kerry seems to have nostalgia for the peacemaking ways of Clinton. But what Clinton actually bequeathed to George W., says Benn, was 'an Israeli-Palestinian war and a total collapse of the hopes that flourished in the 1990s.'" (See also: "Bush's indelible imprint" (Aluf Benn, Haaretz, 2004/08/27))"Israel proves there is a military solution to terrorism" (Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/10/17)
"Taken together, these measures prove what a legion of diplomats, pundits and reporters have striven to deny: that there is a military solution to the conflict. This is true in two senses. First, a sufficiently strong military response to terrorism does not simply feed a cycle of violence (although a weak military response does); rather, it speeds the killing to a conclusion. That makes it possible for Israelis and Palestinians to resume a semblance of normal life. Second, a military solution creates new practical realities, and new strategic understandings, from which previously elusive political opportunities may emerge. ...
As for Israel, these past four years have also brought its share of lessons. Tactically, Israeli security forces learned, after a shaky start, how to suppress a massive terrorist-guerrilla insurgency, a remarkable accomplishment U.S. military planners would do well to study. Strategically, a majority of Israelis concluded that while peace with this generation of Palestinian leaders is impossible, separation from them is essential. And morally, Israel learned that even the most fractious democracy can stand up to a prolonged terrorist assault, and choose not to yield.
It's a choice made easier when you know there is no alternative." (See also: "Center Right: Israel's Unexpected Victory Over Terrorism" (Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren, The New Republic, from the 2004/09/27 issue))"Iraq's Barbed Realities" (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post Outlook, 2004/10/17)
Chandrasekaran on his first meeting with Fallujah's senior tribal chief Sheik Khamis Hassnawi in July 2003, "when travel around Iraq didn't require armored cars and armed guards":
"The Americans, he said, needed to find a way to employ the legions of former soldiers and other disaffected young men milling about the city. Unlike Shiites in the south, who had grown accustomed to unemployment and poverty, Sunnis in Fallujah had thrived on government contracts, smuggling and graft. Postwar joblessness was a new, embarrassing — and dangerous — phenomenon. "Either you put them to work," Hassnawi said, "or they will turn to the resistance." ...
What would have occurred if the U.S. occupation authority, the vast bureaucracy that was supposed to administer postwar Iraq, had heeded Hassnawi's advice? Could Fallujah have avoided becoming a cauldron of violence?
As with so much else in Iraq, we'll never know for sure. I suspect that had there been an infusion of reconstruction funds in those early days, creating jobs and giving people some hope in the future, many young men would have opted not to side with the insurgents. But no such funds existed. Military commanders had only a modest budget to pay for small public works projects. It was not until this spring that the occupation authority began doling out large-scale contracts. By then, however, Fallujah was deemed too volatile for reconstruction work.""Conference at Duke University equates Zionism, apartheid" (Janine Zacharia, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/10/17)
The Duke Conference II: "On Friday evening, Dianna Buttu, legal advisor in the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department, applauded the International Court of Justice's ruling that determined the West Bank barrier is illegal and ought to be torn down. She told an audience of a few hundred, many dressed in "Free Palestine" tee-shirts and keffiyehs, that South African apartheid was no different than Israeli occupation.
"Israel is attempting to rid itself of the Palestinians as much as possible while taking as much land as they can," she said. ...
On Saturday, Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Yale University professor and the co-founder of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition, referred to Zionism as a "disease" and said the media only reported on "resistance to colonization" not on the violence of "repression and ethnic cleansing" by Israel. He also rejected a two-state solution. "We ought to stop talking about these vague concepts about a two-state solution," he said." (See also: "Duke University's Weekend Hate Fest" (Lee Kaplan, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/10/15))"Soap off air after Taliban threat" (Jamal Halaby, The Herald Sun, 2004/10/17)
The Road to Kabul: "After a week-long advertising blitz, Jordan abruptly cancelled plans today to broadcast a soap opera about Afghanistan after an Internet threat to "strike" everyone from actors to TV executives if the show portrayed the Taliban in a negative light.
The Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), however, went ahead with its scheduled programming and aired the soap opera's second episode.
The series, al-Tareeq ila Kabul (The Road to Kabul), chronicles life under Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers, and was to be aired in Jordan during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. ...
The threat appeared on a website known as a clearinghouse for Muslim militant statements. Its authenticity could not be independently verified.
"We swear to the great God that if we see in the series anything other than the honorable reality of the Taliban ... we will assault all those who participated in this sullied malice," the statement read.
'We will strike, God willing, the centres of satellite stations, their correspondents ... and we swear that nobody will slip from our hands — if not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then in a month, or a year.
We direct our strong warning to all who participated in producing this series, whether an actor, producer or cameraman.'""Women fleeing college under Islamist threats" (The Washington Times, 2004/10/17)
"BAGHDAD — Islamist extremists are targeting the city's universities by threatening and even attacking female students who wear Western-style fashions, setting off bombs on campuses and demanding that classes be segregated by sex.
At least 1,000 of an estimated 3,000 women who want to postpone their studies for fear of violence will be granted leaves of absence, a student affairs official here said. ...
Pamphlets found on campus declared: "If the boy students don't separate from the girl students, we will explode the college. Any girl student who does not wear a veil, we will burn her face with chemicals." ...
Two days later, student Rana Fuad was abducted as she was leaving the campus. Within an hour, the young woman, still dressed in blue jeans, was found unconscious at the college gate.
Miss Fuad stopped going to classes and refuses to talk to the press.
"Rana is in bad psychological condition," friend Sheatheh Ahmed said. "She was kidnapped by three masked men who told her they would burn her face with chemicals if she puts on such clothes again, and that this was her last chance.""Saddam aide in exile heads list of most wanted rebels" (Peter Beaumont, The Observer, 2004/10/17)
"A senior Baath party organiser and Saddam Hussein aide, Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, has been named by western intelligence officials as one of the key figures directing the Sunni insurgency from his hiding-place in neighbouring Syria.
Sources have told The Observer that Younis al-Ahmed - who has had a $1 million price tag placed on his head by the US - is one of between 20 and 50 senior Baath party figures based in Syria who, they believe, are involved in organising the guerrilla war against the US-led multi-national forces in Iraq and against the new Iraqi security forces. ...
'The main organisational strength behind the insurgency is Baathist military intelligence types who enjoy safe refuge in Syria,' said one official. 'So although Syria has clamped down on the border, they have not done anything about the planners and organisers. We are talking about 20-50 people who have access to funds, who know how to organise and use existing networks and are adept at reforming into cells.'""Madrid Attacks May Have Targeted Election" (Keith B. Richburg, The Washington Post, 2004/10/17)
"MADRID -- Seven months after bombs exploded aboard morning commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people, the precise motives of the attackers remain unclear. But new evidence, including wiretap transcripts, has lent support to a theory that the strike was carefully timed to take place three days before a national election in hopes of influencing Spanish voters to reject a government that sent troops to Iraq. ...
