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Saturday, April 06, 2002
One of the least noticed, analyzed, and discussed aspects of the current conflict is that it officially marks a new kind of fighting, what I call the real-time war. Here's a good take on the critical role space advances play in the new military paradigm.
Did you ever wonder why the time on every watch or clock face you ever saw in an ad was very close to ten minutes after ten? According to the April deadtree Gentleman's Quarterly, the reason is simple: Smiley face.
My money's on Jibril Rajoub. He'll have CIA backing, for one thing. Mazen and Qureia don't really have the support of the young gunnies. And Rajoub's killers will be kicking in Marwan Barghouti's door, and cutting down his Tanzim troops no later than ten seconds after Arafat chokes his last. Rajoub has added incentive: unless he wins, Hamas will kill him.
Many on the left see the country trapped between Sharon and Arafat, two aging tribal leaders engaged in a feud that draws on history and memory.
Hm, let's see, where have I heard this before? Oh, that's right, it's WaPo's new official meme. Well, at least they've accurately described their political stance on the matter.
In case anybody is still wondering why Saddam Hussein is encouraging the intifada by upping his bounty for Palestinian human-sacrifice bombers from ten to twenty-five thousand dollars, here's why.
You know, Ev (the creater of Blogger) likes to snark (scroll down the messages - he's "Evhead") at self-important cluelessness when it comes from dawn-age techno-scribblers like Dvorak, but his irritation might carry more weight if he'd fix his own freaking problems with Blogger before he spends time sneering at other folks's gripes. It's not like he doesn't have more than a few legitimate complaints directed at him - with cause.
UPDATE: Okay, that's three posts in a row about Blogger-related bullshit. As Prexy Bush says, enough is enough. Back to the news.
UPDATE: Reader Glenn Reynolds writes to let me know that Blogger's user email announcement list warned that because of upgrades, users would not be able to change their URLs over the weekend. Of course, I didn't see the email, because I'm not subscribed to the list. This no doubt explains the problems I've been having all day. Maybe we'll take a shot at the whole moving process again later.
For some reason, even with computer skills that date back to programming for RCA Victor back in 1966 (RCA Spectra 70/40, thanks for asking), I can't cajole or coerce Blogspot into letting me put my blog back there, even though I paid to upgrade to BloggerPro at least two months ago, and at one time did have my blog there.
So, in those immortal Saturday Night Live words: Never mind...
Now. See that four-door 1994 Huff parked over there? I'm leaving in it. Grumble.
DailyPundit is reluctantly, and with some trepidation, moving back to Blogspot. It's a function of success. Hit counts have soared to levels I never dared to dream of when I posted the first few items to what was then called "The Blogical Suspects," around Christmas last year. But DailyPundit brings in no income to balance what is now a definite outflow in rising bandwidth charges, so the unfortunate result is that I must reward my wonderful and steadfast (and growing number of) readers with what will probably turn out to be spottier service, at least for a while.
I will be setting the redirect on http://www.DailyPundit.com to point to http://dailypundit.blogspot.com today. This will probably take a couple of days to percolate through the DNS servers, which is why I'm doing this on a weekend, when my readership is smaller. If your links or favorites are already set to www.DailyPundit.com, you don't need to change anything, although you may end up here, rather than the new site, until the changes "take." Otherwise, I'd recommend you do change them to the www.DailyPundit.com URL, because any further DailyPundit moves will always be redirected through that address.
Thanks for your patience. And thanks more than you can imagine for your support.
Fellow Bay Area blogger Peter Pribik offers an excellent thumbnail summary of Israel/PLO/Lebanon/Syria history by way of arriving at this conclusion:
All of this to say that Arafat and his organization need to go. And the IDF is the only force capable of removing him. I am beginning to think that Steven's initial suggestion of killing Arafat was the only way to go. He subsequently suggested that perhaps the Israelis were clever to surround him and gather evidence beyond redemption. I also thought this a good idea in an earlier post. But now, as the days wear on, and the Israelis are once again running out of time to clean up, and Zinni is going to talk to Arafat, and everyone is screaming "enough already" (as they said after the earliest of successes in Afghanistan), I am beginning to agree with my friend Bryan, who wrote that no matter what the Israelis produce in evidence, it will not be enough. I feel somewhat naive for having assumed otherwise, for the case was already strong with the Karine-A shipment its centerpiece.
This is correct. It has been plain for some time that there will be no way to move toward a real and lasting peace in the Middle East unless somebody - and at this point it doesn't really matter who it is - puts a heavy caliber bullet through Yasser Arafat's skull. If Bush allows the old murderer to survive this latest crisis, he will become, for Bush the Younger, the same sort of disaster Saddam Hussein was for Bush the Elder. But I don't want to wait for Bush the Third to come along and fix Bush the Younger's mess, as BtY is currently undertaking to do for BtE.
