Archived news and commentary: March 21 - 27, 2005

2005/03/21 - 2005/03/27
2005/03/14 - 2005/03/20
2005/03/07 - 2005/03/13
2005/02/28 - 2005/03/06
2005/02/21 - 2005/02/27
2005/02/14 - 2005/02/20

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Sunday, March 27, 2005

News and commentary:

"Lebanese men look through the window..."
(Damir Sagolj, Reuters, 2005/03/27)
"Lebanese men look through the window of a burnt building at the blast site in a Christian suburb of east Beirut, March 27, 2005. A bombing in a Christian suburb of east Beirut overshadowed Easter celebrations on Sunday and raised fresh fears of a slide back into Lebanon's violent past."

"Special Report #1 - Oil-For-Food Investigation" (Roger L. Simon, rogerlsimon.com, 2005/03/27)
"This blog has new information from sources close to the investigation of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Scandal by Paul Volcker's Independent Inquiry Committee. After some delay, the committee is releasing its preliminary results at noon Tuesday. This report may reveal, among other things, startling information tending to indicate Secretary General Kofi Annan had more knowledge of, or was closer to, his son Kojo's activities with Cotecna - the company whose role in the scandal seems so pervasive - than previously thought.
The committee has been interviewing Pierre Mouselli, a businessman in Paris who was Kojo's business partner. Their relationship started in 1998 when then 45-year old Mouselli met young Kojo (then 23) at a Bastille Day Party in the French Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria. Mouselli, who has been a cooperative witness and is not under investigation himself, has told the committee numerous interesting things, which deserved to be followed up, They include:
1. Previously unrevealed private meetings between Kojo and two separate Iraqi Ambassadors to Nigeria, arranged by Mouselli in or about August 1998. At these meetings Kojo presented the business card of Cotecna, which subsequently won the lucrative oil inspection contract for Oil-for-Food. Cotecna had previously been blacklisted from doing business in Nigeria for alleged arms trafficking. ...
3. Early Autumn 2002. The Iraqi Ambassador to Nigeria makes a surprise call to Mouselli inquiring of the whereabouts of Kojo (at this point Mouselli and Kojo were not in close contact). Mouselli goes to the Iraqi Embassy where he is informed by the Ambassador that we (the Iraqis) have done favors for Kojo in the past and now need to see him. The Iraqis do not specify what these favors were or what they needed from Kojo, but offer Mouselli a visa to come to Baghdad for further discussion. Mouselli picks up the visa in Paris but does not go to Iraq because of the increasingly violent situation."

"The UN charade on human rights" (Frida Ghitis, The Boston Globe, 2005/03/27)
"During the six weeks from March 14 until April 22, members of the 53-country commission will gather in Geneva and pretend to protect human rights. Those seated at the table, looking serious and committed to the cause, will include a Who's Who of perpetrators of large-scale crimes against their own people.
The commission this year includes countries like Sudan, whose government, much of the world agrees, is complicit in the murder of tens of thousands and the forced displacement of millions of the country's citizens. A UN report found the government and its allies guilty of carrying out a policy of murdering, raping, torturing, and destroying the villages of non-Arab Sudanese in the Darfur region of the country. The world can't quite agree on whether Sudan's government is guilty of genocide or crimes against humanity. Yet Sudan's representative will help ''set the standards" for human rights around the world.
God help us all.
Sudan will receive presumably invaluable help in its efforts to protect human rights from the government of Zimbabwe, whose president used battalions of thugs to intimidate the opposition, destroy freedom of the press, and successfully destroy the country's economy, plunging most of its population into poverty. They will work shoulder to shoulder with that other defender of freedom, equality, and tolerance: Saudi Arabia.
Monarchs, despots, and dictators of all stripes will contribute to the commission's work, with regime representatives from such paragons of human rights as Cuba, Nepal, Egypt, Pakistan, Swaziland, Bhutan, and China, among others, helping craft the agenda to defend human rights and individual freedoms around the world.
Oh, yes. We could hardly be in better hands." (Hat tip: The Wandering Jew.)

"Unveiling Turkish conspiracies" (Mustafa Akyol, The Washington Times, 2005/03/27)
"The anti-American fervor in Turkey has been of interest in the U.S. media recently. American officials and pundits express concern about the widespread resentment of America evident in the Turkish media and popular opinion as well as even some Turkish bureaucrats and politicians.
While they recognize a global controversy exists about the war in Iraq and that anti-Americanism among Turks is not unique, they also identify an odd fact especially pertinent to Turkey: the widespread acceptance of bizarre conspiracy theories about the United States.
However, these conspiracy theories should be viewed in context. Americans should resist taking them personally. This phenomenon is just an example of how the common Turkish mind works. A great many of our people believe conspirators rule the world. Mapping out their plots is a national pastime.
This is evident in Turkey's internal debates. Some Islamists, for example, are quite convinced the country is ruled by a cabal of Freemasons and crypto-Jews. Turkish nationalists, on the other hand, believe there is a Western agenda to break Turkey into pieces and that Kurds and libertarian intellectuals are paid agents of this evil scheme. The Marxists believe the drive to join the European Union is the most recent plot of the international, evil bourgeoisie to enslave the Turkish proletariat." (See also: "'Mein Kampf' becomes Turkey bestseller, raising the question: Why?" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2005/03/18) and "The Sick Man of Europe - Again" (Robert L. Pollock, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/02/16))

"Playing Both Sides in Jordan" (Jim Hoagland, The Washington Post, 2005/03/27)
"Iraqis have not forgotten that Jordan supported Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf War in 1990 and afterward. Iraqi resources were drained by the massive breaking of sanctions and other corrupt dealings that enriched the Jordanian establishment at the expense of the Iraqi people.
Abdullah's meddling in Iraqi affairs since the overthrow of the Baathists has rekindled those resentments. The king has exacerbated tensions with his aggressive championing of his co-religionists, Iraq's Sunni minority, who provided the base of past Baathist power and of the present insurgency.
Abdullah publicly warned against the coming to power of Iraq's Shiite majority as he sought to get Bush to postpone the Jan. 30 elections. He has portrayed Iraq on the edge of a religious war. He has channeled support to CIA favorites among Iraqi factions.
So when Iraqis heard on March 14 that the Jordanian family of Raed Banna had thrown a huge party to celebrate their relative's "martyrdom" -- which consisted of killing himself and 125 Iraqis in the Shiite town of Hilla -- they said "enough."
Angry crowds sacked the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad and forced it to close. "Iraqis are feeling very bitter over what happened," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said. Shiite leader Abdul Aziz Hakim called on Jordan to acknowledge "the meanness and lowliness of people who celebrate the killing of honorable Iraqis" and "to stop the incitement, recruitment and mobilization of Jordanian terrorists to Iraq."
Hakim should not hold his breath. Former Baathist lieutenants who are now key operatives in the Iraqi insurgency still move themselves and money around Jordan without interference." (See also: "Iraq versus Jordan: MidEast Pains, Coalition Political Gains" (Austin Bay, austinbay.net, 2005/03/20))

