Tickle My Blog

2003-07-16T10:04:00.000-04:00

How I became an 'unconscious fascist' by Fiamma Nirenstein

Via LGF.

Another meaningful episode: a group of Professors at Ca Foscari University, the prestigious Venetian institution, signed a petition calling for a boycott of Israeli professors and researchers. The content of the document is totally irrelevant, but the reaction it provoked among the Jewish community is very interesting.

One prominent Venetian Jew, when asked for his opinion, said: "They're making a serious mistake. Those professors don't realize that they are reinforcing Sharon's policy with their boycott."

Such an absurd reaction is the clear proof of the failure, within the Jewish world, to understand this totally new type of anti-Semitism that focuses on the State of Israel. Another document, this time a letter by a group of professors at the University of Bologna "to their Jewish friends", was published with a very large number of signatures.

Here is an excerpt: "We have always considered the Jewish people an intelligent and sensitive one because they have been selected (that's right, selected!) by the suffering of persecution and humiliation. We have school friends and some Jewish students whom we have helped and educated, taking them to high academic levels, and today many of them teach in Israeli universities. We are writing because we feel that our love and appreciation for you is being transformed into a burning rage… we think that many people, also outside the university, feel the same. You have to realize that what was done to you in the past, you are now doing to the Palestinians… if you continue on this path, hatred for you will grow throughout the world".

The letter is an excellent summary of all the characteristics of the new anti-Semitism. There is the pre-Zionist definition of the Jewish people as one that suffers, has to suffer by nature, a people bound to bear the worst persecutions without even lifting a finger, and is, therefore, worthy of compassion and solidarity.

And there is the well established, democratic, military powerful, and economically prospering state of Israel, which is the antithesis of this stereotype. The "new Jew" that tries not to suffer, and that, above all, can and wants to defend himself, immediately loses all his charm in the eyes of the Left.

But it was different before the map of Middle East was painted in red by the Cold War and Israel was declared the long hand of American Imperialism. The rising new born Israel, until the 1967 war, was built on an ideology that allowed and even obliged the left to be proud of the Jews and the Jews to be proud of the Left, even when Israelis were fighting and winning hard wars.

The Jews that survived Nazi-fascist persecution, the persecution of the Right, created a socialist state inspired by the values of the Left, work and collectivism, and by doing so, again sanctified the Left as the shelter of the victims.

In exchange for this, the Jews were granted legitimization. But in fact, the Jews were enormously important for the Left. The people of Israel were a living accusation of the anti-Semitism that marked the Holocaust, the Nazi-Fascist anti-Semitism; and now they were building collective farms and an omnipotent trade union! To some degree, this absolved Stalinist anti-Semitism, or gave it a much smaller importance than it really had. The Jews became indispensable for the left: look at the passionate and paternalistic tone of the Bologna professors, as they seem to plead: "Come back, our dear Jews. Be ours again. Let us curse Israel together and than take a trip together to the Holocaust memorials".

2003-07-16T08:24:00.000-04:00

Holman Jenkins

One of my favorite columnists. The article requires registration.

Microsoft is contemplating a special dividend of $10 billion from it $46 billion cash hoard. This one puts the capital asset pricing model, a financial holy of holies, to a test. In theory, shareholder response should have been ho hum, it's already our money because we own Microsoft. Why should it matter to us if it's shifted from one pocket to another?

In practice, the result was a $10.2 billion jump in the company's market value after it was bruited that Microsoft might dip into shareholders' money to pay a special dividend to, ahem, shareholders. Evident message from investors to management: Our money is more valuable in our hands than in yours.

2003-06-19T09:12:00.000-04:00

Sowell on Hoffer part II

The whole thing is worth reading.

2003-06-18T13:14:00.000-04:00

Sowell on Hoffer

What Hoffer was describing was the political busybody, the zealot for a cause -- the "true believer," who filled the ranks of ideological movements that created the totalitarian tyrannies of the 20th century.

In a comment very relevant to the later disintegration of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union itself, he observed that totalitarian governments' "moment of greatest danger is when they begin to reform, that is to say, when they begin to show liberal tendencies."

Mikhail Gorbachev's place in history was secured by his failure to understand that and his willingness to believe that a decent and humane Communist society was possible. But, once the people in Eastern Europe no longer had to fear tanks or the gulags, the statues of Lenin and Stalin began being toppled from their pedestals, like the governments they represented.

Contrary to the prevailing assumptions of his time, Eric Hoffer did not believe that revolutionary movements were based on the sufferings of the downtrodden. "Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams," he said. He had spent years living among such people and being one of them.

Hoffer's insights may help explain something that many of us have found very puzzling -- the offspring of wealthy families spending their lives and their inherited money backing radical movements. He said: "Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities."

What can people with inherited fortunes do that is at all commensurate with their unlimited opportunities, much less what their parents or grandparents did to create the fortune in the first place, starting from far fewer opportunities?

Like the frustrated artists and failed intellectuals who turn to mass movements for fulfillment, rich heirs cannot win the game of comparison of individual achievements. So they must change the game. As zealots for radical movements, they often attack the very things that made their own good fortune possible, as well as undermining the freedom and well-being of other people.

2003-06-18T13:12:00.000-04:00

Jay Nordlinger

Speaking of Belgium, you may have read, and been sickened by, reports of slaughter in Congo. A French-led EU force is supposed to be preventing the murder there. In the Daily Telegraph, Adrian Blomfield wrote of a Congolese — Dieu Donne — who was to be executed along with his family and friends:

"They wanted to shoot us but were afraid they would be heard," Dieu Donne said. "They said, 'We are not going to waste our blitz on people without value like you. We are going to kill you with knives.'" The six were then forced to a former Ugandan army trench just outside the camp . . . and ordered to lie head-to-toe.

"There were other bodies in the hole covered with a little soil," he said. "We saw their feet sticking out." Dieu Donne was last in line, lying face down in the dirt. "There were ten soldiers. They took their bayonets and stabbed my father in every part of his body," he said. "Then they moved on to my neighbor, then the two boys, and then my friend."

As they went down the line, they mocked the prisoners, all members of the Bira tribe, until now not directly involved in Bunia's bloody war. "They were shouting, 'Call the French, tell them to set you free,'" he said.

So, "when they got to Dieu Donne, they stabbed him through his chin, throat, hands, chest, and torso, and he lost consciousness. But while the soldiers were away finding clothes to cover the bodies, he came to and managed to crawl into the nearby bushes, then fled."

Friends, I have no comment to make. I just think, I suppose, that this kind of thing ought to be known.

2003-06-17T08:39:00.000-04:00

Gitmo Crybabies

The NYT has an article on newly-released prisoners from Gitmo who are upset about the conditions there.

According to accounts in the last three months from some of the 32 Afghans and three Pakistanis in the weeks since their release, it was above all the uncertainty of their fate, combined with confinement in very small cells, sometimes only with Arabic speakers, that caused inmates to attempt suicide. One Pakistani interviewed this month said he tried to kill himself four times in 18 months.

An Afghan prisoner who spent 14 months at the camp, at the American naval base at Guantánamo, described in April what he called the uncertainty and fear. "Some were saying this is a prison for 150 years," said Suleiman Shah, 30, a former Taliban fighter from Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan.

This "uncertainity and fear" is the major complaint, along with confinement. It's repeated again and again: "But it was the uncertainty and fear that they would be there forever that drove many of them to despair, prisoners said."

Jamie Fellner, director of the United States program for Human Rights Watch, said in an interview ... "These conditions of confinement by themselves over a prolonged period are enormously psychologically stressful," she said. "Added to that is the uncertainty as to the future."

So, here's my question. What the hell kind of certainty about the future did these guys have over in the caves of Afghanistan? What they had was religious zeal, not economic security, not promises of good health in their old age, and certainly not a secure food supply. They did have purpose though, praying every day for Allah to smite the infidels and make Islam supreme. Well I'm glad we ripped away the false hopes they had, to be honest. I'm glad they saw that they were powerless and impotent. Welcome to planet Earth.

And at least when they go home, they can tell their friends and family that the great hope of the Islamic revolution, the sense of glorious purpose in the service of Allah's will, leads to a small cage in the hot sun.

2003-06-13T11:33:00.000-04:00

VDH Day

2003-06-13T09:22:00.000-04:00

The Fat Police

The main argument for government intervention in this area is that all of us pick up the tab for obesity-related disease when treatment is covered by taxpayer-funded health care programs. A recent study in the journal Health Affairs put the total medical cost at $93 billion a year, about half of it covered by Medicaid and Medicare.

But since overweight people tend to die earlier than slim people, they may not use as much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much. Hence the net financial result could be a wash or, as in the case of smokers, taxpayer savings.

More important, the argument based on taxpayer-funded medical treatment proves too much. This rationale could be used to justify almost any interference in our personal lives, since nearly everything we do carries some risk of injury or disease. As University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein pointed out at the AEI conference, the public policy problem is the subsidy, not the behavior.

2003-06-13T09:13:00.000-04:00

Ukranian Famine

AT LONG LAST a Pulitzer Prize committee is looking into the possibility that the Pulitzer awarded to Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent whose dispatches covered up Stalin's infamies, might be revoked.