They say that politics makes strange bedfellows, and certainly any coalition that includes conservative Republican congressman Bob Barr and liberal ACLU activist Nadine Strossen would seem to be strange snoozing arrangements indeed. It isn't, though: they both understand the dangers to the health of the nation of trading liberty for security, and they both opposed the recent Bush "security" initiatives for that reason.
Viewed through another prism, of course, this alliance isn't strange at all: liberals have traditionally supported an expansive view of freedom (leaving aside correct speech and the Second Amendment), while conservatives have always staunchly upheld the same ideals (leaving aside risque speech and the establishment clause of the First Amendment). Since none of those partisan interpretations of liberty are at issue here, it's no surprise at all to find this sort of unity. One has to wonder, though, why there wasn't more of it in evidence when these lousy statutes were rammed through the legislative process in the first place.
LA Cardinal Accused of Sexual Abuse Cardinal Roger Mahony, the head of the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, said Friday he has been accused of molesting a female student at a Catholic high school in 1970.As I've noted before, there is considerable question as to whether this is solely the "homosexual male pedophilia" scandal that has been commonly portrayed in the media.
Editor -- So, according to a new study, Americans believe that the country is becoming ruder, angrier and more mean-spirited ("Land of the mean, home of the rage," April 3). I couldn't agree more. Actually, part of the answer had been discussed in the article, "Sleep habits leave Americans tubby, grouchy" (April 2). As the sleep-deprived, workaholic society that we have become, it's no surprise that we have become angrier as a nation. The United States has already passed Japan as the most workaholic nation on Earth. We are way ahead of all the Western industrialized nations. Also, throw in the facts that we have the fewest vacation days per year, as well as no national health insurance, which our European counterparts have enjoyed for decades! It's no wonder we seem to be fraying at the seams in nearly all segments of our society. What kind of message are we sending to the rest of the world about what we have become? RENE DELPRADO San Francisco
"What kind of message are we sending to the rest of the world," Rene Delprado? I think it's "We are the most successful nation in the history of the human race."
Bjørn Stærk is surprised that leading US media outlets are treating the laughable Arab News as a legitimate, even moderate operation:
But there they were on CNN about a week ago, pretending to speak for moderate Arabs on the Palestinian conflict, and they weren't even labelled as a Saudi newspaper. First the New York Times, and now CNN, (not the first time for all I know, I don't watch much TV). I don't get it, don't they recognize a state-owned propaganda machine when they see one?
Oh, they get the "state-owned" part all right. It's the "propaganda machine" part that whizzes right by. Since they see Arab News using their own propaganda tools, (wildly one-sided editorials that occasionally slip all the way into fantasy, iffy fact checking, tame columnists, single-minded slanting, dishonest and/or sloppy book reviews, opinion pieces masquerading as straight news, etc.) they assume AN must be legit. They probably think it's an Arab version of National Public Radio.
Equally on the spot, Arafat is under Bush pressure to confront terror and deal with it. And it could be his last chance to be treated by the administration as the leader of the Palestinians.
If this is the result of a calculated administration leak, it tends to reinforce my earlier thesis about close textual analysis of Bush's last speech:
It was instead a more or less final warning to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian authority: put up, or we will permit Israel to shut you up.
And isn't it interesting how the line, "I ask Israel to halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied," (which was universally spun as a "demand," not a request) has so quickly been modified to make it perfectly clear that all the demands were aimed in the direction of Arabs and Palestinians?
The White House eased back Friday from President Bush's demand that Israel immediately begin to pull its forces out Palestinian-held areas of the West Bank.
Need I add that all this will be to the extreme disappointment of the Palestinians's world-wide media Amen Corner?
Israeli troops on Friday killed two leading Palestinian militants, including the mastermind of a Passover suicide bombing in Israel that killed 26 people and triggered Israel's current military offensive, Palestinian sources and Israeli TV reports said.
And I say good. That's two more murderous savages Arafat and his thugs won't be able to "arrest," hold for three days, then release to slaughter some more Israeli innocents. I'm hoping the total bag goes much higher before Israel withdraws from the territories, and I expect that it will. (Link courtesy PejmanPundit).
I was going to say something about Bush cabinet member (and token from the idiot demographic) Norm Mineta's horror at the notion of allowing airline pilots to carry pistols in the cockpit, but Craig Schamp has already covered the ground - and in the process trampled Mineta's positions into the kind of mush that packs Mineta's skull from one huge ear to the other. (Anybody ever notice how much Mineta looks like Star Wars's Yoda?)
The SpinSanity demolition of Mike Moore's latest pathetic effort, Stupid White Men, ends on this note:
For the bestselling nonfiction book in the country, "Stupid White Men" has received remarkably little scrutiny and few serious reviews. Moore is much beloved in Britain, and a review on a BBC show called his book "fantastic" with "loads of research." Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have read much of it -- though the thousands of people who have bought his book surely don't know that.