Newly disclosed wiretaps of an alleged organizer of the bombings expressing glee that "the dog Aznar" had been put out of office have prompted some analysts here to conclude that the perpetrators sought to try to bring about specific reactions through the attacks.
"It's a lesson for everybody because an attack like this changed the government," said Casimiro Garcia-Abadillo, a deputy editor of El Mundo newspaper and author of a new book, "11-M, La Venganza" ("March 11, The Revenge"). 'It was a coup d'etat undercover.'""Post-war planning non-existent" (Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott, Knight Ridder, 2004/10/17)
A devastating account of the non-existent post-war planning:
"A Knight Ridder review of the administration's Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country. The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions.
In fact, some senior Pentagon officials had thought they could bring most American soldiers home from Iraq by September 2003. ...
"The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious," warned an Army War College report that was completed in February 2003, a month before the invasion. Without an "overwhelming" effort to prepare for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the report warned: "The United States may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America's own making." ...
At the Pentagon, the director of the Joint Staff, Army Gen. George Casey, repeatedly pressed Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of the Central Command, for a "Phase 4," or postwar, plan, the senior defense official said.
"Casey was screaming, 'Where is our Phase 4 plan?'" the official said. It never arrived. Casey is now the commander of U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq."
Saturday,
October 16, 2004
News and
commentary:
"Iraqi women walk past the debris of a church..."
(Jewel Samad, AFP, 2004/10/16)
"Iraqi women walk past the debris of a church following an explosion in Baghdad. Iraq's tiny Christian community was targeted in a string of blasts at churches around Baghdad, while a medic was killed when a mortar round exploded outside a hospital.""The Islamic Republic about to stoning a 13 years-old girl" (Safa Haeri, Iran Press Service, 2004/10/16)
"According to Iranian and foreign press, Zhila Izadi, a 13 years old girl from the north-western city of Marivan had been condemned to death by stoning after being found that she had been pregnant from her 15 years-old brother.
Zhila Izadi, a 13 years old girl from the north-western city of Marivan had been condemned to death by stoning after being found that she had been pregnant from her 15 years-old brother.
The independent Iranian online newspaper “Peyke Iran” (www.peykeiran.com) that had first revealed the news last week reported on Saturday 16 October 2004 that the girl has given birth two weeks ago in prison.
While Zhila as been sentenced to stoning, her brother, jailed in Tehran, is to receive only 150 lashes, in accordance with Islamic laws." (See also: "The Heartbreaking And Enraging Story of a 16 Year Old Girl’s Execution Past Sunday in the Town of Neka, Iran" (ActivistChat, 2004/08/19))"Time Out of Joint: Western dominance, Islamist terror, and the Arab imagination" (Sadik J. Al-Azm, Boston Review, From the October/November 2004 issue)
"Yet it would be very hard these days to find an Arab, no matter how sober, cultured, and sophisticated, in whose heart there was not some room for shamateh [schadenfreude] at the suffering of Americans on September 11. I myself tried hard to contain, control, and hide it that day. And I knew intuitively that millions and millions of people throughout the Arab world and beyond experienced the same emotion. ...
Does my response, and the silent shamateh of the Arab world, mean that Huntington’s clash of civilizations has come true, and so quickly?
In the end, no. Despite current predictions of a protracted global war between the West and the Islamic world, I believe that war is over. There may be intermittent battles in the decades to come, with many innocent victims. But the number of supporters of armed Islamism is unlikely to grow, its support throughout the Arab Muslim world will likely decline, and the opposition by other Muslim groups will surely grow. 9/11 signaled the last gasp of Islamism rather than the beginnings of its global challenge. ...
The clash of civilizations between Islam and the West indeed exists in the weak, ordinary sense of clash, but not in the strong and more dramatic meaning of the term. Islam is simply too weak to sustain in earnest any challenge to an obviously triumphant West.""Why Muslims always blame the West" (Husain Haqqani, International Herald Tribune, 2004/10/16)
"Instead of hard analysis, which thrives only in a free society, Muslims are generally brought up on propaganda, which is often state-sponsored. This propaganda usually focuses on Muslim humiliation at the hands of others instead of acknowledging the flaws of Muslim leaders and societies.
The focus on external enemies causes Muslims to admire power rather than ideas. Warriors, and not scholars or inventors, are generally the heroes of common people. In this simplistic "us vs. them" worldview, both Musharraf and bin Laden are warriors against external enemies. ...
In the post-colonial period, military leaders in the Muslim world have consistently taken advantage of the popular fascination with military power. The Muslim cult of the warrior explains also the relatively muted response in the Muslim world to atrocities committed by fellow Muslims. ...
National pride in the Muslim world is derived not from economic productivity, technological innovation or intellectual output but from the rhetoric of "destroying the enemy" and "making the nation invulnerable." Such rhetoric sets the stage for the clash of civilizations as much as specific Western policies." (See also, for example: "Conspiracy Theories in the Egyptian Media Concerning the Terrorist Attacks in Sinai" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 801, 2004/10/15) and "Leading Egyptian Government Editor's New Book: 'Hatred is a Western Export that has been Marked Return-to-Sender'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 800, 2004/10/15))"Operation Guardian Latest" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2004/10/16)
More on the Guardian's mail campaign: "And it also runs insane letters-to-Ohio from the likes of Samia Rahman, deputy editor of "the Muslim lifestyle magazine emel". Imagine how happy someone in Clark County will be to receive this load of condescending abuse:... I know that you will not stand by and observe your country being hijacked by a select group of neo-conservative extremists who spread fear and loathing. I don't expect you to stand for the haughty suppression of your civil liberties threatened by the proposed Domestic Security Enhancement Act, which will enable the government to detain in secrecy anyone who supports a "terrorist" group and strip them of their citizenship.
I know that you, as Americans, understand the issues and will not allow your sincere and industrious population to be misrepresented, exploited and cowed any longer in the name of a so-called democracy that dishonours your founding fathers. I implore you to vote on November 2. The greatest weapon in the war against terror is you.A British Muslim telling heartland Americans their nation "dishonours your founding fathers"; that’s certain to drive votes away from George W. Bush!" (See also: "Letters to Clark County" (Samia Rahman, The Guardian, 2004/10/15) and "Dear Clark County voter, Give us back the America we loved. Yours sincerely, John Le Carré" (The Guardian, 2004/10/13))
"The Birthplace of Bush Paranoia" (Andrew Ferguson, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/10/25 issue)
"In his great essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," the political scientist Richard Hofstadter remarked how political paranoids in early America — the anti-Masons, for example — were alarmed from decade to decade by the same chimera: They convinced themselves that they saw, operating just beneath the surface of the national life, "a libertine anti-Christian movement, given to the corruption of women, the cultivation of sensual pleasures, and the violation of property rights." Now, of course, the paranoids are bewitched by the mirror image: In Bush and his followers they detect, in place of a libertine anti-Christian movement, an uptight pro-Christian movement, given to the "virtue" of women rather than their corruption, the denial of sensual pleasures instead of their cultivation, and — perhaps most shocking of all — the preservation of property rights rather than their violation. Times do change. The earlier American paranoids imagined their enemies in drunken orgies and were horrified; today they see them at prayer — and they're still horrified." (See also: "Et Tu, Kristol?" (Daniel W. Drezner, The New Republic, 2003/05/14) and "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (Richard Hofstadter, Harper's Magazine/The Academic JFK Assassination Web Site, November 1966))
"Blasts Hit Churches, Hotel, Hospital in Baghdad" (Alistair Lyon, Reuters/Wired, 2004/10/16)
"Explosions damaged churches and hit a hospital and hotel in Baghdad on Saturday in fresh challenges to Iraq's U.S.-backed interim government. ...