In order to assist in their researches, I am downloading here some of the lies contained in those dispatches, lies which the New York Times has never repudiated with the same splash as it accorded Jayson Blair's comparatively trivial lies:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."
--New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
--New York Times, August 23, 1933

"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin's program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding."
--New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
--New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18

"There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."
--New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would like to add another Duranty quote, not in his dispatches, which is reported in a memoir by Zara Witkin, a Los Angeles architect, who lived in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. ("An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia: The Memoirs of Zara Witkin, 1932-1934," University of California Press ). The memoirist describes an evening during which the Moscow correspondents were discussing how to get out the story about the Stalin-made Russian famine. To get around the censorship, the UP's Eugene Lyons was telephoning the dire news of the famine to his New York office but the was ordered to stop because it was antagonizing the Kremlin. Ralph Barnes, the New York Herald Tribune reporter, turned to Duranty and asked him what he was going to write. Duranty replied:

"Nothing. What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated.

And this was at a time when peasants in Ukraine were dying of starvation at the rate of 25,000 a day.

In his masterwork about Stalin's imposed famine on Ukraine, "Harvest of Sorrow," Robert Conquest has written:

As one of the best known correspondents in the world for one of the best known newspapers in the world, Mr. Duranty's denial that there was a famine was accepted as gospel. Thus Mr. Duranty gulled not only the readers of the New York Times but because of the newspaper's prestige, he influenced the thinking of countless thousands of other readers about the character of Josef Stalin and the Soviet regime. And he certainly influenced the newly-elected President Roosevelt to recognize the Soviet Union.

What is so awful about Duranty is that Times top brass suspected that Duranty was writing Stalinist propaganda, but did nothing. In her exposé "Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Times's man in Moscow," S.J. Taylor makes it clear that Carr Van Anda, the managing editor, Frederick T. Birchall, an assistant managing editor, and Edwin L. James, the later managing editor, were troubled with Duranty's Moscow reporting but did nothing about it. Birchall recommended that Duranty be replaced but, says Taylor, "the recommendation fell by the wayside."

When Duranty of his own volition decided to become a special correspondent on a retainer basis for the New York Times, the newspaper published an editorial reassuring its readers that his reputation as "the most outstanding correspondent of an American newspaper during all the years of his faithful and brilliant work at Moscow will remain unimpaired in the slightest degree by the change now made." This about a man whom Malcolm Muggeridge, the Manchester Guardian correspondent and Duranty's contemporary, described as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of journalism."

Duranty was one of a gaggle of Stalin's intellectual admirers. Muggeridge, whose centennial we celebrate this summer, wrote about them in these lapidary words:

Wise old [Bernard]Shaw, high-minded old [Henri]Barbusse, the venerable [Sidney and Beatrice] Webbs, [Andre] Gide the pure in heart and [Pablo] Picasso the impure, down to poor little teachers, crazed clergymen and millionaires, driveling dons and very special correspondents like Duranty, all resolved, come what might, to believe anything, however preposterous, to overlook nothing, however villainous, to approve anything, however obscurantist and brutally authoritarian, in order to be able to preserve intact the confident expectation that one of the most thorough-going, ruthless and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on earth could be relied on to champion human freedom, the brotherhood of man, and all the other good liberal causes to which they had dedicated their lives. ("Chronicles of Wasted Time," pages 275- 276.)

Let's all give a great encouraging cheer to the Pulitzer committee for undertaking a task 70 years late. And perhaps the Times will now a look back at the Herbert L. Matthews coverage of Cuba and the man he so admired, Fidel Castro.

2003-06-06T11:05:00.000-04:00

VDH Day

2003-06-06T10:12:00.000-04:00

Goldberg on the DNC

Anyway, the DNC's official story is murky. According to the Post, DNC chief Terry McAuliffe said the DNC Ten would never have been actually fired, and other officials said this was all just a big misunderstanding. Numerous black Democrats told the press they were unsatisfied with McAuliffe's explanations.

Well, a prominent Democratic operative in a position to know tells me the real story. Each department head at the DNC was asked to suggest at least one person under their supervision to be laid off. The list was compiled by a senior consultant and submitted to the chief operating officer at the DNC, Josh Wachs.

It was only when they put the list together that it became clear everyone was black. In other words, each supervisor was asked to fire only a single person on merit. Race wasn't an issue or a problem until the statistics were compiled.

2003-04-15T15:43:00.000-04:00

The Productivity Gap

There is worse. Europe's leaders see a productivity gap and feel called upon to develop government programs to eliminate it. Not for them Ronald Reagan's wise "Don't just do something, stand there." Not enough entrepreneurship? Let's have more tax credits. Entrepreneurs are unwilling to locate business in the regions in which the politicians want them to locate? Still more tax credits and some regional planning. Not enough research and development? Set up an international bureaucracy to encourage it. All of these programs, of course, favor those who can best navigate the sea of paper created by the tax code and the massive regulatory web spun by the eurocrats, while the heavy tax burden on the successful reduces their incentive to work and take risks, and encourages capital flight.

That's just not what American-style entrepreneurship is all about. It's about free spirits deciding what sort of business will meet consumers' needs. It's about businessmen, large and small, deciding where to locate their offices and factories, without the aid of a regional planning council. It's about getting rich, with "social justice" flowing from private philanthropy of the sort that all-invasive governments in Europe have virtually eliminated.

Most of all, it's about individual freedom. It is not possible to breed a nation of men and women who look to the state to fund their trips to the spa (as in Germany) or who are told that they are too ill-informed to choose their own doctors (as in Britain)--and then expect those same men and women to become risk-taking, innovating entrepreneurs.

2003-04-15T12:13:00.000-04:00

Colonialism and Social Obligations

Theodore Dalyrymple has a good article in City Journal. Read the whole thing.

2003-04-15T11:06:00.000-04:00

Income Tax Info

More here and here.

2003-04-15T10:54:00.000-04:00

Passover

This model of true liberation — into ordered freedom rather than chaos — was thus set. The Midrash, another ancient source of Jewish tradition, says it succinctly, "Whatever is written concerning Abraham is also written concerning his children" — his spiritual descendants, us.

Biblical tradition seeks to tell how the world works, elucidating history's patterns. The paradigm established by Abraham provides that liberation only results in genuine freedom when it is accompanied by a clear moral order — apparently absent in Iraq despite the country's professed religion. Without an ethical culture there can be only anarchy or tyranny.

For the Iraqis' sake, some such order will need to be planted and nourished from outside. That will be America's task, and not an easy one.

2003-04-15T10:44:00.000-04:00

Dorothy Rabinowitz

But there is no inadvertence in the ill-concealed hostility now coming from the antiwar camp--only a kind of awkward pretense to give credit to the American and British forces that won so swift a victory. And grudging credit it is, replete with arguments that, of course, everyone knew they would win overwhelmingly. That assurance did not, of course, keep this crowd from issuing their dire predictions the first day or two of the war, about the "quagmire" and new Vietnam.
The latest entry in the grudging acknowledgments department comes from Saturday's New York Times editorial that first pays tribute to the great skill of the American forces, credits Mr. Rumsfeld's push for a smaller more agile force, and then goes on to the main point: whether the victory could really be attributed to U.S. military excellence. The Iraqis, it notes, fought poorly and ineptly--perhaps this was simply "a lopsided fight."

The most noteworthy specimen to date, though, must be the lead Talk of the Town item in the April 14 New Yorker, in which Hendrick Hertzberg writes: "By the end of last week--even though American troops who, by all accounts, have fought honorably and without undue cruelty, were at the gates of Baghdad--it was too late for the rosy scenario of the cakewalk conservatives." We may take it, from that "undue cruelty" reference, that Mr. Hertzberg is willing to credit American troops mainly because they failed to perpetrate war crimes. It is a pronouncement worth remembering, and not for what it says about the troops.

2003-04-14T13:44:00.000-04:00

From Today's Federalist Digest

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.” --Alexander Fraser Tytler

2003-04-14T11:31:00.000-04:00

"For what feeds the tendency to fantasy is the fact of failure."

Lee Harris has a fine column. (Via Instapundit)

And this is precisely why the Bush administration must be permitted to follow through on the second part of its program—namely, the reconstruction of Iraq. For the administration understands perfectly well that the only cure for the Arab mind's penchant for fantasy is to provide it with a real and genuine achievement—and what greater achievement could there be then an Iraq that was free and stable and prosperous?

It is a bold vision—and there are times when my own deep historical pessimism tells me that it is even a utopian vision. We have seen that the people of Iraq hated the tyranny under which they lived—but the fact that men do not wish to live as slaves is, tragically, no proof that they are capable of living as free men.

2003-04-14T11:03:00.000-04:00

Scare Quotes

Scare quotes have two functions, the first of which is quite straightforward: They allow their users very easily to express incredulity about, and often contempt for, the views of their political opponents. But they also allow those users to avoid the hard work of thinking up their own descriptions of events or people or ideas. And they're parasitic: They suck all their nourishment from the host words, contributing nothing of their own. Fisk's sneer quotes--he's not as scary as he'd like to be--allow him to express his revulsion at the very notion of describing what's happening in Iraq as "liberation," but relieve him of the obligation to say just what he thinks is happening in that city. Is it (as many left-wing critics have said) a new form of colonization? Ah, but that is a claim too easily refuted, unless one wishes to stretch the term beyond all historical recognition. Is it occupation? But if so, we would need to have a conversation about the purposes of occupation, some of which can be better than others. This is all too complicated; it's so much simpler to wheel out the trusty old inverted commas.