Hmm. Does that situation remind anybody of another best-selling "non-fiction" book beloved by the liberal establishment? Something about guns, I recall - oh, yeah. Arming America, by Michael Bellesiles.
While I generally have small interest in the sort of book Oprah usually picks to highlight, I do have an intense interest in the financial health of the book publishing biz, since my own financial health depends so heavily on it. Whatever I may think about Oprah's literary tastes, she was able to move a ton of units every month, so this cannot be welcome news in all the NYC publisher's accounting departments which, according to an old editor of mine, are located somewhere in the wilds of New Jersey. (He was trying to explain why an advance check due me was four months late - "But Bill," he wailed, "the accounting department is in New Jersey." Evidently to New Yorkers, New Jersey is less accessible than the dark side of the moon. Yes, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, you know the guy I'm talking about...)
Editor -- In referring to Palestinians as "a culture that cheers and glorifies" suicide bombings, columnist Ellen Goodman shows an appalling ignorance of the current conflict ("Suicide bombers -- terrorists or martyrs?," April 4). Although suicide bombing like any other deliberate killing must be condemned, it is what people do when they are besieged and have no other weapon. Is there really a moral difference between the Palestinian who sets off bombs in an Israeli street and the Israeli who shoots shrapnel-spewing shells into a crowded refugee camp or drops bombs on civilian areas from an F- 16 jet fighter? Both Israelis and Palestinians are descended from rich and historic cultures. Their tragedy is to have ended up in the roles of oppressor and oppressed. For many years, wise people on both sides have warned that there was only one solution if disaster was to be avoided: two separate and independent states in which Palestinians and Israelis could live side by side in dignity and equality. It is still the only solution. RACHELLE MARSHALL Stanford
Yes, Rachelle Marshall, you pathetic moral imbecile, there really is "a moral difference between the Palestinian who sets off bombs in an Israeli street and the Israeli who shoots shrapnel-spewing shells into a crowded refugee camp or drops bombs on civilian areas from an F- 16 jet fighter." Now, try not to move your lips when you read the following, okay?
It is the difference between your next door neighbor invading your home, raping your children, killing and eating your dog, and setting fire to your baby's bassinette (with the baby still in it), and you firing a shotgun at your neighbor while he's on his murderous rampage against your innocent family, missing, and killing his wife.
I'd advise you to think on this a bit longer, but I see no evidence that you're capable of rational thought in the first place. Have you considered moving from Stanford to San Francisco, where I'm sure you'd feel more at home?
Speaking of the upcoming NYC conservative newspaper The New York Sun, the New Yorkersnarks that the new paper will fill a conservative niche that is empty:
"...apart from a few lonely voices at the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, two or three score nationally syndicated columns, a couple of dozen magazines, a few hundred 24/7 talk-radio stations, the Fox News cable network, the Bush Administration, the Supreme Court, and half of Congress—have been ruthlessly suppressed by the liberal establishment."
Over at Amygdala, (where I got this link) Gary Farber cracks wise with, "He forgot weeklies, such as the New York Press."
Cute. So I guess the few lonely liberal voices at the NYT, WaPo, LAT, SFChron, New Yorker, Village Voice, Time, Newsweek, USNews, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, MTV, a couple hundred magazines, a few thousand NPR stations, Hollywood, the national charitable foundations like the Ford, Rockefeller, and McArthur, the labor unions, the national education establishment, the National Council of Churches, the permanent Clinton coven, the civil rights "movement," the environmental "movement," half the Supreme Court, and half of Congress have been shouted into silence by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
I've been giving Bush's speech some more thought, and the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the single most important - in fact revolutionary - line in the entire address is this:
Now other Arab states must rise to this occasion and accept Israel as a nation and as a neighbor.
Has any American President ever couched this in the form of a demand? Not, "It would be good," or, "Arab nations should try," or "we should work toward," but "You must...accept Israel as a nation..."
This is not the pathetic EU's Romano Prodi, or the UN's ludicrous Kofi Annan speaking. This is the most powerful man in the most powerful nation in history telling a pack of rag-bag tyrannies what they must do. (And it would seem this demand must include, at least implicitly, a U.S. guarantee of Israeli statehood).
Taken in this light, Bush's request - remember, he made a point of saying, "I ask Israel to halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas..." - makes perfect sense, because he's outlined the quid pro quo: "You do what I ask, and I will force the Arabs into your dearest desire: formal recognition not just of your right to exist, but your actual existence as a nation. And I will guarantee that existence with the prestige and military might of the United States."
In fact, to really understand this speech, go through it clause by clause, and see who Bush says "must" do things, and who "should," or who he "asks" to do things, and exactly what those "must" clauses entail. If the Arabs do everything he says they must do, the whole landscape of the Middle East will be transformed in a single stroke.