Five churches were hit in a string of bomb attacks before dawn that were apparently meant to intimidate Iraq's small but deep-rooted Christian community, already shaken by a deadlier series of bombings of churches that killed 11 people in August.
A nightwatchman was jolted out of bed to find the St Rum church in the central Karrada district had been gutted, its pulpit and pews reduced to ashes.
"This is no good. We live in fear," said Marlene Mikhail, 40, sitting in her home with crosses and icons on the walls." (See also: "Coordinated Blasts Hit Iraqi Churches" (Todd Pitman, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/08/01))"Democracy Comes to Afghanistan" (Michael Gonzales, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/10/16)
"KABUL, Afghanistan — It is difficult to deny that the free presidential election held in — and by — Afghanistan was a success for the Bush administration and its policy of bringing democracy to the Muslim world. Skeptics will say that this was an imperfect election that will not fix Afghanistan's many intractable problems. In a sense that is true. But it is the limited truth of the myopic — those unable to appreciate the positive magnitude of an election in a land that had never before known democracy, and which, for many years, has known only strife, bloodshed and war. ...
Indeed, the results since the fall of the Taliban are palpable. Kabul, literally in ruins after years of war, is thriving, and the rest of the country is starting to rebuild. This dispatch was filed from an Internet cafe, one of many that now dot Kabul, where a sighing young man helped me reconfigure my laptop. Only three years ago, the Taliban were throwing people into dungeons for owning TV sets or listening to music. ...
It is niggardly in the extreme, however, to refuse to acknowledge what has happened in this land thus far. There are occasional comments in the Western media that the courageous Mr. Karzai is a "puppet" because of the U.S. presence. But U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was much closer to the mark when he told me that for '70% to 80% the fear is not of American domination, but of American abandonment.'""U.N. Says Sudan Death Toll Reaches 70,000" (Warren Hoge, The New York Times, 2004/10/16)
"The United Nations health agency said Friday that the death toll in refugee camps in the Darfur region of Sudan had reached 70,000, and that people would continue dying at the rate of 10,000 a month as long as the international community did not provide more money. ...
The United Nations has received only half of the $300 million it needs, he said, while with full financing it could reduce the current mortality rate by half. ...
Mr. Nabarro said that because of a lack of money, relief workers in Darfur were unable to distribute aid in helicopters and had to rely on trucks, which broke down. He said the agency needed 10 charter aircraft but could only afford four. The agency has been borrowing money to meet its needs of $1.5 million a month, he said, but could not continue doing so past mid-December." (See also [PDF]: "Mortality Projections for Darfur" (WHO, 2004/10/15))
Friday,
October 15, 2004
News and
commentary:
"The Media War Continues" (Armand Laferrère, EURSOC, 2004/10/15)
"Last Thursday and Friday - Oct. 7 and 8, 2004 - the Franco-German channel Arte, mostly paid for by the taxpayer, broadcast a very bad French-Egyptian movie by Yousri Nasrallah called "Les portes du soleil". The fact that it was very bad was actually a blessing, for the main purpose of the movie was to show the founders of the state of Israel as moral equivalent to the Nazis.
The movie begins with a scene in a Palestinian school in 1943 where a teacher tells children about "our country, Palestine" and the "Jewish colonisation" going on. 1-9-4-3. Was nothing else happening at that time in Jewish history ? Apparently not, according to Arte.
It goes on: the 1948 war, when Israel barely survived a coordinated attack on the day of her birth by Arab states openly calling for genocide, is described slightly differently. Jews in green-grey uniforms come with tanks and commit mass murders of innocent women and children, burn the villages, pile the clothes of the dead according to size in order to send them to Israel. The Palestinian hero tattoos the date of the slaughter on his own wrist.
This is nauseating. This is unbelievable. Of course the 1948 Jews had neither tanks nor real uniforms - they almost didn't have two rifles of the similar kind, for God's sake! Arabs were brutalised, some were expelled in militarily important areas just as Jews were expelled from their homes in Arab countries - but indiscriminate slaughter by Tsahal? When, where? ...
This man has found actors to play this, two democratic governments to help finance it, and a television executive, Mr Jerome Clement - may his name live in infamy forever - to broadcast it in spite of many warnings that this movie would endanger the physical safety of French Jews.""Chancellor Schroeder inaugurates Book Fair in Frankfurt Together with notorious Holocaust-Denier" (Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, wadi, October 2004)
"Would the German Chancellor Schroeder show himself in public with a Holocaust-Denier like David Irving? Would he seek a dialogue with him?
Last Tuesday has proven that he has at least not that great fear of contact with these kind of people.
After Chancellor Schoeder held a speech at the opening event of this year Book Fair in Frankfurt, the notorious Mohammad Salmawy delivered a greeting message of Nobelprice Winner Nagib Machfus, who was not able to visit the Book Fair. ...
Since years it is well known, that Mohammed Salmawy, editor of the French magazine Al Ahram Hebdo, publicly denies the Holocaust and praises Suicide Bombers in Israel. Al Ahram Hebdo is property of the Egyptian government." (Hat tip: John Rosenthal. See also: "Anti-Zionist Arab Books Criticized at Fair" (Edward Wyatt, The New York Times, 2004/10/09))"Duke University's Weekend Hate Fest" (Lee Kaplan, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/10/15)
Kaplan on the Palestine Solidarity’s conference held at Duke University this weekend: "But the most telling speaker at this event who shows it is an anti-Semitic hate fest is Charles E. Carlson, whose hatred for Jews borders on psychosis. Carlson is an overt supporter of suicide bombers. He has written articles glorifying suicide bombers:
“Imagine taking the risk of being caught and beaten to death while trying to sneak out of Gaza, a fenced prison; then to travel alone overland to some populated area carrying a homemade pipe bomb that you know can only be detonated within a few feet of an enemy if it is not to be wasted. Imagine knowing that if you detonate the bomb too soon or in the wrong place you will kill only yourself and your friends....”
Carlson goes on to argue that the fact that so many Israeli soldiers are killed by suicide bombers “proves” that the bombers are targeting soldiers, not civilians. Soldiers are killed when they apprehend suicide bombers at check points. The bombers are, of course, en route to civilian targets." (See also: "Duke's Platform for Terror" (Lee Kaplan, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/09/15) and "Campus Rally for Terror" (Lee Kaplan, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/11/26))
"Conspiracy Theories in the Egyptian Media Concerning the Terrorist Attacks in Sinai" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 801, 2004/10/15)
"The following are reports in the Egyptian media that blame the U.S. and Israel for the Taba attack: ...