(I have a suspicion also that many journalists, even those most addicted to the scare quote, would say that it's their job merely to report, to describe--leave it to the editorialists and news analysts to offer positive explanations. But it is surely a curious understanding of reporting that allows the journalist merely, and just typographically, to cast doubt on the claims of others, without offering any reasons for that doubt or any alternatives to those claims.)

2003-04-14T10:32:00.000-04:00

VDH - "There is something profoundly amoral about this."

I thought immediately of the macabre aftermath to the battle of Arginusae in 406 B.C. After destroying a great part of the Peloponnesian fleet in the most dramatic Athenian naval victory of the war, the popular assembly abruptly voted to execute six of their eight successful generals (the other two wisely never came back to Athens) on charges that they had failed to rescue seamen who were clinging to the wreckage.

The historian Xenophon records the feeding frenzy and shouting of the assembled throng. Forget that Sparta felt beaten and was ready for peace after such a catastrophic defeat; forget the brilliant seamanship and command of the Athenian triremes; forget that a ferocious storm had made retrieval of the dead and rescue of the missing sailors almost impossible; forget even that to try the generals collectively was contrary to Athenian law. Instead the people demanded perfection in addition to mere overwhelming success — and so in frustration devoured their own elected officials. The macabre incident was infamous in Greek history (the philosopher Socrates almost alone resisted the mob’s rule), a reminder how a society can go mad, turn on its benefactors, throw away a victory — and go on to lose the entire war.

Something like that craziness often takes hold of our own elites and media in the midst of perhaps the most brilliantly executed plan in modern American military history. Rather than inquiring how an entire country was overrun in a little over three weeks at a cost of not more than a few hundred casualties, reporters instead wail at the televised scenes of a day of looting and lawlessness.

How about a second block?

There is also a final reason that explains our demand for instantaneous perfection. It is often a trademark of successful Western societies that create such freedom and affluence to fool themselves that they are a hair’s breadth away from utopia. Journalists who pad around with palm pilots, pounds of high-tech gear, dapper clothes, and expensive educations have convinced themselves that if lesser people were as caring or as sensitive as themselves then we could all live in bliss. The subtext of the daily Western media barrage has been that if we were just smarter, more moral, or better informed, then we could liberate a country the size of California in days, not weeks, lose zero soldiers, not 110, and be instantaneously greeted by happy Iraqis who would shake hands, return to work, and quietly forget thirty years of terror as they voted in a Gandhi.

Anything less and Mssrs. Rumsfeld, Meyers, Franks, “the plan,” — somebody or something at least! — must be held accountable for the absence of utopia.

But that is a word, they should remember, that means not a “good place” but “no place” at all.

2003-04-14T10:06:00.000-04:00

Deforestation as environmental policy?

Now, I recall that Europe, esp. Britain and Germany, lost most of its forests due to fuel use in the old days. Looks like some EU types want to do it again. Do they have any idea how much area they'd need to grow enough trees to get "sustainable" wood fuel?

Using wood to tackle climate change

To combate climate change, the EU recognises both the value of replacing fossil fuel intensive materials with sustainably produced wood and the role of wood products which store carbon.

The EU actively supports an accounting approach, such as stock-change, in which wood products, analysed throughout their whole lifecycle, constitute an additional carbon sink alongside forest sinks, and stresses the need for incentives to increase the use of wood products.

Trees reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, since one cubic metre of wood absorbs one tonne of CO2. Greater use of wood products will stimulate the expansion of Europe's forests and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by substituting for fossil fuel intensive products.

Indeed, substitution brings a triple gain:
- Carbon emissions are decreased in the production process,
- Recycling rates are high
- Wood products' carbon sink increases in the longer term, so more and more carbon is removed from the atmosphere.

The Commission is examining ways to encourage these trends.

2003-04-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

Arsenic Junk Science

2003-04-12T00:10:00.000-04:00

Quick Notes:

Andrew Sullivan has a good post.

2003-04-08T12:34:00.000-04:00

John Keegan says Saddam is (was?) Inept

Saddam's war plan, if he had one, must be reckoned one of the most inept ever designed. It made no use of the country's natural defences. All advantages the defence enjoyed were thrown away even before they could be utilised.

2003-04-08T11:50:00.000-04:00

John Derbyshire says it's a VDH War

Last Friday night on Fox News there was an interview with an Arab reporter from a TV station in Abu Dhabi. What did this well-educated, well-dressed, well-spoken (in upper-class British English) Arab professional want us to hear? "Yes, we know it's over. You will win. But we want to see you bloodied. We want to see the body bags. We hope the Iraqis will make a brave last stand. This is what all Arabs want to see. Our rulers, too — all the Arab rulers. If the American casualties taking Baghdad are high, then America will think twice before doing this again. That's what we want at this point."

Mean, but rational. Subtext: "We know we can't stand up to you in battle, but we believe that if we can kill a few hundred of you, your people will be so dismayed they will leave us alone in future. Then you will not come again to establish bases on our sacred Arab land. You will not nag us about democracy and law in that tiresome way you have. You will let our despots play with their poisons, germs and isotopes in their secret laboratories out of sight, to their hearts' content. You will allow our holy warriors to plot acts of terrorism against you and your friends without interference. Perhaps you will even let us pursue our dearest dream — to drive the Jews from our precious soil once and for all. These are the things we desire from you."

Well, tough kazoolies, Mohammed. You've lost the war, and we're not in much of a mood to accommodate your delusional fantasies. You — the Arabs. "This is what all Arabs want to see." That's the shape of it in your mind, isn't it? You were at one with Saddam Hussein, weren't you? — poison gas, secret police, torture chambers, rapist sons, wars of invasion (Iran, Kuwait), and all. He was a son of a bitch, but he was your son of a bitch, wasn't he? It was the Arabs versus the Crusaders and the Jews, wasn't it? But look: As always in every modern engagement, the Arabs have lost. Lost big: We don't know the body count yet, but it's at least 100 to 1, and quite possibly 1,000 to 1. The wisdom of the late Moshe Dayan has been borne out yet again. Asked to reveal his recipe for winning wars, Dayan replied with a soldier's crisp brevity: "Fight Arabs."

2003-04-07T12:55:00.000-04:00

Worth Reading

From Andrew Sullivan.

2003-04-07T10:34:00.000-04:00

Michael Novak on Pacifists

Dear Caro Rinaldo,

The strangest disease afflicts our pacifists over here, Rinaldo, and I see by the e-mail you sent me that it afflicts Italian pacifists, too. Especially among theologians. Our pacifist theologians are always speaking of "peace," but the tone in which they write, especially of those who disagree with them, is bombastic, fiery and murderously polemical. They are not content to disagree civilly. They describe their opponents as evil, venal, and brainless. They calumniate.

2003-04-07T09:43:00.000-04:00

Bob Bartley on the Dreaded Vietnam Syndrome

It [news analysis from the Iraq war] was a perfect demonstration of how the day's news is ordered less by underlying events than by the stereotypes that journalists apply to them--with hiccups in reality switching the prevailing stereotype from short war to long war and back again. Importantly, however, the caterwaul reflected an underlying longtime stereotype, the "Vietnam syndrome."

The notion is that U.S. opinion is "fickle," ready to turn against a war at the first sight of "body bags." The notion would be bad enough merely among journalists, but it has also prevailed at the White House and Pentagon, and, still worse, among the likes of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. It is almost entirely a myth, based on a misunderstanding of both the American public and the Vietnam experience.

2003-04-05T15:12:00.000-05:00

Professors disappointed more students don't hate the USA

Via Instapundit.

"It seems the professors are more vehement than the students," Jack Morgan, a sophomore, said. "There comes a point when you wonder are you fostering a discussion or are you promoting an opinion you want students to embrace or even parrot?"

Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals, between professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more conservative student body traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Prowar groups have sprung up at Brandeis and Yale and on other campuses. One group at Columbia, where last week an antiwar professor rhetorically called for "a million Mogadishus," is campaigning for the return of R.O.T.C. to Morningside Heights.

Even in antiwar bastions like Cambridge, Berkeley and Madison, the protests have been more town than gown. At Berkeley, where Vietnam protesters shouted, "Shut it down!" under clouds of tear gas, Sproul Plaza these days features mostly solo operators who hand out black armbands. The shutdown was in San Francisco, and the crowd was grayer.

All this dismays many professors.

"We used to like to offend people," Martha Saxton, a professor of women's studies at Amherst, said as she discussed the faculty protest with students this week. "We loved being bad, in the sense that we were making a statement. Why is there no joy now?"

2003-04-04T15:00:00.000-05:00

Oil for Food, Money for Kofi

2003-04-04T11:41:00.000-05:00

Where have all the Iraqis gone?

John Keegan wants to know.