"What Set Loose the Voice of the People" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2005/03/27)
"BEIRUT, Lebanon — In memory, the two scenes are linked by their silence. Last week in downtown Beirut, Lebanese by the hundreds filed past the tomb of Rafik Hariri, the fallen national leader, each pausing to offer some unspoken tribute. The only audible sound was a murmured prayer for the dead.
In Baghdad two months before, Iraqis in similar numbers had waited in line outside a high school to cast their ballots. Mortar shells were exploding in the distance, yet hardly anyone uttered a sound.
Amid such overwhelming displays of popular will, it seemed that words were hardly necessary.
Only weeks apart and a few hundred miles away, the popular demonstrations in Lebanon and Iraq offer themselves up for such comparisons. Their proximity suggests a connection, possibly one of cause and effect, like the revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1989. As went Berlin, Prague and Bucharest; so goes Baghdad, Beirut and Cairo. ...
How could Iraq have inspired this?
Chibli Mallat, a Beirut lawyer and opposition leader, has an answer. He believes that for years, Iraq stood as both a positive and malevolent symbol to others in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein's survival following the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Mr. Mallat said, froze the status quo in the region for more than a decade. The Iraqi dictator's prolific human rights abuses had the perverse effect of making every other unelected leader in the Middle East look tame by comparison. The result, he said, was political stasis.
"Saddam's survival created an atmosphere where people literally got away with murder," Mr. Mallat said. 'His removal became a precondition for change in the region.'"

"The Case The Saudis Can't Make" (Faiza Saleh Ambah, The Washington Post, 2005/03/27)
"JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia
It's hard not to be intoxicated by the breeze of democracy wafting across the Middle East. An Arabian Spring, analysts call it, heralded by round-the-clock demonstrations in Lebanon, suffragists out on the streets in Kuwait, rare protests in Egypt, voting in Iraq and reform even here in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where limited municipal elections are being held this year. But just as I'm about to get carried away by the spirit of hope, my mind stops, does a U-turn and returns to three men -- two academics and a poet -- who've been behind bars in Saudi Arabia for a year. Their case, and not the ballot box, has become my barometer for real change in the kingdom.
Along with their lawyer, these men have forced a groundbreaking case onto the Saudi legal system, the power of which lies in its simplicity. They want the implementation of the rule of law in practice and not just in theory. Their tenacity could cost them their lives. But they take the risk because they know that without the rule of law this so-called Arabian Spring will prove to be as illusory as a desert mirage. ...
A couple of weeks ago, on the anniversary of the initial arrests, I spoke with an American friend. What is most interesting about this case, he said, is: Who's on trial here? Is it these three guys sitting in jail or the Saudi legal system that put them there?
I believe the answer is clear; it is the Saudi legal system now on trial.
So, as I watch footage of brave Lebanese demonstrators and Iraqi voters who are -- step by step and ballot by ballot -- making the Middle East a more democratic place, I think of two academics, a poet and a lawyer, who are trying to make sure that this Arabian Spring is no mirage. They're doing so by sitting in their sunless jail cells."

"Arabs fail to face the facts" (Bangkong Post, 2005/03/28)
Arab League II: "Another meeting of Arab leaders has let down the Middle East and their own people with platitudes so vacuous they appalled even the notoriously obsequious local media. The summit last week in Algiers kissed off the Israel-Palestinian problem with a rehash of an old plan that is unacceptable even to the Palestinians. Arguably worse, the leaders declined to discuss either the reforms already under way in places such as Iraq and Lebanon or the changes almost all their nations must make, sooner rather than later. It was a disappointing performance from men facing such political and economic pressure and winds of change. ...
The summit, in short, was not a helpful moment for Mideast security, did not provide a hint that leaders take their peoples' demands for accountable government seriously, and did nothing to help the region's most pressing problems: Iraqi reconstruction, Lebanese stability and the fragile cease-fire that has at least temporarily halted the violence between Palestinians and Israelis.
The region's media turned instantly against the leaders for their failed summit. A common word was "redundant", as the usually tame press noted the same old pageantry followed by the regurgitated 2002 resolution. A Jordanian commentator called the summit boring farce, while a Palestinian commentator noted pointedly that leaders who are democratically elected are careful to defend their peoples' interests. Beirut's leading Daily Star said the leaders "demonstrated an almost cold-hearted apathy towards the devastating plight of the Iraqi people". One Palestinian called on Arab League President Amr Moussa to step down over the disgraceful summit." (Hat tip: Rochi Ebner.)

"Arabs looking backward" (The Boston Globe, 2005/03/27)
Arab League I: "There was an Arab League summit meeting last week in Algiers, and apart from a bizarre tirade by the Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy, the event was noteworthy more for what the assembled notables chose not to say than for what they did. If liberal forces eventually replace the authoritarian political order that prevails in most Arab states, future generations in those countries will look back on the Algiers gathering as a display of extraordinary obtuseness by rulers who refused to heed the tremors under their feet. ...
Addressing the newly elected Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas by his familiar name, Khadafy said: ''Don't be angry, Abu Mazen, but the Palestinians are idiots and the Israelis are idiots." The secretary general of Fatah, Abbas's political party, asked Khadafy to apologize for words that ''offended the feelings of all Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims."
Back home in Libya, Khadafy is keeping a leading opposition figure, Fathi el-Jahmi, in harsh prison conditions for speaking out in favor of democracy, the release of political prisoners, and a free press. Like his peers in Algiers, Khadafy ignored the astonishing popular demonstrations in Beirut against Syria's occupation of Lebanon, the crucial precedent of Abbas's election, the spectacle of 8 million Iraqis going to the polls, and the genocide being perpetrated in the Darfur region of Sudan by the National Islamic Front rulers of that country, who will host the next Arab League summit in 2006.
Maybe by then the league will have caught up with history."

"Wolfowitz: 'Important Things' to Do" (Lally Weymouth, The Washington Post, 2005/03/27)
An interview with Paul Wolfowitz: "Do you think that what's going on in Lebanon and the recent vote in Iraq are vindications of your policies in Iraq?
I know people use that word a lot, and I wouldn't. I think we still have a lot more work to do. ... But I think that I have believed and continue to believe that the desire of people to be free and to choose their own leaders is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It's not utopian ... I think it's realistic to figure out how to mobilize that force on our side because we are the natural allies of people with those goals.
Do you take responsibility for any mistakes made in planning for the war in Iraq, and what do you see as the key mistakes? Dissolving the army?
There's so much finger-pointing that goes on. It's a long exercise to dissect all the things that are wrong that are said about why this has proven to be difficult. And the notion that there was no planning is simply wrong.
You mean that there was planning for the aftermath?
There was a lot of planning, and the State Department was involved in the planning. The usual phrase is, there was no planning for the post-conflict phase. And the real problem is that the conflict hasn't ended, and that there is an enemy still out there actively trying to prevent the emergence of a new Iraq. ...
I think people shouldn't have been surprised that a regime that had burrowed into Iraqi society over 35 years and killed and tortured and intimidated people so effectively didn't quit just because they were driven out of Baghdad on April 9, 2003."

