12.30.2002
Well here it comes. Shannon Brownlee, in The Washington Post, writes the first (that I’ve seen) of what is sure to be many arguments that attempt to give some intellectual covering fire to the plaintiff’s attorneys. She argues that the food companies have in fact been guilty of cynically manipulating the average American into becoming a porker. The food companies are perpetrating this nefarious plot by, get this,…selling food cheaply. Those sneaky bastards!
12.29.2002
12.27.2002
Here, in Israel, are actual Jews, fighting for their country, against both terror and misthought public opinion, as well as disgracefully biased and, indeed, fraudulent reporting. Here are people courageously going about their lives, in that which, sad to say, were it not a Jewish state, would, in its steadfastness, in its reserve, in its courage, rightly be the pride of the Western world. This Western world is, I think, deeply confused between the real and the imaginary. All of us moviegoers, who awarded ourselves the mantle of humanity for our tears at "The Diary of Anne Frank" — we owe a debt to the Jews. We do not owe this debt out of any "Unwritten Ordinance of Humanitarianism" but from a personal accountability. Having eaten the dessert, cheap sentiment, it is time to eat the broccoli. If you love the Jews as victims, but detest our right to statehood, might you not ask yourself "why?" That is your debt to the Jews. Here is your debt to the Jewish state. Had Israel not in 1981 bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor, some scant weeks away from production of nuclear bomb material, all New York (God forbid) might have been Ground Zero.
If the audience of the screening I attended is any indication of German attitudes in general, it doesn't augur well for the future. Remember, this wasn't an audience composed of skinheads from the neo-Nazi enclaves in Karlsruhe and the former DDR. This was a group of Germany's best and brightest: educated, middle-class, sophisticated denizens of a major cosmopolitan city. One scene in particular is seared into my consciousness. It happens about halfway into the film. The Jews of Warsaw have been herded into the ghetto. A street used by the Germans bisects the ghetto. While a group of Jews is waiting to cross to the other side of the street, several Nazi thugs force some elderly Jews to dance at an increasingly faster tempo. Weakened by malnutrition, hobbling on crutches, riddled with heart and lung infirmities, many of the Jews fall to the ground in sheer agony. It's a sickening scene. It's the kind of scene that makes you ashamed that your last name is Grim. Hell, it's the kind of scene that makes you ashamed that you listen to Beethoven. If an American soldier had done the same to a German or Japanese POW he would have been thrown into the brig for life or cashiered out of the service on a Section 8. But there they were, today's educated, freedom-loving, let's-all-hold-hands-and-love-one-another Germans, laughing at torture. If there is a more sickening spectacle than Germans finding humor in what their fathers and grandfathers did to the Jews, if there is a more perfect example of the utter lack if humanity at the core of the German nation, I am unaware of it. There is something terribly wrong with Germany and the German Volk. The German soul is a deep abyss, a fetid, stinking morass that befouls the community of nations. But wait, there's more. Another scene from the movie that stands out is when an SS guard announces to a half-starving Jewish work detail that they will be receiving an additional portion of bread with their rations, one that they can sell to other Jews, because "everybody knows how clever the Jews are at selling things." This time the audience fairly rolled with laughter. I was tempted to call in an air strike on the theater, or at the very least to slap a couple of hundred Germans, but I managed to hold my fire knowing that ultimately any World War II movie ends badly for the Germans. Normally I don't talk back to the screen at the movies, but I do have to admit that I did yell out "USA" and pumped my fist in the air when the Szpilman family listened to the announcement on the radio that the United States had declared war on Germany. And I also do have to admit that it felt mighty fine to yell out "Shoot those damn Nazis!" when the film showed the Jews starting to fight back during the Warsaw Uprising. <
I have to admit that it is a strange experience to watch a Holocaust film in Germany. It's even stranger when you're the only American in the midst of about 200 Germans. But perhaps the strangest thing of all is to watch the reactions of the Germans as the events of the movie unfold. You hear a lot about how Germans are so ashamed today of the behavior of their countrymen during the Nazi period and about how much they've done to atone for their past sins. Don't buy that bill of goods.
Grim wrote another piece worth reading a while back called Hitler's Children.
It's funny how quiet the theater became when near the film's end a group of SS goons were shown in a holding camp awaiting transportation to a deserved harsh fate in the Russian gulag. And then it became clear as a bell. German shame for World War II does not result from a moral awareness of the innumerable crimes and atrocities committed by the Germans. No, the Germans are ashamed because they got their rear ends handed back to them by a bunch of Yanks, Russkies and Brits who they considered - and still consider - to be members of inferior races.