For once, I'm not going to excoriate mainstream pundits for missing this - I missed it too. (Of course, it didn't help that most of the mainstream guys were focused solely on the request that Israel withdraw...) But I doubt that the rest of the Arab world missed it. And for those who didn't get it, evidently Secretary Powell will be arriving in the region shortly to explain it to them. If I'm right, President Bush has just taken the biggest and boldest step in the history of US participation in the Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The Israel Defense Force website has posted original images and translations of documentary proof that Yasser Arafat knew of, and paid, the terrorist killers responsible for the bat mitzvah slaughter at Hadera on January 17th this year.
We're going to see a lot more of this. Look for the squalls of "fake, Jew plot" to gradually die down as the sheer horrifying volume of Arafat's crimes becomes evident. (Lead courtesy Little Green Footballs).
UPDATE: Here's a copy of the both the original and translated version of the incriminating document:
More than $8 out of every $10, or about $26 million, the RNC took in from January through March came in hard money. Such donations are limited in size and the sources they can come from but can be spent in any way.
Under a law signed by President Bush last week, hard money will be the only kind that party committees can raise after the fall election.
The Democratic National Committee raised $26 million in the first quarter of the year, about $8 million of it hard money.
Believe it or not, I'd hate to think that knowing this (and there is no way Karl Rove did not know) helped to influence President Bush's shameful signing of the Campaign Finance Reform act - even if the bill is yet another nail in the Donks's political coffin down the road.
Jeebus. I can't imagine why there seems to be a resurgence of anti-semitism across the pond. Surely the religious leaders there will unite to disavow it? Well, maybe not:
A Scottish clergyman said today that a church mural showing a crucified Jesus flanked by both Roman soldiers and modern-day Israeli troops was not anti-Semitic, but designed to make his congregation think about current conflicts.
The Rev. John Armes said the painting, which was unveiled last week as part of the church's Easter celebrations and removed today, "unashamedly addresses the role of the Israeli government" in the Middle East conflict.
Representative James Traficant Jr. (D-Andromeda Galaxy) sounds like an idiot, looks like a fool, and acts like a maniac. He'll be missed by folks like Mark Twain, who once observed, "There is no distinctive native American criminal class, except Congress."
The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.
Charlotte Aldebron, 12, wrote this essay for a competition in her 6th grade English class. She attends Cunningham Middle School in Presque Isle, Maine. Comments may be sent to her mom, Jillian Aldebron: aldebron@ainop.com
Just a little something from CommonDreams.org to give you that patriotic boost. Little Charlotte has more to say on the subject of the "piece of cloth." Her parents must be proud of her.
These are the sorts of people who are complaining about the prisoners at Guantanamo being brainwashed.
Out of the fog of speeches and counter-speeches today, which are being spun almost solely as a "call" by President Bush that Israel withdraw from the PA territories, two tangible events have occurred: First, Israel will allow Bush negotiator Anthony Zinni into Arafat's compound to speak with the old terrorist. Second, Bush will send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region "next week." Israel's Ariel Sharon was was quick to reply:
"Negotiating before terror is subdued will only lead to its continuation," Prime Minister Sharon said on private Israeli television.
He then stated the Israeli operations in the West Bank would continue.
There's been a lot of puzzlement about what is actually going on here. A full reading of Bush's speech makes it clear that, far from being only a call for Israeli withdrawal, most of it is aimed at Arafat, with lines like:
Terror must be stopped. No nation can negotiate with terrorists, for there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death.
Since September the 11th, I've delivered this message: Everyone must choose; you're either with the civilized world or you're with the terrorists. All in the Middle East also must choose, and must move decisively in word and deed against terrorist acts.
The chairman of the Palestinian Authority has not consistently opposed or confronted terrorists.
At Oslo and elsewhere, Chairman Arafat renounced terror as an instrument of his cause, and he agreed to control it. He's not done so. The situation in which he finds himself today is largely of his own making. He's missed his opportunities and thereby betrayed the hopes of the people he is supposed to lead.
I call on the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Authority, and our friends in the Arab world to join us in delivering a clear message to terrorists. Blowing yourself up does not help the Palestinian cause. To the contrary, suicide bombing missions could well blow up the best and only hope for a Palestinian state.
All states must keep their promise, made in a vote in the United Nations, to actively oppose terror in all its forms. No nation can pick and choose its terrorist friends. I call on the Palestinian Authority and all governments in the region to do everything in their power to stop terrorist activities, to disrupt terrorist financing, and to stop inciting violence by glorifying terror in state-owned media or telling suicide bombers they are martyrs.