Columnist Adli Barsum wrote in the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhuriya: ...
'Whether [the U.S.] is the main perpetrator, whether it is [only] the inciter, the planner, or the one providing behind-the-scenes encouragement, it strives to safeguard its interests and to stabilize its footing in the entire world by means of violence and counter-violence. This is in order for the conflicts to continue, for the fire to remain ablaze, and for the hatred to continue to rage. Thus [the U.S.] will feel [itself to be] the supreme power and will pull most or all of the strings and will set the world in motion as it wishes, in order to rake in riches upon riches, slaves upon slaves, and [to attain] more servants among the [world's] rulers who vie between themselves for its friendship and its appeasement… ...
In our eyes, Arab blood is a thousand times more precious than Israeli blood. If the U.S. does not want to see a thing except for Israeli blood, that is her business.'"See also:
"The usual suspects?" (Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram, 2004/10/14)
"Israel accused of masterminding attacks" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/10/10)
"Palestinians blame Israel, US for Sinai bombings" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/10/09)"Leading Egyptian Government Editor's New Book: 'Hatred is a Western Export that has been Marked Return-to-Sender'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 800, 2004/10/15)
When is a culture on the "road to madness"? One indication is surely when its "brightest minds" are busy rationalizing hatred towards the "other". So it's pretty ironic that Nafi uses the term "other" in a text which is a schoolbook example of "otherization." The tragedy is that his views are probably echoed by millions.
Excerpts from "The Road to Madness," written by Ibrahim Nafi, editor of the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram:"The West, and specifically those that are at the helm of their empire of evil, are the real terrorists. It is they who have unleashed Jihad, or holy war, in its most horrific and lethal manifestations… ...
In the face of the tyranny being unleashed by the West, and by the U.S. in particular, against the Islamic world, it is little wonder that Muslim peoples have come to the conclusion that an empire of evil threatens them and their countries with annihilation, marginalization and, ultimately, expulsion from history. ...
Muslims do not hate the U.S. and the West without reason. They hate the West because of its attempts to marginalize, oppress, and exploit them and to give Israel power over them. Hatred is manufactured in the West. It sprouted during the Crusades, matured during the colonialist invasion, and flourished with the drive to Americanize the world. Hatred is the engine driving domination and hegemony and it is the tool used to denigrate Muslims in order to facilitate this quest. ...
While no one can deny the existence of anti-Western and anti-American sentiments in the Islamic world, it is equally impossible to refute that such hatred is a Western export that has been marked 'return to sender.' It is a response to the hate-filled invectives of the Western media, and official statements, political commentaries, and literary output directed against the 'other'…""Platoon defies orders in Iraq" (Jeremy Hudson, The Clarion-Ledger, 2004/10/15)
"A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday.
The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered "deadlined" or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook. ...
The platoon is normally escorted by armed Humvees and helicopters, but did not have that support Wednesday, McClenny told her mother.
The convoy trucks the platoon was driving had experienced problems in the past and were not being properly maintained, Hill said her daughter told her. ...
"They knew there was a 99 percent chance they were going to get ambushed or fired at," Hill said her daughter told her. 'They would have had no way to fight back.'""US moves on Iraqi rebel stronghold of Fallujah after deadly strikes" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/15)
"FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - US ground troops advanced on the Iraqi rebel bastion of Fallujah after a night of deadly air assaults, while a Baghdad car bombing killed a civilian in a bloody start to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. ...
Eight Iraqis were killed and 23 wounded in air and artillery strikes which were unleashed on Fallujah late Thursday, medics in the city said.
Before dawn, 1,000 US group troops, along with tanks and Iraqi special forces, rumbled toward Fallujah in a bid to flush out Zarqawi, said to be the top Al-Qaeda operative in Iraq, after attempts to hammer out a truce collapsed.
"Units are pushing forward... Their mission is to disrupt the enemy's ability to conduct terror attacks in this area of operations, specifically in the city of Fallujah... They'll do whatever it takes to accomplish that," said marines spokesman Lyle Gilbert.""The Therapeutic Choice" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/10/15)
The nuance of nuisance: "This attitude is part of the therapeutic view of the present struggle that continually suggests that something we did — not the mass murdering out of the Dark Age — brought on our present bother that is now "the focus of our lives." We see this irritation with the inconvenience and sacrifice once more reemerging in the Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, and the New York Times: We, not fascists and Islamist psychopaths, are blamed for the mess in Iraq, the mess in Afghanistan, the mess on the West Bank, and the mess here at home, but never credited with the first election in 5,000 years in Afghanistan or consensual government replacing autocracy in the heart of the ancient caliphate.
Sometimes our problems arise over our past failure to chastise the Russians over Chechnya. Or was it not enough attention to Mr. Arafat's dilemmas? Or maybe we extended prior support for corrupt sheiks? All that and more — according to rogue CIA "experts," best-selling authors, and the omnipresent Richard Clarke — earned us the wrath of the Islamists. Thus surely our past transgressions can be alleviated by present contrition, dialogue, aid, and policy changes of the European kind.
To all you of the therapeutic mindset, listen up. We can no more reason with the Islamic fascists than we could sympathize with the Nazis' demands over supposedly exploited Germans in Czechoslovakia or the problem of Tojo's Japan's not getting its timely scrap-metal shipments from Roosevelt's America. Their pouts and gripes are not intended to be adjudicated as much as to weaken the resolve of many in the United States who find the entire "war against terror" too big, or the wrong kind, of a nuisance." (See also: "Kerry's Undeclared War" (Matt Bai, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/10/10))"Rethinking the Intifada" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2004/10/15)
"How long can the current violence continue? Unless stopped politically, it can last forever. ...
In the short run, the intifada suits everyone. As long as bombs explode and Israelis retaliate, Arafat is under no pressure to offer any political strategy while no one will dare challenge his despotic rule.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, owes his election mainly to the violence triggered by Arafat, because the present Likud coalition also lacks a strategy. ...
And as long as the intifada continues, the United States has a ready-made excuse for its diplomatic lethargy, and the Europeans have ample opportunities for making moralistic statements without taking political risks.
The Arabs states also have reason to be happy with the intifada. It provides a smoke-screen to hide their failure to agree even on an analysis of the problem, let alone its solution.
The only losers are the Palestinians and their Israeli neighbors. ...
So, the intifada, and its mirror-image of Israeli retaliation are likely to continue, forever, if necessary.""The making of the terror myth" (Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 2004/10/15)
The return of the "terror myth" myth. An article on "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear", a new BBC documentary in three parts which "claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion."
Of course, before 9/11 the party line was much the same. The terrorist threat was seen as irrational, phony and exaggerated:"Six months before September 11, Sarah Lawrence professor Fawaz Gerges, whose work drew on Esposito's paradigm, asked: "Should not observers and academics keep skeptical about the U.S. government's assessment of the terrorist threat? To what extent do terrorist 'experts' indirectly perpetuate this irrational fear of terrorism by focusing too much on farfetched horrible scenarios?" ...