2003-04-04T11:37:00.000-05:00

Mark Steyn

Just for the record, as of yesterday morning fewer British servicemen had died in combat in Iraq than Ontarians had died of SARS. That may be one reason why Her Majesty's Governments in London and Canberra are now advising their citizens not to travel to Toronto. The Brits and Aussies are happy to take their chances in Basra and Mosul, but Hogtown? Forget it.

The bad news is SARS is spread by the ease of modern air travel. The good news is Air Canada's management is doing its best to eliminate that risk for Canadians. My linkage isn't entirely frivolous. Here's a challenge for the CBC. Why not try applying the "skepticism" - i.e., sneering condescension -- you reserve for the Pentagon to SARS and Air Canada?
...
Here's the list of places the World Health Organization has advised travellers to avoid: China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, Toronto. Spot the odd one out.

Correct: Toronto is not in Asia.

2003-04-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

Good one

A funny joke for Jay Nordlinger's column today.

The eight Saddam body doubles are gathered in one of the bunkers in downtown Baghdad. Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, comes in and says, 'I have some good news and some bad news.' They ask for the good news first.

Aziz says, 'The good news is that Saddam is still alive, so you all still have jobs.'

'And the bad news?' they ask.

Aziz replies, 'He's lost an arm.'

2003-04-04T11:03:00.000-05:00

Friday is VDH Day

Here are some excerpts, containing VDH's policy prescriptions for various nations after the war in Iraq.

The Saudis:

We should smile, profess goodwill — and then withdraw all American troops from Saudi Arabia as soon as events settle down in Iraq, reassessing in a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world our entire relationship with that medieval country. After all, we buy oil from the worst of all dictatorships in Teheran and the people there like us better than do the Saudis precisely because we are not complicit in their government. The Saudis, of course, could still catch the train as it leaves the station, close the madrassas, and join the 21st century — but it is their call, not ours.

Iran:

In the neighborhood of the battlefield, Iran is in a unique position. The illegitimate government will have to tell its own restless population why the liberation of Iraq next door is a bad thing. The unfortunate Iranians, scarred by a dirty war with Saddam Hussein, weary of mullocracy that they brought in themselves, will not be unhappy that the soldiers a decade ago who slaughtered them are losing, and the changes that are coming across the border are what they themselves want.

Syria:

Syria, the embryo of most terrorist groups and the occupier of Lebanon, still issues empty threats. For all the scary rhetoric and promises of worldwide jihad, an impotent Syria must be terrified of the consequences should it send direct aid to Saddam Hussein. It is a historical rarity that 300,000 United States troops are at last fighting an Arab dictator with 70 percent of the American people’s support — and losing far less dead than those slaughtered in one day in their sleep in a barracks in Lebanon.

2003-04-04T10:37:00.000-05:00

Peaceful Poets

It sometimes seems that, in the peace posturings of today's poets, there is an unwillingness to consider the "difficult conditions of human freedom." That is, to consider the consequences of inaction.

2003-04-04T09:57:00.000-05:00

Pete du Pont on Racial Preferences

If there are to be race-based preferences, who gets to pick the minorities that get the preference? In the 1978 Bakke case, which involved University of California medical students, Asian-Americans were included in the preference class; at Michigan they are not. The 14th Amendment would not seem to give state university admissions officials the power to make such decisions, but that is what Michigan demands.

And if race-based preferences are constitutional in university admissions, may there be race-based preferences in other areas--for job applications, juror selection or the election of state legislators?

Deval Patrick, President Clinton's assistant attorney general for civil rights, argued in 1997 that "our success as an American democracy is going to depend on our ability . . . to set aside our preoccupation with some of the differences between us. We are not going to learn to do that by balkanizing ourselves into separate groups."

One would think that he was arguing against the kind of racial preferences the University of Michigan uses. He wasn't, of course. But his argument--as opposed to his conclusion--makes sense.

If race-conscious admissions policies are permitted, legal scholar Douglas Kmiec has argued, the next step may be to require them by characterizing their absence as a form of discrimination. And if preferences are acceptable to increase the proportion of certain minorities admitted, why not to decrease it? Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen asked in January whether the Asian population at Harvard would have to be held to the 3.6% of the population Asians represent. And what about Jewish overrepresentation? "They amount to less than 2 percent of the population," Cohen wrote, "yet one estimate has them at 21 percent of Harvard's undergraduate class."

2003-04-03T11:01:00.000-05:00

"When the Iraqis fire... I don't know how to say this politely.. but they just can't aim. Whenever they start to shoot, it just never seems to hit where it's supposed to. And when Americans start firing, enemy fire is immediately suppressed." MSNBC's Chip Reid, live from Iraq, today. Via Command Post.

2003-04-02T15:55:00.000-05:00

Axis of Evil Economics

Europe is undoubtedly currently divided. Some countries — the U.K. and Spain come to mind — support the U.S. while France, Germany, and Belgium do not. What do those who oppose the U.S. have most in common? That question might arouse hours of debate amongst political scientists, but not economists. There is a striking and significant difference between countries that support us and those that do not. The countries that do not support us have terrible economies, and have had terrible economies for a long time. Weasels they may be, but "axis of losers" may be a more precise moniker.
...
In Schroeder’s Germany, for example, an unemployed worker can probably sue if he is fired, and receives unemployment benefits for 32 months after that. No wonder the unemployment rate is above 11%.
...
As clearly evidenced by Schroeder’s speech, Old Europe embraced the view of capitalism formulated by Italian marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci viewed liberal democracy and capitalism as an edifice designed to benefit the privileged at the expense of the oppressed. The privileged control the oppressed by indoctrination into a belief system that reinforces the oppression. A key first step to social justice is the destruction of the capitalist belief system, to fight the view that capitalism, as practiced by the Americans, can ever lead to just outcomes.

Ah, just read the whole thing.

2003-04-02T15:21:00.000-05:00

"Europeans are antiwar, but they are pro-commerce."

That's from Instapundit.

Here's one more, also via Instapundit, on "Global Balkinization."

2003-04-02T14:21:00.000-05:00

Oh, I have to do this...

Scrappleface is just too damn funny...

2003-04-02T13:43:00.000-05:00

Update: Who Armed Saddam?

Based on the SIPRI data I blogged before [#91776244], this blogger (Solport) made a chart illustrating who armed Saddam. Read his comments also.

2003-04-02T11:15:00.000-05:00

Kathleen Parker on Lt. Gen. Wallace

The quote du jour, attributed to Lt. Gen. William Wallace, commander of U.S. Army ground forces, and simultaneously repeated in Time magazine, The New York Times (compliments of columnist Maureen Dowd), and a scattering of other newspapers that picked up the original wire story, went like this:

"The enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against," he reportedly said. Well, yes, that seems true enough. So what? Soldiers train to fight other soldiers, not children or disguise artists or cowards strapped with bombs. But that's not how Wallace's purloined statement is meant to be understood.

As framed by Dowd, it was intended to bolster the position that the United States is simply clueless in this war, the implication being that since we were wrong about "Iraqi resistance," we're wrong about everything else. Dowd's parenthetical -"No doubt, that truthful heads up will earn General Wallace a slap down" -is surely unlikely.

I suspect Wallace's military footing is secure. Moreover, his statement, while true within the context of the moment, is hardly the sum total of his thoughts. Here's what else he said several days earlier:

"I don't think we'll know until we get in contact with them," he said when asked whether Iraqi soldiers would fight or surrender. And this: "We've got no business to underestimate this enemy. He's cagey, he's foxy, and he's going to fight."

That doesn't sound like a man who is going to be shocked or surprised. Rather only certain members of the media seem to be. Other Americans, notably soldiers and their families, seem to have far greater equilibrium in the face of war than do their interviewers.

I wish she'd linked to the source. Maybe I can track it down.

2003-04-02T11:07:00.000-05:00

Interesting Walter Williams Article

The topic is big bloated federal programs without Constitutional authority.

2003-04-02T10:51:00.000-05:00

Mogadishu Redux?

Max Boot doesn't think so.

The endgame--the liberation of Baghdad--will not be easy or bloodless but it is doable. Saddam may think he can repeat "Black Hawk Down" on a larger scale but he is almost certainly mistaken. U.S. forces had no trouble securing Mogadishu in 1992. The problems occurred in 1993 after the bulk of U.S. troops had gone home and a small contingent of commandos was sent to chase a warlord. U.S. forces achieved their objective but at a cost of 18 lives, because they lacked armor and air support. In the battle of Baghdad there will be no such lack.

But... will it be another Vietnam!?

2003-04-02T10:47:00.000-05:00

Foreign Correspondents

A theme today in the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Johnathan Last at the Weekly Standard has this take on the CENTCOM briefings.

Over at NRO, Michael Novak has a similar theme: "To me and my friends in America, most of the European press seems to be living on Venus. They think we live on Mars. We don't see reality the same way."

2003-04-02T10:31:00.000-05:00

Would We Have Won the World Wars with 24/7 Coverage?

Britain's Foreign Minister Jack Straw wonders.

Speaking to the Newspaper Society's annual conference, he added: "Yet even in the 20th century, a combination of delay and censorship have helped governments to suppress the truth. The innocent volunteers and conscripts of 1914 knew nothing of the war of attrition lying in wait in Flanders.