They're not martyrs. They're murderers. And they undermine the cause of the Palestinian people. Those governments, like Iraq, that reward parents for the sacrifice of their children are guilty of soliciting murder of the worst kind. All who care about the Palestinian people should join in condemning and acting against groups like al-Aqsa, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all the groups which oppose the peace process and seek the destruction of Israel.
Now other Arab states must rise to this occasion and accept Israel as a nation and as a neighbor. Peace with Israel is the only avenue to prosperity and success for a new Palestinian state.
America recognizes Israel's right to defend itself from terror.
As Israel steps back, responsible Palestinian leaders and Israel's Arab neighbors must step forward and show the world that they are truly on the side of peace. The choice and the burden will be theirs.
The world expects an immediate cease-fire, immediate resumption of security cooperation with Israel against terrorism, an immediate order to crack down on terrorist networks. I expect better leadership and I expect results.
And to those who would try to use the current crisis as an opportunity to widen the conflict: Stay out. Iran's arms shipments and support for terror fuel the fire of conflict in the Middle East, and it must stop. Syria has spoken out against al Qaeda; we expect it to act against Hamas and Hezbollah as well. It's time for Iran to focus on meeting its own people's aspirations for freedom, and for Syria to decide which side of the war against terror it is on.
Anybody reading these words cannot fail to understand that Bush's speech was not the unilateral demand for Israeli withdrawal the knee-jerk pacifists of the eurocommentariat in particular (but also a significant segment of their American brethren) are portraying. It was instead a more or less final warning to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian authority: put up, or we will permit Israel to shut you up. It is also a warning to the Arab states: either stop supporting Palestinian terrorism - or any other kind of terrorism - or you will earn the wrath of the United States. In other words, Bush has just drawn a line in the sand for Iran and Syria. The significance of the absence of Iraq in this group is simple: its fate has already been decided. Saudi Arabia is left to make of Bush's speech what it will, but I doubt the Putrid Princes will find in it anything to lessen their desires to buy as much French Riviera beachfront property as they can.
It is being much glossed over at the moment, but has anybody thought to ask what would seem to be an obvious and significant question, to wit: What is General Zinni going to say to Arafat when they meet for their tea party? Somehow I doubt it's going to be, "Nice job, buddy." Instead, in view of Bush's speech, I expect it will be something more along the lines of, "Listen, asshole, would you like to walk out of here still attached to your head, or merely surrounding it?"
Suitably cleaned up for diplomacy, of course. In the meantime. the IDF has, I would guess, at least another week to finish killing as many of the hard-core baby bombers and their commanders as they can.
Then they can start figuring out where to build the wall.
UPDATE: I've been having some second thoughts about this speech.
Protein Wisdom's Jeff Goldstein provides exactly the right level of snarling snark in his analysis of Dubya's speech this morning, and the loads and loads of Beamish from the talking bubbleheads in response.
Bet you didn't know that the Clinton administration made it effectively impossible for local police to arrest illegal aliens:
In 1996, the department ruled that local officers couldn't arrest people just for immigration violations unless their departments exercised a provision of the 1996 immigration law and signed an agreement with federal officials. No department has signed such a pact, which involves training and other conditions.
Now the Bush administration is going to reverse that edict. Good. Winking at illegal immigration makes a mockery of legal immigrants who play by the rules.
InstaPundit has already linked to this: Bombers Gloating in Gaza as They See Goal Within Reach: No More Israel, which means the entire blogosphere will take note, but I'm going to add to the load of Beamish called the "echo chamber" and put up a link myself - this is something every thinking human in the world needs to understand:
The goals of Hamas are straightforward. As Sheik Yassin put it, "our equation does not focus on a cease-fire; our equation focuses on an end to the occupation." By that he means an end to the Jewish occupation of historical Palestine. Hamas wants Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza, the dismantling of all Israeli settlements and full right of return for the four million Palestinians who live in other states. After that, the Jews could remain, living "in an Islamic state with Islamic law," Dr. Zahar said. "From our ideological point of view, it is not allowed to recognize that Israel controls one square meter of historic Palestine." Mr. Shenab insisted that he was not joking when he said, "There are a lot of open areas in the United States that could absorb the Jews."
"If it became necessary to kill every Jew in Israel in order to provide a homeland for the Palestinians, would you be in favor of doing so?"
Go ahead, ask it. Ask in Egypt and Kuwait. Ask in Syria and Saudi Arabia. Ask in Iran. Ask in Libya. Ask in Morocco. Ask in Algeria. Ask in Iraq.
I'll bet any honest poll would find at least 65% in favor. And that would make crystal clear the sort of culture with which we are dealing.
Yes, it would make it clear. And it does. Hamas votes a resounding yes! Yet this is the conflict which Mad Madeline Albright reduces to "two old, stubborn men who have had a lifetime hatred of each other..." But just because our former (and worst) Secretary of State is a moral moron doesn't mean the rest of us have to be.