Edward Said, meanwhile, was approvingly recycling the argument of Esposito's book "The Islamic Threat" - that the fear of terrorism is the latest mutation of Cold War paranoia. An influential article of Said's appeared in the New York Times Magazine on November 21, 1993, under a title that, in retrospect, nicely encapsulates the worthlessness of his prognostications: 'The Phony Islamic Threat.'"To paraphrase Max Boot: "That's some myth — it killed 3,000 people." One would like to think that 9/11 in itself laid the "myth" myth to a much needed rest, but as it is based on the general leftist world view, according to which the "Empire" needs an "Enemy", it is sure to survive even a nuclear holocaust. (Note that the Communist menace, which "killed over 100,000,000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30,000,000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked", is filed under "Cold War paranoia".):
"Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media." The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."
Adam Curtis, who wrote and produced the series, acknowledges the difficulty of saying such things now. 'If a bomb goes off, the fear I have is that everyone will say, 'You're completely wrong,' even if the incident doesn't touch my argument. This shows the way we have all become trapped, the way even I have become trapped by a fear that is completely irrational.'"(See also: "The Terror of Islam" (Stanley Kurtz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/05/27 issue) and "The Scandal of Middle East Studies" (Stanley Kurtz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2001/11/19 issue). Also: "How Many Did Communist Regimes Murder" (R.J. Rummel, hawaii.edu/powerkills, 1993))
"Bush bashing" (Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz, 2004/10/15)
International poll in perspective: "Here's a figure that sounds familiar: Only a quarter of the people of France support U.S. policy. At least that is what is reflected in the survey conducted by the daily Le Monde, as part of the project we are publishing on these pages. But it was the same in a Newsweek survey conducted 20 years ago, when Ronald Reagan was president. ...
The Newsweek survey of 1983 contains many other findings that recall the current status of the U.S. in world public opinion. The support of the Germans for the U.S., for example, was only slightly higher than that of people in France. In many countries, those polled replied that surplus American power "increases the prospect of war" rather than reducing it.""International poll: World opposes Bush, except Israel" (Haaretz, 2004/10/15)
International poll: "Two weeks before the U.S. election, hostility toward President George W. Bush has reached new heights internationally. A joint poll taken by 10 newspapers worldwide reveals that most of those surveyed oppose Bush's policies, want to see him defeated, and paint his influence on the global situation in the gloomiest colors.
Israelis, perhaps not surprisingly, are alone in their support of the American president. While in other countries, 60-80 percent of those asked said they believed the war in Iraq to have been a mistake, in Israel most thought it justified.
Among the poll's results: Some 60 percent of The Guardian readers are anti-Bush, with hostility to the U.S. president rising to 77 percent among people under 25.
Among Mexicans, 83 percent thought the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Some 36 percent of Canadians believe the U.S. is not a worthy model for democracy. Among people up to age 40 in S. Korea, 70 percent reported negative attitudes to the U.S. In France, 72 percent said they would like to see Kerry win the election." (See also reports from those 10 newspapers: "U.S. elections: A global view" (Haaretz, 2004/10/15))"Iran 'in control of terrorism in Israel'" (Anton La Guardia, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/10/15)
"Iran has taken control of many Palestinian terrorist cells from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, giving them funds and orders to attack Israeli targets, and even rewarding successful missions with "bonuses", according to a senior Israeli security source.
For many years, Iran has given money and ideological support to radical Palestinian groups, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for most of the Israeli deaths in the past four years of the Palestinian uprising.
But Israel believes that much of the Fatah-affiliated armed faction, calling itself the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, has now come under Iran's sway, especially in the West Bank. ...
Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian "president" who has been confined to his Ramallah headquarters for more than three years, said this week that Hizbollah was trying to infiltrate Fatah.
He said Iran was financing radical Islamist groups, and denounced Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei.
He said: 'Khamenei is working against us. He is giving money to all these fanatical groups. Khamenei is a troublemaker.'""Italian Woman's Veil Stirs More Than Fashion Feud" (Ian Fisher, The New York Times, 2004/10/15)
"DREZZO, Italy - The immediate issue is how one woman in one tiny town in northern Italy dresses, so it made a certain kind of sense for Giorgio Armani to weigh in. His opinion? A woman should wear what she likes, even if what she likes is a veil that hides her face completely.
"It's a question of respect for the convictions and culture of others," Mr. Armani, the fashion designer, said in a statement released late last month. "We need to live with these ideas."
He was speaking out in defense of Sabrina Varroni, a Muslim woman from this town near the Swiss border who has been fined 80 euros, about $100, for appearing twice in public wearing a veil that completely covered her face. Her punishment has won cheers from some Italians and has horrified others. ...
The case has been viewed by some as a telling clash of two ideologies: Islam versus Italian xenophobia.
To fuel that view, the mayor here, Cristian Tolettini, fined Ms. Varroni under a 1931 Fascist-era law banning the wearing of masks in public. The Italian press got into the act when a reporter from the Milan newspaper Il Giorno showed up in Drezzo last month completely veiled, and was promptly fined, too.""Insurgents Penetrate Green Zone of Baghdad, Killing at Least 5" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2004/10/15)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 14 — Insurgents penetrated the American-controlled Green Zone today, setting off a pair of bombs within seconds of each other and killing five people, including three Americans, and wounding 20 others.
Witnesses said that at least one of the explosions was set off by a suicide bomber and that the second may have been as well. Neither American nor Iraqi government officials had any immediate explanation as to how the bombs were smuggled inside. ...
Responsibility for the attack was taken by the group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has also claimed responsibility for a number of other attacks and killings, including beheading of hostages. ...
The Baghdad attack, which struck a cafeteria know as the Green Zone Café and a shopping bazaar, appeared to mark the first time that insurgents have infiltrated the heavily fortified area, which houses senior officials in the Iraqi government as well as the American embassy."
Thursday,
October 14, 2004
News and
commentary:
"An Indonesian Muslim girl..."
(Supri, 2004/10/14)
"An Indonesian Muslim girl stands during a prayer at Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta October 14, 2004, ahead of the upcoming Islamic fasting month of Ramadan which starts on Friday.""Have War Critics Even Read the Duelfer Report?" (Richard O. Spertzel, Wall Street Journal/Benador Associates, 2004/10/14)
"While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale production of chemical nerve agents, sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, ricin, aflatoxin, and other unspecified biological agents. These laboratories were also evaluating whether various poisons would change the texture, smell or appearance of foodstuffs. These aspects of the ISG report have been ignored by the pundits and press. ...
The chemical section reports that the M16 Directorate "had a plan to produce and weaponize nitrogen mustard in rifle grenades and a plan to bottle sarin and sulfur mustard in perfume sprayers and medicine bottles which they would ship to the United States and Europe." ...