"Iraqi resistance begins to crack after elections" (Jason Burke, The Observer, 2005/03/27)
"The Iraqi resistance has peaked and is 'turning in on itself', according to recent intelligence reports from Baghdad received by Middle Eastern intelligence agencies.
The reports are the most optimistic for several months and reflect analysts' sense that recent elections in Iraq marked a 'quantum shift'. They will boost the government in the run-up to the expected general election in May. ...
Intelligence officials believe that ordinary Iraqis are increasingly turning against the militants.
Last week shopkeepers and residents killed three hooded men who began shooting at passers-by in Baghdad's southern Doura neighbourhood. Hours before the gunfight gunmen in the same quarter, which is ethnically mixed, killed a policeman as he drove to work, police said.
According to Iraqi authorities, townsmen in Wihda, 25 miles south of Baghdad, killed seven of a group of militants thought to be planning a raid in the town earlier this month." (See also: "Iraq's insurgents 'seek exit strategy'" (Steve Negus, Financial Times, 2005/03/25))

Saturday, March 26, 2005

News and commentary:

"Flames erupt from a building..."
(AP, 2005/03/26)
"Flames erupt from a building in a Beirut industrial area following an explosion Saturday, March 26, 2005. Arab TV stations cited security officials saying a bomb caused the blast. The nature of the explosion was not immediately known, but witnesses said the blast, coming on the eve of the Easter holiday, occurred in the predominantly Christian northeastern Beirut suburb of Dekweneh."

"Continental Drift" (D.D. Guttenplan, The Nation, from 2005/04/04 issue)
In this fight, we are all reactionaries now. Guttenplan argues that America must be contained in a rather dreadful overview of the debate on America vs. Europe [emphasis added]:
"'The 'problem' of America is not that it is uniquely evil or violent or corrupt, but that it is dominant. The only real question is whether anyone in the world can yet be saved from its influence.' In 1968, when Andrew Kopkind wrote those words, the American empire was going through a troubled adolescence. Much has changed since then, not least the necessary acknowledgement by progressives that many of the empire's opponents do not share our values or our goals. Given the global reach of American influence, perhaps the fundamental question also needs to be re-phrased: Can America be contained? Less a call to the barricades than a recognition that in the world we're in, the struggle to contain America is tranquil power's greatest challenge. In this fight, we are all Europeans now."

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at The Post" (The Washington Post, 2005/03/26)
Condoleezza III: "Q: Is there any country in the region in which you worry about things progressing too rapidly, or what could happen if the lid came off too fast?
SECRETARY RICE: I really believe that once these things are in motion it is not possible to try and almost thermostat-like dial them up and back. They take on a life of their own.
Because I have a lot of faith in democratic institutions and their moderating effect, I'm probably less concerned that things will go too fast... ...
Q: So you're not concerned about a rapid rise of Islamic fundamentatalism in many of these countries, particularly Saudi Arabia or even as Iraq that started out?
SECRETARY RICE: Oh sure. Nobody wants to see the rise of greater fundamentalism or greater – let me use extremism. But it is really as opposed to what at this point? It isn't as if the status quo was stable the way that it was. What we really learned on September 11 as you really started to look underneath what was going on there, is that the Middle East is a place that's badly in need of change, that some of these malignancies that are represented by the rise of extremism have their roots in the absence of other channels for political activity or social activity or the desire for change... ...
And then you have to have some confidence that democratic institutions and people's desire not to live in violence and not to be kind of constantly sending their children off to be suicide bombers, is going to have a moderating effect on the region.
Can we be certain of that? No. But do I think there's a strong certainty that the Middle East was not going to stay stable anyway? Yes. And when you know that the status quo is no longer defensible, then you have to be willing to move in another direction."

"Rice Describes Plans To Spread Democracy" (Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright, The Washington Post, 2005/03/26)
Condoleezza II: "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday set out ambitious goals for the Bush administration's push for greater democracy overseas over the next four years, including pressing for competitive presidential elections this year in Egypt and women's right to vote in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
Rice, in an interview with Washington Post editors and reporters, said she was guided less by a fear that Islamic extremists would replace authoritarian governments than by a "strong certainty that the Middle East was not going to stay stable anyway." Extremism, she said, is rooted in the "absence of other channels for political activity," and so "when you know that the status quo is no longer defensible, then you have to be willing to move in another direction."

"China forgets manners as Rice visit touches nerves" (Hamish McDonald, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2005/03/26)
Condoleezza I: "'How come the United States selects a female chimpanzee as Secretary of State?'
"This black woman thinks rather a lot of herself."
"She's so ugly she's losing face. Even a dog would be put off its dinner while she's being fed."
The 5000 years of civilisation on which the Chinese pride themselves were not so evident this week in the comments on Condoleezza Rice's visit to Beijing posted on the internet site "New Tide Net".
As monitored by the media analyst Liu Xiaobo, the overall tone of the 800 postings was hostile and about 10 per cent were racist, sexist or both, reflecting what Mr Liu calls a pervasive phobia here about dark-skinned races.
Similar undercurrents well up in neighbouring South Korea and Japan, which Dr Rice also visited on her introductory Asian tour as Washington's foreign minister." (Hat tip: Tim Blair.)

Friday, March 25, 2005

News and commentary:

"A Kyrgyz man looks through the broken window..."
(David Mdzinarishvili, Reuters, 2005/03/25)
"A Kyrgyz man looks through the broken window of the presidential office in central Bishkek, March 25, 2005. Looting in Bishkek followed violent protests in the southern towns of Osh and Jalal Abad earlier this week."

"Mass march urges reforms in Bahrain" (Reuters, 2005/03/25)
"MANAMA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands have marched in one of Bahrain's largest opposition demonstrations to demand democratic reforms in the pro-Western Gulf Arab state.
Friday's peaceful march, called by the Shi'ite-led opposition, follows unsuccessful talks with the government on constitutional reforms to give greater powers to parliament's elected assembly, which is on an equal footing with a state-appointed chamber.
Bahrain, the Gulf's banking hub and home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, has introduced some reforms, but the opposition, led by the country's majority Shi'ite Muslims, want more rights in the small Sunni-ruled island state. ...
Sheikh Ali Salman, a cleric who heads a main opposition group, earlier told marchers: "This gathering is demanding a constitution that is agreed upon by everybody, to bring the country out of a crisis which cripples its progress and reforms." Organisers estimated the crowd at about 80,000.
"Bahrain is suffering from policies that harm the nation -- corruption, unemployment and poverty. There is an urgent need for reforms," he added." (Hat tip: Publius Pundit.)

"Iraq's insurgents 'seek exit strategy'" (Steve Negus, Financial Times, 2005/03/25)
"Many of Iraq's predominantly Sunni Arab insurgents would lay down their arms and join the political process in exchange for guarantees of their safety and that of their co-religionists, according to a prominent Sunni politician.
Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein, who heads Iraq's main monarchist movement and is in contact with guerrilla leaders, said many insurgents including former officials of the ruling Ba'ath party, army officers, and Islamists have been searching for a way to end their campaign against US troops and Iraqi government forces since the January 30 election. ...
Sharif Ali said the success of Iraq's elections dealt the insurgents a demoralising blow, prompting them to consider the need to enter the political process."