(found at la prensa amarilla, where I'm sure I'd find lots of great stuff, if only I could read Spanish)
12.26.2002
(via NoLeftTurns)
12.25.2002
Is President Bush's policy of intervention the best response to an imperative need? Yes, it is said, and I am reluctant to say anything else. I find war repugnant. All wars. I know war's monstrous aspects: blood and corpses everywhere, hungry refugees, devastated cities, orphans in tears and houses in ruins. I find no beauty in it. But it is with a heavy heart I ask this: what is to be done? Do we have the right not to intervene, when we know what passivity and appeasement will make possible?
Elie knows as well as anyone what passivity and appeasement can make possible. Saddam is no Hitler, but he'd like to be, and it seems like it's up to us to make sure he never is. So be it.
12.24.2002
(via IsraPundit)
12.23.2002
I have two words for the critics: Radio Sawa.
Radio Sawa went online with a mix of English and Arabic pop tunes with some news and politics just eight months ago, and replaced VOA Arabic in most of the Middle East. Within three months, it was the number one station in eight Arab capitals, reaching ten times the number of people Voice of America Arabic reached in 50 years. It is now a tremendous tool for spreading the American viewpoint throughout the Arab world.
What the VOA is doing in Iran is copying a program that has been proven to work. They are trading a station that has a boring format of all-news-and-politics, for something that will have a little less politics, but will have the opportunity to reach a far wider audience. The people dying for an American voice on the news and the political situation will still get it, while many others, uninterested or even opposed to our ideals, will now be exposed to them anyway. If they can halve their news coverage and double their audience, that would be a great trade, and that's what they're trying to do. If Radio Sawa is any indication, they'll do a lot better than that. If anything, it's evidence that Bush is taking Iran more, not less, seriously.
Dr Tamimi said he regarded the reception last month as a valuable contacts-building exercise with US diplomatic staff. "America is not George Bush. America is not Dick Cheney. It is a continent of 260 million who come from various parts of the world, including Arab countries," he said. It was important to exchange views because of the "huge ocean of misunderstanding, suspicion and fear that exists between America and Muslims", Dr Tamimi added.
(via Martin Kramer who has some interesting commentary)
12.22.2002
(via Instapundit)
America ought to be able to live with this distrust and discount a good deal of this anti-Americanism as the "road rage" of a thwarted Arab world -- the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds. There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power's simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region's age-old prohibitions and defects. There should be no illusions about the sort of Arab landscape that America is destined to find if, or when, it embarks on a war against the Iraqi regime. There would be no "hearts and minds" to be won in the Arab world, no public diplomacy that would convince the overwhelming majority of Arabs that this war would be a just war. An American expedition in the wake of thwarted UN inspections would be seen by the vast majority of Arabs as an imperial reach into their world, a favor to Israel, or a way for the United States to secure control over Iraq's oil. No hearing would be given to the great foreign power.
This is a really thorough look at the Arab world and their view of the Iraqi situation, and what our goals need to be. Read the whole thing, and then write to Foreign Affairs and tell them they need print-friendly pages on their website.
12.21.2002
12.20.2002
12.19.2002
So be it. There is a principle at stake here. Better to lose the Senate than to lose your soul. New elections come around every two years. Souls are scarcer. A man who has no use--let alone no feel--for colorblindness has no business being a leader of the conservative party. True, if Lott is ousted, he might resign from the Senate and allow his seat to go Democratic, thus jeopardizing Republican control of the Senate and undoing the great Republican electoral triumph of 2002.
I agree, though I didn't before I read this. Krauthammer can do that to me.
(via Blogs of War)
Update: Here is a working link courtesy of John Anderson
12.18.2002
The answer to them, from an outside view, is, "Fine, you can run Iraq instead of Saddam, and all by yourself if you want to. Now go and depose him." For the people who do that are going to call the shots, and that is going to be the Americans. And the second most powerful faction in post-war Iraq will be the British.
12.17.2002
12.13.2002
No doubt some master negotiators and crisis-resolution types are celebrating this new show of American concern for the tender sensitivities of our allies in the war against terrorism, but you can be sure that the real celebrations are being held in Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and the various dens of the terror masters. Some war strategy we've got, huh?