"The president wants to seize the moment to try to create an environment in which peace can take root," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. He said Bush would take action to "exert the moral leadership of the United States."
The only way the US can exert "moral leadership" is if it discovers the spine to stop issuing press releases to the effect that Israel and Arafat are equally to blame for the problem, and focus attention on the one group that needs to be convinced their terror war will only end up destroying them - the Palestinians themselves.
WaPo, of course, simply cannot do this. Even in this article, they are peddling the new line (same as the old line):
"I really do think we are watching two old, stubborn men who have had a lifetime hatred of each other being played out on a scene where hundreds of people are endangered and people are dying," she said. "They need to forget their personal animosity and think about the national interests of their people."
This from Madeline Albright, partial architect of the disastrous Clinton "peace conferences" that sparked the current intifada in the first place. Evidently the reality of seeing so many vicious, savage attacks against innocents by Palestinian terrorists has finally rendered the old conventional moral equivalence wisdom - "They're both just alike" - inoperative (ahem), so now we have a new mantra: "Sharon and Arafat, both evil old men."
Look for it at a mainstream mouthpiece near you - soon.
Editor -- Your headlines are becoming genuinely Orwellian. I read "Bush reaffirms push for peace" (April 1) and asked myself, "Are we on the same planet?" This is the president who has declared war against an undefined foe using unlimited funding of unrestricted means for an indefinite period of time. This is literally, as George Orwell called it, "perpetual war for perpetual peace." Is that the "peace" you meant in the headline? President Bush has asked for a greater increase in next year's military budget than is spent in total by all of our enemies in the world combined. He has announced a barbaric new willingness to use nuclear weapons for offensive purposes. He has signaled to all the world that he's planning an invasion of Iraq, apparently just in time for the November elections. He winks while our closest client-state, Israel, wages what U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan calls "full scale war" on the Palestinians. Bush is accelerating a truly aggressive Star Wars scheme to achieve first- strike capabilities against any enemy anywhere on Earth. He repudiates international inspections for biological weapons, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and restrictions on the use of children as combatants. Tell me again: Where is the "push for peace"? ROBERT FREEMAN Palo Alto
I don't know what planet you're on, Robert Freemen, but I doubt it's anywhere near the one I inhabit, or very near the dimension called "reality," either. The "undefined foe" you gasp on about is those who use terror tactics to attack our country and kill our citizens. Do you need their individual names and addresses (which in many cases we already have) to understand that? And speaking of Orwellian double-speak, you show a nice flair for it: in your world, Bush is planning on invading Iraq in order to win an election in which he isn't even a candidate. Of course, Iraq wouldn't even have been on the plate, but for Islamofascist terrorists incinerating 3000 people on 9/11, so Bush must have somehow instigated that as well, in order for your thesis to make any sense (which of course it doesn't). That Karl Rove - what an electioneering genius he is! Your Orwellian flights of fancy reach their peak, however, when you call a missile defense system an "aggressive...scheme to achieve first-strike capabilities..." Ah, yes, black is white, defense is offense, and Orwell is Robert Fisk. As for your final bleating question, let me tell you where the push for peace is: it's in the places where brave men and women are willing to fight for it, rather that submit, with cowardly whines, to terrorist murderers . History teaches us that peace reigns when enemies don't want to attack us. Much as you hate to admit it, that usually occurs when those enemies who do want to kill us are dead.
Over at InstaPundit, Glenn Reynolds is giving a good amount of play to Eric Olsen's contention that we need to see a lot more publicity given to Abu Zubaydah's supposed connections to the Cole bombing. I'm not so sure.
Zubaydah is probably the most important intelligence catch of the entire War on Terror. The potential value of obtaining his knowledge and using it to protect the United States - that's the goal, remember? - is astronomically high. The process of thoroughly interrogating this man surely will not be helped along by any vast public outcry for either mercy or vengeance. It would suit me fine if we never heard his name publicly mentioned again - but that all of a sudden deeply buried "sleeper" terror nests in the United States and elsewhere around the world began to find themselves terminated with extreme prejudice
Ken Layne links to an excellent article on the blogosphere by journo and new media maven Henry Copeland (who just happens to have been part of the Welch/Layne Prague Posse). Unlike the recent Blobe load of Beamish on the subject, Copeland's effort is chock full of interesting insights, neat links, and tasty goodness. Well worth a read, and not just because Copeland searched out and credited the guy who minted the term "blogosphere."
A last brief note. There are news reports, that I won’t link to or read, about how the number-one book in France claims that Flight 77 never crashed into the Pentagon. That it was all, somehow, made up. For a proper response to that astoundingly hateful theory, click here. I would only add this, to the authors and their readers: Fuck you.
In the widely-read world of Real Journalism, Matt probably couldn't get away with saying that - and the world would be much the poorer for it.