"As democracy spreads, the noose tightens" (Victor Davis Hanson, The Chicago Tribune, 2005/03/25)
"When Wahhabist Saudi Arabia promises municipal elections, or Afghan women line up at the polls for hours, then the world has been turned upside down.
Syria's worst nightmare is not an American invasion, but an Arab League that is dominated by nascent democracies.
The terrorists of the Bekaa Valley, the Hezbollah operatives in Damascus, the thousands of the Syrian Gestapo, the ex-Baathists and Al Qaedaists who roam freely over the Syria border, all these killers won't take lightly to reform -- especially the drainage of one of their last lagoons of unfettered terrorism in the Middle East.
So things could get far worse before they improve, as the noose tightens around this last, increasingly desperate Assad.
Forces are now in play that cannot be stopped, in part because the United States ceased the old realpolitik of appeasing the violent autocracies of the Middle East."

"Report reveals shame of UN peacekeepers" (Owen Bowcott, The Guardian, 2005/03/25)
"The reputation of United Nations peacekeeping missions suffered a humiliating blow yesterday as an internal report identified repeated patterns of sexual abuse and rape perpetrated by soldiers supposed to be restoring the international rule of law.
The highly critical study, published by Jordan's ambassador to the UN assembly, was endorsed by the organisation's embattled secretary general, Kofi Annan, who condemned such "abhorrent acts" as a "violation of the fundamental duty of care".
The embarrassment caused by the misconduct of UN forces in devastated communities around the world - including Haiti, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Cambodia , East Timor and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - has become an increasingly high profile, political problem.
Allegations have recently surfaced that troops sent to police Liberia were regularly having sex with girls aged as young as 12, sometimes in the mission's administrative buildings.
In the DRC, peacekeepers were said to have offered abandoned orphans small gifts - as little as two eggs from their rations, says the report - for sexual encounters.
Used condoms, an inquiry by the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services discovered, littered the perimeter of military camps and guard posts."

"Protests Topple Kyrgyzstan's Government" (Karl Vick and Peter Finn, The Washington Post, 2005/03/25)
"BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, March 25 -- Opposition demonstrators pushed past riot police and seized the presidential headquarters Thursday in this Central Asian country, toppling the government in the third successful popular revolt in a former Soviet republic in 16 months. President Askar Akayev dropped from sight, and Russian news agencies reported that he had flown to neighboring Kazakhstan.
In the capital, Bishkek, the supreme court quickly nullified the results of disputed elections that had sparked the uprising. Members of parliament appointed their speaker, Ishenbai Kadyrbekov, as acting president, news services reported.
Jubilant protesters took turns sitting at Akayev's vacant desk in the palace and freed opposition prisoners from jails, capping an operation that met little resistance from government security forces." ...
Kyrgyzstan's revolt followed street uprisings in two other former republics -- the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, which brought Western-oriented leaders to office. The Bush administration has welcomed the changes; Russia, which views countries on its border as a natural sphere of influence, has watched warily but allowed the new governments to assume power."

Thursday, March 24, 2005

News and commentary:

"Kyrgyzstan Protesters Storm Gov't Building" (Steve Gutterman, AP/The Guardian, 2005/03/24)
Kyrgyzstan I: "Protesters stormed the presidential compound in Kyrgyzstan on Thursday, seizing control of the symbol of power after clashing with riot police who had surrounded it during a large opposition rally. The defense minister was led out of the building by demonstrators.
About 1,000 protesters managed to clear riot police from their positions outside the fence protecting the building, and about half that number entered the compound and went into the building through the front entrance. Others smashed windows with stones, while hundreds of police watched from outside the fence. ...
The protests began even before the first round of parliamentary elections on Feb. 27 and swelled after March 13 run-offs that the opposition and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said were seriously flawed." (For more on Kyrgyzstan, see the excellent coverage at Gateway Pundit and Registan.net. See also: "Kyrgyzstan Leader Reportedly Flees Country" (Steve Gutterman, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/03/24))

"U.N.: Lebanon's Hariri Probe Unsatisfactory" (Nick Wadhams, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/03/24)
"UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. report into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri concluded that Lebanon's probe of the killing was riddled with flaws and an international investigation is needed.
The report, released Thursday, does not directly assign blame, saying the causes could not be determined. But it says Syrian military intelligence shares responsibility to the extent that it and Lebanese security services failed to provide "security, protection, law and order" in Lebanon.
The report says there was a "distinct lack of commitment" by Lebanese authorities to investigate the crime, and the probe was not carried out "in accordance with acceptable international standards."
It detailed a host of problems, including the disappearance of crucial evidence and tampering with the scene of the massive bombing that killed Hariri. The report even faults police for not turning off a water main that flooded the blast crater and washed away vital evidence." (See also: "U.N. report blasts Syria, calls for international probe into killing of ex-Lebanese leader" (Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Knight Ridder/Yahoo! News, 2005/03/24): "But even an international team isn't likely to succeed in finding out who killed Hariri if the pro-Syrian heads of Lebanon's security apparatus remain in power, FitzGerald said. In the current environment, such a team wouldn't be able to receive the cooperation it would need from authorities, he said.
"The government of Syria clearly exerted influence that goes beyond the reasonable exercise of cooperative or neighborly relations," he wrote. 'It is obvious that this atmosphere provided the backdrop for the assassination of Mr. Hariri.'")

"Sharon and the Bush Doctrine" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/03/24)
"Today the Bush Administration, together with the Sharon-Peres government, is pushing the view that Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan for Gaza and northern Samaria is aligned with the Bush Doctrine. Among the Palestinians and the Israelis, however, it is becoming increasingly clear with each passing day that not only is there no connection between the two, but that there is a glaring contradiction.
This week, MK Azmi Bishara's Web site, www.Arabs1948.com, published an interview with Hamas spokesman Ahmed al-Bahar in which he discussed the significance of Sharon's plan. Bahar claimed, "The painful and qualitative blows which the Palestinian resistance dealt to the Jews and their soldiers over the past four and a half years led to the decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip."
"All indications show that since its establishment, Israel has never been in such a state of retreat and weakness as it is today, following more than four years of the intifada," he continued. "Hamas's heroic attacks exposed the weakness and volatility of the impotent Zionist security establishment. The withdrawal marks the end of the Zionist dream and is a sign of the moral and psychological decline of the Jewish state. We believe that the resistance is the only way to pressure the Jews."
There can be no clearer exposition of the Palestinian view that Israel's plan to hand over strategic assets to its enemy in the midst of war and receive nothing in return is a victory for terror than Bahar's statement."