It is asserted that Iraq was not supporting terrorists. Really? Documentation indicates that Iraq was training non-Iraqis at Salman Pak in terrorist techniques, including assassination and suicide bombing. In addition to Iraqis, trainees included Palestinians, Yemenis, Saudis, Lebanese, Egyptians and Sudanese.""The usual suspects?" (Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram, 2004/10/14)
Blaming Israel for the Sinai attacks: "For many Egyptians, the culprit was obvious: Israel. "Clearly, this is the work of intelligence, and specifically Israeli intelligence," Essam El- Eryan, a senior member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, told the Weekly.
The endgame of the attack, according to El- Eryan, is to put further pressure on Egypt to adopt the Israeli-American agenda under the guise of combating international terrorism, which in fact means adopting the Israeli definition of terrorism that includes the Palestinian resistance movement. ...
"The question of who carried out the attacks," said El-Eryan, "should not divert our attention from the broader picture, which is one of state terror, brutal occupation and a ruthless use of force against a civilian population."
El-Eryan said, 'it is very much in Israel's interest to appear as victims of terror both in Israel and outside of it. This is why the media focus is on the 13 Israelis who died -- even though five of them are Arabs -- while no tears have been shed for the Italians, the Russians and the Egyptians who were victims of the same incident.'" (See also: "Israel accused of masterminding attacks" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/10/10))"Iraq N-Sites Were Stripped Methodically - Diplomats" (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/14)
Vanished N-Gear V: "The mysterious removal of Iraq's mothballed nuclear facilities continued long after the U.S.-led invasion and was carried out by people with access to heavy machinery and demolition equipment, diplomats said on Thursday. ...
"This process carried on at least through 2003 ... and probably into 2004, at least in early 2004," said a Western diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitored Iraq's nuclear sites before last year's war. ...
Several diplomats close to the IAEA said the disappearance of the nuclear items was not the result of haphazard looting.
They said the removal of the dual-use equipment -- which before the war was tagged and closely monitored by the IAEA to ensure it was not being used in a weapons program -- was planned and executed by people who knew what they were doing.
"We're talking about dozens of sites being dismantled," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity. 'Large numbers of buildings taken down, warehouses were emptied and removed. This would require heavy machinery, demolition equipment. This is not something that you'd do overnight.'" (See also: "U.S. seeks to block WMD through Amman" (Middle East Newsline, 2004/10/14), "UN Fears Bombmakers May Get Iraq Nuke Items - Diplomats" (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/12), "Nuclear-linked items 'have vanished from Iraq'" (Mark Turner, Financial Times, 2004/10/12) and "UN: Iraqi Nuclear-Related Materials Have Vanished" (Irwin Arieff, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/11))"The man in the muddle" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2004/10/16 issue)
More on the "Kerry Doctrine": "And that’s the point: even if you take the Kerry doctrine as seriously as the New York Times does, the nuance of nuisance depends largely on the terrorists. When all they could do was kill a few dozen here, a few hundred there, they were a ‘nuisance’ to Clinton, Cohen, Kerry and co; when they came up with a plan that killed thousands, they became something more than a nuisance. But that change in status was determined largely by them. They might go back to being a mere nuisance for 2005, just blowing up a US consulate hither and yon in places no one much cares about. But in 2006 they might loose a dirty bomb in Chicago and upgrade to über-nuisance again. The Kerry doctrine leaves it in their hands. And, in this kind of war, if you’re not on the offensive, you’re losing.
That’s what John Kerry means when he says ‘we have to get back to the place we were’ — back to the Nineties. Mem’ries light the corners of his mind, misty watercolour mem’ries of the way we were, but the reason they’re misty watercolours is that we didn’t see clearly what was going on.""The Man Who Was Unchanged" (Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, 2004/10/14)
Boot on the "Kerry Doctrine" as described in Matt Bai's cover story in The New York Times Magazine:
"What's objectionable is not Kerry's goal, but how he plans to get there.
Bai infers — though Kerry is too cautious to come out and say so — that the candidate agrees with his advisor, Richard Holbrooke, who says: "We're not in a war on terror in the literal sense. The war on terror is like saying 'the war on poverty.' It's just a metaphor." That's some metaphor — it killed 3,000 people. ...
Kerry is offering Clinton redux. This focus on diplomacy and law enforcement, on treating Al Qaeda as if it were the Medellin drug cartel, may have been a plausible posture in the 1990s, when terrorism appeared to be a low-level nuisance. But 9/11 changed everything. Now we know that the jihadists would gladly incinerate one of our cities if they could get their hands on a nuclear bomb — and they won't be deterred by the prospect of being arrested afterward.
Bush gets it; he was transformed by 9/11. His policy implementation has been shaky, to say the least, but at least he has shown a sense of urgency in combating terrorism and weapons proliferation that was missing in the 1990s. Kerry claims a similar sense of purpose, but he told the Times that the attacks on America "didn't change me much at all." That's a lot scarier than having a president who's clueless about 'the Internets.'" (See also: "Kerry's Undeclared War" (Matt Bai, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/10/10))
"A series of explosions rocked the fortified Green Zone..."
(Ahmad Al-Rubaye, AFP, 2004/10/14)
"A series of explosions rocked the fortified Green Zone of the Iraqi capital and thick smoke was seen rising from the area.""Blasts Kill Five in Baghdad's Green Zone" (Nadia Abou El-Magd, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/14)
"Insurgents penetrated Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone and set off bombs at a market and a popular cafe Thursday, killing five people, including three Americans, the U.S. military said, in a bold attack on the compound housing the U.S. and Iraqi government headquarters.
A top Iraqi officials said the attacks appeared to have been a "suicide operation." If so, it would be the first time insurgents have successfully infiltrated and set off bombs in the heart of the U.S.-Iraqi leadership of the country. ...
One bomb ripped through an outdoor bazaar that caters to Westerners, selling everything from mobile phone accessories to pornographic DVDs.
The second blast took place at the Green Zone Cafe, a popular hangout for Americans and other Westerners. Last week, an improvised bomb was found and safely defused at the same cafe.""Iraqi TV journalist killed in drive-by shooting" (AP/Boston.com, 2004/10/14)
"A female Iraqi television journalist was killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad on Thursday, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said.
Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman said the reporter was fatally shot by three assailants driving by in an Opel car around 8:00 am.
The journalist was identified as Zeina Mahmoud, who was working for Kurdish-run Al-Hurriya TV, said the station's director Nawrooz Mohammed.""Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: 'Do Western Countries Want to Fling the Entire Region Into the Volcano? Haven't We Learned From 9/11, From the War in Iraq?'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 799, 2004/10/14)
"Syrian President Bashar al-Assad spoke at the Conference of Syrian Expatriates, held in Damascus on October 8, 2004. He criticized U.N. Resolution 1559, which condemns the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, and discussed other regional issues. The following are excerpts, printed the following day in the Syrian daily Al-Ba'th: ...