Here is a glimpse of the probable outcome of Arafat's insane and self-destructive policies:
That official and the Israeli defense minister have [both] said the government has made no decision about whether to enter Gaza. The most likely explanation for the lack of urgency, as the security official said, is that around Gaza "there is a fence." Attackers cannot easily get out and enter Israel. The Erez border crossing, the only entry into Israel, was very quiet today. Gazans are not permitted out. "It's like a jail here," a Palestinian border guard said. "We can't get out."
If building a wall around the West Bank Palestinians and waiting twenty years for sanity to reassert itself is the only way Israel can prevent mad bombers from attacking their weddings and pizza parlors, that wall will be built, no matter what protests issue from feckless Euroweenies or hypocritical US officials.
Paula Zahn is not my idea of the sharpest interviewer ever to question a slippery politician, but she does a nice job here:
ZAHN: I know the president has been loath to call Yasser Arafat a terrorist because he has said he has signed onto the peace process. But how many more days of these kinds of activities, suicide bombings, can go on before you will declare him a terrorist? POWELL: Well, these are terrorist activities, and we condemn them. There is no question what they are. They are killing innocent civilians. But Chairman Arafat still has a legitimate role within the Palestinian movement, and we think at this point, it is best to deal with him in that role and see if we can move the process forward rather than to designate him as such.
Really, Secretary Powell? Would you care to enlighten the rest of us as to what Arafat's role might be? Perhaps financing and sending out more suicide bombers?
The hypocrisy of the Bush Administration on this issue is becoming sickening.
bwolfe makes some intriguing points in a list posted in one of Little Green Football's comment sections:
I ran across these intresting historical facts that pretty much destroy the reasoning behind the Pals notion that the West Bank and Jerusalem specifiaclly be made there capital. Funny how all this is never talked about... 1. Nationhood and Jerusalem. Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam. 2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel. 3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E. the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years. 4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years. 5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit. 6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran. 7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem. 8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem. 9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. 10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms. 11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same. 12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey. 13. The Arab - Israeli Conflict: The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won. 14. The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them 15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths. 16. The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel. 17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on or before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel. 18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians. 19. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. 20. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
I wouldn't go so far as to say this is "never talked about." Let's just stipulate it's never emphasized.
Letter from Gotham sends me a link to this NYT account of the bliss-ninnies currently ensconced in Yasser Arafat's office where they hope to protect him and the pack of monstrous killers holed up with him:
The foreigners in the compound, many from Italy and France, came on a visit organized by two West Bank groups that have organized nonviolent action against Israeli forces there: the International Solidarity Movement and Grass-roots International Protection for the Palestinian People.
LFG asks, "How did they get in, both to Israel and to Arafat's office?" Easy. As I posted elsewhere,
"There is an implicit belief at work here that Israel and the IDF will respect these human shields. But why would people assume this? Easy. Because they regard Israel as a civilized nation that does not slaughter innocents and civilians out of hand.
And because Israel is a civilized nation, they let this mob of the feeble-minded pass without harm. Unlike the men they are seeking to protect, who would grind them up and feed them to wild hogs without a qualm if it suited their evil purposes.
LFG further notes a dichotomy between the fact that these fools, who claim to be pacifists, are allowing armed Palestinians to protect them from arrest by the Israelis, and wonders how they can truly believe in pacifism. Short answer: They don't. They are hypocrites. And idiots, of course. But that goes without saying - or it should.
Drunk with "victory" in the Cornel West contretemps, one of Harvard's "African American Dream Team is now planning to sue his employers for slavery reparations. Still glad you caved to the Prince of Harvard Hip-Hop, President Summers?
It looks as if the Arabs - at least some of them - are hell-bent on arranging their own destruction. What sort of grievous miscalculations lead them to believe these plans have any hope of success?
The radical right-wing freakazoids can be just as moronic as any of the lefty "nanny state is all" smother artists. Just think what a world we would live in if they could both have their way: Humans would be born with permanently interconnected umbilical cords, but without testicles or ovaries. Now the yahoos on the right are shocked, shocked I tell you, to find somebody pushing the notion that teens might be interested in (gasp) sex.
More and more, the capture of Abu Zubaydah is looking like the single biggest victory in the war on terror so far. It now appears he was in the process of actively preparing new attacks against the United States when he was taken.
Tyrants and thugs always sadly underestimate the toughness and staying power of free nations and societies. They mistake the artifacts of civil society - freedom, democracy, the rule of law - for signs of weakness. Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar made that mistake, and the murderous old monster Yasser Arafat is beginning to reap the results of a similar miscalculation. His insane and savage intifada has served to harden the course of the only two nations who matter to his and his so-called "cause:" Israel is now on record as being his enemy, and the United States soon will be - if not officially, at least in practice.