"The Seven Faces of “Dr.” Churchill" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2005/03/24)
"No one knows what to make of his various arrests, boasts of bomb-making, trip to Libya, angry and traumatized ex-wives, braggadocio about petty vandalism, tales of phone threats, and the variety of other sordid stories that surround this fabricated man. ...
Churchill’s rantings are full of leftist hyperbole, vicious Nazi allusions, and calls for violence against the United States (“more 9/11s are necessary”) and an end to America itself (“There’s no U.S. in America anymore”). Should Churchill have been such a vicious court jester of the Right and slurred gays and minorities as he did the victims of mass murder, he would have been fired long ago. ...
Victimization is essential to academic man. Under the warped tenets into which affirmative action has devolved and the existing protocols of the blame industry, at first glance this put a pink heterosexual American male like Churchill in a seemingly tough bind. What cover or exemption, after all, is there when his scholarship, teaching, or academic citizenship is found wanting?
That dilemma Churchill solved brilliantly when he endowed himself with two new unimpeachable personas: the noble but victimized Native American, and the half-noble but nevertheless traumatized Vietnam veteran. ...
Perhaps it is best to think of Churchill as our aging portrait of an academic Dorian Gray, in whom all the once-hallowed university’s vices and sins of the last half-century are now so deeply etched and lined." (See also: "'Teachable Moments': But who will teach the teachers?" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review/Private Papers, 2005/03/10))

"News Real" (Lawrence F. Kaplan, The New Republic, 2005/03/24)
"At what point does the press report a trend? The question comes to mind because, over the past month, the news from Iraq has been unusually good. Depending on which military official you ask, insurgent attacks have dropped by either a third or nearly half. The number of Americans killed in action has declined. Civilians have begun killing terrorists. Over the past week alone, U.S. forces have killed scores of insurgents in lopsided battles -- in the latest, Iraqi forces spearheaded the offensive. Does this mean America has turned a corner? Can we see a light at the end of the tunnel? Does it mean anything at all?
At least to judge by the amount of press coverage devoted to the past weeks' progress in Iraq, the answer would seem to be no. ...
The question, then -- which has been nagging at me since I wrote a downbeat article on my last trip to Iraq -- is, when and if things turn out well in Iraq, will journalists even be able to recognize it? I'm not so sure. ...
What worries me is that, unlike in Vietnam, where the press only broke with official policy after the Tet Offensive, the reverse may have happened in Iraq -- that is, reporters have become so accustomed to bad news that they won't accept, and hence convey, good news for what it is. The result would be the same. As the late Peter Braestrup documents in his two-volume book on the subject, by the time the smoke had cleared from Tet and the good news had emerged that the Viet Cong had been defeated, no one was listening. Walter Cronkite had already declared the war a lost cause; The Wall Street Journal had already editorialized that Vietnam was "falling apart beneath our feet." When and if the smoke clears from the past two years, hopefully -- despite all of the horror and dissembling that have characterized the war up until this point -- the press will get it right." (See also: "The Last Casualty: The Tragic End to a Liberal Iraq" (Lawrence F. Kaplan, The New Republic, 2005/01/27))

"With the call of God is the Greatest,
the flag of Zionism will fall and will be destroyed"
(The Ottawa Citizen, 2005/03/24)
"The cover page of the boy’s story is illustrated with a burning Star of David beside a machine-gun and a Palestinian flag atop the Dome of the Rock, an ancient Muslim shrine in Jerusalem. The text next to the shrine reads: 'With the call of God is the Greatest, the flag of Zionism will fall and will be destroyed.'"

"Islamic school suspends teachers over student's hate-filled tale" (Juliet O'Neill, The Ottawa Citizen, 2005/03/24)
"Two teachers at the Abraar Islamic school in Ottawa were suspended yesterday pending an investigation into the encouragement or incitement of hatred against Jews expressed in a young student's violence-laden writing project.
Principal Aisha Sherazi said the seven-member school board and administration were "shocked" by teacher involvement in the project that was brought to her attention by the Citizen yesterday morning, and decided at an emergency meeting to suspend the instructors.
One teacher was apparently involved in the artistic production of the eight-page story of killing and martyrdom. Handwritten in Arabic and titled The Long Road, the cover page was illustrated by a drawing of a burning Star of David beside a machine-gun and Palestinian flag atop the Dome of the Rock, an ancient Muslim shrine in Jerusalem.
The other teacher had written comments on the student's paper, praising the boy's story of revenge for the assassination by Israeli forces a year ago of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a co-founder of Hamas, in retaliation for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.
"God bless you, your efforts are good," the teacher wrote on the title page. "The story of the hero Ahmed and the hero Salah is still alive. The end will be soon when God unites us all in Jerusalem to pray there."
On the margins inside the story, the teacher had written a note endorsing the boy's fantasy of a young Ahmed Yassin and his friend, Salah El-Dine, ambushing Israeli soldiers.
"Without thinking, Ahmed took his M16 machine-gun and threw the bombs, and he showered the Jews; this resulted in the killing of the soldiers," the boy's text reads. 'Salah said: 'You killed them all.' Ahmed answered: 'Praise be to God.''" (Hat tip: Rochi Ebner.)

"U.S.-Backed Iraqis Raid Camp and Report Killing 80 Insurgents" (Edward Wong, The New York Times, 2005/03/24)
"Iraqi and American forces killed at least 80 insurgents on Tuesday in a fierce battle during a morning raid on what appeared to be the largest guerrilla training camp to be discovered in the war, Iraqi officials said Wednesday. Seven Iraqi policemen were killed and six wounded.
Scores of guerrillas were reported to be living in tents and makeshift buildings at the marshy lakeside encampment, northwest of Baghdad.
The size and location of the camp suggested a shift in strategy by insurgents, American military officials said: It was first time the military had come across insurgents organized in such numbers in a remote rural location, an arrangement similar to Al Qaeda training camps in the arid mountains of Afghanistan. ...
The Iraqi and American forces, who were responding to a tip from villagers nearby, discovered munitions, training manuals, car bombs, suicide-bomber vests and computers, along with identification papers that indicated that some of the fighters had come from outside Iraq, Major Goldenberg said.
He declined to specify the nationalities of the foreign insurgents; Iraqi officials said most came from Arab countries, and a statement released early Wednesday by the Interior Ministry said an Algerian had been arrested."

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

News and commentary:

"Taliban in the armchair, kneeling is the Prime Minister"
(Star Gazette/MEMRI, 2003/07/10)

"Turkey's Spiritual Submission" (Steven Stalinsky, New York Sun/MEMRI, 2005/03/23)
"A picture is worth a thousand words. A couple months after Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was elected to office representing the Justice and Development Party, the Turkish daily Star Gazette ran a photo on July 10, 2003, that shows Afghan jihad leader (and Taliban and Al Qaeda ally) Gulbuddin Hikmatyar sitting with two men kneeling at his feet. The man on the right is Mr. Erdogan. The caption reads, "Taliban in the armchair, kneeling is the Prime Minister." It is important to recognize the significance of sitting at one's feet in Islamic tradition: It implies spiritual submission.
Mr. Hikmatyar has long-established ties with Osama bin Laden and is responsible for offering to shelter him in Afghanistan after he fled Sudan in 1996. Following September 11, 2001, Mr. Hikmatyar pledged allegiance with the spiritual leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, to launch a guerrilla war on the Afghan government and American troops there. Mr. Hikmatyar was named in Executive Order 13224 as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" during the same month that Mr. Erdogan was elected."