"Had the public been able to see live reports from the trenches, I wonder for how long the governments of Asquith and Lloyd George could have maintained the war effort. Imagine the carnage of the Somme on Sky and BBC News 24."

The same would have held true in the Second World War, he added. "It is also worth speculating how much harder it might have been to maintain the country's morale after Dunkirk had live reports confronted the public with the brutal reality of German tactical and military superiority.

"Could the 'spirit of Dunkirk', so important to national survival, have withstood the scrutiny of 24-hour live news?"

2003-04-01T11:15:00.000-05:00

Phyllis Schlafly on Higher Ed.

She rails against low standards, taxpayer subsidies that result in 5 and 6 year long Bachelor's Degrees...

Getting a bachelor's degree now takes five or six years instead of the traditional four. That drives up the already exorbitant cost another 25 percent to 50 percent more than you may have budgeted. Yet your degree isn't worth one penny more.

Only 31 percent of students at state institutions and 65 percent at private institutions graduate in four years. The primary reason for this slowdown is the easy flow of taxpayer money for grants and loans that make the extended stay pleasant for students and profitable for the institutions.

And Women's Studies...

College publications brag about their women's studies departments, but they fail to warn students that there are few job opportunities for those with a degree or a concentration in women's studies, except at the declining feminist organizations and their nonprofit bureaucracies.

The Independent Women's Forum surveyed 89 women's studies majors and discovered that all but 18 were earning less than $30,000 per year, and 8 reported no personal income at all. In interviews with prospective employers, many found it useful to conceal or de-emphasize their women's studies majors.

Maybe women's studies majors didn't really expect to get a good job because they have been taught to approach life as a whining victim who will never get equal treatment. Women's studies courses openly teach the ideology that American women are oppressed by a male-dominated society and that the road to liberation is abortion, divorce, the rejection of marriage and motherhood, and unmarried sex of all varieties.

2003-04-01T10:34:00.000-05:00

David Frum on Moving the Goalposts

There are doomsters and defeatists out there who keep insisting that the U.S. and its allies can only claim victory if they meet an ever-lengthening list of conditions:

"The allies win ONLY IF they (1) overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime and (2) find Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and (3) do so with minimal casualties and (4) also with minimal Iraqi casualties while (5) being hailed and welcomed by the Iraqi population and (6) without upsetting Arab public opinion too much also (7) without irritating the European allies too much and now (8) without any alterations of their original plan." In other words, allied success can be discounted if along the way the allies make any adjustment of their plans to circumstances.

If we accepted this remarkable principle, we would have to conclude that though the Allies appear to have defeated Germany and Japan reasonably decisively, they actually lost World War II on points.

2003-04-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

VDH

"Confidence in victory is never as strong as despair on rumors of quagmire. The stronger our military, the more likely grow the doubts of our elites."

2003-04-01T10:21:00.000-05:00

Who Armed Saddam?

Hint: not the USA. Found at the Command Post

Links: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Note that the US is number 11. Russia, France, and China are the top 3. Bear this in mind for the "But we armed Saddam!" argument.

From the SPRI link: (formatting altered slightly for readability)


IRAQI ARMS IMPORTS 1973-2002		

COUNTRY			$(Millions)	%

USSR			25145		57

France			5595		13

China			5192		12

Czechoslovakia		2880		7

Poland			1681		4

Brazil			724		2

Egypt			568		1

Romania			524		1

Denmark			226		1

Libya			200		1

USA			200		1

South Africa		192		0

Austria			190		0

Switzerland		151		0

Yugoslavia		107		0

Germany (FRG)		84		0

Italy			84		0

UK			79		0

Hungary			30		0

Spain			29		0

E. Germany (GDR)	25		0

Canada			7		0

Jordan			2		0

TOTALS			43915		100

2003-03-28T15:18:00.000-05:00

BBC Honcho Denies Bias

at a meeting of Media Workers Against the War. And he was denying they have a pro-war bias. Wow - reality has left the building.

2003-03-28T12:07:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan has a point

Read up on Former President Clinton's attitude about Iraq.

2003-03-28T11:16:00.000-05:00

Jewish Tradition that Supports the War

Send this to Liv!

Maimonides identifies two categories of justifiable warfare. There is the war which is a divine "commandment," including to save the nation "from the hand of the enemy that has come upon them." This requires no approval from other branches of government. There is also the category of war called "optional," driven by a need to ensure the future safety and prosperity of the country. The Talmud depicts the Biblical King David as making war against corrupt neighbors to provide his country, in danger of starvation, with sufficient sustenance (tractate Berachot, page 3b). This is not theft, but a matter of survival.

In an "optional" war, the king needs the approval of his legislative branch, the Sanhedrin of 71 expert sages. But with this approval secured, he may go to war to enlarge the nation's borders, or to pursue "greatness" and "reputation." Such a "reputation" is a defensive strategy. When other countries cease to regard your nation with awe, for instance if it tolerates violence against its citizens, this invites disrespect, which invites physical attack.

2003-03-28T11:04:00.000-05:00

VDH has the cure for media doomsaying

Maybe he should run for President?

Indeed, the only wrinkle is that our present military faces cultural obstacles never envisioned by an Epaminondas, Caesar, Marlborough, Sherman — or any of the other great marchers. A globally televised and therapeutic culture puts an onus on American soldiers that could never have been envisioned by any of the early captains. We treat prisoners justly; our enemy executes them. We protect Iraqi bridges, oil, and dams — from Iraqi saboteurs. We must treat Iraqi civilians better than do their own men, who are trying to kill them. Our generals and leaders take questions; theirs give taped propaganda speeches. Shock and awe — designed not to kill but to stun, and therefore to save civilians — are slurred as Hamburg and Dresden. The force needed to crush Saddam’s killers is deemed too much for the fragile surrounding human landscape. Marines who raise the Stars and Stripes are reprimanded for being too chauvinistic. And on, and on, and on.

When this is all over — and I expect it will be soon — besides a great moral accounting, I hope that there will deep introspection and sober public discussion about the peculiar ignorance and deductive pessimism on the part of our elites. In the meantime, all we can insist on is absolute and unconditional surrender — no peace process, no exit strategy, no U.N. votes, no Arab League parley, no EU expressions of concern, no French, no anything but our absolute victory and Saddam’s utter ruin. Unlike in 1991, commanders in the field must be given explicit instructions from the White House about negotiations: There are to be absolutely none — other than the acceptance of unconditional surrender.

2003-03-27T15:37:00.000-05:00

Larry Elder

Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, born a slave, once offered a lesson in patriotism. In 1859, he fled for his life, accused erroneously of participating in the raid on Harper's Ferry, along with John Brown.

Director-producer-writer Ron Maxwell ("Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals") notes that, in 1860, Douglass spoke in Glasgow, Scotland, where, prior to his address, a radical antislavery leader delivered a scathing attack not just on slavery, but on all things American.

Despite his experience of brutality and dehumanization, Douglass, nevertheless, criticized the previous speaker. "He who stands before a British audience to denounce anything peculiarly American in connection with slavery," said Douglass, "has a very marked and decided advantage. It is not hard to believe the very worst of any country where a system like slavery has existed for centuries. This feeling towards everything American is very natural and very useful. I refer to it now not to condemn it, but to remind you that it is just possible that this feeling may be carried to too great length." He gave a detailed analysis of the American Constitution. Despite America's flaws, Douglass said, America stands unique in comparison to all other nations with its Constitution even with America's failure to live up to it.

2003-03-27T15:25:00.000-05:00

George WIll on Sen. Moynihan

For calling attention, four decades ago, to the crisis of the African-American family--26 percent of children were being born out of wedlock--he was denounced as a racist by lesser liberals. Today the percentage among all Americans is 33, among African-Americans 69, and family disintegration, meaning absent fathers, is recognized as the most powerful predictor of most social pathologies.

At the U.N. he witnessed that institution's inanity (as in its debate about the threat to peace posed by U.S. forces in the Virgin Islands, at that time 14 Coast Guardsmen, one shotgun, one pistol) and its viciousness (the resolution condemning Zionism as racism). Striving to move America ``from apology to opposition,'' he faulted U.S. foreign policy elites as ``decent people, utterly unprepared for their work.''

Their ``common denominator, apart from an incapacity to deal with ideas, was a fear of making a scene, a form of good manners that is a kind of substitute for ideas.'' Except they did have one idea, that ``the behavior of other nations, especially the developing nations, was fundamentally a reaction to the far worse behavior of the United States.''

2003-03-27T14:11:00.000-05:00

Old Liberalism, R.I.P.: Daniel Patrick Moynihan did not die alone.

"In the early 1960s in Washington," Moynihan reflected, "we thought we could do anything. . . The central psychological proposition of liberalism is that for every problem there is a solution." Early on Moynihan came to understand the "fatal flaw" of liberalism: "Wishing so many things so," he wrote 30 years ago, "we all too readily come to think them not only possible, which they very likely are, but also near at hand, which is seldom the case."

Why "seldom the case"? Because human nature and human society are more complicated and less susceptible to easy government remedies than our optimistic liberalism had led us to believe. But when the news started coming in during the mid-1960s that our problems were not going to be easily solved with another billion dollar program, many liberals reacted badly, often lashing out at the messenger. "Liberalism faltered when it turned out it could not cope with truth," Moynihan observed.