The carrier's efficiency and lethality, however, are not a consequence of mere technological superiority, but of the dividends of a peculiarly American set of values. If we gave the Truman to Egypt it would sink on its maiden voyage. The French Charles de Gaulle I imagine has better food than the Roosevelt, but far fewer planes and even fewer launches. Israel has astonishing pilots, but few if any could land on the Vinson. Even the Swiss or Dutch could not build a Ronald Reagan. China claims they can soon launch a simulacrum to our carriers; but though they can steal the technology of an Enterprise, they still cannot emulate the ethic and creed at the heart of its success — unless China too first creates a culture of freedom. Carriers, in other words, are an American thing, and I am glad we at least will never have to meet such things in battle. Presently the open seas are ours; and such 23-storey enforcers go where they wish and do what they please — not only ensuring America's freedom, but guaranteeing that the Japanese can buy oil, the Chinese can ship Wal-Mart their sundry goods, and our food reaches hungry Africa. Ships that helped obliterate the Taliban and may do the same to the fascist Republican Guard in Iraq also save sailors of foreign navies on the high seas who are on the brink of death and need life-saving operations, or stop to pick up the anonymous dead who float routinely in the Arabian Sea — careful to notify surrounding nations of their losses and to provide a dignified Islamic funeral as if the drowned were our own….
Amen to that.
12.12.2002
(via LGF)
Update: Read the comments for excellent commentary from Nikita, Puggs, and Andrew, who calls Lott " a man who is grandiose in his mediocrity." Well said.
12.11.2002
…the plain fact remains that when the rest of the world wants anything done in a hurry, it applies to American power. If the "Europeans" or the United Nations had been left with the task, the European provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo would now be howling wildernesses, Kuwait would be the 19th province of a Greater Iraq, and Afghanistan might still be under Taliban rule. In at least the first two of the above cases, it can't even be argued that American imperialism was the problem in the first place.
Such views are not the exception to the rule among the Arabs and Muslims I've encountered over the last three decades. They are the rule. And the time has come to face this fact openly and deal with it, rather than to deny it by sticking our collective heads in the sand. Too many of us have borne this denial in silent resignation for too long. The Protocols episode was the last straw for me. I won't be silent again. Many Arabs and Muslims, especially those in official leadership positions, will want to play dumb at this point, professing never to have encountered any significant anti-Semitism in their communities. But most people, I think, know exactly what I mean. I mean the kind of person whose explanation for anything is that "The Jews control everything," or the type who protests Israeli policies by chanting, "Hitler and Sharon are the same; only difference is the name." I mean the kind of person who says, "Jews drink Arab blood to hasten the coming of the Messiah," or the type who says, "Well, you never know; maybe the Protocols are true." I mean the child who tells me that he admires Hitler's nationalism, or the adult who says, "Hitler should have finished the job." And yes, I mean the person who supports Hezbullah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, while prattling on fatuously about the evils of Israeli occupation.
That's one, about 999,999,999 to go. Hey, it's a start.
Update: This explains it, it sounded to good to be true.
12.10.2002
Terrorism is not a militarily serious matter. All the world's terrorists combined cannot do as much damage as one modern infantry battalion, one Navy ship or fighter squadron. Nor is terrorism such a bedeviling challenge to intelligence. It is potent only insofar as terrorism's targets decide to deny the obvious and pretend that the terrorists are acting on their own and not on behalf of causes embodied by regimes. Terrorism is potent only against governments that deserve contempt. The U.S. government earned the Arabs' contempt the hard way, by decades of responses to terrorism that combined impotent threats, solicitude for the terrorists' causes, outright payments to Egypt and the PLO, courting Syria, a "special relationship" with Saudi Arabia, and a pretense that Islam was as compatible with American life as Episcopalianism. Killing individuals who do not count engenders hatred, while sparing those who do count guarantees contempt. Victory against terrorists requires precisely the opposite approach: expend little or no energy chasing the trigger pullers and bombers. Rather, make sure that any life devoted to terror will be a wasted life. This means leaving no hope whatever for any of the causes from which the Arab tyrannies draw such legitimacy as they have: people who give their lives for lost causes exist more in novels than in reality. It means discrediting and insofar as possible impoverishing (rather than paying for) Arab regimes that foster opposition to America. It means using military force to kill the regimes—the ruling classes—of countries that are in any way associated with terrorism. Contempt is the active ingredient of anti-Americanism. And others' contempt for us is entirely our fault. People have contempt for those they consider impotent. The deadliest contempt is reserved for those who have, or seem to have, great power but somehow cannot use it. Contempt is the bite that the jackal inflicts on the stricken or befuddled lion. It is a cheap substitute for courage. Contempt for America makes vile European intellectuals feel like men. Flouting America with impunity, declaring moral superiority over it, bribing its businessmen and politicians, allows Arab dictators—whether they call themselves kings or presidents—to pretend that they are world statesmen instead of bandits of the desert. And it is our fault, because we let them get away with it.