"The Soft Power Summit" (Thomas Joscelyn, The Weekly Standard, 2005/03/23)
Joscelyn on the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security in Madrid earlier this month:
"Disturbingly, a virulent strain of anti-American ideology ran throughout much of the summit's proceedings and the events afterwards. One of the most outspoken critics of the war on terrorism was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. ...
Thus, in the former Secretary's view: the war on terror has (maybe) created more terrorists; the American public has been "lied" to; the Bush administration uses a false sense of fear to abrogate civil liberties and push forward its judicial agenda; and the events at Guantanamo and Abu Gharib have been "disastrous," while the newly found freedom for millions in the Middle East is not worth mentioning.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a student leader of the leftist 1968 May revolution in Paris who is now a German politician, agreed with Secretary Albright, adding, "Madeleine said it: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo -- delocalization of torture. Take people prisoner and put them in countries where torture is not forbidden: what the CIA did. This is the end of our civilization if we accept this." ...
According to Amre Mossa, secretary general of the League of Arab States, neoconservatives are one of these western illnesses. Drawing moral equivalence between Islamist terrorists and Western neoconservatives, Mossa explained, "This clash [of civilizations] does exist between extremists on all sides and in all civilizations to the point of using violence, terrorism and extreme ideas. When I talk about that, I'm not only talking about those extremists in the Muslim world, but also the neoconservatives in the Western world, who have ideas about how to control the world and how to use violence in order to change the world." [emphasis added]" (Hat tip: Barry Kaplovitz.)

"Document: Bin Laden Evaded U.S. Forces" (Robert Burns, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/03/23)
"WASHINGTON - A commander for Osama bin Laden during Afghanistan's war with the Soviet Union who helped the al-Qaida leader escape American forces at Tora Bora is being held by U.S. authorities, a government document says.
The document represents the first definitive statement from the Pentagon that bin Laden, the mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was at Tora Bora and evaded his pursuers. ...
The document, provided to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the detainee held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora." While not identified by name or nationality, he is described as being "associated with" al-Qaida and having called for a holy war against the United States.
In an indication that he might be a higher-level operative, the document says the detainee "had bodyguards" and collaborated with regional al-Qaida leadership. "The detainee was one of Osama bin Laden's commanders during the Soviet jihad," it says, referring to the holy war against Soviet occupiers in the 1980s."

"Radicals On The Rocks" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2005/03/23)
"The biggest setback for the Islamists, however, is a shift of mood in the Islamic heartland. The elections in West Bank and Gaza, Afghanistan and Iraq; Lebanon's freedom movement; the beginnings of change in Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia — all have helped generate new interest in democratic reform.
Also important are the efforts by Mahmoud Abbas to transform Palestine from an emotional cause into an issue of practical politics. Today, even Hamas, the most radical of Palestinian movements, is obliged to end its boycott of normal politics, and is getting ready to compete in the parliamentary elections.
While bin Laden's message of hatred and terror still resonates in sections of the Muslim communities and the remnants of the left in the West, the picture is different in the Muslim world. There, people are demonstrating for freedom — even (in Egypt a few weeks ago) for more trade with Israel.
This is a new configuration in which Islamist terrorism, although still deadly dangerous, has only a limited future."

"In Deep Trouble" (Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/03/23)
Rosett on the U.N. reform program announced by Kofi Annan:
"While this goes on, it would be useful to keep in mind that the real push for a better world on Mr. Annan's watch has come not from the U.N. but from a Bush administration that Mr. Annan has done plenty to thwart and revile. Mr. Annan includes high-sounding words in his report about U.N. "support" for elections in Iraq. They ring hollow when you consider that had Mr. Annan and the U.N. prevailed instead of Mr. Bush, Iraqis would still be living under Saddam (and the U.N. would still be running the rotten Oil for Food program).
How to reform the U.N. is a big question, in need of real debate and workable proposals from some quarter. What we got from Mr. Annan as he presented this latest menu for U.N. improvement was his warning that no one should pick and choose among his proposals "a la carte." Great. If he really wants all or nothing, the next move is to toss this report, and start looking for a secretary-general who can get it right."

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

News and commentary:

"Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi..."
(Amr Nabil, AP, 2005/03/22)
"Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi smokes a cigarette during the opening session of the 17th League of Arab States' summit in Algiers, Tuesday, March 22, 2005. Arab leaders will reaffirm their 2002 peace initiative, promising normal relations with Israel in a land-for-peace formula. Hard-line Syria, supported by Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan, shot down a Jordanian initiative opening the door for Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel before a full withdrawal from occupied Arab lands. At right, Libyan head of protocol, Nouri Mesmari."

"'The Whore Lived Like a German'" (Jody K. Biehl, Der Spiegel, 2005/03/22)
"In the past four months, six Muslim women living in Berlin have been brutally murdered by family members. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. How can such a horrific and shockingly archaic practice be flourishing in the heart of Europe? The deaths have sparked momentary outrage, but will they change the grim reality for Muslim women?":
"One of the unsettling truths about Hatin's death and the plight of many Muslim women is that it took the comments of three Turkish boys and the outrage of a male school director to get people to notice. When the murder first happened, it sent no shock waves through the mainstream German press. It only became big news when a group of 14-year-old Turkish boys mocked Hatin during a class discussion at a school near the crime scene. One boy said, "She only had herself to blame," while another insisted, "She deserved what she got. The whore lived like a German." The enraged school director not only sent a letter home to parents, but also to teachers across Germany. The letter ignited a media fury. Less known, however, is that the letter also hit a nerve among educators. "Teachers from across the country wrote back saying they had had similar experiences," Boehmecke said. They reported Turkish boys taunting Turkish girls who don't wear headscarves as "German sluts." "That's the part no one has written about. Clearly there is huge potential for similar violence across Germany," Boehmecke said. "Not just in the big cities, but all over. It's a problem many politicians haven't been willing to face." (See also: "When Freedom Gets the Death Sentence" (Deutsche Welle, 2005/02/24))

"Ordinary Iraqis Wage a Successful Battle Against Insurgents" (Robert F. Worth, The New York Times, 2005/03/22)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 22 - Ordinary Iraqis rarely strike back at the insurgents who terrorize their country. But just before noon today, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming towards his shop and decided he had had enough.
As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their own AK-47's and opened fire, police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's young nephews and a bystander were injured, the police said.
"We attacked them before they attacked us," Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, said in a brief exchange at his shop a few hours after the battle. He did not give his last name. "We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen. I am waiting for the rest of them to come and we will show them."
It was the first time that private citizens are known to have retaliated successfully against insurgents. There have been anecdotal reports of residents shooting at attackers after a bombing or assassination. But the gun battle today erupted in full view of half a dozen witnesses, including a Justice Ministry official who lives nearby."

"A Labour anti-semite?" (Stephen Pollard, stephenpollard.net, 2005/03/22)
"I'd be interested in what Lord Ahmed, a Labour Peer, has to say about a speech which was delivered, at his invitation, in a room in the House of Lords last month.
'Israel Shamir' (in fact a Swedish-domiciled anti-semite now named Joran Jeremas) was asked to speak by Lord Ahmed, and delivered a noxious rant, of which these are some 'highlights':

“your newspapers belong to Zionists”
“in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East…in the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble - and that is Jewish supremacy drive”
“…the Jewish media-lords in the US and elsewhere. Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking; just last month a Rothschild bought the French daily Liberacion…”
“The Jews like an Empire…This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance…Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se…”
“Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England…they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important in order to turn the tide.”
“all the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.” ...