At the same time liberalism began to experience its harsh limits in the 1960s, the rising generational revolt spawned a new political culture, apocalyptic in tone, "that rewarded the articulation of moral purpose more than the achievement of practical good." To the morally pure mind of the protest Left in the 1960s, if you expressed any doubt about immediately ending poverty, racism, and war, then you were a Bad Person. This was the beginning of "the politics of personal destruction." Liberalism came, in Moynihan's words, to have "the ability to immediately dissolve every statement of fact into a question of motive." Moynihan himself was one of the first victims of this new political culture, even though he never stopped trying to refine social policy to serve liberal ends.

In practical everyday terms this not only means that you will demonize your opponents in the most personal way ("Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"), but it also rules out compromise with the opposition. The Clintons brought this attitude with them to Washington. Clinton could have had comprehensive health care reform in 1994 if he had been willing to compromise with Republicans in Congress. But Clinton wouldn't even compromise with Moynihan, who was then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. In Clinton's very first week in office in 1993, a senior White House aide was quoted (anonymously) in Time magazine about Moynihan: "He's not one of us . . . we'll roll right over him if we have to."

He's not one of us. The phrase speaks volumes.

2003-03-27T13:33:00.000-05:00

John Keegan

Will trying to avoid civilian casualties cause more deaths? Read his essay.

2003-03-26T11:49:00.000-05:00

Depleted Uranium

I watched the Centcom briefing this morning, and I think 2 or 3 reporters - a French one and maybe a Brit - asked about our use of depleted uranium munitions. There is a theory out there that DU munitions are an insidious health threat (what munition isn't?) due to the radioactive nature of uranium. This article explains the facts of the case. Bottom line: no proven danger; and significant evidence of little to no danger.

The World Health Organization agrees that DU is not a great health risk. Its 2003 fact sheet on the topic declares that "because DU is only weakly radioactive, very large amounts of dust (on the order of grams) would have to be inhaled for the additional risk of lung cancer to be detectable in an exposed group. Risks for other radiation-induced cancers, including leukaemia, are considered to be very much lower than for lung cancer." Another WHO report found, "The radiological hazard is likely to be very small. No increase of leukemia or other cancers has been established following exposure to uranium or DU."

What about those military reports [which report no ill effects of DU]? Dan Fahey, a former naval officer who served in the first Gulf War and is a long-time anti-DU activist, asserts that Defense Department spokespeople "have lied about the health of US Gulf War veterans exposed to DU and exaggerated the importance of DU rounds." What was the alleged lie? The Pentagon has said that no veterans in a small follow-up study of Gulf War soldiers who had been exposed to DU have contracted cancer. Fahey cites a memo that states that one veteran who had been recently added to the study has had lymphatic cancer. Fahey does acknowledge that "it is possible that this veteran's cancer is not linked to his confirmed exposure to DU."

Fahey thinks the Pentagon exaggerates the importance of DU munitions and points out that DU rounds probably took out only one-seventh of the Iraqi tanks destroyed during the first Gulf War. But Fahey also admits that there is very little evidence that DU is severely toxic. He also refutes other activists' alarmist claims that civilians have been severely harmed by depleted uranium. "There are no credible studies linking exposure to DU with any cancers or illnesses among people in Iraq, the Balkans, or Afghanistan," he declares.

If DU is not notably harmful to human health or the environment, why the fierce opposition to it? A lot of it has to do with conventional anti-nuclear activism: Some people automatically object to anything that hints of nuclear radiation. Second, some of the opposition is the result of a successful Iraqi disinformation campaign claiming that exposure to DU had caused thousands of cancers and birth defects to innocent civilians. When the WHO offered to investigate the claims, Iraqi officials flatly refused the offer. Other than trying to gain international sympathy, Pentagon officials argue that one of the real aims of the Iraqi campaign was to get DU munitions outlawed internationally so they would not have to face them again.

2003-03-26T11:03:00.000-05:00

Sowell on Public Education

It is bad enough when someone takes the position that he has made up his mind and doesn't want to be confused by the facts. It is worse when someone else makes up his mind for him and then he dismisses any facts to the contrary by attributing bad motives to those who present those facts.

Creating mindless followers is one of the most dangerous things that our public schools are doing. Young people who know only how to vent their emotions, and not how to weigh opposing arguments through logic and evidence, are sitting ducks for the next talented demagogue who comes along in some cult or movement, including movements like those that put the Nazis in power in Germany.

2003-03-26T10:45:00.000-05:00

The UN's "Moral Authority"

From Jay Nordlinger's column today.

Anyway, here is President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, on March 8 (before the beginning of the war, obviously). Consider the source, as we say:

"They [US and coalition partners] should act when they are right to act because the Security Council can be wrong. It was wrong in Rwanda. . . . You might avoid war and have a worse situation. . . . That is why I was giving a comparison with our case. People avoided a war or doing very much and it ended up with a genocide."

2003-03-26T10:33:00.000-05:00

George Will

One of the best. Good line: "It is the conservatives' vocation to prepare the public to be comfortable with imperfection."

2003-03-26T10:25:00.000-05:00

Democracy not "mobocracy"

Mental note: send this to Olivia!

2003-03-26T10:19:00.000-05:00

Glenn Reynolds on the "New Class"

I can't help but notice that anti-Americanism, and the various manifestations of what some have called Transnational Progressivism, are most common among people who, well, have state-supported managerial or intellectual jobs, the people who made up what Milovan Djilas and others called the "New Class" of bureaucrats and managers in the old Communist world. Not surprisingly, the New Class was deeply concerned with matters of status and position, and deeply opposed to things that might have led to competition on merit. There's nothing new about such a view, which predated communism: As David Levy and Sandra Peart note, it's an attitude that even in the nineteenth century was characteristic of anti-capitalists and anti-semites - and, nowadays, there's a lot of overlap between anti-capitalists, anti-semites, and anti-Americans.

A common thread among anti-semitism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Americanism is the fear of being outdone by people willing to work harder. It's not surprising that such a fear exists among a disproportionate number of those who take state-supported jobs. It's thus not surprising, then, that New Class sensibilities are so often anti-American and anti-capitalist, and increasingly (or perhaps I should say, once again) anti-Semitic, too. The New Class, in this regard, as in many others, is like the old haut-bourgeoisie.

2003-03-26T10:15:00.000-05:00

Ralph Peters

I like this guy's analysis. He wants more armor in the field and things the Pentagon made a mistake in this respect. Maybe he's right. We'll see.

2003-03-24T15:06:00.000-05:00

Cool Slide Show

http://herald-sun.com/nationworld/14-333618.html

2003-03-24T12:07:00.000-05:00

Winning Big

2003-03-24T11:31:00.000-05:00

Anglosphere:End of transnational illusion?

By James Bennett. Good read as well.

2003-03-24T09:57:00.000-05:00

Even more VDH

Wow. He outdid himself today. Read this and re-read it.

2003-03-23T21:37:00.000-05:00

More Victor Davis Hanson

According to [Arab rulers'] stereotypes of us, we will tire of all this dirty war, throw up our hands, and finally go home.

And there is a depressing predictability even about the more successful conventional wars of the Middle East, whether we examine the Israeli-Arab conflicts, the first Gulf War or the decades of conflicts in Lebanon.

An exasperated West - hit by assassinations and bombings, wearied by the shouts of "Death to America," witnessing monotonous goose-stepping of the Republican Guard or Martyrs Brigade - finally in exasperation sends in the troops. Arab armies flee. Peace is begged for and given.

Armistices are then broken. Past defeat is transmogrified into victory; terrorism renews - and suddenly Roman numerals are needed to identify the next war.

2003-03-21T11:24:00.000-05:00

Victor Davis Hanson

I love this guy's writing.

Try the pope and the Catholic Church. It has forgotten its mistaken warnings about the first Gulf War. Had we followed the pope's advice of nonintervention then, Iraq would now be sitting on half of the world's oil reserves, armed with nuclear weapons, and unrepentant about the killings of thousands of Kuwaitis.
...
Perhaps instead we can look to preeminent citizens of the world, such as Nobel Peace laureates? Ignore past embarrassments like the killer Yasser Arafat and note that the two most courageous — Elie Wiesel and Lech Walesa — are both support liberating Iraq. Why, then, should we listen to the newly canonized Jimmy Carter — who has a long record of parlaying with dictators and failing in diplomatic initiatives (from the Iranian hostage crisis to the Korean nuclear fiasco) — to say nothing of campaigning for the award on the widely praised strategy of ankle-biting a current American president in time of war? This was a leader, after all, who sought to "scare" the Iranian mullahs in 1979 by shipping F-15s to Saudi Arabia — all, of course, "unarmed."

2003-03-21T11:17:00.000-05:00

Interesting discussion at Samizdata

2003-03-21T09:56:00.000-05:00

Centcom's Website

It's www.centcom.mil. Here's Gen. Franks message to the troops.