Codevilla is one of my favorite writers on this kind of stuff. If you like this piece, go read What War, which he wrote back in May.
12.09.2002
Probably anti-Americanism will be with us for a long time yet. This is a shame, because the one thing everyone notices about us Americans is how much we want to be liked. That, at any rate, used to be the thing everyone noticed. I do not think the yearning to be liked has departed from the American psyche yet, but it now finds itself sharing that psyche with some other wishes: principally, the desire that if we cannot be liked, we shall at least be respected. If it should become clear that Americans are to be denied even respect, I think quite a lot of us will settle for being feared.A fascinating article. There is a story at the beginning that has me feeling an emotion that I haven't normally associated with our State Department- respect.
12.08.2002
(via Peter Schramm at NoLeftTurns)
Then the last panelist spoke. He was an Iraqi dissident named Kanan Makiya, and he said, ''I'm afraid I'm going to strike a discordant note.'' He pointed out that Iraqis, who will pay the highest price in the event of an invasion, ''overwhelmingly want this war.'' He outlined a vision of postwar Iraq as a secular democracy with equal rights for all of its citizens. This vision would be new to the Arab world. ''It can be encouraged, or it can be crushed just like that. But think about what you're doing if you crush it.'' Makiya's voice rose as he came to an end. ''I rest my moral case on the following: if there's a sliver of a chance of it happening, a 5 to 10 percent chance, you have a moral obligation, I say, to do it.'' The effect was electrifying. The room, which just minutes earlier had settled into a sober and comfortable rejection of war, exploded in applause. The other panelists looked startled, and their reasonable arguments suddenly lay deflated on the table before them. Michael Walzer, who was on the panel, smiled wanly. ''It's very hard to respond,'' he said. It was hard, I thought, because Makiya had spoken the language beloved by liberal hawks. He had met their hope of avoiding a war with an even greater hope. He had given the people in the room an image of their own ideals. one chilly evening in late November, a panel discussion on Iraq was convened at New York University. The participants were liberal intellectuals, and one by one they framed reasonable arguments against a war in Iraq: inspections need time to work; the Bush doctrine has a dangerous agenda; the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East is not encouraging. The audience of 150 New Yorkers seemed persuaded.
That's about right.
12.07.2002
They are trying to bid that price higher and higher, with the help of the purblind, and largely anti-American, international media elites. They assume that, in the end, Mr. Bush will prove a conventional politician, who will not take political risk beyond a certain point, and would rather take his knocks backing down. They have genuinely underestimated how much is at stake here. And I think they have completely misread their man. For here is the plain truth, in it's simplest, knocked-down form: If the United States and allies cannot eliminate so obvious a malefactor as Saddam, the "war on terror" is over, and we lost. The future of state-sponsored terrorism is secure, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will accelerate, their use in blackmail becomes inevitable, the check on their actual use is relaxed, the annihilation of the people of Israel can be safely predicted, and the rest of us must learn to live our lives under the threat of smallpox, anthrax, nerve gas, Scuds, and radiation. It is a game of diplomatic brinkmanship. Mr. Blix, Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general, and in the background, the French and the Russians and others, working from the various different motives I have tried to explain in previous articles, are counting on Mr. Bush to be too cautious and diplomatic to call their bluff. They know that the political and diplomatic cost to the Bush administration of calling this bluff -- of identifying the game they are playing, a kind of multilateral "monkey in the middle" -- will be very high. It could get very ugly.
I too think they have misread Bush. It's time. Baghdad Delenda Est.
12.06.2002
The belief that mankind’s progress, by any conceivable standard of measurement recognized by Karl Marx, could be achieved through the destruction or even decline of American power is a dangerous delusion. Respect for the deep structural laws that govern the historical process — whatever these laws may be — must dictate a proportionate respect for any social order that has achieved the degree of stability and prosperity the United States has achieved and has been signally decisive in permitting other nations around the world to achieve as well. To ignore these facts in favor of surreal ideals and utterly utopian fantasies is a sign not merely of intellectual bankruptcy, but of a disturbing moral immaturityThe left, if it is not to condemn itself to become a fantasy ideology, must reconcile itself not only with the reality of America, but with its dialectical necessity — America is the sine qua non of any future progress that mankind can make, no matter what direction that progress may take.