It is, I suppose, possible that Lord Ahmed made a terrible mistake and had no idea that the man he invited was a rabid anti-semite - despite the fact that his views are freely available on his website.
But the absence of an apology for such a mistake, or a condemnation of the views expressed by Jeremas, seems to indicate that Lord Ahmed sees nothing wrong with the views expressed in Jeremas' speech, and might even support the views outlined on his site, since he chose to invite him to speak. In which case, does the Labour Chief Whip in the Lords feel it appropriate that Lord Ahmed should still hold the Labour whip? And if so, why?" (See also: "Jews and the Empire" (Israel Shamir, israelshamir.net, 2005/02/23) and "Israeli writer is Swedish anti-Semite" (Tor Bach et al., Searchlight Magazine, May 2004))

"That Bleeding Heart Wolfowitz" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2005/03/22)
"When the left hears the term "regime change," and responds with anxious whimpers about "destabilization," do we not detect a hint of what Marxists call negation? Who are the radicals here? ...
Now even the supreme and magnificent United States is hostage to debts held by others, while poor countries are mired in an even worse debt trap and the U.N. bureaucracy is a sweltering, corrupt banana republic in its own right. Who can guess the way out of these dilemmas? But with the Wolfowitz and even the John Bolton nomination to the United Nations, the Bush administration retains its capacity to startle, mainly because it has redefined the lazy term "conservative" to mean someone who is impatient with the status quo."

"The war against Arab despotism" (Amir Taheri, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/03/22)
"As far as I am concerned, the war was primarily the coup de grace given to the model of Arab despotism based on the one-party system dominated by a "strongman." The ease with which Saddam Hussein's tyranny collapsed destroyed the myth of the Arab zaim (chief), thus opening the path for pluralist politics. The effects of this historic change have already been felt across the Arab world from Libya to Yemen, passing through Tunisia and Egypt.
No one knows how the new political system in Iraq will develop. But one thing is certain: It is not going to develop into another form of despotism. To appreciate the importance of this revolutionary change it is sufficient to recall that Mesopotamia, the land now called Iraq, has always been ruled by despots, over millennia. Thus the Iraq war was, in a sense, about ending a 6,000-year-old tradition of dictatorship."

"Can Hezbollah and Hamas Be Democratic?" (Daniel Pipes, New York Sun/danielpipes.org, 2005/03/22)
"If Al-Qaeda renounced terrorism, would the U.S. government welcome its running candidates in American elections? Had the Nazis denounced violence, would Hitler have become an acceptable chancellor for Germany? Not likely, because the tactics of Al-Qaeda and the Nazis matter less than their goals.
Similarly, Hezbollah and Hamas are unacceptable because of their goals. These organizations are important elements of the Islamist movement that seeks to create a global totalitarian order along the lines of what has already been created in Iran, Sudan, and in Afghanistan under the Taliban. They see themselves as part of a cosmic clash between Muslims and the West in which the victor dominates the world.
Washington, trying to be consistent in its push for democracy, prefers to ignore these goals and instead endorses involvement by Hezbollah and Hamas in the political process, pending their making some small changes. ...
Washington should take a principled stand that excludes from the democratic process not just terrorists but also totalitarians using the system to get into power and stay there. It is not enough for Islamist organizations to renounce violence; being irredeemably autocratic, they must be excluded from elections."

"The strange death of the liberal West" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/03/22)
"Since 1945, a multiplicity of government interventions - state pensions, subsidised higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything - has so ruptured traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that in Europe a child is now an optional lifestyle accessory. By 2050, Estonia's population will have fallen by 52 per cent, Bulgaria's by 36 per cent, Italy's by 22 per cent. The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation? ...
The 19th-century Shaker communities were forbidden from breeding and could increase their number only by conversion. The Euro-Canadian-Democratic Party welfare secularists seem to have chosen the same predicament voluntarily, and are likely to meet the same fate. The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism. This is the political issue that will determine all the others: it's the demography, stupid."

"'Myth' America" (Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/03/22)
Errors of analysis. A review of Nancy "There's always hope that this might not work" Soderberg's "The Superpower Myth":
"Next are larger, but equally basic, errors of analysis. "It is now believed that [Abu Musab] Zarqawi operates independently, and even in competition with bin Laden." She must have missed Zarqawi's declaration of fealty to Osama bin Laden in October. (Bin Laden certainly noticed it: He recently ordered Zarqawi to widen the scope of his efforts beyond Iraq.) "While [Ahmed] Chalabi was popular in certain powerful circles in Washington, he had virtually no support in Iraq." Funny, then, that Mr. Chalabi did well enough in January's elections to be in serious contention for the premiership. "The war in Iraq drew the Bush administration's focus away from Afghanistan during the critical two years following the overthrow of the Taliban, making the job there infinitely harder." Infinitely? Ten million Afghan voters missed that nuance.
And then there is the Soderberg Whopper: "The hegemons' experiment has failed in Iraq," she writes. "Whether other benefits of the war cited by the administration will materialize, such as promoting democracy and reform in the Middle East and a resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, will take years to evaluate. Early signs indicate the war set back rather than promoted these goals." Early signs being . . . Palestinian elections? Iraqi elections? The Cedar Revolution? The "Kifaya" ("Enough") movement in Egypt? The end of the intifada? As the lady says, you can always hope that 'this might not work.'" (See also: "'But as an American . . .'" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2005/03/02))

"Syria feels heat as evidence in Lebanon PM's murder points to bomb under road" (Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, 2005/03/22)
Meanwhile, no evidence at all appears to point to Patrick Seal's assertion in the very same newspaper a month ago that Israel probably was responsible for the murder. According to Seale, Syria was in all probability innocent: "So attributing responsibility for the murder to Syria is implausible." But then who needs evidence when you can have a conspiracy theory?:
"The balance of evidence appears to point to the explosion being caused by a bomb under the road - a method that some analysts are suggesting points conclusively to Syrian involvement.
In Beirut, though, the pro-Syrian authorities prefer to focus on a possible Islamist connection, in particular a white van which was captured on the closed-circuit television cameras of a nearby bank.
Another camera, at the Phoenicia hotel, which might have had a better view of what happened, went out of service a couple of weeks before the blast and repairing it proved unusually difficult.
The Lebanese have been reluctant investigators from the start. The Syrian-backed president, Emile Lahoud, was eager to fill in the bomb site, re-asphalt the road and get the diverted traffic moving again as soon as possible. It was only when the interior ministry intervened that he had second thoughts." (See also: "'Something was going to happen – it was going to be me or him'" (Nicholas Blanford et al., The Times, 2005/03/18). Also: "Who killed Rafik Hariri?" (Patrick Seale, The Guardian, 2005/02/23))

Monday, March 21, 2005

News and commentary:

"Idiot's Delight" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2005/03/21)
Demonstration II: "The "antiwar movement" doesn't seem to be going well. An e-mail list called the Idiot's Delight Digest, inspired by the radio show of the same name, carries a first-person account from one Jordan Hoffman of a rally apparently in New York:

I went to the anti-war demonstration today. Anyone else go? Man, it was depressing. It was more of a group mope than a demonstration. People just kinda went to the park, wandered around, looked sad and left. And got harassed for contributions to every organization under the sun. That made me even sadder because I couldn't join a friend going downtown because I only had $2.00 on my metrocard & needed that to get home and I have $0.00 in my wallet until next week. . . .
I gotta relax. It is 4:49 AM and I haven't been to sleep. I've been up all night stewing about how much I can't stand the direction the US's policy has taken -- I still can't get over the fact that John Kerry lost. It's kinda like a delayed thing. I just can't believe how willfully dumb people are. Or maybe just mean. Mean and nasty. And covering it up, like ketchup on a burnt steak, with their bornagain Christianity."