2003-03-21T09:44:00.000-05:00

John Fund Skewers Moore

2003-03-19T16:04:00.000-05:00

Hans Blix is a Fag

In the wussy sense, not the homosexual sense. The mush-mouthed, muddy-thinking, panty-waist variety of person, who would kowtow to any bully or thug. The kind of person who could say this crap:

Asked whether he believed Saddam would use such [chem/bio] weapons, if he has them, Blix said: "I think they would be able if the weapons were there -- and I'm not saying they are. And I'm not saying that they have means of delivery -- but they could have it. ... But I doubt that they would have the will to do it."

And this was the chief weapons inspector? "I'm not sure, but if I were, I doubt I would be."

2003-03-19T15:43:00.000-05:00

Fifth Column Alert

From the Center for Consumer Freedom's email newsletter today. [empahsis added]

---- SPECIAL REPORT: Eco-Terror Leader Declares War On America ----
Craig Rosebraugh, the enigmatic environmental anarchist whose tenure as the public face of the terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF) was marked by millions of dollars in violent property destruction, a sizable financial gift from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and a penchant for hiding behind the Fifth Amendment, has declared war on America.

Fresh from his appearance at Cal State Fresno's "Revolutionary Environmentalism" conference, Rosebraugh has penned a manifesto calling for anti-war protesters to carry out "direct actions" against the American government, military installations, multinational corporations, financial institutions, urban centers, and broadcast television networks.

Like the ELF, Rosebraugh has no use for peaceful protests, calling them "pointless, and perhaps even counterproductive." Instead, he prefers an activist plan that, quite literally, terrorizes America into withdrawing troops from the Persian Gulf.

"An atmosphere of severe unrest," Rosebraugh wrote on Monday, "if manufactured properly, will force the U.S. government to place military resources in the streets of the United States, will threaten the economy... and ultimately create a political atmosphere unfavorable for Bush to continue on with the war."

How to manufacture this sort of atmosphere? Rosebraugh articulates the following seven-point plan (in his own words) for would-be members of his hate-America terrorist brigade:

"Attack the financial centers of the country... physically shut down financial centers which regulate and assist the functioning of [the] U.S. economy."

"Large scale urban rioting [so that] the U.S. government will be forced to send U.S. troops into the domestic arena thereby taking resources and political focus away from the war... Rioting should be focused on governmental agencies and corporations."

"Attack the media centers of the country... Using any means necessary, shut down the national networks of NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc. Not just occupations but actually engage in strategies and tactics which knock the networks off the air." (emphasis added)

"Spread the battle to the... very heads of government and U.S. corporations... Hit them in their personal lives, visit their homes."

"Make it known publicly that this movement DOES NOT support U.S. troops... Create an atmosphere lacking of support to assist U.S. troops at home and abroad in losing their morale and will to fight."

"Actively target U.S. military establishments within the United States... use any means necessary to slow down the functioning of the [U.S. military]." (emphasis added)

"[S]trike hard and fast and retreat in anonymity. Select another location, strike again hard and fast and quickly retreat in anonymity... Do not get caught. DO NOT GET CAUGHT. Do not get sent to jail. Stay alert, keep active, and keep fighting."

Rosebraugh implies over and over that the anti-war movement simply hasn't gone far enough. He clearly wants to take the ELF's terror tactics -- honed during attacks on logging companies, new home builders, and the Vail ski lodge -- and direct them at the federal government itself.

Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said yesterday that intelligence on homegrown terror groups influenced his decision to raise America to the "code orange" alert level on Monday. "[R]egional extremist organizations and ad hoc groups or disgruntled individuals may use this time period to conduct terrorist attacks against the United States," he told reporters during a Tuesday press conference.

In a poignant Washington Times book review of a Unabomber biography, Fresno State University's Bruce Thorton argued on Sunday that we may one day fall prey to "a homegrown terrorism driven by debased myths and shop-worn ideas."

"The war against terrorism," Thornton added, "has more fronts than we think."

2003-03-19T14:53:00.000-05:00

One More at National Review.

The Exhausting Pursuit of Peace: A problem with just-war theory today. By Joseph Loconte

2003-03-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

All Kinds of Good Stuff Today

As befits the momentous nature of this day, D-Day for Saddam, (D as in Dead, that is), there is a wealth of really good opinion pieces on the web today worth noting. Here's a quick rundown on what I've liked so far, in the major websites.

The War Against America by Andrew Thompson, former minister in the Australian government under PM John Howard. Good perspective on the age old question, "Why do they hate us?" His answer: we're big, we're good, and we're damn successful. And they are less so.

Democrats Against Democracy by Lawrence Kaplan. The whole thing is worth reading, but here is a relevant passage:

At the simplest level, it [Democratic and liberal opposition to trying to bring democracy to the Mideast] derives less from opposition to President Bush's foreign policy than from opposition to its architect. But the looming war has also unearthed a contradiction at the heart of American liberalism. The contradiction pits the liberal ideal that no people ought to be governed without their consent--and its admonition to support the democratic aspirations of foreign peoples--against the liberal ideal that discourages impinging on the autonomy of others. The tension between the two manifests itself every time America goes to war, with liberals who heeded George McGovern's summons to "come home, America" arguing that we have no right to violate the sovereignty of a Yugoslavia or an Iraq, while the descendants of Woodrow Wilson argue that to do otherwise would amount to a betrayal of liberalism.

This notion of a contradiction in liberalism is similar to a point made by Lee Harris in this essay, Our World-Historical Gamble, which I blogged before. It's worth reading if you haven't already. The section I'm talking about is part 4. To summarize, the liberal notion of a world body made up of inviolable, sovereign nations which will keep the peace, will in fact keep alive despotic regimes that will trample the liberal notion of individual freedom and the rule of law. "Self-determination at the level of the nation state may entail complete loss of freedom and dignity at the level of the individual - and all in the name of liberalism."

Another article on OpinionJournal.com, by Claudia Rosett, has a similar theme. Again, worth reading in its entirety.

National Review has lots of interesting material today as well. William Hawkins talks about the "Vietnam Syndrome," but not in the way you night think someone would. He makes a point that, if you read Victor Davis Hanson's books, you'll be familiar with. Wars end when one side is defeated and the other wins. Not before. In Vietnam, we had a famous "peace" agreement, right? Well...

The Hanoi regime had signed a piece of paper, but had not changed its outlook. The Paris Accords even allowed North Vietnamese troops to remain in those parts of South Vietnam they had seized. With American ground troops subsequently withdrawn and U.S. aid to South Vietnam curtailed, Hanoi was able to launch a successful ground offensive only two years later. The war only ended when one side was destroyed. Tragically, it was Saigon that was subjected to a regime change.

Hanoi bought time. So has Saddam. Until W. made up his mind, that is.

There are also two good pieces on antiwar types - one describing the moral relativists, and one on the anti-Americans. And David Frum rips into Buchananite types, whom he dubs "unpatriotic conservatives."

And finally, John Derbyshire rephrases the old question "Why do they hate us?" into "Why do they misunderstand us?" And, to be fair, he includes the question "Why do we misunderstand them?"

2003-03-18T14:35:00.000-05:00

Steyn on Rumsfeld

Priceless stuff. Via Little Green Footballs.

2003-03-18T12:55:00.000-05:00

The Anglosphere Cometh

Good read here. Linked via Instapundit. Check this out:

I have never tried to claim a moral legitimacy for the Anglosphere nations to speak for the world. What they do have is a moral legitimacy to speak for their own peoples. This is conferred by the boring but to date irreplaceable method of an unbroken record of functioning representative constitutional institutions stretching back centuries.

To say that a community of nations with these experiences in common might be able to form a better basis for cooperation than the grab-bag of democracies, semi-democracies, semi-evolving totalitarian and authoritarian states, outright kleptocracies and failed states ... is not arrogance. It is simply reality.

2003-03-18T11:57:00.000-05:00

Light Rail

Did I already link to this? Can't remember, so here it is again. Good stuff

2003-03-18T09:36:00.000-05:00

Containment Dispelled

An interesting point raised in today's WSJ.

We know that if nothing else Saddam and al Qaeda share the common goal of punishing the U.S. and driving us from the Mideast. In his famous 1998 fatwa endorsing the murder of Americans, "civilian and military alike," Osama bin Laden mentioned two main complaints: First, that U.S. troops were deployed on the Islamic holy land of Arabia, and second that U.S. planes continued to bomb Iraq while enforcing the U.N.'s no-fly zones.

Osama's jihad--and therefore September 11 itself--is in other words one direct consequence of the past 12 years of U.S. "containment" of Saddam. Without his continuing threat, American troops would not need to be stationed in Saudi Arabia and U.S. fighters would not still patrol the skies over Iraq. While fretting about the costs of going to Baghdad, those who favor a policy of sanctions and diplomacy have never been honest about the real costs of containment.

Here's a good zinger: "The U.N. cannot defend them [peaceful people] in a crisis, and the French will gladly sell the ammunition to the tyrant who shoots them."

2003-03-17T10:49:00.000-05:00

The New Arab Way of War

Interesting stuff here.

2003-03-17T10:40:00.000-05:00

BOOM!

It begins.