Here is the next step in the collapse of Argentina: the Peronista (Fascism With A Kindly Face) President Duhalde and his government gin up a phony war against England in hopes of distracting the citizens from the real cause of their misery: their own idiotic policies.
The CSM is reporting that Saddam Hussein was planning major terror attacks against the United States as recently as last year. I expect we'll be hearing more of this sort of thing, as the orchestrated drumbeat to "get Saddam" moves into full swing. Unlike last year, when every potential Iraqi connection was downplayed, now we'll see similar ties trumpeted to the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of finishing our business with Saddam. But I do get bothered sometimes by the naked cynicism of those who manipulate the conversations of the public square so transparently.
Editor -- Regarding columnist Sam McManis' take on urban elitism ("Suburban without the shame," Bay Area section, March 31): After World War II, when suburbs began in earnest, it was the elite middle class who fled the cities, leaving the urban cores to the very rich and the very poor. The reason there is a malady called "suburban shame" is because what the suburbs did to the central cities is shameful. Instead of sharing postwar wealth with the cities from which they came, suburbanites abandoned their parent neighborhoods in search of plots of land and a life they could call their own. Instead of communal life in urban neighborhoods, they began lives of isolation in the suburbs. While not literally gated communities, they were culturally gated communities in which everyone had to have his or her own car, a detached house and a life detached from the very rich and the very poor, from their past and from the very cities they came from. I'm glad for suburbanites that they can find work, culture, dining and shopping in their suburban utopias, but real culture is not going to the symphony or the theater. It is something that grows spontaneously in an urban environment, like the Beat movement in the '50s, flower children in the '60s and gay liberation in the '70s. Young people understand what culture is, and that's why they still flock to San Francisco rather than Walnut Creek or San Mateo. Culture is what is new and exciting. Suburbs should pay proper respect to the central cities from which they emerged.
MICHAEL ZONTA San Francisco
Sure, Michael Zonta, those who "fled" the cities did something "shameful" by leaving. God forbid people should be free to move where their spirits, needs, and desires take them, for to do so is "shameful," especially if they like to live in "culturally gated" communities. I hate to tell you this, but young people barely understand their own physical workings, let alone what culture is. And if you pay any attention to reality - arguable, since you're a San Franciscan - you'd know that in the wake of the dot.com bust, young people are flocking away from San Francisco, in many cases back to their parents's homes - in the suburbs.
Over at the Daily Rant, Jay Caruso posts a sensitive and penetrating analysis of the "soon-to-collapse blogosphere" thesis I propounded in other posts:
At the same time, blogging is a fad at this point. It has reached its height of popularity, and will soon come crashing down. Many blogs will survive. Many will not. I don't know how much longer I am going to do this. It's hard to do on a daily basis. Especially when you know the big guys such as Sullivan and Reynolds are getting 30-40 thousand visits a day, and guys like me struggle to get 30 a day. It's sometimes frustrating because this isnt easy, especially when you work full time elsewhere. To check your stats and see you have had around 10 visits all day long is downer. I find myself asking, "Why the hell do I bother?"
Most of us use the term "blogrolling" with an unspoken, ironic leer, but we probably shouldn't. The blogosphere is a chaotically networked entity that operates on, masticates, and digests issues as a functional whole that is greater and more unpredictable than the sum of its parts. Part of the techno-intellectual sinew that binds this entity together is the linkage that is the primary way individual nodes enter and grow within the network. One mention from a Glenn Reynolds, or even one of the little dogs like DailyPundit, a node whose leverage is mainly that it's read by most of the established bloggers, might well be enough to make the difference between an unknown blog's survival or demise. And yet even that process, like most processes involving natural selection, is brutal. There is only one way to get listed on my permanent links, and that is to be one of the blogs I read on a more or less regular basis. If you're there, I read you. If not, I probably don't, at least not more than once or twice. And if I don't read you, I'm not linking to your items, either. But the real problem is that I, and everybody else, can only read so many blogs in a day - or even a week.
At some point, this process is going to become too unwieldy, and we'll begin to see second-generation, and then third-generation blogs with entirely new linkages and interactions. Warblogs are coming to the end of their first generation now. The tipoff was the recent scramble when nearly everybody began to reorganize their permanent link sections, all of which, it was variously claimed, had become too "unwieldy, disorganized, and clogged up." This, too, will be an evolutionary process, but it will change the nature of the warblogosphere at the very least, and perhaps larger parts of the whole blogosphere as well. We would be wise to keep in mind that the warblogosphere is getting all the notice in the so-called "legitimate" media right now, and just as as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal predicts, the observers are unable to observe without altering the blogosphere by their very notice. See Matt Welch's wise comment on exactly that issue.
All that said, the Daily Rant is a fine blog. Caruso, in an almost off-hand way,
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