(See also: "4 more wars" (Jordan Hoffman, Idiot's Delight Digest, 2005/03/20))

"Fool of the day" (Arthur Chrenkoff, chrenkoff.blogspot.com, 2005/03/21)
Demonstration I: "Another highlight from the London anti-war rally:

"People poured into the capital from across the country, including 29-year-old human rights author Susanna Akono who traveled in a coach from Kent.
'The war on terror is wrong because it is not going to end terrorism when you have people such as Iyad Allawi (Iraq's outgoing prime minister) being put in power,' she said, with an anti-war poster in her hand.
Akono, who is from Cambodia and is married to a British man, plans to go on a hunger strike from April 14 in protest against the continuing war on terror.
'I want to do everything I can to make sure my child has a secure future,' said the pregnant activist."

Starting with starving the unborn." (Hat tip: Best of the Web Today. See also: "Tens of thousands protest against 'war on terror'" (AFP/The Peninsula, 2005/03/20))

"Connecting the wrong dots" (Arnaud de Borchgrave, The Washington Times, 2005/03/21)
"It is tempting to connect the dots between the Iraqi elections, Palestinian elections and Lebanon and describe the overall picture as the inexorable march to democracy. But the strengthening of Hamas, another terrorist organization, in the Palestinian municipal elections, a harbinger of how it will do in next July's legislative elections, and Hezbollah's unchallenged position in Lebanon, should remind the White House these two organizations, along with Islamic Jihad, are now part of al Qaeda's support group.
Islamists, Arab nationalists, anti-U.S. majorities in almost all Arab and Muslim countries, and anti-globalists, together are also a force multiplier for Osama bin Laden's global movement. Two years ago, in Morocco and Jordan, two pro-Western countries at least at the government level, in overwhelming majorities told Pew Foundation surveyors they trusted bin Laden more than George W. Bush.
Even in Iraq, the elections have produced a less secular country now more influenced by Iran than the United States. In Egypt, the winner of a truly democratic election could easily be the Muslim Brotherhood, the founder of all modern-day Islamist extremist organizations. More people hate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for his close alliance with the United States than blame him for lack of political freedom.
Turkey elected a democratic government democratically -- and an Islamist party won and now governs. Its first important act was to deny transit rights across Turkey for the U.S. 4th Infantry Division in Operation Iraqi Freedom."

"French anti-Semitism hits 10-year high" (Ynetnews, 2005/03/21)
"Anti-Semitic and racist attacks in France during 2004 were at their highest level in nearly 10 years, the Associated Press reported.
According to a report issued Monday, there were 1,564 attacks against Jews and Muslim in 2004, 833 more than in 2003. Attacks were at their highest level since 1994.
French newspaper Liberation reports there were 970 attacks against Jews, as opposed to 601 in 2003. Most of the attacks came from individuals of “Arab or Muslim extraction”.
According to reports, there were 33 violent attacks, as opposed to 22 the previous year. Schools were a primary source of anti-Semitic violence, where anti-Semitism is “particularly apparent” and where anti-Semitism has become “accepted”.
Muslims suffered 595 attacks, as opposed to 232 in 2003. Most attacks were perpetrated by far-right activists.
The French report comes on the heels of a February 2005 report that said anti-Semitic attacks have reached record levels in Britain as well."

"PA 'using weapons for criminal activity'" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/03/21)
"'Palestinian Authority security officials are using their weapons for criminal activities, including murders and killings, with the aim of scoring personal gains and accumulating fortunes. Some use their weapons to collect debts, serving as judges and enforcers of verdicts that were issued without trial.
What's strange is that those who take the law into their hands are individuals or groups belonging to the PA executive branch. They have become saboteurs of the entire Palestinian society and epidemics that harm its fabric and weaken it.'
This text was not taken from a booklet published by the Foreign Ministry or the IDF. Nor were these serious allegations made by a hard-line Likud minister or a Knesset member from one of the right-wing parties. Rather, they were made by Dr. Abdel Rahman Bsaisso, a renowned Palestinian researcher from the Gaza Strip affiliated with the ruling Fatah faction headed by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Such harsh criticism of the PA has become commonplace among Palestinians in the aftermath of the death of Yasser Arafat on November 11. ...
'People who had expressed similar views when Arafat was alive were either imprisoned or physically assaulted," said a Palestinian editor in Ramallah. 'Today, however, people are no longer afraid to express their opinion and to speak out against corruption.'"

"There Are Signs the Tide May Be Turning on Iraq's Street of Fear" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2005/03/21)
"In the first 18 months of the fighting, the insurgents mostly outmaneuvered the Americans along Haifa Street, showing they could carry the war to the capital's core with something approaching impunity.
But American officers say there have been signs that the tide may be shifting. On Haifa Street, at least, insurgents are attacking in smaller numbers, and with less intensity; mortar attacks into the Green Zone have diminished sharply; major raids have uncovered large weapons caches; and some rebel leaders have been arrested or killed.
American military engineers, frustrated elsewhere by insurgent attacks, are moving ahead along Haifa Street with a $20 million program to improve electricity, sewer and other utilities. ...
But the change American commanders see as more promising than any other here is the deployment of large numbers of Iraqi troops. American commanders are eager to shift the fighting in Iraq to the country's own troops, allowing American units to pull back from the cities and, eventually, to begin drawing down their 150,000 troops. Haifa Street has become an early test of that strategy."

"Britons in Gulf fear bombing heralds new al-Qaeda attacks" (Sean O'Neill and Michael Theodoulou, The Times, 2005/03/21)
"The suicide car bombing of a theatre in which a British teacher was killed is feared to be the beginning of a new wave of al-Qaeda attacks against soft Western targets in the Gulf.
Jon Adams died and his wife, Rosemarie, was among 12 people taken to hospital in Qatar when a terrorist rammed a car packed with explosives into the Doha Players’ Theatre during a production of Twelfth Night.
The bomber, who struck on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, was named as Omar Ahmed Abdullah Ali, an Egyptian. ...
He struck at about 9.15pm, when the coffee bar would ordinarily have been packed with theatregoers during the interval. But Saturday’s performance had started an hour early, for the benefit of those working on Sunday morning, and the audience were back in their seats when the bomb exploded.
“If the explosion had happened at the same time on Friday night there would have been 200 people in the West End and complete carnage,” one theatre company member said." (See also: "One dead as blast demolishes Qatar theatre packed with westerners" (Sean Rayment and Peter Zimonjic, The Sunday Telegraph, 2005/03/20))

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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

› 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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