2003-03-12T16:48:00.000-05:00

Somewhat depressed today

Resolve can be difficult to sustain in times like these. Will we attack Iraq is only part of the question - will the West survive, or shall it decline until... who knows what insidious form of tyranny can replace it? Reading this article at Weekly Standard, I don't find this bit of wisdom, from Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, very encouraging:

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline of courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

"Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

"Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?"

He said that in 1978. Can courage make a comeback?

"Today's Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove his every step is well founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints."

Sounds like the UN holding back President Bush to me. Events in recent days are not filling me with confidence - we're holding a vote, we're delaying the vote, deadline March 17, or maybe April 17, Britain is backing out, Tony Blair is hanging tough. Well, what is it already?

Saddam's undoubtedly winning the PR war, as Kathleen Parker points out.

Yet, the United States and Britain bizarrely have become the bad guys in this perverse game of international chicken. We're the ones forced to justify our demands for Iraqi compliance rather than Saddam being forced to comply. Confronted with such illogic and its frightening contagion, one begins to feel confused. To doubt one's instincts. To question what is true.

Yeah, that's me today. Parker continues:

For the most part, we are a reasonable and fair-minded people and as such tend to project our values onto others. Good people, because they are good, tend to believe in the goodness of others. Likewise people of conscience tend to assume conscience in others. But people of conscience are always at a disadvantage with psychopaths.

Thus it requires a suspension of belief in others' goodness in order to interact with those who have declared themselves our enemies. To deal with Saddam, one must accept not only that he is evil, but also understand that he is mad.

In the battle of wills, Saddam is clearly winning. As is Kim Jong Il, if the comments of Teddy Kennedy and his ilk are any indication. As for our courage, I hope the man in the Oval Office hasn't lost his. But so many people here have, I wonder how long it can last.

2003-03-11T14:29:00.000-05:00

Heavy Duty

Read this - it's mind-blowing. Via Instapundit.

2003-03-10T11:25:00.000-05:00

Kerry has his cake and eats it too

Talk about triangulation! He's setting himself up so that he can say he supported Bush if Iraq is a success, and if it goes badly he can say "I told you so." I find his statements quite disgusting, honestly.

I think it's time for a law which requires anyone running for the Presidency to resign any and all public offices before running. Might make people think about it a little harder if they have to quit their day jobs - especially real secure ones like Kerry's seat in my home state of Massachusetts.

2003-03-10T11:14:00.000-05:00

"He meant very few things he said but he said them very well"

Andrew Sullivan on President Clinton. The whole piece is worth reading.

2003-03-10T10:35:00.000-05:00

Amen

Larry Miller on what's coming up next. It really sums up how a lot of us Bush supporters feel.

What's about to happen in Iraq, and what's going to continue to happen in the rest of the world for many years to come is as serious as life gets, and I'm scared. Any sane person must be. I respect those who sincerely disagree with an armed invasion of Iraq. But I support our administration and our soldiers on the job they're going to do. I think they're going to liberate a country, defend their own, and continue to crack the ice on the pathology of cruel, authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.

But our people and theirs are going to die. If I'm wrong, then part of the responsibility for those lives is on my shoulders, because I supported it. We may all, someday, God forbid, be victims of related attacks, but soon, over there, others will be paying the price first. Please, God, let it be a price worth paying.

2003-03-10T10:08:00.000-05:00

Quick Notes

The Journal of Obvious Results

Jeff Jacoby on gay marriage in the Boston Globe

Philip Bobbit on Iraq, in the NYT.

2003-03-06T13:43:00.000-05:00

Think the Unthinkable - Mark Steyn

"'War without the UN is unthinkable,'declared Polly Toynbee, grande dame of Britain's Guardian, to Peter Cuthbertson of the Conservative Commentary web site the other day. But why? Why is it 'unthinkable?' Why not try thinking about it just to see where it takes you? No doubt, to Polly's mind, September 11 was also unthinkable. But it happened nonetheless. These days, everything's thinkable, everything's up for grabs. But once you recoil from the unthinkable, it's all too easy to slump back into the unthinking."

Here's another money quote: "The argument of the wise old birds and the EU and the Arab League is that a resolution of the Palestinian question is the key to a stable Middle East that somehow creating another backward repressive sewer state on a tiny sliver of the West Bank would transform the map from Algeria to Pakistan."

2003-03-06T13:11:00.000-05:00

Leaflets dropped on Iraq

Check these out. Direct and to the point. Accurate too, which is refreshing for propaganda.

2003-03-06T11:48:00.000-05:00

Area Man Seeks Confrontation, Gets One, Part II

The Smoking Gun has the complaint against that Albany T-Shirt Guy. Apparently our pacifist friends who "were just wearing t-shirts" had actually gotten themselves in disputes with other customers, thus drawing attention to themselves. Now, one could suppose that the peaceniks did not initiate any confrontations, but... Let's just say, when was the last time you met an activist who could keep his mouth shut? Wouldn't be much of an activist now, would he?

2003-03-06T11:05:00.000-05:00

The Giant Sucking Sound

2003-03-06T10:53:00.000-05:00

Thomas Sowell has some interesting demographic data

His thesis is that as affluent urbanites - i.e. liberals - make restrictions on development in the name of environmentalism, they reduce the supply of housing, and thus prices skyrocket.

Affluent and politically liberal-left communities like San Francisco and Monterey are places from which blacks have been forced out economically, even as they are cheered in political rhetoric. In San Francisco, for example, the number of blacks declined from more than 79,000 in the 1990 census to less than 61,000 in the 2000 census, even though the total population in the city increased by more than 50,000 people.

In adjoining -- and equally affluent and politically liberal -- San Mateo County, the black population fell from more than 35,000 to less than 25,000 during the same decade. Here too the total population rose by more than 50,000. More than half the land area of San Mateo is off-limits to building under "open space" laws.

In Monterey, another bastion of affluent liberalism and environmentalism, the black population in this community of more than 30,000 people declined from 937 to 749.

These are all bastions of liberal Democrats. In all these places, Ted Kennedy would be a middle of the roader, if not right of center.

But it's not just blacks who are getting the shaft: people with kids are getting priced out of the market too.

Regardless of race, people with children are likewise finding it hard to live where concentrations of limousine liberals force housing prices sky high with their severe land use restrictions under pretty environmentalist names. The number of children in San Francisco declined absolutely between 1990 and 2000, despite the overall growth in the city's population.

You can see where there are more children and less children in the average ages of local populations, which can differ by a decade or more. The average age in Merced County, out in the more conservative central valley, is 28 but in San Francisco it is 37. In very affluent communities like Beverly Hills, Malibu, and Woodside, the average age is in the forties.

So it looks like those liberal counties are behaving just like Europe, slowly dying off as the desire for children is outweighed by the desire for a comfortable life. No wonder SF seems like a foreign country sometimes.

2003-03-05T16:55:00.000-05:00

Stalin's Obit in NYT from 1953

These are just the headlines and subheads:

Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State

Dictator Ruthless in Moving to Goals

He Furthered Socialization and Industrialization of World's First Marxist Nation

Led World War II Effort

Hard, Mysterious, Aloof, Rude, He Outlasted the Dreamers and Solidified Power

No Mass Murder? No gulag? Times have changed, I hope.

2003-03-05T16:32:00.000-05:00

Area Man Seeks Confrontation, Gets One

That's my take on the lawyer who got arrested at a mall in NY. I think this guy set the whole situation up, and the publicity is exactly what he wanted. "Monday's arrest came less than three months after about 20 peace activists wearing similar T-shirts were told to leave by mall security and police." My question is, was Mr. Peace part of that original demonstration that got booted? Or affiliated with it somehow? And I wonder what the mall security cameras reveal...

In any case, for legal stuff, look at Eugene Volokh and Instapundit.

2003-03-05T15:06:00.000-05:00

Human Shield ad nauseum?

The following was sent to me from my friend Gary Barrett. It's a Reuters story, but I don't have a link for it. Here it is in its entirety:

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand woman said on Wednesday she was willing to be crucified by President Bush if he pledges not to attack Iraq.
Mary Grierson said she had emailed the challenge to the White House and as an open letter to leading U.S. newspapers.

"Send your troops home and take me instead, on behalf of everyone in the world who does not want war and oppression," she wrote.

But the deal has a catch -- Bush would have to personally hammer in the nails.

"I don't think he would have the courage to do it quite frankly, but that is the measure of a man," she told Radio New Zealand.

"Can he follow through with this aim of creating more chaos in the world if he had to do it just to one person himself?"

It is not the first novel expression of protest in New Zealand against a looming U.S.-led war on Iraq.

Another woman spent NZ$2,500 ($1,409) last month on an anti-war newspaper advertisement directed at Bush in the hope it would be seen by the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and passed on to Washington.

New Zealand, which refuses entry to its ports for foreign warships that are nuclear powered or carry nuclear weapons, opposes military action against Iraq unless it is backed by the United Nations.

I quote Emperor Ming: "Show us this loyalty; throw yourself onto your sword."

Now, maybe if she sets herself on fire, then sits perfectly still while she burns, then I'll be impressed.

2003-03-05T14:50:00.000-05:00

The Pentagon's New Map

Neato.

2003-03-05T11:51:00.000-05:00

Facts on Who Benefits From Keeping Saddam Hussein In Power