'We took nothing from Lebanon, but we gave blood. Had we wanted hegemony over Lebanon we wouldn't have withdrawn our forces in stages from Lebanon in the last five years up to the last withdrawal…
The region was at the mouth of a volcano. But now, we in the Middle East are in the heart of the volcano. Syria and Lebanon are the most stable countries in the Middle East, despite all the circumstances. Do they [the Western countries] want to fling the entire region into the volcano? Haven't they learned from 9/11? Haven't we learned from the Iraq war? Hasn't the world learned?
We learned many years ago that when a volcano erupts, its core strikes countries near and far, great and small, powerful and weak. The time has come for us to learn this lesson.'""Sudan crisis being fixed? No its worse" (Fraser Nelson, The Scotsman, 2004/10/14)
What is important?: "Ethnic warfare in Sudan is spreading so quickly that 6,500 people in Darfur are being driven from their homes every day, the United Nations has warned. ...
The US Agency for International Development says that 350,000 lives are now at risk in Sudan.
Its bleak forecast, and that of the UN, contrasted with a more upbeat assessment from Ben Bot, the Dutch foreign minister, who held talks in Khartoum. While more could be done by Sudan’s government in Darfur, they were starting to grasp the problem, he said.
"What is important is that the Sudanese government has adopted an open and positive attitude," said Mr Bot, representing the rotating EU presidency. He went on to suggest — then dismiss — a December deadline for sanctions." (See also: "Security Deteriorates in Darfur - U.N. Official" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/12))"Saudis Blame U.S. and Its Role in Iraq for Rise of Terror" (Joel Brinklet, The New York Times, 2004/10/14)
"How could America be so oblivious to our feelings?": "But the fact that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi has become an issue in the presidential campaign, as has the accusation that the Bushes are too close to the royal family.
No one here seems to care about any of that. Instead Saudis unceasingly complain about American support for Israel and the war in Iraq, which they call unjustified, though Saudi Arabia allowed American troops to operate here during the war. Government officials also say they deplore the Bush administration's call for more democracy here. "It's none of their business," one of them said with scorn. ...
The first attacks in May 2003 came just as the major combat was ending in Iraq, "and that is when it really hit home here, with all the images of collateral damage," said Khaled al-Maeena, editor in chief of Arab News. "How could America be so oblivious to our feelings?"
Saudis certainly had no love for Saddam Hussein, but "why couldn't they topple Saddam and install a new government without destroying the country?" Prince Mubarak asked.""U.S. seeks to block WMD through Amman" (Middle East Newsline, 2004/10/14)
Vanished N-Gear IV: "AMMAN [MENL] -- The United States has intensified an effort to block the flow of weapons of mass destruction components through Jordan.
Officials said the United States has been training and equipping Jordanian personnel at the port of Aqaba and border land points to examine cargo from such countries as Iraq, Iran and those in the Gulf Cooperation Council states. They said Washington wants to ensure that Jordan could detect and capture WMD meant for Al Qaida or other clients in the region. ...
Officials acknowledged that a large number of Iraqi WMD-related facilities has disappeared over the last 18 months. They said some of these facilities were believed to have been smuggled to neighboring Jordan and might have been offered for sale to Islamic insurgency groups." (See also:"UN Fears Bombmakers May Get Iraq Nuke Items - Diplomats" (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/12), "Nuclear-linked items 'have vanished from Iraq'" (Mark Turner, Financial Times, 2004/10/12) and "UN: Iraqi Nuclear-Related Materials Have Vanished" (Irwin Arieff, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/11))
Wednesday,
October 13, 2004
News and commentary:
"KRS-One, decency zero" (New York Daily News, 2004/10/13)
"If Osama Bin Laden ever buys a rap album, he'll probably start with a CD by KRS-One.
The hip-hop anarchist has declared his solidarity with Al Qaeda by asserting that he and other African-Americans "cheered when 9/11 happened."
The rapper, whose real name is Kris Parker, defiled the memory of those who died in the terrorist attacks as he spouted off at a recent New Yorker Festival panel discussion.
"I say that proudly," the Boogie Down Productions founder went on, insisting that, before the attack, security guards kept black people out of the Trade Center "because of the way we talk and dress.
"So when the planes hit the building, we were like, 'Mmmm - justice.'"
The atrocity of 9/11 "doesn't affect us [the hip-hop community]," he said. "9/11 happened to them, not us," he added, explaining that by "them" he meant "the rich ... those who are oppressing us. RCA or BMG, Universal, the radio stations."
Parker's screed drew a loud boo from novelist Tom Kelly, who was in the audience. "I lost six friends there on 9/11," Kelly told us afterward.
Parker also sneered at efforts by other rappers to get young people to vote.
"Voting in a corrupt society adds more corruption," he added. "America has to commit suicide if the world is to be a better place."
Ex-Nirvana rocker Krist Novoselic, who was on the panel, yelled back: 'That is wrong, man. Suicide is not the answer.'" (Hat tip: Best of the Web Today.)"A Former Hostage in Iraq Tells His Story" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 798, 2004/10/13)
"The following are excerpts from an interview with Muhammad Ra'd, a Lebanese national who was kidnapped in Iraq and later released. ...
Muhammad Ra'd: "[The kidnappers] brought me into a room reeking of blood — there was dry blood on the ground. A masked man was there, holding a whetting stone and a knife, he was sharpening the knife with the stone. ...
He took me out and said, 'There is something we want to show you now, to serve as a lesson to all Lebanese and especially those who collaborate with the American army. You are going to see a horrific sight but you can take it. We're already used to it, but perhaps it's the first time you'll see such a thing.' Two cars came. The Egyptian [hostage] was in the trunk, in his underwear. His entire body was blue from beatings. We went inside. They said to me, 'Stand in the corner behind the cameraman and don't say a word.' ...
He wanted to say the Islamic declaration of faith [shahada], but the 'butcher' who was behind him … they call the guy who stands behind and does the slaying 'the butcher'… He pulled his tongue out and cut off a piece of it. He said, 'The shahada must not come out of your mouth, because you are defiling it.' They put some cotton wads in his mouth. The 'butcher' read a statement that he was holding in his hand, he finished reading and they lay him down on the ground, someone held his feet, and he cut off his head — slaughtered him.""Militant, freed from Guantanamo Bay, is now holding hostages in Pakistan" (USA Today, 2004/10/13)
"TANK, Pakistan — A former Taliban fighter who was freed in March from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is leading a group of militants who have kidnapped two Chinese engineers and threatened to kill them. Tribal leaders called on the Pakistani military Wednesday to use force to free the hostages.
Negotiations in this region near the Afghan border broke down early Wednesday. The militant leader, Abdullah Mehsud, refused to discuss the issue until five of his fighters, who are holding the two hostages in a house surrounded by security forces, are allowed to travel with the captives to where he is hiding in nearby mountains.
The engineers had been helping build a dam near here. They were abducted Saturday. ...
Mehsud — who is thought to have forged ties with al-Qaeda since his release — offered to release two Pakistanis kidnapped along with the Chinese. But the elders said the Chinese, who have had explosives strapped to them, must be released first, Sher said. ...