Interestingly enough, A couple of months ago in an interview, avowed Marxist Thomas von der Osten-Sacken said:
But at the moment, I think one has to support the West, which means in this case America, Britain and Israel, in its battle against its own creations. Then you can think again of how to create a much better world. The questions the anti-globalization movement raises are very important - issues like the environment, world hunger and the enrichment of a very small minority of people while the vast majority become poorer. But with the Ba'ath Party and Hamas as your actors, you will not change anything. They are not the historical subjects who are carrying the idea of emancipation.The moment this anti-globalization ideology brings together Hamas, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, nationalistic movements in the Balkans, the Zapatists in Mexico, and the neo-Nazi right wing, which is very active in the anti-globalization movement, it means they are not fighting for universal freedom, liberation and emancipation, but are reproducing anti-universalist, anti-Semitic stereotypes that are only leading to barbarism. Rosa Luxemburg once said that the question is socialism or barbarism, and that question is still valid. But at the moment, I think the fight is to defend the Western world against those who would like to be its successors. These people are also, dialectically, the products of the Western, capitalistic world. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden grew out of the bad politics of the U.S. and Europe in the Middle East. They didn't fall from the moon.
At least some self-described Marxists do recognize that America is the way forward even if your goal is Socialism.
... the Saudis will change their tune only when we change ours. The Saudis should curb their state-subsidized mullahs, and stop the murderous freeloaders in their midst. If they do, they may retain their peninsula. If not, should it come to that, we know the address of the Hashemites.
(via LGF)
The revolution is being led by students, workers, intellectuals, and military officers and soldiers who can no longer bear the misery of the Iranian people, the corruption and hypocrisy of the Iranian leaders, and the awful degradation of the country. The battle for the minds and souls of the Iranian people has already been won by the opponents of the regime. The battle now underway — the battle that should be concerning our own leaders and intellectuals — is for the streets and institutions of the country.
This says nothing about inherent violence; most Muslims are obviously peaceful people living within the rules of civilized behavior. But the actual violence, bloodletting against nearly every non-Muslim civilization from Hindu to African animist, demands attention The question is not just unanswerable, it is irrelevant. The real issue is not the essence of an abstraction -- who can say what is the real Christianity or the real Judaism? -- but the actions of actual Muslims in the world today. And there is no denying the fact, stated most boldly by Samuel Huntington, author of "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," that "Islam has bloody borders." From Nigeria to Sudan to Pakistan to Indonesia to the Philippines, some of the worst, most hate-driven violence in the world today is perpetrated by Muslims and in the name of Islam….
I don't think the question is as irrelevant as Krauthammer does, but I do think it doesn't really matter what we think, but what the Muslims think. If they kill in the name of Islam, than Islam is a violent religion. Period. What makes Christianity or Judaism non-violent is not their theology, but the fact that when people attempt to kill in their name the entire population of the respective religion makes it quite clear that they consider that outside the bounds.
What makes Islam a violent religion is simply that the vast majority of Muslims support terrorism and violence against nonbelievers, if not with their voices, then with their silence.
12.05.2002
Update: More at Segacs, who is all over the issue.
12.04.2002
(link via Pejman)
The real story is rather that the U.S. has not given Mr. Blix and company any kind of help. The Americans do, after all, have quite elaborate satellite-based and other monitoring systems in place, and are more likely than anyone in the U.N. to know where inspections could most fruitfully be made. Clearly, the Americans assume any information provided to Mr. Blix will be quickly compromised. The real story here is not that Hans Blix and company aren't making proper use of their powers to investigate. The Bush administration all along knew what kind of man they were dealing with, and what was the most they could expect.
So far, the inspections have been a joke, and Warren thinks it just might be the US trying to lull Saddam into thinking he can leave whatever he wants off the list due Dec. 8
12.03.2002
12.02.2002
The fact that we escaped is not an argument for the stability of deterrence. It is an argument for luck. Indeed, it is an argument for trying to escape deterrence and find sturdier ground for human survival. If the Cuban missile crisis is evidence of the virtues of deterrence, God help us. It brought us closer to the abyss than any event in human history, and could very well have taken us over had the United States and the Soviet Union had different leaders at the time. The world will not survive more than a very few missile-crisis equivalents before someone makes a blunder that precipitates catastrophic nuclear war.