Mehsud, 28, came back to Pakistan in March after about two years' detention at Guantanamo. He was captured by U.S.-allied Afghan forces in northern Afghanistan in December 2001 while fighting for the Taliban.""Iraqi PM warns Fallujah: Give up Zarqawi or face bombs" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/13)
"Prime Minister Iyad Allawi threatened a military assault on Fallujah if the rebel bastion does not surrender Iraq's most wanted man Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, while the war-ravaged nation pleaded for aid at an international donor conference in Tokyo.
Emboldened by recent joint US-Iraq military operations against rebel areas and the ongoing disarmament of Shiite militiamen in Baghdad, Allawi said it was high time for Fallujah to return to government control before elections in January.
"We have asked Fallujah residents to turn over Zarqawi and his group. If they don't do it, we are ready for major operations in Fallujah," Allawi told Iraq's 100-member interim parliament.""Foreign Ministry warns Israel, Europe on collision course" (Haaretz, 2004/10/13)
"A secret report prepared by the Foreign Ministry warns that Israel's global standing could deteriorate in the coming decade and could even resemble the pariah status of apartheid South Africa.
According to the document, which was written in August by the ministry's Center for Political Research, Israel and Europe will find themselves on a collision course that will cause serious economic and diplomatic damage to Israel.
Israel could become increasingly isolated in the coming years if Europe becomes more influential, the Foreign Ministry report says.
"In extreme circumstances, this could put Israel on a collision course with the European Union. Such a collision course holds the risk of Israel losing international legitimacy and could lead to its isolation, in the manner of South Africa," according to the document.""Dear Clark County voter, Give us back the America we loved. Yours sincerely, John Le Carré" (Richard Dawkins, The Guardian, 2004/10/13)
Antonia Fraser, Richard Dawkins and John Le Carré "hit the campaign trail" in the Guardian's Operation Clark County, a mail campaign for "non-Americans" to have their say in the American election via letters to Clark County voters.
Here's Richard Dawkins, describing 9/11 as something that "gave America a free gift of goodwill". In fact, he describes 9/11 as a "free gift" three times in one paragraph:
"Before 9/11 gave him his big break — the neo-cons' Pearl Harbor — Bush was written off as an amiable idiot, certain to serve only one term. An idiot he may be, but he is also sly, mendacious and vindictive; and the thuggish ideologues who surround him are dangerous. 9/11 gave America a free gift of goodwill, and it poured in from all around the world. Bush took it as a free gift to the warmongers of his party, a licence to attack an irrelevant country which, however nasty its dictator, had no connection with 9/11. The consequence is that all the worldwide goodwill has vanished. Bush's America is on the way to becoming a pariah state. And Bush's Iraq has become a beacon for terrorists." (Hat tip: Tim Blair. As for the "free gift of goodwill", see also: "The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy" (John Rosenthal, Transatlantic Intelligencer, 2004/10/06))"Thatcher knew how to fight terrorists" (Robin Harris, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/10/13)
"Twenty years ago yesterday, the IRA blew up the Grand Hotel in Brighton, killing five people and injuring 34 others. The prime target was Margaret Thatcher. ...
Mrs Thatcher refused to call off the conference or return to Downing Street. She stayed the night in a local police college; she slept for a while; she had coffee; she rewrote her speech. It was delivered next day to a half-empty hall. Only one line of what she said really mattered: "The fact that we are gathered here now, shocked but composed and determined, is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail." But was she right?
History would not, on the face of it, suggest so. The bomb was placed by Patrick Magee. He was released in 1999 under the Belfast Agreement. Magee is now a minor celebrity. Many of his fellow terrorists are back in active politics.""As Humans Are Hunted" (Nicholas D. Kristoff, The New York Times, 2004/10/13)
"FARAWIYA, Sudan — Hawa Moussa Abdullah was lucky enough to survive the first round of murder here in Darfur, but all the international outrage at Sudan's genocide isn't helping her much. She and her four children are still having to live like hunted beasts.
She is one of more than 500,000 victims of the Darfur genocide who are beyond the reach of international aid. The inability to reach victims is one reason the United Nations describes Darfur as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.
So Ms. Hawa and her children gather wild seeds to eat, and they huddle under trees at night. They live in constant terror that the Sudanese Army or the militia it financed, the Janjaweed, will find them and kill them all.""Duelfer to France: J'accuse!" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2004/10/13)
Duelfer XVII: "Powerful officials and their profiteering friends in France had a reason to try to stop the U.S. from overthrowing Saddam Hussein: they were pocketing billions in payoffs through a United Nations oil-for-food front. ...
The former French ambassador to the U.N., Jean-Bernard Mérimée, is listed as receiving vouchers for 11 million barrels of oil from Saddam, the proceeds from which would beat a diplomat's pay. Another of President Jacques Chirac's friends receiving Saddam's U.N. largesse is Patrick Maugein, "whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac," according to the report.
Maugein, 58, whose association with Chirac has occasionally been chronicled by the French journalist Karl Laske, is chairman of Soco, an oil company active in Vietnam. He's down for 13 million barrels. French oil companies Total and Socap got about 200 million barrels.""Is This the Flag To Help Rescue Iraq?" (Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 2004/10/13)
Duelfer XVI: "Certainly, given how much importance is sometimes attributed to the United Nations, it is odd how little notice has been taken of what may be the worst U.N. scandal ever. Tucked away in arms inspector Charles Duelfer's report on Iraqi weapons -- this is the report mostly remembered for its "no weapons" conclusion -- are allegations that the United Nations' oil-for-food program had, at the time of the invasion of Iraq, degenerated almost entirely into a money-laundering scheme. ...
A decision to "send in the United Nations" is never going to be the full solution to any problem. And in light of what we are learning about the United Nations' appalling record in Iraq, it's pretty clear that calling upon "the United Nations" to save us in Iraq is tantamount to a cry of desperation.""Insurgent Alliance Is Fraying In Fallujah" (Karl Vick, The Washington Post, 2004/10/13)
"Relations are deteriorating as local fighters negotiate to avoid a U.S.-led military offensive against Fallujah, while foreign fighters press to attack Americans and their Iraqi supporters. The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at least five foreign Arabs in recent weeks, according to witnesses.
"If the Arabs will not leave willingly, we will make them leave by force," said Jamal Adnan, a taxi driver who left his house in Fallujah's Shurta neighborhood a month ago after the house next door was bombed by U.S. aircraft targeting foreign insurgents. ...
Several local leaders of the insurgency say they, too, want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.
"He is mentally deranged, has distorted the image of the resistance and defamed it. I believe his end is near," Abu Abdalla Dulaimy, military commander of the First Army of Mohammad, said.""Chechen terrorists probed" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/10/13)
"U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that a group of 25 Chechen terrorists illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July.
The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.
Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity."
"Babies found in Iraqi mass grave" (BBC News, 2004/10/13)
"A mass grave being excavated in a north Iraqi village has yielded evidence that Iraqi forces executed women and children under Saddam Hussein.
US-led investig